Huh? it's not like you pay more for hardware that's always been present. You get exactly the same CPU from entry level M1 to fully specc'd M1. It's not like you could turn a M1 into a M1 Pro or a M1 Max by flicking a switch or blowing a fuse, because the hardware is just not there.
Compare that with BMW who builds and sells cars with heater seats that you software unlock, but the hardware is already there, which is ridiculous. At that point all cars could have it enabled and it would barely make a dent in the price as the uniform assembly line that produces economies of scale is already in place. This is what Mazda is doing, basically you have two, maybe three trim levels, sometimes only one, fully specc'd, and that's it.
I hope people don't buy these subscriptions and auto manufacturers give up on them.
edit: words...
Unlikely. 20+ years ago I was working for a manufacturer of high end office machines and they were doing the same thing. It's been popular for a long time, just now trickling down to consumer hardware.
https://lwn.net/Articles/884876/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30394918
I don't think the big players have the same intentions though.
I shudder self driving cars and the prospect that companies would pay to nudge driver routes past their shops is perhaps another future concern, one in which would be a bit evil. Just as well some companies say they will do no evil, though non spring to mind thesedays.
Still, in tech the earliest type of paying to unlock a feature goes back to the 60's iirc and some storage drive that you would pay to upgrade and entailed an engineer comming out and flipping a dip switch to enable the extra capacity. Think it was some ICL kit, though was such a long time ago and never personaly experienced that beyond past down anicdotes.
Person from Minnesota drives their car down to Florida and sells it. Buyer has no need for the car's heated seats & steering wheel, so it goes unused. Are you saying this is a problem?
At that point you can spread the cost over 1000 instead of keep selling 800 at a higher price to cover for the 200. I also guess Pareto goes the other way (200 heated + 800 non-heated), which only makes it worse.
This is not an Apple thing... For ages CPUs and I think GPUs, too, are basically the same thing between many different models.
Then more expensive versions just get more cores unlocked, higher frequency allowed, etc.
That's called binning, the unit goes through some testing and components that don't pass get shunted away (hardware or firmware) because they're known to behave incorrectly. Better that than throwing it into a trash.
Blow the fuse/hack the firmware and you can unlock these because the hardware is there, but it's likely that it doesn't operate entirely correctly (especially under duress), even though it may appear to work at first blush.
A solid mechanism to enable/disable these features on demand would make the situation a lot better. You could pay just for the upgrade instead of the whole chip, either permanently or only when you need it and pay per use.
But the reality is that in practice this mechanism will probably not work to the advantage of the end user. It will focus entirely on the company's bottom line and open up new avenues for abuse. If your hardware is linked to a license and to the manufacturer forever, you'll never own it. Unless the legal framework enforces the rights of the consumer under threat of drastic fines for the manufacturer, we're just forgoing real ownership.
https://lwn.net/Articles/884876/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30394918
But the thing now with "pay to unlock more cores" is... interesting.
They'd probably love to turn that into a subscription, too.
I think Intel abused this at least once, back in the days when they had ridiculously good yields across the board, but let's not generalize in absence of evidence.
Perhaps the confusion comes from the different mix of performance and efficiency cores on different Macs, but those are physically different. So for instance my M1 MBA has four performance and four efficiency cores, a compromise intended to give very long battery life.
Look at HP. They used to be the go-to "reputable, always reliable" brand for printers. Heck, if you can still find the old Laserjet 4xxx series printers they're still good.
But HP in the last decade or so are on most people's shit list.
When people are shopping for an appliance, price is often the largest deciding factor. HP prices their inkjet printers low to lock in that sale. But in order to still earn a profit, they try to make money from the ink, so they lock down the firmware to block 3rd party ink.
People hate how expensive ink is, so they created Instant Ink, a subscription model. If you do a decent amount of printing, especially color printing, you'll actually save money. But it's widely misunderstood. You're not subscribing to ink, you're subscribing to printed pages. And so there are people writing nasty articles about HP because they'll pay $3 for their first month of Instant Ink, HP will send them an ink cartridge, they'll cancel their subscription, then have a Surprised Pikachu face when their printer then refuses to print with the Instant Ink cartridge, because for some reason they thought they owned the ink cartridge that they paid $3 for.
And of course, someone will take a picture of their printer refusing to print with the Instant Ink cartridge that they're no longer subscribed to and post it to /r/AssholeDesign.
And yet, HP still sell printers in the EU.
In America, corporations run the government and the propaganda machine. They've convinced half the country that any restrictions on corporations are attacks on the Free Market™ (and your freedom!) and are a slippery slope to SOCIALISM!!.
Unfortunately, several of the other printer manufacturers seem to have copied HP's approach. With similar results.
The Epson EcoTank range (eg specifically refillable ink tanks) seems like a good idea, not that I've used them yet. :)
They even went to the point of modifying their Amazon listing for their old label printer, so it has all the good reviews for the old product, but selling the new crap DRM-locked garbage product.
So all the newer reviews are people complaining, but the star average is still high for the moment.
Moreover, I seem to recall reading here on HN a fair bit about smart refrigerators and Samsung smart TVs with ads, and I can't see those revenue models going away anytime soon.