I'm fine with vendors charging way more than the ram is worth, as long as I have the option to purchase my ram somewhere else.
There's no denying that the new MacBook is a very nice machine, it just sucks that they either had to make huge concessions to get the form factor the way it is or they wanted to.
Does anyone know if the Samsung Series 9 allows for user upgradable memory? If so, there is no excuse for Apple.
Dell's XPS 13 Ultrabook appears to have a user replaceable SSD, but not RAM. That Lenovo X230 appears to allow both. Seems other ultrabooks allow one or the other, or none.
While I do like to upgrade things myself (upgraded the RAM and put an SSD in my current 13" Pro) and would prefer notebooks have that option, Apple's targeting an audience that would rather have their notebooks be as thin as possible than have the ability to do something that they'll never care to do. People that don't like that, can just buy something else, in Apple's opinion.
At a guess I'd say that's because they're using matched 8GB sticks, whereas Apple is using 4x 4GB. (Just a guess.)
I also just navigated the labyrinth that is HP.com and looked at pricing on the 15" Envy (15t-3000 series specifically). The base model comes with 6GB and it costs $315 to go to 16GB (8GBx2)[3].
So, Apple's pricing really doesn't seem bad at all.
[1]: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226... [2]: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226... [3]: No direct link possible apparently.
Lenovo, for example, wanted $1,060 to go from 4GB to 16GB in the ThinkPad X230.
Regardless, I don't think anyone looking at such an expensive notebook to begin with would have a problem paying $200 for more RAM if they think they might need it some day if it means a thinner notebook.