They haven't increased enormously in price, when comparing like models and factoring in exchange rates to USD.
The 2012-2015 generation 15" were bifurcated in 2013 between integrated and discrete graphics. You need to look at discrete graphics models.
The 2009-2012 generation 15" was the midrange model, and the 17" was the top of the line model, so you need to compare to that model.
The 2018's have introduced new tiers of parts on the super high end (i9 and 4tb ssd) that bump the fully spec'd model up in price. Of course that's getting a lot of attention, but those don't represent the typical builds.
See this chart on historic USD pricing [0] and historic pricing by country [1], and historic 10Y exchange rates (pick any currency) [2]. I did this comparison for someone on reddit [3] with CAD and each of their examples of price increases were 100% accounted for by looking at exchange rates.
The 2012-2015 generation 15" were bifurcated in 2013 between integrated and discrete graphics. You need to look at discrete graphics models.
The 2009-2012 generation 15" was the midrange model, and the 17" was the top of the line model, so you need to compare to that model.
The 2018's have introduced new tiers of parts on the super high end (i9 and 4tb ssd) that bump the fully spec'd model up in price. Of course that's getting a lot of attention, but those don't represent the typical builds.
See this chart on historic USD pricing [0] and historic pricing by country [1], and historic 10Y exchange rates (pick any currency) [2]. I did this comparison for someone on reddit [3] with CAD and each of their examples of price increases were 100% accounted for by looking at exchange rates.
[0] https://everymac.com/global-mac-prices/mac-prices-us-usa-uni...
[1] https://everymac.com/global-mac-prices/index-global-internat...
[2] https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=10Y
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8yqu2p/the_prices_of...