News Apple's new MacBook Pro blocks upgrades

Well we don't know about Vizio. While for sure the GPU and CPU are soldered on. (this isn't new, beside you usually can't find any upgrade for the CPU, or the BIOS won't support it, and the performance increase is usually not worth it). The SSD and RAM are probably not. And probably no special screws, either. We have to see.

What I hope it does, is simply wake up the PC OEM's, and start making nicer systems (in all aspects, meaning screen, battery life and specs too, good touchpad, and looks half descent, 0 junk, OS disk). That is all. I don't care about thinnest and MacBook Pro looks. So far, beside Vizio, the only laptop manufacture that does a effort is ASUS.

While Vizio systems aren't the best of the best, or same specs as the MacBook Pro, as mentioned, it is not bad for a first try, and as they are aiming at affordable for what you get price, I think they'll get plenty more sales than Razor, that's for sure. And if they can pull it off, then expect over the time to expand with high end model.. and who knows, maybe even something like Dell where you can customize your system from their website.

 

None of that is compelling to me. Apple's OSX is based on a derivative of UNIX (not Linux), called NeXT. Given that this was Job's baby before he rejoined Apple, he was entitled to use it as he saw fit.

Google has anything but a "laissez faire" attitude. Much of their "open source" code is not open. And many manufacturers of Android devices lock them down so upgrading to the next version of Android OS is a nightmare. As for the devs: I once emailed a suggestion to an iPhone app developer and within a week he released an update with the feature implemented.

 

To clear some things up, as there's alot of misinformation floating around.

First of all... OSX is based on UNIX. UNIX was introduced in 1969 by Bell and none of the current end-user OS besides OSX is based on UNIX. Linux is a totally different thing and has basically nothing to do with UNIX. Linux was developed without using UNIX as the starting-point. Same with Windows (MS-DOS).

More importantly. MacOS is the reason why the GUI and the mouse gained rapid interest in the public allthough it was not the first OS with a GUI. The people who invented the GUI were working at XEROX in 1974. However these people then teamed up with Apple later on to develop MacOS, so we'll just call Apple the first to release a PC with a GUI as XEROX was not officially selling computers to any endusers.

Tablet PCs and smartphones... yes these also existed before Apple intorduced them ofc, but it was Apple again that made the bigger public interested in these kind of products, as noone was marketing these before or selling them in large quantities.

We can discuss the question if Apple is user-friendly or not, and we can discuss the question if Apple coud improve their products amking them more user-friendly, but this question is totally missing the point, that the vast majority of users are not interested in modifying their systems, replacing hardware etc. Endusers normally bua a product and use it the way it is.

bit-tech readers, aswell as readers of other tech-sites are the absolute minority, only making up for some 5-10% of the endusers. So Apple couldn't be interested any less in people like us, who like to have options to modify and fiddle around with their hardware or software.

Last but not least, to those allways coming up with google and Android... google is just the same as Apple, but they make you believe that they're more open-minded.
The difference is, that google is licensing Android to manufacturers, but it's the manufacturers then who put limits on their products in man cases. It's the same as iOS basically in the end.
When google decides to stop licensing Android to manufacturers and try to sell their own products - which is to believed happening in the future with the aqcuisition of Motorola - then we'll see how open minded google will be with Android.
Just look at all the recent patent-wars going on... google/Motorola are going to the court next week against Apple, because of a standard-relevant patent they're not licensing to Apple for a reasonable low fee.

People are fast to bash Apple, allthough the other players in the market are just the same. It sickens me to see people being that one-sided and narrow-minded. Just don't buy the stuff from Apple, if you think there's superior products, but don't come in here constantly and try to spread the fairy tale of Apple being worse then other manufacturers when there's tons of evidence around to proove that it's just that... a fairy-tale.


So, have fun bashig Apple even more, but you'll look like a fool to people, who are actually open-minded and free of predjudices.

 

True, but I was just saying I didn't notice any apple users being outraged at this. I was expecting apple users to be like "how could they do this to me?" and windows users to go "Ha ha!" but it's more like the opposite.

Everyone's probably seen it already anyway but...

 

This is a two edge sword. Mechanically what they've done makes sense. The fewer connectors, the better secured, implies more reliable. The problem is this is a very expensive throw away machine in a couple years. The hardware is still fast but parts that break are either too expensive to replace or just not available.

Probably the most effective planned obsolescence I've seen in a while.

I am not an Apple fan but I can see the logic of their methods in this machine. If they do this to every machine I would have no problem slamming them further. I guess that's why I stick with PC. I like doing what I want to what I own. I think Apple hardware is just like a software license, you can use it but you don't really own it.

 

That's because you don't get Apple-users. People who buy products from Apple aren't interested in tech and modifying it etc. People who buy and use products from Apple just buy and use them without questioning aslong as the product works as intended, which it'll do most of the time.

 

Hint: the lifecycle of hardware is only 2-5 years

So if the PC works for 2-5 years without breaking it's perfectly fine. Especially for companies or self-employed people, as they get extended warranties for very little money -> Apple Care Protection Plan and in addition they can offset the hardware against tax every 3 years.

 

That statement is interesting given the near 10 year lifespan of some things I own. Then again it's because I take the time to maintain it.

Not really worth the cost mind you.

 

I've seen several people on these boards state they own an apple laptop as well as a pc. I'm not trying to be argumentative but you can't make a blanket statement about every single apple user as being uninterested in tech and modifying. The fact that they're on these boards indicates otherwise.

All I'm saying is that I'd expect them to gravitate towards this article and more than likely have an opinion on it. So far I didn't notice any outrage from apple users, which leads me to believe that even the pc hobbyists and techs who also buy apple products don't have upgradeability in mind when purchasing. It's an interesting niche that apple has cornered imo.

Other than that, the non-apple users seem more indignant about this move from apple, despite being entirely unaffected. Pc users aren't affected and apple users don't seem to be all that affected either. What's the big deal?

 

I'm buying a new PC every two years. I don't upgrade them either, just like I don't upgrade a laptop, or tablet etc.
I'm one of those self-employed, who just offsets his hardware every two or three years against taxes and I'd be stupid to not buy a new rig actually.

Ofc I'm interested in tech and it's possibilities, and I even do modify my cases or built one myself from scratch, but I'm not modifying, overclocking or changing my hardware every now and then. When something breaks, I just buy something new or have it exchanged aslong as the warranty is still intact.

So, the big deal is, that most people actually couldn't care less about these things, as tehy're nothing to be upset about. Even if affected by the design of Apples products, it's nothing to be bothered about, as we just get new hardware and not think about it any further.

Apples products are not designed to be modified, overclocked or whatelse. They're designed to work the way they are until they get exchanged for something new. We - those who buy and use Apples products - are happy with that and so we don't care or cry foul.

So yeah, for Apples products my statement still stays, there's no interest in modifying these. We allready got PCs for that, if we wanted to.

 

Saying Apple gear is for people who don't care about tech and are just poor deluded sheep is now as antiquated as the rhetoric that used to be spouted around when slavery was abolished or women were given the vote...

Apple Good: Cutting edge tech. Gorgeous design. Seamless experience between OS & hardware.

Apple Bad: Not the cheapest. Limited options to customise and perform post purchase internal upgrades.

Apple summary: Good, but not suitable for everyone.

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Imo (which is what arguments consist of), you could give the same Good points for Windows (if you're willing to pay more, the design is there). As for the experience, the only problems I've really had with windows have been either me overclocking something too far or deciding to delete the boot partition (I've done this more than once ). You also get the wide range of tech choice which comes with having a completely open tech choice.

Having borrowed by dad's old 3GS while I'm waiting for my S3 to be delivered, I didn't see the massive responsiveness/smoothness everyone seems to talk about - it would freeze for a couple of seconds every now and then. Don't take this as me saying that all apple gear is slow, it's more that in my experience it hasn't had the advantages that it is claimed to have.

Just my two cents.

 

Based off the usage of an old phone, and not having used a Mac? Sorry, but you're basing your opinion on shaky ground.

I'm a Mac user, and have been since 2003. Equally, I'm a Windows user, because OS X is still terrible for games. Both platforms have their advantages and disadvantages, and it is down to the individual user to balance those up according to their opinions.

I appreciate my PC because it is fast and I can tinker with it. I appreciate my Macs because they're designed incredibly well, and the whole package of OS and hardware is tightly integrated. My love for good design spills over to the PC, where I'll spend ages finding a good case, but stops at the internals.

The new MacBook Pro is a powerful, slim, laptop with a ridiculously high resolution screen. That comes with sacrifices - namely the inability to tinker with components. At this point in time, you just have to accept the latter if you want the former. In time, we'll see the high resolution trickle down to other computers, which do let you swap out the RAM/battery and so forth - it's just that right now, with a limited supply of screens, Apple decided to go for the luxury slim & light market.

 

Of course it's all all personal opinion, just chilled out banter between friends.

And I'm happy to take you up on the challenge, but I'll do Microsoft's bad points too.

I'll start with a brief summary. Microsoft has more positive going for it than Apple, but it also (IMHO) has a lot more negative as well. And looking historically, Microsoft has some right clunkers to be ashamed of.

Microsoft Good: Familiarity. Choice. Both cheap and cheerful and high end options available and everything in between. Pro level enterprise software (Too many to name but I'll name check Office for starters and then do a server room name call later). Possible to find a solution to nearly any requirement you possibly have. Customisation of hardware. Allowing PC tinkering as an interest/hobby. Development tools. Xbox.

Microsoft Bad: The experience of the end user is not the driving force behind their decisions. Company ethos means genuinely fresh ideas will rarely be given the push they need. Too many development APIs. Allowing OEMs to install truly terrible software and ruin the UX. Allowing OEMs to build brilliant hardware and ruin it by writing terrible software for it and then abandoning said software after six months (Hello Sony). Allowing OEMs to build terrible hardware and then install terrible software on it. Not really knowing what to do with the tech they pull together (Surface, Courier etc)

Microsoft Legacy (The God Damn Awful list... whoever come up with these needs to be taken out and spanked!): F6 to install raid drivers. Bios. The registry. Clippy. Windows ME. Windows Genuine Advantage. PlaysForSure. User Account Control. Windows Pocket PC memory management. Everything pre Windows 95. Everything to do with networking pre Windows 2000. Regional and Language options during install. Twips in VB.

 

I have a 3GS as part of the development test suite and I've never seen it lockup like this, but I wouldn't be too surpassed by the experience even if its iOS install was fully up to date. The 3GS does suffer from lack of RAM every now again and it is technically possible for it's normally pretty good memory management to stutter while it plays catch up when switching between several high demand apps.

As I said I've never seen it lockup for 2 seconds or so, but I'm certainly not saying it couldn't happen and 'if' the 3GS is jailbroken then memory management will be fighting even harder depending on the jailbreak + hacks installed.

I've got an original iPad in my test suite and although it doesn't lockup I can certainly feel that it's less responsive than my later iPads.

New device + new iOS version = Smooth and fast

Old device + new iOS version = Hardware having to work a lot harder to keep up.

Apple do restrict the functionality when they release the latest OS to the older devices, but it's not a perfect arrangement. You get 'most' of the new OS but not 100% and you certainly don't get the performance you'd get by buying a newer multi-core device with four times the RAM.

IMHO I'd still rather this arrangement then the carrier dominated model that plagues android on and which leaves ICE sitting on 7% of devices compared to 80% of Apples running iOS 5.

 

-> F6 to install RAID drivers: I don't see what's wrong with that. Windows 9x setup was terrible, so they went with the Windows NT one. Windows setup system which worked better, far more robust, and independent (no DOS needed). This meant, however, no interface. Why? because computer standards stated that when the system went in "Safe Mode" (no drivers), it went to minimum performance and ability (remember you need to support the lowest common denominator), and that meant that fancy GUI was out of the question. Heck, even Vista and Linux had trouble.

-> BIOS... what it has to do with Microsoft?

-> The registry is actually the best solution. A unified place, and using a database means super high performance in accessing data, and writing to it. Also (since Vista) it's fully loaded on memory, so no need to start reading files everywhere on an HDD. Also corruptions are limited and doesn't affect everything.

-> User Account Control. This is god send. This should have been in Windows 1 or 2. And the approach that Microsoft take is very good, while not perfect, it's far better than opening a command prompt window and start typing command with "sudo" in front, and start typing user name and passwords non stop, on fields that don't populate as you type. UAC also blocks all if not a great majority of viruses and malware from affecting a computer. They can't do anything until YOU allow it to.

-> I don't see what's wrong with 'Regional and Language options during install". Might as well do it there then start digging into the OS to find it, to avoid programs going "default" language on you, and pick different languages other than English, because no language was specified.

The rest I can't comment on, as I know nothing.

-> Windows Activation system. It works perfectly, and doesn't affect the user experience.

The only thing I would agree with you is Windows ME.

So before telling people they don't know **** about Mac's, and that you "know" both, you don't, and your not better than the people you critiqued.

 

I understand the ethos in having a hardware / os platform that will occasionally require 3rd party driver injection as part of the install procedure. But why is it you have to hit F6 at just the right time? Why can't the install wizard identify your hardware, realise it doesn't have any discs it can install to and then prompt you for the option.

It's a UX that assumes a certain amount of preparation and knowledge from the user. They could have produced a better and more user friendly system but didn't because this system was 'good enough'

They were in a position to take a lead and make some real changes. Any muppet who can hit a delete key can enter a legacy bios and bring a machine to its knees in seconds, but it take a real genius to get a custom build working at it's very best and not fry the system with too much voltage in the process.

Microsoft could have said "Look at this - we're Microsoft and we're frigin' massive, we've come up with this better system and we want all you OEMs to use it as it'll result in more stable machines for the masses and a better tweaking experience for the tweakers out there. Oh and the PC will boot quicker too'.

What do they do? Leave all the decision making on this aspect of how best to manage a PC to the hardware vendors. The result is the bios we're all so well encountered with which is fine for you and I but akin to fitting every VW golf with a dashboard dial to adjust the valve timings.

Apart from when 3rd party software treats it mean and drops it's keys down the back of the registry sofa before leaving.

In principle the idea is great, but in reality it lead to there being too many requests for authentication which lead to people just clicking 'yes' on autopilot.

There's too many options that need to be in sync to end up with a machine with a 'standard' config. If I recall there was three places you had to set "British English" or similar to ensure you got your dates in the right format and your keys mapped correctly.

They could have just allowed a country choice with a 'customise' option to bring up the advanced options. Forcing every installer to see these convoluted options is bad thinking.

Citation needed!

I've never said that or insinuated that. We've been discussing our opinions on tech and our opinions on why the tech is the way it is. PCs are cool, Windows 7 is a nice OS. There's a lot of Mac users here, and even those that don't own Macs have clearly shown they have a knowledge of the platform. What gives? Why the accusation?

I'm sorry you're so offended by my opinions, or that because I'm happy to express them you think I'm insulting you and accusing you of knowing four asterisks about Macs.

As I've said I think there's more pros to owning a PC than there are to owning a Mac, but this opinion is tempered by my other opinion that the negative aspects of owning a PC are greater than the negative aspects of owning a Mac.

(macPositive - macNegative) > (pcPositive - pcNegative)

This opinions do not apply, and cannot apply to all of the people, all of the time. We're talking about 'general purpose computers here' not specialist gaming monsters, or corporate servers... or a million other scenarios where a PC is the clear choice.. or in the hundreds of scenarios where a Mac is the obvious choice (See what I did there!!!)

I don't hate you for choosing PC over Mac... or Xbox over PS3... or SNES over Megadrive... or Atari ST over Amiga... or C64 over spectrum... Same arguments time and time again.

All mostly humbly IMO!

PS. Having a choice and being able to debate the different merits of each system is amazingly cool! Don't go hating on someone because they have a different opinion.

PPS. I'm trying to keep things nice and fluffy but it's been twice now where I've been attacked in this thread for daring to have the opinion that Apple computers, while not perfect, are actually nice things to own that have some merits over a PC. The next person who throws an insult in my direction gets a cold pot of custard down their trousers!

 

This is where it all comes down to. The above OPINION is subjective, everyone has one and the above is true in your case. However is others, myself included, it is not and I feel it has, to a degree, to do with what you were brought up around/worked with first.

Having recently gained a mac in the household (dad needed on for work) I was shocked at how different they are and how baffled I was at time trying to use it. This is just because I have never really used them, always have a pc or a windows machine of some sort.

In my opinion Windows out weighs mac in terms of overall benefits for me and that isn't just down to my apparently lack of knowledge towards mac but also the systems I have worked on.

For me windows has many great options and features that I feel go uncredited such as some brought up above.
*UAC- an excellent addition to Windows, all be it sometimes a little intrusive , it is almost a self preservation system that has come to my aid many a time.
*Cross system compatibility- no matter what hardware inside a pc if its running windows and has a SOFTWARE only problem it can quite easily be solved, as can macs I am aware, but it also opens up for competition and variation. My PC is hardly ever going to be identical to anyone else's as I have picked each part for my own reasons. As has everyone here but macs are very limited. Two people with a MBP are likely to have almost identical systems. Can the same be said about PCs? No.
*software base and compatibility- Windows has strived and has succeeded in having a huge software base much larger than macs and that is fantastic, any problem with the right troubleshooting can be solved on a pc, on a mac? No sometimes I believe you just have to accept there are some things osx can not do.

Above are just a few but in my opinion Windows just provides a more "open" system

PS. Having these chats are what makes bit-tech.

 

1- IDE doesn't require drivers.
2- It doesn't know what you need drivers, it assumes it can communicate with the controller (which it can), and everything will be normal. The controller doesn't say "Hey Mr. Setup! You don't have your needed drivers loaded so that you can work with all the features I support." Even today, there is no OS that support this. All it can do, is notice that no drives can be detected, and ASSUMES that no drivers are loaded, and will load wtv is on disk, or tell you about installing them.
3- The only reason why you need some now, is because XP was on market for 6 years.
4- Back then, it was computer enthusiasts or professionals or "professionals" who installed Windows. Rarely mom and pop.

And when Microosft does change something, everyone freaks out and goes "Dont' changes what's not broken!!!!!"

Every time Microsoft tried to touch something that was standard to make it better, everyone freaks out, and criticizes them. However, Microsoft did push greatly UEFI, and was supporting it since Vista days, when no one here had it.

OEMs don't allow voltage control or any kind or changes beside the pure basics like time, date, RAID (if you are lucky), password protect, and boot order. System stability has nothing to do with the BIOS. OEM's uses inferior product quality and poor engineering because the consume seeks the lowest price possible. That is why Business class system cost so much more over consumer models for the same specs. Better costumer service, better warranty service, longer warranty, better build quality, better engineering, better cooling system and engineering, better software, junk free, and OS disk, all costs money. Most consumers don't care about any of that. All they want is the lowest price possible. Else they buy a Mac, or business class system.

I understand what you mean. Honest, no joke. Do you mean that a software doesn't delete it's keys after you uninstall? If so, then complain to the developer. Also, the cool thing about databases, is that you can make it as dirty as possible, and the most unorganized mess, and it will be just as efficient as if it was clean.

First of all, it only shows up when you do system level tasks, affects all users on the system, and install/uninstall a program. A normal user doesn't and should not be affected by this. If they are, and have no idea what they are ding, then their is just so much Microosft can do. I guess Microsoft can make a video chat pop-up thing that shows and tell the user: "I think this 'no-a-virus-honest-super-cool-picture.exe' is a malware or virus, you should not allow it". Or a policy that will destroy your front door as they come in, and point guns on your head and go: "STOP!".

huh?

Isn't this like this already?