News Apple's new MacBook Pro blocks upgrades

@Unicorn: Obviously it isn't a good idea, especially from a technical point of view or a view where preservation is involved (I'm a technician myself). But In terms of profit margins? They're rolling in cash. That is until a large defect with a certain component is found. Then they'll be crying.

It's still a double edged sword to be honest. It reduces the out of door cost for apple (which somehow doesn't trickle down to the consumer...take that reagan!) But on the other hand maintainence, troubleshooting and repairing these machines are prohibitively expensive. What is one to do? This is that out of the world though. But I am truly interested to see how battery life for this thing will be in 2-4 years. Because $3k is a large investment that should last at least that long.

 

You know, I'm sure someone said that we'd never need more than 640K of memory... (could be more of a limit when we consider how many programs people may want to run, not just how much the OS will use)

 

That's another area of concern for me; Battery life and replacement. It's now glued in which means obviously not a user serviceable part. I can't see the battery being in a good state in 4 years. Really good Lithium Polymer batteries can survive with 80% or better capacity after 500 full charge cycles. Really good batteries. The Li-Ions that I use in my torches cost as much as £20 each and they're just single 3.7v cells, not entire packs. I also have racing and flight packs for my RC cars and heli's which cost upwards of £60. Most cheaper lithium cells won't survive with 50% capacity past 400 cycles. I know my laptop gets cycled once every couple of days... So the lifespan is potentially very short. What's the new procedure for replacing a MBP battery then? Send it to the repair centre to be forcibly removed by a tech using a polycarbonate shield and have a new one glued in its place?

You're right, they will be crying when they have to do a "x million unit" recall or mass repairs because of a component defect. I wonder if this new move means they've drastically increased their quality control and testing?*

*By quality control and testing, I mean at the component level. Manufacturers of good, branded, high end electronics take a sample of components from each batch and test them before using the rest of that batch in their product, whereas manufacturers of cheap, rubbish electronics just assemble their products with components lifted straight off a shelf.

 

I'm pretty sure glue can be removed. That isn't difficult, the problem is removing it cleanly. But assembly must be cheap. On the other hand though, the consumer gets screwed over still. If there's a mass battery defect (hey it's happened with everything, even capacitors) and it's 2 years down the line, that won't be good. At all.

But this wasn't made to be repairable. Just like almost every other iproduct for a while, they were made to be disposable. And this one is just another in the long line. It's neither good nor bad for me, but for a tinkering madman and a generally not so wealthy person myself. The inability to maintain something is a large deterrent.

 

My bad on the SSD, totally miss read the article.

Me and a colleague have GSX access and believe me, replacement parts take an age!

I'm not going to buy one, i'm just saying form someone who has to work on them daily for our staff and deal with returns and repairs its only more ball ache : (

 

Well, that's why I was talking about business/corporate-customers, who get a 5 year AppleCare Protection Plan. Atleast that's my experience with Apple, when I buy stuff through my companies account.

 

5 million pixels on a laptop isn't news to you?

How many pixels are you typing on now? 1? 2?

Anyways this is just linkbait hysteria, the screws are defeated by a 7 dollar screwdriver you can order online...
components on other apple devices like ipods and the rest have had tutorials and 3rd party replacement bits pop up over time, this is a market and it will be served. anyways at the high end the folks will just pay for someone else to repair it, whether apple or someone else, its not a big deal. whats the last time you changed the valves on your own car engine yourself anyways most people won't even touch the oil change.. never m ind anything else.

 

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
they claim 1000 cycles.
maybe their batteries are better, they tend to use the cutting edge.

but yes many cheaper ones only last a few hundred.

 

Clearly people forgot about the parody gamer commercial about how with a pc you have to upgrade and blah blah but with apple its great you just throw it away and get another one =p

 

What a silly thing to say. For noteboooks, Intel uses Socket G2 (PGA988) and AMD uses Socket S1 (PGA638), you'll find them in a majority of laptops. GPU socket, right on that account no such thing.

 

Mixed feelings with this one. For starters how do we deal with faulty memory - might not happen that often but it can happen. I guess it would be a quick motherboard replacement if the laptop is still under warrenty?

Did they make any improvement with Bootcamp (and not I do not want to discuss the merits of OsX vs Windows). As far as I know Windows 8 should be able to easily handle the Retina resolution - problem here is the apps that are not written to display at high resolution which will look fugly.

The biggest grief is the lack of ethernet as the laptop is clearly aimed at professionals and most professional have to move heavy data which wireless is just not suited for. Nonetheless a minor point - overall love the dimensions, display and finally HDMI and USB 3. The rest is pretty much standard and a catch up play.

I am a professional but that price tag is just out of my pay grade - maybe I am not pro enough

 

This is just wasteful to be honest.

 

MacBooks

LOL +1. When I seen this thread I knew there would be serious apple bashing going down. The completely non-upgradable machine is quite a let down on my part.

I have a MacBook and its a great machine but i have upgraded my RAM in the machine i have and the last MacBook I had. Don't think i shall be buying another at any point. Also they dont have a optical drive that is a big loss for somebody who uses a lot of live CD's and burns alot of DVDs. For my work i prefer to work on a *nix based machine so Macbooks are great for that. Think ill just be getting myself a Samsung and banging Linux on it.

Also what's wrong with Lion? Given i did enjoy snow leopard better but why the dislike out of interest?

Bill

 

You might want to research MXM - granted, the socket isn't on every laptop, but it is used for some of the higher end discrete laptop cards.

I'd go out on a limb and say that replacement parts will be available so any half-decent repair shop would be able to replace the logic board or whichever other part may fail (or anyone with the right set of tools and balls to do it). The control over ram is somewhat crippling though and a laptop of such high spec and cost you'd want to keep running for a good many years, so why the battery has been made difficult to replace is a (imo) crap decision.

Crikey, I replaced a screen on my MB without completely disassembling the whole unit from front to back (as you should do), by just taking the clutch cover off. It was incredibly tricky but it saved a lot of time. If you need to make a repair on pretty much anything and are not sure how to do it, someone will have already figured out how to do it and posted a youtube vid with instructions.

 

1) I said I don't know anyone in person. So not generalised there.
2) I said "most", and this holds water.
3) Everyone I know in person that has a PC and uses it for more than jsut occasionally surfing the web has an external. That includes my gran. The fact remains that using an external is easier and quicker than installing a new HDD. Most people are simply not tech savvy at all. Hell, the amount of hardware techs I've worked with that judge a GPU by how much RAM it has is astounding. This leads me to believe that for most people (and most of them are not on this forum), an external is a much more attractive option than opening a PC Case, nevermind digging out a screwdriver to open a laptop.
4) You're in the minority simply by virtue of knowing what a VM is already. Deal with it.

Exactly.
I have in 3 years not had the need to upgrade my MBP. I don't work with 300+dpi print media much, and generally use it for mkaing websites in CODA/MAMP/Photoshop.
it was entry level back then (2.4GHz C2D, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD), and it works just ducky for that.
Now with me planning to go more into print media, etc, the extra RAM, CPU horse power and the SSD make it attractive to upgrade.

^^this.

16GB RAM and an SSD is plenty for normal photoshop usage.
For rendering, you probably shouldn't be using a laptop anyway, and for VMs your HDD requirements already are substantially higher than the normal users'.

On top of that, this is marketed at the super-trendy MBP user.
That screen by itself marks up the price so much that while it's really pretty, it's ultimately a bit of a foolish buy right now (mostly, at any rate).
at 2200USD, this thing is squarely pitched at the trendy e-peen conscious user rather than someone that simply needs a new and beefy laptop.

I for one am looking at replacing my 13" MBP with a new 13" MBA, specced up to 2.0GHz/8GB/256GB SSD. It's portable, and cheap enough that I can buy anew home theater system for the price difference between that and the MBP/retina monster.
Also, it packs enough of a punch that I'll probably be happy with it for the next 2 or 3 years with the work I am doing.

 

Here in Canada, Apple is warranty is really good.
You go to the Apple store with your laptop that has a problem, and they just take it, and give you a new system right away. Not a refurbished, new. Your data isn't transfer though, but people are happy, and it makes the support desk far more empty, despite being packed with people daily. So it makes the consumer feel that it's better system already.

The problem with a lock down system, is that if you break the system accidentally. Like spill a bit of liquid on the keyboard, where it doesn't break the system cause it's a few drop, and just breaks the keyboard instead, because it prevents or always does contact, with the two circuit sheet as you type. Or if you keep the system for longer than 3 years (I keep my PC laptop for 5 years easy), and something happens, well too bad. Also, if you plan to sale your used laptop, well you can't swap the drive, so data might be recoverable. And other similar issues, and of course no updatability, or repearibility. But that's ok. Tim Cook said himself on stage at an interview. That Apple costumers will buy the new latest Apple product even if it has issues. They complain about it, but still buy it.

source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/29/tim-cook-why-i-joined-apple-/

 

I think I've worked out how Apple will remove the batteries... and I bet it's really easy if you have the gear.

Look at this pic: http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/ALDqXyUNeJTWCycT.medium

They've glued the cells directly to the alu in the unibody. Heat up the metal from the other side, soften the glue and the cells should ease out easy enough.

I can imagine a line of foxconn workers in Brazil being able to strip down a RMBP and have new cells in within a couple of minutes.

(They should have come with a better system though. I've replaced iPhone batteries and even that isn't fun!)

 

Not too hot though, eh? Isn't it 100c for LiPol before it asplodes everywhere?

 

Next up, they'll use epoxy glue. MacBook Pro's where specifically engineered to be like this. It's not for convenience, doesn't cut product cost, doesn't reduce height of the system, despite what is being said by Apple (excuses). They are specifically made to be like this on purpose. If my laptop, 4 year old, I can pull out the motherboard out with a few screws (6 if I recall correctly). Where 1 screw will remove the entire bottom of the system, for full internal access. Engineers can do anything they want. That's their job.. Do the impossible, solve problems out of nothing. That's engineering, and that is why they are paid so much.

 

Most people could not fix a laptop anyway even upgrading its ram is beyond 99% of users who buy the product

Quick question though

There is 4 slots for ram? If so only 2 are surely filled couldn't you in theory stick in the extra 2 sticks ?