Or do any sort of repair on the thing. It's quite feasible to do basic board level repair with the schematics. But not without the schematics or if the thing is welded shut. It's wasteful, and I sincerely hope one day we can have a proper "right to repair" act. I mean, this has nothing to do with user experience, security, or aesthetics. It's basically just an anti-consumer move on Apples' part. And, I honestly don't get why. What are they trying to protect? Just put some screws or other mechanism for detaching the thing and publish the board schematics. They won't loose money over it.
These boards contain mostly surface mounted devices. This isn’t a TV from the 80s. You can’t just go in and solder things, even if you have the schematics.
The pro market doesn’t care about that anyway, they just get AppleCare.
It's definitely possible. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w (he does a bunch of different issues, just click any of the board level repair videos). I mean if you don't own the equipment yourself (or don't feel like doing it) I don't see why /other people/ well versed in doing it should not be allowed to. As a so called "pro" AppleCare is not always an option. You loose all your data and often enough have to wait several weeks to get your device back...and in a lot of places there are no certified apple dealers in a 700 mile radius. It's just user hostile, and completely unnecessary.
My guess is that their line of thinking is something like:
- 4 x thunderbolt 3 gives plenty of expansion options for things like external high-speed storage, external gpu, 4k+ monitors, etc.
- what can't be upgraded via thunderbolt 3 (ie cpu, ram) are components which should have a performance-value "half-life" that keeps the workstation productive for at least 3-5 years. (imac pro is configurable to up to 128gb ram and 18-core turbo-boost up to 4.5Ghz) with cpus having a less steep single-core performance curve over the last 5 years I think they're betting that this cpu would be competitive for at least 3-5 years. The same bet can't be made for the gpu but I supposed the thunderbolt 3 ports may help alleviate that worry.
- lastly their market research and projections about what the pro-workstation competitive landscape looks like in the next 3-5 years likely informed these decisions and releasing this product during a time when other "pro" mac options aren't looking too hot will certainly helps bolster it's sales.
I think they're targeting a "creative-professional" demographic that will likely just "buy a new one" in ~3-4 years as well as another demographic ("prosumer"?) that is purchasing more power than they actually need so they'll likely be happy with the machine for ~4-6 years and will act as raving Apple evangelists during those 4-6 years.
If you have an aversion to their offerings you're likely not part of their target demo and they've likely accounted for your demographic not being interested but there's still thousands, if not millions of consumers who will bite.
I hope they come out with a more upgradeable mac pro but if they didn't and I was in the market for a pro desktop I'd still be happy with the iMac pro. If they do come out with a more upgradeable mac pro I would be surprised if you could configure it with a 5k Apple display and meet the imac pro's price-point so there's that to consider as well.
Probably because a large percentage of their customers don't actually care about expansion. I don't know - I don't have access to Apple's sales demographics, but I would be hard-pressed to think the reason was "malice".
You don't have / spend the extra for a bigger disk or memory and your screwed. You will need to buy a new one...