My thoughts exactly. But I do think that if I would put over $2000 to a laptop I wouldn't like the fact that I'm not able to upgrade memory after few years. It's ok with devices like iPad but $2000 laptop is a device that you expect to use a bit longer.
Apple expects consumers to replace hardware every two to three years. Often this is encouraged by their practice of only supporting a single version of their operating system and their practice of making new versions of their operating systems incompatible with hardware more than a few years old.
To put it another way, Apple doesn't want you to keep your Macbook for three years because there's no money in that, just support costs.
Sure, Apple wants to sell as much as possible. But it's unclear to me if this decision has that effect. Not if many people are like me.
Knowing that there are upgrade options makes it easier for me to pay up for an expensive machine. But years later I never actually buy an upgrade because it feels like a waste to put money into a machine that is nearing the end of its useful life anyway.
I don't even want to know how much money I have wasted on buying "future proof" hardware. So if anything I have to thank Apple for making this perfectly clear to me and saving me from sinking $2200 into a laptop ;-)
I was gonna but this and install Windoze on it... not sure i'll bother now and save myself around £1000 on a similar spec Dell (albeit without the slimness and super sharp screen)
More and more os x and the Mac "platform" is moving towards a becoming a crystal prison. They are still the undisputed leader when it comes to quality hardware. But locking down the os and hardware is not going to he good in the long run. I knew this was. I in that's why I got the 17 inch mbp in feb. figured I can have it last for a few more years as can upgrade the ram an hdd to a ssd giving it more life. If the os becomes restrictive then I can always install Linux or windows on the quality hardware.
So's the hardware, I'm not sure why that would matter much.
Battery is already soldered (basically), nobody cares. Aftermarket RAM upgrades only matter insofar as their historically being way overpriced at Apple, this seems avoided for now on the new MBP ($200 for the 16GB upgrade, Crucial asks for $160 for 2x8GB SODIMM so the markup extreme — least of all on a $2200 machine), the HDD -> SSD upgrade is irrelevant as it's already an SSD and if it's the same as the Air (no reason for it not to be), it's a semi-proprietary caseless and low-profile SSD module... for which there are third-party alternatives (or will be, in case the pinout is incompatible with 2011 Air pinout, which would be surprising)
Yes I know but that wasn't the point. The point is that if I now buy the laptop with let's say 8GB because I think I don't need more than that because all I do is code. After 6 months I get assigned to doing work with BIG databases that easily eat 10GB memory. Now I'm stuck with 8GB because it's soldered and even Apple can't upgrade it.
No, I'm buying a Mac because I need a UNIX-based operating system that can run the Adobe Creative Suite.
My fiancee, who is practically hardware illiterate, just installed brand new RAM and a new SSD into her 4-year-old MacBook. If she had originally purchased it with those upgrades, it would have been $500+ extra at the time of purchase. This week, it cost $150 for the parts on Amazon.
User-serviceable operations that don't require completely replacing the computer are important, and will surely affect many people's buying decisions. You don't get to say that everybody who wants a Mac will never want to waste time dicking around with their computer.
You're buying a Mac because you don't like to waste time dicking around with your computer, remember?
And I do like to waste time dealing with backups and Craigslist scammers? I'm buying a Mac because I want a Unix workstation with a solid UI. Lots of MacBook Pro owners are not terrified of screwdrivers.
Has that really been considered 'sound advice' all this time? Getting the best CPU/GPU I could understand, but up until now PC's have been so easily upgradable, that I've never heard someone recommend maxing out the Hard Drive and RAM during the ordering process (unless it was to your average consumer). I've always heard (and likewise, advised my 'power-user' friends) to just buy systems with the baseline HD and RAM options, because those components really tend to be a lot cheaper via third parties...
> I've always heard (and likewise, advised my 'power-user' friends) to just buy systems with the baseline HD and RAM options, because those components really tend to be a lot cheaper via third parties...
Not to mention if you hit your HD limit after a year the bigger drives are going to be drastically cheaper.
I disagree. Sometimes I can afford the best CPU, but it's twice as much as a CPU that's 90% as powerful. It doesn't make sense to buy it, even if I can afford it. I can wait a year or 2 and upgrade and still save money over buying the best.
The same goes for memory, hard drive, and other parts of the computer.
I have a current MBP with both 8GB and 16GB of memory. I found that with 8GB, performance is excellent. With 16GB, I normally have about 6-7GB free - Mac OS X normally uses the rest for a filesystem cache but it doesn't really affect performance that much in my experience. 16GB is going to be enough for quite a while...
Not to mention, the glaring problem people like to ignore when discussing this is the motherboard in the MBP is only going to support so much memory anyway (would not be surprised if it could only support 16gb), so talking about not being able to upgrade it to 32/64/whatever is common then is kind of moot.
I have the late 2011 MBP with 16gb of RAM and I maxed out RAM usage earlier today just with Postbox, Steam, a backgrounded 2Gb VM, a large file copy in forklift and chrome. While that's a rare occurence now, I imagine that over time it will become more common.
Did anyone upgrade their Mac? Secondary market prices for Mac laptops are insanely high. Over the last several years, I've been buying a new MacBook every year. I buy at $1100 and sell around $800. $300 is less than I spend on coffee.
