Wow... I don't think I can go back to a non retina after I had a retina, but good for you though.
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Anyone else still mourning the loss of upgradable SSD?
- Thread starter DoNoHarm
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Wow... I don't think I can go back to a non retina after I had a retina, but good for you though.
Oh don't worry only had a the retina pro for a day. I actually went from an iPod Touch 4 to an iPhone 3GS a couple of yeas ago, and my iPad is an iPad 2. The only retina devices I have are my Mini 2 (used for iPad lessons) and my iPhone 5.
I couldn't of put it better myself.
Apple are forcing users in to an upgrade cycle for there products. I am heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem however I am looking at Windows laptops currently.
The Macbook Pro's are not PRO and with no upgradeable parts the machines become outdated very quickly. It wouldn't be so bad if they were reasonably priced, however Apple products are expensive and we don't all have 2k spare every 2 years.
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I struggled with this for a couple of months as I looked for a new computer. I basically had narrowed down my search for two desktops (I have a surface pro 3 that fits my needs perfectly). I could get a 5k iMac or a Dell XPS 8900. The Dell was completely upgradable, but the iMac offered me the freedom to easily run OS X and windows - that was a huge advantage. Then there's the 27" 5k display. I could not get anything as nice on the PC side - at least not for what I could for the iMac.
I don't have buyers remorse but overall, the Dell would have given me a lot more flexibility at extending the life of the computer.
I don't want to go back to Windows but I also don't want to spend over 2k on a new machine that wont last.
I don't feel the Macbook Pro's offer a PRO spec anymore either. I want to stay with Apple mainly for the OS at this point.
I don't want a Hackintosh either.
I will wait until Apple release's the new lineup of Macbook Pro's but I'm 99% sure ill be disappointed and will then be forced to move away from OS X.
I don't feel the Macbook Pro's offer a PRO spec anymore either. I want to stay with Apple mainly for the OS at this point.
I don't want a Hackintosh either.
I will wait until Apple release's the new lineup of Macbook Pro's but I'm 99% sure ill be disappointed and will then be forced to move away from OS X.
I lucked out and managed to find a near mint 2015 13" rmbp for less than the cost of a macbook air, so I did well on price.
My price point forced me to get a 256 ssd and this necessitated the purchase of an external drive to allow me to carry my music collection with me. It's not the tidiest or most elegant solution.
I'm hoping for a 256 gb flash storage drive in the expansion slot, but that's not available yet for the 13" rmbp.
In the meantime, I'm VERY vigilant about clearing out unnecessary files to preserve storage space.
Not really.
The days of storing (and actually even having) hundreds and hundreds of gigs of MP3/flac etc are over. Streaming has pretty much made than unnecessary, and I actually still have hundreds of CDS for when I do want to use good headphones and enjoy the audio quality..
I use my 15" for audio recording, and installed about 150GB of various sample libraries I use, - so I'm good. I don't play games or store movies, and I certainly am not going back to non-retina, and I love the PCIe SSD speed.
Having just installed a non-PCIe SSD on my mini, - you can definitely tell the difference the speed makes..
The days of storing (and actually even having) hundreds and hundreds of gigs of MP3/flac etc are over. Streaming has pretty much made than unnecessary, and I actually still have hundreds of CDS for when I do want to use good headphones and enjoy the audio quality..
I use my 15" for audio recording, and installed about 150GB of various sample libraries I use, - so I'm good. I don't play games or store movies, and I certainly am not going back to non-retina, and I love the PCIe SSD speed.
Having just installed a non-PCIe SSD on my mini, - you can definitely tell the difference the speed makes..
Yes, I very much enjoy the speed of the flash drives. Then again, if you can't store anything on the drives, the speed itself becomes meaningless.
It's a bit of waiting game. The cost of manufacturing larger capacity ssd drives should come down at some point, but waiting it out is no fun.
It's a bit of waiting game. The cost of manufacturing larger capacity ssd drives should come down at some point, but waiting it out is no fun.
Check the thread title, sunshine.
The question asks whether we want upgradeable computers or not. The answer for me is obviously yes.
It's possible to want to use os x and also want upgradeable drives and ram.
How much can a RAM or SSD upgrade really extend the life of a computer when the CPU and GPU can't be upgraded? I've found that the GPU usually ends up being the limiting factor and it isn't upgradeable in many portable computers at all.
I guess I'm just saying that, for a lot of people, overbuying to extend the life is just flawed logic.
Ram and drive upgrades allowed me to keep my 2008 macbook useful for 8 years. The primary limiting factor were the cheap aftermarket batteries I kept buying as replacements.
It is true that cpu/gpu limitations force an eventual upgrade, for sure. The 2008 macbook still works (for the most part), but it was long overdue for an upgrade.
I'm hoping that an eventual ssd upgrade does in fact become available within a year or so for my rmbp. We'll see.
There is an sd card slot, so I'm hoping to get total storage up to 512 gigs total.
Actually I have 2 TB external portable storage, but I am not especially pleased with this hack.
Just about every Mac I've had has had its life extended by a ram or more recently an SSD upgrade. My Aunt was frustrated with her 2008 Macbook Aluminium's performance to the extend she was going to buy a new laptop, so I put an SSD in a year ago and she's happy.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: user upgradeability is absolutely critical in extending the useful life of any computer. Unfortunately it is anathema for the corporate bottom line.
Only the most apologetic of apple fanboys would claim otherwise.
Only the most apologetic of apple fanboys would claim otherwise.
It really depends on your needs. I upgraded my mid/late 2009 13" MBP with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD and that kept me going for another 6 months in 2012, but in reality, I should have just sold it and bought something newer.
For a lot of people though a 2009 Macbook Pro would still be more than enough for today if it had an SSD and Ram upgrade, as what it came with would be annoyingly slow running El Capitan today.
You're correct. I gave the computer to my parents and it does everything they ask it to do. It would have been able to do all of those things with the original 4GB of RAM and the 250GB HDD too. They still have an original MacBook and it works just fine with stock RAM and HDD.
Sure but wth the stock 5400rpm drive, OSX is an absolute disaster of lag and slowness. My own 2012 Macbook Pro was bad enough with a 7200RPM drive.
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Very true. If you've invested in a computer platform for practically your whole life, its not particularly easy to move to a a new one.
I still keep my 113 GB of music on my 2015 512GB 16GB MBP. I used to have a 4TB drive attached to it and was using it as an ATV2 iTunes server but got tired of having the drive always attached and moved that over to my Mac Mini. I still have all my music and podcasts on the 2015 because, besides internet, syncing my iPhones/iPad to the MBP is it's main function.
I don't use streaming and as I've posted many times on other threads, hate iTunes Match. iTunes Match has continuously made a mess of my music library year after year by downloading sometimes as many as 20 duplicates of the same song over and over and then making a huge mess even worse by mixing up the album artwork.
Not everyone in this world is wiling to trust the cloud for everything. I still use my MBP to backup my iOS devices every time I charge them and to sync to them. I once had a 16GB iPad Air that I had backed up to the cloud. Exchanged it for a 32GB and tried to restore that iCloud backup to the new Air and it failed giving an error.
I'm down to 232GB on my 2015 MBP now with all my iTunes library on it and I should be good for a few years at least with that much space.
In addition to what I wrote before, let me clarify that I do think that storage should be upgradeable (for obvious reasons). Storage can fail and needs can change. It would be a big design fail if the SSD was soldered on board (which it is not, because Apple is not entirely dumb 
). But yes, Apple should move back to industry-standard connectors for their SSDs, which I hope will happen soon.
However, RAM is a very different question. RAM upgrades were a big deal back in the days, but today's machines come with basically maximal amount of RAM from the start (e.g. you couldn't upgrade the 15" to more than 16GB even if the RAM were socketed, so why bother). Furthermore, RAM will likely disappear as a dedicated component within the next few years. Driven by the need of more performance and more efficiency, the industry has integrated more and more crucial components on the CPU directly, and RAM is the next logical step. This is already happening with the GPUs which start putting the VRAM on top of the GPU die. I am pretty sure that within a decade or so, we will just have a humongous stacked chip that combines CPU/GPU/RAM+nessessary logic in one fast, interconnected package.
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That is at least what I was told by someone working in a shop like that.
). But yes, Apple should move back to industry-standard connectors for their SSDs, which I hope will happen soon.However, RAM is a very different question. RAM upgrades were a big deal back in the days, but today's machines come with basically maximal amount of RAM from the start (e.g. you couldn't upgrade the 15" to more than 16GB even if the RAM were socketed, so why bother). Furthermore, RAM will likely disappear as a dedicated component within the next few years. Driven by the need of more performance and more efficiency, the industry has integrated more and more crucial components on the CPU directly, and RAM is the next logical step. This is already happening with the GPUs which start putting the VRAM on top of the GPU die. I am pretty sure that within a decade or so, we will just have a humongous stacked chip that combines CPU/GPU/RAM+nessessary logic in one fast, interconnected package.
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That is at least what I was told by someone working in a shop like that.
That's why you buy windows machines and install OSX via VMWare. Is it legal? Ehh.
Good enough to learn iOS programming.
I'm saving up for the next Skylake 15" rMBP.
Good enough to learn iOS programming.
I'm saving up for the next Skylake 15" rMBP.
I wasn't replying to the thread I was replying to a specific part of your post that suggested you were forced into buying something. You weren't, you wanted something that Apple don't make and chose to buy something that was a compromise. Yes you want upgradeable computers from Apple, that's obvious, but you CHOSE to make the compromise and buy a non-upgradeable computer, you could have compromised differently and chose an upgradeable computer without OSX. No one forced you into anything you had a multitude of options and you made a choice based on software over hardware. Admittedly the option you wanted was not available but hey that is life get used to it....
In the past its given my laptops and computers a nice lease on life. I'd say as software demands more resources and your storage needs change bot upgrades can markedly improve and extend an older computer.