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Apple to Charge $199 for Battery Replacement on MacBook Pro with Retina Display
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You are off the mark and not the consumer this one is aimed at.
"PRO" is most of these days a marketing term. But, you can do a lot of pro work in the field with this fine machine.
Anybody who buys this I am sure goes through the pros and cons like the Retina display and portability/weight, speed etc.etc.
As somebody already posted you have plenty of options to tinker with the other MacBookPros.
And, as Apple users we do not care about the WINTEL world. Be happy with that if that is what you like.
What exactly defines a professional? You clearly narrowed it down to a specific group of people such as yourselves but there are just as many group of techies that cares more about more power in a laptop that's lighter and thinner than the ability to upgrade or customize. Pro is a vague term, it just means high-end or premium for Apple.
I'm a professional and I have zero problems with the zero upgradability option. I'm happy with the thinner and lightness as I carry it around between floors and rooms to work on servers, clients and so on. I'm definitely not in the minority here as I've have friends who felt the same work who works in the same field as I do.
I half-jokingly said something and next thing you know I've got 10 new quote notifications. Even after I clarified that. Gotta love the unnecessarily argumentative flavor of the message boards. 
Are you attempting to write English sentences?
Pro is not always a marketing term...no matter what industry. As I mentioned, if Apple is going to just start calling things "pro", I have a different (less) respect for Apple now.
What exactly are you stating?...that I have the ability at Checkout to customize my system? Sure...BUT THAT'S NOT MY POINT. My point is down the road...1-3 years later when you want to improve the system somehow with very simple upgrade options...but, no...can't do that with Mac Pro laptops. What you have is what you have. Throw it away (or pay some insane price to have some upgrade it for you).
I'm an Apple user. You're way off with this comment. Speak for yourself if you dislike an industry/market.
just max the ram at BTO time, or bring the machine to an auth reseller if its possible to do the install then. yes, this costs you money -- but so what? if youre half the "pro" you think you are, then youre expensing this against your taxable income and its not a huge deal. if youre just calling yourself a "pro" then boo hoo.
but whatever you do, get it thru your head -- user-serviceable laptops are going to become a thing of the past. just like user-upgradable music players are. its simply more cost efficient to build a giant SSD device than a bunch of shelf-parts. deal w/ the future or be left behind.
Amen brother. I love macs too, but non upgradable RAM is ridiculous in this type of machine. For comparison, the 15" Samsung Series 9 is thinner AND manages to have 2 standard RAM SODIMMs.
First, if I can't upgrade it, then no "authorized reseller" or "genius" or anyone could. The problem, as many have said, is that you're stuck with whatever you get on day one. On day thirty-one (or whenever you can no longer return it), your only options to upgrade are to buy a new one. That's it. As I mentioned above, other similar computers seem to have no issue giving users access to simple components. Until a week ago, so did Apple. What changed?
You may be right that user serviceable laptops might become a thing of the past, but I don't have to like it nor accept it from a company I do like; and I can sure as hell bitch about it all day long on a fan forum
God bless 'merica!Again and again you and others are not sticking to the topic...
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT PRO MACHINES HERE. NOT CONSUMER MACHINES.
Your point above is moot. Professionals, ESPECIALLY THOSE USING HIGH END COMPUTERS, don't deal with a Bic lighter approach...buy something, then need to enhance it months or years later and be told "sorry, you got what you got."
Consumers? Sure, the Bic lighter approach has been around for a long time with personal computers and Apple has capitalized on it quite well since 2001 and the introduction of the iMac.
And your comment about user-upgradeable music players is a complete joke. I have never, EVER seen a commercial music player that was upgradeable. And I owned mp3 players before the iPod existed. Yes, if you were a super guru you could BUILD YOUR OWN FROM SCRATCH...but there was never an mp3 player that you bought at a store, used it, then months later decided to upgrade the hard drive via any kind of mass-market, standards-driven, supply chain.
People are so quick to throw around the scam word these days it's just marketing no scam involved.
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True pros use the Mac pro the Mbp is for Uni students.
It certainly looks like less value for money. It is a bit cheaper, but with a tiny 128 GB hard drive, slow and dual core processor, 1600 x 900 display, tiny battery, inferior OS, nowhere near the MBPR. Between the 13" MBA (£300 less with identical hardware except the slightly smaller screen) and the Retina MBP (£400 more for hugely superior hardware), the Samsung isn't worth the money.
And even though it is not upgradeable, there have been plenty of people upgrading various iPods with bigger hard drives, and posting here about it. Just like in a year's time you'll see people upgrading the non-upgradeable SSDs in their retina MBPs.
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I think he was talking about the few that you could put a SD in to give it a bit more storage. His argument still fails though because almost every android and windows phone device has a memory expansion port of some kind. So I hardly consider it "becoming something of the past".
Also I have to agree with you wholeheartedly with this new "pro". If apple wanted to create a more powerful macbook air then they should had kept it under the macbook air line.
Anyways I cant help but only wish the imac was more like the last generation macbook pro in terms with how easy it is to maintain it WITHOUT having to lug it to a apple store. Needed to dust out you computer? With the old pro all you had to do was remove 8 screws and dust it out with canned air, you could even use this opportunity to plop in more memory. All without voiding your warranty!
Where with the imac you have to remove the glass panel, remove the lcd, remove the logic board, and then dust it out. Effectively voiding your warranty.
I hate to say it... but I seriously hope this is not the mindset apple has when they do eventually upgrade the Mac Pro.
It's just a brand name for a high-end computer. If Apple wanted to, they could've just called it MacBook Premium but it isn't as catchy as Macbook Pro. It's just a laptop with better and more powerful parts, nothing more and nothing less.
MacBook Pros are consumer machines, they are not workstations with high end super-powered CPU/GPUs that you see in workstations designed for certain groups of people who need it.
Apple do seem to be quite generous with their battery replacement however. On my 09 MBP it had the service battery warning at about 700 cycles, they said that it was high and they would not replace it at first, but after speaking to apple care the man said it was within a 1000 cycles so replaced it free of charge within an hour
I have always found Apple to be very reasonable if you present a rational case. If you go in freaking out they are less helpful.
As I posted, you have the option to tinker with the OTHER MacBook Pros and you can do that, just not for this one.
If you consider that memory and hard drive replacement/upgrade are not enough of a "system improvement", again this model is not the machine for you.
To lament over something Apple doesn't offer and claim that one has to throw it away is ridiculous. Have you ever heard of ebay? It's a better choice than throwing it away, plus there are a lot of places and ways to sell a used Mac. They actually hold their value well.
To expect that the very same computer one buys is still up to date after 3 years is also ridiculous.
Any "Pro" knows that technological advances will make her/his purchase usually obsolete within months.
Depending on what they do for a living, they will buy the latest technology they need for their PRO job every 2 or 3 years. Part of business cost.
MacBook Pros are LAPTOPS and despite their power are not meant to be taken apart to swap out vital components and just keep the outer shell.
Users who open computers for other reasons than memory upgrades and hard drive replacements are not the target group Apple markets to.
So, why lament over the fact that that's Apple's strategy? Looks like it has worked well for them so far.
As for WINTEL, to each his own. It's just of no interest to me.
I can do all I need to do with Apple products and since they switched to Intel chips, they made it even less likely that I'd ever need anything from that industry.
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Let's not make stuff up here about the 15" Samsung Series 9 np900x4c
Pros:
- thinner (.64" thick, less than macbook air)
- lighter (2.8lbs, lighter than 13" macbook air)
- cheaper ($800 cheaper than rMBP)
Same:
- battery (it gets 7:29 in engadget's rundown test, the rMBP got 7:49 in the same test; that's close enough)
Worse:
- CPU is sandy bridge, but they will probably update it.
- SSD is 128GB, but it is easily upgradable!
- 4GB of ram, again it is easily upgradable!
- Screen is kinda crappy
- Keyboard is kinda crappy
- Trackpad is kinda crappy
Conclusion: That's not the point. I would rather have OSX so I wouldn't even consider the Samsung. Case closed, that's it.
My point is, it is possible to offer a computer thinner and lighter than a Macbook Air with a 15" screen and awesome battery life without sacrificing user-serviceable access. Apple did it just to be dicks to the 1% of us who like to tinker, plain and simple.
Those hard drives were easily upgradable. They were standard connectors and standard hard drives (albiet in a tiny form-factor for the ipod) and they were not soldered on. I upgraded both the battery and hard drive in my old 4th gen ipod. It was great! There is NO way to upgrade the ram in the new apple laptops (unless you have the capability to solder tiny chips with extreme precision). OWC will probably come out with an upgrade for the SSD at some point, but no one else will.
Thunderhawks said:
See above. There is a difference between doing something which was not intended or breaking a warrantee, and deliberately sabotaging someones efforts. As far as I can see, apple had no engineering reason to limit their machines in this way.
We don't have to be marketed to, we just wanna take stuff apart
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Why not 'Pro'
There seems to be a lot of talk on here about how this is not a 'Pro' machine because you cant crack it open and swap the battery, RAM or hard drive. Thing is almost all people using these for 'professional' work have no idea what is in a computer and don't want to know. If something goes wrong or they want an upgrade they just take it back to the store and have them sort it out. If you have to rely on a computer for your living you don't shove in cheap battery, RAM or an SSD from ebay because its not worth the risk if something goes wrong, in other words you can lose far more money than you ever save so you don't do it. Lets face it $199 for a new laptop battery is not overpriced given the size and complexity of the battery in this thing. Even the larger batteries from Dell cost around $150 and only last a fraction of the charge cycles these can take before they are spent.
I have had a chance to use one of these and as someone who is a Pro, considering how light and powerful it is and how good the screen is, I'm sold. If you can justify $2.5k for a laptop for your work then $199 for a new battery three years down the line is just not that important. Also asked the guy at the local apple store how long it takes to change battery and he said it only takes about an hour if you book it in so in my opinion its not going to be an issue for 99.99% of people buying this kind of machine.
There seems to be a lot of talk on here about how this is not a 'Pro' machine because you cant crack it open and swap the battery, RAM or hard drive. Thing is almost all people using these for 'professional' work have no idea what is in a computer and don't want to know. If something goes wrong or they want an upgrade they just take it back to the store and have them sort it out. If you have to rely on a computer for your living you don't shove in cheap battery, RAM or an SSD from ebay because its not worth the risk if something goes wrong, in other words you can lose far more money than you ever save so you don't do it. Lets face it $199 for a new laptop battery is not overpriced given the size and complexity of the battery in this thing. Even the larger batteries from Dell cost around $150 and only last a fraction of the charge cycles these can take before they are spent.
I have had a chance to use one of these and as someone who is a Pro, considering how light and powerful it is and how good the screen is, I'm sold. If you can justify $2.5k for a laptop for your work then $199 for a new battery three years down the line is just not that important. Also asked the guy at the local apple store how long it takes to change battery and he said it only takes about an hour if you book it in so in my opinion its not going to be an issue for 99.99% of people buying this kind of machine.
$199 sounds like a lot, but to put it into perspective, this is what I paid for a battery for a T410 Thinkpad yesterday:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Le...55-notebook-battery-Li-Ion-94-Wh/2050268.aspx
And I can guarantee you won't get 7 hours out of it. Granted that's a Lenovo-branded battery and not third party, but I don't think Apple's pricing for battery replacement is all that outlandish, in my experience.
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Le...55-notebook-battery-Li-Ion-94-Wh/2050268.aspx
And I can guarantee you won't get 7 hours out of it. Granted that's a Lenovo-branded battery and not third party, but I don't think Apple's pricing for battery replacement is all that outlandish, in my experience.
No, they streamlined their manufacturing efficiency and made that decision part of a design compromise (their feel). They also decided they don't want anybody to open this machine.
If you can't live with that buy something else to tinker.
With delivery times now at 3-4 weeks, looks like their decision is a good one and nobody buying it cares to get in there.
Imagine you have 100 green lollipops to give to kids and they all take them as offered, but one kid wants a red one.
Would you be scrambling to get a red one for the kid? No, you'd tell him/her nicely that that' s all there is and to enjoy.
The kid will get over it and so should all the tinkerers.