I don't mind this direction at all. I always bought computers and things in the past with an eye for upgrades. This was back in my PC days. Rarely did I upgrade anything other than RAM, maybe HD space. Those are by far the top two upgrades and the ONLY upgrades you can make in laptops typically.
But the landscape of computing has changed, and upgradability is less important to most reasonable users.
Hard Drives
With things like iTunes Match, DropBox, etc. more things are going into the cloud and not on your HD.
For example, I use iTunes Match for music. I have a few playlists consisting of maybe the 100-200 songs I listen to the most downloaded on my devices, but the rest can live in the cloud. I don't feel like I will ever just HAVE to access some song I hardly listen to (if ever) at a place where I will find myself without an internet connection or access to one nearby. Very unlikely scenario. This can easily save you 100GB+ depending on how big your collection is.
Also, for things like media, instead of downloading hundreds of gigs of movies, I got Netflix and very occasionally do I download anything. And because things are so readily available, I don't feel compelled to hoard TV shows and movies. If I want to watch it again, I'll just download it again if I have to. For things I really want to keep or are rare, I have a 3TB external HD for that off chance I'll wanna see it again. But very few things go in there.
Back in the day when the internet was slow and downloading a movie took all day or maybe even several days, hoarding was useful. Now when you can download whatever you want in minutes, maybe a couple hours tops, hoarding is pointless.
The only thing left is photos. Once a good cloud-based solution for storing your photos permanently appears, my 65GB collection of family vacation photos will be living there (maybe on an external HD too, for back up just in case), and not on my HD.
RAM
As for RAM, let's face it. Going from 512MB of RAM to 1GB or 2GB on the computers of yesteryear made a night and day difference in performance. Even going from 2GB to 4GB for some heavy users. And because of the price, it made sense to buy a computer now and then save up for an upgrade later.
This is no longer the case. Going from 8GB to 16GB makes almost 0 difference for everyday computing, it is only important for people who are going to be manipulating videos.
And at only $100 extra on a $2199 machine (the difference of 4.5% is less than the amount of sales tax you are likely to pay on the machine) it doesn't make sense not to upgrade if you fit into the category of people who are going to NEED it. Heck, ask a student in your family to lend you their discount and going with the 16GB version is actually CHEAPER than the stock version (plus you get an extra $100 iTunes credits!).
For people who don't do movie editing or another task which requires super heavy RAM, I guarantee you that 8GB is going to be enough to run Facebook, E-Mail, Microsoft Office, iWork, and the rest of the internet for as long as you own the machine. (8GB is enough for a whole lot more than that too.)
Battery
I have only gotten a battery replacement ONCE under a warranty and swapped it out. The new MBP would give you the same benefit, if your battery is defective. The old school batteries of yesteryear had up to 300 cycles on them. That means for heavy users by the end of the 1st year it would stop holding a charge.
Today's batteries can be recharged 1,000 times before they reach 80% capacity. That means you would have to fully discharge and recharge your battery every weekday (for work) for nearly 4 years before you saw any drop.
And if just every other day you plug in instead of relying on the battery alone, you could extend that to 8 years -- far beyond the point when you'll be buying a new laptop.
As far as battery life, I remember laptops of yesteryear (by that I mean 2003-2005) having no more than 2-3 hours of practical use before they went completely dead. This made having the ability to carry a spare battery for replacement all the more important (not to mention wore out batteries quicker, necessitating a quicker replacement).
With battery life now reaching around 7 hours of practical use, you not only recharge two or three times less often, you also don't need to carry a spare since it is doubtful someone will be over 7 hours away from an outlet and needing to do continuous work. 7 hours is a full work day (take 30 mins for lunch, and two 15 min breaks in between and you're at a typical 8 hour shift).
Drawbacks
The only drawbacks I see so far of where Apple's products are headed is that you now really have to buy AppleCare+ in case anything goes wrong, as you can't swap the parts yourself easily.
However, this has always been the case as Apple has used custom motherboards for ages and if that went bad your system was shot regardless.
Now the HD is going to have 3rd party upgrades, so that really leaves RAM as the only thing that can go bad. As a computer tech, I have seen RAM only rarely go bad, so the odds are very small.
In any case, this is the biggest drawback of "appliance" machines that I can think of. However, there's risks to using anything and having it break down after the warranty period.
One possible solution is to replace your equipment yearly. Since Apple stuff holds its value well, if you sell your last gen model and buy the current one, you may be looking at a yearly upgrade fee of only a few hundred dollars and you'll get the better specs, a fresh warranty, etc.
However, if you are less paranoid and willing to live like a badass, just use your computer out of warranty until it dies. You may be surprised how long it lasts.
The 2nd hand market for even broken Macs is pretty pricey, so you may even be able to salvage $500 or $1000+ for your broken MBP. Look at eBay prices if you don't believe me. It is not uncommon for broken "as is" Macs to go for 50% of the value of a fully working one.
In any case, the point here is that most of the reasons for why upgradability was important in the past is no longer true going forward.
- No more need for super high HD's thanks to cloud storage and solutions
- RAM giving diminishing returns on performance as to minimize upgrade benefits
- Battery technology being good making externals useless
So not having to worry about upgrades is good, just one less thing to worry about. However, old habits die hard, so many people will psychologically feel the need to tinker with their equipment or feel like they want the ability even if they don't use it.
But future generations who grow up on these machines and don't have the "I used to upgrade my equipment all the time" backgrounds/stories will not find this problematic. Much like no one misses the "Turbo" button on their computer.
