Credit to Apple for repairability
On the other hand it highlights their greedy approach to laptops.
On the other hand it highlights their greedy approach to laptops.
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iFixit Shares 2019 Mac Pro Teardown: 'A Masterclass in Repairability'
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The short answer is there’s not much demand. Mac Pro can still be profitable, even though there’s low demand, because Apple charges a premium.
If they offered a Mac Pro mini with 4 PCIe slots instead of 8, 6 DIMM slot instead of 12, and a smaller power supply and case, some would like it, sure. But those changes only remove a few hundred dollars of cost from the BOM.
Apple would have to sell it for $5k, and who would want to pay that?
Look, as time goes on and technology advances, things will get less repairable (to component levels) as there aren't even humans building them. There are humans babysitting the machines and robots that make them. the level of knowledge and skills is mostly beyond the garden variety repair person. There is/has to be a level of security over repairs to protect personal information on the device and at their servers level.
No one is suggesting the xMac would need a Xeon processor and ECC RAM. Stick an i7 in there (in addition to fewer RAM / PCIe slots, obviously) and even $1,999 becomes achievable.
Like with the Mini with T2, as long as you enable booting from external media in Apple's Security Utility, you can boot from external media, same as before: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198
The market size for Mac Pro has shrunk drastically. Many pros have moved to iMac, MacBook Pro, iMac Pro or even the mini. So development and other costs are spread across a lot fewer units, and each unit bears a greater percentage of those costs.
I’ve yet to see a pro effectively make the case that the extra $50/month—the difference between $3K and $6K over a five year life—takes the Mac Pro from affordable to unaffordable.
Of course most don’t buy the base, but the math is the same. A $16K box vs $13K is still a $50/month difference over a five year life span.
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That makes total sense. We are got out cMP 5,1s in 2010 for a cost of $12K each maxed out BTO. They are still running and editing video everyday....a bit slow but they're old. So, that's $1333.00 per year, not bad. we will be ordering 3 new Mac Pros at most likely $17K each and will get 9-10 years out of them again. If you are not making good money off of them....of not making money off of them then maybe you need to rethink the "pro" thing. I don't think they were intended to be gaming machines and I think that the number of hacker/tweakers asking for such is likely enough to make it cost effective for Apple. even if they took the new Mac Pro and cut it in half, it's still going to be in the $4-5K price range.
Reality, Apple is a corporation and their obligation is to be profitable to the shareholders.
It’s been talked about on this forum at least since I joined in 2003. Isn’t gonna happen.
“There: you made a car go 100mph, now do it for rollerskates!”
A mobile phone with this degree of modularity would not be so mobile, ditto a laptop.
Sure. All the Mac Pros have scored well afaik. The 2013 cylinder got a very high score as well, 8/10.
I wouldn't mind seeing some M.2 slots, or built-in 3.5" drive bays. I could use the extra storage, plus have a dedicated drive for macOS, and another dedicated drive for Windows. This with the only add-on being the drive itself, not the enclosure, and don't want to get external drives.
I switched to Apple in 2004 when, whatever iteration it was, Windows kept crashing. I figured Apple's recent switch to Unix based OS was more stable. It was. Apple OS X is still my preferred system but sometimes Apple doesn't satisfy every need.
Apple's slimming of its products has reduced the number of ports available on their laptops. The Thinkpad P73 has plenty of ports for the times I need to connect different types of scanners and printers. I do archival work in different locations and the P73 reduces adapted/docking clutter while offering excellent screen resolution.
Yes. The only problem with Threadripper right now is AMD can't make them fast enough. The Threadripper forced Intel to significantly cut prices over the summer.
No, it would be horrible. AirPods with user replaceable batteries are a different class of item. Different approaches for different products. This is a needed return to modularity in their pro line but I don't want to see it anywhere else.
Flip side: it's more likely to be worth stealing.
A rather compact box containing 8K edits of a $100,000,000 movie (or some comparable scenario) is a tempting target for theft. If that box "walks off" then it d@mn well better have not-"repairable" storage.
That's why they have the rackmount. BTW I love that rackmount option. I wish somebody would make a clone of it.
There was a leaked image of that recently
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The relentless "repairable laptops!" refrain fails to note the obvious:
Most users don't need repairable/upgradable, but do want thin/light/tough/cheap.
The more "repairable" the device, the more space you need for latches, hinges, connectors, etc - and the more parts there are, the more points of failure and costs increase. Most people aren't going to do their own repairs/upgrades, but are sensitive to excessive size/weight; I'm baffled by people who haul around thick heavy Windows notebooks, for whom "repairability" is a liability in effort and breakability.
Most users don't need repairable/upgradable, but do want thin/light/tough/cheap.
The more "repairable" the device, the more space you need for latches, hinges, connectors, etc - and the more parts there are, the more points of failure and costs increase. Most people aren't going to do their own repairs/upgrades, but are sensitive to excessive size/weight; I'm baffled by people who haul around thick heavy Windows notebooks, for whom "repairability" is a liability in effort and breakability.
Wonder how the former MacPro achieved this (not the trashcan) with a reasonable price (wonder how my PC workstation achieves this with a reasonable price too) ...
Build a hackintosh. Use an intel 9900k and an AMD card. There are plenty of build guides online. If the new Mac pro is a “masterclass” in repairability, then a hackintosh is repairability utopia.
I'd love it, but I think at this stage in the game that niche probably isn't much larger than the group buying the Mac Pros and in addition to wanting a cheaper computer, it's doing anything overly beneficial for Apple. The Pro crowd is important for content creation.
With that said, I'm hoping this simply means a bit of an about-face on their designs in general. The Mac Mini of 2011, in terms of opening it up, is a great little machine. It wasn't as easy as a tower, but replacing the RAM and storage wasn't hard. The future outside of the power crowd is Thunderbolt. Plugging something in is easier than swapping out a card. I'd like to see laptops return to something more of their 2008 designs in terms of upgrades.
I can see a case to be made for soldering in memory—but it's pretty weak. The SSDs though? There's zero reason. Whatever the case, being able to fix and upgrade those parts is nice for a small subset of users, but for a company that spends so much time talking about its commitment to the environment... oh yeah, and batteries. I just removed one from a 2013 MBP. If Apple wants to tell the world what a brilliant bunch it is, how about putting some of those design engineers heads together on making small machines that are held together without glue, especially on the parts most prone to failure!
I used to grab older MacBooks, give them a bit of a facelift (RAM and storage) and then sell them at cost or give them away. An old Mac was so much more reliable than some cheap PC, especially for those that weren't technical. Recycling is nice and all, but "reduce" and "reuse" are the more important "Rs".
Anyway, rant over.
Mac Minis are this machine. eGPUs and external PCIe chassis give you A LOT of options. I think the crowd looking for the smaller tower should really check this stuff out because, as someone who has been using an eGPU for over a year now on my laptop, it's really awesome.
What sort of machine are you thinking of there? Do you have a link so I can see a similarly specced Windows machine? I assumed they would cost a lot *less* than the Mac but I don’t know where to look.
I think they actual make ratings based on how much iFixit will make from upgrades / repairs.
Given that they don't sell graphics cards (or any other PCIe expansion stuff), compatible SSD's, or any of the replacement modules that you have to buy direct from Apple, I doubt that. And you don't really need any tools to get in, so they won't make money there either.
I don't really get the "iFixit just wants repairable things so they make more money" angle. The way I see it, the more repairable things get, the less people have to rely on iFixit to source parts and tools. If Apple supplies users with good instructions, parts, and easy to open devices, then those users don't need iFixit, right?