You are assuming the laptop is under warranty when the battery needs replacing. I have a 2009 macbook air that is about 85% of what it's new battery life was. I suspect within another year I will want to get a new battery for it. It will not be under warranty so the express shipping will not be available for it. Apple I am sure is well aware that batteries will need to be replaced for most normal high usage users after apple extended care is over. Not to mention I do want want to have to buy extended apple care just to protect the battery in case it did expire under an extended warranty.
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Retina MacBook Pro Could Lose EPEAT Status
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And they lie. My 18 month old MacBook Air is already down to only lasting 90 minutes on its battery. No way that thing's gonna go 5 years before I have to break down and get a new battery.
Yes, and if you were orbiting in the ISS you would have to wait months to get the Russians to come up and take your computer back. You're setting up pretty unusual circumstantial limitations. Next day shipping is available almost everywhere Fedex or UPS goes around the globe. I'm also curious as to how a battery that is 2.5 years old and at 85% will need to be replaced next year (at the outrageous cost of about $200).
You incorrectly assume that all users take their old Macs back to Apple. I would venture a guess that only a minority do. And don't tell me "well, they should" because Apple doesn't (for example) pick up from Enterprise when we have a large pallet of computers to dispose of. We have to use 3rd party. And all of a sudden the difficulty of disassembling a MacBook falls on someone other than Apple. Thus they need to be easily recyclable.
Does the intended market necessarily disqualify a product from being "enterprise ready?"
Not trying to pick a fight, but there is a distinction between the intended markets and the markets in which a product can be used.
To be fair to Gnasher, he did not assume that. He assumed that 70% took their old Macs back to Apple, because that's the figure he quoted, via Apple themselves. Given the publicity this story is getting, one can hope that the figure of 70% will increase over time. It's certainly a majority, regardless.
There are a lot of requirements to be enterprise grade. One for example is to have easily replaceable parts. Like the Hard drive should be easy to pull out and pop in another computer. Quick replacement for ram and mobos. It should be quick and easy to do on site. No requirement to go threw Apple to do it.
The down time for the computer is way to high of a cost to go threw Apple. Apple is far from an enterprise grade company.
+1.i don't know about the rest of the world admitedly, but where i'm from recycling is almost unheard of and considered unnecessary and a waste of time.
While I don't disagree, not all enterprises have this requirement. Those that do (that have Macs in sufficient quantities) have self service agreements with Apple to get parts, etc.
yeah but the order is insane. Apple enterprise support is pretty bad. It cost more for less and slower service plan and simple.
If you look at HP eliteBook, a Thinkpad or dell latiditude as example of enterprise grade laptops.
Self-service doesn't require interaction directly with Apple. You diagnose, place the part order and send the old one back. This really is no different than Dell, or similar. Meaning, if you want to abide by the support agreements you have, you can't slap in off the shelf parts and expect reimbursement.
In those regards, there is really no difference. Enterprises (with good staff) have plans in place for hardware failure to get the end-user back up and running and deal with the repair/replacement behind the scenes. Most companies aren't holding up the user as they wait for parts.
I am not saying Apple is doing a great job on the Enterprise front (I think they are not), but your examples ignore what happens in the real world.
Problem is if you are a medium size shop kind of hard to get those parts.
Also for the example of rMBP far from enterprise grade. In the real world often times hard drives get flipped between computers if a some other part fails. No point to loose all that data. That or they pull the hard drive and plug it in elseware to at least pull the data off of it.
Can not do with rMBP. That hard drive and ram replaceable are key factors.
Like I said, any shop can get the parts through Apple. You just have to: Have a Apple Hardware certified individual and apply for the account.
Drives do indeed get flipped. If you speaking of situations where: User machine fails, pull hard drive out, place in comparable machine. This is most assuredly possible with the retina as well.
User has rMBP, something fails, pull the drive out of the rMBP place in another rMBP. Now this doesn't work across models naturally, but the basic premise is there and generally with Mac OS you don't want to flop OS installations between different models anyhow.
Pulling data off is obviously troublesome, but doable assuming we aren;t talking a drive failure.
umm just going to point out that the rMBP hard drive is soldered to the MOBO. Everything is soldered to the MOBO making it impossible to pull out and replace with out a complete new MOBO.
The 70% is an estimate. It can only be an estimate, because all that Apple knows is how much they sold, and how much they are receiving back, but not how many Macs are still in use, how many are in someone's home not turned on, and how many have been dumped. Apple uses the same method that Dell and HP use, and these both estimate 20% of returns.
I'm not assuming anything at all. 70% is the number that Apple publishes on their website. So if you want to accuse someone, don't accuse me of making assumptions, you'll have to accuse Apple of lying. Are you saying that? Are you saying that Apple is lying?
I'll hereby downvote you by -10 for spreading misinformation. The hard drive is _not_ soldered in.
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The rMBP SSD drive is not soldered to the motherboard. It is proprietary though so you are not going to order a new one through newegg.
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Retina-Display-Mid-2012-Teardown/9462/2 (step 10 on that page)
I imagine 100 years from now we will just be 3d printing the entire devices in one shot with no changeable parts possible. We will be certainly screwed at that point when it comes to servicing them.
It's not funny, and it's not true. It's just like the SSD in the MacBook Air, just with a newer connector, and is removable and replaceable (not by the user, officially, but neither was the MacBook Air's SSD).
jW
I do believe you are 100% correct.
If the Retina MBP does lose their EPEAT status, that would actually be the most appropriate move so as to not mislead people that don't know any better.
Being honest is always the right thing to do, as hard as it is for Apple to reveal truths about their operation.
Sleight of hand, a game Apple plays so masterfully, is no longer serving them well.
I don't know what part of the world you're in, but at least in the United States, that's exactly what they do for our business (free pickups of single or bulk machines). They also give us cash money for the machines as opposed to Apple Store credit, which is all consumers can get from Apple. Apple recycles 100% of our company owned machines, including Windows PCs.
The 2006 MBP lacked a FW800 port - Apple said they were dropping support for mid/low range products. - People complained as USB2 was not fast enough - A few months later Apple released a revised version of the MBP WITH FW800. Those with the original MBP were left hanging...
The truth is, I have no idea whether Apple will change the current battery configuration. I can't really grasp why they did it in the first place. What I do know though is that the battery will have to be replaced at some point after the first 2 years of use. Un-gluewing a LiPo Battery is VERY dangerous. A simple rapture in its casing will most probably cause an EXPLOSION...
I suggest we revisit this topic in 2-3 years? I'd be very interested to know how they actually replace them. If they do at all...
That may be true for simple home/internet use. When it comes to actual work though you'll need the extra throughput. I'd like to see how a designer would share multiple renders or cad files with his team through wifi. We tried it at the office last year only to experience a HUGE slowdown!
So yeah Apple doesn't seem to care about us all that much, or they would have included the dongle in the box.
Reality is what your bank account makes it. Also Apple drops support for anything 4 years or older so you kinda have to upgrade anyway.
Course, cause Apple wants you to spend 3x the $$$ on RAM and SSD's. Even when I worked behind the bar years ago, all of us told our clients to go to Crucial or some other third party vendor for their PowerMac RAM.
Now, not so much.
(I have a feeling Apple may be delaying the next Mac Pro in order to find a way to make it less user upgradeable, forcing people to buy Apple parts in a BTO system that are soldered in lol)
I love a lot of the USA's geography, but that's about it as far as things I like about it goes.
Where are you from? Mars?
You scare me...
Maybe I need to work on how I use my words, but seriously guys? How did you honestly take my post as a representation of my own opinions? You'll notice I said nothing about myself, just that in the part of the world where I live, that is the general consensus of most of the surrounding population. (Southern/Southwest U.S, depending on your definition)
I highly support reuse and recycle. I still use an eMac as my main machine for crying out loud.
I was simply stating that there are many willfully ignorant people that do not understand the importance of such things, and dismiss them entirely.More sense made?