Teardowns of Late 2013 Retina MacBook Pros Reveal No Improvements in Accessibility

[spronkey]

I hate to be "that guy" but .. you're debating something which isn't debatable. If you want user serviceable parts, Apple isn't really for you. Nothing anyone says on here is going to push them in another direction. Their customers are buying their products because the majority of end users do not upgrade their PCs or even know how to, much less fix anything. That user base is so small Apple, as well as most other companies don't need to make them happy.

A few others above have said it, but... Apple have in the past been an "enabling" company. They've always gone the extra mile to make certain things easy to do - that includes upgrading your machines. Right from the get go they've included expansion ports, and guides on how to replace certain "user accessible" parts.

About 6 years ago they went all-out on their notebooks and actually started designing them specifically with this in mind. RAM slots gained easy to access triggers or panels, and the "number of disassembly steps required" to access HDD and optical drives reduced dramatically.

Then, as someone else said, with iOS and the MacBook Air, this suddenly stopped happening. It was a complete shift in their approach.

And to all you people claiming it's impossible to make a machine as thin and powerful as the rMBP with upgradable components I call BS. Dell's just done it with the New XPS 15. And I'm pretty sure that M.2 connectors would fit exactly where the SSD is on both rMBPs. I'm also pretty sure that they could fit a daughterboard where the RAM is currently soldered, even if they had to use one of the smaller DIMM standards, and even if you had to remove the logic board to plug in a DIMM.

 

[wshyang]

you're being overly dramatic. Apple offers a flat rate repair on their portable computers. If you have no Applecare, for whatever reason, you pay 290 for 11 and 13 inch machines and 330 for 15+. You could argue that it's too much but "you're lost" is a bit strong.

Is this scheme publicly mentioned anywhere? And is it applicable in all countries? Not trolling, but I have never heard of such a wonderful scheme. Apple seems too eager to slap us with a $1000 repair bill for a logic board replacement here.

 

[Crimson Hikari]

So thousands of users can't have better, lighter and more efficient computers, because a select few insist on upgrading RAM and harddrives themselves?

This is why we can't have nice things.

The weekend before an important assignment was due my hard drive in my Macbook Pro decided to wave a little white flag. I had the backup of my saved assignment, but nothing to finish it on (my mother's laptop is a windows laptop which subsequently wouldn't have been able to open my Pages doc).

Half an hour, and I was recovering my stuff back from one of my backups onto my spare (albeit slightly slower) drive. Why? Because I was able to take the back off my MBP and replace the hard drive myself.

If that happens to you with a Retina model, you are SCREWED until you can get to an Apple Store. And even then you're going to have to wait for them to get off their backsides even if you mention "This is urgent, I NEED my laptop" because, well, why should they care? They're not the ones with an assignment.

I know failures are usually a rare occurrence, but when they do strike, they are at extremely inconvenient times, and that is one of the things that we 'select few' miss.

 

[kustardking]

I strongly disagree. This is a marketing decision not a technical limitation.

Not just marketing. Apple doesn't have to create and manage a whole retail presence (design, packaging, shelf space) for things that are "service parts". No packaging, not having to stock everything everywhere, and more space in the stores for quicker-cycled and *no shelf life* items (such as cases) are compelling economic reasons to not provide replaceable batteries.

This is aside from the technical decision to go thin challenging chassis rigidity and weight with a user-accessible compartment that would be 2/3 of the volume. Maybe if they made it of titanium to increase the internal volume with thinner walls, but now we're going to treble the price.

 

[Fzang]

The weekend before an important assignment was due my hard drive in my Macbook Pro decided to wave a little white flag. I had the backup of my saved assignment, but nothing to finish it on (my mother's laptop is a windows laptop which subsequently wouldn't have been able to open my Pages doc).

Half an hour, and I was recovering my stuff back from one of my backups onto my spare (albeit slightly slower) drive. Why? Because I was able to take the back off my MBP and replace the hard drive myself.

If that happens to you with a Retina model, you are SCREWED until you can get to an Apple Store. And even then you're going to have to wait for them to get off their backsides even if you mention "This is urgent, I NEED my laptop" because, well, why should they care? They're not the ones with an assignment.

I know failures are usually a rare occurrence, but when they do strike, they are at extremely inconvenient times, and that is one of the things that we 'select few' miss.

Funny you should say that. A week before my exam project had to be handed in (which is actually tomorrow, at the time of writing), my MBA's SSD died, and the Apple Store said it would take a week for a new SSD to arrive.

Guess what?

1. I was able to borrow a MacBook from someone else. It even had an SSD as well. Yay.
2. It didn't even take Apple a week to fix my MBA anyway.

Moral of the story: your scenario is just as likely as mine. Or just as unlikely. Whichever.

 

[Rossatron]

Oh no! Quick everybody, make a scene!

 

[undesign]

i am more pissed at the soldered in RAM rather than glued in battery.

Apple better rectify this insanely stupid decision with the next MacBook Pro.

I will NOT buy any MacBook with soldered ram.

 

[adnbek]

Batteries are consumables and NOT covered by AppleCare or standard warranty, they degrade over time. After a few hundred charge cycles (so, a year) their capacity is about half.

Your info is many years out of date. Batteries in Apple laptops are designed to still hold at least 80% of their original capacity after 1000 cycles.

 

[Pointcrosseed]

I repair Apple Computers for a living... honestly, this doesn't look all that bad.

Maybe its because you repair Apple Computers for a living and you dont mind eating, wearing clothes, and maybe shelter

 

[Crimson Hikari]

Funny you should say that. A week before my exam project had to be handed in (which is actually tomorrow, at the time of writing), my MBA's SSD died, and the Apple Store said it would take a week for a new SSD to arrive.

Guess what?

1. I was able to borrow a MacBook from someone else. It even had an SSD as well. Yay.
2. It didn't even take Apple a week to fix my MBA anyway.

Moral of the story: your scenario is just as likely as mine. Or just as unlikely. Whichever.

You're pretty lucky it was a week. It's not really a great idea to ask someone to borrow their MacBook when they're knee-deep in coursework, and even then, I don't know if this particular friend even owned Pages.

Maybe there's a god or a deity who has a sense of humour that day and was punishing me for leaving finishing my assessment that late. Maybe I was just sh** out of luck. But that weekend was not the best time for my hard drive to cr**, and if I hadn't have been able to replace and recover my hard drive myself I would have been up diarrhoea drive without a saddle.

No moral. Just noting that if Apple want to keep some of their loyal users, they might want to rethink removing the ability to replace basic computer parts like RAM and data storage devices. Its alright for iDevices, but laptops and desktops? I'd rather have a slightly heftier Mac with a more reasonable solution to a hard drive problem than 'take it to an Apple store/reseller'.

 

[Steve121178]

Apple has no reason to make any parts user accessible.

Harder to design/assemble
Less profit to make off huge markups on upgrades

If Apple is smart they will continue to make things harder and harder to upgrade.

I know many people who refused to buy new Mac's as they can't upgrade.

Losing sales does not equal a bulletproof business model.

 

[MattDSLR]

as expected from apple

 

[Fzang]

You're pretty lucky it was a week. It's not really a great idea to ask someone to borrow their MacBook when they're knee-deep in coursework, and even then, I don't know if this particular friend even owned Pages.

He studies something else, and had just finished his exam

And I only copied the Pages.app file to his MacBook from my backup disk. Of course that meant Pages wouldn't start by itself, because it's not properly installed. But wait! The App Store recognized this and said "hey, here's the new version of Pages for free" and upgraded my single file to a fully working install.

The planets were probably aligned in a straight line that day. Not every day you can fix problems with such a lengthy luck streak.

 

[RedRaven571]

Guess what?

1. I was able to borrow a MacBook from someone else. It even had an SSD as well. Yay.
2. It didn't even take Apple a week to fix my MBA anyway.

Moral of the story: your scenario is just as likely as mine. Or just as unlikely. Whichever.

The solution to non user upgradable parts is to borrow a colleague's computer?

 

[Crimson Hikari]

He studies something else, and had just finished his exam

And I only copied the Pages.app file to his MacBook from my backup disk. Of course that meant Pages wouldn't start by itself, because it's not properly installed. But wait! The App Store recognized this and said "hey, here's the new version of Pages for free" and upgraded my single file to a fully working install.

The planets were probably aligned in a straight line that day. Not every day you can fix problems with such a lengthy luck streak.

If I had been able to borrow my friends mac, I would have never thought to try that. He had an older macbook, one of the ones that might have have lost support during the upgrade to Mountain Lion, so it might not have worked in the same way.

Even if it had, if I had asked him to borrow his laptop at that point, I'm fairly sure he would have tried to lynch me!

 

[Fzang]

The solution to non user upgradable parts is to borrow a colleague's computer?

Now you're just twisting my words. That's not what I said.

What would you have done if any other component had failed? What if the CPU gave up? And how would you upgrade your GPU anyway? People are listing so many "what if" scenarios, and for the greater good, Apple can't support every single person who wants to upgrade his HDD capacity.

I'm sure if a public poll (public as in public, not a tech site poll) was held, replaceable hard drives would be made obsolete in favor of technological progress for the greater masses.

A person once said "I love listening to loud music while riding 160 km/h on motorcycle on the highway", to which I said "That sounds dangerous", and he replied "No it's not. See, I'm still alive, right?" Not exactly the best analogy, but in essence it's the same; what is it that makes people believe they're special individuals?

 

[RedRaven571]

Now you're just twisting my words. That's not what I said.

What would you have done if any other component had failed? What if the CPU gave up? And how would you upgrade your GPU anyway? People are listing so many "what if" scenarios, and for the greater good, Apple can't support every single person who wants to upgrade his HDD capacity.

I'm sure if a public poll (public as in public, not a tech site poll) was held, replaceable hard drives would be made obsolete in favor of technological progress for the greater masses.

A person once said "I love listening to loud music while riding 160 km/h on motorcycle on the highway", to which I said "That sounds dangerous", and he replied "No it's not. See, I'm still alive, right?" Not exactly the best analogy, but in essence it's the same; what is it that makes people believe they're special individuals?

No, I hear you, the vast majority of end users would't think of opening up a laptop to swap out the HDD/RAM (lot's of my family members wouldn't) but, if you are marketing a line of products called 'Pro' well then.......

 

[SideStepSociety]

Maybe, like every other situation in life, as things get harder to mod, we need to get better at modding.

If it went in, it can come out. It might not be easy, but nothing is easy when you're a pioneer.