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Upgradeable Macs Gone Forever?

As stated above Macs warranty is only one year. You have to pay for Apple care to get it covered for 2 more years for a total of 3.
The issue is not only the duration of the warranty period but the fact that they do fail significantly more than before. And most of the times after the warranty is gone: disposable Mac.
Just look at the Genius Bar and see how many people are lined up waiting for their turns to get service and waiting for their Macs to be serviced.
You can buy SSD drive upgrades for the 2008-2012 MacBook Airs. 2013 not yet. Retina...disposable.
 
McGiord said:
As stated above Macs warranty is only one year. You have to pay for Apple care to get it covered for 2 more years for a total of 3.
The issue is not only the duration of the warranty period but the fact that they do fail significantly more than before. And most of the times after the warranty is gone: disposable Mac.
Just look at the Genius Bar and see how many people are lined up waiting for their turns to get service and waiting for their Macs to be serviced.
You can buy SSD drive upgrades for the 2008-2012 MacBook Airs. 2013 not yet. Retina...disposable.
Click to expand...

You should be able to upgrade the SSDs in the 2013 Retinas soon.
 
kelon111 said:
In other machines from other companies you can already have 2 x 1TB of SSDs if not more.
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How do they deliver more? Is there a triple-drive laptop out there? AFAIK the biggest SSD is 1TB is it not? Happy to be corrected if I missed a memo.... :)
 
simon48 said:
Ok...

A 1TB SSD is considered nice and big by today's standards, if you really want more go buy something else or wait.
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Sure, but SSDs are not ready for prime time for large scale storage yet. Sure, they're nice and fast, but a 1tb sad is something like $1000 from Apple. No one in their right mind insists that mass storage be SSDs. It's very common to see laptops with mixed SSDs and HDDs with multiple terabytes of total storage.

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simonsi said:
How do they deliver more? Is there a triple-drive laptop out there? AFAIK the biggest SSD is 1TB is it not? Happy to be corrected if I missed a memo.... :)
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The same way their MPB 13 inch still does - spinning drives! You can mix the two - if only apple had come up with some kind of technology to allow transparent fusion of ssd and spinning drives...
 
disasterdrone said:
The same way their MPB 13 inch still does - spinning drives! You can mix the two - if only apple had come up with some kind of technology to allow transparent fusion of ssd and spinning drives...
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Did you read the post I quoted? The poster was talking about "2x 1TB SSD or more"
 
simonsi said:
Did you read the post I quoted? The poster was talking about "2x 1TB SSD or more"
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You're right - he was - I misread it. Of course, the point is that in non rMBP machines it's easy to have 2x1tb SSDs, or 2x2tb spinning drives, whatever you want.
 
disasterdrone said:
I didn't say anything about 2tb ssds. I said storage. I have a 512ssd and a 1.5tb spinning disk in my MBP. It's fast, cheap, has plenty of space, and is available now. The great thing is that I can configure it the way I want now.
Click to expand...

wonderspark said:
My 2012 cMBP has 2x1TB SSDs, and anti-glare screen. I know for a fact it was far cheaper that way. If 2TB SSDs come out, I can have 4TB instead of the current 2TB, thanks to DIY upgrade capability.
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You are both talking about optical bay upgrades, which is a hack and (arguably) a violation of the warranty. I agree that its convenient. Still, let's not forget that with the freedom you have, you also gain 25% more weight and sacrifice battery life. Big internal storage is a very niche demand. I would take the 256GB fast SSD over your 2TB combined space any time, if it means lighter and thinner machine. I am sure so will most customers. Apple was never about specialised niche machines, their laptops are all about general-purpose mobility for the majority. If you are unsatisfied with internal storage options of Apple notebooks, then there is a high chance that its not the right brand for you.

kelon111 said:
In other machines from other companies you can already have 2 x 1TB of SSDs if not more.
Click to expand...

In the same form factor as the rMBP? I very much doubt it. Again: different types of laptop - different usage scenarios.

disasterdrone said:
I love that your solution for storage is that hopefully there's a fix in the future. There likely won't be for anyone with soldered storage.
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Well, as far as I am concerned, the SSD is the only weak link in the rMBP. Both from failure and upgradeability (due to rapid price drops and storage increase). I completely agree that it should be user-upgradeable. The reason why I say that there is a good possibility of this actually happening is that Apple describes the Mac Pro storage as user-upgradeable, and for all we know, MBP and MP use the same exact modules. As for your (valid) complain about soldered storage, I'd rather wait for that to actually happen ;) I very much doubt Apple will soon start to solder on the SSDs. Soldering RAM makes lots of sense, soldering the SSD absolutely none at all.
 
leman said:
You are both talking about optical bay upgrades, which is a hack and (arguably) a violation of the warranty. I agree that its convenient. Still, let's not forget that with the freedom you have, you also gain 25% more weight and sacrifice battery life. Big internal storage is a very niche demand. I would take the 256GB fast SSD over your 2TB combined space any time, if it means lighter and thinner machine. I am sure so will most customers. Apple was never about specialised niche machines, their laptops are all about general-purpose mobility for the majority. If you are unsatisfied with internal storage options of Apple notebooks, then there is a high chance that its not the right brand for you.



In the same form factor as the rMBP? I very much doubt it. Again: different types of laptop - different usage scenarios.



Well, as far as I am concerned, the SSD is the only weak link in the rMBP. Both from failure and upgradeability (due to rapid price drops and storage increase). I completely agree that it should be user-upgradeable. The reason why I say that there is a good possibility of this actually happening is that Apple describes the Mac Pro storage as user-upgradeable, and for all we know, MBP and MP use the same exact modules. As for your (valid) complain about soldered storage, I'd rather wait for that to actually happen ;) I very much doubt Apple will soon start to solder on the SSDs. Soldering RAM makes lots of sense, soldering the SSD absolutely none at all.
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Look - I totally get that Apple is a business and will follow the money. Most people don't need high end storage for their email and Facebook. It's just sad to me that Apple is abandoning what used to be a key niche for them - the media and creative professionals who appreciated an adaptable and capable computer.
 
leman said:
You are both talking about optical bay upgrades, which is a hack and (arguably) a violation of the warranty. I agree that its convenient. Still, let's not forget that with the freedom you have, you also gain 25% more weight and sacrifice battery life.
Click to expand...

My experience is a bit different to the picture you paint:

The SSD and caddy were not much more than the optical drive so not much change there (and nowhere near 25% of the MBP). The 1TB Hitachi is is the same physical size as the original 320GB it had when new. I'll allow a smidgen of weight gain for the extra 4GB RAM but again the sum total of weight gain I would challenge you to notice without scales.

Battery life, this was approx 6.5hrs when new. Now the battery is down to about 93% of original according to battery guard yet running on SSD with the HDD spun down the battery life can go up to an estimated 7.5hrs so again in real world usage these are pain-free upgrades (except the $$) as the technology has improved in both GB/gram and GB/amp....

Oh and I upgraded once out of warranty but of course there may have been an Apple Care price to pay if that had been in force.
 
disasterdrone said:
It's just sad to me that Apple is abandoning what used to be a key niche for them - the media and creative professionals who appreciated an adaptable and capable computer.
Click to expand...

I have one such friend who went to PC last year for this exact reason. He said that the new offerings (both laptop and desktop) were too much of a compromise just to get Mac OS. He ended up with a 15" Dell M4700. I have to admit that I like it. It's a little heavier and a little thicker than my cMBP. It feels nice in my big clumsy hands. It has four memory slots and can accommodate up to 32GB. He has three drives in it. It boots from an mSATA and he added two 2.5" spinners. One of those is in the optical bay, but that's officially supported. The caddy/adapter was actually included. So no worries about doing something subversive behind Apple's back.

I really do get the appeal of lighter and thinner--Especially for students and those professionals who actually do need to carry them around on foot all day long. But it's a shame that Apple didn't see fit to maintain the entire cMBP line as well. This "function follows form" philosophy does leave some folks behind.
 
Can't say I was particularly fond of the changes they made when the first rMBP's came out... Soldered RAM, doing away with the choice between an optical drive or a second HDD and getting rid of the off-the-shelf 2,5" SATA HDD/SSD for an exotic SSD with a proprietary connector. All that just for a quarter of an inch in thickness and a few hundred grams of weight.

I even remember vowing to switch to a hackintosh or Linux (which I already use in one form or another for pretty much everything except on the desktop) if they dropped the regular model, which they did in early 2013.

However after seeing how fast the new PCIe SSD's are and that I've managed just fine with a 240GB SSD, I've found myself warming up to the rMBP's. Even the lack of an optical drive isn't an issue considering how rarely I use the one in my current machine due to having just about everything in digital format on a 3TB NAS drive (with another 3TB to spare).

Another thing I've noticed is that my use of RAM hasn't increased anywhere near as much as I expected. When I upgraded my 2007 Macbook Pro from 2 to 4GB, I haven't touched the 4GB my 2011 machine came standard with even now 2,5 years down the line. On the other hand, I don't work that much with media (just editing some youtube rants in iMovie and editing together match tapes for the university football team) whilst most of the actual work I do is just programming and reading or writing text. Of the things I do, the thing that uses the largest amount of RAM is games and most of what I play consists of indie games and console ports, nether of which uses that much memory. The amount of memory used by console ports is probably going to go up with the introduction of another console generation, but the standard amount in all rMBP's should still be able to cover that.

So whilst initially being skeptical about the rMBP's, I'm now seriously considering getting a second hand early 2013 machine so that I can learn CUDA programming directly on the machine and not have to SSH to a university one.
 
leman said:
How silly of me. Still, could you point me to where one can get that cheap 2 TB SSD you now have? Always wanted one of those ;)

P.S. it's pointless to discuss hypothetical upgrades. For all we know, in one year it could be possible to buy a 2TB SSD module for the rMBP. Or maybe there will never be affordable 2TB SATA SSDs
Click to expand...

A potential future in contrast with a real today:

In a MacBook Pro you could install inside the portable Mac two 1TB SDD in a RAID array you get the 2TB.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Samsung/MZ7TE1T0BW/

Or go the hybrid SSD/HDD route, and save some more:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Toshiba/YMO3T1.0HYS/

Try to to that with a disposable Retina…
 
leman said:
And how is it different from before? You can opt for a repair, but laptop repair always used to be costly.
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The difference is that with any portable before the disposable Macs you have several options to solve a hardware problem: buy a new component that fits, replace the same component, or upgrade it. The serviceability is gone.

leman said:
Current macs are more powerful than ever before. The 16GB RAM upgrade for laptops costs 40$ over the market price. Wouldn't call it very expensive. Kind of agree on SSDs - there is a high chance those are/will be replaceable shortly.
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What I ment to say is that they lose their power over time, as soon as the amount of RAM and storage are no longer enough for the owner needs they loose their power. You are limited to whatever size you originally bought.
In the past I could replace them with higher capacity and sometimes even faster speed.

leman said:
Its a conjecture, and a quite unreasonable one. Why should it last more then 3 years when CPU/GPU/display/RAM vendors ono give 3 year warranty on their components? If you are dissatisfied with the price of Apple computers, you are welcome to look for another brand. Good luck finding better quality for less money :D
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Again, if it doesn't last after 1 year it is a disposable computer. Warranty is one thing, how long the computer continues working is another. If I cannot upgrade it afterwards then it is disposable. Older Macs have better quality.

leman said:
Again, a conjecture. I don't see 'glueing and soldering' as a limitation, it reduces form factor and increases reliability. Soldering has been used in electronics since forever. And adhesives are a high-end modern technology. My motorcycle engine is held together by 'glue'.
Click to expand...
Reduces serviceability and customization. You are locked into your decision today, therefore you can't change your Mac hardware afterwards. It is disposable. Adhesives are a manufacturing and service nightmare.

leman said:
Last but not least - if you want to see 'terrible manufacturing quality' - go to any computer store and look at non-Apple laptops ;)
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No need. Just go to the Genius Bar and see what is going on, listen and observe.
Apple's design is one thing, the manufacturing quality is another one. However a robust design will not allow for manufacturing defects, a and will not sacrifice the functionality, serviceability and reliability.

One of the reasons why Apple is coming back to the US to manufacture here.

The real disappointment is the market trend of customers blindly in love with this terrible idea of a "good deal" of buying disposable devices.
 
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leman said:
Apple was never about specialised niche machines, their laptops are all about general-purpose mobility for the majority. If you are unsatisfied with internal storage options of Apple notebooks, then there is a high chance that its not the right brand for you.
Click to expand...

Talking about conjectures. I wonder what a 17" PowerBook / MacBook is?
 
leman said:
In the same form factor as the rMBP? I very much doubt it. Again: different types of laptop - different usage scenarios.
Click to expand...

Dell Precision M3800 ( M.2. SSD + normal 7mm SSD)
Hp Zbook 14 ( M.2. SSD + normal 7mm SSD)
and others

Dell and HP allow users to add and remove parts.
 
In some sense, Apple is going back to the late-80s/early-90s when they had a lot of proprietary, non-replaceable c*** like ADB. You had to use only Apple printers, keyboards, mice, displays and so on.

When Jobs came back, what we got? BSD-like OS (that is, a lot of non-proprietary software), PC processors, standard form factor RAM, SSDs, USB (remember the first iMac G3?). That is, what Apple is doing is the same game they did without Jobs and proved unsuccessful.
 
Upgrade ability is not coming back. It's far more easy to make soc style computers and solder everything in. Old computers needed to be upgraded....these days, even low end computers pack a lot of power and can easily last 4-5 years. Most people will not need to upgrade their computer for a long time... And when they do, they might as well just buy a new one.

In terms of apple leaving its niche customers behind, I don't think that's true. The ones that complain the loudest in Macrumors are the media types. Sure, ram is hard to upgrade, but everyone I know who does creative work buys what they need and upgrades later...and gets faster wifi, more battery life, newer port and faster processor. For storage, they all keep media backed up and take only what they need with them or connect to an external.
 
redkamel said:
Upgrade ability is not coming back. It's far more easy to make soc style computers and solder everything in. Old computers needed to be upgraded....these days, even low end computers pack a lot of power and can easily last 4-5 years. Most people will not need to upgrade their computer for a long time... And when they do, they might as well just buy a new one.

In terms of apple leaving its niche customers behind, I don't think that's true. The ones that complain the loudest in Macrumors are the media types. Sure, ram is hard to upgrade, but everyone I know who does creative work buys what they need and upgrades later...and gets faster wifi, more battery life, newer port and faster processor. For storage, they all keep media backed up and take only what they need with them or connect to an external.
Click to expand...

We'll see. Everything old is new again. A lot of other companies are making great expandable machines. The netbook trend is thankfully almost dead. In a couple of years I think Apple will 'invent' the amazing expandable MacBookPro...
 
upgradeable macs will come back when people stop pushing for thin and light

ya i don't see that happening do you?
 
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