No Upgrading Your New Retina MacBook Pro

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Look at this teardown of the new Retina MacBook Pro. With the memory soldered in place, batteries glued down and a proprietary SSD, you won't be upgrading your Mac any time soon. :eek:

When you get to the battery, the individual packs of which take up a sizable portion of the new MacBook Pro’s casing, and which are glued in place. It also partially covers the trackpad cable. Finally, the display assembly “is completely fused” – Apple said that was to help slim the lid down – which means it will likely have to be replaced in its entirety should anything go wrong.
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It's all to increase their profit margin on an already overpriced laughable laptop.
 
Not overpriced. Ask the guys in the Displays forum how much they'd pay for a 2880x1800 display.

The nonconfigurability is the price you pay for a laptop that's less than 3/4th of an inch thick.
 
evilsofa said:
Not overpriced. Ask the guys in the Displays forum how much they'd pay for a 2880x1800 display.

The nonconfigurability is the price you pay for a laptop that's less than 3/4th of an inch thick.
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this.
 
Melon said:
Let's see the Apple fanatics defend this one. :D
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What's to defend? I'm not an Apple guy by any stretch of the imagination but clearly to make this system work with this much power in the ultra-thin enclosure they had to put everything on the motherboard. No room for individual components in there.
 
evilsofa said:
Not overpriced. Ask the guys in the Displays forum how much they'd pay for a 2880x1800 display.

The nonconfigurability is the price you pay for a laptop that's less than 3/4th of an inch thick.
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Sounds nice until you realize it's a 15.4" screen.


Let's see:

(3) 27" Catleap 2560x1440 monitors + rig to drive them, or this MBP. 10 sarcastic emotes says that users on the display forum would pick the latter.
 
Who cares. The Air is already like this. You can only order it with 8GB or 16GB and it comes witha 256GB in the lowest configuration. You don't need to upgrade it.
 
Interestingly, I haven't seen any complaints about non-user-seviceable batteries and soldered RAM in Dell's and other manufacturers' Ultrabooks.
 
So if I'm understanding correctly, non-user-serviceable batteries and soldered RAM are only of concern when the value of the machine is greater than X, where X is apparently an arbitrarily-selected dollar amount between $1,400 and $2,100. Is this accurate?
 
Man i really hated working on apple products before but they have really done it now! And people wonder why i charge more to fix apple vs pc.
 
evilsofa said:
Not overpriced. Ask the guys in the Displays forum how much they'd pay for a 2880x1800 display.

The nonconfigurability is the price you pay for a laptop that's less than 3/4th of an inch thick.
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They may have 2880x1800 pixels to play with, which is just enough to look online to find out that they're screwed if they need more ram or storage. Even more screwed if they need to replace a bad component. If the ram were to go bad then you need a whole motherboard. How's that Apple warranty again, cause I would get it extended?

Don't give me that bullcrap that they had to do that to keep it that thin. Then make it a little thicker or wider. Would be a great excuse to go past 15 inches. BTW, half the laptop is a freaking battery.

mac-vs-pc-car.jpg
 
I don't see why it has to be soldered in, there are most definitely ultrabooks that have swappable HDDs and RAM. From a replacement perspective this doesn't make any sense either.
 
If you give the customer what they shouldn't want, your product sells more.
It's simple economics really.... ...........................(walks away really questioning humanity)
 
I'm actually pretty surprised they used glue considering the price of the computer. It seems like there'd be another way to secure the battery with plastic fittings and not sacrifice anything in thickness. As for non-replaceable components, as long as the system fails under warranty and Apple is willing to perform repairs without giving the customer any grief, I don't see how it's a big deal. The computer won't be trendy in 12 months anyway when a new model goes to market so making it basically disposable is a no-brainer from a business perspective.
 
I'm not even a fan of Apple products but I want the new MBP just because of that display. I actually think it's priced fair considering how much 2560x1600 displays still cost. Here's hoping this move by Apple pushes other manufactures to offer high-res displays, which will drive down prices then we'll all win :D
 
the battery is huge
how else would you fit custom components in along with that battery?
 
note235 said:
the battery is huge
how else would you fit custom components in along with that battery?
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Increase thickness, but a thicker system, even one that runs cooler, has servicable parts, and a larger battery, is no longer attractive to the consumer market where people place apparently heavy emphasis on how thick something is without ever really considering the unchanging nature of the other two dimensions.
 
It is hilarious that some of you people are jelly of Apple products. Oh noes non upgradable ram oh my! Never mind the display, thickness, build quality, cooling solution, etc.

Apple could shit out a 30" panel with zero glare facing the sun in the Sahara, brushed aluminum, with 5120x 3200 resolution, free GTX 680 ( for Macs ), no dead or stuck pixel 20 year warranty for 499.99 and you people would still cry and bitch.
 
SkribbelKat said:
Increase thickness, but a thicker system, even one that runs cooler, has servicable parts, and a larger battery, is no longer attractive to the consumer market where people place apparently heavy emphasis on how thick something is without ever really considering the unchanging nature of the other two dimensions.
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well its a portable
i have my 3930k system that does all that with the video editing that i do would i like one that has a swappable disk drive and memory? yes but none one has the 1880p display and after viewing my pictures on the ipad 3 its GORGEOUS
 
wonderfield said:
So if I'm understanding correctly, non-user-serviceable batteries and soldered RAM are only of concern when the value of the machine is greater than X, where X is apparently an arbitrarily-selected dollar amount between $1,400 and $2,100. Is this accurate?
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Only matters if it has an Apple Logo. Welcome to [H]. Enjoy your stay.
 
next-Jin said:
It is hilarious that some of you people are jelly of Apple products. Oh noes non upgradable ram oh my! Never mind the display, thickness, build quality, cooling solution, etc.

Apple could shit out a 30" panel with zero glare facing the sun in the Sahara, brushed aluminum, with 5120x 3200 resolution, free GTX 680 ( for Macs ), no dead or stuck pixel 20 year warranty for 499.99 and you people would still cry and bitch.
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I'm pretty sure if Apple invented such a display everyone on the planet would own it. Or at least, everyone on [H] would.

We'd only bitch if it required to use a mac with it :rolleyes:
 
I think it is a good money move for apple. If you look at their two biggest market demos; people who can't be bothered with learning how or why it works and the fashion/hipster/teen-college crowd, this is right in line with their business model. Accordingly, apple is just mirroring the walled garden software approach in their hardware. It is SUPPOSED to be disposable and non-upgradable. That is kinda the point: Two years and done. Planned obsolescence at its finest.

Why would anyone in their market segment even want user-upgradable options. After two years the next bigger and shiner thing will be out and last years model will be passe. What about repair cost, you ask? Well that is the thing people who buy apple have disposable income so they will either have applecare, which is brilliant on the part of apple because it makes it a very attractive add-on sale, or they will just buy a new one. It also saves apple on the back-end because they won't have to pay geniuses and repair monkeys as much because these devices are going from a diagnose-repair model to a stop and swap model.

Don't like it, don't buy it.
 
next-Jin said:
It is hilarious that some of you people are jelly of Apple products. Oh noes non upgradable ram oh my! (The iCar, it breaks, you buy a new on the those too after three years) Never mind the display, thickness, build quality, cooling solution, etc.

Apple could shit out a 30" panel with zero glare facing the sun in the Sahara, brushed aluminum, with 5120x 3200 resolution, free GTX 680 ( for Macs ), no dead or stuck pixel 20 year warranty for 499.99 and you people would still cry and bitch.
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Two small things:

1. Jelly? really? Oh never mind...

2. The specs on that Apple panel are actually crap because I want a 32" panel that's gold plated for $475 (no tax too). So your point is moot. Lets face it, it's too little too late even though they're the first to bring something like this to market. Simple really....:D




You follow me?
 
next-Jin said:
It is hilarious that some of you people are jelly of Apple products. Oh noes non upgradable ram oh my! Never mind the display, thickness, build quality, cooling solution, etc.

Apple could shit out a 30" panel with zero glare facing the sun in the Sahara, brushed aluminum, with 5120x 3200 resolution, free GTX 680 ( for Macs ), no dead or stuck pixel 20 year warranty for 499.99 and you people would still cry and bitch.
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I'd be more interested in what they'd have to do to make that only cost them $200 to manufacture...
 
I seem to remember the Dell D420 and D430, which had thin profiles for their time, also having non-upgradeable components (I would know because I had one). People are just bitching about it because they like to bitch about Apple.
 
this is the first apple laptop i actually want to buy.

16gb ram, 512GB SSD.

if i need more storage i have usb3 or tbolt ports for external. i can just shut down a few VMs if i ever bump into the 16GB ram limit. the 8gb in my current laptop has yet to be a limitation, idk why 16 ever would be.
 
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