RAM Soldered Into New Mac Mini To Block Memory Upgrades

Zarathustra[H];1041177728 said:
...so I'll probably suck up the pride and buy a image-over-substance Mac... :(
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You mean to say that women don't only care about what's inside. (It's an Intel inside TM)
 
How's it feel to pay about 3 times what that Intel hardware is worth?
 
drescherjm said:
Only 2 times? I mean I have seen PC OEMs have a much higher markup than 2X.
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Selling 2 year old ram for twice as much as it cost 2 years ago. As in if RAM X costs 150 dollars new 2 years ago. Apple sells it for 300 dollars today. That same RAM today likely costs 50 to 75 dollars.
 
m heisty said:
You mean that garbage can shaped thing? Yea I am sure that has an easy/cheap upgrade path
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Actually, you might be surprised.

I think it is hideously expensive and looks kind of ridiculous, but apparently it is fairly easy to work on (though I haven't tried myself)

It must have been opposites day at Apple. They normally build functionally limited expensive eye candy so people can feel smug at rich as they sip their $8 lattes at the coffee shop.

This thing is ugly, and comparatively easy to work on, and while it is stupendously expensive, it would actually be rather difficult to build an equivalent PC for the money, as they packed a lot of hardware in there.

And I think I saw one at Dunkin Donuts the other day:

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viscountalpha said:
Hackintosh is the correct answer here.
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I thought so too. I was going to build the GF a hackintosh, but when it comes down to it, everyone I spoke to online recommended against it, as a "built for someone else" machine, as they tend to break with software updates, and you'd be maintaining them all the time.
 
I'd refuse to buy a girlfriend a $3000 facebook/netflix machine and go find a woman who understands value and practicality. However, if she's actually developing and actually knows something, then I'd consider getting her a Mac Mini. Thank God my wife is happy with my old Thinkpad and doesn't even want me spend the money for an SSD for it.

That RAM will most likely be BGA and is very difficult to rework without a hot air gun (like an OKI) and a pre-heater. Then you'd need a reflow oven and perfect placement to get another one on. Chances are they'll just throw away any boards with corrupted or defective modules. Very "green" indeed.
 
CaribouNuggets said:
I'd refuse to buy a girlfriend a $3000 facebook/netflix machine and go find a woman who understands value and practicality. However, if she's actually developing and actually knows something, then I'd consider getting her a Mac Mini. Thank God my wife is happy with my old Thinkpad and doesn't even want me spend the money for an SSD for it.
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I was thinking one of the cheaper low end iMac's. At about a third of that price, they are still horrendously overpriced for what you get... ...but I want her to be happy, so...

Besides, after how sketchy and unreliable the MythTV box has been, even though I have no reason to believe a PC I built that is both much faster and cheaper would be any less reliable, if ANYTHING happens at least it isn't my fault :p

If 3 years from now, anything I built started having problems, then it's my fault, but if something like this happens instead, then maybe she'll learn from the experience, and never buy another Apple product :p
 
I'd negotiate. $500 Thinkpad + $500 vacation or $1000 Macbook + no vacation. Then you'd get a vacation plus you wouldn't give Apple more money. :p

...I'm pretty sure my wife would say "no laptop is fine, $1000 vacation please."

Oh lawdy I'd be pissed if my laptop from 2011 had GPU problems. I just had a Dell 1705 GPU crap out, and I got that in 2007.
 
I guess the Apple love affair is officially over. Apple users complain about EVERYTHING now
 
paffinity said:
I'm sure some of it is to prevent users from upgrading, but I think the main reason why they do this is to reduce costs. Soldering the DRAM directly to the board removes the DIMM slots and associated components from the bill of materials. Granted, it probably saves them $1 or so, but when you're building millions of these (or is it much less for the mini) it adds up.
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This. It's easy to lambaste Apple for being unfriendly to anyone that's ever opened a computer, but building costs are a big deal when you are talking the volumes that Apple deals in.

Reliability is the only point I would add to this. Your signal quality is way better when you are dealing with soldered down components and board traces, instead of the multiple contact points and increased signal distance associated with DRAM on modules.
 
spugm1r3 said:
Reliability is the only point I would add to this. Your signal quality is way better when you are dealing with soldered down components and board traces, instead of the multiple contact points and increased signal distance associated with DRAM on modules.
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True, but if it were that much of a factor, you'd think enterprise servers - where uptime is EVERYTHING - would have soldered on RAM... :p
 
spugm1r3 said:
This. It's easy to lambaste Apple for being unfriendly to anyone that's ever opened a computer, but building costs are a big deal when you are talking the volumes that Apple deals in.

Reliability is the only point I would add to this. Your signal quality is way better when you are dealing with soldered down components and board traces, instead of the multiple contact points and increased signal distance associated with DRAM on modules.
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And Apple clearly intends for this device to be considered an appliance. This is the type of computer that I'd buy my mom (and I did). It gets used for years and years, as-is. There are a vocal few that want to buy the cheapest one and immediately gut the device to replace the RAM and drive. That's not a market that Apple's concerned with.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041178066 said:
True, but if it were that much of a factor, you'd think enterprise servers - where uptime is EVERYTHING - would have soldered on RAM... :p
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The small form factor macs are not designed to be opened. It's as simple as that. The new iMacs are so packed in that you'll have a hard time just dismantling them without breaking anything.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041177728 said:
Ever had a girlfriend?

I've never met a woman who didn't prefer a Mac to a PC, and rolled their eyes at me whenever I complained about all the limitations of Macs.

I'm planning on surprising my GF with a computer for Xmas, and while it really pains me to give such an awful company my money, I want her to have something she likes, so I'll probably suck up the pride and buy a image-over-substance Mac... :(
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my gf is rabidly anti apple, doesn't like tablets, meh on android, her "tablet" is a surface pro (she also insists on a 17 inch or bigger laptop with a dedicated gpu).
she also has a self built/modded watercooled full tower pc that she uses for damn near everything. I helped her with some paint and tricks and that's about it.

so its not all of them, i think the hipster thing still stands. it just seems most mainstream girls fall for marketing bullshit easier.
 
m heisty said:
Selling 2 year old ram for twice as much as it cost 2 years ago. As in if RAM X costs 150 dollars new 2 years ago. Apple sells it for 300 dollars today. That same RAM today likely costs 50 to 75 dollars.
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Someone already posted that the cheapest comparable RAM for sale on amazon is $136 dollars so how is it twice as much to charge $200?

Also, 16GB of RAM was not $50 bucks two years ago...or my timing might be off. It was priced low for a short window of time but both before and after that window it was exorbitantly priced.
 
CaribouNuggets said:
Chances are they'll just throw away any boards with corrupted or defective modules. Very "green" indeed.
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You think that they throw them away instead of recycling them?

Apple stores will even buy a customer's older gear and recycle it for them. They didn't offer my friend much, I think $150 bucks or so for an old Macbook, but the point is the offer was there for her to avail herself of if she wanted to.
 
On the price detour...

I'd still take a Mac Mini. The price is actually reasonable for a micro system, given its configuration. Haswell-based NUCs are still overpriced, and that's the next closest thing to the Mini.
 
My MBP has soldered ram, don't really care. The only time I touch the ram in my desktop is when the whole system is getting rebuilt. It's not as big a deal as you guys are making it.
 
ThatsAgood1jay said:
My MBP has soldered ram, don't really care. The only time I touch the ram in my desktop is when the whole system is getting rebuilt. It's not as big a deal as you guys are making it.
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Same here, by the time the 16Gb of ram in my MBP becomes too small I'll need a new laptop anyway. The 500Gb SSD is also large enough for my use, especially when OSX makes storage and device sharing so simple.
 
If you really want the system why not just buy it with the amount of memory you want. If I remember correctly the Mac Mini's never took over 16GB anyway.
 
It is a huge annoyance not being to upgrade the ram, but for people here who complain about the upgradability, all of you do realize there are still a bunch of people on windows XP and/or ancient mac os 10.X right? Many people keep their computers until they die.
 
this reminds me of the radeon all in wonder pro that was like $250 for PC and the MAC one cost $500. And the only difference was a 5 cent resistor you could solder on your self.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041178026 said:
If 3 years from now, anything I built started having problems, then it's my fault, but if something like this happens instead, then maybe she'll learn from the experience, and never buy another Apple product :p
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Then buy her an iMac, as they tend to overheat. Especially if you have a cat/dog (long hair to clog the vents), and don't have air conditioning for those hot summer months.
 
Apple always kind of positioned their base model as a loss leader.

But lately they seem to have jumped the shark on this.

The new Mini has a freaking 1.4GHz dual core along with the soldered in 4GB ram.

The two year old model has a 2.5 GHz dual core with socketed 4GB RAM.

So the old machine was simply much better.

Apple is making the low end machine so unpalatable that no one should buy it. It is there to advertise a low end price, but force you to pay at least $700 to get a model as usable as the old one.
 
When will Apple learn. You don't solder the memory in, you make a proprietary slot that only you have the ability to produce for. Duh.
 
nutzo said:
Except it's not legal.
So from a business standpoint, I had no choice but to waste money on an over-priced mac.
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How is it not legal? If you buy a fully licensed version of the OS. You can put it on what ever you want.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041177728 said:
Ever had a girlfriend?

I've never met a woman who didn't prefer a Mac to a PC, and rolled their eyes at me whenever I complained about all the limitations of Macs.

I'm planning on surprising my GF with a computer for Xmas, and while it really pains me to give such an awful company my money, I want her to have something she likes, so I'll probably suck up the pride and buy a image-over-substance Mac... :(
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Finally converted mine fully :).
 
Standard memory modules are huge and a waste of space. I think this isn't such a bad idea.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041178066 said:
True, but if it were that much of a factor, you'd think enterprise servers - where uptime is EVERYTHING - would have soldered on RAM... :p
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IBM did exactly that for their machines, at least in the late 90's and early 2000's. They sold all the memory boards (yes, memory was on a diff PCB than the processor) full up but you had to pay them to use it all. Even enterprise cares about cost and doing it isn't free which is why everyone doesn't do it.

I've seen several laptops, especially as you go towards the ultrabook form factor, that solder in some of the memory and have only one upgrade slot. Haven't looked but a lot of NUCs likely do the same.

it's also better from a signal integrity standpoint since you ditch the connector and have shorter net lengths. They're not pushing the speed any but it likely gives them effectively better yield on the DRAM since some parts that would fail in a DIMM will work soldered down like that.
 
paffinity said:
I'm sure some of it is to prevent users from upgrading, but I think the main reason why they do this is to reduce costs. Soldering the DRAM directly to the board removes the DIMM slots and associated components from the bill of materials. Granted, it probably saves them $1 or so, but when you're building millions of these (or is it much less for the mini) it adds up.
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Does that end up being cheaper for the buyer?
Hell no, and it has the added bonus of being proprietary and non-customizable or upgradable.

Screw-job for the loyal fans.
Bend over, take it, and enjoy it, Apple fans... without lube, that is.
 
Staples said:
Standard memory modules are huge and a waste of space. I think this isn't such a bad idea.
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You know, in a laptop or ultrabook, this would make sense.
But for a desktop computer, albeit a SFF, this only makes sense from Apple's liquidity.

Definitely not from the customers' point of view.
Just keep drinking that delicious koolaid. :p
 
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