yes 256gb might be too low in long run. i am devastated by the fact that the puny tiny 15 inch monitor now beats my 30 inch monitor in resolution.
-
IP addresses are NOT logged in this forum so there's no point asking. Please note that this forum is full of homophobes, racists, lunatics, schizophrenics & absolute nut jobs with a smattering of geniuses, Chinese chauvinists, Moderate Muslims and last but not least a couple of "know-it-alls" constantly sprouting their dubious wisdom. If you believe that content generated by unsavory characters might cause you offense PLEASE LEAVE NOW! Sammyboy Admin and Staff are not responsible for your hurt feelings should you choose to read any of the content here. The OTHER forum is HERE so please stop asking.
New Macbook Pro 15 inch - Buy Buy Buy!!
- Thread starter singveld
- Start date
yes 256gb might be too low in long run. i am devastated by the fact that the puny tiny 15 inch monitor now beats my 30 inch monitor in resolution.
EVERYTHING is too slow, too low in the long run.
you can max ssd to 768MB. rich boss.
and cpu to 2,7GHz.
weight is an issue for this laptop, do you think the screen alone made it worth it, as compare to air?
When it comes to monitor screens, colour accuracy is more important to a photographer than resolution.
My images are all going to end up in print. Monitors are but an intermediate step towards quality output.
i have already an macbook pro 13, i bring together with my company laptop for travelling, so weight is my biggest issue with macbook pro 13, it is heavy for me, since i bring so much. macbook air is light and have the power for my needs. i never complain of any present macbook screen yet. they are quite nice. so should i get macbook 15 for the screen or macbook air for the weight? high resolution is bad for games, i know. high resolution on program that does not support them, made it look worse.
you have so much print? where do you keep it?
Last edited:
80% of my clients ask for photobooks rather than image files. Even those who ask for the files will eventually print the images in brochures or in-house magazines.
I have to know, when I view the image on my monitor, that it will look similar once a hard copy is generated.
i print photobook too, it is hard to get color and brightness right. the photobook, put a thin layer of protective chemical on the photobook, making it darker.
viewing photo with backlight on lcd are different from viewing print, where light come from ambient instead.
i spend a lot of time tinkering with settings. most of time, pulling my hair out when receiving the photobook.
You won't be able to get it right unless you calibrate your equipment.
You need Colormunki or Spyder in order generate your color profiles.
i have spyder express i bought from cathay camera, i asked the salemen, what is different with express and pro. he said i would not use the feature of pro, get express, but after using it, i really need to brightness calibration of pro. some of those salemen just give bad info.
Last edited:
Hands on with the Retina MacBook Pro
The new, Retina-display-bearing MacBook Pro was in our offices Monday afternoon. While we'll start lab testing it and getting our review going, I got a chance to poke and prod it for a few hours. Here are some quick initial impressions.
First off, this disclaimer: I've been using an 11-inch MacBook Air for so long now, it's very hard for me to judge a 15-inch laptop. It feels enormous to me. But fans of the current 15-inch MacBook Pro will notice that this new laptop is actually quite a bit thinner than the current model, a bit lighter, and slightly narrower.
That all said, this is in many ways the 15-inch answer to the MacBook Air. Gone is the optical drive, spinning hard drive, FireWire port, and Gigabit Ethernet jack of past models; instead, it's all solid-state storage, Thunderbolt and USB 3 ports, and HDMI.
On the right side of the case, there's an SD card reader, an HDMI port, and a single USB 3 port. Compare this to the previous MacBook Pro, which offered nothing but the slot-loading optical drive.
The left side, meanwhile, features a small assortment of ports. There's the new MagSafe 2 connector (about which more in a bit), two Thunderbolt ports, a USB 3 port, and a headphone jack.
And then there's the display, a mindblowing 2880-by-1800-pixel screen that looks like a 1440-by-900 model--except for the fact that there are four pixels for every one on the older display. Just as on the iPad and iPhone, a retina display offers incredibly smooth, clear text and images with startling detail. It's quite funny to view a Final Cut Pro interface with roughly a quarter of the screen taken up with a video preview, only to realize that the video is playing back at full, native 1080p resolution with plenty of room to spare. Pictures are similarly sharp. Web pages display with crisp text but, as on the third-generation iPad, most images on those pages are noticeably jaggy.
The Displays preference pane on this system (running OS X version 10.7.4, build 11E2617) isn't like those seen on previous Macs. Instead of displaying a list of different screen resolutions, it defaults to a "Best for Retina display" resolution. If you choose the Scaled option instead, you can choose from five presets ranging from Larger Text (which makes all the interface elements on the screen larger) to More Space (which makes everything smaller, feeling more like a high-resolution display on previous MacBook Pro models).
Then there's the change that will make any IT manager groan: yet another port switch that renders a whole generation of Apple computers incompatible with a whole other generation of Apple computers. In this case, it's the MagSafe power plug, which has evolved into a thinner, wider connector that's completely incompatible with previous models. (Apple is selling a $9 MagSafe to MagSafe 2 converter to address this.) Simply put, the new MacBook Pro is too thin to fit the old MagSafe adapter. So it needed to change. But if you're a family or workplace that's already got a MacBook and wants to add another, freely sharing adapters is off the table.
Apple says that the process used to attach the Retina display to the monitor allows less glass to be used, creating less glare. It's hard to tell without more use, but it seems that the new MacBook Pro is more like the MacBook Air (which I don't find particularly glare-prone) than the older MacBook Pros (which seemed quite glarey).
If it weren't for the Retina display, this MacBook Pro would seem to be just about what I expected from the infusion of some MacBook Air sensibility into the MacBook Pro line. It seems like there will be a day, in the not too distant future, when there's just a single line of MacBooks from a tiny 11-incher to this larger 15-incher. That day's not here yet—this model is too expensive right now to wipe out the lower-cost MacBook Pro models—but it's coming. (Keep in mind, the original MacBook Air was another $2000-plus product that arrived a bit early, but within a few years the Air had become the lowest-cost, most mainstream Apple laptop. This is the path this new MacBook Pro is now on.)
That evolution is natural. But then there's the X factor, the introduction of a high-DPI display to the Mac for the first time. Developers will need to update their Mac apps to take advantage of Retina mode. And it'll be interesting to see how users—especially those in creative jobs such as working with photos and video—take advantage of all that screen resolution. Apple's been promising a high-resolution Mac interface for years now, but with the new MacBook Pro the future is finally here.
The new, Retina-display-bearing MacBook Pro was in our offices Monday afternoon. While we'll start lab testing it and getting our review going, I got a chance to poke and prod it for a few hours. Here are some quick initial impressions.
First off, this disclaimer: I've been using an 11-inch MacBook Air for so long now, it's very hard for me to judge a 15-inch laptop. It feels enormous to me. But fans of the current 15-inch MacBook Pro will notice that this new laptop is actually quite a bit thinner than the current model, a bit lighter, and slightly narrower.
That all said, this is in many ways the 15-inch answer to the MacBook Air. Gone is the optical drive, spinning hard drive, FireWire port, and Gigabit Ethernet jack of past models; instead, it's all solid-state storage, Thunderbolt and USB 3 ports, and HDMI.
On the right side of the case, there's an SD card reader, an HDMI port, and a single USB 3 port. Compare this to the previous MacBook Pro, which offered nothing but the slot-loading optical drive.
The left side, meanwhile, features a small assortment of ports. There's the new MagSafe 2 connector (about which more in a bit), two Thunderbolt ports, a USB 3 port, and a headphone jack.
And then there's the display, a mindblowing 2880-by-1800-pixel screen that looks like a 1440-by-900 model--except for the fact that there are four pixels for every one on the older display. Just as on the iPad and iPhone, a retina display offers incredibly smooth, clear text and images with startling detail. It's quite funny to view a Final Cut Pro interface with roughly a quarter of the screen taken up with a video preview, only to realize that the video is playing back at full, native 1080p resolution with plenty of room to spare. Pictures are similarly sharp. Web pages display with crisp text but, as on the third-generation iPad, most images on those pages are noticeably jaggy.
The Displays preference pane on this system (running OS X version 10.7.4, build 11E2617) isn't like those seen on previous Macs. Instead of displaying a list of different screen resolutions, it defaults to a "Best for Retina display" resolution. If you choose the Scaled option instead, you can choose from five presets ranging from Larger Text (which makes all the interface elements on the screen larger) to More Space (which makes everything smaller, feeling more like a high-resolution display on previous MacBook Pro models).
Then there's the change that will make any IT manager groan: yet another port switch that renders a whole generation of Apple computers incompatible with a whole other generation of Apple computers. In this case, it's the MagSafe power plug, which has evolved into a thinner, wider connector that's completely incompatible with previous models. (Apple is selling a $9 MagSafe to MagSafe 2 converter to address this.) Simply put, the new MacBook Pro is too thin to fit the old MagSafe adapter. So it needed to change. But if you're a family or workplace that's already got a MacBook and wants to add another, freely sharing adapters is off the table.
Apple says that the process used to attach the Retina display to the monitor allows less glass to be used, creating less glare. It's hard to tell without more use, but it seems that the new MacBook Pro is more like the MacBook Air (which I don't find particularly glare-prone) than the older MacBook Pros (which seemed quite glarey).
If it weren't for the Retina display, this MacBook Pro would seem to be just about what I expected from the infusion of some MacBook Air sensibility into the MacBook Pro line. It seems like there will be a day, in the not too distant future, when there's just a single line of MacBooks from a tiny 11-incher to this larger 15-incher. That day's not here yet—this model is too expensive right now to wipe out the lower-cost MacBook Pro models—but it's coming. (Keep in mind, the original MacBook Air was another $2000-plus product that arrived a bit early, but within a few years the Air had become the lowest-cost, most mainstream Apple laptop. This is the path this new MacBook Pro is now on.)
That evolution is natural. But then there's the X factor, the introduction of a high-DPI display to the Mac for the first time. Developers will need to update their Mac apps to take advantage of Retina mode. And it'll be interesting to see how users—especially those in creative jobs such as working with photos and video—take advantage of all that screen resolution. Apple's been promising a high-resolution Mac interface for years now, but with the new MacBook Pro the future is finally here.
Retina Display MacBook Pro Reviews: Critics are Raving
The reviews are in for Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and you can probably guess what they say.
Critics are thrilled by the ultra-thin, fairly light, power-packed Apple laptop, with its 2880-by-1880 resolution “Retina” display. What's not to like about a MacBook whose individual pixels can't be told apart by the human eye?
There's that nagging issue of price -- the new MacBook starts at $2,199 and scales up to $3,749 -- but that's easy to overlook when the laptop is on loan from Apple. Besides, Apple has a way of getting people to fork over an arm and a leg for its latest gear.
Want to bask in the critics' raves? Here's a roundup of MacBook Pro with Retina Display reviews:
Retina Display
ABC's Joanna Stern starts off with astonishment over the display:
“After 20 minutes of using Apple's new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, I switched back to my own six-month-old MacBook Pro to send an e-mail. But when I looked at its screen, I thought my contact lenses had actually fallen out. For a second I was worried; everything on the screen looked less crisp and less bright. It's not an old machine, but it was really as if an optometrist had switched my prescription, or I'd been forced to use my old glasses. Everything just seemed blurry by comparison.”
This new display has other benefits beyond a clearer picture, as Engadget points out:
“Viewing angles are expanded compared to Apple's other high-end displays, so the annoying drop in contrast that happens from odd vantage points is all but abolished. Contrast, too, is boosted and, interestingly, glare reduced. Yes, this is still a glossy display and no, there still isn't an option for matte glass. But, Apple promises a reduction in glare here from previous Pros.”
There's just one downside to that gorgeous display: Non-retina apps will look terrible until app developers accommodate the technology, as SlashGear notes:
“Applications must support the Retina Display with suitably high-resolution graphics, and if they don’t it’s a recipe for visual disaster. Apple’s own Mail, Calendar, Address Book, Safari, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture and Final Cut Pro are all Retina-optimized, but most third-party apps aren’t, and the difference between them is brutally obvious.”
Design
At 0.71 inches thick, the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is nearly as thin as a MacBook Air, and it's a bit lighter than older MacBook Pro models at 4.46 lbs. Reviewers were all impressed with the design. Here’s CNet’s take:
“It feels like a nice shift from the current Pro, which is what I'd call a ‘carry it around twice per week, tops’ laptop. More often than that, especially with the traditional 15-inch MacBook Pro, and it really drags you down. I could see carrying this new, thinner Pro around with you several days per week, or maybe to and from work on a daily subway commute at a stretch.”
The new Pro also shakes up the arrangement of jacks and ports, including HDMI out and a redesigned MagSafe charger port. The Verge says HDMI is a “particularly useful addition” for plugging video and audio into a television with one cable.
Macworld's Jason Snell notes that the new power adapter is incompatible with old power plugs without a $9 converter, which could be a headache for some users:
“Simply put, the new MacBook Pro is too thin to fit the old MagSafe adapter. So it needed to change. But if you're a family or workplace that's already got a MacBook and wants to add another, freely sharing adapters is off the table.”
Though the audio features of a laptop usually don't get much attention -- laptop speakers are often terrible -- reviewers praised the audio on the new MacBook Pro. Here's Laptop Mag:
“For its size and weight no other notebook on the market sounds better. Apple deserves serious credit for the dual speakers integrated into the new MacBook Pro. Not only did they get surprisingly -- almost alarmingly -- loud during our testing, but they offered a full and rich sound.”
Performance
With Core i7 quad-core processors, solid state drives and a minimum 8 GB of RAM, it's a given that the new device performs well. Engadget ran some benchmarks and found better performance than previous MacBooks. Also, Diablo III hummed along at 25-30 frames per second at maximum resolution and full graphical details. In Laptop Mag's boot time test, the MacBook's 15-second start-up time beat every other laptop in its class. Only Samsung's Series 9 came close.
Even when the new MacBook Pro is running at full blast, it runs quiet, according to Harry McCracken at Time.com:
“Some fast laptops tax their processors to such a degree that they heat up like pavement in the summer, forcing the use of noisy fans to bring the temperature down. The famously fan-phobic Apple says that it tuned the ones in the Pro to run at different frequencies so the whirrrrrrrrrrrr is less obvious. Even when I loaded gazillions of browser tabs, streamed videos and ran a virtualized copy of Windows 7 courtesy of Parallels Desktop, the Pro kept its cool and I couldn’t tell if the fans were active without pressing my ear to the case.”
As for battery life, ABC's Stern eeked out 5 hours and 22 minutes of non-stop HD video playback, which was about an hour less than Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air. Laptop Mag got about 8 hours of continuous Web surfing on 40 percent brightness, compared to 6 hours and 18 minutes for the average thin-and-light notebook.
Conclusion
Slashgear's final words sum up the general sentiment in all the MacBook Pro with Retina Display reviews:
“In the end, though the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is more than just the sum of its screen, the inescapable truth is that any other notebook feels dreary and last-gen in comparison. Just as switching from Retina on a new iPad to another tablet feels like stepping back in time, so the new MacBook Pro’s display feels like what computing really should be.”
But let's give the last word to Macworld's Snell:
“Apple's been promising a high-resolution Mac interface for years now,” he wrote, “but with the new MacBook Pro the future is finally here.”
The reviews are in for Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and you can probably guess what they say.
Critics are thrilled by the ultra-thin, fairly light, power-packed Apple laptop, with its 2880-by-1880 resolution “Retina” display. What's not to like about a MacBook whose individual pixels can't be told apart by the human eye?
There's that nagging issue of price -- the new MacBook starts at $2,199 and scales up to $3,749 -- but that's easy to overlook when the laptop is on loan from Apple. Besides, Apple has a way of getting people to fork over an arm and a leg for its latest gear.
Want to bask in the critics' raves? Here's a roundup of MacBook Pro with Retina Display reviews:
Retina Display
ABC's Joanna Stern starts off with astonishment over the display:
“After 20 minutes of using Apple's new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, I switched back to my own six-month-old MacBook Pro to send an e-mail. But when I looked at its screen, I thought my contact lenses had actually fallen out. For a second I was worried; everything on the screen looked less crisp and less bright. It's not an old machine, but it was really as if an optometrist had switched my prescription, or I'd been forced to use my old glasses. Everything just seemed blurry by comparison.”
This new display has other benefits beyond a clearer picture, as Engadget points out:
“Viewing angles are expanded compared to Apple's other high-end displays, so the annoying drop in contrast that happens from odd vantage points is all but abolished. Contrast, too, is boosted and, interestingly, glare reduced. Yes, this is still a glossy display and no, there still isn't an option for matte glass. But, Apple promises a reduction in glare here from previous Pros.”
There's just one downside to that gorgeous display: Non-retina apps will look terrible until app developers accommodate the technology, as SlashGear notes:
“Applications must support the Retina Display with suitably high-resolution graphics, and if they don’t it’s a recipe for visual disaster. Apple’s own Mail, Calendar, Address Book, Safari, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture and Final Cut Pro are all Retina-optimized, but most third-party apps aren’t, and the difference between them is brutally obvious.”
Design
At 0.71 inches thick, the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is nearly as thin as a MacBook Air, and it's a bit lighter than older MacBook Pro models at 4.46 lbs. Reviewers were all impressed with the design. Here’s CNet’s take:
“It feels like a nice shift from the current Pro, which is what I'd call a ‘carry it around twice per week, tops’ laptop. More often than that, especially with the traditional 15-inch MacBook Pro, and it really drags you down. I could see carrying this new, thinner Pro around with you several days per week, or maybe to and from work on a daily subway commute at a stretch.”
The new Pro also shakes up the arrangement of jacks and ports, including HDMI out and a redesigned MagSafe charger port. The Verge says HDMI is a “particularly useful addition” for plugging video and audio into a television with one cable.
Macworld's Jason Snell notes that the new power adapter is incompatible with old power plugs without a $9 converter, which could be a headache for some users:
“Simply put, the new MacBook Pro is too thin to fit the old MagSafe adapter. So it needed to change. But if you're a family or workplace that's already got a MacBook and wants to add another, freely sharing adapters is off the table.”
Though the audio features of a laptop usually don't get much attention -- laptop speakers are often terrible -- reviewers praised the audio on the new MacBook Pro. Here's Laptop Mag:
“For its size and weight no other notebook on the market sounds better. Apple deserves serious credit for the dual speakers integrated into the new MacBook Pro. Not only did they get surprisingly -- almost alarmingly -- loud during our testing, but they offered a full and rich sound.”
Performance
With Core i7 quad-core processors, solid state drives and a minimum 8 GB of RAM, it's a given that the new device performs well. Engadget ran some benchmarks and found better performance than previous MacBooks. Also, Diablo III hummed along at 25-30 frames per second at maximum resolution and full graphical details. In Laptop Mag's boot time test, the MacBook's 15-second start-up time beat every other laptop in its class. Only Samsung's Series 9 came close.
Even when the new MacBook Pro is running at full blast, it runs quiet, according to Harry McCracken at Time.com:
“Some fast laptops tax their processors to such a degree that they heat up like pavement in the summer, forcing the use of noisy fans to bring the temperature down. The famously fan-phobic Apple says that it tuned the ones in the Pro to run at different frequencies so the whirrrrrrrrrrrr is less obvious. Even when I loaded gazillions of browser tabs, streamed videos and ran a virtualized copy of Windows 7 courtesy of Parallels Desktop, the Pro kept its cool and I couldn’t tell if the fans were active without pressing my ear to the case.”
As for battery life, ABC's Stern eeked out 5 hours and 22 minutes of non-stop HD video playback, which was about an hour less than Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air. Laptop Mag got about 8 hours of continuous Web surfing on 40 percent brightness, compared to 6 hours and 18 minutes for the average thin-and-light notebook.
Conclusion
Slashgear's final words sum up the general sentiment in all the MacBook Pro with Retina Display reviews:
“In the end, though the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is more than just the sum of its screen, the inescapable truth is that any other notebook feels dreary and last-gen in comparison. Just as switching from Retina on a new iPad to another tablet feels like stepping back in time, so the new MacBook Pro’s display feels like what computing really should be.”
But let's give the last word to Macworld's Snell:
“Apple's been promising a high-resolution Mac interface for years now,” he wrote, “but with the new MacBook Pro the future is finally here.”
Teardown Reveals New MacBook Pro Models a Bear to Repair
Good luck if you ever need to service a new MacBook Pro model that isn't under warranty. The fine people over at iFixIt did what they do best with one of Apple's newly refreshed laptops, promptly gutting the device with a detailed walkthrough. What did they discover along the way? That's it's not so easy to repair. In fact, iFixIt gave the new MacBook Pro a measly 1 out of 10 'Repairability Score', the worst possibly score a gadget can get.
There are multiple reasons why the MacBook Pro is a crummy machine for do-it-yourself (DIY) repair types. It starts with those annoying pentalobe screws, which are specifically intended to keep you from cracking it open with your presumably bumbling fingers. But that's not all that makes it difficult to work on. The lithium-polymer battery is glued, not screwed, into the case, which means you're likely to break something during disassembly, iFixIt surmises. RAM is soldered to the motherboard, the SSD isn't upgradeable (not yet, anyway) as it's a separate daughtercard, and the display assembly is completely fused with no glass protection. Should something fall inside while performing a repair, you're looking at a costly replacement, as you'll need to swap out the entire assembly.
The model iFixIt tore into was a 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with LED-backlit Retina display, Core i7 processor (Ivy Bridge), 8GB of DDR3L RAM, and Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics. Apple announced the upgraded model at WWDC on Tuesday.
Good luck if you ever need to service a new MacBook Pro model that isn't under warranty. The fine people over at iFixIt did what they do best with one of Apple's newly refreshed laptops, promptly gutting the device with a detailed walkthrough. What did they discover along the way? That's it's not so easy to repair. In fact, iFixIt gave the new MacBook Pro a measly 1 out of 10 'Repairability Score', the worst possibly score a gadget can get.
There are multiple reasons why the MacBook Pro is a crummy machine for do-it-yourself (DIY) repair types. It starts with those annoying pentalobe screws, which are specifically intended to keep you from cracking it open with your presumably bumbling fingers. But that's not all that makes it difficult to work on. The lithium-polymer battery is glued, not screwed, into the case, which means you're likely to break something during disassembly, iFixIt surmises. RAM is soldered to the motherboard, the SSD isn't upgradeable (not yet, anyway) as it's a separate daughtercard, and the display assembly is completely fused with no glass protection. Should something fall inside while performing a repair, you're looking at a costly replacement, as you'll need to swap out the entire assembly.
The model iFixIt tore into was a 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with LED-backlit Retina display, Core i7 processor (Ivy Bridge), 8GB of DDR3L RAM, and Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics. Apple announced the upgraded model at WWDC on Tuesday.
NEW MACBOOK PRO: UNFIXABLE, UNHACKABLE, UNTENABLE
This week, Apple delivered the highly anticipated MacBook Pro with Retina Display—and the tech world is buzzing. I took one apart yesterday because I run iFixit, a team responsible for high-resolution teardowns of new products and DIY repair guides. We disassemble and analyze new electronic gizmos so you don’t have to—kind of like an internet version of Consumer Reports.
The Retina MacBook is the least repairable laptop we’ve ever taken apart: unlike the previous model, the display is fused to the glass—meaning replacing the LCD requires buying an expensive display assembly. The RAM is now soldered to the logic board—making future memory upgrades impossible. And the battery is glued to the case—requiring customers to mail their laptop to Apple every so often for a $200 replacement. The design may well be comprised of “highly recyclable aluminum and glass”—but my friends in the electronics recycling industry tell me they have no way of recycling aluminum that has glass glued to it like Apple did with both this machine and the recent iPad. The design pattern has serious consequences not only for consumers and the environment, but also for the tech industry as a whole.
Four years ago, Apple performed a market experiment. They released the super thin, but non-upgradeable, MacBook Air in addition to their two existing, easily upgradeable notebooks: the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. Apple’s laptops had evolved over two decades of experience into impressively robust, rugged, and long-lasting computers. Apple learned a lot from the failings of the past: the exploding batteries of the PowerBook 5300, the flaky hinges of the PowerBook G4 Titanium, the difficult-to-access hard drive in the iBook. Apple’s portable lineup was a triumph—for consumers and for Apple itself. IT professionals the world over love working on the MacBook. I’ve disassembled a few of them myself, and I can attest that they are almost as easy to repair as they are to use.
The 2008 Air went in a new direction entirely: it sacrificed performance and upgradeability in exchange for a thinner design. Its RAM is soldered to the logic board (as in the Retina MacBook Pro), so upgrading it means replacing the entire expensive logic board. And like all laptops, the Air has a built-in consumable. The MacBook Air’s battery was rated to last just 300 charges when it was introduced. But unlike laptops before it, replacing the Air’s battery required specialized tools and removing some nineteen screws.
When Apple dropped the MacBook Air to $999 in 2010 to match the price point of the MacBook, they gave users a clear choice: the thin, light, and un-upgradeable MacBook Air or the heavier, longer lasting, more rugged, and more powerful MacBook. Same price, two very different products. At the time, I wasn’t very happy with the non-upgradeable RAM on the MacBook Air, but I respected that Apple had given their users a choice. It was up to us: did we want a machine that would be stuck with 2 GB of RAM forever? Would we support laptops that required replacement every year or two as applications required more memory and batteries atrophied?
Consumers overwhelmingly voted yes, and the Air grew to take 40% of Apple’s notebook sales by the end of 2010.
The success of the non-upgradeable Air empowered Apple to release the even-less-serviceable iPad two years later: the battery was glued into the case. And again, we voted with our wallets and purchased the device despite its built-in death clock. In the next iteration of the iPad, the glass was fused to the frame.
Once again, with another product announcement, Apple has presented the market with a choice. They have two professional laptops: one that is serviceable and upgradeable, and one that is not. They’re not exactly equivalent products—one is less expensive and supports expandable storage, and the other has a cutting-edge display, fixed storage capacity, and a premium pricetag—but they don’t have the same name just to cause confusion. Rather, Apple is asking users to define the future of the MacBook Pro.
Apple isn’t fundamentally against upgradeability and accessibility. The current Mac Mini has compelling finger slots that practically beg people to open it. When Steve Jobs released the “open-minded” Power Mac G3 with a door that opened from the side, the audience oohed and aahed. Apple products have historically retained their value quite well, in part due to third-party repair manuals, but also due to a number of very modular, very upgradeable designs.
Even the MacBook Pro was originally touted as an accessible, repairable machine—at Macworld in 2009, Steve Jobs said, “Our pro customers want accessibility: [...] to add memory, to add cards, to add drives.” That’s part of what I love about my MacBook Pro. I’ve upgraded my RAM, and I even replaced my optical drive with an 80 GB SSD.
On the other hand, Apple has consistently introduced thinner, lighter products. They learn from experience. They react to their customers. They’re very adept at presenting us with what we want. And they give us options from time to time and allow product sales to determine their future designs.
We have consistently voted for hardware that’s thinner rather than upgradeable. But we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Our purchasing decisions are telling Apple that we’re happy to buy computers and watch them die on schedule. When we choose a short-lived laptop over a more robust model that’s a quarter of an inch thicker, what does that say about our values?
Every time we buy a locked down product containing a non-replaceable battery with a finite cycle count, we’re voicing our opinion on how long our things should last. But is it an informed decision? When you buy something, how often do you really step back and ask how long it should last? If we want long-lasting products that retain their value, we have to support products that do so.
Today, we choose. If we choose the retina display over the existing MacBook Pro, the next generation of Mac laptops will likely be less repairable still. When that happens, we won’t be able to blame Apple. We’ll have to blame ourselves. They gave us the choice.
This week, Apple delivered the highly anticipated MacBook Pro with Retina Display—and the tech world is buzzing. I took one apart yesterday because I run iFixit, a team responsible for high-resolution teardowns of new products and DIY repair guides. We disassemble and analyze new electronic gizmos so you don’t have to—kind of like an internet version of Consumer Reports.
The Retina MacBook is the least repairable laptop we’ve ever taken apart: unlike the previous model, the display is fused to the glass—meaning replacing the LCD requires buying an expensive display assembly. The RAM is now soldered to the logic board—making future memory upgrades impossible. And the battery is glued to the case—requiring customers to mail their laptop to Apple every so often for a $200 replacement. The design may well be comprised of “highly recyclable aluminum and glass”—but my friends in the electronics recycling industry tell me they have no way of recycling aluminum that has glass glued to it like Apple did with both this machine and the recent iPad. The design pattern has serious consequences not only for consumers and the environment, but also for the tech industry as a whole.
Four years ago, Apple performed a market experiment. They released the super thin, but non-upgradeable, MacBook Air in addition to their two existing, easily upgradeable notebooks: the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. Apple’s laptops had evolved over two decades of experience into impressively robust, rugged, and long-lasting computers. Apple learned a lot from the failings of the past: the exploding batteries of the PowerBook 5300, the flaky hinges of the PowerBook G4 Titanium, the difficult-to-access hard drive in the iBook. Apple’s portable lineup was a triumph—for consumers and for Apple itself. IT professionals the world over love working on the MacBook. I’ve disassembled a few of them myself, and I can attest that they are almost as easy to repair as they are to use.
The 2008 Air went in a new direction entirely: it sacrificed performance and upgradeability in exchange for a thinner design. Its RAM is soldered to the logic board (as in the Retina MacBook Pro), so upgrading it means replacing the entire expensive logic board. And like all laptops, the Air has a built-in consumable. The MacBook Air’s battery was rated to last just 300 charges when it was introduced. But unlike laptops before it, replacing the Air’s battery required specialized tools and removing some nineteen screws.
When Apple dropped the MacBook Air to $999 in 2010 to match the price point of the MacBook, they gave users a clear choice: the thin, light, and un-upgradeable MacBook Air or the heavier, longer lasting, more rugged, and more powerful MacBook. Same price, two very different products. At the time, I wasn’t very happy with the non-upgradeable RAM on the MacBook Air, but I respected that Apple had given their users a choice. It was up to us: did we want a machine that would be stuck with 2 GB of RAM forever? Would we support laptops that required replacement every year or two as applications required more memory and batteries atrophied?
Consumers overwhelmingly voted yes, and the Air grew to take 40% of Apple’s notebook sales by the end of 2010.
The success of the non-upgradeable Air empowered Apple to release the even-less-serviceable iPad two years later: the battery was glued into the case. And again, we voted with our wallets and purchased the device despite its built-in death clock. In the next iteration of the iPad, the glass was fused to the frame.
Once again, with another product announcement, Apple has presented the market with a choice. They have two professional laptops: one that is serviceable and upgradeable, and one that is not. They’re not exactly equivalent products—one is less expensive and supports expandable storage, and the other has a cutting-edge display, fixed storage capacity, and a premium pricetag—but they don’t have the same name just to cause confusion. Rather, Apple is asking users to define the future of the MacBook Pro.
Apple isn’t fundamentally against upgradeability and accessibility. The current Mac Mini has compelling finger slots that practically beg people to open it. When Steve Jobs released the “open-minded” Power Mac G3 with a door that opened from the side, the audience oohed and aahed. Apple products have historically retained their value quite well, in part due to third-party repair manuals, but also due to a number of very modular, very upgradeable designs.
Even the MacBook Pro was originally touted as an accessible, repairable machine—at Macworld in 2009, Steve Jobs said, “Our pro customers want accessibility: [...] to add memory, to add cards, to add drives.” That’s part of what I love about my MacBook Pro. I’ve upgraded my RAM, and I even replaced my optical drive with an 80 GB SSD.
On the other hand, Apple has consistently introduced thinner, lighter products. They learn from experience. They react to their customers. They’re very adept at presenting us with what we want. And they give us options from time to time and allow product sales to determine their future designs.
We have consistently voted for hardware that’s thinner rather than upgradeable. But we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Our purchasing decisions are telling Apple that we’re happy to buy computers and watch them die on schedule. When we choose a short-lived laptop over a more robust model that’s a quarter of an inch thicker, what does that say about our values?
Every time we buy a locked down product containing a non-replaceable battery with a finite cycle count, we’re voicing our opinion on how long our things should last. But is it an informed decision? When you buy something, how often do you really step back and ask how long it should last? If we want long-lasting products that retain their value, we have to support products that do so.
Today, we choose. If we choose the retina display over the existing MacBook Pro, the next generation of Mac laptops will likely be less repairable still. When that happens, we won’t be able to blame Apple. We’ll have to blame ourselves. They gave us the choice.
Similar threads
