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It's not just software. While I'm still a fan of Macbooks, I'm getting close to abandoning ship thanks to the increasingly un-repairability of these things. I h

It's not just software. While I'm still a fan of Macbooks, I'm getting close to abandoning ship thanks to the increasingly un-repairability of these things. I have a Macbook from ~2008 that's still functional as a media PC thanks to memory/SSD upgrades and battery replacements over the years. My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery glued to the case. The SSD is technically replaceable, but the specs that this laptop shipped with are going to be the specs that it dies with. When the battery goes, I'll have to either risk destroying the machine or pay way too much to Apple to do the job for me. At that point I'll probably just switch to a brand with a more reasonable user-servicing model, assuming those still exist.

yuhong 11y ago
The EPEAT fiasco is my favorite here.
givinguflac 11y ago
While I agree with you, when your current Mac is older and relegated to media PC duty, are you going to need more than the 8 or 16GB of RAM it shipped with? As for batteries, it's almost the exact same price to buy a battery a replace it yourself as it is to have Apple do it, and you don't have to deal with proper recycling (hopefully you would.) I'm hoping we see a reverse trend but who knows.
- gburt 11y ago
  If and only if you live near an Apple store. Otherwise you might be without your machine for a week or two during that period: that is a serious cost for many people in our profession.
  - givinguflac 11y ago
    That's certainly a valid concern; I have never been in that situation so yeah that could be trouble. Aren't there typically local repair centers that do authorized repairs? If not that's a huge oversight even if they only allowed battery swaps. That said, I have a 2006 MBP that is ancient and still works when wired to power even though I can replace the battery it works fine as an email/web browsing headless with a monitor.
  - ssmoot 11y ago
    That doesn't apply if you're relegating the previous system to media-center duty though.
- carlob 11y ago
  Who would ever need more than 512kb of RAM…
  - efes 11y ago
    I guess you've hurt feelings with sarcasm? But I agree. Virtualization is a bad joke with 8GB of RAM today, so I decided to assume 16GB max isn't enough lifetime for a new system and wont be consuming in the current market.
- tluyben2 11y ago
  If you live in the US. In most countries in the EU last I checked it is far more expensive and harder to come by.
merpnderp 11y ago
Yeah, I feel the same way. I just upgraded a 2011MBP's HDD to and SSD and replaced the battery myself, and from start to finishing up the OSX install was about an hour. My 2013 MBP is nearly unrepairable. Which is too bad because I really like the hardware. Luckily other manufactorers are closing the quality gap quickly and functionally to me linux and OSX are nearly interchangeable.
ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
I worry that the higher end ultrabooks are going to end up as repairable as the MBP.
- jszymborski 11y ago
  Regret is a strong word, but I'm definitely beginning to miss the ability to switch out the battery in my Asus Zenbook (which is soldered in).
skorecky 11y ago
It does suck the repairability is next to none but they have the best looking hardware out there. I have yet to see any other manufacture come close to what Apple can do hardware wise. A metal laptop enclosure is basically unheard of outside of Apple sadly. I would like to see someone step up.
- cesarbs 11y ago
  Do you buy hardware based on what it looks?
  - skorecky 11y ago
    It's certainly a factor. I also like that it's way more rugged than 99% of the other PCs out there that use cheap plastic.
  - brandonmenc 11y ago
    Kind of. I'm willing to put up with some non-repairability for an ultra thin metal laptop with tight tolerances. ymmv.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    That case could do double duty as an axe in a pinch. It's incredibly solid. I really wished the hardware was more standard there is no way I'm going to be using OS/X.
  - andrewingram 11y ago
    Actually, yes. Given my computer is always on display on a desk or table in my home, I consider it to be a piece of furniture. Therefore aesthetics are as much a consideration as they are for anything else I buy for for my home.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    People are entitled to do that. Just like people buy cars/homes/clothes/cellphones just because of how they look. I'd argue they should look at the overall "package" when purchasing, but if looks are important to someone that's absolutely fine, and there is nothing wrong with valuing looks.
roymurdock 11y ago
Had to buy a new laptop to replace a 2009 MBP recently. Chose the mid 2012 non-retina display. Took out the disk drive and put in my own SSD and RAM. Does everything I want it to do without the slightest complaint. All told I probably paid ~$700 less for a comparably powerful machine with 10x the internal storage of a late model MBP retina, albeit heavier and with a slightly inferior display. Next time I need to upgrade I'm with you - it's just too painful to knowingly buy into an ecosystem where upgrades and repairs feel like unabashed extortion. Obviously there's a very large target market of folks that just want their tech to work and will happily drop a few hundred bucks each time they need to upgrade or repair. But it's hard to go back once you've opened up your computer and seen how cheap/easy it is to replace some of these extremely modular components. I imagine my mindset will change as I get older and have less time/more disposable income.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > Obviously there's a very large target market of folks that just want their tech to work and will happily drop a few hundred bucks each time they need to upgrade or repair. But it's hard to go back once you've opened up your computer and seen how cheap/easy it is to replace some of these extremely modular components. I imagine my mindset will change as I get older and have less time/more disposable income. There is. I'm 33, and do devops/infrastructure. I just want my rig to work. Macbook Air maxed out on ram and disk. To me, its disposable every three years (comes out to be ~$60/month). Apple is going to have to get pretty bad before I throw away the experience of walking into an Apple store, buying a new laptop, restoring from TimeMachine, and being up and running almost immediately. As you mention, disposable income and a lack of time changes the equation.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    > (comes out to be ~$60/month) Even phased like that that is a lot of money.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Not for a tool contributing towards six figures of income for me annually. That's an insane ROI. EDIT: I know people who spend more than that on Starbucks each month.
Someone1234 11y ago
Unfortunately Apple values looks over functionality. Apple just keeps making changes for thinness, almost at any cost. And soldering wasn't the first example, I'd argue that removal of the ethernet jack on the MBP was a sign of things to come. Essentially everything started going downhill with the 3rd generation MBPs way back in 2012 (the original "Retina"). The 3rd gen removed: Ethernet, Firewire 800, Superdrive, Kensington lock, and nothing is user replaceable eventually... All for what? To save 0.93 pounds in weight and 0.2 cm in thickness (13" model). I don't care if the "Macbook" and the MBA want to go this route of maximum thinness/lightness; but what irks me is that they ruined their supposed power user machine for these cuts. Give me the functionality back. It wasn't like the MBP was heavy or large even before 2012.
- epistasis 11y ago
  For me, and for nearly everyone I know, thinness is far more functional than an ethernet port. As is weight, a pound is actually a lot! Ethernet ports are easy to add as a dongle, you can't do the same with thinness. I really only need ethernet in fixed locations, and where there I already have power, and that's the case for most people. It's totally cool that you have different needs, but it's not cool to misascribe that to "looks."
  - slantyyz 11y ago
    For me, the lack of an ethernet port is a dealbreaker, because most of the on-site work I do at clients requires it. The last thing I need is to forget a dongle. I myself gave up on Apple after my 2011 MBP bricked itself last year. That was too bad, because I really liked the discontinued unibody form factor. If I was spending money on a new laptop, it wasn't going to be a two year old 2012 unibody or one one of the newer thinner, less user-serviceable models.
    - gearoidoc 11y ago
      So buy an adapter.
sjm-lbm 11y ago
The extra annoying part is that Apple's total lack of reputability is starting to spread to competing products - a lot of Android phones have dropped user-replaceable batteries, for instance, and a sizable amount of good Windows ultrabooks are about as repairable as MacBooks.
- kordless 11y ago
  > extra annoying part is that Apple's total lack of reputability is starting to spread to competing products Oh, please. Apple has nothing to do with that problem. The problem is we're a throw away society hell bent on buying the latest greatest thing. If it's anyone's fault, it's our own.
  - Uhhrrr 11y ago
    The fact that Apple has been able to get away with it certainly has encouraged others (Samsung).
  - davnicwil 11y ago
    Spot on. There are sufficient players operating at comparable scale to Apple in these markets that we must conclude that trends like this are significantly driven by the demand side. That's not to say that this trend isn't convenient for the supply side, and that this doesn't play in, it's just to say that it's self-evident that you are correct - the average consumer does, in the end, prefer hard-to-repair and therefore shorter-lived devices, with the advantages they bring, to the alternatives. If this wasn't the case, there's a HUGE amount of money on the table, and one of the other players would certainly have grabbed it from Apple, instead of mimicking their approach.
  - sjm-lbm 11y ago
    Well, I didn't mean "this is Apple's fault" as much as "serviceability problems traditionally associated with Apple devices are now common industry wide" - and are now hard to avoid even if you look at other brands, as the person I was replying to said they would. I do understand that, ultimately, companies are just delivering what most consumers want.
pekk 11y ago
This lack of repairability is actually not a recent thing at all. For example, I worked a support job in the late 90s where a high proportion of Applecare complaints were resolved with "replace the motherboard." With PCs we just replaced the offending part, which was rarely the motherboard. The worst part of this is that Apple's success has dragged the rest of the market toward things like non-replaceable batteries.
- delecti 11y ago
  > The worst part of this is that Apple's success has dragged the rest of the market toward things like non-replaceable batteries I think that statement is only half right. Apple may have pioneered the move towards non-replaceable batteries, but I think it's only a symptom of increasingly integrated and small devices. If an inch thick device is thicker by 1mm because the battery is easily detachable, that's much less of an issue than on a 10mm laptop. They may have done it in an egregious way first (gluing/soldering in components), but we probably would have gotten there before long anyway.
- yardie 11y ago
  I've used Apple products since the early 90s. Replacing the MB is the only option since almost all components are on the MB (sound, GPU, modem, network). In contrast PCs had everything highly compartmentalised according to the PC/AT spec. Sound was ISA/PCI, video was AGP/PCI, modems were ISA, 10/100baseT PCI. While I agree I know very few people that actually replaced their battery. Usually, when the battery died is about the time they replace that laptop anyway.
- Animats 11y ago
  The real problem is that lithium-ion batteries suck in every dimension except energy density. They're fragile, can blow up, don't allow many charge/discharge cycles, and charge slowly. There are other battery technologies, such as lithium iron phosphate, which have much better lifetimes, but you give up some energy density. Sealed units should use one of those technologies.
ksubedi 11y ago
As much as I liked Mac OS X, I recently jumped ship from my early 2015 retina macbook pro to a dell xps 13 and i am super happy. Windows 10 is definitely not the same but it is much much better than how windows 8 used to be. The biggest factor that got me to switch was how locked down the hardware was and i couldnt even replace the battery if i wanted to. And i got the 128gig version thinking there would be aftermarket storage upgrade option down the line but it doesnt seem like that is happening.
- threeseed 11y ago
  > couldnt even replace the battery if i wanted to Just take it into an Apple Store and pay the $129 to replace it. I've replaced a battery once on my 2012 MacBook Pro so would not consider this to be a reason to pick one platform over another. > aftermarket storage upgrade option I agree this sucks. But personally I am happy for Apple to focus on I/O performance at any cost even if it means no aftermarket upgrades. I just find that with so much being in the cloud and the size of USB drives increasing there hasn't been a need for a large internal storage drive.
  - to3m 11y ago
    The retina ones are $199 in the USA: https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=United_States&product=Macnotebooks https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=Unite...
  - ksubedi 11y ago
    Yeah saw that you could do it at the apple store, but it is $200 to replace. And if your computer has other damage like a bit of dent or if you replaced the display etc with aftermarket one, or if there are even tiny signs of liquid damage, they straight up refuse service.
  - slantyyz 11y ago
    >> I've replaced a battery once on my 2012 MacBook Pro If you've got the unibody (2012 was the last year), it's got an end-user replaceable battery. You can buy a third party battery from Amazon, MacSales etc and swap it pretty easily. The experience is not quite so convenient with newer models.
siquick 11y ago
Yep same issue with 2013 MBA. The 4GB RAM is becoming a bottleneck but it's soldered in so I'll be forced to upgrade within a year.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
superuser2 11y ago
Non-user-serviceability buys smaller and lighter form factors. I would expect the story to be similar for hardware with similar size, weight, and battery life characteristics. EDIT: and most importantly, more battery chemistry per weight. Safety requires that serviceable batteries are enclosed in rather substantial cases whose internals are non-user-serviceable. Apple "cheats" by making this case the entire laptop, rather than a specific battery module.
- shas3 11y ago
  So, it's probably wise for Apple or any other company to keep a model or two that are modular to satisfy the geekier crowd. It would be expensive, because with larger-numbers, the razor thin laptops will be cheaper due to scale.
  - sehr 11y ago
    geek satisfaction probably isn't valuable enough to go against their entire design history
    - maaku 11y ago
      Which is why they lost me, and other posters in this thread as customers. Functionality >> design. Which is a shame because OS X is a nice operating system. I would like to use it.
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    Apple does have such a model, at least for now: https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a
    - wwweston 11y ago
      I can't upvote this enough. A year ago, I wasn't sure how much longer my ancient (but still functioning!) 2008 MBP would be going on. So I went shopping. Found the same tradeoffs Marco mentions here: I didn't like the sealed nature of the newer offerings (and also, AFAICT no screen density can make up for the inexplicably missing matte displays). I ended up buying a used 2.6Ghz i7 8GB 15" matte MBP instead of anything new from Apple, though. About the only complaint I have is that Mavericks seems neither as stable or as well-performing as Snow Leopard, which seems to be the last time Apple released an OS that was a strict improvement over previous releases. Too bad it's no longer safe to run given the state of updates.
api 11y ago
Apple is optimizing for the mainstream of the market, which mostly never repairs things (except using licensed repair outlets or the original store) and values slimness and lightness and appearance above repairability. They're also locking down the platform more and more. I don't think this is some conspiracy to take away user freedom. I think it's because anything that makes a platform 'hackable' also makes it 'pwnable' by malware. Again they are optimizing for the mainstream of the market, which is mostly users with absolutely zero clue about malware or security. They want to field an OS that apps can't easily trojan/backdoor and conscript into a botnet or crytolocker your files, etc. Unfortunately hacker types are casualties here. It's very, very hard to remain appealing to the hacker crowd while also targeting the mainstream. You're targeting two very different local maxima and a lot of what these two camps want is in absolute conflict -- e.g. UX vs. "power" and packability. I actually think Apple is doing a decent job all things considered. Macs are still great for development and are hackable enough, and if I want more hackability I can spring for a $30 Raspberry Pi or run anything I want inside Parallels with the bonus of not borking my main host machine if I mess it up. I am worried about the future though. If they overly "iOS-ify" the Mac they will lose me.
- paws 11y ago
  This.
rayiner 11y ago
Comparable laptops aren't really any better. The rMBP is a lot more repairable than say the Surface Book (which won't let you even open the case without possibly cracking the display). At least Apple has a battery replacement service at an advertised price--what'll Dell charge you to replace the non-servicable battery in the XPS13 or XPS15? And no other PC laptop hits that right sweet spot of power/battery/display quality. ThinkPads have great power and good battery, but shitty screens.[1] Dells and HPs with gorgeous 4k screens can barely get 4-5 hours out of them. I almost jumped ship recently because the Surface Book hits a great mix of screen quality/power/battery life, but judging by the forums, it's buggy as hell. So what to do? I'd love a swap-able battery in my rMBP like I have in my T450s, but at the end of the day, I never reach for my ThinkPad when I've got my Mac handy. I'll just go ahead and pay the $200 bucks Apple charges to replace the sealed battery. [1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM, and FHD IPS display.
- xlayn 11y ago
  >[1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM, and FHD IPS display. Oxymoron: tech reasons of how great your computer is; and an argument on why a non technical people don't like it.
  - ctdonath 11y ago
    I've concluded that spec sheets in advertising are at best excuses, and at worst lies. Most users don't care what the exact pixel count is, they just want enough pixels that everything looks great. They don't care exactly how much RAM or storage there is, so long as they don't run out of it (either "brick wall effect" or discernible slowdowns). They don't care exactly how fast the processor is, so long as it's perceived as "fast enough". If specifications are presented, it's done so precisely to convince the user "this is good enough" ... but if it was good enough, customers wouldn't be looking at those numbers to see if it's at least above some criteria indicating "well, I guess I can put up with it since you put it that way". That's precisely why Apple doesn't give specifications for as many products as they can get away with. RAM specs are limited to regular computers. Devices with "retina" displays don't list pixel counts any more (or at least overtly so). Given how they're pushing to make storage size irrelevant on mobile devices (iCloud, dynamic app deletion/installation, Photos cloud storage, etc), I expect they'll eventually drop exact local storage specs in most ads (opting for "small/medium/large").
agumonkey 11y ago
It's probably a transition. Apple doubled down on engineering and integration feats due the the mobile ecosystem and marketing lever (mind you MS is taking that road too if you look at Surface tech talks and ads). So things were standardless (non-disk-form-factor SSD), some things were soldered. Unless it never profitable again to have pluggable boards (let's say if simpler to just tape a new SoC and access cloud data) it will come back. Modular cell phones projects exist, tiny usb3 sockets that can be used for almost any device, etc etc I'd bet we will have gumstix like modules in laptops. Might also help durability since you don't have to avoid breaking a big motherboard full of surface mounted components.
mgrpowers 11y ago
I agree. I've had three different top of the line MBPs and they don't feel as solid as my 2007 macbook. The solid states are unreliable, the battery life never comes close to what's promised and that damn fan won't turn off. Sure, I'm a power user but isn't that why I'm paying 3500 for this?
ixtli 11y ago
I feel as though this is comparing two different orders of magnitude. Apple users are, in general, getting upset about software user experience. A subset of users have always been upset about repairability of apple hardware, though admittedly it's gotten worse with its laptops in the past years. The subset that wants to do what we want to do with our hardware here is much smaller and thus not who Apple is trying to sell to. In the end, the users buying macbooks want lighter, thinner machines and are willing to sacrifice basically anything to get it. Personally I've given up laptops because I'm not willing to make this tradeoff, even with "pc" hardware. Edit: There are even some people in this thread, who I assume are "power users," that are willing to sacrifice previously sacrosanct things like ethernet ports for mobility. Personally I'm not willing to do so but I also don't have a pressing need for a laptop.
ixtli 11y ago
I feel as though this is comparing two different orders of magnitude. Apple users are, in general, getting upset about software user experience. A subset of users have always been upset about repairability of apple hardware, though admittedly it's gotten worse with its laptops in the past years. The subset that wants to do what we want to do with our hardware here is much smaller and thus not who Apple is trying to sell to. In the end, the users buying macbooks want lighter, thinner machines and are willing to sacrifice basically anything to get it. Personally I've given up laptops because I'm not willing to make this tradeoff, even with "pc" hardware.
lvspiff 11y ago
Don't forget about the regular Mac Pro - I recently purchased 3 of them for my design team thinking a desktop should be better than a laptop - 2 of them have had a failure, 1 requiring a replacement graphics card the other needed a system reinstall - both took a couple days to get sorted out. I doubt our next round of funding will go towards Mac products - we can buy a Dell just as powerful with same day business support for WAY less - but to tell the truth none of the Dell Precisions we have bought in the last 3 years have had any issues.
- josh64 11y ago
  There is an Apple repair program for that issue http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/06/late-2013-mac-pro-video-issues-repair-program/ http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/06/late-2013-mac-pro-video-... Good luck!
TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
Yep, agreed, it's a bit of a worry. But as another commenter pointed out, these $2000-ish laptops are costing us around $2 a day over about 3 years, so I use my MacBook as my primary machine and replace it around the 3 to 4 year mark, and have a couple of Core2Duo laptops (one running Windows and one running Linux) in the house also. It's less than the price of a cup of coffee, here in Australia you can't get a coffee for less than $3.50. I put a 128GB USB3.0 SanDisk Ultra Fit[1] in my MacBook (these things are tiny), to supplement the SSD. Currently on sale for AU$74. Plenty fast enough for storing media, and I'm wearing my SSD less now too. Not to sure what to do when the SSD wears out, probably boot of the USB stick, but that's a while away and I'll sell the laptop before then anyway. 1. https://www.sandisk.com.au/home/usb-flash/ultra-fit-usb https://www.sandisk.com.au/home/usb-flash/ultra-fit-usb
Ezhik 11y ago
I run OS X on a ThinkPad T420, and this unholy combo is an experience I am honestly enjoying a lot. I like having a 9 cell battery, I like having >1TB of storage, the ThinkPad keyboard and TrackPoint, and I like being able to take the thing apart. At the same time, I also like OS X. I get UNIX underlyings, yet can continue to use software like Photoshop. And there's just a big bunch of subjective things that IMO OS X just does better, like scrolling and font rendering. Still, the device is growing older, and I honestly have no idea what to replace it with once the time finally comes. The strange combo I have doesn't really have a modern equivalent. Do I sacrifice modularity to stay with OS X? Do I go to Windows or Linux to keep modularity with a modern ThinkPad (which are getting too close to the way modern MacBooks are, sadly).
- jjude 11y ago
  I thought the licence terms disallowed running OSX running on anything other than Mac. Of course, I always clicked 'Agree' without reading the licence terms. I have been thinking of something opposite: run ubuntu on Mac.
  - collyw 11y ago
    Single button trackpads are a pain in the arse, if you like middle click to paste.
bsg75 11y ago
> When the battery goes, ... it may be too late: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=macbook+air+battery+swollen https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=macbook+air+ba...
SunShiranui 11y ago
I had the unfortunate experience of owning an early 2011 MacBook Pro. The graphics card broke down multiple times (three, iirc) requiring a 500€ logic board replacement. This was a widespread issue, and we, the affected users, repeatedly asked Apple to recognize it and run a repair program. By the time (two years?) they decided to roll one out I had already bought an Asus laptop, which was comparable in most ways and costs about half of what I paid for the MBPro. I don't think I'll be buying Apple hardware for a while. Their increasing push towards planned obsolescence troubles me deeply.
crudbug 11y ago
This is more of a business decision than technical. The industry should avoid going into this trap. Co should give users a choice and keep the ports open. I bought a T550 minimal configuration, for $600 upgraded the RAM to 16G & 500G SSD for $200, after using MBP for 7 years. Though the MBP is still kicking ass with an upgraded 8G RAM & 500G SSD.
tracker1 11y ago
I have to agree... When I got my current rMBP(late 2014), I actually had to return my first purchase when I found out I couldn't upgrade the ram or ssd myself. Even though you can technically replace the SSD, the interface Apple is using doesn't seem to be common at all, so you're stuck with mostly costly options in a sea of cheaper SSD components. The display isn't the best, but close... the touchpad is bar none the best in any laptop, but I might be willing to sacrifice that when I need another laptop... I haven't been doing iOS native, and my work issued laptop is an rMBP as well, but may just create a build server for cordova out of a used mac mini if/when the need arises. I never bought into iOS devices, mainly because of early ties to Apple, and I'm somewhat entrenched in Android's ecosystem. The poor software updates, broken SMB/CIFS support and a host of other issues has me more than concerned.
Mandatum 11y ago
I upgrade every 2 years. It costs me about $1-2K for the "next" model's difference (after selling the old one on Craiglist/Ebay), however averaging the usage out over those 2 years I'm still getting really good bang for buck without hardware fault issues.
rubyfan 11y ago
I have one of the last MBP from that era that still has replaceable memory, hard drive and optical drive. My machine is maxed out on memory, SSD and swapped the optical for a backup HDD. I love the thing and had the fried graphics card issue fixed some time ago instead of opting to replace the MBP with a newer model. This old thing is struggling to keep up with El Capitan these days though and I'm now mulling a Thinkpad with OpenBSD as a replacement. I kind of wish I could get this same body with updated hardware and OSX 10.6 but that's not in the cards.

yuhong 11y ago

The EPEAT fiasco is my favorite here.

givinguflac 11y ago

While I agree with you, when your current Mac is older and relegated to media PC duty, are you going to need more than the 8 or 16GB of RAM it shipped with? As for batteries, it's almost the exact same price to buy a battery a replace it yourself as it is to have Apple do it, and you don't have to deal with proper recycling (hopefully you would.) I'm hoping we see a reverse trend but who knows.

gburt 11y ago
If and only if you live near an Apple store. Otherwise you might be without your machine for a week or two during that period: that is a serious cost for many people in our profession.
- givinguflac 11y ago
  That's certainly a valid concern; I have never been in that situation so yeah that could be trouble. Aren't there typically local repair centers that do authorized repairs? If not that's a huge oversight even if they only allowed battery swaps. That said, I have a 2006 MBP that is ancient and still works when wired to power even though I can replace the battery it works fine as an email/web browsing headless with a monitor.
- ssmoot 11y ago
  That doesn't apply if you're relegating the previous system to media-center duty though.
carlob 11y ago
Who would ever need more than 512kb of RAM…
- efes 11y ago
  I guess you've hurt feelings with sarcasm? But I agree. Virtualization is a bad joke with 8GB of RAM today, so I decided to assume 16GB max isn't enough lifetime for a new system and wont be consuming in the current market.
tluyben2 11y ago
If you live in the US. In most countries in the EU last I checked it is far more expensive and harder to come by.

merpnderp 11y ago

Yeah, I feel the same way. I just upgraded a 2011MBP's HDD to and SSD and replaced the battery myself, and from start to finishing up the OSX install was about an hour. My 2013 MBP is nearly unrepairable. Which is too bad because I really like the hardware. Luckily other manufactorers are closing the quality gap quickly and functionally to me linux and OSX are nearly interchangeable.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago

I worry that the higher end ultrabooks are going to end up as repairable as the MBP.

jszymborski 11y ago
Regret is a strong word, but I'm definitely beginning to miss the ability to switch out the battery in my Asus Zenbook (which is soldered in).

skorecky 11y ago

It does suck the repairability is next to none but they have the best looking hardware out there. I have yet to see any other manufacture come close to what Apple can do hardware wise. A metal laptop enclosure is basically unheard of outside of Apple sadly. I would like to see someone step up.

cesarbs 11y ago
Do you buy hardware based on what it looks?
- skorecky 11y ago
  It's certainly a factor. I also like that it's way more rugged than 99% of the other PCs out there that use cheap plastic.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  Kind of. I'm willing to put up with some non-repairability for an ultra thin metal laptop with tight tolerances. ymmv.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  That case could do double duty as an axe in a pinch. It's incredibly solid. I really wished the hardware was more standard there is no way I'm going to be using OS/X.
- andrewingram 11y ago
  Actually, yes. Given my computer is always on display on a desk or table in my home, I consider it to be a piece of furniture. Therefore aesthetics are as much a consideration as they are for anything else I buy for for my home.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  People are entitled to do that. Just like people buy cars/homes/clothes/cellphones just because of how they look. I'd argue they should look at the overall "package" when purchasing, but if looks are important to someone that's absolutely fine, and there is nothing wrong with valuing looks.

roymurdock 11y ago

Had to buy a new laptop to replace a 2009 MBP recently. Chose the mid 2012 non-retina display. Took out the disk drive and put in my own SSD and RAM. Does everything I want it to do without the slightest complaint. All told I probably paid ~$700 less for a comparably powerful machine with 10x the internal storage of a late model MBP retina, albeit heavier and with a slightly inferior display. Next time I need to upgrade I'm with you - it's just too painful to knowingly buy into an ecosystem where upgrades and repairs feel like unabashed extortion. Obviously there's a very large target market of folks that just want their tech to work and will happily drop a few hundred bucks each time they need to upgrade or repair. But it's hard to go back once you've opened up your computer and seen how cheap/easy it is to replace some of these extremely modular components. I imagine my mindset will change as I get older and have less time/more disposable income.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> Obviously there's a very large target market of folks that just want their tech to work and will happily drop a few hundred bucks each time they need to upgrade or repair. But it's hard to go back once you've opened up your computer and seen how cheap/easy it is to replace some of these extremely modular components. I imagine my mindset will change as I get older and have less time/more disposable income. There is. I'm 33, and do devops/infrastructure. I just want my rig to work. Macbook Air maxed out on ram and disk. To me, its disposable every three years (comes out to be ~$60/month). Apple is going to have to get pretty bad before I throw away the experience of walking into an Apple store, buying a new laptop, restoring from TimeMachine, and being up and running almost immediately. As you mention, disposable income and a lack of time changes the equation.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > (comes out to be ~$60/month) Even phased like that that is a lot of money.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Not for a tool contributing towards six figures of income for me annually. That's an insane ROI. EDIT: I know people who spend more than that on Starbucks each month.

Someone1234 11y ago

Unfortunately Apple values looks over functionality. Apple just keeps making changes for thinness, almost at any cost. And soldering wasn't the first example, I'd argue that removal of the ethernet jack on the MBP was a sign of things to come. Essentially everything started going downhill with the 3rd generation MBPs way back in 2012 (the original "Retina"). The 3rd gen removed: Ethernet, Firewire 800, Superdrive, Kensington lock, and nothing is user replaceable eventually... All for what? To save 0.93 pounds in weight and 0.2 cm in thickness (13" model). I don't care if the "Macbook" and the MBA want to go this route of maximum thinness/lightness; but what irks me is that they ruined their supposed power user machine for these cuts. Give me the functionality back. It wasn't like the MBP was heavy or large even before 2012.

epistasis 11y ago
For me, and for nearly everyone I know, thinness is far more functional than an ethernet port. As is weight, a pound is actually a lot! Ethernet ports are easy to add as a dongle, you can't do the same with thinness. I really only need ethernet in fixed locations, and where there I already have power, and that's the case for most people. It's totally cool that you have different needs, but it's not cool to misascribe that to "looks."
- slantyyz 11y ago
  For me, the lack of an ethernet port is a dealbreaker, because most of the on-site work I do at clients requires it. The last thing I need is to forget a dongle. I myself gave up on Apple after my 2011 MBP bricked itself last year. That was too bad, because I really liked the discontinued unibody form factor. If I was spending money on a new laptop, it wasn't going to be a two year old 2012 unibody or one one of the newer thinner, less user-serviceable models.
  - gearoidoc 11y ago
    So buy an adapter.

sjm-lbm 11y ago

The extra annoying part is that Apple's total lack of reputability is starting to spread to competing products - a lot of Android phones have dropped user-replaceable batteries, for instance, and a sizable amount of good Windows ultrabooks are about as repairable as MacBooks.

kordless 11y ago
> extra annoying part is that Apple's total lack of reputability is starting to spread to competing products Oh, please. Apple has nothing to do with that problem. The problem is we're a throw away society hell bent on buying the latest greatest thing. If it's anyone's fault, it's our own.
- Uhhrrr 11y ago
  The fact that Apple has been able to get away with it certainly has encouraged others (Samsung).
- davnicwil 11y ago
  Spot on. There are sufficient players operating at comparable scale to Apple in these markets that we must conclude that trends like this are significantly driven by the demand side. That's not to say that this trend isn't convenient for the supply side, and that this doesn't play in, it's just to say that it's self-evident that you are correct - the average consumer does, in the end, prefer hard-to-repair and therefore shorter-lived devices, with the advantages they bring, to the alternatives. If this wasn't the case, there's a HUGE amount of money on the table, and one of the other players would certainly have grabbed it from Apple, instead of mimicking their approach.
- sjm-lbm 11y ago
  Well, I didn't mean "this is Apple's fault" as much as "serviceability problems traditionally associated with Apple devices are now common industry wide" - and are now hard to avoid even if you look at other brands, as the person I was replying to said they would. I do understand that, ultimately, companies are just delivering what most consumers want.

pekk 11y ago

This lack of repairability is actually not a recent thing at all. For example, I worked a support job in the late 90s where a high proportion of Applecare complaints were resolved with "replace the motherboard." With PCs we just replaced the offending part, which was rarely the motherboard. The worst part of this is that Apple's success has dragged the rest of the market toward things like non-replaceable batteries.

delecti 11y ago
> The worst part of this is that Apple's success has dragged the rest of the market toward things like non-replaceable batteries I think that statement is only half right. Apple may have pioneered the move towards non-replaceable batteries, but I think it's only a symptom of increasingly integrated and small devices. If an inch thick device is thicker by 1mm because the battery is easily detachable, that's much less of an issue than on a 10mm laptop. They may have done it in an egregious way first (gluing/soldering in components), but we probably would have gotten there before long anyway.
yardie 11y ago
I've used Apple products since the early 90s. Replacing the MB is the only option since almost all components are on the MB (sound, GPU, modem, network). In contrast PCs had everything highly compartmentalised according to the PC/AT spec. Sound was ISA/PCI, video was AGP/PCI, modems were ISA, 10/100baseT PCI. While I agree I know very few people that actually replaced their battery. Usually, when the battery died is about the time they replace that laptop anyway.
Animats 11y ago
The real problem is that lithium-ion batteries suck in every dimension except energy density. They're fragile, can blow up, don't allow many charge/discharge cycles, and charge slowly. There are other battery technologies, such as lithium iron phosphate, which have much better lifetimes, but you give up some energy density. Sealed units should use one of those technologies.

ksubedi 11y ago

As much as I liked Mac OS X, I recently jumped ship from my early 2015 retina macbook pro to a dell xps 13 and i am super happy. Windows 10 is definitely not the same but it is much much better than how windows 8 used to be. The biggest factor that got me to switch was how locked down the hardware was and i couldnt even replace the battery if i wanted to. And i got the 128gig version thinking there would be aftermarket storage upgrade option down the line but it doesnt seem like that is happening.

threeseed 11y ago
> couldnt even replace the battery if i wanted to Just take it into an Apple Store and pay the $129 to replace it. I've replaced a battery once on my 2012 MacBook Pro so would not consider this to be a reason to pick one platform over another. > aftermarket storage upgrade option I agree this sucks. But personally I am happy for Apple to focus on I/O performance at any cost even if it means no aftermarket upgrades. I just find that with so much being in the cloud and the size of USB drives increasing there hasn't been a need for a large internal storage drive.
- to3m 11y ago
  The retina ones are $199 in the USA: https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=United_States&product=Macnotebooks https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=Unite...
- ksubedi 11y ago
  Yeah saw that you could do it at the apple store, but it is $200 to replace. And if your computer has other damage like a bit of dent or if you replaced the display etc with aftermarket one, or if there are even tiny signs of liquid damage, they straight up refuse service.
- slantyyz 11y ago
  >> I've replaced a battery once on my 2012 MacBook Pro If you've got the unibody (2012 was the last year), it's got an end-user replaceable battery. You can buy a third party battery from Amazon, MacSales etc and swap it pretty easily. The experience is not quite so convenient with newer models.

siquick 11y ago

Yep same issue with 2013 MBA. The 4GB RAM is becoming a bottleneck but it's soldered in so I'll be forced to upgrade within a year.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

superuser2 11y ago

Non-user-serviceability buys smaller and lighter form factors. I would expect the story to be similar for hardware with similar size, weight, and battery life characteristics. EDIT: and most importantly, more battery chemistry per weight. Safety requires that serviceable batteries are enclosed in rather substantial cases whose internals are non-user-serviceable. Apple "cheats" by making this case the entire laptop, rather than a specific battery module.

shas3 11y ago
So, it's probably wise for Apple or any other company to keep a model or two that are modular to satisfy the geekier crowd. It would be expensive, because with larger-numbers, the razor thin laptops will be cheaper due to scale.
- sehr 11y ago
  geek satisfaction probably isn't valuable enough to go against their entire design history
  - maaku 11y ago
    Which is why they lost me, and other posters in this thread as customers. Functionality >> design. Which is a shame because OS X is a nice operating system. I would like to use it.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  Apple does have such a model, at least for now: https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a
  - wwweston 11y ago
    I can't upvote this enough. A year ago, I wasn't sure how much longer my ancient (but still functioning!) 2008 MBP would be going on. So I went shopping. Found the same tradeoffs Marco mentions here: I didn't like the sealed nature of the newer offerings (and also, AFAICT no screen density can make up for the inexplicably missing matte displays). I ended up buying a used 2.6Ghz i7 8GB 15" matte MBP instead of anything new from Apple, though. About the only complaint I have is that Mavericks seems neither as stable or as well-performing as Snow Leopard, which seems to be the last time Apple released an OS that was a strict improvement over previous releases. Too bad it's no longer safe to run given the state of updates.

api 11y ago

Apple is optimizing for the mainstream of the market, which mostly never repairs things (except using licensed repair outlets or the original store) and values slimness and lightness and appearance above repairability. They're also locking down the platform more and more. I don't think this is some conspiracy to take away user freedom. I think it's because anything that makes a platform 'hackable' also makes it 'pwnable' by malware. Again they are optimizing for the mainstream of the market, which is mostly users with absolutely zero clue about malware or security. They want to field an OS that apps can't easily trojan/backdoor and conscript into a botnet or crytolocker your files, etc. Unfortunately hacker types are casualties here. It's very, very hard to remain appealing to the hacker crowd while also targeting the mainstream. You're targeting two very different local maxima and a lot of what these two camps want is in absolute conflict -- e.g. UX vs. "power" and packability. I actually think Apple is doing a decent job all things considered. Macs are still great for development and are hackable enough, and if I want more hackability I can spring for a $30 Raspberry Pi or run anything I want inside Parallels with the bonus of not borking my main host machine if I mess it up. I am worried about the future though. If they overly "iOS-ify" the Mac they will lose me.

paws 11y ago
This.

rayiner 11y ago

Comparable laptops aren't really any better. The rMBP is a lot more repairable than say the Surface Book (which won't let you even open the case without possibly cracking the display). At least Apple has a battery replacement service at an advertised price--what'll Dell charge you to replace the non-servicable battery in the XPS13 or XPS15? And no other PC laptop hits that right sweet spot of power/battery/display quality. ThinkPads have great power and good battery, but shitty screens.[1] Dells and HPs with gorgeous 4k screens can barely get 4-5 hours out of them. I almost jumped ship recently because the Surface Book hits a great mix of screen quality/power/battery life, but judging by the forums, it's buggy as hell. So what to do? I'd love a swap-able battery in my rMBP like I have in my T450s, but at the end of the day, I never reach for my ThinkPad when I've got my Mac handy. I'll just go ahead and pay the $200 bucks Apple charges to replace the sealed battery. [1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM, and FHD IPS display.

xlayn 11y ago
>[1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM, and FHD IPS display. Oxymoron: tech reasons of how great your computer is; and an argument on why a non technical people don't like it.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  I've concluded that spec sheets in advertising are at best excuses, and at worst lies. Most users don't care what the exact pixel count is, they just want enough pixels that everything looks great. They don't care exactly how much RAM or storage there is, so long as they don't run out of it (either "brick wall effect" or discernible slowdowns). They don't care exactly how fast the processor is, so long as it's perceived as "fast enough". If specifications are presented, it's done so precisely to convince the user "this is good enough" ... but if it was good enough, customers wouldn't be looking at those numbers to see if it's at least above some criteria indicating "well, I guess I can put up with it since you put it that way". That's precisely why Apple doesn't give specifications for as many products as they can get away with. RAM specs are limited to regular computers. Devices with "retina" displays don't list pixel counts any more (or at least overtly so). Given how they're pushing to make storage size irrelevant on mobile devices (iCloud, dynamic app deletion/installation, Photos cloud storage, etc), I expect they'll eventually drop exact local storage specs in most ads (opting for "small/medium/large").

agumonkey 11y ago

It's probably a transition. Apple doubled down on engineering and integration feats due the the mobile ecosystem and marketing lever (mind you MS is taking that road too if you look at Surface tech talks and ads). So things were standardless (non-disk-form-factor SSD), some things were soldered. Unless it never profitable again to have pluggable boards (let's say if simpler to just tape a new SoC and access cloud data) it will come back. Modular cell phones projects exist, tiny usb3 sockets that can be used for almost any device, etc etc I'd bet we will have gumstix like modules in laptops. Might also help durability since you don't have to avoid breaking a big motherboard full of surface mounted components.

mgrpowers 11y ago

I agree. I've had three different top of the line MBPs and they don't feel as solid as my 2007 macbook. The solid states are unreliable, the battery life never comes close to what's promised and that damn fan won't turn off. Sure, I'm a power user but isn't that why I'm paying 3500 for this?

ixtli 11y ago

I feel as though this is comparing two different orders of magnitude. Apple users are, in general, getting upset about software user experience. A subset of users have always been upset about repairability of apple hardware, though admittedly it's gotten worse with its laptops in the past years. The subset that wants to do what we want to do with our hardware here is much smaller and thus not who Apple is trying to sell to. In the end, the users buying macbooks want lighter, thinner machines and are willing to sacrifice basically anything to get it. Personally I've given up laptops because I'm not willing to make this tradeoff, even with "pc" hardware. Edit: There are even some people in this thread, who I assume are "power users," that are willing to sacrifice previously sacrosanct things like ethernet ports for mobility. Personally I'm not willing to do so but I also don't have a pressing need for a laptop.

ixtli 11y ago

lvspiff 11y ago

Don't forget about the regular Mac Pro - I recently purchased 3 of them for my design team thinking a desktop should be better than a laptop - 2 of them have had a failure, 1 requiring a replacement graphics card the other needed a system reinstall - both took a couple days to get sorted out. I doubt our next round of funding will go towards Mac products - we can buy a Dell just as powerful with same day business support for WAY less - but to tell the truth none of the Dell Precisions we have bought in the last 3 years have had any issues.

josh64 11y ago
There is an Apple repair program for that issue http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/06/late-2013-mac-pro-video-issues-repair-program/ http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/06/late-2013-mac-pro-video-... Good luck!

TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago

Yep, agreed, it's a bit of a worry. But as another commenter pointed out, these $2000-ish laptops are costing us around $2 a day over about 3 years, so I use my MacBook as my primary machine and replace it around the 3 to 4 year mark, and have a couple of Core2Duo laptops (one running Windows and one running Linux) in the house also. It's less than the price of a cup of coffee, here in Australia you can't get a coffee for less than $3.50. I put a 128GB USB3.0 SanDisk Ultra Fit[1] in my MacBook (these things are tiny), to supplement the SSD. Currently on sale for AU$74. Plenty fast enough for storing media, and I'm wearing my SSD less now too. Not to sure what to do when the SSD wears out, probably boot of the USB stick, but that's a while away and I'll sell the laptop before then anyway. 1. https://www.sandisk.com.au/home/usb-flash/ultra-fit-usb https://www.sandisk.com.au/home/usb-flash/ultra-fit-usb

Ezhik 11y ago

I run OS X on a ThinkPad T420, and this unholy combo is an experience I am honestly enjoying a lot. I like having a 9 cell battery, I like having >1TB of storage, the ThinkPad keyboard and TrackPoint, and I like being able to take the thing apart. At the same time, I also like OS X. I get UNIX underlyings, yet can continue to use software like Photoshop. And there's just a big bunch of subjective things that IMO OS X just does better, like scrolling and font rendering. Still, the device is growing older, and I honestly have no idea what to replace it with once the time finally comes. The strange combo I have doesn't really have a modern equivalent. Do I sacrifice modularity to stay with OS X? Do I go to Windows or Linux to keep modularity with a modern ThinkPad (which are getting too close to the way modern MacBooks are, sadly).

jjude 11y ago
I thought the licence terms disallowed running OSX running on anything other than Mac. Of course, I always clicked 'Agree' without reading the licence terms. I have been thinking of something opposite: run ubuntu on Mac.
- collyw 11y ago
  Single button trackpads are a pain in the arse, if you like middle click to paste.

bsg75 11y ago

> When the battery goes, ... it may be too late: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=macbook+air+battery+swollen https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=macbook+air+ba...

SunShiranui 11y ago

I had the unfortunate experience of owning an early 2011 MacBook Pro. The graphics card broke down multiple times (three, iirc) requiring a 500€ logic board replacement. This was a widespread issue, and we, the affected users, repeatedly asked Apple to recognize it and run a repair program. By the time (two years?) they decided to roll one out I had already bought an Asus laptop, which was comparable in most ways and costs about half of what I paid for the MBPro. I don't think I'll be buying Apple hardware for a while. Their increasing push towards planned obsolescence troubles me deeply.

crudbug 11y ago

This is more of a business decision than technical. The industry should avoid going into this trap. Co should give users a choice and keep the ports open. I bought a T550 minimal configuration, for $600 upgraded the RAM to 16G & 500G SSD for $200, after using MBP for 7 years. Though the MBP is still kicking ass with an upgraded 8G RAM & 500G SSD.

tracker1 11y ago

I have to agree... When I got my current rMBP(late 2014), I actually had to return my first purchase when I found out I couldn't upgrade the ram or ssd myself. Even though you can technically replace the SSD, the interface Apple is using doesn't seem to be common at all, so you're stuck with mostly costly options in a sea of cheaper SSD components. The display isn't the best, but close... the touchpad is bar none the best in any laptop, but I might be willing to sacrifice that when I need another laptop... I haven't been doing iOS native, and my work issued laptop is an rMBP as well, but may just create a build server for cordova out of a used mac mini if/when the need arises. I never bought into iOS devices, mainly because of early ties to Apple, and I'm somewhat entrenched in Android's ecosystem. The poor software updates, broken SMB/CIFS support and a host of other issues has me more than concerned.

Mandatum 11y ago

I upgrade every 2 years. It costs me about $1-2K for the "next" model's difference (after selling the old one on Craiglist/Ebay), however averaging the usage out over those 2 years I'm still getting really good bang for buck without hardware fault issues.

rubyfan 11y ago

I have one of the last MBP from that era that still has replaceable memory, hard drive and optical drive. My machine is maxed out on memory, SSD and swapped the optical for a backup HDD. I love the thing and had the fried graphics card issue fixed some time ago instead of opting to replace the MBP with a newer model. This old thing is struggling to keep up with El Capitan these days though and I'm now mulling a Thinkpad with OpenBSD as a replacement. I kind of wish I could get this same body with updated hardware and OSX 10.6 but that's not in the cards.