5 ms·

Unfortunately this seems to be less and less true over the years. When I got my MacBook about 4 or 5 years ago, it only had 4GB of ram and a pretty slow hard di

Unfortunately this seems to be less and less true over the years. When I got my MacBook about 4 or 5 years ago, it only had 4GB of ram and a pretty slow hard disk. If have upgraded it to 12GB Ram and a pretty good SSD, this is why I can still use such an old MacBook. For the new ones, I have to decide the RAM, and disk upfront and can't replace them anymore (this is especially worrying with the small lifetime with SSDs). I wish Apple made their pro products more bulky so we can upgrade the hardware and let the air products be the sexy, thin ones for Starbucks hipsters.

csydas 10y ago
As a long time mac user, I do agree that the lack of upgradability in their Pro line is a problem, and it probably should be the defining factor of Pro versus the Air/Straight Macbook line. That being said, Apple has gone to pretty crazy lengths to ensure that it's modern OSes work on legacy hardware; I was a bit shocked to hear from my parents that they were able to install El Capitan on my dad's 2008 iMac, as I was wary about putting it on my 2012 Macbook Air due to performance concerns. I don't know if this was a conscious decision by Apple to cater to the idea of "Apple = Longevity", but it's very nice to know that a single purchase takes you pretty far. I think Apple could take it a step further and really win over more people if they added the millimeter or two to the Pro line and allowed for the upgrades. It's really a back and forth thing for me; on the one hand, I wish I had more options and the ability to customize later on. On the other hand, since ~2010, the appliance like nature of the portables has worked so seamlessly that my only complaint comes from the lack of an option to upgrade, not the need for an upgrade. For my previous Apple laptop, my own incompetence when trying to do a repair hurt the laptop's longevity; had I not had butterfingers when working on the insides, I'm sure that I could have had another 3 years with my already 5 year old Macbook.
- douche 10y ago
  Performance has essentially plateaued for the last decade in laptops - aside from sticking SSDs and more memory in them, there isn't a ton of difference in specs. I have a 2006 Windows laptop that runs better now on Win 10 than it did originally on Vista. Except for power consumption, it's the same as my two year old laptop. Of course, with a Windows PC, you've got a variety of options, and can buy something that is actually upgradable, rather than being locked into what Apple deigns to give you.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    I believe the SSD is a pretty large aside, isn't it? GPUs have also vastly improved, I believe. It's just CPU that stagnate at the "good enough" level.
- Matt3o12_ 10y ago
  While I do agree with most things, there will be a need to upgrade something in the future. When I bought my MacBook, 4GB of Ram were plenty but it is not anymore. Chrome takes to much ram and with 16GB, I don't have to worry about anything. Furthermore, apples new laptops are all dual core (until you buy the bigger one). This is also dealbreaker for me – quad cores are really awesome when using VMs. Sure a CPU cannot be updated on most laptops (and certainly not on apples but I can't blame really). My point is that I'm afraid apples pro series has drifted into a state where their lifespan will shorten while the prices go up. And apple's OS performs really good until you use third party applications that expect better performance then your sad 5-year-old MacBook.
  - gaius 10y ago
    The question is why the software takes up so much more. Firefox is the pain point for me on my 2008 Macbook, for everything else, it's perfectly snappy. I block ads, don't play games or look at animation heavy sites, but even doing nothing but displaying pages, it sits at 2.5G RAM (out of 4) and 100% of one of my two CPU cores. I'd run an old version if it wasn't for the security updates. Utterly ridiculous.
    - astrange 10y ago
      Check about:memory. It's probably not Firefox but the websites.
  - csydas 10y ago
    Oh I'm not suggesting that it will never peak higher than what Apple offers; again, I do agree that it would be nice if the Pro line offered a little more to users looking for more oomph. It's just that, again, by and large with everything with the Mac line up right now, you throw something at it and you're good to go. Even my 2012' Air can do moderately advanced video editing in Premiere, the only real bottlenecks being local storage and the CPU taking a bit to render video. The current line up is not a perfect solution for absolutely everything, and Apple's power option in the Mac Pro line is just unacceptable for most people, even if it does bring a lot to the table. But in most cases, Apple's line ups do extremely well for a large majority of things you'd want to use a computer for. I too would enjoy a quad core in the Air/Pro line, or at least the Pro line, though I suspect the issue is heat, and as I said earlier, I'd happily take a bit of thickness to accommodate a heftier processor. I certainly don't endorse letting Apple tell me what hardware I need; I also don't have too many complaints with what they've given. Price exaggerations aside, I find the price tag for the Macbook Air/Pro lines appropriate for the base models, and comparable to other 13" sized machines with similar specs and amenities (for lack of a better word). Such is sort of the nature with Apple and being a long time user - there's a lot Apple does that bugs you, but at the same time, there is a lot of good you get with the hardware and the OS.
phamilton 10y ago
I think this sentiment (pro users want to upgrade their hardware) is inaccurate for most professionals. Hobbyists and freelance/self-employed may want to upgrade their hardware but a professional generally doesn't care. They just want a machine that works and a reasonable path to a new machine that doesn't affect their productivity. That upgrade path is really smooth on OS X. Migration assistant plus thunderbolt cable plus target disk mode makes it really easy.

csydas 10y ago

As a long time mac user, I do agree that the lack of upgradability in their Pro line is a problem, and it probably should be the defining factor of Pro versus the Air/Straight Macbook line. That being said, Apple has gone to pretty crazy lengths to ensure that it's modern OSes work on legacy hardware; I was a bit shocked to hear from my parents that they were able to install El Capitan on my dad's 2008 iMac, as I was wary about putting it on my 2012 Macbook Air due to performance concerns. I don't know if this was a conscious decision by Apple to cater to the idea of "Apple = Longevity", but it's very nice to know that a single purchase takes you pretty far. I think Apple could take it a step further and really win over more people if they added the millimeter or two to the Pro line and allowed for the upgrades. It's really a back and forth thing for me; on the one hand, I wish I had more options and the ability to customize later on. On the other hand, since ~2010, the appliance like nature of the portables has worked so seamlessly that my only complaint comes from the lack of an option to upgrade, not the need for an upgrade. For my previous Apple laptop, my own incompetence when trying to do a repair hurt the laptop's longevity; had I not had butterfingers when working on the insides, I'm sure that I could have had another 3 years with my already 5 year old Macbook.

douche 10y ago
Performance has essentially plateaued for the last decade in laptops - aside from sticking SSDs and more memory in them, there isn't a ton of difference in specs. I have a 2006 Windows laptop that runs better now on Win 10 than it did originally on Vista. Except for power consumption, it's the same as my two year old laptop. Of course, with a Windows PC, you've got a variety of options, and can buy something that is actually upgradable, rather than being locked into what Apple deigns to give you.
- matt4077 10y ago
  I believe the SSD is a pretty large aside, isn't it? GPUs have also vastly improved, I believe. It's just CPU that stagnate at the "good enough" level.
Matt3o12_ 10y ago
While I do agree with most things, there will be a need to upgrade something in the future. When I bought my MacBook, 4GB of Ram were plenty but it is not anymore. Chrome takes to much ram and with 16GB, I don't have to worry about anything. Furthermore, apples new laptops are all dual core (until you buy the bigger one). This is also dealbreaker for me – quad cores are really awesome when using VMs. Sure a CPU cannot be updated on most laptops (and certainly not on apples but I can't blame really). My point is that I'm afraid apples pro series has drifted into a state where their lifespan will shorten while the prices go up. And apple's OS performs really good until you use third party applications that expect better performance then your sad 5-year-old MacBook.
- gaius 10y ago
  The question is why the software takes up so much more. Firefox is the pain point for me on my 2008 Macbook, for everything else, it's perfectly snappy. I block ads, don't play games or look at animation heavy sites, but even doing nothing but displaying pages, it sits at 2.5G RAM (out of 4) and 100% of one of my two CPU cores. I'd run an old version if it wasn't for the security updates. Utterly ridiculous.
  - astrange 10y ago
    Check about:memory. It's probably not Firefox but the websites.
- csydas 10y ago
  Oh I'm not suggesting that it will never peak higher than what Apple offers; again, I do agree that it would be nice if the Pro line offered a little more to users looking for more oomph. It's just that, again, by and large with everything with the Mac line up right now, you throw something at it and you're good to go. Even my 2012' Air can do moderately advanced video editing in Premiere, the only real bottlenecks being local storage and the CPU taking a bit to render video. The current line up is not a perfect solution for absolutely everything, and Apple's power option in the Mac Pro line is just unacceptable for most people, even if it does bring a lot to the table. But in most cases, Apple's line ups do extremely well for a large majority of things you'd want to use a computer for. I too would enjoy a quad core in the Air/Pro line, or at least the Pro line, though I suspect the issue is heat, and as I said earlier, I'd happily take a bit of thickness to accommodate a heftier processor. I certainly don't endorse letting Apple tell me what hardware I need; I also don't have too many complaints with what they've given. Price exaggerations aside, I find the price tag for the Macbook Air/Pro lines appropriate for the base models, and comparable to other 13" sized machines with similar specs and amenities (for lack of a better word). Such is sort of the nature with Apple and being a long time user - there's a lot Apple does that bugs you, but at the same time, there is a lot of good you get with the hardware and the OS.

phamilton 10y ago

I think this sentiment (pro users want to upgrade their hardware) is inaccurate for most professionals. Hobbyists and freelance/self-employed may want to upgrade their hardware but a professional generally doesn't care. They just want a machine that works and a reasonable path to a new machine that doesn't affect their productivity. That upgrade path is really smooth on OS X. Migration assistant plus thunderbolt cable plus target disk mode makes it really easy.