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I'm not convinced that consumers care if their laptop has easily replaceable parts. Consumers definitely like thin laptops though, which is at odds with repaira

I'm not convinced that consumers care if their laptop has easily replaceable parts. Consumers definitely like thin laptops though, which is at odds with repairability in most cases.

xvf22 8y ago
When a motherboard failure wipes out their soldered on SSD I'm sure they'll care.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  Sure, if that was a common occurrence I'm sure people would care, but it's not so they don't.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    SSDs failing, maybe not, but I gather that mechanical failures on the new MBP keyboard are also very expensive to fix.
  - xvf22 8y ago
    Motherboards fail more often than you'd imagine, liquid damage being a common cause. The chips may be fine but since they're part of the failed motherboard Apple won't do a thing to recover the data. Unlike removable storage where you can move it to a working machine.
  - ropeadopepope 8y ago
    Do you have a source on that? The mac users I know are especially worried about data loss because of the high rate of other failures on their new MBPs. One of my co-workers temporarily lost some of his work because he hadn't pushed his changes to git and his computer had to go back to apple for repair because it wouldn't boot. He got the computer back the next day, so all was well, but it makes you wonder.
- kogir 8y ago
  This happened to me and I was rather disappointed. I had backups but Apple didn’t even offer to try and recover data at any cost, or allow me to keep the parts with my data still on them.
- naravara 8y ago
  On the other hand, when a spilled cup of coffee fails to fry the electronics because the whole thing is sealed up, they'll learn to value the closed chassis. Which of these events do you think is more likely for the typical user? This is actually why the fragile keyboard on the latest MacBook Pros is such a problem. It compromises durability in a part of the laptop that is actually very important.
  - gargravarr 8y ago
    I would agree with you if the chassis was sealed in the USB-C ones, which it isn't. A cup of coffee spill is still as fatal to a MBP as it's ever been. My 2011 ThinkPad X220 has drain holes in the keyboard. These laptops have moisture detectors to void your warranty. Give me maintainable laptops, not throwaway ones, for the love of...
  - slantyyz 8y ago
    Yeah, but once your computer is out of warranty, you'll definitely appreciate the ability to replace parts. I spilled soda pop on my 2008 Macbook's keyboard and fried it. Fortunately, the computer still worked (I ended up carrying a USB keyboard in my bag as I was consulting on site, which was awkward, but at least I could do that without being stuck without a computer for a few days). I ordered a second hand replacement from OWC, and after watching a video, I had the keyboard replaced in less than an hour.
    - naravara 8y ago
      >Yeah, but once your computer is out of warranty, you'll definitely appreciate the ability to replace parts. On a laptop I don't really think so. An extended warranty runs about 3 years and most Macs I've had have lasted about 5. At that point I would just rather get a new computer anyway than bother sprucing up an old one. I did have one computer fry in about 3 years because of a logic board issue, which pissed me off royally. But in the grand scheme of things, the money I would have saved by having a user replaceable GPU vs. just upgrading the thing 2 years before I was ready to doesn't amount to very much. If I was very money constrained it would definitely be more of an issue, but that's never really been Apple's target market.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  Data you haven’t backed up is data you don’t want. Regardless of whether the SSD is replaceable or soldered on, if data loss is your problem you should have been backing up.
  - dijit 8y ago
    That's not how users think and you know it. There's a comic and I can't find it right now where a person is lamenting the fact that they have no backups while their computer is not booting. Then the computer works and they exclaim that "thank god I don't need to do any of that", it's funny because it's quite relatable to a lot of people.
geezerjay 8y ago
> I'm not convinced that consumers care if their laptop has easily replaceable parts. That's like saying that you're not sure consumers dislike the idea of falling victims to price gauging schemes or even being forced to scrap perfectly good hardware due to a minor issue with an otherwise perfectly modular component or the inability to upgrade low-performing hardware.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  "like" and "dislike" aren't the same as caring. In this case, caring means they feel strongly enough about it to purchase or not purchase a specific laptop. I'm sure plenty of consumers dislike their laptops lack of repairability - I also think that they don't care.
- oldcynic 8y ago
  Careful here. Anecdotally I'm aware of more than a few folks who replaced their bottom end PC/Windows laptop with a brand new machine because it was supplied with far too little memory, but hit a £399 or £499 price point, and they installed one too many bits of crap. So they spend another £499 on another too lightly specced laptop when £40 doubling memory would have fixed all their issues. PC makers have always been happy to sell machines with barely enough RAM to reach the desktop let alone run or install anything. A lot of consumers don't know what they're buying, how much memory Windows needs, how to upgrade even when possible, or how to uninstall things they no longer need (eg iTunes after they switched to Android, Massive HP drivers remaining when now running an Epson printer and vice versa). Helpful in-store sales people don't help with this. Most of us on HN however would prefer to buy the least standard memory/SSD possible and immediately bump it at Crucial or some such for a quarter of Dell, Lenovo or Apple's price.
rootusrootus 8y ago
I'd like Apple to give it a shot and find out. I was happy enough lugging around my 2011 MBP even though it was much thicker than my current one (a 2013) which is itself much thicker than the newer ones. Make a thin MacBook, sure. Then make a proper MacBook pro and make it about the hardware and not beauty. I believe there is actually a market for it.
- gargravarr 8y ago
  At this stage, I'm convinced Apple have forgotten how to make Pro computers.
  - wilsonnb2 8y ago
    You can buy an iMac Pro with an 18 core Xeon, 128GB ECC RAM, 4TB SSD, and Vega 64 graphics. If that's not a pro computer, then I'm not sure what is.
    - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
      Nice specs, but you can't upgrade the SSDs, RAM is possible but breaks warranty, can't upgrade the soldered GPU, and it's unclear if the CPU is actually upgrade-able. So I would call it disappointing, as a 'Professional' product.
      - rbanffy 8y ago
        It's a professional tool. When the GPU is too slow or I need more than than 18 cores or 128 GB of RAM, I'll just buy a new one. I'm pretty sure that won't happen in less than 5 years. As for storage, I'd be crazy not to keep all important files on a backed-up RAID array. It's a professional tool, after all. (and I keep my music on an off-site-backed-up RAID array)
        extra88 8y ago
        Yes, I just bought one for someone at work, got a good deal at Microcenter but I’m still annoyed that I couldn’t get one with less than 1 TB and pay less; the internal drive is not where our data goes.
Kluny 8y ago
They might not think about it when they buy their first laptop, but trust me, everyone cares about a $200 replacement part vs a $3000 replacement laptop after it's happened to them once. I've had the most tech-illiterate people I know explain this to me as the reason why they stick with their old Mac or buy a Windows PC. Their technical details might be off, but they definitely care.
markkanof 8y ago
Do consumers really care about thin laptops or is it just that Apple (and other manufacturers) can't come up with any other more interesting ideas that they could use for marketing purposes. Light weight laptops I can see being interesting for when you actually have to move it around, or significantly longer battery life could be an attractive addition to laptops. It really seems like pushing so hard on the idea of how sexy thin laptops are just demonstrates that they are completely out of ideas. There must be something more meaningful that they could change on a laptop and push just as hard on that to convince people it is worth lusting over.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  I don't care about thin in laptops. I barely even care about weight. Once you're past the portability threshold where it is light enough and self-contained enough to be hand carried from place to place, and return to workstation functionality by plugging in no more than 3 cords, I'm done with size and weight. I simply don't spend that much time carrying a laptop around. I really like the mil-spec ruggedized laptops. I look down a row of those, and it really strikes me how they're all the same size, they're covered in ports (behind little gasket-protected doors), and they are so unapologetic about size and weight that they have sturdy carry handles attached. So what I really want most is a standardized form factor. Then my concern is for the closely related concepts of power, cooling, and heat dissipation. My Third choice would be 1920x1080 display resolution or better. After that, battery life. If you're designing your laptop to be too thin and light to accommodate a standard TRS audio mini-jack, you're not designing for me. The other thing lappie makers are doing is touch screens, which are just awkward on a laptop, and usually unusable in a docking station anyway. Never mind about turning the function key row into a touchscreen.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    I don't care about thin in laptops. I barely even care about weight. Once you're past the portability threshold where it is light enough and self-contained enough to be hand carried from place to place I care about weight. A lot. Because I travel. People on HN like to say a particular laptop is "light enough." Sure, if that's all your carrying. But if you have a bag or briefcase full of other things like documents, every ounce counts.
cletus 8y ago
There is a large amount of truth to this. However, I think Apple has taken it too far in two ways. 1. Things like the new MBP keyboard are objectively worse than the old keyboard in terms of user experience. This might have saved half a millimeter in height of a closed laptop. What's more, repair costs are _insane_. Even after a year of using this I still prefer the old keyboard. 2. They've added features that serve little more purpose than raising the ASP of MBPs. Top of that list is the touch bar. I consider the 2011-14 Macbook Air to be the pinnacle of Macbook hardware. Decent ports, good form factor, decent CPU (by comparison the 12" Macbook IMHO makes too much sacrifices to the altar of thinness) and, best of all, a great price. The fact that you could buy such a great machine for <$1500 was amazing to the point that I didn't really care what happened to it. I'd just buy another one if it died or I lost it. That made me more comfortable buying it and using it wherever. The problem is that consumers won't see the downside of this until they've been around long enough to start failing outside of warranty and then outside of AppleCare. At that point paying $500+ (or whatever it is; I don't know the specific number) just to repair a keyboard is going to be pretty hard to swallow.
golergka 8y ago
Consumers differ. Pro users care, and they have traditionally been the primary macpro audience.

I'm not convinced that consumers care if their laptop has easily replaceable parts. Consumers definitely like thin laptops though, which is at odds with repairability in most cases.

xvf22 8y ago

When a motherboard failure wipes out their soldered on SSD I'm sure they'll care.

wilsonnb2 8y ago
Sure, if that was a common occurrence I'm sure people would care, but it's not so they don't.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  SSDs failing, maybe not, but I gather that mechanical failures on the new MBP keyboard are also very expensive to fix.
- xvf22 8y ago
  Motherboards fail more often than you'd imagine, liquid damage being a common cause. The chips may be fine but since they're part of the failed motherboard Apple won't do a thing to recover the data. Unlike removable storage where you can move it to a working machine.
- ropeadopepope 8y ago
  Do you have a source on that? The mac users I know are especially worried about data loss because of the high rate of other failures on their new MBPs. One of my co-workers temporarily lost some of his work because he hadn't pushed his changes to git and his computer had to go back to apple for repair because it wouldn't boot. He got the computer back the next day, so all was well, but it makes you wonder.
kogir 8y ago
This happened to me and I was rather disappointed. I had backups but Apple didn’t even offer to try and recover data at any cost, or allow me to keep the parts with my data still on them.
naravara 8y ago
On the other hand, when a spilled cup of coffee fails to fry the electronics because the whole thing is sealed up, they'll learn to value the closed chassis. Which of these events do you think is more likely for the typical user? This is actually why the fragile keyboard on the latest MacBook Pros is such a problem. It compromises durability in a part of the laptop that is actually very important.
- gargravarr 8y ago
  I would agree with you if the chassis was sealed in the USB-C ones, which it isn't. A cup of coffee spill is still as fatal to a MBP as it's ever been. My 2011 ThinkPad X220 has drain holes in the keyboard. These laptops have moisture detectors to void your warranty. Give me maintainable laptops, not throwaway ones, for the love of...
- slantyyz 8y ago
  Yeah, but once your computer is out of warranty, you'll definitely appreciate the ability to replace parts. I spilled soda pop on my 2008 Macbook's keyboard and fried it. Fortunately, the computer still worked (I ended up carrying a USB keyboard in my bag as I was consulting on site, which was awkward, but at least I could do that without being stuck without a computer for a few days). I ordered a second hand replacement from OWC, and after watching a video, I had the keyboard replaced in less than an hour.
  - naravara 8y ago
    >Yeah, but once your computer is out of warranty, you'll definitely appreciate the ability to replace parts. On a laptop I don't really think so. An extended warranty runs about 3 years and most Macs I've had have lasted about 5. At that point I would just rather get a new computer anyway than bother sprucing up an old one. I did have one computer fry in about 3 years because of a logic board issue, which pissed me off royally. But in the grand scheme of things, the money I would have saved by having a user replaceable GPU vs. just upgrading the thing 2 years before I was ready to doesn't amount to very much. If I was very money constrained it would definitely be more of an issue, but that's never really been Apple's target market.
robin_reala 8y ago
Data you haven’t backed up is data you don’t want. Regardless of whether the SSD is replaceable or soldered on, if data loss is your problem you should have been backing up.
- dijit 8y ago
  That's not how users think and you know it. There's a comic and I can't find it right now where a person is lamenting the fact that they have no backups while their computer is not booting. Then the computer works and they exclaim that "thank god I don't need to do any of that", it's funny because it's quite relatable to a lot of people.

geezerjay 8y ago

> I'm not convinced that consumers care if their laptop has easily replaceable parts. That's like saying that you're not sure consumers dislike the idea of falling victims to price gauging schemes or even being forced to scrap perfectly good hardware due to a minor issue with an otherwise perfectly modular component or the inability to upgrade low-performing hardware.

wilsonnb2 8y ago
"like" and "dislike" aren't the same as caring. In this case, caring means they feel strongly enough about it to purchase or not purchase a specific laptop. I'm sure plenty of consumers dislike their laptops lack of repairability - I also think that they don't care.
oldcynic 8y ago
Careful here. Anecdotally I'm aware of more than a few folks who replaced their bottom end PC/Windows laptop with a brand new machine because it was supplied with far too little memory, but hit a £399 or £499 price point, and they installed one too many bits of crap. So they spend another £499 on another too lightly specced laptop when £40 doubling memory would have fixed all their issues. PC makers have always been happy to sell machines with barely enough RAM to reach the desktop let alone run or install anything. A lot of consumers don't know what they're buying, how much memory Windows needs, how to upgrade even when possible, or how to uninstall things they no longer need (eg iTunes after they switched to Android, Massive HP drivers remaining when now running an Epson printer and vice versa). Helpful in-store sales people don't help with this. Most of us on HN however would prefer to buy the least standard memory/SSD possible and immediately bump it at Crucial or some such for a quarter of Dell, Lenovo or Apple's price.

rootusrootus 8y ago

I'd like Apple to give it a shot and find out. I was happy enough lugging around my 2011 MBP even though it was much thicker than my current one (a 2013) which is itself much thicker than the newer ones. Make a thin MacBook, sure. Then make a proper MacBook pro and make it about the hardware and not beauty. I believe there is actually a market for it.

gargravarr 8y ago
At this stage, I'm convinced Apple have forgotten how to make Pro computers.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  You can buy an iMac Pro with an 18 core Xeon, 128GB ECC RAM, 4TB SSD, and Vega 64 graphics. If that's not a pro computer, then I'm not sure what is.
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    Nice specs, but you can't upgrade the SSDs, RAM is possible but breaks warranty, can't upgrade the soldered GPU, and it's unclear if the CPU is actually upgrade-able. So I would call it disappointing, as a 'Professional' product.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      It's a professional tool. When the GPU is too slow or I need more than than 18 cores or 128 GB of RAM, I'll just buy a new one. I'm pretty sure that won't happen in less than 5 years. As for storage, I'd be crazy not to keep all important files on a backed-up RAID array. It's a professional tool, after all. (and I keep my music on an off-site-backed-up RAID array)
      - extra88 8y ago
        Yes, I just bought one for someone at work, got a good deal at Microcenter but I’m still annoyed that I couldn’t get one with less than 1 TB and pay less; the internal drive is not where our data goes.

Kluny 8y ago

They might not think about it when they buy their first laptop, but trust me, everyone cares about a $200 replacement part vs a $3000 replacement laptop after it's happened to them once. I've had the most tech-illiterate people I know explain this to me as the reason why they stick with their old Mac or buy a Windows PC. Their technical details might be off, but they definitely care.

markkanof 8y ago

Do consumers really care about thin laptops or is it just that Apple (and other manufacturers) can't come up with any other more interesting ideas that they could use for marketing purposes. Light weight laptops I can see being interesting for when you actually have to move it around, or significantly longer battery life could be an attractive addition to laptops. It really seems like pushing so hard on the idea of how sexy thin laptops are just demonstrates that they are completely out of ideas. There must be something more meaningful that they could change on a laptop and push just as hard on that to convince people it is worth lusting over.

logfromblammo 8y ago
I don't care about thin in laptops. I barely even care about weight. Once you're past the portability threshold where it is light enough and self-contained enough to be hand carried from place to place, and return to workstation functionality by plugging in no more than 3 cords, I'm done with size and weight. I simply don't spend that much time carrying a laptop around. I really like the mil-spec ruggedized laptops. I look down a row of those, and it really strikes me how they're all the same size, they're covered in ports (behind little gasket-protected doors), and they are so unapologetic about size and weight that they have sturdy carry handles attached. So what I really want most is a standardized form factor. Then my concern is for the closely related concepts of power, cooling, and heat dissipation. My Third choice would be 1920x1080 display resolution or better. After that, battery life. If you're designing your laptop to be too thin and light to accommodate a standard TRS audio mini-jack, you're not designing for me. The other thing lappie makers are doing is touch screens, which are just awkward on a laptop, and usually unusable in a docking station anyway. Never mind about turning the function key row into a touchscreen.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I don't care about thin in laptops. I barely even care about weight. Once you're past the portability threshold where it is light enough and self-contained enough to be hand carried from place to place I care about weight. A lot. Because I travel. People on HN like to say a particular laptop is "light enough." Sure, if that's all your carrying. But if you have a bag or briefcase full of other things like documents, every ounce counts.

cletus 8y ago

There is a large amount of truth to this. However, I think Apple has taken it too far in two ways. 1. Things like the new MBP keyboard are objectively worse than the old keyboard in terms of user experience. This might have saved half a millimeter in height of a closed laptop. What's more, repair costs are _insane_. Even after a year of using this I still prefer the old keyboard. 2. They've added features that serve little more purpose than raising the ASP of MBPs. Top of that list is the touch bar. I consider the 2011-14 Macbook Air to be the pinnacle of Macbook hardware. Decent ports, good form factor, decent CPU (by comparison the 12" Macbook IMHO makes too much sacrifices to the altar of thinness) and, best of all, a great price. The fact that you could buy such a great machine for <$1500 was amazing to the point that I didn't really care what happened to it. I'd just buy another one if it died or I lost it. That made me more comfortable buying it and using it wherever. The problem is that consumers won't see the downside of this until they've been around long enough to start failing outside of warranty and then outside of AppleCare. At that point paying $500+ (or whatever it is; I don't know the specific number) just to repair a keyboard is going to be pretty hard to swallow.

golergka 8y ago

Consumers differ. Pro users care, and they have traditionally been the primary macpro audience.