5 ms·

The pros are only size related. Size at all costs is excusable as a consumer or prosumer product, but most of the users of the high end pro's want power, cooli

The pros are only size related. Size at all costs is excusable as a consumer or prosumer product, but most of the users of the high end pro's want power, cooling, good ports, reliability, and certainly upgradability. The 2012's were so nice featuring 2 internal sata connections and removable ram. Those computers weren't too thick in my mind, so for a pro, I think they have their objectives mixed up.

rbanffy 7y ago
I feel the upgradability issue is relatively minor. For some extra money, I can order one with 64 GB of DDR4 and 8 TB of flash. That's probably enough to carry me for five or so years. Quite frankly, my local storage needs topped out somewhere between 1 and 2 TB and have been there for the past five years. Whether 64 GB of RAM will be enough is the big question for me. Even if it weren't, there aren't many laptops available today that can go further than that. Upgradability is good if you intend to make a lower initial investment and increase capacity at a later point. This laptop is not a toy and, if you are buying one, it's reasonable to expect a return on your investment.
- lliamander 7y ago
  > Upgradability is good if you intend to make a lower initial investment and increase capacity at a later point. This laptop is not a toy and, if you are buying one, it's reasonable to expect a return on your investment. Not clear on your meaning here. Are you saying that upgradability increases ROI, and that it is something one should expect in a professional laptop? If so, I agree.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    Kind of yes. You can buy an upgradable computer specced to your current needs today and adapt it to your future needs as needed. You will pay less now because it doesn't need to be able to run now the OS that'll be available in 5 years and you probably will pay less for the capacity by then. The cost is the time you'll need to invest to make those upgrades: sourcing the parts, assembly, etc. Upgradability is, in general, a good thing. In the case of these laptops, you buy them to the specs you'll need at the end of the machine's useful life, at the full current price.
    - lliamander 7y ago
      > In the case of these laptops, you buy them to the specs you'll need at the end of the machine's useful life, at the full current price. OK, I see what you are saying. The nit I have to pick with that particular sort of reasoning is that now Apple has put their customers in a bit of a bind: - either you buy the absolute max spec (and hope that it includes the specs you'll need for that time span), or - you risk buyers remorse as you end up in a situation where the laptop that you already handed over a small fortune for isn't up to the task This past year I recently considered buying one of Lenovo's premium Thinkpad T-series laptops, but the fact that they had one (of two) RAM slots soldered put me off. I was buying this laptop for personal use, and so I didn't want to spend top dollar on it right then, but I didn't want to end up in a situation where what I had settled for wasn't enough. I ended up going for one of the "budget" E-series Thinkpads, because (paradoxically) those do have fully upgradable RAM.
      - evgenyp 7y ago
        The Thinkpad T490 (not the T490s) does have upgradeable RAM -- we settled on it for all our new developer machines. It's got an amazing keyboard and is fairly lightweight, but has every port you'd need, even VGA (and costs ~$1,000 for 8GB/256GB SSD).
        lliamander 7y ago
        It has one stick of upgradable RAM - better than nothing, but I wanted both sticks. Honestly, for a work laptop where you are going to be trading it out again in 3 years, that's probably fine. My E495 currently has 8GB (2x4GB for better iGPU performance) and that's all I need for personal uses for now. But I can upgrade to 32GB later if I need to (and for less overall cost).
      - spronkey 7y ago
        It's not just buyers remorse. If you use the machine for work and buy something under-spec'd - especially in RAM, you lose money by being less efficient with a slower machine.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  Upgradability also lowers the total cost of ownership, as the upgraded parts become cheaper by the time you need them.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    By how much? I understand that if instead of buying a laptop with the intention of replacing it with the then top-of-the-line model five years down the road I get one that I plan to outgrow in 2 years, I'll spend less money, but is that a relevant amount compared to the money you expect to make by using the computer? The question is less whether the cost is lower, but whether it's lower enough to justify the extra work of upgrading.
    - nicoburns 7y ago
      > whether it's lower enough to justify the extra work of upgrading. Extra work? I upgraded the SSD in my 2015 MBP in 2 hours. And almost all of that was waiting for time machine to restore to the new disk. Is that worth it against the £2k+ I'd have to spend on a whole new MacBook? Of course it is. I couldn't have afforded the bigger disk when I first purchased the laptop (if you have the ability to always be able to afford to top-of-the-line model, then that's a luxury that not everyone has). And this is Apple, who claim to be environmentally friendly.
    - chaostheory 7y ago
      Not everyone makes Bay Area money as an engineer especially in the hard sciences. Even though I’m one of the lucky ones, it’s annoying being forced to pay Apple prices for storage which is about double the market price eg Apple 8TB $2400 vs decent brand decent speed 8TB ~$1200-$1500. It is very hard to justify. This also doesn’t account for inflation and the general decrease in storage prices over time. Yes, the price drops are no longer as fast but in a year or two, we’re still seeing %25 price decreases; it’s still worth waiting for a lot of people including me. I feel the same way about Apple RAM. Soldering it down does nothing for me. it just helps Apple’s profits, since it seems they’re no longer able to substantially grow their user base. It feels like extortion and this isn’t helping growth long term even if they only see iOS as the future
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Some extra money? You’re talking about a nearly $6k configuration. It almost never makes sense to overbuy storage and memory, which tends to be a cyclical market that drops in cost over time. Doubly true with Apple that marks up both commodities dramatically.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    64 GB will cost you $800. For $2200 you get the 8 TB. $6000 is the price of the full 8-core machine with each and every bell and whistle. It's expensive, but not absurd. Think of it as paying $1000 a year for a computer.
    - spronkey 7y ago
      Maybe in Silicon Valley with VC money. Even then, it's getting more and more difficult to justify the increasing gap between Apple pricing and say - Dell or Lenovo. Almost $1k in it now for equivalently spec'd non-base MBP vs XPS15/X1 Extreme, and the gap just gets higher as you need higher requirements. Let's have a look at what Apple have done since 2012. 1) Inflate the base prices of the machines and attempt to justify it via non-optional "features" such as the touch bar, wide gamut displays, extra thunderbolt ports, obsessively thin designs, T2 chip. 2) Solder everything, requiring customers to buy the specs they think they'll need in ~3 years' time upfront, when prices are at their highest. Look how expensive 1TB of flash was 3 years ago vs today, for example. Heck, in 2008-2012, several Apple machines could be upgraded to beyond their original BTO capabilities thanks to technology advancements and firmware updates by Apple at the time. 3) Where they didn't solder storage in the 2012-2015 machines, they used several different proprietary form factors for blade card SSDs when standardised form factors have existed the whole time (mSATA, M.2 SATA/PCIe AHCI/NVMe). 4) Removed the ability for customers to restore machines to working state either in the field or in a timely manner, and pushing customers toward Apple service and AppleCare. 5) Literally glue in the one consumable item in the machine (battery) that is almost certainly going to fail before the usable lifespan of the machine, pushing the price of a battery service up dramatically, reducing the economical lifespan of the machines. 6) Reduce serviceability of other components likely to fail or get damaged over time such as the keyboard and trackpad by riveting, glueing, sandwiching etc to ensure older machines are uneconomical to repair as soon as they can be, pushing customers toward buying a new machine. This is a company that is doing everything to take away your choice as a customer, trying to turn expensive computers into disposable appliances. Don't try to justify this crap - just say no. All the above, combined with the design flaws almost every 2016+ MacBook has (butterfly keyboard, flexgate, staingate, display connector issues, T2 chip integration issues), the seriously declining quality of Apple's OSs, the removal of useful features (MagSafe!, sleep light, external battery status meter, IR remote, non-type C ports, SD reader), have me now in the position where I not only don't want to buy any of there new MacBooks, I'm actively encouraging others not to as well. Me, a once huge Apple fan whose personal portable machines have been Apple almost exclusively since the 90s. Whose OS of choice has been OS X/macOS since Jaguar. Who used to go out of his way to explain why Apple machines were worth it. Nope. No more.
- asdff 7y ago
  During the upgradability era, it was still cheaper to up your ram and storage yourself on day one than through apples gouging. You could even put in more ram than apple even offered.

rbanffy 7y ago

I feel the upgradability issue is relatively minor. For some extra money, I can order one with 64 GB of DDR4 and 8 TB of flash. That's probably enough to carry me for five or so years. Quite frankly, my local storage needs topped out somewhere between 1 and 2 TB and have been there for the past five years. Whether 64 GB of RAM will be enough is the big question for me. Even if it weren't, there aren't many laptops available today that can go further than that. Upgradability is good if you intend to make a lower initial investment and increase capacity at a later point. This laptop is not a toy and, if you are buying one, it's reasonable to expect a return on your investment.

lliamander 7y ago
> Upgradability is good if you intend to make a lower initial investment and increase capacity at a later point. This laptop is not a toy and, if you are buying one, it's reasonable to expect a return on your investment. Not clear on your meaning here. Are you saying that upgradability increases ROI, and that it is something one should expect in a professional laptop? If so, I agree.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  Kind of yes. You can buy an upgradable computer specced to your current needs today and adapt it to your future needs as needed. You will pay less now because it doesn't need to be able to run now the OS that'll be available in 5 years and you probably will pay less for the capacity by then. The cost is the time you'll need to invest to make those upgrades: sourcing the parts, assembly, etc. Upgradability is, in general, a good thing. In the case of these laptops, you buy them to the specs you'll need at the end of the machine's useful life, at the full current price.
  - lliamander 7y ago
    > In the case of these laptops, you buy them to the specs you'll need at the end of the machine's useful life, at the full current price. OK, I see what you are saying. The nit I have to pick with that particular sort of reasoning is that now Apple has put their customers in a bit of a bind: - either you buy the absolute max spec (and hope that it includes the specs you'll need for that time span), or - you risk buyers remorse as you end up in a situation where the laptop that you already handed over a small fortune for isn't up to the task This past year I recently considered buying one of Lenovo's premium Thinkpad T-series laptops, but the fact that they had one (of two) RAM slots soldered put me off. I was buying this laptop for personal use, and so I didn't want to spend top dollar on it right then, but I didn't want to end up in a situation where what I had settled for wasn't enough. I ended up going for one of the "budget" E-series Thinkpads, because (paradoxically) those do have fully upgradable RAM.
    - evgenyp 7y ago
      The Thinkpad T490 (not the T490s) does have upgradeable RAM -- we settled on it for all our new developer machines. It's got an amazing keyboard and is fairly lightweight, but has every port you'd need, even VGA (and costs ~$1,000 for 8GB/256GB SSD).
      - lliamander 7y ago
        It has one stick of upgradable RAM - better than nothing, but I wanted both sticks. Honestly, for a work laptop where you are going to be trading it out again in 3 years, that's probably fine. My E495 currently has 8GB (2x4GB for better iGPU performance) and that's all I need for personal uses for now. But I can upgrade to 32GB later if I need to (and for less overall cost).
    - spronkey 7y ago
      It's not just buyers remorse. If you use the machine for work and buy something under-spec'd - especially in RAM, you lose money by being less efficient with a slower machine.
nicoburns 7y ago
Upgradability also lowers the total cost of ownership, as the upgraded parts become cheaper by the time you need them.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  By how much? I understand that if instead of buying a laptop with the intention of replacing it with the then top-of-the-line model five years down the road I get one that I plan to outgrow in 2 years, I'll spend less money, but is that a relevant amount compared to the money you expect to make by using the computer? The question is less whether the cost is lower, but whether it's lower enough to justify the extra work of upgrading.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    > whether it's lower enough to justify the extra work of upgrading. Extra work? I upgraded the SSD in my 2015 MBP in 2 hours. And almost all of that was waiting for time machine to restore to the new disk. Is that worth it against the £2k+ I'd have to spend on a whole new MacBook? Of course it is. I couldn't have afforded the bigger disk when I first purchased the laptop (if you have the ability to always be able to afford to top-of-the-line model, then that's a luxury that not everyone has). And this is Apple, who claim to be environmentally friendly.
  - chaostheory 7y ago
    Not everyone makes Bay Area money as an engineer especially in the hard sciences. Even though I’m one of the lucky ones, it’s annoying being forced to pay Apple prices for storage which is about double the market price eg Apple 8TB $2400 vs decent brand decent speed 8TB ~$1200-$1500. It is very hard to justify. This also doesn’t account for inflation and the general decrease in storage prices over time. Yes, the price drops are no longer as fast but in a year or two, we’re still seeing %25 price decreases; it’s still worth waiting for a lot of people including me. I feel the same way about Apple RAM. Soldering it down does nothing for me. it just helps Apple’s profits, since it seems they’re no longer able to substantially grow their user base. It feels like extortion and this isn’t helping growth long term even if they only see iOS as the future
Spooky23 7y ago
Some extra money? You’re talking about a nearly $6k configuration. It almost never makes sense to overbuy storage and memory, which tends to be a cyclical market that drops in cost over time. Doubly true with Apple that marks up both commodities dramatically.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rbanffy 7y ago
  64 GB will cost you $800. For $2200 you get the 8 TB. $6000 is the price of the full 8-core machine with each and every bell and whistle. It's expensive, but not absurd. Think of it as paying $1000 a year for a computer.
  - spronkey 7y ago
    Maybe in Silicon Valley with VC money. Even then, it's getting more and more difficult to justify the increasing gap between Apple pricing and say - Dell or Lenovo. Almost $1k in it now for equivalently spec'd non-base MBP vs XPS15/X1 Extreme, and the gap just gets higher as you need higher requirements. Let's have a look at what Apple have done since 2012. 1) Inflate the base prices of the machines and attempt to justify it via non-optional "features" such as the touch bar, wide gamut displays, extra thunderbolt ports, obsessively thin designs, T2 chip. 2) Solder everything, requiring customers to buy the specs they think they'll need in ~3 years' time upfront, when prices are at their highest. Look how expensive 1TB of flash was 3 years ago vs today, for example. Heck, in 2008-2012, several Apple machines could be upgraded to beyond their original BTO capabilities thanks to technology advancements and firmware updates by Apple at the time. 3) Where they didn't solder storage in the 2012-2015 machines, they used several different proprietary form factors for blade card SSDs when standardised form factors have existed the whole time (mSATA, M.2 SATA/PCIe AHCI/NVMe). 4) Removed the ability for customers to restore machines to working state either in the field or in a timely manner, and pushing customers toward Apple service and AppleCare. 5) Literally glue in the one consumable item in the machine (battery) that is almost certainly going to fail before the usable lifespan of the machine, pushing the price of a battery service up dramatically, reducing the economical lifespan of the machines. 6) Reduce serviceability of other components likely to fail or get damaged over time such as the keyboard and trackpad by riveting, glueing, sandwiching etc to ensure older machines are uneconomical to repair as soon as they can be, pushing customers toward buying a new machine. This is a company that is doing everything to take away your choice as a customer, trying to turn expensive computers into disposable appliances. Don't try to justify this crap - just say no. All the above, combined with the design flaws almost every 2016+ MacBook has (butterfly keyboard, flexgate, staingate, display connector issues, T2 chip integration issues), the seriously declining quality of Apple's OSs, the removal of useful features (MagSafe!, sleep light, external battery status meter, IR remote, non-type C ports, SD reader), have me now in the position where I not only don't want to buy any of there new MacBooks, I'm actively encouraging others not to as well. Me, a once huge Apple fan whose personal portable machines have been Apple almost exclusively since the 90s. Whose OS of choice has been OS X/macOS since Jaguar. Who used to go out of his way to explain why Apple machines were worth it. Nope. No more.
asdff 7y ago
During the upgradability era, it was still cheaper to up your ram and storage yourself on day one than through apples gouging. You could even put in more ram than apple even offered.