Slashdot Mirror
Apple's New 15-Inch MacBook Pros Have Storage Soldered To the Logic Board (macrumors.com)
yoink! writes: The integration loop is complete. Apple's, admittedly very fast, PCIe storage modules are now built right into the main boards of their 15-inch, Touch Bar-equipped, Retina-screened, Thunderbolt 3-ported, MacBook Pros. A few forum posts over at MacRumors reveal the skinny on the quiet removal of the last user-upgradable component of their professional-series laptops. From the report: "MacRumors reader Jesse D. unscrewed the bottom lid on his new 15-inch MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar and discovered, unlike the 13-inch model sans Touch Bar, there is no cutout in the logic board for removable flash storage. Another reader said the 13-inch model with a Touch Bar also has a non-removable SSD. Given the SSD appears to be permanently soldered to the logic board, users will be unable to upgrade the Touch Bar MacBook Pro's flash storage beyond Apple's 512GB to 2TB built-to-order options on its website at the time of purchase. In other words, the amount of flash storage you choose will be permanent for the life of the notebook."
A high quality integrated SSD probably has a MTBF approaching that of the connectors to a separate SSD over the useful life of a laptop.
Steve Jobs always wanted Macs to be appliances that the user could not tinker with or modify.
That's how my wife treats her MBP. Every few years she starts complaining about it running too slow or the disk is full. So I buy her a new one, which is okay with me because it is still cheaper than jewelry or a vacation in Paris.
She just got a new 15", and she loves it, especially the new task bar (which has color!). Hopefully, Apple won't upgrade it again for a while.
This change is more inexcusable than other modifications / removals of user-serviceability that they did in the name of thinness or performance. This mod signals to me their trying to fully capture / enforce price segmentation and making sure that products will expire and be retired more predictably.
(and even if maybe not their outright explicit thinking, surely a benefit that they welcomed tacitly. And trading off user-friendliness and serviceability for profit. )
I was already unhappy with the newer Macbooks having non-swappable RAM. I stuck with the old 2010-style Macbook Pros that you could remove everything pretty much and keep it up to date with larger, faster SSDs, etc.
This on top of USB-C and the all-at-once crappifying of this model means I'm out.
Isn't a MacBook pro $2400-$2800???? You can do a Paris vacation on that. That is insane to spend that much money on a laptop in 2017.
As a microcosm of the world, Slashdot is peopled by two kinds of people; those who are poor and/or getting poorer, and those who are rich and getting richer. If you haven't noticed that there's a fair few people on Slashdot with quite a bit of disposable income, you must be new here. Not coincidentally, there's quite a few Trump supporters. (Trump supporters' median income is more than $10k higher than Sanders or Clinton supporters'... Not just the average mind you, the median)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Somehow, I doubt that they were disassembling all their old MacBooks to remove the SSD before going home every night.
I can understand why someone would detest Trump. Hating on people for voting for him is another matter. When you're faced with the choices in the 2016 election there were no good choices. People ended up voting on what they hoped would work best for them. I knew when the election cycle started that I wasn't voting for Hilliary so when it began looking like Trump was going to blow away the Republican field I started praying for Bernie to win the Democratic side. That didn't happen so all I had was Trump. I don't give a shit how butthurt all the liberals are over it. They nominated a person who had all the negatives of a Liberal with absolutely none of the positives. Hopefully they'll evaluate how they got where they are and think about changing.
I bought a Macbook Pro in 2007, and I'm using a Macbook Air right now. Apple's actions are really beginning to piss me off. The company is being run by a bean counter and it shows. Greedy greedy greedy. Gluing their batteries in. Soldering the SSD. I asked a student to save a document to Google Drive and then upload it from an iPad to my website. Apparently you can't upload files from Google Drive to a website on an iPad. Seriously. They just want you to use effing iCloud Drive. I get insult after insult from Apple when I want to do things my way. I want to set the battery warning percentage so that it is 20%, so that I don't kill my battery. Nope. No option to do that. So I end up running my battery down to 1% far too many times (which is exactly what they want). I want to change the colour profile on my wife's iPhone 5 to get some sort of a yellow coloured night mode. Nope. You can do it on an iPhone 6, but not on an iPhone 5. That is a bloody fake restriction, and it just pisses me off. I want control of my devices. I shouldn't have to jailbreak my device.
I used to be an Apple fanboy. They made damn good laptops. They sold excellent software...FCP was bloody awesome. If I'm going to pay a 30% or more premium for my laptop, I expect the freedom to control and upgrade my device. I did exactly that with my Macbook Pro. New batteries, new HD, memory upgraded to the maximum. Even with my Macbook Air, I have gotten around their stupid storage restrictions with a 128GB low profile USB drive and a 200GB flush mount microSD adapter. Now there is no SD slot. Now they expect me to pay their premium and get a locked in device. Well fuck you Apple!
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I feel the same way. The ways to work around Apple's arbitrary restrictions are all getting blocked now. I love OSX/MacOS but if Apple keeps going on like this my next computer will be a self-built running Linux again.
-- Cheers!
On my previous job, there were about a dozen iphone developers and other hipsters who had macbooks as their workstation. Every single one of them had their SSDs replaced due to breakage at latest on the second year of usage. I bet they either had some really crap SSDs installed on factory or the devices were not ventilated well enough for full day usage and the drivers were literally toasted. I wonder if the apple's SSD lifetime is still the same?
Something that snaps to the bottom of the laptops and adds extra battery, storage and a boatload of ports. Then when you need ultimate portability take the laptop out and live without movies or whatever you were storing on the extra hard drive for a little while. People are overthinking such things, solutions have been there forever for smartphones.