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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."
blacklisted from secure environments now
How are you supposed to wipe the SSD before you sell it?
Clear the FileVault encryption key.
...the storage is set for the lifetime of the notebook... and the lifetime of the notebook is set by the longevity of the storage.
Way to go, Apple.
Buy now, while still DRUNK!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What about when the SSD craps out? Then it's back to Apple, (or at least to a third-party shop), for an undoubtedly expensive repair job. Great! More stuff that the user has no hope of repairing on his or her own, and more non-renewable materials prematurely tossed into landfill. Tell me again - why in hell would I want a new Apple laptop?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Buy or don't buy. There is no upgrade.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Is this all Slashdork is anymore? Bitch about Apple, bitch about Trump, bitch about climate change. Booooring. No wonder this turd is dying.
No, not all. There is also a good number of people who come here to bitch about /.
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.'"
Don't buy. "Pro", my ass.
To audio pros, the single most important feature in a pro laptop is knowing that when the logic board s**ts itself, you can take the thing in for repair, and you'll get back a machine that still has all your software on it. Without that, you get to experience the joy of spending several weeks on the phone with a hundred different software vendors trying to convince them to give you another device activation because your old machine no longer exists and you can't deactivate the existing installation.
The other design screw-ups in the new "Pro" were obnoxious, but survivable. This one, however, represents a level of epic fail that is simply beyond acceptable. When you've had a long string of GPU-related logic board failures like Apple has experienced lately, soldering the non-volatile storage to the main logic board is just too incompetent for words.
This is a show-stopper. This is not a pro machine. It is a disposable toy.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The next step will be to solder your credit card directly to the ApplePay reader.
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)