That said, in this case, I don't see what is being gained by not making the GPU swappable or at least accessible (although it might very well still be). I'm assuming they could simply only offer official support for the one it contains but let people do whatever they want with it (which again might be the case in practice, they just aren't announcing it officially).
Some huge percentage of that is because many if not most laptops shipping today have wired everything down. You can't even update the Wifi chip in most laptops today, even though the whole reason we put Wifi on a daughtercard in the first place is because we knew the standards were going to have to move...
Meanwhile, I'm typing this from a five year old laptop that I would have happily upgraded by adding more RAM if possible, and I know a lot of people that would be more than happy to do the same, since CPU technology hasn't really been improving in leaps and bounds and neither has laptop design in the past five years.
Let's not be afraid to call it what it is: It's planned obsolescence. They want you to have to buy a new one in 18 months when they ship version 2.
Until last year, I physically removed the default cards in any of my laptops to put a "known good"" Dell ath9k in place. I bought them in bulk, and I may still have some spares
i am now investigsting "modern" alternatives
But, you know, once in 30 years of owning laptops.
My laptop is 4.5 years old now and I'm starting to think about replacing it. It was upgraded the week it was purchased, with a bigger hard disk and 16 gigs of memory (and a US keyboard, but that doesn't count) and that was the last upgrade it had. The next one will probably be never upgraded, as the manufacturer offers the configuration I want (at the time, Dell didn't). I expect it to last about 5 years just like this one.
Would I love to have a faster laptop? Of course I would. Can I justify the cost in terms of productivity gained? No way.
One of the elitebooks I saw recently doesn't even need a screwdriver to open the laptop.
I guess the business Dells are the same?
Yes, making things upgradeable generally adds weight and size to components. Sockets aren't "free", calling it planned obsolescence is absurd. They've been designed to have wired in components for a reason. You may not agree with that reason, say size constraints, but that is the constraints it was designed under. Weighting any decision is: how much will this cost our design? (note, cost here is not just money, its time, size, weight, manufacturing cost, complexity, etc...)
Upgradeability is a feature, if nobody is willing to pay for it, guess what will happen to the feature? Same thing as happened to our own species tails, they became obsolete.
And no ape had its tail cut in the name of evolution. It happened slowly, as older apes were replaced by newer models.
Maybe their next iteration might have replacable gpu cartridges or something? But I can totally see why they wouldn't prioritise this. Not everything companies do is done out of malice.
Because the CPU is not a problem and no noticeable difference in performance from generation to generation, makes no damn sense to replace their laptops.
You get easily get more than 5yr at less cost if you spec for upgrade ability up front (good CPU + motherboard specs) and then do a mid lifecycle ram, storage, etc upgrade. Rolling upgrades can save even more money if done properly because the hardware coming out of use becomes your service parts for the stuff that's getting up there in age.
Regardless, the best solution is whatever fits your specific needs best.
It was an old work machine that I got to take with me when I left that job so it was far overspecced for casual use.. though it feels so much better now.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+...
I may end up staying with High Sierra, but I'd really like to try out the dark mode
Apart from that, no problems at all.
http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/ and the related forum posts were excellent.
I've added RAM and replaced the HD with a SSD on a laptop I've owned since 2005,and would upgraded more chips if it was possible.
If you asked any macbook pro owner if they were willing to spend money to double its RAM or HDD capacity I'm sure you wouldn't get many negative answers.
The price of upgradabilty is a heavier, thicker machine with probably less battery life (because they now squeeze the cells into every nook and cranny).
The ability to upgrade a machine is not a no-cost argument.
If given a blanket question of - ‘would you like to be able to upgrade your laptop?’ I’m sure the answer would be 100% Yes!
But, if you said ‘would you like to be able to upgrade your laptop but it will be half an inch thicker and a pound heavier?’ You’d get quite a different answer.
Based on what I've seen from non-technical friends and family, the standard approach to laptops is to buy a $300 netbook, fill it with crappy browser extensions and malware over a few years, complain that the computer is "too old and slow", throw it out and buy a new one.
It's really not, and it's quite obvious that the baseless assertion that no one wants to upgrade hardware is rather mind-numbingly absurd.
There are businesses dedicated to repair, upgrade and refurbish computers, including laptops. There are businesses dedicated to sell used hardware which offer clients a choice of processors and other components, including different makes and models. It's utterly absurd that we're supposed that this basic need simply vanishes in a specific form factor.
but even that is obviously wrong because the 99.9% he claimed out of thin air.
And it's wasteful - once the GPU is out of date you have to dispose of a perfectly good TB3 enclosure.
Another anti-consumer decision made under the auspices of design and practicality that consumers want.
I cant imagine a single customer has ever asked for a non-upgradable eGPU.
Who cares that 50% of the components in both boxes are functionally identical? Certainly not all the not overly technical folks out there.
The lack of upgradability on the newer machines is a real turn off.
If you don't need macOS or an ultra-elegant thin computer with an incredible screen, you'll probably be happier with a PC from Dell or Lenovo with similar specs and an updated machine every 2 years. But they are neither elegant, nor thin. At least they run Linux very well.
My current personal laptop is 4.5 years old and I am now considering replacing it with a machine with specs similar to the PC I described - non-thin, non-elegant, decent-but-not-incredible screen, a non-bleeding-edge CPU, as much memory as possible, some flash storage and a hard disk and I don't expect to upgrade it in less than 5 years.
But hey, it's thin and light and aluminum, so all is forgiven, right? Don't get me wrong, the MBP is a pretty gorgeous device, but it's pretty hilarious to say that all is good and well just because it's thin and light and aluminum.
The problem is that not everyone has the budget to buy a fully-speced machine at the time of initial purchase. Also, many laptop vendors charge a significant premium to buy such configurations.
Apple partly solves this by simply not even selling the low-speced "base model" that other vendors would advertise. But still, buying low/mid-range now and upgrading later can be significantly more tolerable on the wallet than going-for-broke every major upgrade cycle.
Yes. In some markets Apple offers financing options right on their website. In case of businesses, they can deal directly with their banks.
People who want upgrade-ability aren't wrong for wanting to buck the throw away society we've become.
You can probably still buy one of those mobos and swap it out. Just look on ebay.
This design looks a lot smaller, and I'm sure it is a lot quieter as well. If you don't want those things and do want upgradability there are plenty of other options available already.
You're right, they don't. They ask someone else to do it. So, I'd bet your number is way off.
I've read statistics that most users, business or not, don't update anything, even when the hardware gives them the opportunity.
For businesses it doesn't even make much sense to update: they can just lease or buy new computers and have them as a tax writeoff.
As for most people, they just buy a new PC every 5-6 years (can be 10 years for the less interested in tech), and that's it.
It's a small niche of tinkerers and "power users" (actually power tinkerers -- there are users that do much more important stuff with the computers than them that still don't tinker at all) that ever does upgrade stuff.
Of course that's includes many people in our tech bubble, but you'd be surprised how many programmers don't care for upgrading and tinkering, and just buy a new laptop every so often.
As a programmer myself (CS degree and everything) I know I hate tinkering with hardware with a passion, but I know lots of others that do too. Of course I also know many dev friends and colleagues that do like building custom rigs.
the new mac has a 4TB SSD option for £2800. You can buy a 4TB top of the range samsung SSD for £800.
£2000 profit is a good motivation for sticking stuff down.
https://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-rSSD7101A-4TB-NVMe-Drive/dp...
The samsung SSDs have about 15% the read speed Apple is advertising.
HP EX920: http://www.legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/hp-ex...
Apple: https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/Apple/MacB...
Same AS SSD benchmark.
Now you can argue that since SSD performance increases with size, maybe that's why. Then prove it.
Sounds like a perfect fit for the Apple ecosystem.