It's super weird to see this phrased as "courage". I can understand the desiderata--"I want a user-servicable laptop" is entirely a reasonable position--but framing this narrative as "courageous" is bizarre. It's all a mix of branding and utility.

I'm pretty sure they're referencing Apple saying it took "courage" to remove the iPhone's headphone jack.

And for my generation: the courage to ditch CD-ROM drives!

If anything, Apple's environmental impact and their advertising around it is a staggeringly courageous amount of bullshit considering how hard they make it to service, upgrade, and repurpose old devices.

I use my Apple devices for a substantially longer time than the alternative, so I would say I’ve probably consumed less.

They generally have a much better resale value compared to other brands too. People are still buying old macs on ebay.

I just listed my old mac on eBay yesterday. It's from 2015. Absolutely would not bother with any other laptop.

"Courage", as well as "A sense of pride and accomplishment" means different things now, because some presentations have given those words new life.

In the case of "Courage", Apple branded their decision to remove the headphone jack as "courageous".

"A sense of pride and accomplishment" is from the Battlefront video games, when marketers were talking about some features that either cost hundreds-of-dollars, or literally hundreds of hours of gameplay to unlock.

What is the new meaning of the word "courage" then? I presume it just means a decision other than the "safe" option. It's a bit melodramatic, perhaps, but not really a new definition. From an individual perspective, someone may have felt they were sticking their necks out and were in danger of hurting their career if the decision led to backlash and a reversal.

(Talking about the audio jack change, no idea how making easy-to-maintenance parts is not the safe choice).

For one, courage is the mean between cowardice and recklessness. I.e., the pursuit of a good where the risk is rationally justifiable in proportion to the good.

Can't comment on whether the decision makers were being courageous or not in any way. Not sure any of us could.

AFAIK, companies "having courage" has been a meme for a few years after Apple said it took great courage (or similar) to remove the headphone jack.

I was actually considering it a lack of courage: that Apple is so insecure and concerned with its own lack of or zero innovation in last decade or so that it forces its customers to keep buying costly new devices and keep getting costly repairs by means like making devices unrepairable (e.g. literally using a new pin configuration in every other MacBook SSD which are non standard to start with), making devices breakable (glass backs?) etc.

Compared to the pricetag of Macbooks, $1000 is a great deal, no?

The $999 Air will outperform this most likely. Build quality will be similar

Yeah, the M1 will kill whatever CPU they'll put in this, I wish they had also an ARM version.

I think MS has ARM based Surface laptops.

It's just that they're a joke compared to the M1.

They have AMD options, not just Intel.

Really hoping that Jony Ive leaving will have a positive impact in regards to serviceability. Hopefully the blowback for their obsession with thinness was due to Ive.

> At least Microsoft has courage.

I see what you did there: https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12838024/apple-iphone-7-pl...

>At least Microsoft has courage.

Is this the same Microsoft whose original Surface Laptop got the lowest repairability score that iFixit has ever given?

>According to iFixit, the Surface Laptop isn’t repairable at all. In fact, it got a 0 out of 10 for repairability and was labeled a “glue-filled monstrosity.” Ouch. That’s never happened before. The lowest scores previously were a 1 out of 10 for all previous iterations of the Surface Pro

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/251046-ifixit-labels-s...

Are you kidding me? SSD?

In 2012, 4-5 days after the purchase of my first and last MacBook Air, they gave me a quote that was half the price of the new MBA when a key cap just popped out. I literally was using it and it popped out.

Their reasoning: physical damage + (this is the kicker) in Air there’s no provision to repair the key or key cap, entire lower board/chassis needs to be replaced.

Yes just a key cap! I shouted to customer support. It was replaced. I decided I am not paying for another fruit company laptop. (In their defence they tried to pull this off in a country with pretty much no or no accessible consumer protection)

I'm having a hard time believing that. The 2012 Air keyboard is a normal scissor keyboard, there's only the keycap and the scissor plastic thingy beneath it, you can literally repair it with a bit of superglue if you're lucky.

Was it Apple who told you this? Or a 3rd party service center? A reseller? What country did they try to pull this off in?

Soldering "everything" is not specific to Apple.

But boy, the crowd here loves to harp on it though.