For RAM that they are purchasing and installing in volume.

That's a lot of net profit into their pocket, for each unit.

And that's where I have one particular concern: Apple closing down and engorging itself on yet another market segment (upgrades).

You can argue that it's their product, to do with as they please.

But when they start to own entire supply chains (just how "easy" is it going to be for competitors to get retina-class displays, in a timely fashion?), well... you have to start considering the word "monopoly", even if you stick a "quasi" in front of it.

They've done an excellent job with their products, and with their marketing. But there's a reason that "competition" continues to be a mantra throughout the world, one that is held by many factions of differing ideology. Over the long term, total control tends to go bad.

[1] I don't know from where my memory has retained the $200 figure, but looking at Apple's web site, I see that switching from the 8 GB / 256 GB configuration to the 16 GB / 512 GB configuration takes the system price from $2199 to $2799, for a $600 difference.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo...

Amazon has a retail Samsung 830 256 GB at $253 and a Samsung 830 512 GB at $677, for a $424 difference.

The user looks at a storage upgrade as "I get twice as much for X". They don't break it out to $ per GB, and they don't start to compare to low volume wholesale (i.e. NewEgg) component prices.

Automobiles are very similar, especially the higher end you go. Though even for family sedans, the "cost" of a V6 over a four-cylinder in a family sedan isn't several thousand dollars. Even if you include upgrades to the transmission and the rest of the driveline, the raw cost doesn't come close. It's tasty front-end margin, plain and simple, and I can't think of many people who complain about the cost per additional horsepower. The cost to produce 19" wheels over 18" wheels on a Porsche Boxster isn't anywhere near the extra $1560 they charge you, but if you want stiffer sidewalls, it's what it's going to cost straight from Porsche. Trim levels? Trust me, a V12 sedan doesn't cost 50% more than a V8 sedan, regardless of interior upgrades. There's a lot of pure profit built into top-trim levels of models.

You should never price things based solely on how much the inputs cost. If people are willing to pay huge premiums for incremental RAM upgrades, Apple will gladly let them.

You can always stick the cheap ram in your clunky Dell laptop.

  > your *clunky* Dell laptop

If I put it next to my wife's MacBook Pro, well, the only word for it is "clunky". Put a reasonably handsome man next to George Clooney and he'll look clunky, too.

Of course, they have also made it somewhat shamelessly MacBook like in certain respects: large touchpad, calculator-style keyboard...

HP has been working towards making better products through better design. Sony keeps working on creating these crazy, over-styled products, but they are different. Dell seems to be cranking out the same basic thing.

But you do have a choice. Apple still makes the older MBP design with greater upgradeability. The tradeoff, though, is that if you want the sexy screen, you give up the upgrade options.

Lenovo, for example, wanted $1,060 to go from 4GB to 16GB in the ThinkPad X230.

Regardless, I don't think anyone looking at such an expensive notebook to begin with would have a problem paying $200 for more RAM if they think they might need it some day if it means a thinner notebook.

I'm fine with vendors charging way more than the ram is worth, as long as I have the option to purchase my ram somewhere else.

There's no denying that the new MacBook is a very nice machine, it just sucks that they either had to make huge concessions to get the form factor the way it is or they wanted to.

Does anyone know if the Samsung Series 9 allows for user upgradable memory? If so, there is no excuse for Apple.

Dell's XPS 13 Ultrabook appears to have a user replaceable SSD, but not RAM. That Lenovo X230 appears to allow both. Seems other ultrabooks allow one or the other, or none.

While I do like to upgrade things myself (upgraded the RAM and put an SSD in my current 13" Pro) and would prefer notebooks have that option, Apple's targeting an audience that would rather have their notebooks be as thin as possible than have the ability to do something that they'll never care to do. People that don't like that, can just buy something else, in Apple's opinion.

At a guess I'd say that's because they're using matched 8GB sticks, whereas Apple is using 4x 4GB. (Just a guess.)

I also just navigated the labyrinth that is HP.com and looked at pricing on the 15" Envy (15t-3000 series specifically). The base model comes with 6GB and it costs $315 to go to 16GB (8GBx2)[3].

So, Apple's pricing really doesn't seem bad at all.

[1]: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226... [2]: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226... [3]: No direct link possible apparently.

To follow up on the RAM specifications, would the chip count/size for the 16 GB model be equivalent to two 8 GB DIMM's or to one 16 GB DIMM (as they are currently constructed)? (Asking anyone who knows.) I assume the latter, representing higher per-chip density, would reflect significantly higher cost.

P.S. I'm not a fan of small, light gray text on a white background (the specs listing on the Apple product page).

I'd say it looks roughly equivalent to two 8GB DIMMs.

One way Apple has done this is to provide some of the initial capital needed for new plants/technologies. For example, if retooling a plant for new LCD production costs $1 billion, Apple might front 1/2 the money in exchange for 6-18month exclusivity on those panels.

Also, Apple has scale in its favor. They can negotiate better terms and ensure that their quota gets filled first.

Your argument would carry more weight if Apple had a much larger chunk of the market than all others.

For "Retina"-class displays, they absolutely do.

It was easy to see this coming years ago, and it was indeed inexcusable for everyone else to be caught flat-footed. Any fool should have been able to see exactly what was going to happen the minute they laid eyes on a non-Retina iPad.

If a manufacturer could out do the iPhone 4, iPad or MBP screen, they would have. Especially since they are traditionally spec driven.

I think a major reason other manufacturers haven't done this may be that they ship Windows boxes. My logic for that is as follows:

- There are manufacturers that ship numbers of their high-end laptops that are in the same order as the number of MacBook Pro's that Apple ships.

- Apple, by supplying only one form factor, reaps economies of scale.

- That form factor may be suboptimal for some, but it is what they will have to buy if they want to run Mac OS.

- If other manufacturers tried the same, they would lose sales to other parties that do provide machines with different feature sets that also run Windows.

On the other hand, I do not know whether it is that more expensive to have a single high-DPI line crank out multiple sizes of display. If it is not, it all boils down to balls. Other manufacturers may be spec driven, but they do that by buying the best the market has to offer. Apple, on the other hand, is willing (and able) to tell the market what it wants, and put money on the table up-front for it.

http://www.macmyth.com/2012/06/touch-screens-5-440-dpi-at-lg...

But as others noted there are some with comparable displays, I was just unfamiliar with them.

Does this change your point?

For example, a Mass-Market brand, like Casio, may produce some nice Premium products [1], and those products may sell decently. But it's hard for them to target and sell products to people who want "the best", for the simple fact that subconsciously (and sadly) price and quality are mixed, and marketing exploits that fact. It doesn't have to be "the best" technically, but subjectively (perceived value, coolness, status brand and so on).

And of course, one of the main reasons that a product is considered Premium is its exclusivity. That's the problem that Armani faces right now, with its multiple brands targeted at different segments and markets, making their brand equity dilute[2]. Now imagine what would happen if Rolex made a cheaper watch, to compete with Casio.

Before you think I'm comparing in the same terms the competence between Apple/Samsung to Rolex/Casio (that hardly compete each other), I know it's not the best analogy. At least in the smartphone and tablet market, their products overlap. But what I'm saying is that their products are targeted to different segments. Apple is clearly a Premium brand. Samsung is a Mass-Market brand. Apple takes advantage of their brand value perception, and uses products like that screen to preserve and push that brand value forward. Samsung and the others instead, are focusing in the bigger market, people that will not spend half the household's monthly income (or even 2 or 3 full household's monthly income in some countries in Europe, Americas and Asia) in a computer. [3] So, they focus in building products with the best features possible while at the same time, having the lowest possible price. When they make a premium product, they do it to position their brand against other Mass-market Brands (DELL vs ASUS, Samsung vs HTC vs Motorola). Not to compete with a Premium Brand.

If those screens are still expensive to produce in large quantities, Samsung (or any other producing them) has not the need to create a product yet to use them, simply because they sell those screens anyway. And Apple is surely paying a nice premium to keep it that way. When they can start producing those screens at larger quantities, sure, there will be others using them.

But by keeping this strategy, Samsung is able to make money from both markets (premium and mass-market), while Apple is able to keep it's brand equity, in this case, by maintaining the exclusivity of the display. It's a very profitable win-win strategy.

And unless someone has VERY deep pockets to pay the same and more than Apple to cut the deal... (and Apple has lots of cash to avoid this from happening) I doubt that someone can offer those displays right now. Hopefully in a year, it will be easier and we can have more and more displays like this.

Until then... "I doubt it would be that difficult for others to source an equivalent display" Yes, it's that difficult. :)

[1] http://www.watchshop.com/Premium-G-Shock-Watches.html [2] http://www.venturerepublic.com/resources/giorgio_armani_-_th... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Wide_Smartphone_Sale...

I'm seeing 4 GB DDR3 DIMM's at around $23, while 8 GB DIMM prices -- a bit scant in quantity -- appear to average in the low $50's.

So, say $46 versus $110, for a $64 difference? Very approximately. And I didn't look closely at bus speeds -- just very off-the-cuff.

The other thing to consider is that the same applies to repairing technology. Why are we putting resource into catering for the tiny minority of a given product which experience mechanical failures which we can fix?

90% of BlackBerry users will never change the battery on their device. 100% of BlackBerries have a stupid door on the back which allows you to remove the battery and eventually becomes very loose and slides off.

80% of MacBook Retinas (at least) will never have a hardware problem (as long as Apple has finally learned how to correctly apply thermal paste). The ones who do we replace.

The economics of replacing an entire device are finally starting to make sense. That's the really exciting thing about this. It is no longer cheaper for Apple to pay technical people in stores and service centres to cater for failure rates in hardware. It is now cheaper to throw the broken thing away and get a new one, and take a chance on not having two successive one-chance-in-a-million failures for the user.

True, but it was sometimes the only way you could do a hard reboot on those things!

> JAVA MESSAGE ERROR

Which required removing the battery to do a hard reset (which took about 120 seconds).

>We went to lunch afterward, and I remarked to Dennis that easily half the code I was writing in Multics was error recovery code. He said, "We left all that stuff out. If there's an error, we have this routine called panic, and when it is called, the machine crashes, and you holler down the hall, 'Hey, reboot it.'"[0]

[0]http://www.multicians.org/unix.html

Exactly. The distinction between a "device" and a "component" is no longer particularly interesting or important. We're dealing with pieces of the 2001 monolith here, for better or worse.

is it easy to re-use parts from these failed devices?

(I don't buy the anecdotal "Nobody can recycle aluminium with glass pressed into it" line from the article.)

Actually it is! The failure rate for a MacBook Pro was way under 2/10 when I was there during the lifespan of the product.

Apple calculates the lifespan of a product in different terms to the warranty. The warranties differ by country (EMEA & US have different warranties thanks to EU and individual state laws).

You're right that these machines can and will go for five years. My current laptop, a 17" MacBook Pro, has been with me since ~2007. It'll go for another year at least.

Apple will replace these devices when they are in warranty. True. But the concept of a warranty is what is wrong, not the replacement of an entire device.

It's better to have a device which is far less likely to suffer mechanical failure, which happens to require a more expensive repair when it does, than it is to have a device far more likely to suffer mechanical failure but with cheaper repairs (for a few select problems).

If you can't afford a MacBook Pro don't buy one. There are other machines on the market which are highly user-replaceable. I'm going to buy the new Retina, I won't be getting AppleCare, and I bet it lasts just as long if not longer as anything else you buy.

So yeah, I can afford a MacBook Pro. I'm just choosing not to, anymore.

But I'm probably not going back to Linux (where I came from). Honestly, Windows doesn't looks so bad anymore. I admit I don't know the first thing about it, but maybe I'll give it a try.

Integration with tools like git and svn are only through 3rd party solutions, and aren't as polished as one would like.

I could get by with it, but I would prefer not to. However, I'm also not particularly happy with the idea of going back to Linux, and my work still requires a Mac. Thus, stuck on Mac OS X.

How do they come off as sustainable and cool when their are responsible for all this trash production?

How do they come off as sustainable and cool when Greenpeace was protesting in front of Infinite Loop a month ago?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4395572.stm

Greenpeace protesting outside of <random PC manufacturer> is page 5 at best.

When you want to make the 6pm news you go after the guys that gives you the most publicity, rather than the guys that are worse offenders.

So now, I have the option of maxing out the hardware _hoping_ that it will last me many years. That's part of buying into a closed platform _and_ belonging to a niche of consumers.

A large part of their profit margin comes from making only very few models that share commonality in parts. Nobody is screaming for an optical drive either, so I suspect that the old unibody laptops will only be kept around for 1-2 years until demand decreases.

There's bound to be other companies that will cater to that market, but they won't be able to ship OSX on their laptops.

http://blog.macsales.com/9102-secret-firmware-lets-late-08-m...

Looks like this won't fly in the Early 2008 MBP, but you might be able to get 6GB in there (note "Standard RAM"):

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macb...

With the MBPs sold in 2008, all of them support 6GB even though Apple claims only 4GB. Go ahead and try it. If it doesn't work I'll pay for your RAM upgrade.

Processors have barely became faster in the last couple of years. Even a 5 year computer (with some upgrades) is good for doing what 99% of the people do today (internet)

So chances are upgrades today are moot. Unless you're hitting the limits constantly like video editing, compiling software, etc

Funny you should mention that. I will be picking up one of the new MacBook Airs and when mulling over the 1.8 vs 2.0 GHz processors, I realized that my last three notebooks (including the new Air) have each had successively lower clock speeds while posting faster Geekbench scores.

2008 - Aluminum MacBook 2.4 GHz - 3374

2010 - MacBook Air 2.13 GHz - 3475

2012 - MacBook Air 1.8 GHz - 6398

Combined with a more efficient architecture, this helps explain the performance gains.

That's true in the low/mid-range market, but the high end is a different story. A Sandy/Ivy Bridge chip with 4+ cores is ridiculously fast compared to everything else. Meanwhile, today's low-end CPUs are no faster than the mid-market parts of 5 years ago.

The gap between the low and high end of the CPU performance spectrum causes problems for those of us who have to figure out what to target with new products.

If you are going to carry multiple product lines, then why would their features converge? I see no reason to get into the closed vs open debate - this is Apple we're talking about.

But why would they turn the Mac Book pro into a MacBook Air with higher specs? Why not get rid of all the branding distinctions and let the consumer spec out the machine, with a few default configurations for those who don't want to think about specs?

They didn't. You can still get an old-style macbook pro with updated internals. They're offering a new option that looks a lot like a MBP-Air. Doing essentially what you seem to suggest: giving people a choice of a new thing and not taking any old things away.

And if/when most pros demonstrate that they don't care about the modicum of hardware-accessibility in the old-style pro design, Apple will simply be dropping the product that its customers do not prefer. As it always does. As it did with the 17" MBP. A beast that increasingly few Apple customers had any interest in.

You really think Apple will be selling old-style MBPs indefinitely? It seems like the product line is going through a transition, and the old-style MBPs will be the end of the line.

After all -- despite the mini, nano and shuffle -- the iPod classic stubbornly remains. Even after all these years. Not to mention the 13" MBP which seems (without the benefit of sales data) to be fairly pointless.

Apple won't hesitate to risk cannibalizing itself with new products. But they don't have any history of forcing the issue, if the old products still sell.

There are completely different chipsets, ports, batteries etc in a MacBook Air versus a MacBook Pro. Most of which have dependencies on each other. So a user can't just spec out a machine with the exception of very specific components.

Hence why they are branded differently.

The MB pro is almost as thin, has a SSD, integrated battery, an no disk drive and a better screen.

They killed the old Mack Book Line.

That is one of Apple's greatest strengths, and having that strength absolutely allows them to offer configurability.

It does NOT mean a person who wants the ability to upgrade their RAM/Hard Disk from a third party.

- Environment: Gluing glass and aluminum most probably forbid recycling both of them, that's just a waste. - Cost of repairing: While with previous models, any of us could replace some part of his laptops easily (to repair as well as to upgrade), that won't be possible anymore. That means that it will cost tons of money to customers (Apple Care becomes mandatory), and that the ecological impact will be even greater, see 1.

I am currently thinking about changing my current MBP June 2009, and as the author of the article states, I have to make a choice, and that choice will probably participate to drawing the future of laptops.

My biggest concern is the RAM, both because I've had RAM failures before which now becomes a motherboard swap, and because I'd rather max out the RAM later when it's cheap.

CASREP 98032 SUBJ: REQUEST $30K BOARD TO REPLACE 30CENT CAPACITOR.

Yes, Captain, the cost of a day's fuel for a 30 cent capacitor. And we will spend $80,000 to air drop that board in a $5000 box from a $50M airplane into the ocean and recover it in a RHIB at non-zero risk to human life. For a 30 cent capacitor. Thank Raytheon.

I'm concerned about the battery. Those things don't last as long as they are claimed. I have a new one in my late 2008 MacBook pro right now.

I doubt that's an insurmountable technical hurdle. Apple should take the machines back at the Apple store, though, and they should handle the separation.

The Apple stores accept smaller Apple products for recycling like batteries and iPods. I suspect they don't accept the larger items due to local laws on toxic waste management.

So really there isn't any excuse not to recycle your Apple product at EOL if you so desire.

The MBP 2009 that I mention in my previous post has been upgraded twice (RAM and HD). That has allowed me to keep it for three years and in my opinion has justified spending that amount of money in a laptop (2000 euros at that time). I don't know if I would put the same amount if I knew I could not upgrade it.

When the battery dies it will be worthless as a laptop. For a power user that means you are forced to buy a replacement way sooner than you'd want.

Just yet another reason for why it is so obvious that apple does mainstream hardware, the sad part is that people confuse it with quality hardware.

Ha, wouldn't it be great if the batteries were held in place with something like those 3M Command strips, which hold fast until you pull on one edge?

I have a 2 year old 4GB MacBook Pro, and had to upgrade the RAM as I found it swapping too much.

$11 from newegg. Including shipping. Unlikely, however, to be readily available to an inquisitive 5-year-old, who might easily do more damage to some expensive electronics than he meant to, if he could get it open.

Also, many people ignore that most of those crazy looking screw drives also have benefits such as better cam-out resistance.

http://gizmodo.com/373124/kids-are-tearing-apart-the-olpc-la...

Huh. I love my 17" MBP. In fact I bought my third one a year ago... and now I'm particularly glad I did. I'll have to see how many years I can get out of this one... 7 or 8, maybe.

eh I think that comment is missing the real lifecycle of tech. First, it goes to the mac users. People that are willing to pay a large premium for something super stylish that they don't have to screw with. These people don't want to upgrade; that defeats the whole point of paying extra so they don't have to screw with it.

Two to three years down the road, the hardware gets discarded by the 'my bicycle has no flywheel' set and ends up with one of my people. At that point, it matters that we can't upgrade the ram or the disk, as there are going to be dramatically better parts at that point.

Of course, apple doesn't care; I mean, I'm sure apple bears us no ill-will, but apple has no reason to go out of their way to make our lives easier. We're not going to spend that kind of scratch on a laptop.

You see the same thing with electric and hybrid vehicles; Their batteries are out of warranty and will be completely useless around the time that they drop into the price range where I'd consider buying them; and a new battery pack kicks them out of my price range again. But why would Tesla or Toyota care? I'm not going to buy a new car from them.

(of course, like I said, manufacturers of high-end new stuff have no reason to care about 'my people' - so eh, from the manufacturer's standpoint, you are correct, but there is a whole ecosystem of scavengers that will be disappointed by this trend.)

A challenge which is much more easily met when the life of the laptop is limited by design.

Further, if they were offering an upgradable model in addition to the current retina option, in addition to the existing model, they'd both be more expensive than if only one was offered, because the screen supply is constrained, and with the market split, the volumes on the thin/light model would be lower.

Well, the point of the article is that there was a choice between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, and the outcome of that choice resulted in the current evolution. He is saying wouldn’t like that choice made again.