Low-end Retina MacBook Pro now available with 512GB, 768GB drives - Page 2

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......... **** **** **** ************!!!! OK, I'm SO returning my 2.3GHz/8GB even though it's been 45 DAYS and BTO'ing the 2.6GHz for $100 more......................

 

This is a total departure from Apple usually forcing us to buy the high-end model of any given series (MBP, MBA, iMac) to be able to customization of the entire insides...so this is good news, as we can look forward to every (or most) product line and customize the whole thing ourselves. It's also totally reasonable on the part of Apple to charge $100 for a 300MHz bump in CPU's (2.3GHz to 2.6GHz). Same goes for $200 for 8GB, to go from 8GB to 16GB.

 

However, I'm not paying another $250 for the 2.7GHz (from the 2.6, so $350 to from the 2.3 to 2.7).

 

I'm also not paying another $500 for an additional 256GB Flash (for a total of 512GB Flash), never mind $1,000 to get the full 768GB in Flash.

Except you're not simply buying 8 GB more RAM. If Apple used DIMMs, then you'd have to replace 2x4 GB with 2x 8GB, so you'd spend at least $105 for 16 GB of RAM (keep in mind it's a laptop, not the desktop RAM you quoted). And even then, there'd be no guarantee that it would work - Apple has a history of buying RAM which is of higher spec and more reliable than third party RAM. Many people are willing to pay that level of premium for the security of knowing their RAM will work - and not having to replace it manually.

More importantly, look at the competition. Dell Precision Workstation, for example. $431 to upgrade 2 DIMMs to 8 GB each. Or Dell Latitude - no 16 GB option, but it's $175 to upgrade from 4 GB to 8 GB.

While Apple RAM was very expensive at one time, that's no longer true.

 

 

 

 

I know what ya mean...Lugging 4 pounds around can be hard on yer back. And no, the 13" Retina MBP won't be upgradable either, so expect lots of that proprietary glue. Let's hope Apple won't have to shut down if they lose your business.

 

Absolutely, and I want to reinforce your thrust here with an analogy, which may sound a bit bizarre at first blush, but totally makes one of your (and other rational posters') key points I think.  

 

I was a pre-med student and took "comparative vertebrate anatomy."  We dissected animals from various phyla.  The 55 articulated bones in a codfish skull (which I once had memorized - every single one - and could find and ID on an exam table) - have over eons become the six heavily sutured ("glued together" in this analogy) ones in the human skull.  

 

I can just see "codfish surgeons" complaining about human skulls being so much harder to operate on and how difficult they make it to get at the brain, etc.

 

(and I'm talking to you too, iFixit!)

 

And now think about the "evolution" of PC's from 1977 to today.  Form follows function, the survival of the fittest and an improving tool kit.

 

Deal.

 

 

His statement was slightly misplaced in that Apple seems to care more about soldered NAND than packaged SSDs, but he's not wrong.

 

 

No one else makes these cards. Apple is therefore charging the cheapest of anyone for the retina MacBook Pro's hard drives. They are also leading the charge into this stick-based SSD market and they truly will be driving the price down. By the time everyone else in the industry gets their heads out of their butts and realizes they should be doing this, Apple will have done it for a decade, know how to do it the most efficiently, and be able to provide the best quality in doing it.

 

Though that seems to be the case with nearly everything Apple does.

It's interesting to see this upgrade in the base configuration, but my problem with the new MBP is its weight. Last year I moved to my MBA because I needed a light laptop (I was hurting my back, serious). Yes, the new MBP is lighter than the older one, but it still weighs double a MBA. I'm happy with the performance of my late-2010 MBA, and it's certainly the best purchase I've made these years, but I hope they don't leave the MBA for netbook use in the future, because I want a 2.3 pounds (1 kg) laptop for my work. 

 

Please Apple, either make the MBP lighter, or keep the MBA as a good performing machine for work!

I heard OWC is coming out with ssd upgrades in this form. Not sure when it will be released. I bet others will follow. I really like the rmbp, but my gut says wait until at least the next rev to let the dust settle on this. 

Please.  There will be PC ultrabooks with stick-based SSDs by November.

There's a tradeoff. You can make a computer lighter, but you sacrifice performance and features. In theory, there's almost a continuous spectrum of weights and performances that could be chosen.

However, your "new MBP weighs double and MBA" statement is false. The 15" rMBP is less than twice the weight of an 11" MBA - which is obviously a silly comparison. If you compare it to the 13" MBA, it's only 50% heavier - and even that's not a good comparison because of the screen size. The MBA models are 2.4 and 3 pounds. The MacBook Pro is 4.5 pounds. It's pretty hard to imagine that there's a significant market for something in between those numbers with the performance penalties that would be required.

 

They have them for the MacBook Air already, and I'm certain they'll do the retina Pro, too. But the timeframe is always tricky. To my knowledge, they're also the only ones that offer anything for the Air, so I doubt anyone else will follow when Macs are still just 5% worldwide.

 

If will be's and mights could solve all our plights, then the Courier was released last Christmas.

So lets say you buy the RMBP with the smallest SSD card, 256GB, so you can then buy an after market SSD card from Newegg.

Using your prices — even though your comparison isn't ffair because you choose the cheapest ones you could find — you are looking at $1.60 per GB. now I guess you might be able to sell your old one but that seems doubtful for many reasons and if you do I doubt you'll get a decent price for it. So basically what you're complaining about it that the entry-level price is too low and that Apple — just all other OEMs — is trying to upsell you. The horror!

PS: Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD is $920 reduced to $720 on Newegg. That is $220 more than what Apple charges and it's not even built or marketed for Apple's RMBPs. Just wait until those aftermarket SSD cards hit.

no... all MBP Retina models have always come with 1gb GDDR5 GT 650m GPUs... its the ONLY option and that is NOT changed.  You may be thinking of the classic MBP 2012 15" low end that has a 512mb version... but its always been 1gb on the retina.