I bought one just last week for those very reasons. I could have gone with a rMBP, but for £150 extra I installed a 960GB SSD and 16GB RAM. It's perfect as a portable studio and live performance tool. Logic Pro & Ableton Live fly on it with the upgrades.
You can get a new nearly 1 TB SSD drive for less than £200 in the UK?
Please post details so that I can buy one too!
It would be hard to get both RAM and SSD for the price mentioned above without a special deal of some kind but ~1TB SSDs can be bought under £200:
Apple charges £640 for the 1TB upgrade over 256GB just now so they are charging £640 for 768GB as 256GB is already included in the base price. The cheap SSDs tend to be TLC drives, Apple uses MLC, which is more reliable and expensive but 1TB MLC is still £300 retail, less than half what Apple is charging just now. Their SSDs are overdue a price drop.
They should be able to get the 128GB 13" MBP down to $1199, 256GB at $1299, 512GB at $1499 and 1TB at $1799, 2TB for $2399. That would be charging about $685 for 1TB MLC, which is $400-500 retail just now.
The old MBP had 500GB HDD at $1199 with 1TB for $50 so $1799 for 1TB would still be a fair bit more expensive but it's fast SSD storage and there's a Retina display.
Had the 17" mbp, was an awesome machine, lasted for years and was upgradable - it's a shame we can't do that anymore.
Upgradability was for storage and RAM. Battery replacements were an option but 3rd party replacement batteries never lasted very long. Apple maxed out the RAM by default in the 15". While SATA storage could be upgraded, it was slow and there are upgrades now for PCIe storage:
Fewer people need to upgrade their machines the more advanced computers get so it's not worth engineering upgrades into the design of the product. The Macbook and iOS products show where things will end up. When components become inexpensive, they will just bundle so much that they are better soldering everything in, including the SSD. When SSD hits $0.10/GB in about 4 years (2TB = $200), people won't bother about upgrades. They will be able to offer 10TB internally for $1000 for high storage needs and 3rd parties can sell small bus-powered pen-drives that replace the bulky RAID boxes that people use now.
I bought one just last week for those very reasons. I could have gone with a rMBP, but for £150 extra I installed a 960GB SSD and 16GB RAM. It's perfect as a portable studio and live performance tool. Logic Pro & Ableton Live fly on it with the upgrades.
You can get a new nearly 1 TB SSD drive for less than £200 in the UK?
Please post details so that I can buy one too!
Yeah, I got very lucky. Brand new 960GB SanDisk SSD listed on eBay for £150, but offered £120 and got it. Then picked up new, unused 16GB RAM for £30 from a private seller who'd bought the wrong RAM for his windows laptop.
I've got an office full of these machines. As in, about 50 of them. Yeah, they're a bit long in the tooth but they are the last machine that's actually upgradable. I can buy a base model, dump 16 gigs RAM and a third-party 480G SSD into it for significantly less than purchasing a different machine new with comparable specs.
I've got an office full of these machines. As in, about 50 of them. Yeah, they're a bit long in the tooth but they are the last machine that's actually upgradable. I can buy a base model, dump 16 gigs RAM and a third-party 480G SSD into it for significantly less than purchasing a different machine new with comparable specs.
Comments
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-Sata-inch-Internal/dp/B00M8ABHVQ (960GB = £172)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Patriot-Torch-960GB-height-Solid/dp/B013HMQ1VO (960GB = £175)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-BX200-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B016JREG6Q (960GB = £188)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ADATA-Premier-SP550-Superior-ASP550SS3-960GM-C/dp/B01ASYTAPI (960GB = £183)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-960GB-Solid-State-Internal/dp/B01AWP7MI0 (960GB = £177)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-inch-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B00P738MUU (1TB = £220)
Apple charges £640 for the 1TB upgrade over 256GB just now so they are charging £640 for 768GB as 256GB is already included in the base price. The cheap SSDs tend to be TLC drives, Apple uses MLC, which is more reliable and expensive but 1TB MLC is still £300 retail, less than half what Apple is charging just now. Their SSDs are overdue a price drop.
They should be able to get the 128GB 13" MBP down to $1199, 256GB at $1299, 512GB at $1499 and 1TB at $1799, 2TB for $2399. That would be charging about $685 for 1TB MLC, which is $400-500 retail just now.
The old MBP had 500GB HDD at $1199 with 1TB for $50 so $1799 for 1TB would still be a fair bit more expensive but it's fast SSD storage and there's a Retina display.
Upgradability was for storage and RAM. Battery replacements were an option but 3rd party replacement batteries never lasted very long. Apple maxed out the RAM by default in the 15". While SATA storage could be upgraded, it was slow and there are upgrades now for PCIe storage:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/macbook-pro-retina-display/2013-2014-2015
Fewer people need to upgrade their machines the more advanced computers get so it's not worth engineering upgrades into the design of the product. The Macbook and iOS products show where things will end up. When components become inexpensive, they will just bundle so much that they are better soldering everything in, including the SSD. When SSD hits $0.10/GB in about 4 years (2TB = $200), people won't bother about upgrades. They will be able to offer 10TB internally for $1000 for high storage needs and 3rd parties can sell small bus-powered pen-drives that replace the bulky RAID boxes that people use now.