I didn't know Pro meant removable storage? I wonder how many times someone has actually changed their storage later on?
Pro means the user knows something about their tools. Over the years, I've upgraded the internal storage (HD/SSD and RAM) many times with my 3 MBPs! Even once with the 2012 retina model, because Apple's 768 GB SSD option was too pricey. I waited and got a 1 TB upgrade for less than the 768 GB upgrade.
A pro's tool is his brain and his experience. I know programmers who never open their computer. Yes, programmers, because they're professional programmers or graphic designers or film editors, not computer technicians.
I think we've seen enough of this fake shock and horror. Apple has been aiming to seal their machines shut for years. This is no surprise to anyone.
I tend to use my laptops for six years before replacing them. My first-gen MBP is being used by my twelve-year-old for homework. A SSD has a limited lifespan. This is (sort-of) okay with a tablet or a phone, but I'm looking at spending over $3,000 on the new MacBook Pro early next year (to replace my early-2011). I'm highly unlikely to do spend that kind of cash on a machine that Apple is now considering disposable when a part wears out.
Even if it was removable, you wouldn't want to replace it because these SSDs have an Apple controller and they run on NVMExpress and not on SATA-3 like the rest of the industry. Apple is the first to implement NVMExpress SSDs. SATA-3 SSDs are limited to 300-400 MB/s. NVMExpress peaks at 2-3 GB/s. If any PC maker launches a laptop with NVMExpress next year, you can bet that it will cost you much more than that $3000 you're willing to spend.
you need to realize Apple is a mass market company.
They sell to MASSIVE MARKETS not niche markets like in the past.
The Macbook Pro is designed for a large chunk of the laptop population. You probably are not part of this segment. Seems like you are in the small niche power user segment. sorry.
I realize that Apple became successful, and avoided becoming defunct because of the professional market—the same market (myself included) that continued to support them when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, and they were worth $9 a share. I feel that they should maintain this relationship and provide a true "professional" line, in that it is serviceable, upgradable and offers appropriate connectivity; the same things any other professional/trades person expects from the equipment they need to run a business.
I liken it to the camera industry that is flooded with consumer cameras, yet continue to offer a "professional" line of cameras to a considerably, if not massively smaller niche power user segment. They can differentiate between consumer, prosumer and professional markets. I feel Apple, of all companies, can service their "pro" market just as adequately.
It seems you fail to realize the frustration stems from equipment being called "Pro", when in fact it falls short of being so. Sorry.
I tend to use my laptops for six years before replacing them. My first-gen MBP is being used by my twelve-year-old for homework. A SSD has a limited lifespan. This is (sort-of) okay with a tablet or a phone, but I'm looking at spending over $3,000 on the new MacBook Pro early next year (to replace my early-2011). I'm highly unlikely to do spend that kind of cash on a machine that Apple is now considering disposable when a part wears out.
Modern SSD drives and the algorithms used to minimize the drive "wearing-out" will match, if not exceed mechanical hard drives. Considering the huge performance and reliability factors of SSD drives compared to mechanical ones, it's an easy decision.
Stop bringing up obsolete news. By the time SSD drives wear out, you won't upgrade the laptop. You'll just buy a new one with whatever current technology it has... admit it, because you know that's right.
I'm going to take a screenshot of Disk Utility's physical drive capacity, and then check every year. Maybe it will go down a little, but I doubt it.
It doesn't work like that The reserve sectors are not shown to the user. You'll always see the same capacity.
Again people vote with your wallets. Bitching on an internet message board does no good.
Oh but it does! Do you think Phil Schiller came out twice in quick succession to 'defend' these machines on a whim?
Nope. It is a direct result of the very vocal backlash these machines have provoked.
If people vote with their wallets too, Apple might even eat some humble pie and react to ease some of the unnecessary issues it has brought on itself and many of its users.
This is devastatingly bad news -- for the few people who upgrade their primary storage regularly, and keep their Pro laptops for 5+ years. And those are the people loudly complaining right now. For the rest of the Pro users who can afford to get the storage they need up front, and can't afford to spend half a day swapping out a SSD and transferring a zillion files and OS in order to save a couple hundred bucks, it really doesn't matter. I have NEVER upgraded my laptop's primary, I use external drives for the things that suck storage like photos/video, and I upgrade my laptop every 3 years because it is my primary means of earning income and my employer usually pays for it anyway.
Stop doing this shit. No one likes it. It's of zero benefit to your customers. We don't care if it allows the laptop to be two microns thinner or a tenth of a gram lighter. Two things should always be user upgradeable: RAM and a hard drive. If the motherboard or some power port is hard to access and replace, so be it. Most people will never touch those things. But if my hard drive craps out or the RAM goes blinky, I should be able to pop open a case, pull the bad part out and snap the good one in.
I love Apple products, but this shit is getting old.
Ug, the news for these MacBook "Pros" just keeps getting worse. While the hardware is no doubt great, these are hardly pro machines. Apple is really losing its way, and most of that blame needs to be laid on Tim Cook. Sadly, I highly doubt anything will change at Apple unless they really start to see profits decline.
Again people vote with your wallets. Bitching on an internet message board does no good.
Oh but it does! Do you think Phil Schiller came out twice in quick succession to 'defend' these machines on a whim?
Nope. It is a direct result of the very vocal backlash these machines have provoked.
If people vote with their wallets too, Apple might even eat some humble pie and react to ease some of the unnecessary issues it has brought on itself and many of its users.
I think for me, after having used one of the new systems with the physical function keys, is that I have a rather profound sense of disappointment with the direction Apple is going with their new products. I think the majority of people look at the computer as a tool and not so much as a toy. Yet so many of the changes Apple has made lately in both hardware and software seem to fall into the "toy" category. The interface standards which use to set them apart from other software manufacturers, for example, have been completely thrown out the window. Hardware-wise I found the new MacBook Pro to be almost as hard to type on as the new MacBooks were last year plus the changes like the "instant on" feature when you open the lid of the computer is not always desirable and a somewhat radical change to the way their computers. It's not a desirable change from a support perspective either.
In the case of the SSD I've done a lot of them over the past couple of years for both myself and my customers and I've been able to keep older Apple equipment in service and save people quite a bit of money in the process. On the pro side of Apple's decision is the fact that their SSDs are faster than the off-the-shelf ones you can buy right now. And I suppose that people will handle the "fixed" amount of storage the same way they handle it on their iPhones and iPads. In my case I have a 16 GB iPhone 6 that I don't really have any problems with in terms of space because I purge the Messages log after a month and I dump the photos from it onto my iMac. Works fine for me. On the downside the fixed storage makes it all the more important to have backups of the internal drive because if something happens to the logic board in the computer then your data is gone, gone, gone. Sensible people do back up their data but a lot of people don't have any backups or they don't back up very often.
I have been a loyal Mac buyer for 20 years but more and more is being taken away. Why is that I can get a fantastic Lenovo Thinkpad with OLED display, a proper keyboard, all the memory I need, a semi matte display that doesn't work like a mirror, for the same price as a MacBook Pro with yesterdays technology and a stupid gimmick touchbar. Apples other hardware offerings are running upgrades in slow motion not even knowing when there'll be another. And Mac OS? For last several iterations nothing has happened only loads of irrelevant features. To me Apple is without direction on the Mac hardware and OS-side.
Stop doing this shit. No one likes it. It's of zero benefit to your customers. We don't care if it allows the laptop to be two microns thinner or a tenth of a gram lighter. Two things should always be user upgradeable: RAM and a hard drive. If the motherboard or some power port is hard to access and replace, so be it. Most people will never touch those things. But if my hard drive craps out or the RAM goes blinky, I should be able to pop open a case, pull the bad part out and snap the good one in.
I love Apple products, but this shit is getting old.
Do you feel the same way for iPhones?
Do you expect iPhones to be self serviced also?
of course not. Apple is looking forward, you are looking back.
Its the same reason why iPhones don't have removable storage or hardrive upgrades.
Tiny handheld electronics, no. They are much harder to work on by their very nature because of the extremely tight fit and tiny parts. But a desktop or laptop? Yes, I do. Like I say, I'm not asking for the entire inside to be user serviceable. But hard drive and RAM upgrades are basic no-brainer stuff. My 66 year-old mother could follow the instructions on a hard drive upgrade and pull it off. It might be a little less annoying if the upgrades to RAM and hard drive capacity weren't so bloody expensive when you do those upgrades on the front end from Apple, though I'd still want to choke someone when the hard drive in my laptop crapped out and I couldn't have it replaced in 20 minutes of my time.
Perhaps you can explain to me what tangible benefit you gain from Apple soldering a hard drive to a motherboard or soldering RAM to the motherboard. Maybe I'm missing something.
I didn't know Pro meant removable storage? I wonder how many times someone has actually changed their storage later on?
pro enterprise software dev here, let me chime in. never -- never is the number of times I've later changed the storage on my MBPs. or any of my client-issued PC laptops, for that matter. they have a lifespan and once its expired i or they replace it. it's that simple.
I tend to use my laptops for six years before replacing them. My first-gen MBP is being used by my twelve-year-old for homework. A SSD has a limited lifespan. This is (sort-of) okay with a tablet or a phone, but I'm looking at spending over $3,000 on the new MacBook Pro early next year (to replace my early-2011). I'm highly unlikely to do spend that kind of cash on a machine that Apple is now considering disposable when a part wears out.
Even if it was removable, you wouldn't want to replace it because these SSDs have an Apple controller and they run on NVMExpress and not on SATA-3 like the rest of the industry. Apple is the first to implement NVMExpress SSDs. SATA-3 SSDs are limited to 300-400 MB/s. NVMExpress peaks at 2-3 GB/s. If any PC maker launches a laptop with NVMExpress next year, you can bet that it will cost you much more than that $3000 you're willing to spend.
FYI, there are currently lots of PC-based laptops that have NVMe drives in them.
You can search this page for "NVMe" to get a list:
I don't understand the whining behind this. If you can spend $1800+ for a laptop, why skim $200 for the storage? Really don't get it!
Because some people can't spend $1800 for a laptop. It might be a stretch for them to spend $1499 for one and they can't afford pricey upgrades from Apple. But they want to remain Apple customers and they buy the best one they can afford. And if they need more storage later, they used to be able to know they could easily snag a larger drive off Amazon or from OWC for a good price and pop it in themselves in minutes.
I didn't know Pro meant removable storage? I wonder how many times someone has actually changed their storage later on?
Pro means the user knows something about their tools. Over the years, I've upgraded the internal storage (HD/SSD and RAM) many times with my 3 MBPs! Even once with the 2012 retina model, because Apple's 768 GB SSD option was too pricey. I waited and got a 1 TB upgrade for less than the 768 GB upgrade.
to me Pro means "i make money with this tool", and in no shop I've ever worked in have we had time to futz around with DIY tinkering on our gear. whenever we outgrow a machine we swap it out and move on w/ our work.
To all of the blow hards that are bent out of shape because you can't upgrade the SSD give me a break. The only reason you want it removable is so you don't have to pay Apple's price for higher amounts of storage. For 99.9% of users this is a non-issue.
Well, that's not entirely true. It would lessen the blow if Apple's prices for these upgrades weren't so out of line with the market for those parts. But there are other issues at play that are more important. Often, people can't afford to jack the specs up on the front end. They may be saving and stretching even to get a superior computer from Apple, but can't max those things out then. So they buy the base or mid-tier model and know that if the need arises later, or after they can save some more money, they can easily upgrade those things themselves. But when you unnecessarily solder a part like a hard drive to the motherboard, you've delivered little to nothing in customer benefit while taking away something significant that was beneficial.
And of course the other issue is if something goes wrong with the drive. Rather than simply paying for a new drive and taking about 20 minutes to swap it out for the bad one, then loading your backup on to the new one, you're forced to either send it off to Apple or hope you have a local repair shop and pay for a pricey repair.
Stop doing this shit. No one likes it. It's of zero benefit to your customers. We don't care if it allows the laptop to be two microns thinner or a tenth of a gram lighter. Two things should always be user upgradeable: RAM and a hard drive. If the motherboard or some power port is hard to access and replace, so be it. Most people will never touch those things. But if my hard drive craps out or the RAM goes blinky, I should be able to pop open a case, pull the bad part out and snap the good one in.
I love Apple products, but this shit is getting old.
Waahhh....
It's a non-issue for just about everyone. The fact that you feel progress means denying you a rarely-used ability is of zero consequence for just about everyone else.
Go cry elsewhere. This is a solid update, removes a known failure-point, and uses the fastest SSD drives around. Get lost.
Comments
I think we've seen enough of this fake shock and horror. Apple has been aiming to seal their machines shut for years. This is no surprise to anyone.
I wonder how long that will last. That sounds like a lot heat in a small case.
They wear out only after several hundreds of terabytes of writes. See
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead
Even if it was removable, you wouldn't want to replace it because these SSDs have an Apple controller and they run on NVMExpress and not on SATA-3 like the rest of the industry. Apple is the first to implement NVMExpress SSDs. SATA-3 SSDs are limited to 300-400 MB/s. NVMExpress peaks at 2-3 GB/s. If any PC maker launches a laptop with NVMExpress next year, you can bet that it will cost you much more than that $3000 you're willing to spend.
I liken it to the camera industry that is flooded with consumer cameras, yet continue to offer a "professional" line of cameras to a considerably, if not massively smaller niche power user segment. They can differentiate between consumer, prosumer and professional markets. I feel Apple, of all companies, can service their "pro" market just as adequately.
It seems you fail to realize the frustration stems from equipment being called "Pro", when in fact it falls short of being so. Sorry.
Nope. It is a direct result of the very vocal backlash these machines have provoked.
If people vote with their wallets too, Apple might even eat some humble pie and react to ease some of the unnecessary issues it has brought on itself and many of its users.
I don't care about the soldered on SSD...
Stop doing this shit. No one likes it. It's of zero benefit to your customers. We don't care if it allows the laptop to be two microns thinner or a tenth of a gram lighter. Two things should always be user upgradeable: RAM and a hard drive. If the motherboard or some power port is hard to access and replace, so be it. Most people will never touch those things. But if my hard drive craps out or the RAM goes blinky, I should be able to pop open a case, pull the bad part out and snap the good one in.
I love Apple products, but this shit is getting old.
titantiger doesn't speak for me.
I love Apple forums, but this shit is getting old.
In the case of the SSD I've done a lot of them over the past couple of years for both myself and my customers and I've been able to keep older Apple equipment in service and save people quite a bit of money in the process. On the pro side of Apple's decision is the fact that their SSDs are faster than the off-the-shelf ones you can buy right now. And I suppose that people will handle the "fixed" amount of storage the same way they handle it on their iPhones and iPads. In my case I have a 16 GB iPhone 6 that I don't really have any problems with in terms of space because I purge the Messages log after a month and I dump the photos from it onto my iMac. Works fine for me. On the downside the fixed storage makes it all the more important to have backups of the internal drive because if something happens to the logic board in the computer then your data is gone, gone, gone. Sensible people do back up their data but a lot of people don't have any backups or they don't back up very often.
Perhaps you can explain to me what tangible benefit you gain from Apple soldering a hard drive to a motherboard or soldering RAM to the motherboard. Maybe I'm missing something.
You can search this page for "NVMe" to get a list:
http://laptopmedia.com/laptop-m-2-ngff-ssd-compatibility-list/
to me Pro means "i make money with this tool", and in no shop I've ever worked in have we had time to futz around with DIY tinkering on our gear. whenever we outgrow a machine we swap it out and move on w/ our work.
tinkering is for enthusiasts.
And of course the other issue is if something goes wrong with the drive. Rather than simply paying for a new drive and taking about 20 minutes to swap it out for the bad one, then loading your backup on to the new one, you're forced to either send it off to Apple or hope you have a local repair shop and pay for a pricey repair.
It's a non-issue for just about everyone. The fact that you feel progress means denying you a rarely-used ability is of zero consequence for just about everyone else.