I am really disappointed by the fake speaker grills. They serve no function but to clutter the experience.
>:x
Yeah, that's a weird, seemingly "unApple" choice. Was there something wrong with the clean lines of the prior model? I can only assume that they wanted shoppers to have a visual clue that the speakers are much better. Bah.
This is the same Apple that made a decorative speaker grille on the bottom of the iPhone 7 and decorative screws on the early plastic MacBooks. The speaker grilles on the 15" unibody MBPs have long been mostly-decorative, as well. Only a small portion of the grille's total area has a speaker behind it. Step 40 in this guide has the view from inside the case of a unibody 15" MBP:
One thing i always wondered with so many components inside, especially the chips, is why Apple cant make such chips themselves but instead buy from so many different manufacturers? If they could make all chips themselves, wouldn't it be possible to combine and cramp down things even more? And use less connections that ought to be altered depending on the manufacturer of the chip itself? Are cables, screws, batteries and everything else, too, bought from various manufacturers? How much of it is actually made from scratch by Apple?
that said, most credit cards will give you an extra year over the 1 year warranty, and even on top of the Apple Care warranty
Check your credit card terms. My platinum cards did away with this extended warranty a few years ago. And before that, the one time I tried to use it, it was ridiculously cumbersome so I didn't.
Teardown Update: Alright, most of these holes are cosmetic, but after yanking out the tweeters in the following step, it's clear that some of these are through-holes that carry sound out of the Mac's enclosure.
Teardown Update: Alright, most of these holes are cosmetic, but after yanking out the tweeters in the following step, it's clear that some of these are through-holes that carry sound out of the Mac's enclosure.
So the speaker holes are not cosmetic only.
Cheers for the update.
It'd be great if Apple could move the speaker holes to the bottom of the Macbook Pro. A bit like the iMac, where the speakers at the bottom of the computer bounce off the soundwaves from the surface of your desk to your ears (indirect sound)? As a bonus, we'd get rid of the cramped speaker holes aesthetic on the 13 inch Macbook Pro.
Fast NVME drives are available now. The only rationales I can think of (excluding profit motive of course) might be tighter component tolerance allowing more precise speed tuning, and perhaps a specific form factor for battery optimization
The 13" non-touchbar model has an SSD that can be removed and the touchbar one doesn't. Both laptops are the same height so it wouldn't be the PCIe connector height that moved them to solder the SSD in. They added an extra fan to the touchbar 13" though, which cut down the space a bit (the 15" had two fans before and there it looks like they increased the battery and every model has a dedicated GPU that are spaced apart better): The non-touchbar 13" model SSD is the large grey rectangle to the right in the above image, the one in the touchbar SSD at the bottom is split apart and the separate chips in grey are around the left speaker. That's why they moved the speakers down to the bottom too.
Apple will have data on how often their SSDs needed to be replaced or upgraded over the 8 years or so they've been using them. I wouldn't expect their SSDs have a very high failure rate and Apple never offered an upgrade service (maybe unofficially) so hardly anyone would be increasing their storage. There seems to be an unused connector, possibly for data recovery if people don't have backups.
iOS devices still work fine after 8 years with soldered storage so the bigger issue is capacity than reliability. This will only be an issue for a few years. I expect Apple's SSDs to be around $0.25/GB in 2020 and Apple will be able to put 512GB in the base models with 2TB upgrades for $400. In the mean-time, people who are constrained for storage can use less expensive external USB-C SSDs for bulk data. This mostly affects video editors who would be using external drives anyway.
Although these products are becoming less and less serviceable/upgradeable, there's also less need to upgrade and service them just like iOS products.
Comments
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Late+2008+and+Early+2009+Upper+Case+Replacement/838
The article states that the holes aren't actually holes--just dimples, so they can't serve a cooling function.
So the speaker holes are not cosmetic only.
It'd be great if Apple could move the speaker holes to the bottom of the Macbook Pro. A bit like the iMac, where the speakers at the bottom of the computer bounce off the soundwaves from the surface of your desk to your ears (indirect sound)? As a bonus, we'd get rid of the cramped speaker holes aesthetic on the 13 inch Macbook Pro.
>:x
The non-touchbar 13" model SSD is the large grey rectangle to the right in the above image, the one in the touchbar SSD at the bottom is split apart and the separate chips in grey are around the left speaker. That's why they moved the speakers down to the bottom too.
Apple will have data on how often their SSDs needed to be replaced or upgraded over the 8 years or so they've been using them. I wouldn't expect their SSDs have a very high failure rate and Apple never offered an upgrade service (maybe unofficially) so hardly anyone would be increasing their storage. There seems to be an unused connector, possibly for data recovery if people don't have backups.
iOS devices still work fine after 8 years with soldered storage so the bigger issue is capacity than reliability. This will only be an issue for a few years. I expect Apple's SSDs to be around $0.25/GB in 2020 and Apple will be able to put 512GB in the base models with 2TB upgrades for $400. In the mean-time, people who are constrained for storage can use less expensive external USB-C SSDs for bulk data. This mostly affects video editors who would be using external drives anyway.
Although these products are becoming less and less serviceable/upgradeable, there's also less need to upgrade and service them just like iOS products.