im not saying it shouldn't be upgradeable, just that it not being upgradeable doesn't make it non-pro.
True. Even different generations of iMacs and iBooks could be upgraded. Apple even made it easy to flip-up the keyboard to insert RAM, disks, and wireless.
What should worry is that if we can't upgrade RAM and disk or buy at non-Apple pricing. The battery is glued. All together the expected lifetime of the MacBook Pro 2016 is probably reduced from 5 to 3 years. Combined with new pricing and the TCO is then ≈ +80% higher while the environmental impact is +60% compared to previous. All of that to save 2.5 mm!
Nope. The RAM and Hard drive should be the minimally replaceable items. The GPU (MXM board) and CPU are "nice to have" upgradable but for logical reasons involving cooling, they're not likely. Up until SSD's, you wouldn't even think of integrating the hard drive onto the mainboard, because mechanical drives barely last 2 years in a laptop. SSD's push this up to 3 years, but they are not going to last the life of the laptop. All the machines that I have access to that use SSD's haven't had a SSD last longer than 3 years, and when they die, they die terribly, forget recovering data, because the OS will typically be disabled in doing so. This IMO is what that hidden port is for, recovering the SSD data after it dies.
Laptops can be used for 10 years before they are truely useless. People generally hang on to a laptop or desktop for 7 years and get that life by replacing the hard drive after 2-3, and upgrading the ram from the installed base to the maximum.
That said, "Pro" these are not. These at best are Prosumer. They are a far cry from Professional use. They make for nice looking movie props. Functionality-wise even replacing the F-keys is something that is going to get a lot of flack for tone-deafness product designs.
Will people buy it? Of course. But let's not fool ourselves. The reason they sell at all is that Apple products have one of the best build qualities and resale value. If this were Google or Microsoft (neither whom possess any knack for industrial design, only cheap disposable products that they want you to replace every 18 months) it would cost half as much and be only a quarter as capable. I see all these people cooing over the Microsoft Surface Studio Desktop and I'm like .... It's just slightly worse than Wacom's offering, and less stylish.
Apple 's professional products are without capable professional computers.
Apart from its raw power this machine is non-professional from any every conceivable perspective. Apple still does not get it: Industrial design for pros is something that is very much different from industrial design for consumers. If they want to address a pro market, they should better sit down and think very very hard. For starters they might put an iPhone 7 next to a fairphone 2 and try to imagine, what the best of two worlds might look like.
I guess making millions from my laptop's productivity doesn't make me a pro, happy to have this "clarification" buddy. Going to whine about it, with a cry baby president, whining seems pretty much the in thing to do now.
Lot of crap coming from 1` post people, lots and lots.
im not saying it shouldn't be upgradeable, just that it not being upgradeable doesn't make it non-pro.
True. Even different generations of iMacs and iBooks could be upgraded. Apple even made it easy to flip-up the keyboard to insert RAM, disks, and wireless.
What should worry is that if we can't upgrade RAM and disk or buy at non-Apple pricing. The battery is glued. All together the expected lifetime of the MacBook Pro 2016 is probably reduced from 5 to 3 years. Combined with new pricing and the TCO is then ≈ +80% higher while the environmental impact is +60% compared to previous. All of that to save 2.5 mm!
Really? Why? You keep everything you've ever done on your laptop? Iphones last 4-5 years at least so will these new things. My 3GS is 7 year old and still going strong.
And "pros" (i.e., people who use their laptop professionally--to earn money) don't generally keep using a 5 or 10 year old laptop. If a "pro" can use a 5 year old laptop, then frankly they probably never needed a "pro" computer in the first place. Therefore pros are the least likely to care that the various internal components are difficult to repair/replace.
im not saying it shouldn't be upgradeable, just that it not being upgradeable doesn't make it non-pro.
True. Even different generations of iMacs and iBooks could be upgraded. Apple even made it easy to flip-up the keyboard to insert RAM, disks, and wireless.
What should worry is that if we can't upgrade RAM and disk or buy at non-Apple pricing. The battery is glued. All together the expected lifetime of the MacBook Pro 2016 is probably reduced from 5 to 3 years. Combined with new pricing and the TCO is then ≈ +80% higher while the environmental impact is +60% compared to previous. All of that to save 2.5 mm!
Nope. The RAM and Hard drive should be the minimally replaceable items. The GPU (MXM board) and CPU are "nice to have" upgradable but for logical reasons involving cooling, they're not likely. Up until SSD's, you wouldn't even think of integrating the hard drive onto the mainboard, because mechanical drives barely last 2 years in a laptop. SSD's push this up to 3 years, but they are not going to last the life of the laptop. All the machines that I have access to that use SSD's haven't had a SSD last longer than 3 years, and when they die, they die terribly, forget recovering data, because the OS will typically be disabled in doing so. This IMO is what that hidden port is for, recovering the SSD data after it dies.
Laptops can be used for 10 years before they are truely useless. People generally hang on to a laptop or desktop for 7 years and get that life by replacing the hard drive after 2-3, and upgrading the ram from the installed base to the maximum.
That said, "Pro" these are not. These at best are Prosumer. They are a far cry from Professional use. They make for nice looking movie props. Functionality-wise even replacing the F-keys is something that is going to get a lot of flack for tone-deafness product designs.
Will people buy it? Of course. But let's not fool ourselves. The reason they sell at all is that Apple products have one of the best build qualities and resale value. If this were Google or Microsoft (neither whom possess any knack for industrial design, only cheap disposable products that they want you to replace every 18 months) it would cost half as much and be only a quarter as capable. I see all these people cooing over the Microsoft Surface Studio Desktop and I'm like .... It's just slightly worse than Wacom's offering, and less stylish.
Apple 's professional products are without capable professional computers.
Right... So, I guess if someone can't upgrade their drill, or any kind of equipment they use, they're not "pros" huh.... That's fucking laughable.
What were seeing is just the end of the thinkering era. You buy fully integrated finished tools and you use those tools without changing them like well every other pros out there.
If you want hyper specialized custom equipment, Apple's not for you. If it was catering to that public before, it was just incidental, a limitation of the technology of the time.
And "pros" (i.e., people who use their laptop professionally--to earn money) don't generally keep using a 5 or 10 year old laptop. If a "pro" can use a 5 year old laptop, then frankly they probably never needed a "pro" computer in the first place. Therefore pros are the least likely to care that the various internal components are difficult to repair/replace.
I agree, if your computer is a serious tool, spending $500-1000 a year (so $1500-$3000 every 3 years), to keep it up to date is nothing at all. Actually it's less than that because you can selling it after 3 years, probably more ($500-$1500 every 3 years)
Computers now are so ridiculously inexpensive and powerful compared to 20 years (I spend $15K on a desktop in 1987) ago that a pro can change it every 3 years without batting an eye.
That's why the whining can't really be coming from anyone who is really a pro except in their own mind (like a legend in their own mind).
the whining can't really be coming from anyone who is really a pro except in their own mind (like a legend in their own mind).
Seems you look at Pro as being only about single users demanding ultimate perfomance. That is one segment. Corporate is another, and MBP 2016 just doesn't deliver on such boring corporate Pro parameters as Total Cost of Ownership and Environmental impact. Sorry - at this point the orders I see from corporate are for the previous generation. Not due to shipping times and only in part due to initial cost.
With the advent of the cloud, storing more and more off the device, suspect that HD size is as important as it used to be.
Also, curious if it was only my machine, the touch bar got pretty hot, too hot to use really. Anyone else noticing this?
The cloud should be considered a convenience, not a pseudo replacement for local storage. Apple and all the others want us to be cloud dependent so they can sell us more services but most of the planet doesn't have users with the upload speeds that would make cloud computing as fast as local computing. Add to that that ISPs are doing everything they can to bring back data usage plans to replace unlimited plans AND want to charge the likes of Apple, Google etc for providing content that puts a strain on their infrastructure.
the whining can't really be coming from anyone who is really a pro except in their own mind (like a legend in their own mind).
Seems you look at Pro as being only about single users demanding ultimate perfomance. That is one segment. Corporate is another, and MBP 2016 just doesn't deliver on such boring corporate Pro parameters as Total Cost of Ownership and Environmental impact. Sorry - at this point the orders I see from corporate are for the previous generation. Not due to shipping times and only in part due to initial cost.
Corporate deployment typically lags new laptops by months because they are typicllay coupled with a new release of the OS and n ot alll the enterprise tools have been tested with the new OS. Which is why I don't mind my update being in January. I'd likely have to wait that long anyway since I want the new laptop.
We're still not allowed to upgrade to sierra yet.
So what this tells me is that you are full of shit.
Especially since many corporate IT shops dont want to support any machines where warranty has expired. I wrote off nearly a million bucks of EMC hardware that was out of warranty and got new ones via a capex purchase. We excessed it and someone grabbed it for their IRAD project but had to self administer it because IT wouldn't. They have 10,000 other machines to manage.
Macs have been a huge boon for our IT shop. We went from maybe 15-20% macs a decade ago to nearly 50-50 now. That gave them the bandwidth to support our own private cloud infrastructure without increasing staff. All the windows folks kept their jobs but support fewer desktop tickets now and deal with our increased cloud usage.
which means I can deploy new private build and test servers by filling out a web form and within a few mins it's all there waiting for me.
With the advent of the cloud, storing more and more off the device, suspect that HD size is as important as it used to be.
Also, curious if it was only my machine, the touch bar got pretty hot, too hot to use really. Anyone else noticing this?
The cloud should be considered a convenience, not a pseudo replacement for local storage. Apple and all the others want us to be cloud dependent so they can sell us more services but most of the planet doesn't have users with the upload speeds that would make cloud computing as fast as local computing. Add to that that ISPs are doing everything they can to bring back data usage plans to replace unlimited plans AND want to charge the likes of Apple, Google etc for providing content that puts a strain on their infrastructure.
The cloud isn't just Amazon and Apple but your local cloud resources.
Pros with high computing requirements have moved to the cloud because it provides far more computing capability than even a high end workstation. That and large datasets that won't fit on anything short of a raid array are available anywhere you can VPN.
The need for high powered local workstions is less than before because the workflow has changed.
Video pros and creatives still need high powered workstations but even there render farms and large editing bays are more than a single box with shared computational load.
im not saying it shouldn't be upgradeable, just that it not being upgradeable doesn't make it non-pro.
True. Even different generations of iMacs and iBooks could be upgraded. Apple even made it easy to flip-up the keyboard to insert RAM, disks, and wireless.
What should worry is that if we can't upgrade RAM and disk or buy at non-Apple pricing. The battery is glued. All together the expected lifetime of the MacBook Pro 2016 is probably reduced from 5 to 3 years. Combined with new pricing and the TCO is then ≈ +80% higher while the environmental impact is +60% compared to previous. All of that to save 2.5 mm!
Nope. The RAM and Hard drive should be the minimally replaceable items. The GPU (MXM board) and CPU are "nice to have" upgradable but for logical reasons involving cooling, they're not likely. Up until SSD's, you wouldn't even think of integrating the hard drive onto the mainboard, because mechanical drives barely last 2 years in a laptop. SSD's push this up to 3 years, but they are not going to last the life of the laptop. All the machines that I have access to that use SSD's haven't had a SSD last longer than 3 years, and when they die, they die terribly, forget recovering data, because the OS will typically be disabled in doing so. This IMO is what that hidden port is for, recovering the SSD data after it dies.
Laptops can be used for 10 years before they are truely useless. People generally hang on to a laptop or desktop for 7 years and get that life by replacing the hard drive after 2-3, and upgrading the ram from the installed base to the maximum.
That said, "Pro" these are not. These at best are Prosumer. They are a far cry from Professional use. They make for nice looking movie props. Functionality-wise even replacing the F-keys is something that is going to get a lot of flack for tone-deafness product designs.
Will people buy it? Of course. But let's not fool ourselves. The reason they sell at all is that Apple products have one of the best build qualities and resale value. If this were Google or Microsoft (neither whom possess any knack for industrial design, only cheap disposable products that they want you to replace every 18 months) it would cost half as much and be only a quarter as capable. I see all these people cooing over the Microsoft Surface Studio Desktop and I'm like .... It's just slightly worse than Wacom's offering, and less stylish.
Apple 's professional products are without capable professional computers.
What were seeing is just the end of the thinkering era. You buy fully integrated finished tools and you use those tools without changing them like well every other pros out there.
If you want hyper specialized custom equipment, Apple's not for you. If it was catering to that public before, it was just incidental, a limitation of the technology of the time.
No.
"Right... So, I guess if someone can't upgrade their drill, or any kind of equipment they use, they're not "pros" huh.... That's fucking laughable."
Seriously. Your conclusion is laughable. He explained his point of view very clearly. You don't have to share it but to rubbish it with 'that's fucking laughable' is unfair.
Your comparison is frankly stupid.
You say that if you want customised equipment, Apple is not the company, but it IS. That's why you can choose processors, more RAM and SSD.
The poster made it crystal clear that some elements weren't necessary to upgrade. No one is trying to get BTO to better fans for example.
We are not seeing the end of the tinkering era. We are seeing Apple - at this moment in time - remove user upgradeable options. If Apple sells bucketloads of these things they will continue their march onward. If users refuse to buy into the new MBPs and voice their reasons why, it might just change course and begin listening to its users.
This has already happened with the large screen iPhone.
im not saying it shouldn't be upgradeable, just that it not being upgradeable doesn't make it non-pro.
True. Even different generations of iMacs and iBooks could be upgraded. Apple even made it easy to flip-up the keyboard to insert RAM, disks, and wireless.
What should worry is that if we can't upgrade RAM and disk or buy at non-Apple pricing. The battery is glued. All together the expected lifetime of the MacBook Pro 2016 is probably reduced from 5 to 3 years. Combined with new pricing and the TCO is then ≈ +80% higher while the environmental impact is +60% compared to previous. All of that to save 2.5 mm!
Nope. The RAM and Hard drive should be the minimally replaceable items.
Why? What possible use could there be in replacing the RAM? And why not, say, the DAC?
Performing simulations of large complex systems in engineering using such techniques as FEM and FDTD eats up a great deal of computer resources. My experience in engineering and applied physics is that we "tinker" with the internals of computers all the time. And if you are in academia doing cutting edge research (often as a grad student) you often don't have the same financial resources as your colleagues working at commercial companies meaning you want to be able to defer upgrades. Often if you want to use a Mac instead of a PC you have to provide your own.
With the advent of the cloud, storing more and more off the device, suspect that HD size is as important as it used to be.
Also, curious if it was only my machine, the touch bar got pretty hot, too hot to use really. Anyone else noticing this?
The cloud should be considered a convenience, not a pseudo replacement for local storage. Apple and all the others want us to be cloud dependent so they can sell us more services but most of the planet doesn't have users with the upload speeds that would make cloud computing as fast as local computing. Add to that that ISPs are doing everything they can to bring back data usage plans to replace unlimited plans AND want to charge the likes of Apple, Google etc for providing content that puts a strain on their infrastructure.
The cloud isn't just Amazon and Apple but your local cloud resources.
Pros with high computing requirements have moved to the cloud because it provides far more computing capability than even a high end workstation. That and large datasets that won't fit on anything short of a raid array are available anywhere you can VPN.
The need for high powered local workstions is less than before because the workflow has changed.
Video pros and creatives still need high powered workstations but even there render farms and large editing bays are more than a single box with shared computational load.
When you say 'high computing power' what are referring to exactly? There are many pros that don't even have high speed access to basic cloud services like storage much less computational access.
And "pros" (i.e., people who use their laptop professionally--to earn money) don't generally keep using a 5 or 10 year old laptop. If a "pro" can use a 5 year old laptop, then frankly they probably never needed a "pro" computer in the first place. Therefore pros are the least likely to care that the various internal components are difficult to repair/replace.
Here's something else that pros do: they back up their work so the failure of the 'hard drive' (some of the 'concerned pros' round here seem unable to tell the difference') won't be a complete catastrophe.
A rule of thumb: if the work you're doing doesn't need backing up, or if this machine is worth more than the work you're doing with it, then it isn't meant for you.
With the advent of the cloud, storing more and more off the device, suspect that HD size is as important as it used to be.
Also, curious if it was only my machine, the touch bar got pretty hot, too hot to use really. Anyone else noticing this?
The cloud should be considered a convenience, not a pseudo replacement for local storage. Apple and all the others want us to be cloud dependent so they can sell us more services but most of the planet doesn't have users with the upload speeds that would make cloud computing as fast as local computing. Add to that that ISPs are doing everything they can to bring back data usage plans to replace unlimited plans AND want to charge the likes of Apple, Google etc for providing content that puts a strain on their infrastructure.
The cloud isn't just Amazon and Apple but your local cloud resources.
Pros with high computing requirements have moved to the cloud because it provides far more computing capability than even a high end workstation. That and large datasets that won't fit on anything short of a raid array are available anywhere you can VPN.
The need for high powered local workstions is less than before because the workflow has changed.
Video pros and creatives still need high powered workstations but even there render farms and large editing bays are more than a single box with shared computational load.
When you say 'high computing power' what are referring to exactly? There are many pros that don't even have high speed access to basic cloud services like storage much less computational access.
Sorry, but 'many' isn't a measurement. Neither is 'most' and I think 'most' pros have access to reasonable internet speeds and cloud storage.
I think people are just coming up with edge cases to support their argument.
im not saying it shouldn't be upgradeable, just that it not being upgradeable doesn't make it non-pro.
True. Even different generations of iMacs and iBooks could be upgraded. Apple even made it easy to flip-up the keyboard to insert RAM, disks, and wireless.
What should worry is that if we can't upgrade RAM and disk or buy at non-Apple pricing. The battery is glued. All together the expected lifetime of the MacBook Pro 2016 is probably reduced from 5 to 3 years. Combined with new pricing and the TCO is then ≈ +80% higher while the environmental impact is +60% compared to previous. All of that to save 2.5 mm!
Nope. The RAM and Hard drive should be the minimally replaceable items. The GPU (MXM board) and CPU are "nice to have" upgradable but for logical reasons involving cooling, they're not likely. Up until SSD's, you wouldn't even think of integrating the hard drive onto the mainboard, because mechanical drives barely last 2 years in a laptop. SSD's push this up to 3 years, but they are not going to last the life of the laptop. All the machines that I have access to that use SSD's haven't had a SSD last longer than 3 years, and when they die, they die terribly, forget recovering data, because the OS will typically be disabled in doing so. This IMO is what that hidden port is for, recovering the SSD data after it dies.
Laptops can be used for 10 years before they are truely useless. People generally hang on to a laptop or desktop for 7 years and get that life by replacing the hard drive after 2-3, and upgrading the ram from the installed base to the maximum.
That said, "Pro" these are not. These at best are Prosumer. They are a far cry from Professional use. They make for nice looking movie props. Functionality-wise even replacing the F-keys is something that is going to get a lot of flack for tone-deafness product designs.
Will people buy it? Of course. But let's not fool ourselves. The reason they sell at all is that Apple products have one of the best build qualities and resale value. If this were Google or Microsoft (neither whom possess any knack for industrial design, only cheap disposable products that they want you to replace every 18 months) it would cost half as much and be only a quarter as capable. I see all these people cooing over the Microsoft Surface Studio Desktop and I'm like .... It's just slightly worse than Wacom's offering, and less stylish.
Apple 's professional products are without capable professional computers.
Three years for the life of an SSD didn't sound very long to me (for any laptop, not just an Apple laptop) so I thought I’d try and see where this figure came from. Here's what I found:
The short version is that you're wrong, but I did find plenty of articles from knowledgeable tech journals stating that since 2012 (the early days of SSD use in Apple laptops), the lifetime of an SSD has far outstripped the useable lifetime of the actual machine.
Here's a report on real-world torture test carried out in 2014:
As a worst case scenario, the drive in the old Macbook Air would be good for 13 years; it's theoretical maximum was 50 years.
These days, consumer-grade SSDs can write in the order of petabytes of information before they fail, and this is from measurements taken years ago.
The problem is that they all fail differently; some go suddenly, and some degrade gracefully over time, depending on the sophistication of the SSD controller. Given that Apple has some expertise in preserving the life of SSDS through write compression and use of its own custom controller then I reckon that your 'three years' figure is woefully off-mark. Try fifteen years plus.
If you want to complain about something, you'd have a better chance claiming that Apple should allow the SSD to be removed so it can be used in your next laptop.
And if your SSD does fail then it shouldn't be a problem if you take backups.
No doubt someone will now chime in and claim that not all professionals can afford to take backups.
Rayz2016 said: Given that Apple has some expertise in preserving the life of SSDS through write compression and use of its own custom controller then I reckon that your 'three years' figure is woefully off-mark.
Here's one of the more popular companies Apple acquired in their efforts to create better SSDs. I think this new, Apple-designed controller shows just how series Apple is about fast and reliable SSDs.
With the advent of the cloud, storing more and more off the device, suspect that HD size is as important as it used to be.
Also, curious if it was only my machine, the touch bar got pretty hot, too hot to use really. Anyone else noticing this?
The cloud should be considered a convenience, not a pseudo replacement for local storage. Apple and all the others want us to be cloud dependent so they can sell us more services but most of the planet doesn't have users with the upload speeds that would make cloud computing as fast as local computing. Add to that that ISPs are doing everything they can to bring back data usage plans to replace unlimited plans AND want to charge the likes of Apple, Google etc for providing content that puts a strain on their infrastructure.
The cloud isn't just Amazon and Apple but your local cloud resources.
Pros with high computing requirements have moved to the cloud because it provides far more computing capability than even a high end workstation. That and large datasets that won't fit on anything short of a raid array are available anywhere you can VPN.
The need for high powered local workstions is less than before because the workflow has changed.
Video pros and creatives still need high powered workstations but even there render farms and large editing bays are more than a single box with shared computational load.
When you say 'high computing power' what are referring to exactly? There are many pros that don't even have high speed access to basic cloud services like storage much less computational access.
Sorry, but 'many' isn't a measurement. Neither is 'most' and I think 'most' pros have access to reasonable internet speeds and cloud storage.
I think people are just coming up with edge cases to support their argument.
Could you at least answer the question? Most have access to reasonable internet speeds, I agree with, but download, not upload speeds.
Unless you have unlimited data plans over fibre or hybrid fibre, the Cloud is ok for slow storage (where you leave your photos uploading for example) and synchronisation but not for high computing power (whatever that is).
EDIT: I just checked some basic numbers to put 'most' into context. I live in a developed country with around 60 million inhabitants. Latest official data (Jan 2016) puts fibre users at 3.3 million. I think in the US the figure may be around 25% of the population. If the US is like the country where I live, the fibre roll out was centred on the bigger cities with the rest having to wait. Rents in the bigger cities are typically higher than elsewhere. While everybody might desire to have an office in the city, most do not. Thankfully, copper in my town is no longer being maintained and sometime soon EVERYBODY with internet access will be moved over to fibre. That's one of the advantages of towns with reasonably large populations. The providers can't afford to maintain two types of internet access so everybody gets switched over and copper is removed. In the big cities, it is different as most people have access to fibre but choose not to use it for diverse reasons. This is born out by the numbers of registered fibre users against those who have access to it.
Comments
Laptops can be used for 10 years before they are truely useless. People generally hang on to a laptop or desktop for 7 years and get that life by replacing the hard drive after 2-3, and upgrading the ram from the installed base to the maximum.
That said, "Pro" these are not. These at best are Prosumer. They are a far cry from Professional use. They make for nice looking movie props. Functionality-wise even replacing the F-keys is something that is going to get a lot of flack for tone-deafness product designs.
Will people buy it? Of course. But let's not fool ourselves. The reason they sell at all is that Apple products have one of the best build qualities and resale value. If this were Google or Microsoft (neither whom possess any knack for industrial design, only cheap disposable products that they want you to replace every 18 months) it would cost half as much and be only a quarter as capable. I see all these people cooing over the Microsoft Surface Studio Desktop and I'm like .... It's just slightly worse than Wacom's offering, and less stylish.
Apple 's professional products are without capable professional computers.
Going to whine about it, with a cry baby president, whining seems pretty much the in thing to do now.
Lot of crap coming from 1` post people, lots and lots.
Iphones last 4-5 years at least so will these new things. My 3GS is 7 year old and still going strong.
That's fucking laughable.
What were seeing is just the end of the thinkering era. You buy fully integrated finished tools and you use those tools without changing them like well every other pros out there.
If you want hyper specialized custom equipment, Apple's not for you. If it was catering to that public before, it was just incidental, a limitation of the technology of the time.
Actually it's less than that because you can selling it after 3 years, probably more ($500-$1500 every 3 years)
Computers now are so ridiculously inexpensive and powerful compared to 20 years (I spend $15K on a desktop in 1987)
ago that a pro can change it every 3 years without batting an eye.
That's why the whining can't really be coming from anyone who is really a pro except in their own mind (like a legend in their own mind).
We're still not allowed to upgrade to sierra yet.
So what this tells me is that you are full of shit.
Especially since many corporate IT shops dont want to support any machines where warranty has expired. I wrote off nearly a million bucks of EMC hardware that was out of warranty and got new ones via a capex purchase. We excessed it and someone grabbed it for their IRAD project but had to self administer it because IT wouldn't. They have 10,000 other machines to manage.
Macs have been a huge boon for our IT shop. We went from maybe 15-20% macs a decade ago to nearly 50-50 now. That gave them the bandwidth to support our own private cloud infrastructure without increasing staff. All the windows folks kept their jobs but support fewer desktop tickets now and deal with our increased cloud usage.
which means I can deploy new private build and test servers by filling out a web form and within a few mins it's all there waiting for
me.
The cloud isn't just Amazon and Apple but your local cloud resources.
Pros with high computing requirements have moved to the cloud because it provides far more computing capability than even a high end workstation. That and large datasets that won't fit on anything short of a raid array are available anywhere you can VPN.
The need for high powered local workstions is less than before because the workflow has changed.
Video pros and creatives still need high powered workstations but even there render farms and large editing bays are more than a single box with shared computational load.
"Right... So, I guess if someone can't upgrade their drill, or any kind of equipment they use, they're not "pros" huh....
That's fucking laughable."
Seriously. Your conclusion is laughable. He explained his point of view very clearly. You don't have to share it but to rubbish it with 'that's fucking laughable' is unfair.
Your comparison is frankly stupid.
You say that if you want customised equipment, Apple is not the company, but it IS. That's why you can choose processors, more RAM and SSD.
The poster made it crystal clear that some elements weren't necessary to upgrade. No one is trying to get BTO to better fans for example.
We are not seeing the end of the tinkering era. We are seeing Apple - at this moment in time - remove user upgradeable options. If Apple sells bucketloads of these things they will continue their march onward. If users refuse to buy into the new MBPs and voice their reasons why, it might just change course and begin listening to its users.
This has already happened with the large screen iPhone.
Interesting! That does not sound good, or right.
A rule of thumb: if the work you're doing doesn't need backing up, or if this machine is worth more than the work you're doing with it, then it isn't meant for you.
Sorry, but 'many' isn't a measurement. Neither is 'most' and I think 'most' pros have access to reasonable internet speeds and cloud storage.
I think people are just coming up with edge cases to support their argument.
Three years for the life of an SSD didn't sound very long to me (for any laptop, not just an Apple laptop) so I thought I’d try and see where this figure came from. Here's what I found:
The short version is that you're wrong, but I did find plenty of articles from knowledgeable tech journals stating that since 2012 (the early days of SSD use in Apple laptops), the lifetime of an SSD has far outstripped the useable lifetime of the actual machine.
Here's a report on real-world torture test carried out in 2014:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/consumer-grade-ssds-actually-last-a-hell-of-a-long-time/
and another report from the less techy Wired:
https://www.wired.com/2008/01/macbook-air-ssd/
As a worst case scenario, the drive in the old Macbook Air would be good for 13 years; it's theoretical maximum was 50 years.
These days, consumer-grade SSDs can write in the order of petabytes of information before they fail, and this is from measurements taken years ago.
The problem is that they all fail differently; some go suddenly, and some degrade gracefully over time, depending on the sophistication of the SSD controller. Given that Apple has some expertise in preserving the life of SSDS through write compression and use of its own custom controller then I reckon that your 'three years' figure is woefully off-mark. Try fifteen years plus.
If you want to complain about something, you'd have a better chance claiming that Apple should allow the SSD to be removed so it can be used in your next laptop.
And if your SSD does fail then it shouldn't be a problem if you take backups.
No doubt someone will now chime in and claim that not all professionals can afford to take backups.
Unless you have unlimited data plans over fibre or hybrid fibre, the Cloud is ok for slow storage (where you leave your photos uploading for example) and synchronisation but not for high computing power (whatever that is).
EDIT: I just checked some basic numbers to put 'most' into context. I live in a developed country with around 60 million inhabitants. Latest official data (Jan 2016) puts fibre users at 3.3 million. I think in the US the figure may be around 25% of the population. If the US is like the country where I live, the fibre roll out was centred on the bigger cities with the rest having to wait. Rents in the bigger cities are typically higher than elsewhere. While everybody might desire to have an office in the city, most do not. Thankfully, copper in my town is no longer being maintained and sometime soon EVERYBODY with internet access will be moved over to fibre. That's one of the advantages of towns with reasonably large populations. The providers can't afford to maintain two types of internet access so everybody gets switched over and copper is removed. In the big cities, it is different as most people have access to fibre but choose not to use it for diverse reasons. This is born out by the numbers of registered fibre users against those who have access to it.