I have been using Macs professionally for twenty years—and like many, feel the divide between Apple and its professional users has become intolerable. Specially given the price point Apple is asking for these new models.
I have been embarrassingly close to being a "fan boy" for Apple... and I want nothing more than continue what has been a great relationship. But, for me personally, I just don't know if that is possible any more. That really upsets me to even say, but that goes to show the connection people have had with Apple. It has been/is, a relationship, unlike the Win-box ilk.
People end marriages for a lot less! Watch out, Apple (tongue in cheek).
I need another coffee...
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.
Oh yah? Who? Who are these massive markets wanting a $4000 laptop requiring dongles up the wazoo? This thing is exclusionary to an even more massive market. Microsoft is throwing a party man... wake up! If you can't see that a bunch of millionaires at Apple designed a product for themselves, and not their customers...
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.
I have been using Macs professionally for twenty years—and like many, feel the divide between Apple and its professional users has become intolerable. Specially given the price point Apple is asking for these new models.
I have been embarrassingly close to being a "fan boy" for Apple... and I want nothing more than continue what has been a great relationship. But, for me personally, I just don't know if that is possible any more. That really upsets me to even say, but that goes to show the connection people have had with Apple. It has been/is, a relationship, unlike the Win-box ilk.
People end marriages for a lot less! Watch out, Apple (tongue in cheek).
I need another coffee...
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 get what you are saying sog35, but he (west coaster) dosen't really seem to be a professional user. Mac's work well for (professional) power users who typically flip laptops every couple years. (made even easier due to the MBP's strong resale value) I actually do use both mac laptops and workstations professionally (post house (Color & Compositing)) and I don't have huge issues with non removable drives in notebooks. Professionals make money from their tools, it's easy to cost justify purchasing new ones when you need an upgrade (again, particularly so considering the MacBook pros historically high resale values) You simply buy the tool you need, when for some unforeseen (or predicted) reason it no longer suits you needs, upgrade by selling it and buying the one you currently (and for the near future) need. I really don't understand win fanboys obsession with lack of "upgradeability", you are normally much better off just upgrading the whole unit, it's truly the ultimate "upgrade" (and you get a brand new warranty to boot) Note: However, this strategy works far less well with windows laptops as most of their value quickly evaporates after purchase.
I have been using Macs professionally for twenty years—and like many, feel the divide between Apple and its professional users has become intolerable. Specially given the price point Apple is asking for these new models.
I have been embarrassingly close to being a "fan boy" for Apple... and I want nothing more than continue what has been a great relationship. But, for me personally, I just don't know if that is possible any more. That really upsets me to even say, but that goes to show the connection people have had with Apple. It has been/is, a relationship, unlike the Win-box ilk.
People end marriages for a lot less! Watch out, Apple (tongue in cheek).
I need another coffee...
Sadly people are missing some positives here. Soldered in means a thinner Mac. Soldered in mean more reliable. Soldered in will eventually mean faster machines.
I still don't think people grasp that in the near future even RAM will be built into the processor package. All one has to do is to look at AMD's HBM supported GPU processors to see that there are real benefits. The future (it has always been the future) of hardware is to get smaller and smaller to increase performance and lower power. The days of bit slice machines ant TTL logic is pretty much gone. Instead electrical engineers play with massive SoC solutions, stacked dies and in package support chips.
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.
Non-issue for just about anyone? I doubt it. You shouldn't be trying to speak for almost everyone. A proportionally small number of upgraders will be coming from SSD Macs. It's a question of upgrade cycles. A proportionally high number of those upgraders will opt for the lowest outlay (256GB SSD) because these machines are expensive. That means that many of them will probably be moving to lower capacity machines. We will see if they feel the squeeze sooner rather than later and how they feel about going external.
With 256GB no one will feel any squeeze under normal circumstances. 512 GB may be needed to partition for BootCamp, and that, only if they will store a lot of high end games.
Even if they feel, they will not go immediately external, they will go iCloud first. In this transitional period (from HD to SSD) Apple leverages the relatively small capacity of SSD by offering cloud storage to its customers and integrating its file system with cloud storage. iCloud based Documents and Desktop folders in macOS Sierra work pretty well.
What percentage of MacBook Pro users have ever replaced their hard drive or SSD drive? I'll bet it's 1-2%, if even that.
This is a non-issue. If it means better reliability by removing a known point of failure (albeit rare), and it being the fastest SSD drive speeds anywhere, I'm all for it.
No tears are shed from me. I'm waiting for them to be in the stores so I can see one for myself, and likely purchase one.
Myself and several photographers and other Mac users I know have replaced drives and upgraded RAM on their MacBooks...
Disposable computers are the antithesis of "consumer friendly" or "environmentally friendly", Apple.
I think the 2012-2015 Macbook Retinas are the only prefect laptops Apple ever made.
And yet those perfect laptops are slower, less versatile, and have lesser construction, fewer future-forward features, and a worse display than the better laptops they just released.
Slower, yes. Less versatile, no. Lesser construction? I don't see how this is the case. They are basically the same thing. I would be willing to bet the thicker the model, the tougher it is. Appearance? A draw in my opinion but that is subjective; the space grey is nice but its a laptop, ultimately its function is #1. Except in Apple's book.
Worse display, yes, in terms of brightness and wide color. A push in everything else. Don't forget speakers.
When you need an HDMI at someone's house, school, or work. Better hope you or someone has the dongle. Not to mention USB-A, thunderbolt, and SD-card. Good luck charging your iPhone with the cable from the box. Versatile goes to the 2015 pro retina. No doubt.
What happens when that SSD fails 4 years down the road? Maybe it'll make it to 7-8. Then what? Trash a 2-4K laptop?
Fewer future-forward features? Really starting to sound like an Android fanboy now. The touchbar is nice, likely useful but far from groundbreaking. Especially when you plug it up to a dock and use an external keyboard. It is just good Apple makes an external keyboard with the touchbar...Oh wait..... Re-occurring theme for them lately.
At least the SSD in my 2012 Retina can be replaced. Will be nice when the laptop gets to be some 6-9 years old knowing that I can replace it when it fails. Not sure I will be purchasing another Mac based on the current direction. Before noting that 6-9 is only relevant because a Mac lasts that long; my wifes $500 Dell from 2009 will be 8 years old in 4 months; original everything. It is still kicking, an SSD would make it last 4 more years. That is after I repaired the power supply board because it fell while plugged in. I said, "should have had mag-safe." Which I am glad Apple still uses.......Oh wait....... Idiots dropped that feature too. Saved my laptop some dozen times in college. Lord knows this laptop falling with it plugged in is likely to end that motherboard. At least you can just switch the SSD out....Oh wait.....
I think the 2012-2015 Macbook Retinas are the only prefect laptops Apple ever made. Hopefully they are listening and working on at least adding magsafe back. The transition to USB-C is one I am going to let everyone else handle for 2-3 more years. Apple needs to fix their port situation on their devices, it is a total mess right now. They better push USB-C on everything in 2017.
MagSafe had shortcomings. Apple's backyard is full of MagSafe adapters with broken cables. Since it happens to use Macbooks in very unusual placements, the MagSafe end eventually breaks under continuous stress. Apple has changed the orientation of the plug in recent models but as we know from first Lightning cables, the straight-plug cables break too. And if it breaks, you have to replace the whole adapter, $79. With the new 2/4-port-charging, this unforeseen and annoying issue has been definitively resolved.
Fair point. I have known a few people that it has happened to. Not me but I also don't wrap the cord around the charge line the pop-out hooks seem to suggest. Wrap a cord that tight 100s of times is bound to cause failure. I typically wrap in a circle pattern, loosely. I have two charges, one for home, one for away. Both are in like-new shape except for discoloration on the blocks since they are on the ground. The ability to buy a replacement cable and reuse the block is pretty awesome though. Just wish magsafe was retained. Worse case, I've read there are third party options. The SSD worries me more.
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.
Then go buy something else. Nobody is forcing you to buy a new Mac. Its only a matter of time until other manufacturers follow suit with the rare exceptions.
Why is this always the response from a certain segment of the Mac user base? I like Macs. But when Apple does something like this, I prefer that it be something of genuine benefit if they are going to take capabilities away from me. How is that some radical opinion to hold that warrants a "go buy something else", "take it or leave it" kind of response?
The fanboys just want you out of their club. They want you to shut up because they fear you ruining their club with your opinion being voiced. It's "untouchable" alpha dog wannabe behavior. The same exact crap goes on when sincerely patriotic citizens make valid criticisms of their country and blind nationalists tell them to "love it or leave".
It's the culture of fascism, cults, and gangs. The followers like to think they're going to ride the coattails of the institution toward their own personal success so long as they stay in line with the people they've decided are going to be the inevitable winners.
I didn't know Pro meant removable storage? I wonder how many times someone has actually changed their storage later on?
I have a G4 powerbook for legacy file access & a 2010 mbp 17" both upgraded to SSD & maxed RAM - that has been very helpful (at least to me) especially as the costs of faster components drop, and in the interests of sustainability and extending the use of the embodied energy of such electronics, to assist minimizing the associated mining & environmental footprint...
Be careful caring about sustainability; you're likely to be branded a socialist. (because society is bad and self interest is the ultimate religion)
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.
Non-issue for just about anyone? I doubt it. You shouldn't be trying to speak for almost everyone. A proportionally small number of upgraders will be coming from SSD Macs. It's a question of upgrade cycles. A proportionally high number of those upgraders will opt for the lowest outlay (256GB SSD) because these machines are expensive. That means that many of them will probably be moving to lower capacity machines. We will see if they feel the squeeze sooner rather than later and how they feel about going external.
With 256GB no one will feel any squeeze under normal circumstances. 512 GB may be needed to partition for BootCamp, and that, only if they will store a lot of high end games.
Even if they feel, they will not go immediately external, they will go iCloud first. In this transitional period (from HD to SSD) Apple leverages the relatively small capacity of SSD by offering cloud storage to its customers and integrating its file system with cloud storage. iCloud based Documents and Desktop folders in macOS Sierra work pretty well.
To photographers and musicians with gigabytes of data per project and slow internet access, this is the ridiculous claim of non-content-creators with privileged access to fast internet. Not everyone lives near google fiber and Verizon wet the bed on the fiber optic deals they made with the federal government because they don't like investing in anything anymore, like most huge corporations.
I think the 2012-2015 Macbook Retinas are the only prefect laptops Apple ever made.
And yet those perfect laptops are slower, less versatile, and have lesser construction, fewer future-forward features, and a worse display than the better laptops they just released.
Slower, yes. Less versatile, no. Lesser construction? I don't see how this is the case. They are basically the same thing. I would be willing to bet the thicker the model, the tougher it is. Appearance? A draw in my opinion but that is subjective; the space grey is nice but its a laptop, ultimately its function is #1. Except in Apple's book.
Worse display, yes, in terms of brightness and wide color. A push in everything else. Don't forget speakers.
When you need an HDMI at someone's house, school, or work. Better hope you or someone has the dongle. Not to mention USB-A, thunderbolt, and SD-card. Good luck charging your iPhone with the cable from the box. Versatile goes to the 2015 pro retina. No doubt.
What happens when that SSD fails 4 years down the road? Maybe it'll make it to 7-8. Then what? Trash a 2-4K laptop?
Fewer future-forward features? Really starting to sound like an Android fanboy now. The touchbar is nice, likely useful but far from groundbreaking. Especially when you plug it up to a dock and use an external keyboard. It is just good Apple makes an external keyboard with the touchbar...Oh wait..... Re-occurring theme for them lately.
At least the SSD in my 2012 Retina can be replaced. Will be nice when the laptop gets to be some 6-9 years old knowing that I can replace it when it fails. Not sure I will be purchasing another Mac based on the current direction. Before noting that 6-9 is only relevant because a Mac lasts that long; my wifes $500 Dell from 2009 will be 8 years old in 4 months; original everything. It is still kicking, an SSD would make it last 4 more years. That is after I repaired the power supply board because it fell while plugged in. I said, "should have had mag-safe." Which I am glad Apple still uses.......Oh wait....... Idiots dropped that feature too. Saved my laptop some dozen times in college. Lord knows this laptop falling with it plugged in is likely to end that motherboard. At least you can just switch the SSD out....Oh wait.....
I think the 2012-2015 Macbook Retinas are the only prefect laptops Apple ever made. Hopefully they are listening and working on at least adding magsafe back. The transition to USB-C is one I am going to let everyone else handle for 2-3 more years. Apple needs to fix their port situation on their devices, it is a total mess right now. They better push USB-C on everything in 2017.
MagSafe had shortcomings. Apple's backyard is full of MagSafe adapters with broken cables. Since it happens to use Macbooks in very unusual placements, the MagSafe end eventually breaks under continuous stress. Apple has changed the orientation of the plug in recent models but as we know from first Lightning cables, the straight-plug cables break too. And if it breaks, you have to replace the whole adapter, $79. With the new 2/4-port-charging, this unforeseen and annoying issue has been definitively resolved.
Fair point. I have known a few people that it has happened to. Not me but I also don't wrap the cord around the charge line the pop-out hooks seem to suggest. Wrap a cord that tight 100s of times is bound to cause failure. I typically wrap in a circle pattern, loosely. I have two charges, one for home, one for away. Both are in like-new shape except for discoloration on the blocks since they are on the ground. The ability to buy a replacement cable and reuse the block is pretty awesome though. Just wish magsafe was retained. Worse case, I've read there are third party options. The SSD worries me more.
Ignoring all your other stuff (like appearance, which I never mentioned), why do you think an SSD only lasts 4 years?
I think the 2012-2015 Macbook Retinas are the only prefect laptops Apple ever made.
And yet those perfect laptops are slower, less versatile, and have lesser construction, fewer future-forward features, and a worse display than the better laptops they just
What happens when that SSD fails 4 years down the road? Maybe it'll make it to 7-8. Then what? Trash a 2-4K laptop?
After 7-8 years the law trashes it already. Apple has no obligation to support it anymore after even longer obsolescence periods predicted by California and Turkey.
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.
Non-issue for just about anyone? I doubt it. You shouldn't be trying to speak for almost everyone. A proportionally small number of upgraders will be coming from SSD Macs. It's a question of upgrade cycles. A proportionally high number of those upgraders will opt for the lowest outlay (256GB SSD) because these machines are expensive. That means that many of them will probably be moving to lower capacity machines. We will see if they feel the squeeze sooner rather than later and how they feel about going external.
With 256GB no one will feel any squeeze under normal circumstances. 512 GB may be needed to partition for BootCamp, and that, only if they will store a lot of high end games.
Even if they feel, they will not go immediately external, they will go iCloud first. In this transitional period (from HD to SSD) Apple leverages the relatively small capacity of SSD by offering cloud storage to its customers and integrating its file system with cloud storage. iCloud based Documents and Desktop folders in macOS Sierra work pretty well.
To photographers and musicians with gigabytes of data per project and slow internet access, this is the ridiculous claim of non-content-creators with privileged access to fast internet. Not everyone lives near google fiber and Verizon wet the bed on the fiber optic deals they made with the federal government because they don't like investing in anything anymore, like most huge corporations.
If your Internet is slow then go buy a Thunderbolt SSD for $600 a terabyte. Why would Apple give it to you for free? 128 GB USB-3 flash cartridge is $30. Add USB-C to USB Adapter: +$9...
Apple's internal is NVMExpress over PCIe. That means an internal Thunderbolt SSD. If it is Thunderbolt then it doesn't matter whether it is internal or external. So you moan for $20 worth of an external case?
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 laptops, for that matter. they have a lifespan and once its expired i or they replace it. it's that simple.
Let me counter that with the fact that I have upgraded the internal storage on every MBP that my family has had. As for the lifespan, it is until they fail but some get requalified as secondary machines when we get a new one so a user could have two active machines at once.
There is a healthy aftermarket trade for upgrades to some machines.
Am I right in thinking that, should these soldered on drives suffer some kind of failure, the entire motherboard will need replacing?
you tinkering with your family computers has jack to do with pro users. we don't DIY tinker with our machines in enterprise, we get new machines when the lifespan has ended.
just admit it -- the DIY tinkerer is a fringe case. you don't represent any sort of notable demographic.
this is has been apple's direction since the original Mac. it ain't changing. only the bitching about it is constant.
You mean that where you work you don't upgrade. And what exactly is the lifespan of a machine where you work? If it is two years and the pool gets renewed, I could understand it but if that is the case, perhaps the company should rethink that setup.
When you say it hasn't been Apple's direction since the original Mac, what are you talking about? Until the glue and anorexia arrived, Apple had models that were not only user upgradeable but some even had excellent accessibility. I may be mistaken but there was even a laptop that could have the disk swapped out without removing a single screw.
As I said, users (in this context 'pro' is irrelevant) have and do change disks. It can be for larger capacity replacements or repair, but accessibility is key in both cases. As I also said, there is a healthy aftermarket for such upgrades that supports this notion.
You will find a LOT of pro users upgrading disks precisely to increase the lifespan of their machines (be it as main machines or secondary machines). It isn't just for tinkerers.
2 REASONS YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR NOT BUYING THE NEW MACBOOK PRO
Not being able to add additional RAM or change the drive seems like a really restrictive and mercenary act that frankly I’m surprised the die hard apple users would stand for except that we are all just like sheep being pushed in this direction or that direction by our friendly apple shepherds. They are simply taking advantage of peoples love with all things virtual and I just can’t see it being that important/helpful to users.
WHY I HATE THE TOUCH BAR (and I don’t even have a MacBook Pro) I hate the touch bar and I don't even use it. The truth is I only got an iMac because I wanted to use Logic Pro which I love. I hope they don’t stuff up the interface for that. They appear to be forcing us all to update our apps just to fit in with their touch bar, moving onscreen buttons around, removing them, changing to that darker GUI which frankly hurts my eyes. I tried the new darker interface out on Motion 5 for a couple of hours and nothing was where i expected it to be either which was really frustrating my work flow so I reverted back to the previous version. No doubt I can’t do that forever but I don’t know what to do and need time to think about whether to move away from the Apple OS.
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO What factors will influence me to leave the relatively (until now) happy Apple OS environment I will remain in the Apple world with my iPhone, iPad and but I will not be getting one of their notebooks and if they stuff up Logic Pro for me which I fear they are going to do with the threatened update for that, then I’ll just have to switch to some other 64b DAW that’s compatible with my Komplete Kontrol S61 and various software I use for music production. Changing to a new DAW will be a pain in the neck as I have only used Logic Pro 9 and X after moving up from GarageBand. If I’m no longer using Logic Pro then the next time I have to get a new Desktop machine I might as well go get a high end windows machine and use that and enjoy a lower price for the dame tech.
Apple's internal is NVMExpress over PCIe. That means an internal Thunderbolt SSD. If it is Thunderbolt then it doesn't matter whether it is internal or external. So you moan for $20 worth of an external case?
please tell me where I can buy an external thunderbolt case for $20.
Comments
Who are these massive markets wanting a $4000 laptop requiring dongles up the wazoo?
This thing is exclusionary to an even more massive market.
Microsoft is throwing a party man... wake up!
If you can't see that a bunch of millionaires at Apple designed a product for themselves, and not their customers...
Professionals make money from their tools, it's easy to cost justify purchasing new ones when you need an upgrade (again, particularly so considering the MacBook pros historically high resale values) You simply buy the tool you need, when for some unforeseen (or predicted) reason it no longer suits you needs, upgrade by selling it and buying the one you currently (and for the near future) need.
I really don't understand win fanboys obsession with lack of "upgradeability", you are normally much better off just upgrading the whole unit, it's truly the ultimate "upgrade" (and you get a brand new warranty to boot)
Note: However, this strategy works far less well with windows laptops as most of their value quickly evaporates after purchase.
Even if they feel, they will not go immediately external, they will go iCloud first. In this transitional period (from HD to SSD) Apple leverages the relatively small capacity of SSD by offering cloud storage to its customers and integrating its file system with cloud storage. iCloud based Documents and Desktop folders in macOS Sierra work pretty well.
Disposable computers are the antithesis of "consumer friendly" or "environmentally friendly", Apple.
Slower, yes. Less versatile, no. Lesser construction? I don't see how this is the case. They are basically the same thing. I would be willing to bet the thicker the model, the tougher it is. Appearance? A draw in my opinion but that is subjective; the space grey is nice but its a laptop, ultimately its function is #1. Except in Apple's book.
Worse display, yes, in terms of brightness and wide color. A push in everything else. Don't forget speakers.
When you need an HDMI at someone's house, school, or work. Better hope you or someone has the dongle. Not to mention USB-A, thunderbolt, and SD-card. Good luck charging your iPhone with the cable from the box. Versatile goes to the 2015 pro retina. No doubt.
What happens when that SSD fails 4 years down the road? Maybe it'll make it to 7-8. Then what? Trash a 2-4K laptop?
Fewer future-forward features? Really starting to sound like an Android fanboy now. The touchbar is nice, likely useful but far from groundbreaking. Especially when you plug it up to a dock and use an external keyboard. It is just good Apple makes an external keyboard with the touchbar...Oh wait..... Re-occurring theme for them lately.
Fair point. I have known a few people that it has happened to. Not me but I also don't wrap the cord around the charge line the pop-out hooks seem to suggest. Wrap a cord that tight 100s of times is bound to cause failure. I typically wrap in a circle pattern, loosely. I have two charges, one for home, one for away. Both are in like-new shape except for discoloration on the blocks since they are on the ground. The ability to buy a replacement cable and reuse the block is pretty awesome though. Just wish magsafe was retained. Worse case, I've read there are third party options. The SSD worries me more.
It's the culture of fascism, cults, and gangs. The followers like to think they're going to ride the coattails of the institution toward their own personal success so long as they stay in line with the people they've decided are going to be the inevitable winners.
Apple's internal is NVMExpress over PCIe. That means an internal Thunderbolt SSD. If it is Thunderbolt then it doesn't matter whether it is internal or external. So you moan for $20 worth of an external case?
When you say it hasn't been Apple's direction since the original Mac, what are you talking about? Until the glue and anorexia arrived, Apple had models that were not only user upgradeable but some even had excellent accessibility. I may be mistaken but there was even a laptop that could have the disk swapped out without removing a single screw.
As I said, users (in this context 'pro' is irrelevant) have and do change disks. It can be for larger capacity replacements or repair, but accessibility is key in both cases. As I also said, there is a healthy aftermarket for such upgrades that supports this notion.
You will find a LOT of pro users upgrading disks precisely to increase the lifespan of their machines (be it as main machines or secondary machines). It isn't just for tinkerers.
Not being able to add additional RAM or change the drive seems like a really restrictive and mercenary act that frankly I’m surprised the die hard apple users would stand for except that we are all just like sheep being pushed in this direction or that direction by our friendly apple shepherds. They are simply taking advantage of peoples love with all things virtual and I just can’t see it being that important/helpful to users.
WHY I HATE THE TOUCH BAR (and I don’t even have a MacBook Pro)
I hate the touch bar and I don't even use it. The truth is I only got an iMac because I wanted to use Logic Pro which I love. I hope they don’t stuff up the interface for that. They appear to be forcing us all to update our apps just to fit in with their touch bar, moving onscreen buttons around, removing them, changing to that darker GUI which frankly hurts my eyes. I tried the new darker interface out on Motion 5 for a couple of hours and nothing was where i expected it to be either which was really frustrating my work flow so I reverted back to the previous version. No doubt I can’t do that forever but I don’t know what to do and need time to think about whether to move away from the Apple OS.
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO
What factors will influence me to leave the relatively (until now) happy Apple OS environment I will remain in the Apple world with my iPhone, iPad and but I will not be getting one of their notebooks and if they stuff up Logic Pro for me which I fear they are going to do with the threatened update for that, then I’ll just have to switch to some other 64b DAW that’s compatible with my Komplete Kontrol S61 and various software I use for music production. Changing to a new DAW will be a pain in the neck as I have only used Logic Pro 9 and X after moving up from GarageBand. If I’m no longer using Logic Pro then the next time I have to get a new Desktop machine I might as well go get a high end windows machine and use that and enjoy a lower price for the dame tech.
once all my dev tools run as nice in linux as OS X
these MBPs? no way. never. I'll pick up the last-gen used before I'd pay for such underpowered overpriced stuff.
been using apple stuff for over 30 years, but not much longer. a lot of mac users I know are going ubuntu for laptops / desktops.