131–140 of 353 posts
It says that we value our time, and have other things we wish to do with our time than spend it upgrading a computer.
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I've maxed out the ram, added an SSD _and_ added the biggest SATA drive I could find and fit it in the DVD tray using an adapter from iFixit. My laptop is from 2007 and it feels like a speed demon with the SSD and still can store all my media. So now, I have the option of maxing out the hardware _hoping_ that it will last me many years. That's part of buying into a closed platform _and_ belonging to a niche of consum…
As someone who keeps and upgrades, I appreciate what you are saying. Is the profitably addressable market of keeper-upgraders large enough to justify laptops made larger by interconnects?
A large part of their profit margin comes from making only very few models that share commonality in parts. Nobody is screaming for an optical drive either, so I suspect that the old unibody laptops will only be kept around for 1-2 years until demand decreases.
There's bound to be other companies that will cater to that market, but they won't be able to ship OSX on their laptops.
As long as other OEMs and other industry leaders don't follow Apple's lead on this, I'm fine. I won't need a retina display in the near future unless Visual Studio or vim suddenly require it. (and I really don't see that happpening -ever)
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Off the top of my head (and so, perhaps wrong), I seem to recall the amount Apple is charging for going from 8 GB to 16 GB to be on the order of US$200. [1] For RAM that they are purchasing and installing in volume. That's a lot of net profit into their pocket, for each unit. And that's where I have one particular concern: Apple closing down and engorging itself on yet another market segment (upgrades). You can argue…
Many of Apple's suppliers are also competitors. Samsung, for example, supplies a lot of iPhone parts while also selling iPhone competitors. I doubt it would be that difficult for others to source an equivalent display, if they're willing to pay an equivalent price,
I don't get this "less options is better" vibe. Applying this logic the best thing is having just one option, isn't it? The fact that Apple reduce costs and their customers are always happy doesn't make it a good engineering solution IMHO.
then you dismiss it as crazy talk.
of course the easiest engineering choice is not to make choices - let the consumer choose. just give them long, long lists of component choices. worked for dell, right? right??
That doesn't require as many/any fundamental engineering choices to be made.
It also doesn't get you Apple's brand or customers. If you let me put my own laptop together from whatever components I wanted - where is "you" in the equation anyway?
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This is the crux of the entire issue, crystalized perfectly. If you are going to carry multiple product lines, then why would their features converge? I see no reason to get into the closed vs open debate - this is Apple we're talking about. But why would they turn the Mac Book pro into a MacBook Air with higher specs? Why not get rid of all the branding distinctions and let the consumer spec out the machine, with a…
What you are talking about makes absolutely no sense. There are completely different chipsets, ports, batteries etc in a MacBook Air versus a MacBook Pro. Most of which have dependencies on each other. So a user can't just spec out a machine with the exception of very specific components. Hence why they are branded differently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off the top of my head (and so, perhaps wrong), I seem to recall the amount Apple is charging for going from 8 GB to 16 GB to be on the order of US$200. [1] For RAM that they are purchasing and installing in volume. That's a lot of net profit into their pocket, for each unit. And that's where I have one particular concern: Apple closing down and engorging itself on yet another market segment (upgrades). You can argue…
The upgraded configuration has a faster core i7 processor and 512GB SSD, but still 8GB RAM. Bumping RAM to 16GB is another $200.
To follow up on the RAM specifications, would the chip count/size for the 16 GB model be equivalent to two 8 GB DIMM's or to one 16 GB DIMM (as they are currently constructed)? (Asking anyone who knows.) I assume the latter, representing higher per-chip density, would reflect significantly higher cost.
P.S. I'm not a fan of small, light gray text on a white background (the specs listing on the Apple product page).