What is it with all the critics crawling out of the woodwork to hate on Apple's gorgeous new 15" MacBook Pro?
I mean seriously, the level of animus directed at this machine is ridiculous. Why?
Because geeks and fanboys can't mess with it. You can't upgrade the RAM or the hard drive flash storage except when you initially buy it. What you purchase is what you have to live with. Memory is soldered to the motherboard (as it is in the MacBook Air family) and the Flash card is currently proprietary (at least until some third party supplier steps up with replacements).
One of the honchos over at iFixit even opined that this was the "least repairable" laptop in the world. Or something.
Boo hoo.
We are rapidly reaching the point where our computing devices are becoming appliances. When was the last time you tore down your refrigerator to repair it yourself? How about your microwave oven?
Exactly.
If you want a light, thin, and very, very portable laptop, there are going to have to be tradeoffs. You can't fit a traditional hard drive and sockets for interchangeable RAM in a device a quarter of an inch thick. This is where Apple is going with their laptop lineup, and frankly I think it's amazing.
It's simple: if you don't like it, don't buy one.
Better yet, why not buy one so you can write a hateful review and then box it back up and give it to me?
It's a gorgeous laptop and I am seriously wanting one to replace my 2008 MacBook Pro. Let me tell you the number of times I've ripped this MacBook Pro down and rebuilt it. Zero.
I opened my first PowerMac to put extra memory in it, and it still was too slow for regular web surfing. So, I bought a used MacBook Pro, which I love, but which is very, very, very HOT on my actual lap. I will continue to use Macs for portables and PCs for desktop work so that I keep myself current on both. But I DO like to get under the hood. I thought you did too? 🙂
E X A C T L Y, Dave.
Do you know how many times I've opened a MacBook to upgrade it or change the configuration? Zero. And both times I've had repair problems, I sent the laptops to Apple where they were covered under AppleCare. With that in mind, are average users really so different from me that this crap makes any difference at all?