Jimmy The Lips wrote:

Surely if you buy the support package along with the laptop then this is really a nothing jab at apple.  boohoo, you can't afford support but you can afford a huge ass amount of cash for a spangly piece of tech.... hmmmm.

It's not about being able to afford the care package. It's about Apple claiming to be environmentally friendly, and then glueing all the parts in. It's about not being able to upgrade after you've bought it. It's about not being able to repair it without sending it off to Apple.

Jimmy The Lips wrote:

Its a non issue for me obviously but I may just be fortunate that I can choose my own equipment for work and we have a refresh policy of 3 years which happily coterminates with when the applecare support runs out.

This. I have to buy my own computers. For me, a computer that's going to last me three years is too short a time. I got six years out of my iBook G3 with careful upgrading, and I plan on getting the same amount of time out of my MacBook Pro.

Jimmy The Lips wrote:

The important point is that you should always have a backup of your system using time machine or some other such app or cloud service so that "if" not when your machine braeks you can access everything from the replacement system asap.

Having a back up is a must, yes, but you could avoid having to use your spare machine if you could, I dunno, put a new battery in the current one yourself. Again, it's not about not being able to afford the Apple Care, it's about being able to fix/upgrade my own stuff. This is like buying a car with the bonnet bolted shut and just saying "well, you should have bought the care package and have another car on stand-by". Why not just unbolt the bonnet?

It just seems to me that they've done a lot of stuff for bizarre reasons; I mean, why the hell would you ever glue the RAM in? Why claim environmental friendliness (which Apple do quite a good job on, truth be told) and then glue the glass to the aluminium, making it completely unrecyclable?

As the article I posted said, it comes down to us. Apple are still selling the 'standard' MBPs, we'll just see what people choose: a computer that's locked shut that they'll replace in three years because the care package has run out and can't be opened, or a slightly thicker computer that you can fix yourself. I'll stick with the latter, ta.

I saw these today in the flesh and they are absolutely beautiful. Not for me though, I'm too used to the  size of my Air.

You wouldn't buy a new Ferrari if it needed new pads and discs either.

Blue Swirl wrote:

It's about not being able to upgrade after you've bought it. It's about not being able to repair it without sending it off to Apple.

I've always thought this is sensible corporate policy to an extent.  It protects the brand; the number of older relatives/colleagues/acquaintances I've seen complaining that their "Dell is rubbish," or that "Windows is terrible" because they've taken it to a "mate" to have it fixed and it's not working properly is amazing.  

If Apple make sure that you can't open it up and bugger around with it, or try to repair it and screw it up, then they avoid colloquial stories floating around some areas with people saying "don't get an Apple, so and so did and it broke and then it was never the same" like you can do with other instances of consumer technology.

I can replace pretty much everything I'd need to in any Mac, and if something as major as the screen needed replacing I certainly wouldn't be doing it myself.  I also can't connect the dots between screen glued on and environmentally unfriendly either.

Ultimately they satisfy two different markets. Neither approach is right or wrong, it just depends what you want.

Because OS X is amazing. Because "it just works" and "can be opened up" are not mutually exclusive. (See: the Mac mini. Having the door on the bottom doesn't make it more crash-prone.) Because "user friendly" and "based on open technology" are also not mutually exclusive. (See: Safari (HTML5 and WebKit), OS X (Darwin).)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I fell in love with OS X because it was a) more open than Windows, b) more secure than Windows c) more powerful than Windows and d) more user friendly than Windows and the GNU/Linuxes and BSDs of the world. It was a perfect blend of openness and power, wrapped up in that lovely friendly Aqua UI. OS X proves that 'powerful and open' does not preclude 'user friendly and stable'. Think about it, which OS has a reputation for being clunky to use and crashing a lot? Windows. Which OS is the most proprietary, with the least open components? Windows. Closed = stable or closed = user friendly are both obviously false. If it were true, Windows would be the most user friendly operating system on the planet by a wide margin.

The way Apple are heading now is counter to that. You buy the computer from them, and get all your software either from them or via them off the App Store. Mountain Lion will have Gate Keeper and you just know it'll be on by default. ("It'll make you more secure" is bull crap of the highest order, by the way.) Where as I can open up the bottom of my MacBook Pro and put new hardware in (I've upped the RAM and have a HDD three times bigger than the one it came with), the new RMBP's components are glued down. Only a handful of years ago that would have been laughed at, now people are shrugging their shoulders. I'm never going to fix my own car, but I still wouldn't buy one with the bonnet bolted shut. My Mum is never going to upgrade her Mac mini, but it's nice knowing that I can put a new HDD in for her if something goes wrong.

The way things are heading is frightening to me. Genuinely. If we keep closing up tech like this, it's going to turn around and bite us in the ass. We use these computers to do everything these days; run our social lives, manage our finances, work on documents and play games. We need these things to be as clear and open as possible.

In addition, if we keep going this route, we're going to end up with an entire generation of kids who are mindless consumers of "apps", who have no idea how the things that run their lives work. That is not a good place for us to be. The world needs people like Steve Woz to create the next great thing, and they'll have a much better chance to do that with open tech. In the 21st century when "digital life" is indistinguishable from your day to day life, we cannot afford to give away this much power to one company that has more control over what your devices can do than you do. (And no, before anyone says it, it's not Apple's tech once I've bought it. Once it's in my hands it's mine to do with as I please, within the bounds of morality and legality.)

I'm not saying that Apple need to release everything under the GPL and give it all away for zero cost, I'm not saying that Apple should stop making iPads and shut down the App Stores, I'm just saying that they also don't need to close everything up like they're doing now. They don't need to glue the fucking RAM into the RMBP. They don't need to make it so that iOS devices can only get software from the App Store.

In a world where resources are a major concern, the unfixable, unrecyclable RMBP is a minor disaster. We don't need computers that have redundancy built-in. I mean, what do we use our machines for, most of the time? Visiting webpages and writing emails, that kind of crap. I'm pretty sure I did that no problem on my 486 in 1999. Most of us are walking around with devices many thousands of times more powerful than the machines that got man to the moon in our goddamn pocket. We need to be making computers that lost longer, not shorter.

So, why haven't I got a laptop and put GNU/Linux on it? Because I like Apple tech. I'm just not sure I like Apple any more. We need to be demanding better of the richest company in the world, or we're in for a crappy future.

Microsoft are making better UIs than Apple now.  There, I said it.

Surely nobody can complain about ultra-portables being non-upgradable?  If you made them upgradable, you'd probably do something like double their size.

What do you consider is the "Pro" crowd?  Just curious.

so the only real issue then is memory as the SSD will have upgrade options due it being a replaceable part, albeit by apple.  The max memory that it can hold is 16GB which is limited by the motherboard architecture.  If you buy 16GB today then you are already at the maximum regardless and it doesn't really add a huge cost if you go for the upgraded memory.  I don't imagine that many of the pro crowd would want to fix the laptop themselves seen as in prior macbooks you were limited to what you could fix anyway.   Still not seeing the "big" problem here.

Mod74 wrote:

Related I've heard a lot of complaints that the SSD size is ridiculous if you're working in HD video, and the upgrade costs 3x times the retail cost of what the SSD would be. Which is unfortunate as the rest of the machine seems almost ideally suited to that task.

Sending back to Apple for an upgrade isn't especially attractive if you're paying for the service and through the arse for the part.

I guess if someone else picks up your IT bill you wouldn't care. I'd guess a good proportion of creative folk are independents though.

It's a good chunk out of your income if you need to put a thousand pounds of your income aside every year for new PCs.

Is anyone here using the most recent iMac model as a display for a PS3, 360 or any other HDMI device?  If so, how?  I've been looking at adapters, but they seem to be for older iMacs, or awfully expensive, or not very good.

You'll be able to pipe it in through a. USB/FireWire video capture unit, but I'd imagine the lag would make it pretty annoying for action games.

Or take the opportunity to get more into PC gaming when you're not in front of the TV. Steam on a bootcamped iMac and you've got the best of all worlds.

The basic technology is exactly the same.

Monitors tend to have smaller screens and higher resolutions, TVs the opposite.

You wouldn't enjoy using a computer on a 32" 720p TV screen as it would look fairly blocky, you'd probably get away with a 1080p set.

TVs tend to have motion control processing to smooth out TV type images which is great for TV but shit for gaming. Ideally you want to be able to turn any picture processing off for gaming, most sets allow you to do this but double check.

Monitors tend to have faster response times as low response times would make using the PC (and gaming) feel weird.

Oh, and TVs obviously have tuners in. Monitors don't.

There's no reason why a TV can't be pressed into monitor service, nor why a monitor can't be pressed into TV (via a non aerial* source) service. I think the only really limiting factor between the two is how big or small you want the screen.

*except an external Freeview box of course.