Apple : Apple's Retina MacBook Pro: Least fixable notebook ever?

Apple's Retina MacBook Pro: Least fixable notebook ever?
Gary Marshall: The new MacBook Pro: unbelievable, or unforgivable?
13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina screen 'out this year'
Week in Tech: Apple revs up iOS and Macs, bins Ping and Google Maps

Apple's Retina MacBook Pro: Least fixable notebook ever?

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The technology surgeons at iFixit put tools into hands on the new MacBook Pro 2012 with Retina Display, and the results of their teardown were shocking in more ways than one.

Apple's latest MacBook Pro may be a thing of beauty both inside and out, but good luck getting one fixed down the road.

An iFixit teardown of the notebook reveals very little in the way of user-serviceable parts, with RAM soldered to the motherboard and battery packs glued into place.

In fact, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display received a mere one out of 10 on iFixit's Repairability Score, making it the least repairable notebook the company has ever laid their hands (and tools) upon.

A surprise inside

iFixit techs not only got a nice shock while tinkering with the MacBook Pro's sealed 95Wh battery packs, but also discovered that future RAM upgrades will be impossible - so choose wisely when purchasing.

Worse yet, the display assembly is fused together with no outer glass protecting it - an engineering and design marvel to be sure, but one that will require replacing the entire assembly should the display ever fail.

On a more promising note, the solid-state storage may not be upgradeable quite yet, but iFixit notes that it's at least on a separate daughtercard, providing hope that the company may be able to offer an upgrade "in the near future."

Gary Marshall: The new MacBook Pro: unbelievable, or unforgivable?

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Whenever I bought a used car, I'd go crazy with the car stereo. I'd rip out and replace the speakers, cut holes in the parcel shelf to make room for more, stick amps under seats and subwoofers wherever they'd fit.

And then I stopped.

I didn't stop because manufacturers started making their stereos in unique shapes, although that was a pain, and I didn't stop because stereos became part of a wider system, integrated with trip computers and phone kits and other odds and sods. I stopped because once the manufacturers started fitting decent stereos, upgrading was no longer necessary.

I upgraded the stereos because the factory-fit ones were crap. When they were no longer crap, I stopped upgrading them.

I think the new generation MacBook Pro, the one with the retina display, is a bit like that. The standard spec is good enough that you shouldn't need to upgrade, which is just as well, because you can't. Want to upgrade the RAM later on? No can do. Replace the battery? Nope. Repair the trackpad? Uh-uh. According to iFixit, it's "the least repairable laptop we've ever taken apart."

If you're in the business of showing people how to repair or upgrade laptops, as iFixit just happens to be, then of course that's bad news. But is it bad news for the rest of us? Are we, as one iFixit commenter suggests, "building our own prison"?

Locked down

There are two key objections to kit you can't easily upgrade or repair. The first is practical and the second is philosophical.

Practical first. Having a non-removable battery isn't ideal, because batteries have a finite lifespan: my ageing MacBook Pro's battery went all bulgy a year ago, but the laptop itself is doing just fine. Traditional Apple batteries are pricey enough, so I wouldn't fancy paying Apple prices to replace the kind of battery you see in the new MacBook Pro.

It's nice to be able to upgrade the RAM, too, but I'm not sure that's a deal-breaker here: the only time I've had to upgrade laptop RAM is because I under-specced it in the first place to save a few quid. 8GB or 16GB on-board seems future-proof enough for three years. The other thing that's likely to go, the SSD drive, should see third-party options appearing before long.

Those are the practical things. What about the philosophical issues? Apple is removing your freedom to tinker, turning the computer into an appliance whose innards are untouchable by mere mortals. That may be true, but laptops were never the most expandable or upgradeable computers in the first place - and the same lack of user-serviceable/upgradeable parts applies to pretty much everything inside and outside my house: my TV, my set-top-box, my Xbox, my central heating, my tablet, my smartphone, my coffee machine, my car.

Yes, some of those examples are silly, but the car one is probably the closest: the newer, better and more expensive the car, the less likely you'll be spending your weekends crawling underneath it with a tin of Gun Gum and a Haynes book. When the car goes wrong most of us go to the dealer and pay them to fix it, and if it costs too much to fix we take it into the hills and torch the bugger*.

Is the new MacBook Pro the shape of things to come? Maybe, for Apple at least. Should people be worried? Possibly: as a whole bunch of original iPad owners discovered this week with iOS 6, just because it has an Apple logo on it doesn't mean it's future-proof. Is it the end of the world as we know it? Probably not. I think that for most laptop owners, "upgrading" means buying a new one.

* not really**
** better to pay Mad Danny to do it for you***
*** no, not really. Anyway, he's in prison now

13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina screen 'out this year'

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Apple may have decided to kill off its 17-inch MacBook Pro but there's a 13-inch version on the way which sports a Retina screen.

The arrival of WWDC earlier this week brought with it tears from many a website developer, who knew that the arrival of a Retina screen on a MacBook Pro would make websites look more than a little rubbish.

This aside, the arrival of a Retina screen on a MacBook is a nice shift forward in screen technology. Unfortunately it comes at a price with the 15-inch MacBook costing at least £1,799 ($2,199).

There's some hope for those who can't afford this, however, with news that a 13-inch MacBook Pro may be entering the market in October 2012.

Book 'em

This is according to Apple Insider, which notes that 13-inch version will have a powerful Retina display, a 2GHz Ivy Bridge Processor and Intel 4000 HD integrated graphics.

Now, all this sounds a little less painful on the pockets but if a 13-inch MacBook Pro is indeed on the cards then Apple will be encroaching on the MacBook Air 2012's turf, especially given that the Pro has been on something of a diet.

Week in Tech: Apple revs up iOS and Macs, bins Ping and Google Maps

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Apple fans are like Australians: for them, Christmas is something that happens in the summertime. June means WWDC 2012, Apple's annual developers' conference, and it means shiny new kit and exciting new software - and just like the real Christmas, it can also mean a lingering sense of disappointment when you realise that Santa Cook didn't bring everything you asked for.

This year's show was a particularly mixed bunch, providing ammunition for Apple fans and enemies alike.

The WWDC announcement that will affect the most people is iOS 6, the forthcoming upgrade to Apple's mobile OS. Most of the changes are evolutionary, but the big news is that Google Maps is getting the boot: instead, Apple's come up with its own Maps app.

Our fears that Apple's Maps would be a US-centric service that doesn't know Britain exists were set to rest almost immediately when it emerged that the mapping data comes from TomTom, which uses its own rather fine TeleAtlas maps data.

Google Maps isn't the only thing getting the chop: the ill-starred musical social network Ping is going too. That's largely because, with Facebook integration coming to iOS and Twitter integration already built in, Ping's pointless.

While iOS is very good, it's also going to deliver different experiences on different devices, so for example while iOS supports the iPhone 3GS some key features, such as the new Maps app's Flyover view, aren't available. Apple has also said that it won't make iOS available for the original iPad, which means it's effectively mothballing the device after just two years.

Clever people on Twitter say that the reason is the original iPad's comparatively crappy 256MB of on-board RAM, but it's still a shockingly short lifespan for what was a pretty pricey bit of kit.

Retina is great news for everybody

Could the new MacBook Pro have a limited lifespan too? The next-generation MacBook Pro is a genuinely beautiful and groundbreaking computer that looks like an iPad with a keyboard stuck on it. Like the iPad the new generation MacBook Pro has a retina display, and like the iPad you can't really upgrade it: the RAM isn't expandable and the battery isn't removable.

It's pricey, too, with a top-end 2.6GHz model costing £2,299 before you get happy with the options list. Still, you can spec it with 16GB of RAM and a 768GB solid-state drive; add some AppleCare and you're close to cracking £3,500. As commenter Bradavon put it: "The prices are absurd, but so is the spec... these certainly aren't intended to be mass market laptops."

Jeremy Laird says that even if you have no interest in MacBook Pros, what Apple's done is good news for PC buyers: "It was Apple's use of high quality IPS displays in its iPhone and iPad gadgets that had sparked a trend towards better LCD panels for PC monitors and laptop systems.

So, you might assume a similar process could see a resolution war among laptop and PC screen makers." We hope so: compared to retina displays, normal screens look rotten.

FutTv : eCBJ8oS7a7k72

The MacBook Pro wasn't the only kit getting a WWDC upgrade: the Mac Pro got one too, although it's a very small one. As Chris Smith says, "What we really have is a speed increase and very little else." More excitingly, the MacBook Air has been upgraded with Ivy Bridge processors.

The new Macs will get free upgrades to Mountain Lion, the latest version of OS X, which goes on sale in July for a very reasonable £13.99. We're glad it's cheap, though: as Dan Grabham points out, "this is not a mega update to Mac OS X". The changes are mainly worthwhile, however: better iCloud integration, an improved Safari, Twitter and Facebook integration, AirPlay mirroring and a bunch of improvements for the important Chinese market.

Power to you

Is there anything Apple can't do? Well, yes, as it turns out: it can't make an umbrella that boosts your mobile signal. Vodafone can, though: its solar-powered umbrella charges your phone and includes a signal booster for your mobile. They'll be coming to a festival near you this summer.

Yahuui Blog

Friday, June 15, 2012