Reply to: WWDC - Paging all fanbois (and Cojak)

[Sysman]

They've also glued the battery in so its difficult to get out without blowing yourself up in the process and made the display an integrated part of the lid so it can't be replaced individually, needs the whole unit along with the bluetooth and whatever other bits and bobs are in there replacing.

Bit naughty as they've effectively made the AppleCare package into a 'must have' rather than a 'nice to have'. You'd be stupid not to get it with that model so Apple should subsidise it if they make the kit unfixable as its few hundred quid extra to get that.

Yep. AppleCare definitely needs to be added to the budget. I long ago decided that AppleCare was a good idea for laptops after a mate had his screen pack in.

I'm no longer in the UK so this doesn't affect me, but is the cost of AppleCare allowable in pushing your purchase price over GBP 2K for VAT purposes? It might help someone out there...

[doodab]

That's consumer electronics for you. I suspect a few of their competitors (sony particularly) will go the same way, and the average consumer won't give a toss.

The rest of us will buy thinkpads

[eek]

Yep, just discovered that.

I must say that I deliberately got mine in March and I don't regret that decision.

The New MacBook Pro: Unfixable, Unhackable, Untenable | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Don't go near an apple store then. The retina screen is a thing of beauty is incredibly tempting.

As for the story above given three years apple care who cares how repairable it is. If anything goes wrong you can go into a store and they'll fix it. And after three years its written off so you can get another one.

[bobspud]

Yep, just discovered that.

I must say that I deliberately got mine in March and I don't regret that decision.

The New MacBook Pro: Unfixable, Unhackable, Untenable | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

I think for his reason, the 2011-12 MBP is going to be a future classic

[cojak]

Yep, just discovered that.

I must say that I deliberately got mine in March and I don't regret that decision.

The New MacBook Pro: Unfixable, Unhackable, Untenable | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

[Durbs]

A developer I know has put his buying decision on hold because of that. He doesn't need the full compliment of RAM right now, but expects to in a year or two. He might as well wait until he really needs it.

They've also glued the battery in so its difficult to get out without blowing yourself up in the process and made the display an integrated part of the lid so it can't be replaced individually, needs the whole unit along with the bluetooth and whatever other bits and bobs are in there replacing.

Bit naughty as they've effectively made the AppleCare package into a 'must have' rather than a 'nice to have'. You'd be stupid not to get it with that model so Apple should subsidise it if they make the kit unfixable as its few hundred quid extra to get that.

[Sysman]

The fact the ram is soldered to the logic board and the SSD is non-standard is a big turn off for me on the new retina MBP. Thats not on when you're paying so much for a bit of kit.

A developer I know has put his buying decision on hold because of that. He doesn't need the full compliment of RAM right now, but expects to in a year or two. He might as well wait until he really needs it.

[Durbs]

The fact the ram is soldered to the logic board and the SSD is non-standard is a big turn off for me on the new retina MBP. Thats not on when you're paying so much for a bit of kit.

I'd probably have one if I could purchase the base 8GB model with the smallest SSD and then upgrade 12 months down the line when big solid state kit is cheap as chips. Appreciate they did it to keep the svelte form but i'd much rather have an extra mm here and there and be able to upgrade the thing I've splashed £lots on.

Hopefully they'll sort that for the next incarnation, at least the ram anyway.

[NickFitz]

That was about 20 years ago

And a completely different operating system

In fact, the SE was discontinued in 1991. Presumably the tools in question were MPW; I never used it myself (I used an OO Forth for Mac development back then) but, from Wikipedia's description, it doesn't sound any worse, or better, than the Microsoft tools I used for MS-DOS development (MASM and CodeView).

[Bunk]

I hope its improved since the last time I used their development environment boy was it poor.







Granted this was in the days of the Mac SE but even so.

That was about 20 years ago

[eek]

WHS.

It's a different model. Apple is a hardware manufacturer, and Microsoft is a software manufacturer.

Apple also chucks in a full development environment with OS X and has always done so. Once you start using that you might want to upgrade to a beefier system, and if you produce anything saleable as a result you will automatically need to keep up with latest releases, buying newer hardware/extra gadgets along the way.

I hope its improved since the last time I used their development environment boy was it poor.







Granted this was in the days of the Mac SE but even so.

[Sysman]

It applies equally well to older machines, because you have already paid the $500 apple premium for those and they can afford to give you the upgrades for next to nothing as well. Even with you paying through the nose for a couple of windows updates during the life of a machine MS will make less per PC than apple do. It's a different business model.

Plus, if you are like every other mac owner I know, you will need to buy 3 copies of windows to run in parallels / fusion anyway.

WHS.

It's a different model. Apple is a hardware manufacturer, and Microsoft is a software manufacturer.

Apple also chucks in a full development environment with OS X and has always done so. Once you start using that you might want to upgrade to a beefier system, and if you produce anything saleable as a result you will automatically need to keep up with latest releases, buying newer hardware/extra gadgets along the way.

[eek]

With the new maps stuff, what if one has developed for ios 5 using MKMapView etc, will it just work on ios 6?

Looking at iphone - Can I still use google maps in iOS 6 - Stack Overflow it looks like the answer is yes unless the data you are using has a restriction on it that only allows google maps.

[russell]

With the new maps stuff, what if one has developed for ios 5 using MKMapView etc, will it just work on ios 6?

[d000hg]

Which doesn't address the fact that it's $19.99 for all the Macs you already have as an upgrade. If I have, say, three PCs running Windows 7, how much will I be charged to upgrade all of them to Windows 8? I can guarantee it won't be cheap, and I'll have to pay again for each one separately if I'm to stay on the right side of Microsoft's licensing. Your argument only applies to buying a new machine, when the OS cost is amortised in the cost of the hardware, which isn't relevant to the price I posted about.

No it doesn't. I'm saying Apple essentially give the OS away for free to make the hardware attractive... the profit on hardware funds OS development full-stop even if you upgrade.

They simply don't really have an interest making money from the OS or from software in general - iOS is totally free and I can get a new version on my pre-existing devices. I don't really know why Apple charge even £20 for it now it's available as a download, unless it's simply so people feel they are tangibly buying something. I'd not be surprised if they moved to making OSS free and auto-update more like iOS. At the most, Apple only need to generate enough income to make the software department break even, whereas MS rely on the OS as one of their largest income streams... it's a totally different business model.