New Anti-Consumer MacBook Pros - Teardown And Repair Assessment - Apple Silicon M1/M2
No surprises here. Just like the lockdown on iPhone screen and part replacements, Macbooks suffer from the same Apple's anti-repair and anti-consumer bullshit. Battery glued, ssd soldered in and can't even swap parts with other official parts. 6000$ laptop and you don't even own it.
another example of why apple laptops are so expensive.
80% of the price is to cover the R&D for fucking over the consumer.
Seriously, tying the goddamn *hall effect sensor to the system so it cant be replaced? Thats some freaking cyberpunk level corpo shitbaggery.
Apple is making really good hardware but we should stop buying it because of what they are doing against repairabality or because of the fact that they trying to capture you in their ecosystem.
I have a MBP 2015 and I love all the integrations with other stuff like my iPhone and Apple Watch, but every time I see a convenience feature like "Scan from iPhone" I just stop for a second and think "Imagine that was an open source, documented API that any developer could both hook into and implement into something like Windows or Linux."
Apple is so good at making everything just work when everything is Apple. Truly, I think if this problem was solved for PC users, it would take away from Apple's market share
True, though Apple does contribute some things, like MagSafe for iPhones is becoming part of Qi 2. I think Apple get a bad rep just because they’re a large target sometimes, but I don’t recall other big platforms releasing a bunch of their work as FLOSS either.
I’m also on the fence about the repairability thing. It’s nice to be able to open up an old computer to add more RAM/Storage/etc., but I also get that making everything integrated and soldered improves durability and reliability. I do think they take that a little too far sometimes. While RAM/SSDs should typically last a long time, the battery life often becomes the limiting factor for usability so making that repair simpler would go a long way. Pricing can be hard to bite too, while I don’t mind the idea of soldered RAM, I don’t like that upgrades are pretty heavily marked up compared to most manufacturers.
Then again, I’m still in the ecosystem, so unless there’s some government oversight setting standards for Apple to follow they’ll continue doing what’s profitable and their sales keep steadily growing despite the occasional bad press.
They've significantly overcharged for their products for the past 20 years. If you can't get people to give a fuck about the bottom line, good luck getting them to care about anything else
I'm going to put this out there as just an idea, don't buy apple products.
They're shit they've always been shit and they've never been financially worth buying.
I just got an M2 MBP. In my personal experience it is very much not "shit".
Expensive and a PITA to fix? Quite possibly.
+1 apple products are very much not shit. Otherwise people wouldnt buy and use them as prolifically as they do.
I started using Macbooks because the user experience on windows laptops sucks in comparison.
Agreed. I work in computer simulations and their great. CPU is crazy fast, stays cool and silent. Battery life is solid.
If I bought a framework laptop I would not physically be able to stop fiddling with it. I think I may end up spending more money in the long run. It's too configurable for its own good.
I wonder if they'll ever consider adding an e ink screen option, with a separate normal screen. There have been a few concept laptops like that, but I don't think the demand is enough to actually make that profitable, but if it was just a configuration option of an otherwise more normal laptop, then I could see it being viable.
That's sweet. Do you have one?
I've got a framework 13. It's not better than a Macbook except in terms of user-serviceability.
That said, I do really like the laptop. I just find myself reaching for my macbook especially due to the issue with battery life.
They are a lifestyle brand and play on that to keep people trapped. People who buy Apple like the aesthetic of appearing wealthy. It's classism through consumerism, even if the consumers don't realise it.
Apple's terrible privacy policy (yes, despite the word privacy appearing in the ads), atrocious right to repair stance, and aggressive software lock-in tactics should put any person who cares about those things off.
There was a purpose to buying Apple when they were the only player in the specific niche. Audio engineering is a great example of this. In the 90's, Apple were really the only valid choice in a highly specialist field. Microsoft caught up in the 2000s, with Linux not too far behind in the 2010's.
So nowadays, the limitations are effectively self-imposed. You can spend whatever money you want on a setup that will do whatever you need and the OS is a personal preference.
The EU needs to fuck their shit up.
Mandate that laptops must have user replaceable storage and RAM (and tablets to have user replaceable storage). My old Dell laptop has windows in the bottom to get to both of those.
The loss of 3.5mm headphone jacks is nothing compared to the loss of that. They're common failure points and easy upgrade paths.
Nobody is stopping you from buying a laptop with user replaceable storage and RAM. Why do you need the EU to get involved? That's ridiculous.
Upgradable RAM isn't as fast as non-upgradable RAM and that this is especially true for the way Apple Silicon is designed. So no we shouldn't be mandating something that reduces computer performance for the sake of an upgrade most people would never care to perform.
We should however force them to produce laptops with a certain minimum RAM and to reduce their ridiculous upgrade pricing.
Edit: also I don't own a single Apple product. I aren't a fan boy at all and I know they do a whole bunch of anti-consumer bs. I also know that modular RAM for Apple Silicon would be a terrible idea for that specific design. Modular SSDs on the other hand would be very doable.
As much as I do like the looks and compelling as the M1/M2 chips might be, I cannot help but agree.
Except they're not. They're excellent products and since Apple silicon are actually half decent value in some cases.
Except that they are. There is absolutely no value to anything they make. It's all over priced proprietary crap.
Apple products right now are almost entirely home use there's almost no commercial industry anymore.
Developers graphic design artists music producers most technology firms most offices like doctors and lawyers whatever don't use Apple products. They're almost exclusively windows.
Literally the only thing keeping them in business right now is the iPhone. They don't sell enough of any other product.
You mean my neighbor won't be able to think that I'm badass, rich, fancy and living my American Dream? 😱 You want to ruin my social status? How dare you 💔
All of their products are anti consumer and they have been for years. I don't understand why people still buy their products
Because I love the platform. I've been a Mac user for decades. People harp on marketing making us foam at the mouth for these products, but I genuinely love them. I also hate some decisions, but the time to switch platforms is not today or in the foreseeable future.
Yes, Linux would let me do most of what I want to do. But I appreciate the design of indie Mac apps. They're far beyond the polish of apps on Linux and Windows.
Sad to say it but yeah. I've never really used MacBooks, but I had an ipad pro 10.5 for years, and it finally died on me a few months ago. I recently replaced it with a 2 in 1 thinkpad, but the level of usability is just not the same. Tried windows (kinda half thought out) and currently going through Linux distros (mostly buggy when in purely touchscreen only mode) but it is a far cry ipad os, even if I have issues with it.
They're great work laptops, as long as you treat them as basically disposable. If I have a problem, just turn it into IT and grab another, pull down the repos and I'm off. Wouldn't buy one with my own money, though.
Really really good marketing, packaging and fomo overall
Not being forced to use Windows or having to hope that Ubuntu works, battery life, raw SoC performance, good keyboards (after they fixed the duds from 2016-2020), best trackpads in town, good quality apps, native Unix shell?
I was really looking into buying the Framework laptop but apart from that, everything seemed to be more or less crap (for my use cases) if you don't want to deal with Thinkpads.
I don't any more because of this kind of thing but I can understand. A few points at the top of my head
They are just used to them. OS X has one specific way of working that, once you learn it, is quite good. It sucks completely if you try to use it in different way so if you don't like magic mouse (which sucks) and don't like using their laptop keyboard (which sucks) and touchpad you will not enjoy it. But if Mac is all you know, you're used to their hardware and know how it works you will love it because any other OS will be different and feel way less ergonomic. In my opinion if you're skilled Linux/Windows user will customized workflow OS X will feel limited and be painful to use. If it's you first computer or you don't have any established workflow you will like it a lot.
It sucks completely if you try to use it in different way so if you don’t like magic mouse (which sucks) and don’t like using their laptop keyboard (which sucks) and touchpad you will not enjoy it.
This isn't true for me. I use the same (cheap Logitech) mouse with Win11, Linux, and my MBPs. What's meant to be the issue? It's just like every other setup I've used in the last 30 years.
So, genuine question.
What other laptops are there with comparable screens? Colour gamut, accuracy and all the good stuff Apple does so well.
Some day I might need something to work with on the go, and I need a good display.
Edit: Well, didn't expect so many answers in as little time, thank you
Asus OLED laptop screens are as good (or better depending on what your criteria are). If you do print, they are Pantone Validated.
I've been using a Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i (or Slim Pro 9i if you're in the US) for around half a year now and have been loving it so far. 14" MiniLED screen, 100% DCI-P3, can get really bright, has a touch screen (if that's something you like) and a 165 Hz refresh rate. Can't speak for the color accuracy though.
I got the i9 variant with 32GB RAM and an RTX 4060 GPU during a "Mega Power" sale and with an additional 10% off as a Student for just over 2000€, but even the normal price is "only" (compared to your MacBooks and XPSs) around 2500€ iirc.
RAM is sadly soldered onto the motherboard but at least you get 6400MHz for it. Storage is upgradeable.
Connectivity is great (2x USB-C with PD3.1 for 140W charging, one also supporting Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, full-size SD Card reader, 2x USB-A...)
Dell precision 5570.
I own a MacBook Air now but prior to that I've used thinkpad, dell xps, Asus zenbook and hp envy lineups.
If i were to ditch MacBook I'd have picked up a zenbook since they're budget friendly, great oled screen, long battery life, lightweight and good build quality. You can even do casual gaming on it.
The biggest thing i miss switching to mac has been losing my steam library and unable to play games with my friends.
I own recent OLED Zenbook and it's super creaky squeaky, plus, the screen unglued itself from the frame. The build quality isn't very good I'd say.
Maybe the ProArt Studiobook from Asus
Basically, none.
A display is only as good, as the OS running it. Otherwise you're seeing random, usually oversaturated shizzle.
macOS is still the only, properly color-managed OS. (Usually running P3 displays)
If you have a windows laptop with a display that's not sRGB, you're in for some "fun", if you're doing any sort of creative or design work.
Edit: I'm getting downvoted because "apple bad >:("?
No, you're getting downvoted because you can buy non-apple laptops with quality screens. Also, you could just plug in a cheap monitor that is properly calibrated, or buy a nicer color correct monitor. Apple doesn't have monopoly on color.
Is this what you are talking about?
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/auto-color-management/
OS level colour calibration and management, regardless of the app?
New feature in Windows 11 2022.
None that I've met. But that's why they're apple. They get to control everything on their hardware.
But I'm happy running a framework 13 for a few business trips and I love it.
Battery is not too amazing. Hitting only about 5-6 hours rather than the 8-10 that I truly want.
I've used Macs for a while, but I'd take Frameworks over Macs now. The fun at the start of having a mac is not worth all the hassles that come down the line when things start failing and can't be fixed.
I just recently had a 2020 gen MacBook pro die on me. When I took it to the genius bar, they said that it was a power issue that they couldn't repair unless they changed the whole logic board which would cost me $500 and without the ability to recover the data on the soldered SSD. What's worse is that they sent me to a 3rd party data recovery company to recover my data for $1200. I ended up declining the data recovery and just accepted that my data is gone and bought a thinkpad to replace the laptop.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/clip/UgkxhgZEK-CfdGLZ0YVIfnrhyb-A0A9EULvV
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
It's so annoying. I want to love Apple, heck I've been there and HAD Apple everything. They have a great *nix OS, well polished ecosystem, very good security and privacy practices... but hostility towards repair, along with planned obsolescence, ended up turning me off. One aspect is sustainability. Repair is more sustainable than recycle. They have good recycling credentials but that should be last resort.
Recycling credentials are nonsense. I work in the ewaste industry, very few things actually get recycled. Resale is the goal of these companies. Otherwise most ewaste companjes just trade thier scrap back and forth until it eventually ends up in a landfill in a country with poor regulations.
It's tight to balance between the demand on how impossibly small things are getting, the space requirements for user serviceable latches, and just straight up reduction in component sizes.
I remember back when it was easy to desolder a capacitor/vacuum tube to replace a part; then they got smaller and replaced by IC chips. I remember back when we can just pull out a and replace memory modules on cards; then they got soldered on, but hey the card can still be ripped out of the PCI slots and replaced. Now we're seeing the GPU, CPU, and memory all getting smaller, all getting fused into a single SOC on the ever shrinking logic board... It is just the inevitable future if the world continues to want things smaller (to fit in pockets) and faster (lesser distance for signal to travel).
Unpopular opinion: I find this whole "right to repair" really pointless endeavour pushed by repair shops wanting to retain their outdated business model. In 50 years, when the entire system that's more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer today lives entirely in the stem of your glasses, and the display is fused into the lens or projection, no one will have the necessary tools to pull apart the systems nor the physical precision to repair things... and that future will come, whether these right to repair people want it or not.
It is probably better use of our collective resources to focus on researching technologies that will help us deconstruct these tiny components into their constituent matters (stable chemical compounds), such that they can be reused to build into newer equipments, as opposed to sitting in a landfill never being used again.
Unpopular opinion: I find this whole "right to repair" really pointless endeavour pushed by repair shops wanting to retain their outdated business model.
Either you're a shill, or you have zero clue what you're talking about. It's one of the two.
I take issue with some of the statements here. First of all:
I find this whole "right to repair" really pointless endeavour pushed by repair shops wanting to retain their outdated business model.
Right to repair is definitely not just being pushed by repair shops. If you take a good look at the rate Framework is selling devices at (batches instantly sold out until Q1 2024), you'll see that consumers want this more than any other group. We, as the consumers will ultimately benefit the most from having repair options available. Right to repair is not meant to halt innovation, it is not about forcing manufacturers to design products in ways detrimental to the functioning of said products. It is about making sure they don't lock third parties out of the supply chain. If you replace a traditional capacitor with a SMD variant, someone is going to learn to micro solder. If you convert a chip from socketed to BGA mount, someone is going to learn how to use a heat plate and hot air gun to solder it back in to place.
The main problem is manufacturers demonstrably going out of their way to prevent the feasable.
The second part I take issue with is this:
It is probably better use of our collective resources to focus on researching technologies that will help us deconstruct these tiny components into their constituent matters
From my 12 years of experience in design of consumer goods and engineering for manufacturing I can tell you this is not happening because no one is going to pay for it. The more tightly you bond these "constituent matters" together, the more time, energy, reasearch and money it will require to convert them back into useful resources.
There is only one proper way to solve this problem and it is to include reclamation of resources into the product lifecycle design. Which is currently not widely done because companies put profits before sustainability. And this model will be upheld until legislation puts a halt to it or until earth's resources run out.
In terms of sustainability the desireable order of action is as follows:
In the very long term you are right. The thing is we aren't there yet. Lots of companies are making things unrepairable for no reason right now. This is at a time when we need to produce less stuff to help the environment.
This sounds like it's better to wait for imaginary benefits than do the things we really can do. Anyway, there is absolutely no reason not to repair things even if you want your scifi disassembler. Our collective resources are not strained in the slightest by repairs.
I might agree with you if the boards themselves were disposable. If a high end macbook were $300 then sure, just get a new one. But they're $2000 or more just for an "ok" model. At that price they should be repairable.
I think people's anger stems from the fact that it wouldn't be hard for laptops to be repairable and in fact Apple's putting in additional roadblocks over time to make repairing harder. At the very least, having broken components be removable would do a lot for hardware lifespan.
I can see an eventual future when the cores, RAM and storage are all on one IC or something which would also be great for performance (I just bought a desktop processor that does some clever stacking of extra L3 cache on top of the cores). As others said though we're not quite there yet.
Ever since Steve Jobs (I think perhaps as a way of coping with illness making him thinner himself) Apple has done this thing of telling consumers that they want thinner, thinner, thinner at all costs (and other manufacturers following Apple because of course they do) but I've seen no real evidence of consumers actually wanting this. I for one (and I know I'm far from the only one) don't actually mind a bit more thickness if it means a bigger battery, using an M.2 slot (oh no a few mm difference) etc.
I mean, you were never blocked from replacing ICs. Most people just didn't have the capability to solder. Today, IC replacement is blocked by hardware DRM.
It's nothing new. Have you ever opened up a laser disc player or discman from 1989? Extremely intracate parts Ave mechanisms that are nearly impossible to work with.
Even a basic VCR or DVD drive has a ton of small moving parts which are difficult or impossible to fix and designed to break early and often.
Technology doesn't proliferate as quickly as you'd expect. Most people aren't on the cusp of the latest and greatest. I worked for a fucking multibilliondollar international company 2 years ago, and they still pick product, and communicate inventory adjustments with pen and paper.
People rely on the previous shit they've bought.
Awesome!
Always like people that fight for right to repair!
Anyone know if Louis Rossman and these and other people have done collabs or something similar?
Louis Anthony Rossmann (born November 19, 1988) [2] [3] is an American independent repair technician, YouTuber, and right to repair activist. He is the owner and operator of Rossmann Repair Group in Austin, Texas (formerly New York City ), a computer repair shop established in 2007 which specializes in logic board-level repair of MacBooks.
yea this is why i couldnt care less about apple silicon. atleast with AMD/Intel and most ARM CPUs/SOCs you have the flexibility to do whatever you want. With AS you are limited to whatever shit Apple provides.
As someone who generally makes a point to buy laptops with as much upgradeability as possible, I ended up going with an M1 Pro then M2 Max MBP.
I really don't like how much Apple charges for RAM and storage and that I'm stuck with 32GB and 1TB until I buy an entire new laptop, but I just can't ignore how ridiculously powerful and efficient Apple Silicon is for programming, compiling, and even limited gaming.
It also helps that it's made of metal, unlike most PC laptops at similar prices. I've always had terrible luck with plastic bodies: broken hinges, broken traces on the motherboard from excessive flexing, etc.
In my fantasy utopia, Apple would have slots for adding extra storage and "slow" RAM to all its computers, but that's not happening.
I have a 2011 MacBook Air and it isn't supported anymore but I've put Fedora Linux on it. It's snappy and the track pad is still fantastic.
My 2008 MBP is still running with a Linux distro. It was more for the fun than the usability with the Core2duo and 2go of ram.
I had that. I must say I loved that thing. I used it to death, although that said I only really got around 5-6 years out of it. Replaced the battery once the motherboard once, the fan once, the charger twice. Hmmmm.
It performed absolutely admirably throughout its lifetime though and it had a nice big screen even if it made it quite a chonker. I really appreciate the expansion slot because I was able to give it USB3.0 slots even though it didn't have any when it came out.
I'm a big believer in self-repair. And right to repair. I buy framework laptops. Because I believe.
I just can't deny however that Apple MacBooks last forever. I personally have a MacBook that still working after 9 years. Right to repair has less meaning when the laptop lasts a decade.
So my current recommendation to people is get a MacBook Air, but if they're technical, then I recommend a framework
"last forever" is an overstatement, the lastest macOS only supports device until 2017: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213264 ; That is only 6 years old, that is around the phone support period around a later pixel phone, which is not even a company that focus on sustainability.
Although you can probably throw linux on it to extend its life, but I dont know if it is as easy as install it on a normal laptop.
The raw performance isn't everything for me. I already have a gaming laptop that pumps out heat like a 1500W space heater even when it's not doing anything. I really didn't want that in a second laptop, especially with how bad my experience has been with Windows' Connected Standby, where the laptop will just sometimes decide to fully wake up in a bag and overheat and drain the battery.
There were a lot of reasons I went with a Mac for this, but one of the biggest ones was how efficient Apple Silicon is. The M2 Max may take an extra minute or two to compile a large project vs an i9-13900HX, but it also manages to not give me first degree burns if I want to use it on my lap.
I have a lot of problems with Apple and their decisions around macOS and hardware pricing, but for me, that efficiency ratio was really important. I'm not trying to say everyone should buy a Mac, but if we're "saying it like it is", Apple Silicon is years ahead of Intel, AMD, and even Qualcomm for high performance portability. That trade-off might not be worth it to you, and that's fine, but there's literally no competition for what I needed.
The fact of the matter is that the M2 Max rarely goes above 70C under load, even with Apple's ridiculously conservative fan curve, while pretty much every x86 laptop I've owned idles right around there.
Every other post is about how shitty of a company HP is, I'm not sure you'd be winning any integrity points.
Yea I hate the way Apple is treating customers with upgrades but they make a damn good product that is unbeatable compared directly. I hope hackintosh lives on. I hope there’s better efficiency to power ratio on PCs. I’m hoping my current Mac could be my last Mac.
The issue is not so much Apple but the lack of real challenger. If only Sony didn't give up on the PC market. I guess they bought in about tablets killing the conventional PC.
I really dislike Apple's business practices. I remember replacing a screen on a friend's iPhone and the display flex cable would not provide a proper connection without the little metal bracket over the top of it being installed. Honestly thought the replacement display was broken at a point. Never seen such on an android phone.
Considering the serious move EU as made regarding right to repair and imposing that any equipment must be repairable and have parts for it for at least 10 years, this ia going to be another serious pain for this brand.
I've also read an article recently where it was reported that all cell phones circulating in the EU must have replaceable batteries. And from what I took from the article it was meant replaceable by the end user.
Serious anti obsolescence legislation.
This will hurt Apple again.
10? That’s one way to discourage competition from new companies.
How is that?
As it is, that same argument was used by Apple to try to dodge from complying with the demand for having an industry standard for data and charge port/cable - the USB-C.
Planned obsolescence is a thing. Having law put in place to curb it is a good thing.
If you know you can buy something and you know that something will be repairable at least for a decade, it passes confidence to the end user.
Competition is welcome. Innovation as well. Legislation like this just means companies need to share standards and cooperate more and not aim to skin the client in an endless cycle of replacing expensive items that get thrown out before they are worn out.
I'd really like to buy a Mac mini but that mark up on RAM is insane, with that money I can get 8x the same amount of DDR 5
The base config it's too limited and I can't accept to pay 250 euro for 8 extra gigs of RAM and another 250 euro for 250 extra gigs of SSD
Now if they just sold an ITX M2 motherboard with slots for DDR 5, m.2 and PCI express, I could pay 800 euro for that...
But then it would be upgradable, and they'd lose on squeezing as much out of you as possible.
Man fuck Apple, how can anyone purchase anything from a company like this.
The sad fact is that they get away with it because they have the best laptops out there in terms of build quality and user comfort (try using a Macbook touchpad and then any other one after it).
They also have the best software integration because they have to support a limited number of hardware configurations
… try using a Macbook touchpad and then any other one after it.
^ This.
Have been given a current Surface Pro laptop for work and must use an external mouse, or rage in frustration that my 13 yo MBP has a better functioning trackpad.
try using a Macbook touchpad and then any other one after it
I have a Dell laptop from 8ish years ago whose touchpad behaves pretty much identically to an Apple touchpad.
Software support for touchpad gestures on Linux is pretty lacking, but that's not the hardware's fault.
Because they've somehow built a cult around their overpriced and overhyped products.
My laptop can crush anything their anti-consumer company can push out. People drool over MacBooks and they're fucking laughable.
You talking about "crushing" the Apple laptops is missing the point. Performance isn't the main reason people buy them, it's things like the TrackPad, software, battery life, and overall usability.
I didn't say it, but I thought it.
at this point i dont care about apple products.
Soldered in SSDs
Git gud at smd soldering dingdongs
On these machines they are proprietary SSD chips that you can’t buy anywhere.
pulls out a hot air gun, looks sexily at the camera and winks
"Yeah, baby!"
They really did it again huh
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/r0Hwb5xvBn8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Did anyone actually watch the video? Like I’m sure as shit not, but wondering if anyone else did. Guessing no scrolling through the comments.
How about if normalized not fucking linking YouTube videos for topics that seem like news?
I will read an article but I'm not going to click through and watch some random ass length video from some random ass "content creator" who probably has a worthless opinion to begin with.
This is why I'm still rocking a 2012 MacBook pro that I've repaired several times
They don’t do macOS. That’s an Apple issue.
I have a Framework, and I love it. The trackpad isn't as good as a MacBook's.
You have the glasstop trackpad? They're relatively cheap and simple to install if not..
Yeah nah. There are more reasons why Apple TrackPads are great not just glass.
Have a look at the Sensel haptic touchpad used in the X1 Titanium Yoga. It's a touchpad that's actually better than Apple's. It's a shame it only got used in like 2 devices so far.
I have m2 max provided by work. I would never pay for this piece of shit with great battery life.... if only out IT supported Linux, I would switch to framework in no time!
Biggest part of Apple I hate…but at the same time I love how powerful those m processors are.
laughs in my 2009-era Intel MPB
Playing devil advocate here. I owned second hand entry level first-gen MacBook Pro Retina that I bought in 2014. Still using it as my main laptop up until 2021 when I gave it to my nieces. On paper, It doesn't have good repairability so-so specs, everything glued also, but it still working very well, battery still can last more than 4 hours, every apps still run reasonably smooth and dare I said fast.
On the other hand, my spouse bought a brand new ZenBook a year later, it has a bit better repairability, battery and ram are "easily" replaceable, and it have better specs, but the battery dies 3 years ago. Even when the battery still alive, the laptop is very unoptimized causing the fan ran all the time, consuming more electricity, and over time it becomes very sluggish. So now, it's been hiding under closet now since maybe 4 years ago.
So I asked, what the use of repairability if at the end the component break easily. Sure you can replace it, but it just going to create more trash at the end. It's also unoptimized so it use more energy. I take one hardened optimized laptop that can last longer versus one that can be user repairable easily but unoptimized, energy hungry, and easily break component.
The issue lies in assuming that repairable laptops cannot be optimized to the same extent as MacBooks. However, this assumption is inaccurate. While there might have been a problem with your Asus ZenBook, I can assure you that if you were to select a Windows laptop priced similarly to a MacBook, you would find a comparable level of optimization. Additionally, there's the added benefit that you can swap out the battery when it starts going bad and upgrade the RAM and storage if you need to in the future
So you're drawing the conclusion that a more repairable device is inherently going to be worse than a less repairable device but that's not true.
A sample size of two is hardly statistically relevant. Especially because you're completely discounting the possibility that you were unusually lucky with your Mac or unusually unlucky with the Zenbook.
Gluing the battery in, in no way makes it last longer. The biggest problem here seems to be that the fan profile is not optimised, but that won't have a significant effect on the battery because while it increases charge discharge cycles, it doesn't increase them by that much. You probably just had a dud battery.
I’m happy because they make them unstealable and unresellable. Same for iPhones. A fair trade-off. I could never use any other ecosystem
What does that even mean?
Anti-theft, which is a dual-edged sword.
Activation lock prevents the device from functioning without the consent of the owner, but if the owner is locked out of their iCloud account, the device is a brick.
Serializing components has the side effect of preventing activation locked devices from being harvested for parts. Unfortunately, this also means that perfectly working parts cannot be used to repair other iPhones.
It's very hard to walk that fine line between anti-theft and repair. The way Apple is doing it definitely seems to be with an anti-third-party-repair goal, though.
I personally think activation lock is fine, but serializing components is not.
Maybe they have stock in an ewaste disposal company. Apple creates a lot of that, now that they're unrepairable and un-resale-able.
It means they were dropped on their head as a child.
Why would any of this make them not resellable or stealable, as if there aren't loads of iPhones and MacBooks on ebay?
Good luck getting top dollar for an activation locked device. If you paid full price for one of those, you got scammed.
Framework laptops are getting better. Not Apple levels good, but it certainly beats them in average longevity.
The only hope with Apple is having the EU step in again to stop this kind of bullcrap.
I love the idea of Framework and I want to get one, but the price is multiple times of what I paid for my current machine... and this is better than the Framework in several ways. I'm hoping that a few of the Frameworks make it onto the second hand market and I'll buy one there. The idea of a laptop that's easy to replace and lasts forever is brilliant though, and I hope they take off.
What did you get and for how much? To me it seems the framework (at least the 16) is only a bit (100-200 out of 1600) more expensive than laptops with similar specs.
Yeah the upfront cost is more, but personally I think it's more than worth it since it will probably end up being cheaper in the long term, especially if you like to upgrade frequently. I'm personally thinking I'm going to try the framework 16 route once I decide to rid of my current laptop. I hope they take off too and I'm more than willing to show support for a company pushing right to repair.
Not that I’m advocating for Apple’s inexcusable behaviour, but as someone who’s worked in IT managing fleets of hundreds of Thinkpads (among others like Apple, Dell, Acer, HP), respectfully, they are far less reliable and durable than a MacBook. The only devices I had with higher failure rates than ThinkPads were Acer laptops.
They are certainly more repairable, but so are others like Dell and HP. Lenovo were one of the earlier manufacturers to pull some anti-repair moves such as soldering memory to the mainboard (on the Yoga models).
I think your statement is far more accurate in the days when IBM owned the ThinkPad brand, but unfortunately Lenovo have run it into the ground as far as quality goes.
All that said, I certainly hope we see more projects like Framework so that these big manufacturers can get some sort of reality check.
Not sure that's true. I have a pretty top-of-the-line ThinkPad (3 years old) and it started falling apart after like a year of regular use. Maybe years ago that was true but nowadays I feel like everybody except maybe Apple has crap build quality.
This is the opinion of someone who has not used a Thinkpad nor a MacBook built within the past three years.
The L14 Gen1 I have must be an exception then. The fingerprint reader isn't compatible at all (I feel kinda taken for a ride there since it's seemingly the only Synaptics reader without Linux compatibility) and both Bluetooth and USB are very buggy. I haven't used it with Windows, so the latter two may also be down to crappy firmware. Either way I'm rather disappointed for the price tag and probably not buying Lenovo again any time soon.
I would love a Framework laptop, but my current laptop (a Dell XPS 15 from 2017) is still going strong. Buying a new repairable laptop defeats the whole sustainable thing if there's nothing wrong with my current one. I've done 2 fixes to my current laptop: Replaced the speakers that had died, and added thermal pads to the VRMs to fix an overheating / throttling issue. Even the battery is fine still.
Agreed, a lot of people get into sustainability and rush out to buy sustainable stuff. Even with something like a plastic bag, it's better to use it for as long as you reasonably can than to throw it away and rush out to buy an organic cotton one.
Hey there, fellow 2017er! Different worlds, I know, but I'm just finding out my specific model 2017 MacBook Pro--the 13" without a "touchbar"--was the last model with a replaceable SSD, so I'm about to upgrade it to 2TB. Eventually I'll probably replace its battery, but, for now, I'm even pretty happy with the remaining battery capacity. I'm just hoping it keeps working long enough for the right-to-repair movement to force Apple back to replaceable wear-and-tear parts (particularly SSD and battery) before I have to decide whether to choose between a completely unserviceable replacement model or switching platforms again.