As for the SSD, my guess is they don’t want to mess with the design, and don’t want to support users migrating their OS to a new drive.

Will note that I don’t bother to update laptops, though. Much trickier than desktop boxes, with less space to maneuver in the case.

@Ken – I don’t dispute that packaging components on the same PCB impacts performance positively. However, in this instance, it’s been proved that the daughter card (which incidentally _isn’t_ soldered on) for the SSD is not faster than third party solutions. I don’t recall anywhere reading specs that the RAM for the system being soldered onto the mainboard improves performance. The CPU itself already has cache (since there’s obviously no shorter path between the CPU and cache than being on the same die). Obviously I don’t work at Apple so I can’t provide proof positive of why they made the decisions that they made but for me, it seems pretty clear that the decision to have everything soldered on and using proprietary designed daughter cards for the SSD is made with design first, closed ecosystem second, and performance third.

And if a small percentage os users do want to upgrade the product, you would be burdening the majority of customers with the cost of adding that capability (it is absolutely not free).

But my guess is that the upgradability was sacrificed for packaging reasons – it would have impacted how the product looked.

Since I’m a power user, I buy a new computer every 3 to 5 years, and demote the old one to server or backup status. I then have two choices. Either my machine stays top of the line, or the industry continues to advance, and my machine becomes sorely out of date by the time I replace it. Maybe if I were an IT manager I’d choose the former, but as a tech sort I’ve been enjoying the latter.

P.S. A good way of estimating the useful life of a Mac is by looking at used Mac prices. They tend to be pretty high. I have no idea of who is buying those used machines, but some of the resale sites have been around for ages and always seem to have new stock. I usually find it more economical to buy a new machine.

And I’ve been doing my best to acknowledge YOUR experience. As I brought up (you neglected to mention it, though you do seem to agree), IT time costs more than the hardware for the typical business. Not a question of whether or not the machines can continue to operate, but a question of whether it takes less time to clean the old systems or image 100 new ones. The more different generations of software you operate, the higher your costs.

So IT typically runs on a 3-5 year replacement cycle, discarding perfectly useable machines because they are ready for the next. A very different truth than your initial assertion.

Apple products have moved from niche products targeted at hobbyists, IT professionals, and graphic designers to mass-market devices that need to cater to the lowest common denominator of technical knowledge. The average consumer is attracted to Apple’s design and the fact that it is minimally adjustable is a feature to them, not a bug. To ensure that the devices are “idiot-proof” – or at least that they function as best as possible in as many circumstances as possible – Apple needs to minimize the control that users have over the product itself.

This is as true of hardware customization as much as it is of operating systems or anything else. Apple is just giving the public what it wants.

Look, nobody ‘wins’ these discussions, because most people generalise from their own experiences onto the wider marketplace – you certainly are. I’m also not saying your experience is wrong. I have quoted info from a really large user of both brands and gave his experiences, but you keep on insisting that only your experience can be the one that everyone else has.

As for maintenance, a small business usually doesn’t have an IT guy who works for $30 an hour (IME they cost more), but as is typical for many small businesses one of the existing people – the owner perhaps – takes time out to do the necessary jobs and this takes time that is billable usually at far higher rates than $30.

It’s laudable that you give your time for free, but that’s irrelevant to the overall discussion IMO because few businesses are so lucky; in the real world, they have to pay, one way or the other, and my point was that Macs cost less in that area than PCs, whether or not Felix’s point about built in obsolescence is right.

Now, I’ve never been in a production environment of hundreds of thousands of machines but I have been in environments that run close to that many. But the mix was much more extreme (something to the order of 90% PC/10% mac) so that may skew things.

And TFF’s post is precisely right, by pulling parts for repair or purchasing new (better) parts to upgrade is the whole point. Apple is moving away fro that.

My current MBP has had 2 HDD upgrades and doubling of RAM. Part of it is for new parts but the other part was because when I bought the machine, I knew I didn’t need all that it was capable of but that if/when I did, the option was there for me. With this new paradigm, if I want a retina display MBP, I would need to max it out on day 1, whether I need to or not. It’s very rare for people to buy for the future rather than to the need. At this point, I may very well veery back to Thinkpads or possibly Dells simply because Apple is forcing me to make a choice I don’t necessarily want to make yet.

The swapping is most useful when we take in donations. Of the 50 donated boxes in the last batch, perhaps half a dozen were inoperable when we received them. Swapping parts around got that down to two. Nice that we could put out 48 machines instead of 44.

It was ridiculous for you to suggest that their expected lifetime is three years, and the fact that we are running a very low attrition rate on machines that are nearly twice that old proves that.

If you “need” to replace your machines every three years, then I suspect it is the software rather than the hardware. Older computers (PC or Macintosh) should be running an older OS. And yes, you need to scrub the Windows registry regularly (perhaps once a year for older machines).

Note also that the equation is very different when you are paying an IT guy $30/hour to maintain your software than when you have a teacher volunteering the work in his spare time.

My point about Macs is that, in my experience and that of my contact (who has a much larger sample set to base his findings on) it doesn’t matter if they become harder to fix since they don’t go wrong so easily because the effort Apple’s higher margins (gained as I said through clever purchasing) allow them to spend more time designing the internals for longevity through better heat management, vibration control and so on.

It’s a bit like when they invented the transistor radio, the old school radio guys pooh poohed the fact the transistors were soldered to the boards, their complaint was that it would be impossible to replace the valves if everything was soldered together. We now know that the PCB is far more reliable than the old valves BECAUSE it was soldered together.

Greg, you make a good point about the proprietary components in Dells of a certain generation. As for the three year point, I wasn’t saying that a working PC needed to be trashed after three years, just that that was the age in my company’s experience by when most of the PCs had had a problem and that after that point, either the parts it was made from were no longer available, or the cost of repairs needed had added up enough to have bought a new computer instead. Now THAT’S built in obsolescence.

This is exacerbated by software needs, and we have to have the latest software each year. This also means upgrading the OS and in the past this meant a new computer too. But that’s a criticism that can be leveled at both Microsoft and Apple; it’s just more frustrating in Apple’s case because their machines are still like new at that point, the PCs are already beginning to look worn out, have probably had a non-original component or two added, and are probably much slower to work on as a result of the way the OS and the Registry deal with things.

However, it wasn’t always a bed of roses with Dells. Up to until about five to eight years ago, Dell actually had a closed ecosystem as well with their systems. They did not use industry standard sizes for their parts and after a lot of customer outcry, they finally saw the light and conformed with industry standards.

The idea that computers of any kind needs to be trashed after 3 years is false no matter the system (MSFT/OS X/whatever). They may no longer feel quite as snappy but for the casual user, they are absolutely fine.