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Comment by ld00d | Hacker News Reader

While I don't edit video, I still consider myself a "pro" user. I'm a developer like many here, and, like many here, enjoy doing my work on a rMBP. I bought it with the understanding that I wasn't going to be upgrading the hardware inside it. I got the specs I knew I would need. If I need to upgrade, Macs retain their value better than most (if not all) of the other manufacturers, so selling this one and replacing it shouldn't be a problem.

Sure, I sit in the coffee shop with it sometimes, but I don't drink lattes (americano usually), and I don't just browse the web. My rMBP is more than a toy, and I get real work done on it every day.

I'd wager there are a lot more like me than the "pro" user described in this article. Now you tell me: who should Apple cater to more?

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Does it really take much to maintain a user modifiable tower? I imagine the amount of engineering the 2013 Mac Pro took, was greater than simply maintaining a 4x PCIe slot box with whatever the latest and greatest Xeons are. Apple could have left the tower exactly the same. Problem solved. It's not sexy, and its not exciting but it'd keep a very dedicated group of Mac buyers happy and married to the platform.

It isn't mutually exclusive to cater to both audiences.

To be honest, unless you are compiling a giant C++ app or perhaps 3d rendering, developers put very little load on a machine. Consider that we typically write text files and push them remotely for execution. A 486 was sufficient for that.

A few years ago getting enough memory together to run a VM or two might be the largest issue/load. But now memory is cheap and cloud/containers are popular. Containers have breathed new life into my 5 year old machine.

Well, since you are a developer you don't have so many performance of hardware requirements. The pro user described in the article doesn't really apply to you.

> who should Apple cater to more?

That's the real question, and of course we will all be biased here. For someone like you it's fine that you can't (for example) get the latest GPU technology, but for someone that works on digital effects that is a very real issue.

It is a fact that Apple used to cater to such audience before, and the whole point of the article is if Apple is leaving that audience behind or not.

Is it really true that reselling a MacBook machine is possible at a decent price? I've had a lot of trouble with this.

Try selling around the time college students are starting the year for a price comparable to eBay completed listings.

In my experience, base models hold a higher percentage in resale than customized or upgraded machines.

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