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Comment by misnome | Hacker News Reader

> Force people to buy a part separately that could easily be included in the box (wasting less packaging in the process).

A part that 90% of people probably already own 10 of? Sounds like 10% more packaging and 90% less e-waste?

I mean I get the whole "non repairable is bad" argument but Apple stuff has great lifespan and good resale value, thereby being reused instead of junked when upgrading. And they accept devices for recycling, don't they?

Of course it could be better, but there are legitimate ways of looking at these things that aren't as unambiguously "Hypocritical" as you are asserting.

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Gluing or soldering what should be user-upgradeable, commodity components in laptops still really bothers me.

Are you sure they could? I can't imagine how could you possibly fit a connector within my great (and its thinness is a principal component of that greatness) Macbook, and having multiple ways of doing one thing doesn't seem like good business or good for the nature - especially if phones and tablets are the major product of the company.

Yes, they could. Look at Dell XPS 13 9310. It has the battery that's not glued in (using screws) which you can get a replacement for 70-150 bucks and change youself. It has trackpad and keyboard that are replaceable separately. And the SSD is slotted so you can upgrade the drive or recover data when stuff happens and your motherboard dies. Meanwhile, it has great screen, is very light (1.1kg) and thin. The battery life is on par with Intel macs as well.

In 15" laptops you additionally now get a slot for a second hard drive and upgradeable RAM without sacrificing much in terms of thickness (look at XPS 15 9500).

I had XPS 15 before I had the current M1 Macbook, and before that I had the previous gen XPS13 for a very short while - I had to return that, I couldn't work on it at all due to overheating/thermal throttling. XPS laptops are incomparably worse machines and opting for that instead of a Macbook was my greatest mistake that I'll never repeat (I also really tried to like Lenovo machines, but that ship has sailed too - I'm going Apple only since this Dell experiment).

I never lose any stuff on my Mac thanks to the seamless integration of iCloud. And the motherboard fire that happened to my XPS15 destroyed the SSD anyways...

About the screen... Don't even talk about that. I was so angry when I first saw it - I paid big bucks for the best screen Dell offers and yet it's so much worse than the screen on cheapest Macbooks (I moved to the XPS from Macbook 2015 - even that old machine has a much better screen). It was flickering when I enabled dark mode in my editor (not a faulty machine, I tried to return it and they have shown me that every machine does it)!!!

And no, the battery life is nowhere near the 2015 Macbook Pro, and absolutely nowhere near the M1 Macbook. The ads say so, but it's totally not true - my MBP2015 still can sustain 6 hours of work with the original battery, while the XPS was dead after 6 hours of not doing anything.

And to top it all off, the whole XPS was creaking even if I just put my hand on it, and raising it into the air made sounds so terrible people around me were having amused looks! None of my Macbooks ever made any sound like that - or any other unpleasant sound whatsoever.

All good points, thank you!

Yeah, I kind of tuned the issues out because for me the XPS is the only machine that combines slickness with repairability and that's what I value. I have the skill to resolve some of the issues (I always do a wipe and a fresh install) and the rest I learn to walk around through time.

I agree that the XPS is a terrible computer for a person who just wants stuff to work, but my point was that nothing prevents Apple from following the same repairability practices that Dell has while having a better QA. Having removable SSD or the battery that's not glued-in doesn't automatically make your laptop as bad as a Dell or as thick as a brick. If tomorrow these practices are written into the law, Apple will still be producing very good machines which will also be more maintainable.

Especially those components which are likely to wear out and need replacing long before the lifetime of the rest of the product is up.

Commoditization is almost always a big compromise to form factor, which, given that laptops are by their very nature a compromise of power for form factor, isn't exactly desirable by everyone. Stacking PCBs, which is exactly what you're doing when you're adding slots and sockets to your motherboard is absolutely a compromise on form factor.

If you don't like glued on or soldered on parts, then don't buy a computer that has them. There's still a ton of options that have the features that you want. Why be bothered when manufacturers are making things that other people want?

When I bought my 2012 macbook pro 15 retina, the retina screen's high dpr was non-negotiable, and there were no other comparable options without glue + solder.

That means that you made a choice of what matters most to you. In any buying decision unless you're manufacturing it exactly to your specifications (and even then), you're probably going to be compromising on something. In this case you prioritized the screen over anything else, which is perfectly valid.

It's also perfectly valid to pine for a macbook pro with a socketed CPU, dimm slots, and a standard nvme drive. That doesn't mean that things should be that way just because you want them to be, though, which is the point that you made.

My 2013 MBP was the same, and eventually crapped out (power/charging circuit on main board. I couldn't upgrade to one with more RAM, due to some Apple like-for-like policy.

So I did vote with my wallet, and got a beefy ThinkPad running Linux. I wasn't that wedded to the Mac ecosystem, and this thing is a tank. If it needs upgrades or repairs, I can do them myself. So there are choices out there, if you're looking.

> A part that 90% of people probably already own 10 of? Sounds like 10% more packaging and 90% less e-waste?

No, not everyone has those parts since they purposedly changed the way the part works. I mean, look at Apple, chargers used to be USB Type-A -> Lightning and they the included cable from USB Type-C -> Lightning.

Move also made no sense since these chargers usually may not even outlast the person's device. In the end of the day you're causing more waste.

And yes, they do accept devices for recycling, what they do with them its unknown.

> USB Type-A -> Lightning and they the included cable from USB Type-C -> Lightning.

If you have a bunch of old USB A charger chances are you also have a suitable cable. Really it makes less sense giving people yet another USB A cable, considering the Mac lineup is now all USB C and so you don’t have to buy a cable to charge from/connect to your Mac.

Well since Apple cables don't last very long you probably don't have a good one either...

What part are you both talking about? Surely you're talking past each other to some degree.

Charger

charger

Sure, the resale value of broken apple equipment is through the roof.

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