Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.

In article , PeterN
wrote:

you don't need to be an auto mechanic to change a flat tire but most
people don't want to deal with that either.

But they deal with it.

no they don't.

they hire someone else to deal with it by calling aaa or a local tow.

You are missing that many people want the
optional ability to change the tire, or open the laptop themselves, or
to have the person of their choice do it for them. The new laptops take
away that option.

not that many are interested in opening it or even know what to do if
they do open it.

should it need servicing, they take it to a repair shop.

it's just like a car. some people tinker on their own cars but most
don't, even for minor stuff.

But you are probably
right in this case. IIRC Lenovo wanted $240 more for 16gig. I paid under
$100. I do admit, that I got a deal on it, as I found a place that was
going out of business. Otherwise it owuld have cost me $160, from
Crucial. Still a savings.

apple currently charges $200 for 16 gig ddr3 1600 memory.

So. If I decide I wnat to upgrade my memory after the purchase, what is
my option?

you max it out when you buy it. that's what most people do anyway.

In article , PeterN
wrote:

For some strange reason, I like the option, to be able to replace. I
don't like having replacement forced on me.

nothing is forced on anyone.

What are my options when the battery goes?
must I get a new machine, or can the battery be easily replaced?

it's very easily replaced. take it to an apple store and it's replaced
while you wait. not a big deal, especially since it only needs to be
done once every 5 years or so.

there might also be third party repair shops that offer battery
replacement services.

if either isn't convenient for some reason, apple can dispatch a box
for overnight delivery.

it may also be possible to replace the battery yourself with nothing
more than a screwdriver, depending on which macbook it is.

keep in mind that the battery is rated for 5 years and will normally
outlive the computer.

in 5 years you will more than likely want a new computer and there's a
good chance you will have already replaced it by that time anyway.

in other words, this is a lot of noise over nothing.

also keep in mind that by having an internal battery, the laptop is
thinner, lighter and more reliable, something that the user benefits
from every single day, versus being able to swap the battery once in
five years, which is something they might never actually do.

and let's not forget that apple isn't the only company moving to
internal batteries, for the very same reasons.

if you want to bash apple over this, you must also bash many other pc
makers, including microsoft, as well as smartphone makers, video camera
makers, bluetooth headset makers and the list goes on and on.

what happens when the battery in my spendy bluetooth headset fails? can
i replace it? nope. it's not even an option and there's no way to open
it either, without major damage. it really *is* disposable.

I suspect that "most
people," and I exclude the gaming crowd, use their computers solely for
Internet browsing, email and occasional word processing. The tablets
changed that somewhat, by making low cost specialized apps available.

many people do little more than that, which is why an ipad works out
well for them. a laptop and certainly a desktop is overkill.

for those who are doing stuff like 3d rendering, video editing, etc.,
they can get a more powerful workstation for those tasks and fall back
to an ipad for the simpler stuff. use the best tool for the job.

it also won't be all that long until some of the more sophisticated
stuff will be done on mobile devices.

What do you mean by "sophisticated stuff?"

did you not read the examples i gave?

My point is that from a
purely functional standpoint, an old e-machine would do what a lot of
user want to do. If they wnat a new machine just to play, fine. They
should have the option.

everyone has options.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

| I suspect that "most
| people," and I exclude the gaming crowd, use their computers solely for
| Internet browsing, email and occasional word processing. The tablets
| changed that somewhat, by making low cost specialized apps available.
|
| many people do little more than that, which is why an ipad works out
| well for them. a laptop and certainly a desktop is overkill.
|

I don't think it's entirely an issue of what one does. Tablets
are being *marketed* as the more modern replacement for
PCs, but they're just a different tool.

they aren't being marketed as a replacement for pcs, but yes, they are
a different tool.

There are the millions of people who don't demand a lot
from their computer, but who do use it a lot for work: students,
academics, scientists, office workers, writers, business
people..... the millions of people who need to use office
software, or other specialized tools. Many of those tools
can work on a tablet, or even on a phone.

many of those tools *do* work on a tablet, with more and more working
every day.

tablets are a couple years old. pcs are 30 years old. it's still early
in the product's lifecycle.

They don't require
a lot of CPU power, RAM, etc. The issue is not the power
of a tablet but rather simple ergonomics: A large screen,
a good keyboard and a good chair that supports good posture
are the most important factors for anyone who's going to
spend 3 hours writing a paper.

nothing about a tablet precludes using a good keyboard and chair, and
it wasn't that long ago that a 'large screen' was 10-12" especially on
laptops.

however, if you're going to spend three hours writing a paper, then a
tablet is probably not the best choice.

pick the best tool for the job.

on the other hand, there are a lot of things where a tablet is ideal,
including giving presentations and even creating them, among many other
things.

(Though of course college students can get away with
abusing their bodies to some extent, writing term papers
while flopped in a beanbag chair or overstuffed sofa. There's
probably a suite of iCollege apps on the iPhone for iThem,
allowing them to iWrite all of their iPapers without ever
sitting iUp.

you do realize that a lot of schools use ipads, do you not?

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

You don't have to be a geek to install memory.

depends what you call a geek. most people aren't interested in opening
up the computer to install parts, even if it's easy.

you don't need to be an auto mechanic to change a flat tire but most
people don't want to deal with that either.

But you are probably
right in this case. IIRC Lenovo wanted $240 more for 16gig. I paid under
$100. I do admit, that I got a deal on it, as I found a place that was
going out of business. Otherwise it owuld have cost me $160, from
Crucial. Still a savings.

apple currently charges $200 for 16 gig ddr3 1600 memory.

Entirely wrong.

If you order a base Mac with 8GB, you get one price.
eg: i7 iMac 3.4 GHz 27": $1,999.00

To "bump" it to 16 GB you pay $200 for 8 GB _more_.
: $2,199.00

So that's $200 for 8 GB more.

it's $200 for 16 gig, which replaces the 8 gig that was in the machine.

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

I don't know about 'most people,' but I paid Lenovo for 4 gig of memory,
and bought 16 from Crucial, for much less than half the price Lenovo
wanted to charge. The replacement took less than 15 minutes. I had the
chance to see if I really needed the memory before I bought it, and
saved money in the process.

most people wouldn't know where to start to add their own memory. not
everyone is a geek.

now you decide at the time of purchase instead of later, and apple's
prices aren't all that outrageous, assuming you compare the same type
of memory.

Horse**** as usual. If you need more memory, sites like Crucial guide
the non-geek right to the correct part. Even geekish me relies on them
to be absolutely sure I don't order the wrong part as it's easy enough
to do.

non-geeks don't even know where to start looking for memory.

For example on the i7 iMac, selecting the wrong clock timings for a 1600
MHz DDR3 will cause the memory to run at 1033 or 1333 MHz. At that, the
correct timing numbers are counter intuitive.

all the more reason a non-geek doesn't want to bother.

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

Some people like the ability to add new memory.

very few do so after purchase.

What's Apple charging these days, $500 a gig?

about $12/gig for ddr3 1600, competitive with most ram vendors.

Wrong.

Apple charge $200 to bump from the included 8 GB to 16 GB. An 8 GB bump.

That's $25/GB.

you are buying 16 gig chips.

you are not buying 8 gig that goes into a spare slot, keeping the
existing 8 gig. you are replacing the 8 gig with 16 gig, and have 8
left over if you do it yourself.

on the macbooks that had 2 slots, apple used lower density chips in
both rather than one high density chip in one leaving the other empty,
so if you wanted to upgrade, you had to remove both chips.

On 2013.10.26, 11:05 , PeterN wrote:
On 10/26/2013 10:47 AM, Alan Browne wrote:

snip


Another possibility is buying from parts brokers. There are risks (no
traceability (certificates) to manufacturer) therebecause parts are
"re-labled" by unsavoury types to look more qualified (esp. temperature
range) than they really are. We would pay screening houses to take in
the parts and qualify them for us. This would drive the cost of a $100
part to $300 - $500 plus tooling costs ($5000 - $25,000 per run). End
customer pays, of course.


Traceability of structural parts is an FAA requirement. I would be very
surprised if that was not a military requirement for avionics.

Oh Peter. You're so charmingly innocent!

Traceability is absolutely a requirement in civil and military avionics
whether for safety-of-life or performance/reliability reasons.

What a concept. If only it worked.

Unfortunately even the highest qualified parts do not last long in the
market and they have to be procured in irregular fashion. For such, the
parts can be screened as described above and the screening co. (who
might even be us, but we'd much rather sub it) issues the test results
for each part. If it meets the end requirement, fine. If it does not.
(Say a -55C requirement part stops working at -45C) then you so inform
the US gov't buyer and he issues a waiver on a case by case basis or a
waiver to requirements for the entire system production run.

For commercial avionics (excluding entertainment systems and such), in
the absence of traceable parts, then the avionics builder can qualify
the part much as above. In DO-160 electronics such qualification is
quite expensive. And then again the assembled system needs to pass
DO-160E qualification again (at least for temperature and vibration and
maybe humidity and some parts of the many electrical effects if the part
is in the i/o section of the system).

It would take a very long explanation in any real detail and there are
exceptions and qualifiers galore.

--
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-Ambrose Bierce

On 2013.10.26, 11:16 , nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

You don't have to be a geek to install memory.

depends what you call a geek. most people aren't interested in opening
up the computer to install parts, even if it's easy.

you don't need to be an auto mechanic to change a flat tire but most
people don't want to deal with that either.

But you are probably
right in this case. IIRC Lenovo wanted $240 more for 16gig. I paid under
$100. I do admit, that I got a deal on it, as I found a place that was
going out of business. Otherwise it owuld have cost me $160, from
Crucial. Still a savings.

apple currently charges $200 for 16 gig ddr3 1600 memory.

Entirely wrong.

If you order a base Mac with 8GB, you get one price.
eg: i7 iMac 3.4 GHz 27": $1,999.00

To "bump" it to 16 GB you pay $200 for 8 GB _more_.
: $2,199.00

So that's $200 for 8 GB more.

it's $200 for 16 gig, which replaces the 8 gig that was in the machine.

Completely wrong.

The original 8 GB is "priced in" to the Mac price. It's the difference
in price from Apple for "8 GB" and "16 GB".

IOW the 8 GB memory they theoretically "remove" goes to another Mac
(they don't actually remove anything, they take SKU's with the right
config from the shelf).

Apple prices for upgraded memory:

8 mo 16 - 8 = 8. So 8 more = $200 which is $25/GB.

24 mo 32 - 8 = 24. So 24 more = $400 which is $16.67 / GB.


OTOH, I ordered 16 GB from Crucial:

24 mo 24 - 8 = 16. So 16 more = $185 which is 11.56 / GB.[1]


To match the Apple scenario out of Crucial:

8 mo 16 - 8 = 8. So 8 more = $100 which is $12.50 / GB.[1]


No matter how you look at it, buying extra memory from Apple is
expensive compared to reliable 3rd party vendors like Crucial. There
are others such as OWC - but in my case they were a little more
expesnive than Crucial. (I've ordered from them in the past).

[1]: incl. S&H to Canada. In the US it would be less.

--
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-Ambrose Bierce

On 2013.10.26, 11:16 , nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

I don't know about 'most people,' but I paid Lenovo for 4 gig of memory,
and bought 16 from Crucial, for much less than half the price Lenovo
wanted to charge. The replacement took less than 15 minutes. I had the
chance to see if I really needed the memory before I bought it, and
saved money in the process.

most people wouldn't know where to start to add their own memory. not
everyone is a geek.

now you decide at the time of purchase instead of later, and apple's
prices aren't all that outrageous, assuming you compare the same type
of memory.

Horse**** as usual. If you need more memory, sites like Crucial guide
the non-geek right to the correct part. Even geekish me relies on them
to be absolutely sure I don't order the wrong part as it's easy enough
to do.

non-geeks don't even know where to start looking for memory.

For example on the i7 iMac, selecting the wrong clock timings for a 1600
MHz DDR3 will cause the memory to run at 1033 or 1333 MHz. At that, the
correct timing numbers are counter intuitive.

all the more reason a non-geek doesn't want to bother.

A friend of mine just did exactly that - with the caveat of calling me
up to check what he did. And he did fine.


--
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-Ambrose Bierce

On 2013.10.26, 11:16 , nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

Some people like the ability to add new memory.

very few do so after purchase.

What's Apple charging these days, $500 a gig?

about $12/gig for ddr3 1600, competitive with most ram vendors.

Wrong.

Apple charge $200 to bump from the included 8 GB to 16 GB. An 8 GB bump.

That's $25/GB.

you are buying 16 gig chips.

you are not buying 8 gig that goes into a spare slot, keeping the

See my other reply.


--
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-Ambrose Bierce