Technical problems with the new Retina Macbook PRO.

Apple is doing a good job when it comes to preventing their design problems from showing up in their presentations - as in the case with the ipad2 which had a camera of only 0,7 Megapixel - a miserable resolution for 2011 device - but they did manage to keep it well hidden - as nobody was mentioning the resolution - not even in the reviews!

This time, a big disadvantage of the $2200+ Retina Macbook Pro was well hidden: it's not serviceable neither upgradeable!



1. The battery is glued in place and completely irreplaceable! That being said by iFixit guys means that it's  impossible to unglue the battery and glue a replacement (i guess because of the way it's soldered to the motherboard).


2. The Solid state hard drive is not upgradeable. Instead of using a standard SSD plug - they designed their own in order to prevent users/technicians from using any other offerings apart from the original apple spare part in case of malfuction.


3. The RAM chips are soldered to the motherboard - YOU CAN NOT upgrade the RAM neither replace it if it goes faulty. Out of my personal experience - being a Computer Technician in profession - RAM may go wrong in several cases. In such case with Apple Macbook Pro, forget that $40 universal RAM part replacements.

As said in the source article - Apple is artificially restricting the device's lifespan and he is quite right about that! So, Cross your fingers and hope that it wont' go wrong on you !

Also, worth noting is that an upgrade from 8GB to 16GB (This option is available only BEFORE purchasing) costs a whopping £160 on top compared to £72 which is the typical upgrade cost - but again - you have NO option - you have to choose before buying else you're left with 8GB for ever. Either pay your RAM for GOLD or stick to what you got.

If 8GB sounds much - just think who is going to pay $2200+ for this laptop. Yeap, it's userbase is going to be mostly people who run heavy applications, therefore the upgrade to 16GB is going to put them in a dilemma - "let them rape me in total or go with the basic package? "

UPDATE 15/6:
1. Battery can be replaced by Apple for $199 - said to last 1000 charges before hitting 80% capacity.

2. LCD and Camera etc are all fused together so if you brake the lcd panel or if camera stops functioning - you'll have to replace the top part all-together. As said : "Non-serviceable display"

UPDATE 19/6:

The actual screen resolution is by default downscaled to 1400x900. You can adjust the display resolution up to 1920x1080 but you can't get the 2800x1880 displayed (pixel to pixel). This is similar to something like interpolation of early cheap-py digital cameras that were using software (pixel doubling, tripling etc) to get an advertised 9+ Megapixel pictures, by using a 3 Megapixel sensor.

Source:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/06/14/apple-macbook-pro-upgrades/1

Updates Source:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57452314-263/retina-macbook-pro-is-the-least-repairable-to-date/

Battery replacement info:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57454300-37/bigger-macbook-pro-battery-equals-higher-replacement-cost/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=readMore