Roger Fingas reports for AppleInsider, “Apple Stores are beginning to remove the 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro from their showfloors, in what may be a sign the company is preparing to completely phase out the product with a spinning optical disc drive, AppleInsider discovered on Monday.”
“While the computer is still largely in stock and available to buy, some stores are no longer putting it out for shoppers to try in person,” Fingas reports. “A phase-out would make sense, as the company last updated the computer in 2012, reserving future upgrades for Retina models.”
Fingas reports, “In fact all of Apple’s major products now have Retina displays, with the exception of the MacBook Air.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: New hardware looms!
So long FireWire……I miss you already.
Yes, it the official death of the FireWire 800 port.
Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter is still alive though?
There is still a Firewire 800 port on the Thunderbolt display as well.
So long upgradability…
I definitely don’t like what Apple did to it’s hardware lineup…
There is no MacOS laptop that has upgradability beyond the SSD…
I upgraded my 2009 MacBook Pro numerous times:
4GB to 8GB of RAM (more than what Apple EVER offered for that model)
250GB HDD to 240GB SSD
Optical Drive to 2nd 1TB hard drive…
I mean… $200 for 16GB of RAM? Come on!
It’s also $500 extra for less storage than what I already have in my current laptop…
Upgrade pricing should not be the full cost of the upgraded part…
They aren’t giving you the lesser part after all…
Have you priced the Nvme pcie 3.0 drives they use in the new machines? They aren’t cheap. Their upgrade pricing on those is pretty fair. For example, the pcie 3.0 x4 part they use for the 1tb drive in the MacBook Pro is about 1,000.00 by itself and it’s ridiculously fast. But I do agree with you when it comes to serviceability, the older machines were just the same to take apart by removing the bottom plate, and it would be great if the ram wasn’t soldered to the board. I hate that. On the other hand, including 16gb by default is nice on the 15’s
I’m sorry, but $500 for 512 GB SSD is ridiculous when you can get excellent 1TB SSD for $200 – $250
Yeah but the SSD you’re talking about tops out at 540 MB/s…. The m.2 pcie 3.0 x4 drives are literally 4-5 times faster than that…. And I’ll take the speed over bigger storage when I can just attach an external. But that’s me. I like the speed increase.
SATA SSD and PCIE / MSata have a huge difference in performance
Stop your teasing and start your pleasing…
Release the new Macbook Airs (or larger MacBooks) and a TB3 enabled iMac for Jobs sake!
Oh and throw in a new Cinema display while you’re at it…PLEASE!
NOW please start removing all existing Mac Pro 2013’s and clearing even more room for newer & larger versatile & upgradable mini and maxi-tower models Pro’s actually WANT.
Oh golly, am I pro market fantasizing again? Time to start perusing Hackintosh or PC workstation sites again…
Yeah, I’m pretty fed up with Apple’s pro offerings for the desktop. I’m looking into building a Hackintosh that can run macOS Sierra and Windows 10 Pro once the newer hardware comes out from Apple. I want a tower Mac that I can add my own graphics card, SSDs, HDDs, etc. Can’t do that with a non-updatable trash can. :/
Precisely my dear Watson. Apple afficionado’s who are pro’s are now being forced to “think different” and outside the trash can donut. I may end up doing the same thing.
Seeing as how nothing came out of WWDC which historically is when new Mac Pro’s are announced I am now not optimistic Apple will ever see the pro light. Sadly, most sadly. I keep harping on it hoping to add to the dissatisfied voices they might see online. I am also tired of paying a lot more for video cards which need special Mac firmware to run.
My main work Mac is a 2010 MacBook 2.9 GHz Core i7 with 8 GB of RAM, a 240 GB SSD in the main drive slot, and the hard disk moved to where we removed the optical drive. I get SSD speed and have an internal hard disk so extra space. At my desk, I hook up an external screen for 2 displays, and use Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad, along with an external Time Machine disk. It’s a great Mac, and still going strong and performing well at the 6 year mark.
I hope that Apple doesn’t completely cut off people who want some expandability options _somewhere_ in the product matrix. We’ll see.
Do not be so happy. Replace easily and cheaply upgradeable models with those that cannot be upgraded (or can only be upgraded at the cost of an arm and a leg) and there just may be a migration back to Wintel for some power users now that the Windows 8 nonsense is over with, or possibly even to Linux as most Linux desktops now imitate either macOS or iOS.
According to pattern, future mac laptops wont even have screws at the bottom to open up anything. You have to replace the entire laptop to upgrade.
Advantageous for target consumer that is users that don’t know how to tweak and upgrade you mac.