User non-serviceable parts

Since the MacBook Air more and more Macs, Ultrabooks, and regular, old fashioned laptops (not to mention smartphones, …) come without user serviceable battery, storage, memory, etc. Most people argue: “It is not that bad, when do you ever change the battery? And changing memory and storage? Thats for geeks only anyway, …”

More real life examples why this really sucks:

Of course the biggest reason is the battery. If you gonna use your laptop a serious amount of time (2-3 years++) you definitely need to have the battery replaced at least once. Unless –of course– you just keep your laptop on a desk, always connected to a power source. Likewise, previously I always had another battery for my cellphone when traveling abroad. Now with the iPhone I often find myself in a situation where it emergency powers down approaching the end of longer travels. Yes, one could carry those external charging battery packs. But first of all they are usually bigger, can not instantly be exchanged into the phone, and last but not least: in that case I could carry the matching battery to swap in the first place.

But today came an even bigger point in case: I got one of those faulty Retina MacBooks that have this image retaining LG panels, ieek! After some months with this annoyance I finally wanted Apple to replace it. Turns out they will repair it instead of just swapping the machine, and this may take up to 2 weeks++ (here in Germany, at least, …). Now I have of course many personal files, source, images, documents, on it, … With those nice black polycarbonate MacBooks I could just remove the hard disk without opening the case at all. And leave all my source code and documents here at home while the machine is in service.

Now? I have to make sure I have a perfect, recent backup. Then zero out the flash storage, just to replay the backup when I finally get the machine back.

What a really major waste of time (and flash write cycles).

And it is of course a scandal that Apple sold such faulty display on such a high-end machine in the first place :-/ !1!

Brave new world :-/

One Response to “User non-serviceable parts”

  1. Matthew Says:

    Hey René, I wanted to chat with you about the work you did with Sauce labs to get KVM working with OSX 10.8. can you email me to discuss?

    Thanks!
    Matthew

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