Monday, June 08, 2009

New MacBook Pros

Today at WWDC, Apple introduced the latest MacBook Pros.  It appears that Apple has gone to the same non-user-replaceable battery design with the 13" and 15" MBPs that was introduced with the 17" unibody MBP.

I am very disappointed that the 13" and 15" MBPs will have the non-user replaceable batteries. Let me rephrase that: I'm pissed about it and may prevent me from ever buying another Apple laptop.

I've owned two Mac laptops since Dec. 2004, a G4 iBook and a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro.  The iBook battery was recalled but I was able to replace it myself.  So far, I'm on my THIRD battery in the MBP; the first two lasted about a year each before battery life went to hell and Apple replaced them.  Both replacements were overnighted to me and since the battery simply pops out when you release a catch, it's easily user-serviced.

With the new design, if the new batteries need to be replaced and are covered by Apple, I'll still have to take the machine into one of the local Apple stores, which is a major waste of my time for something I should be able to fix myself.  This is a shitty design feature.

The next laptop I buy may wind up being a Thinkpad running Linux, or even Windows 7.  OS X and the apps that run on it are great but I am proficient with the other OSes, and the Thinkpad will be more serviceable.

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