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Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

The consumer industry. And I think it is to be expected, and frankly, not a bad thing.

For example, I am not a car guy, so I just want my car to get me where I want to. I much prefer an engine I can't access that fits my needs over an engine that I can access but requires maintenance on my part. And I understand that people feel the same with computers.

But Macbook Pros are not supposed to be consumer products! It is called "pro", that should be for a reason. People work on these machines, there are developers, sysadmins, etc... You can almost consider it a dev kit for the entire Apple ecosystem. That's why I am a bit concerned. The "consumer product" trend is starting to overstep its borders.

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> I much prefer an engine I can't access that fits my needs over an engine that I can access but requires maintenance on my part.

Sure, but the right comparison is between an engine that you can access and might sometimes require work on your part (or you can hire someone else to do it) and an engine you can't access, and in fact is so locked down that no one not approved by the manufacturer can access it, so when you encounter any problem you have to take it back to the manufacturer, who (it turns out) almost always says the only solution is a total replacement of the engine.

You're forgetting one factor in this slide to locked-down engines: as a customer I prefer an integrated engine with a significant lower chance of failing so I will not have to work on it or pay someone to fix it.

It could be we're straining the whole discussion too far with all these analogies, but in any case, I think that would make sense if it were actually true that you'd never have to work on it. In the real world, my friends seem to be at the Apple store for repairs constantly, and Apple is bricking [1] older hardware when they release software upgrades.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/11/16/apples-...

Pro has been and is just a marketing term for Apple.

I believe it has become just a marketing term - but the original macbook pros were very much geared towards lots of computing power to get serious business done. It has shifted over time.

> For example, I am not a car guy, so I just want my car to get me where I want to. I much prefer an engine I can't access that fits my needs over an engine that I can access but requires maintenance on my part. And I understand that people feel the same with computers.

Ironically your car is a bigger spy device than your phone.

Getting more and more locked down each year

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