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javaunsafe2019

But as it’s bad for the environment it’s even more important in 2023 to keep complaining about it.

But as it’s bad for the environment

Is it? Thanks to the increased reliability that non-upgradeability confers I'm still using my 2012 MacBook Pro as my daily driver. I suspect there's a lot of minutia to tease out to verify whether this claim is actually true in the global case.

I agree with you. My computing requirements haven't changed significantly in a decade, so it is easy to pick a laptop that will meet them. Display technology is pretty much perfect; there is very little that is going to change in the life of your laptop, so you don't need to worry about the display becoming outdated. Laptop keyboards have been terrible since the first laptop ever, and that will remain true forever. CPU / memory / storage is also pretty easy to predict, and modern laptops are very competitive. (I would want 16 CPU, 64GB RAM, 4TB storage. Apple is happy to sell such a laptop, though I guess the CPU maxes out at 12 cores.)

For that reason, I don't see why you would expect to upgrade your laptop. I currently use a home-built workstation and rarely upgrade it. By the time the CPU is outdated and tired, you also want to swap the GPU. My 128GB of DDR4 is useless in the world of DDR5. So it's not like I get a ton of upgradeability by having a workstation. I can keep the case and the fans for the next build, saving me $150. Woo. (I have kept my NVMe SSDs forever, though. But they are inexpensive and "rsync" after the upgrade is not too onerous, so it's pretty reasonable. But, technology improves there too. I have PCIe-4, but my SSDs don't take advantage of it. So keeping them just gives me slower storage.)

The only thing you have to be careful about is sticker shock vs. future needs. Upgrade is pay later, but laptops are pay now. It hurts to price NVMe SSDs on Newegg and then pay Apple $2000 for it. That might be what people are talking about with "upgradeability"; "Apple is too expensive".

Exactly. My Apple products out-last non-Apple stuff by an order of magnitude (as much as I want to be on Android and Linux desktop).

That's because they are more expensive, not because Apple is slower on innovation.

2012 MVP was a solid computer. I've been supplied MacBooks at work that have all been newer and less reliable.

2012 MBP was indeed my final reliable Apple product. I "upgraded" away from it unfortunately (because jobs always paid for these things) which resulted in me throwing away at least 3 newer models, which simply stopped working. I'm gladly off Apple for 2 years now!

My work-issued 2015 MBP is still going strong. But I have heard there have been models where they had more issues.

That's an apt typo!

> the increased reliability that non-upgradeability confers

I'm skeptical of those being connected; my 2008 thinkpads and 2011 desktop (that I'm writing this on) are extremely upgradable and still work fine (I mean, the thinkpads are slow by modern standards, but that's not a reliability issue). And non-upgradeability in this sense also means that it's not reparable either, so when it does have problems the whole thing is dead rather than, say, just swapping out a faulty RAM module or replacing the worn-out SSD or whatever - to say nothing of the battery degrading.

Theoretically, having to design the product to be modular means you'll have connectors, modules, and other parts that you have to ship on every product. At scale, you could imagine that adding 0.1 grams of weight and material to every unit nets out to be more wasteful than throwing away 1 in 100,000 entire units due to a fault.

Theoretically, maybe, but we'd need real numbers to even start to evaluate that.

Sure, I'm just pointing out from an environmental/waste standpoint it's not obvious that repairability is a win.

How often have you had the sockets fail, compared to the components themselves?

His 4th point in the conclusion at the end:

> I wanted a cheap travel laptop I could replace without blinking an eye at the price.

It's pretty easy to get ~10 years out of a good laptop from Apple. I'll be shocked if this guy is still using his Thinkpad in 10 years, and even if he does, that he didn't create more e-waste by swapping parts that he wouldn't have had to sticking with the MacBook.

Hello there. I'm writing this on a Thinkpad x220 from 2011.

Based on highly unscientific observation, people tend to keep using old Apple laptops much longer than random Not Apple laptops.

Old Apple laptops, like the 2012 mentioned, yes. Newer ones don't really last long anymore.

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