Apple expects consumers to replace hardware every two to three years. Often this is encouraged by their practice of only supporting a single version of their operating system and their practice of making new versions of their operating systems incompatible with hardware more than a few years old.
To put it another way, Apple doesn't want you to keep your Macbook for three years because there's no money in that, just support costs.
Knowing that there are upgrade options makes it easier for me to pay up for an expensive machine. But years later I never actually buy an upgrade because it feels like a waste to put money into a machine that is nearing the end of its useful life anyway.
I don't even want to know how much money I have wasted on buying "future proof" hardware. So if anything I have to thank Apple for making this perfectly clear to me and saving me from sinking $2200 into a laptop ;-)
You do realize all the "new" limitations of the MBP come straight from the MBA right? And that the MBA's been a raging success?
Battery is already soldered (basically), nobody cares. Aftermarket RAM upgrades only matter insofar as their historically being way overpriced at Apple, this seems avoided for now on the new MBP ($200 for the 16GB upgrade, Crucial asks for $160 for 2x8GB SODIMM so the markup extreme — least of all on a $2200 machine), the HDD -> SSD upgrade is irrelevant as it's already an SSD and if it's the same as the Air (no reason for it not to be), it's a semi-proprietary caseless and low-profile SSD module... for which there are third-party alternatives (or will be, in case the pinout is incompatible with 2011 Air pinout, which would be surprising)
"X MB/TB of resource Y will be plenty for a while" is almost always something we laugh about 2 years later.
Also, the SSD makes you need less memory, since reading from it is so fast
So 16Gb will go a long way really.
Not to mention if you hit your HD limit after a year the bigger drives are going to be drastically cheaper.
The same goes for memory, hard drive, and other parts of the computer.
1) Back up data, wipe drive
2) Sell MBP on eBay
3) Buy new MBP with desired amount of RAM
4) Restore data
Now stop it. You're buying a Mac because you don't like to waste time dicking around with your computer, remember?
And I do like to waste time dealing with backups and Craigslist scammers? I'm buying a Mac because I want a Unix workstation with a solid UI. Lots of MacBook Pro owners are not terrified of screwdrivers.
Ha. Best of luck, friend.
My fiancee, who is practically hardware illiterate, just installed brand new RAM and a new SSD into her 4-year-old MacBook. If she had originally purchased it with those upgrades, it would have been $500+ extra at the time of purchase. This week, it cost $150 for the parts on Amazon.
User-serviceable operations that don't require completely replacing the computer are important, and will surely affect many people's buying decisions. You don't get to say that everybody who wants a Mac will never want to waste time dicking around with their computer.
You wouldn't be able to either way, depending on the chipset's hardware limitations. 2010 MBPs won't recognize 16GB RAM for instance.