Don’t get me wrong–I like John Gruber. I think his opinions are pretty spot-on almost all of the time. I’m not sure that’s the case, however, with his takedown of iFixit’s complaints about the non-upgradability of the new Macbook Pro with Retina Display:
Do you hear it? That’s the world’s tiniest violin, playing a sad song for the third-party repair and upgrade industry. And that violin was made by Apple and can’t be disassembled.
His point about this being Apple’s prerogative is taken; I agree with him there. But this isn’t just about third-party repairs. Lots of us want to be able to futz with our own hardware. A nerd like me ought to be able to add RAM to his “pro” computer, at the very least. A fixed, non-upgradable computer makes sense for a consumer-targeted product, but I’m not sure it makes quite as much sense for a “pro” model. I really don’t think this is a particularly whiny complaint.
thin and cantankerous 
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