I like the power and price advantage of paying only the retail price for storage and memory upgrades and installing them on my own. Size is a very distant third, and mostly a cosmetic issue at this point.
You may be right about the long-term trend (but I hope not). In the short term my annoyance at this has me considering something other than a Macbook Pro as my next machine, which I never would have believed if you'd told me it a few years ago.
Actually, the price (for the OEM) of buying completely integrated components is lower than buying separate ones. However, OEMs don't like to show that to customers. So each step in upgrading RAM or SSDs or whatever is worth $100 or more, which makes it way cheaper to just buy separate components...
I'm envious of your attitude for not really caring about your laptop's size. That makes it a lot easier :)
> I'm envious of your attitude for not really caring about your laptop's size.
Well, it's not that I don't care at all, but I'd much prefer an up-to-date processor, GPU, etc in a 2011 13" MBP chassis - with the ability to expand RAM & storage - over the slimmer MPB "retina" offerings.
You may be right about the long-term trend (but I hope not). In the short term my annoyance at this has me considering something other than a Macbook Pro as my next machine, which I never would have believed if you'd told me it a few years ago.