What are the new parts this Macbook is requiring? Batteries will need to be replaced and Apple's prices are around market for these. What specific aftersales costs are you referring to?
Generally it's batteries and hard drives with occasional RAM upgrades too. None of these people have the knowledge or confidence to change these themselves so they see the Apple store as the only option. This of course only multiplies parts and labour costs.
Which is a real shame because the unibody systems are one of the easiest laptops to open up and get to the HD and RAM. It's even documented in the Getting Started guide that comes with the system. Now if they'd just let us change that big ol' battery that's sitting right there it would be a dream.
Well, you can take the battery out. I've taken mine out multiple times: once to dry out my computer, and again to replace the top case after drying out my computer failed to make the keyboard work again.
There's actually very little about a MBP that is difficult to take apart. The part where you have to remove the screen isn't even that hard.
The last MacBook Pro that was hard to take apart and put together again was sold in 2008. I have one from 2007 and it was pretty easy to replace the (non-defective but slow) HDD with an SSD. That’s, as I said, a MacBook Pro that still had the hard to replace HDD. The newer ones make the process much easier.
I’m very annoyed that the battery in newer MacBook Pros isn’t user replaceable. It’s not that the battery is hard to access and replace – certainly no harder than the HDD. I’m guessing there is some sort of legal requirement – probably? Maybe batteries have to be sold with a hard shell, the MacBook Pro battery doesn’t have that in order to save space. Since they can’t sell it on its own (only as part of the device) they can’t make it user-replaceable.
At least it’s priced appropriately (relatively): The replacement will cost you €180 (parts and work), that’s not all that much more compared to the old user-replaceable batteries which cost €140.
But yeah, except for the battery the MacBook Pros are very accessible.
Yeah, the last troublesome Apple laptops I had to deal with were 2001-era iBooks. Those were kinda tricky.
" Maybe batteries have to be sold with a hard shell, the MacBook Pro battery doesn’t have that in order to save space"
And the saved space can either be used for more battery, or to reduce the size of the computer. They save the thickness of the battery case, and the thickness of any internal walls in the battery compartment with which a removable battery would mate. I'd think those walls might need to be somewhat substantial, to keep the battery in and prevent flexing and loose connections.
I suppose in theory they could also use irregularly-shaped batteries, that would let them fill every bit of space with battery.
Presumably the same would be true if they were using a PC laptop or netbook, and they'd pay someone to do the install, thus raising the price?
Pretty much any technically capable person with the requisite torx drivers can install RAM or disk in a Macbook. They are user-installable, so any PC repair type person ought to be able to do it, not just the Apple store.
Hell, you don't even need Torx (although they help). I upped my MBP to 8 GB RAM last week, using an ordinary (albeit miniscule) flathead screwdriver. It did take me about 4 tries to get the DIMMs seated correctly, though.
Do you mean torx bits with the security pin? Torx bits are everywhere, its hard to buy driver/bit kits that do not include most torx sizes. Torx+security pin is a different story. Microsoft switched to using them on all of the 360 controllers recently.
I hope I don't get downvoted too much for this comment that adds little: look up "Elder Sign" on Wikipedia if you don't know what it is. I haven't read Lovecraft and simply thought that Elder Sign was a curious brand name.
This (12 page!!) link shows that first generation MBPs are actually pretty tricky to change the hard drive; but that all 3 generations need a torx driver for the HD.
