MacBook Pro Retina 13 inch Upgrade Questions

My wife has acquired a December 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina with 2.6 ghz Core i5, 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB SSD, and Iris Pro graphics. We would like to upgrade the RAM to 16 GB and the SSD to at least 512 GB SSD for some future-proofing. Can you recommend any on-line, third-party vendors where I could purchase the RAM and SSD before I open up the macbook pro?

Thank you very much.

 

They're not upgradeable. Especially not the RAM as it is soldered to the motherboard. It's not exactly straightforward to upgrade the SSD but it's possible however you will pay a lot more than you would have paid initially. The 512 SSD for the rmbp 13 costs $660 on ifixit.

 

Apple is very bad for doing this...

 

Sell it and buy what you really want.

 

Due to the thin and light design, concessions had to be made to get everything to fit. Socketed RAM modules would simply be too large for the form factor. Apple is hardly unique in this, laptops of this thinness and weight typically have a lot "onboard".

Apple uses a proprietary flash storage, probably due in part to them coming up with the idea fairly early. One of the things about being Apple is while everyone else is flailing around trying to come up with a 'standard' for something, Apple just makes their own and ships it.

 

If you need to expand the storage on your wifes macbook pro I'd recommend sd cards. Its far less annoying to keep one of those plugged in than an external hard drive or usb drive. Additionally the read/write speeds are excellent.

 

Still Apple is very bad for doing this...

 

Not as bad as someone that goes out and buys a $1000+ item without doing so much as a Google search on it first. Any of 100 websites could have told you the Retina has soldered-on RAM.

By way of comparison, I spent the better part of an hour yesterday Googling for $200 microwave ovens. I know virtually everything there is to know about the one I bought, and it doesn't arrive until later this week.

 

Haha I agree with you but to be fair, I don't think the average consumer thinks about checking to see whether the RAM in their machine is soldered or not even though everyone should. I don't think the apple "geniuses" tell you that either.

 

The average consumer doesn't buy a computer intending to immediately upgrade it either.

I don't know if the Geniuses outright volunteer "oh yeah by the way 74-year old grandma from Wichita, the RAM in this isn't upgradable." "that's nice Jimmy."

I'd think anyone that asks about RAM upgrades will get an answer.

 

Fair enough

 

Apple is still BAD for doing this irregardless...

 

Like someone said, it's a design tradeoff. Apple opted to go for thin and soldered the RAM as a result. They aren't "bad" for doing this, they could have gone with thicker and upgradeable RAM, but they did not. Is it possible to have socketed RAM in a thin and light form factor, yes. However doing so comes at a significant engineering cost and believe it or not, Apple doesn't make the margins they used to make on their hardware these days. They still make pretty good margins, but not as high. I understand the logic behind their decision, it doesn't mean I agree with it, but I do understand it.

If you want an example of a thin and light that has upgradeable RAM, check out the Precision M3800 and it's cousin the XPS 15. The difference here is that Dell probably opted to recoup the costs associated with the extra constraint of upgrades with the M3800. Business units usually sell at higher margins and allow for more design expenses as a result. On the other hand, the chassis don't tend to change that much.

The SSD in your mac is upgradeable, but a replacement will be pretty costly not to mention the whole voiding the warranty potential issue.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too worried about only 8 GB of RAM, take it coming from a guy with 32 GB of RAM in his laptop, for the standard usage, I don't hit > 8 GB. Heck, even on my gaming desktop, I rarely hit over 8 GB with a game and a ton of stuff opened. It's not like your wife will be running CFD on that mac.

Good for static data. Unless you buy a high end SD which will be somewhat expensive, I wouldn't install programs on it or go crazy with the I/O. That said, they're perfect to hold videos and music.