Apple's new 'Touch Bar' MacBook Pro is totally un-upgradeable
A teardown of the new Apple laptop has found that the SSD storage is soldered in on the models with a Touch Bar, MacRumors reports, making it impossible to remove.
Old MacBooks - like the now-ancient plastic unibody laptops - were upgradeable, letting users swap out the RAM and hard drives at home after purchase to boost their specs. But Apple has slowly been phasing this functionality out.
In recent years, MacBook Pro laptops had the RAM soldered in, and proprietary SSD storage chip - but with a bit of care, it could be removed and replaced with specially made third-party storage chips.
With the new MacBook Pros that come with a Touch Bar (a secondary touchscreen that sits at the top of the keyboard), this is no longer an option, according to a user from the MacRumors forum who disassembled his new laptop. The SSD is soldered in.
So whether you go for the cheapest 256GB storage, or splash out for 1TB, what you buy is what you get. Permanently.
(Interestingly, the cheapest MacBook Pro that comes without a Touch Bar does have a removable - though proprietary - SSD storage chip.)
This shouldn't really come as a surprise. The new MacBook, which launched back in 2015, also had SSD storage that was attached to the logic board.
But it's still disappointing for users hoping to avoid Apple's extortionate rates to upgrade their laptop specs before purchase.