Sorry Paul, but I've changed hard drives and RAM (as have many of my non-computer-industry friends) on those exact models. I've changed them on ALL of the laptops I've had, both my own and many pre-prod units.
Apple puts its own label on the drives they use as OEM and you might not find the part number for that OEM unit in a Hitachi or Western Digital list, but that doesn't mean the drive units are not industry standard equipment. I've changed out the drives in virtually ALL my systems (for larger ones) as it has always been less expensive to get a lot of disk space that way. On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 9:58 PM, steve harley <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2010-02-05 10:15 , Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote: >> >> I was deeply involved with Apple as an external developer from 1984 on >> and then worked for Apple from 1991, shortly after the first PowerBook >> introduction, to 2004. I sat in laptop development teams representing >> Developer Relations during the first decade of my involvement there. >> RAM and hard drives have *always* been user upgradeable, on all of >> them, although some have been easier to do the upgrade than others. > > i didn't work at Apple, but i have direct experience replacing hard drives > with several of these models, and a lot of knowledge of Apple policies and > hardware ... for laptop hard drives, what you say is only generally true for > certain uncommon definitions of "user upgradeable" > > all of the g4 PowerBooks and the MacBooks Pro until the Unibody have had a > deeply buried hard drive -- the vast majority of users would not feel > comfortable with, and might well bungle, the replacement task; but yes, if > it were accomplished carefully, it would not void the warranty, so that > meets one definition of "user replaceable" > > in contrast, Apple has officially sanctioned the hard drive as user > replaceable in the current Unibody units; the instructions are in the user > guide (whereas for previous G4 and later laptops no public Apple > instructions are available for hard drive replacements); if you have good > touch with a fine Phillips screwdriver, you can replace the hard drive in a > Unibodoy MacBook Pro in less than five minutes, though it still takes some > care; it's at least 20 and more like an hour the first time with the older > models > > comparison - three steps (numbers 5, 6, and 8 here) are all you need for the > Unibody models: > > <http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-17-Inch-Unibody-Teardown/618/1#top> > > versus the 15 steps here: > > <http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Core-2-Duo-Model-A1211-Hard-Drive-Replacement/459> > > >> They've always used industry standard components for these items too. > > yes and no; the hard drives always (still) have a custom label with an Apple > logo on them, and the model number often doesn't exactly match what is > commercially available, though the actual differences from "standard > components" are miniscule because, of course, Apple does not make hard > drives > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
