Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Basically it's so thin, and packs in so big a battery etc., that everything had to be glued in to make it fit in as thin a package as Apple wanted. They went to the extreme of manufacturing the Retina display directly in the lid, which means the least problem and it's replacement time, which is VERY expensive.

iFixit, a well-known repair depot for Apple gear who publishes DIY repair manuals, tears apart every Apple product as soon as they get their hands on it. The previous model MacBook Pro's scored 7 of 10 for being repairable, apparently a very good score. The current model? 1/10.

The sad thing about it is that laptop will set you back $2,000. I'm used to paying more for Apple laptops because I think they deliver good value and longer life. But a product that cannot be serviced? If I could get a four-year warranty on it, that would be one thing.

This is going to make my next laptop purchase very difficult. My first Mac, a MacBook Pro, was bought around five years ago and it was retired last December, replaced with an Air. Though there are no user-servicable components, to the best of my knowledge it is serviceable. I got a good four and a half years out of my first, and I think that is an acceptable lifespan for a laptop, especially as much as mine travels. A $6-700 laptop, obviously not an Apple, that lasts three years and can't be serviced? Wouldn't sting as much.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/macbook-pro-unfixable/

I should have posted this last week. Very cool story: owner has Mac laptop stolen when apartment is robbed. Owner works at an Apple store and is smarter than the average bear. Friend calls owner to express surprise that the owner got the laptop back as a chat program shows the owner is logged on. Owner uses a remote-control program, Back To My Mac, to activate the laptop's web cam and take a picture of the guy using said laptop. Picture is turned in to the police, laptop and all stolen possessions are recovered.

You just can't get a happier ending than that! Property recovered, perps do the perp walk and go to jail.

Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/nyregion/10laptop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Slashdot thread: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/11/0133232

And a Macosxhints.com has a post describing better ways of doing it, including rigging it so that it takes a picture every time someone logs on to your computer or opens the lid: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006120918170984. That's what I'm thinking about doing as my main non-work computer is a MacBook Pro that has said built-in web cam, I want it to also FTP the picture up to my web site when it gets an internet connection.

Now, granted, this is specific to the Mac. But lots of laptops are coming equipped with web cams now, so I would expect there are similar background programs for the Windows and *nix environments.