Software seems to be going the same way. SaaS is a fairly transparent rip-off in many cases. Certain big-ticket professional software vendors restrict sales to a network of resellers they can control, who dutifully pull last year's version as soon as this year's is available, so if you want to buy an extra copy to go with the 10 you already have, you can't (unless you upgrade your entire organisation to maintain compatibility).

Bridging the gap nicely are drivers. Here we see a range of dubious techniques. One popular one seems to be releasing equipment with drivers for certian specific operating systems that are available at the time, but then conveniently not releasing any drivers to support new operating systems released within what would otherwise be the normal lifetime of the device, thus artificially shortening its life often by many years. Another good trick (I'm looking at you nVidia) is to take essentially the same hardware, but sell one version with nerfed drivers and another premium (sorry, "workstation") version with "certified" drivers that actually use the hardware to its full capabilities.

I'm a little surprised that we haven't yet seen more people pushing back against these obviously customer-hostile trends, because a lot of people are spending a lot more money and suffering a lot more hassle than they should have to. Certainly some rip-off merchants do come unstuck; I've heard about what would have been extremely lucrative sales of very expensive specialist equipment that got flushed when the prospective customer discovered some form of artificial nerfing in software and took their cash to someone else who didn't do that. But it seems that everyday hardware and software are in one big race to the bottom.

Even premium products, like those high-end graphics cards and professional software installations with their multi-thousand price tags per unit, seem to be tolerated because almost everyone is doing it now. Perhaps this is partly because the more honest competition mostly comes from smaller organisations in the hardware field or in software's case via independent software houses and open source communities, and these kinds of suppliers are (rightly or wrongly, probably a bit of both) regarded as not being up to the job of supplying Serious Business Customers(TM).

What I haven't yet figured out is why this is still happening. Do you know anyone who, in either a personal or a professional capacity, actually thinks any of this stuff is done to help them, or that spending money on these things is a good deal? In a logical market, we would expect competition to spring up and exploit that vulnerability, promoting brands based on honest dealings and good quality, almost certainly charging a higher price for it, but with a greater perceived value that justifies that price. And yet, this doesn't seem to be happening, which suggests that many of the markets in technology industries are not effectively competitive, or some of the big name players are in practice dominant or outright monopolies even if they're not formally recognised as such.

Likewise, it's easy to buy non-stupid printers right now, today. But few people want to pay what they cost. Even techies would rather spend $50 on a printer and then complain about how it screws them over with ink than spend $200 on a good printer.

If you want people to fight the trend, start with yourself. No, you can't fight it everywhere (not enough people want a modular cell phone for anyone to actually manufacture one), but you can fight it in a lot of places. Start by not buying crappy and restrictive printers just because they're cheap.

Right. It's absolutely necessary for Apple to make the new iPad so that you can't even take it to an Apple Store and get the storage upgraded, and to literally glue the Retina version of the MacBook Pro together so it's almost completely impossible to repair anything if it breaks.

Some integration has a genuine benefit, such as minimising size or weight. But plenty more integration is just artificial, and this trend is increasing. Some of the clients I work with design high-end IT hardware for a living, so I can say with some confidence that if you think the equivalent people at places like Apple couldn't design modern devices in more modular ways than they are, you're just kidding yourself.

Likewise, it's easy to buy non-stupid printers right now, today. But few people want to pay what they cost.

Why can't the colour laser printer I already paid for just work? Printing a black-and-white document with nothing but black toner is not rocket science. Stop apologising for people who deliberately screw their customers.

If you want people to fight the trend, start with yourself. [...] Start by not buying crappy and restrictive printers just because they're cheap.

That printer probably cost the equivalent of $1,500 when I bought it, and was marketed for use in a small office. I'm not talking about cheap consumer junk, not that it would make the slightest difference to my argument if I were.

I'm not saying you can't complain about junk. I'm saying that it's really odd to complain about how it's some conspiracy of manufacturers when it's actually just people preferring the non-modular systems for many reasons, and then giving an example where you yourself went for junk instead of something that's supposedly like what you want.

Agreed. This is not some evil conspiracy of hardware integrators (led by AAPL) to make non-modular devices. This is a design tradeoff in a leading edge machine [1] in which upgradeability was deemed to be less of a concern than making maximum use of space and weight.

[1] You can't get a Retina MBP for less than $2200, making it a premium product for the laptop category.

Nonsense. Go look at the iFixit write-ups of taking apart recent Apple devices, which helpfully show exactly how similar/different the variations are in many respects, highlight all kinds of proprietary components literally down to the level of unusual screws that have no apparent benefit whatsoever over using a standard/compatible component, and incidentally debunk your claim about "substantial thickness and weight savings" in the process.

it's actually just people preferring the non-modular systems for many reasons

I'm still waiting for anyone to cite any of those reasons. Other things being equal, why would someone prefer to buy a system that was going to cost a vast amount more to repair in the event of screen damage, or where proprietary connectors meant they couldn't swap out the SSD for a higher capacity unit even though the device itself is actually removable? And as noted above, for the most part other things are in fact equal, or so close as makes no difference.

then giving an example where you yourself went for junk instead of something that's supposedly like what you want

I'm still waiting for anyone to tell me what I should have bought instead. As I said, the printer I was talking about there was very much not an entry-level device, it was pitched as part of a range for professional use in an office, and with a price tag to match. Asking for such a printer to print a black-and-white document with only black toner is not some sort of absurd concession or flippant request. There would be no excuse for nerfing a $150 printer in that way, never mind a $1,500 one.

Also, it's not as if I somehow found the only printer or the only printer manufacturer around who has this problem. Again, as I already said, almost everyone seems to work this way these days. If you insist on maintaining that after extensive research I still wound up buying "junk" unnecessarily, you can easily win this debate. All you have to do is cite an alternative device I could have bought, with a reasonably similar spec and for a similar budget, that does not have such artificial limitations. But you can't, and instead of accepting that, you persist in implying that it's somehow my fault that a world class brand deliberately nerfed a device that costs $1,000+ in order to increase their revenue on consumables.

"Apple did not design and build a 1.5 mm thin LCD panel. They did, however, do something exceptional with the design of this display: rather than sandwich an LCD panel between a back case and a front glass, they used the aluminum case itself as the frame for the LCD panel and used the LCD as the front glass."

Remember your whole theory about iFixit debunking substantial weight savings? Turns out iFixit agrees with the OP and not with you.

Also, here's another direct quote for you:

"Incorporating a removable LCD into the MacBook Pro with Retina display would increase the thickness by less than a millimeter, while still preserving the awesome Retina resolution."

Source: http://ifixit.org/2787/mid-2012-macbook-pro-teardown/

Unless you're going to argue that less than a millimetre is enough to swing a purchase regardless of display resolution, in which case a lot of MBP Retina owners are presumably on their way back to the Apple Store to swap for a MacBook Air, it looks like iFixit does support my claim after all.

No, you wouldn't.

But even leaving aside the obvious hyperbole of your comment, we're drifting away from the topic at hand. My argument is simply that proprietary-everything, all-in-one designs are a significant loss for the consumer and a huge win for the manufacturer, because they very effectively kill both the upgrade and repair industries, making the default response to buy more new equipment instead.

Given the disproportionately high rate of damage to mobile devices, and the relatively low starting specs, and the fact that most laptops (including Apple ones) have not had such severely restricted maintainability until very recently, this all seems like a huge step in the wrong direction, from the customer's point of view.

If it were only the screen on the Retina MBP, I could just about believe the theory that it was done to keep the size down, but it's obviously not only that screen. If you look at the direction of basically all Apple equipment in recent years, not just phones or even laptops, everything has been moving towards using unusual/proprietary connections and fixed-at-birth specifications for a while, and there are far too many cases where there was no apparent benefit of any kind for me to accept that it's all being done because it's what the customer wants. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me dozens of times over a period of years, find me a good shrink.

Who's giving them a choice, other than not buying anything at all?

I think people value the benefits of the non-modular design more than you think.

I think people value other things that may or may not have anything to do with the lack of modularity, and I think they buy devices that have those benefits. Often, they probably don't even realise the lack of modularity or its implications at the time of making a purchasing decision, but even if they did, they might still value the other benefits over any downside due to lack of modularity.

We can't really conclude much from the current trends unless manufacturers also offer devices that have the benefits of modularity as well, potentially at a greater cost literally or in terms of things like bigger size or heavier weight.

As for the rest, can you give me a specific example of a non-modular system that Apple has made that didn't result in savings in cost, space, or weight? Because every example I can think of saves at least one of those, so either you're thinking of something I'm not, or we disagree on what the savings are. Either way, I can't address it until I know exactly what you're referring to.

Personally, I don't buy the idea that a customer goes into a store and measures whether an iPad or a Galaxy Tab is a few tenths of a millimetre thicker before making their purchasing decision. On the other hand, I do buy the idea that a lot of people are shocked and then angry after their Apple gear gets damaged and they learn how much it's going to cost to repair and how long it's going to take, not least because I personally know several people who have been stung in that way. Of course, by the time they discovered that downside to the all-in-one designs, Apple already had their money.

In my experience, people are mostly surprised as Apple's good service when they need a repair. It's not like other manufacturers provide cheap repairs, either.

Anyway, I'd like to see a "modular, flexible" hardware device that meets the specs of an IPhone or Macbook Air. As for printers and gfx drivers, those have sucked since the beginning of time.

I agree, but for the record, there have been a variety of customer-screwing conspiracies within the computer market. If memory serves correctly, price-fixing arrangements have occurred in at least RAM and LCDs. Not to mention various anti-trust issues.

Plus a few lawsuits were avoided or defeated because of the generosity of the US federal government making laws that makes it more difficult to be a consumer; the DMCA comes to mind. Laws pushed by the very companies that are not in a conspiracy but willing to work together for their own benefit when needed. You want a third-party ink cartridge? Screw you because the law says you can't and it's even illegal for you to try.

Nope, nothing to see here.

Then how do you explain the kinds of deliberate and obviously anti-customer behaviour I described before?

In some cases, a single dominant player is abusing their customers because they have a captive market. This is often the case with high-end equipment or software, because once someone has committed to using a certain product range the cost of switching is prohibitive.

In other cases, while there may not be active conspiracy, I can see no credible explanation for the way multiple suppliers all impose the same unnecessarily consumer-hostile policies unless there is a lack of effective competition such that those who offer consumers a better deal gain a commercial benefit from doing so.

Anyway, I'd like to see a "modular, flexible" hardware device that meets the specs of an IPhone or Macbook Air.

Completely modular in the sense of a tower PC case, of course not. But that doesn't mean they have to glue stuff together so even their own people can't easily repair a failed component.

As for printers and gfx drivers, those have sucked since the beginning of time.

Perhaps. But they mostly used to suck because there were no standards, so every device/software combination needed its own version of what we now call a device driver. There's no such excuse today.

Now the drivers suck because someone at the source made an active decision to screw their customers. How else do you explain a newer, much more powerful model of graphics card that somehow has severely degraded performance in some functions compared to a card of the previous generation, while much more expensive workstation cards using the same new generation of hardware under the hood do seem to exhibit the performance improvements one would expect?

And what other description is consistent with releasing a hardware device that should be useful for many years, yet not releasing drivers for it when Windows 7 comes out just a year or two later? It's not as if the arrival of Windows 7 was a surprise or the manufacturers don't know how to write Windows 7 drivers for their equipment. Chances are the next product range runs just fine on Windows 7 and its drivers are probably using a lot of the same driver code as before.

Obviously there is profit in these behaviours, because it forces customers to buy much more expensive high-end brands or to buy replacement equipment much sooner than they otherwise would have to.