OpenForum talks new MacBook Pros

Earlier this week Ars Technica covered Apple's announcements at WWDC, which included details about iOS 6, and notably, a refresh to the MacBook Pros, Macbook Air, and more subtle upgrade to the Mac Pro line. We often bring you highlights from the forums to show you some of the more relevant discussions from the week, and you can register for an account to join in the discussion.

Discussions around the new MacBook Pro updates have been pretty heated for meanwhile a month now. The thread "MacBook Pro Updates?" which started back in May, had been speculating how Apple might update the line of notebooks. Afterwards Monday's announcements, Ars readers dove head first into the discussions of the new specs, and you can find those starting on page eight.

The easy of upgrading these new Apple computers rose as one of the first questions, and njponzer asked, "Is the SSD in the Retina MBP integrated into the motherboard, or is it on a removable module like the Macbook Air uses?" This question, answered in Chris Foresman's piece on MacBook Pro parts, is that yes, it's removable, nevertheless not necessarily compatible with other models.

The lack of Ethernet in the new MacBook Pro

Other OpenForum members as well lamented the lack of Ethernet in the new MacBook Pro. Nevarre said, "The push away from things like Ethernet are getting as a matter of fact, in fact frustrating. I'm deep down OK that the hardware is bounded by USB for size and I'm somewhat happy that DVI and VGA are no longer size constraints, however I would prefer it be bounded by RJ45. At some point you can make stuff thinner-- e.g. iPads are quite do-able today-- yet you have to settle on some solution that's more elegant than a bag full of dongles."

cateye added personal observations about the role of ethernet in the enterprise: "Wifi is great, and works in nearly all situations, nevertheless when it doesn't work, it actually doesn't work. Ethernet is pretty essential in a high-density corporate setting. I'm glad Apple is offering the dongle suddenly, yet... eesh. I'll freely admit that's my own bias against dongles, although."

The Social Editor at Ars Technica

Cesar Torres / Cesar is the Social Editor at Ars Technica. His areas of expertise are in online communities, human-computer interaction, usability, and e-reader research. Cesar lives in Chicago.