Ian Chilton, freaking out:

However, I think this is a bit sly of them – they’ve soldered the RAM to the motherboard, so you not only can’t use cheaper third-party RAM, but you can’t upgrade the RAM at all.

You have got to be shitting me… As [I said on Twitter](http://twitter.com/BenjaminBrooks/status/212900940687220736), this is not only *not* news, but it is *not* new to Apple. MacBook Air RAM is soldered to the board starting in 2010. This isn’t Apple being sly, this is Apple doing what Apple does: designing small computers.

But, hey, let’s give Chilton the benefit of the doubt here and say that Apple really is trying to screw over users that want to upgrade RAM using cheaper third-party RAM.

Guess what?

New retina MacBook Pros come with 8GB and can only expand to 16GB. I don’t know how much that specific RAM costs, but let’s use the regular MacBook Pro RAM as a benchmark. To upgrade a regular 15″ MacBook Pro to 16GB will cost you $169.99 at  [OWC](http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3_1600MHz_SDRAM). To do the same upgrade on the retina MacBook Pro, from Apple: $200, but for that $200 you don’t void a warranty ((Note that I mean you don’t void the Retina Mac warranty, not the older style MacBook Pros)) and don’t do the work yourself.

So basically: same price.

Gasp!

There is an argument to be made that you could do the upgrade at a later date when RAM is cheaper, but if you know that’s what you like to do, then you already know you *can’t* do that with the retina MacBook Pro and will buy accordingly.

This is only news because [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105325) blows everything out of proportion.

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105325Hacker News](Hacker News)