Apple To Offer 32GB of Desktop RAM, Kaby Lake In Top-End 2017 MacBook Pro, Says Analyst (appleinsider.com) 300
AppleInsider has obtained a note to investors from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that says Apple's 2017 laptop line will focus on internal component updates, including the platform-wide adoption of Intel's Kaby Lake architecture. What's more is that Apple is expected to manufacture a 15-inch MacBook Pro with up to 32GB of RAM in the fourth quarter of 2017. AppleInsider reports: Apple took flak in releasing its latest MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models with a hard memory cap of 16GB, an minimal allotment viewed as a negative for imaging and video professionals. Responding to customer criticism, Apple said the move was made in a bid to maximize battery life. Essentially, the Intel Skylake CPUs used in Apple's MacBook Pro only support up to 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM at 2133MHz. Though Intel does make processors capable of addressing more than 16GB of memory, those particular chipsets rely on less efficient DDR4 RAM and are usually deployed in desktops with access to dedicated mains power. In order to achieve high memory allotments and keep unplugged battery life performance on par with existing MacBook Pro models, Apple will need to move to an emerging memory technology like LPDDR4 or DDR4L. Such hardware is on track for release later this year. As for the 12-inch MacBook, Kuo believes next-generation versions of the thin-and-light will enter mass production in the second quarter with the same basic design aesthetic introduced in 2015. New for 2017 is a 16GB memory option that will make an appearance thanks to Intel's new processor class.
battery life a braindead argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
video and photographic professionals who legitimately have needs for that memory it really was a strange move.
Even the latest iMacs and Mac Minis have no 32GB of RAM option.
Of all the products Apple sells.... only the Mac Pro is configurable up to 64GB.
And the hardware's still all a generation behind PC hardware.
Re:battery life a braindead argument (Score:4, Informative)
exactly for a decade apple was at or near the top with annual updates and feature changes.
since 2012 and the broadwell/skylake fiasco apple basically stopped trying to keep up with laptops and desktops.
I want a new macbook (currently a 2009 macbook)but i want a modern cpu and a sd card slot. things i can't get in current line up. So many macbook owners have been waiting 5-6 years screaming for new tech and apple is failing to deliver.
I won't own a windows 10 machine and linux might be possible if all the hardware worked.
Re: (Score:2)
SD cards are holding you back? Why? You have a serious need to copy pictures off an old digital camera, and a $10 dongle is too much?
These Macbooks don't have DVD drives either, why aren't people making a stink about that?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:battery life a braindead argument (Score:5, Insightful)
SD Cards were a minor standard five years ago.
Falsehood #1. They are still the predominant standard among digital cameras and camcorders.
Any quality digital camera for years now uses wi-fi to transfer files
Falsehood #2. Wifi is still a pretty uncommon feature, and even when present is fairly problematic, finicky, and requires an unreasonable number of steps to initiate.
and who uses low-end digital cameras anymore, when their phone is just as good?
Falsehood #3. Unless you're unfairly comparing across differing generations of technology, a dedicated digital camera is superior to a phone camera by simple virtue of physics: larger sensors. Even a low-end point-and-shoot digital camera has a sensor many times larger than that in a cell phone, allowing in more light, more signal, and a resulting better picture.
When you do this, is having to carry a cheap small dongle really that serious of an issue?
Falsehood #4. Dongles are a PITA and constantly get lost. What's the point of losing a millimeter on the laptop thickness in some artificial inverted penis-size competition where the manufacturer has brainwashed everyone into thinking they need/want "THINNER!" when really they don't, but the trade-off is a pile of dongles that are an even bigger hassle to lug around than +1mm in laptop thickness, meanwhile they get lost all the time so the TCO of the laptop skyrockets.
Anyway, micro-SD is far more popular than SD.
And finally, Falsehood #5. What universe are you from? Have you even shopped for cameras ever? I cannot even fathom where you're pulling all this nonsense from. Nothing you say is true to the point where you're either delusional or trolling.
Re: (Score:2)
Not surprised to see you have a UID of less than six digits, as your understanding of technology is a decade outdated. https://www.statista.com/chart... [statista.com] might be illuminating. Basically, it shows that P&S cameras aren't popular anymore.
But to respond:
1) How often you do you see people using digital cameras instead of phone cameras? Enough that every computer needs to accommodate them?
2) Every camera over $200 will have Wi-Fi, and it's been that way for years now. It's very easy/automatic to use. Ev
Re:battery life a braindead argument (Score:4, Interesting)
And dongles don't constantly lose themselves -- people lose dongles, if not careful. And needing a whole "pile of dongles" just shows that there's always some connection or other which can't be included. I mean, do I really want a laptop which has VGA + HDMI + DVI + DP ports? Well, who wants to carry any dongles, right?!
So I'm looking at a MacBook Pro and how it needs a dock sitting on the desk. But I also see this one tiny USB-C/TB3 cable and it is doing a multitude of things. And then I recall the SCSI cables we used to have to use, just for drives and scanners.
And how this one machine, when plugged into a USB-C cable, becomes a desktop, and when I unplug it, it becomes a laptop. And all my stuff is on it. Simple. Thing I like most about the MBP is that it has *four* TB3 ports. It has more connectivity than the Mac Pro tower it replaced.
Re: (Score:2)
Dongles per se do not bother me. I have a selection of dongles for various purposes - always have. What winds me up is that the dongles are all designed to go at the laptop end of the cable.
For the last n years, I have had to carry around a selection of about seven different cables for USB, mini USB, micro USB, USB 3.0, firewire (-400 and -800), Thunderbolt, HDMI. If I could replace all of these with two or three USB-C cables and seven dongles, I'd be very happy.
Re: (Score:2)
Some of this is the fault of HDMI - the HDMI consortium demands that all HDMI cables should have male ends and that's it. And I believe they demand that you can't convert HDMI into anything else.
It makes it a huge pain in the ass. HDMI should just be quarantined to home video, and computing should move ahead with DisplayPort. It's better in just about every way, as well as being an open standard.
Re:battery life a braindead argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I've never found it finicky. The problem is that the actual maximum speed of wireless is GARBAGE for transferring photos, much less video. Wi-Fi is more than an order of magnitude too slow to be practical. Anybody who thinks otherwise has almost certainly never shot photos with anything more capable than a toy iPhone camera.
To give some context, my brand-new, high-end 5D Mark IV shoots photos that can be from 30–70 megabytes each depending on RAW settings. Even though it supports 802.11n, if memory serves, all devices in IBSS mode (without infrastructure Wi-Fi) are limited to 802.11g speeds. So in practice, unless you bring a Wi-Fi router along with you (no camera supports the captive portal Wi-Fi that you'll find in every hotel on the planet), you'll be limited to only 54 megbits per second.
At 54 megabits per second, transferring a typical daily run of 500 photos at 70 megabytes each takes almost an hour and a half, and that's actually slightly optimistic. I do use the wireless functionality to transfer a few pics at a time from my camera to my iPhone while traveling so that I can quickly post pics from my real camera on Facebook. It works well for that, because I'm only grabbing five or six pics at a time, and I'm getting a much smaller JPEG copy instead of a RAW file.
At night, though, the flash card comes out of the camera and goes into the side of my laptop, where I spend only about four or five minutes to import that entire batch of photos. If Apple had bothered to keep their SD card reader hardware up-to-date, it would take under two minutes, but the two minutes saved isn't worth the hassle of trying to dig a flash card reader out of my bag.
With a laptop that lacks a flash reader, however, the entire equation changes. Suddenly, my choices are to either try to dig out an SD card reader (which will always be hard to dig out of a camera bag) or carry a retractable USB 3.0 cable (which turns out to be easier to put in a place where it is accessible, because it is so thin) and use the camera itself as a reader, albeit with the same poor performance as Apple's old SD card reader, and draining the camera battery the whole time. Both choices are approximately equally bad, and the decision to hobble their hardware by removing such a convenient way of importing content makes me seriously question Apple's commitment to the photography market.
Then again, I never used Aperture. If I had, I'd probably have much stronger negative comments....
Pretty much. Apart from cellular phones (where nobody uses the micro-SD slot anyway), pretty much the only cameras that use micro-SD are the little cameras built by GoPro. All pro cameras use either CF or full-size SD, because when the camera isn't a tiny little toy, the size savings of micro-SD aren't enough of a benefit to make up for the smaller contact size and the resulting decrease in reliability and robustness.
Trolling, I'd imagine. Either that or it's an Apple employee astroturfing. Hard to say which.
Re: (Score:2)
tl;dr - "I don't want to use an SD card reader because I'll lose it in my camera bag."
If it's that much of a problem, buy 5 of things and put one in every pocket. They cost like $7.
Re: (Score:3)
I would caution against the last falsehood. All my camera user micro SD. Adapters are reliable, the cards are equally priced (though they top out at a lower capacity), and my laptop's have micro SD slots instead of regular SD.
That said I take more issue with the wi-fi comment. Wi-fi is rare in the high end market. Sure everyone's offering them now but the high end cameras have a long service life. A lot of professional photographers do not have this as an option.
Re: (Score:2)
And, transferring via Wi-Fi is slow as shit, because it's large data sizes and usually limited to 802.11g, which has a maximum of 54Mbps that you will never see, because of the 2.4Ghz ISM band being flooded with signals from every damn thing.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with wi-fi apart from speed is you have to disconnect from the Internet to connect to your camera.
Re: (Score:2)
and who uses low-end digital cameras anymore, when their phone is just as good?
Falsehood #3. Unless you're unfairly comparing across differing generations of technology, a dedicated digital camera is superior to a phone camera by simple virtue of physics: larger sensors. Even a low-end point-and-shoot digital camera has a sensor many times larger than that in a cell phone, allowing in more light, more signal, and a resulting better picture.
When you take into account that the self-absorbed generation of social media narcissists only care about "selfie" quality, your argument defending dedicated camera hardware goes out the window. Good enough is the reason more pictures are taken with cell phones today than any other hardware.
Anyway, micro-SD is far more popular than SD.
And finally, Falsehood #5. What universe are you from? Have you even shopped for cameras ever? I cannot even fathom where you're pulling all this nonsense from. Nothing you say is true to the point where you're either delusional or trolling.
The popularity of microSD is dictated by the fact that cell phones are the primary photo taking devices today, and microSD and the infamous "cloud" are the storage mediums. Whether you want to live in another delusional
Re: (Score:2)
Not buying a new SLR just because you (or Apple) say so. To even suggest it makes you a fucking idiot.
And no phone is "just as good" as practically any SLR, because physics. Yeah, the megapixel count might be there, but basically nothing else is. Fucking idiot confirmed.
Re: (Score:3)
Am I the only one who finds that a SD card slot that holds an SD card is a great way to hold extra data? I keep a 256 GB one with low-use archive data in my SD card slot, symlinked into the main file system.
Frankly I wish they could put 2 or 4 of these slots into a laptop. I would use one for portable data I expected to move to other computers, one as a generic storage enhancer, and one other for my automatic image backup.
The latter I would really like, I can keep at least 5 restore points in 512GB for m
Re: (Score:2)
Am I the only one who finds that a SD card slot that holds an SD card is a great way to hold extra data?
If it's genuinely rarely-accessed data, that's cool. For some reason, most SD cards have shockingly bad random read speeds. I've never been able to figure that one out, but it's completely true. Samsung Evo and Evo+ over 16GB are some of the few models for which it isn't. The ones under 16GB are faster than average, but still slower than the large ones.
Re: (Score:3)
I work as an IT contractor, and I have about 400 gigs of miscellaneous software archives that I drag around with me. About a third of it is legacy crap that I almost never need but when it does come up, it's usually critical to solving some problem.
I split the archive between a current branch and a legacy branch and keep legacy as just a symlink to a directory on a 256 GB card that stays in my Dell laptop and fortunately fits completely flush.
I agree that the speeds to SD are kind of erratic and not nearly
Re: (Score:2)
Should have bought a MacBook Pro ;) I've got a 17in MBP that's over five years old, and it's still an awesome machine. I do all my Lightroom work in it for instance. I've also got an old MBP that turns nine next month - it's still good for email, browsing and playing music, but I'm beginning to think an SSD would have been a good upgrade a couple of years ago!. These Macs can last for a long time, w
Re: (Score:2)
I won't own a windows 10 machine and linux might be possible if all the hardware worked.
It's really not hard to have a quality Linux experience on a laptop, and hasn't been for a while. You just need to get away from shopping for any old POS cheap laptop then deciding to throw Linux on it. Instead, shop hardware with Linux in-mind first. Wifi is usually the biggest issue with Linux drivers (video being second). Pretty much any laptop has a removable standard wifi card in it. Even if you can't/don't get the laptop with an Intel card from the manufacturer (Dell Latitudes have pretty much always
Re: (Score:2)
Come on man if he does professional video work there are no replacements for Adobe products PERIOD! Not to mention color calibration and fonts SUCK on Xorg compared to MacOSX and Windows. Linux is a geek server OS.
Sure you can run Firefox and pretend to be important but that is about it unless you are a system administrator. The OS should support you, not the other way around. Only time you need to support the OS is because you need a million bizaare things tinkered like the size of the sectors on the hard
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you can't/don't get the laptop with an Intel card from the manufacturer (Dell Latitudes have pretty much always offered this as an option), it's trivial to replace it after the fact if you absolutely must have that model.
I've had better luck with Atheros. Intel WiFi quality has been slipping. Granted, much of that is problems with windows drivers which won't crop up on Linux, but not all.
Re: (Score:2)
You know Apple got into this in the 1980's after Jobs was fired. They stopped innovating and stayed expensive and got slower and less powerful at the same time as the PC began to really take off and accelerate and improve.
It looks like Apple died again with Jobs passing.
However, I do recall a similar problem 10 years ago with the PowerPC CPU's. I had Mac heads swear to me WON"T OWN XP NADA! Then I should what a Pentium IV with Adobe Premiere can do and how slow their G4's were. They sighed and built their o
Re: (Score:2)
All our marketing people used Apple desktops, and the 17'' notebook was colossal and a heck of a machine; every photographer, marketing drone, and graphical people had one.
The XP was long due by that time; and frankly if that particular people jumped to Windows they were not Mac heads at all.
Re: (Score:2)
exactly for a decade apple was at or near the top with annual updates and feature changes.
since 2012 and the broadwell/skylake fiasco apple basically stopped trying to keep up with laptops and desktops.
I want a new macbook (currently a 2009 macbook)but i want a modern cpu and a sd card slot. things i can't get in current line up. So many macbook owners have been waiting 5-6 years screaming for new tech and apple is failing to deliver.
I won't own a windows 10 machine and linux might be possible if all the hardware worked.
Seriously? You are passing up on an upgrade of an 8 year old MacBook because the new ones do not have a built in SD card slot? I do a lot of Photoshop work and I build Raspberry PI based cameras which involves a lot of programming and SD card use and I would not dream of passing up on a computer upgrade because of a missing built in SD card slot on my 2016 MacBook. I solved that problem in about 5 minutes: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=n... [amazon.com]. As for your second concern. Even the new MacBook with its 2-core m
Re: (Score:2)
I want something as maintainable as a Thinkpad, Z1 or Z800, but that runs macOS. And I want a macOS that isn't an overblown iOS. The only route to those is to take some drugs, go to bed, and dream of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Yawn, other than tests that the chip has coprocessors designed specifically to run quickly, have there been improvements in processors over the last 5 years?
Re: (Score:2)
I have a 2013 Mac Pro and a new 2016 MacBook Pro 13".
Whilst multi-thread performance is a different matter altogether, single core performance is pretty much on par (with a slight edge to the laptop) when comparing the two machines. The vast majority of software I run is single threaded, as I don't do video editing, 3D or gaming.
This is a Intel Xeon E5-1620 quad-core versus an i7-6567U
https://ark.intel.com/products... [intel.com]
https://ark.intel.com/products... [intel.com]
Power consumption is 130W to the Xeon versus 28W to the i7
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, this is not an Apple specific strategy.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.hardocp.com/article... [hardocp.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Oops wrong one
http://www.hardocp.com/article... [hardocp.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Ah so you have a load with more cores? I was about to reply on your previous comment that benchmarks show little to slower performance to older haswells. But unless you have a parallel load which admit that is about 3% of PC users that won't make a difference which is why your CPU cost $500 more.
I wonder though how much of Mac power users have GPU vs CPU limited workloads?
Re: (Score:2)
you obviously don't do anything processor intensive, while on the face of it the clock speeds haven't changed much the actual raw performance change from a sandy bridge to a haswell is massive, it is close to a 50% step up.
There is none. Go to www.cpuboss.com. The newer cpus are about 5% slower than the ones a few years ago. Massive my ass
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
still all a generation behind PC hardware.
It's not like Intel has that much differentiating their generations.
The MacPro comes with a E5-2697 v2 [cpubenchmark.net] that is still competitive.
Re: (Score:3)
Plus, we can actually get onsite support from HP.
While I agree with moving away from Apple, moving to HP is daft. They have literally the worst support in the industry. When my Elitebook failed with a corporate warranty they sent a tech to my house to break it. The first time he showed up, he merely failed to fix it, and put it back together with the old parts because they didn't send him with any new ones. The second time he showed up, the machine wouldn't boot after he was there. Before, it was just suffering from thermal shutdown due to that nVidia G71
Re: (Score:2)
Another person that cannot stay on topic. My comment was about their workstations
Another coward with shit reading comprehension. My comment was about their support, with some additional anecdotes thrown in about the garbage design of their laptops.
The simple fact is that HP has been known for making completely shit PCs since forever. Vectra, Kayak... these names were watchwords for garbage. And now, they STILL make garbage.
HP is garbage.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone tell Apple that then, because they were fine with configuring an iMac with 32GB RAM and shipping it to me in November.... and their online stores configuration tool still has that option right now...
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting.... How come their website says Configurable up to 16GB then when showing all iMac products?
Were they lying? Is there an error on their Website? Did they support 32GB briefly and then knock it back down ?
Thin is the real issue (Score:2)
Thin is the real issue if the system was bigger then the systems will be better.
Way more braindead to take large hit on battery (Score:2)
for people that have a legitimate need for more than 16GB of ram battery life is a secondary factor
What laptop owners would that really be true of though? A handful, even among pros... if it's going to be plugged in all the time, and battery life is of secondary or no concern - then my not just use a Mac Pro? It's also fairly portable and will be much faster (yes, even before any updates to the current model).
I personally cannot see Apple releasing a laptop with an option that has way worse battery life ju
Re: (Score:3)
A Mac Pro is not 'portable' if you still have to lug a screen around. I like to move from the desk to the living room, patio, or completely different area altogether. Sometimes I like to do work while laying in bed. There are plenty of use-cases that people will reasonably pay to have access to.
I enjoy keeping my computer up and running for long periods of time, but I have to reboot my MBP a few times a month (because I'm stubborn and won't do it once a week) when I dig so far into swap that simply restarti
Re: (Score:2)
A Mac Pro is not 'portable' if you still have to lug a screen around.
Yes, and? The same argument applies for a "laptop" that you MUST lug a power adaptor around with constantly. That is not a device amenable to using on the patio or the bed. In fact the choice Apple made seems like the are tailor made to the case you lay out - which how most people (including myself) use laptops, and why suffering a huge hit in battery life just to go beyond 16GB is a non-starter.
I absolutely need 32GB in order to be pro
Re: (Score:2)
The same argument applies for a "laptop" that you MUST lug a power adaptor around with constantly.
Yes, I'll take the model with the 27" 4k power adapter.
Re:battery life a braindead argument (Score:5, Insightful)
It is all Johnny Ive's and his bullshit obsession for thin. Make the PhatBookPro! Yes, the MacBookPro can be made 2mm thicker to provide a 24 hour battery life or a realworld professional battery life of 10 hours. Johnny Ive's needs to just stop with thin until battery technology gets better. It seems to me that making the bottom panel modular would solve all the problems. If HP and Lenovo want to keep getting thinner, let them. Their touchpads and keyboards suck compared to the MacBookPro. Oh and bring back the glowing Apple logo on the back of the lid. What a dumb marketing move to ditch that.
Re: (Score:2)
A modular bottom panel is a pretty good idea. I suppose ideally the entire case would be designed around the bottom panel being swappable for a thicker one which included supplemental battery power and extra ports.
If they had a docking port on the bottom, this could almost be something a third party could deliver.
Re: (Score:2)
A modular bottom panel is a pretty good idea. I suppose ideally the entire case would be designed around the bottom panel being swappable for a thicker one which included supplemental battery power and extra ports.
No, it's a contrary idea. It runs contrary to the entire design strategy of Apple laptops, which is based around unibody castings. But they could split that frame into an upper and a lower, where the lower frame is changed out for different battery configurations, at relatively minimal expense. It would require somewhere from probably a dozen to a couple of dozen screws to really tie the two frame pieces together. Or just weld them, which now I think of it is a much smarter idea.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, I don't get this obsession with "thin". Never, in the past, did I ever say to myself, "Gee, I wish this thing were thinner!" Faster? Sure. More easily configurable? Easier to get inside of? Mos def. But what can you do? Apple has always been a "Father Knows Best" kinda corporation. It kinda worked when Jobs was around, but nowadays, they might want to consider being more responsive to the users. Still, nothing beats OS X, so I'm stuck with whatever Apple comes up with, hardware-wise.
As for 32 GB of RA
Re: (Score:3)
For heavy users having 32GB of RAM will increase battery life, due to less swapping to disk and less in-memory compression.
Give me field-upgradability (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me the ability to install commodity RAM and storage after I buy the device.
Without that ability, I will be looking elsewhere. If this means leaving the macOS ecosystem or going with a "hackintosh," so be it.
I dunno if this is a good thing (Score:5, Funny)
To squeeze in the extra RAM, they might decide they need to remove the few ports which were left. #courage
Apple must put the user first again, not marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good step, but there's a greater fallacy at work at Apple here: The triumph of marketing demands over technical needs of the user.
Apple is great...they are better than Microsoft at making both hardware and software (especially software). Apple's OS is basically Unix with a candy coated shell and it is the best for basically anything except gaming (I know broad statement...I'm sure there are other applications that are better on Windoze but I'm speaking broadly...chill).
Apple's mistake, and it's a big one, is letting advertising phrases like "Our thinnest Macbook Pro yet!" override user centered design.
Same goes for their port nonsense...removing the headphone jack was a huge mistake, it's a *data port* that is backwards compatible with 100 year old tech. They wanted to advertise their phones as "waterproof" so instead of making the port waterproof like other companies, they just remove it and let marketing handle it. Disgusting.
Apple can easily regain their footing by putting the users first in their design decisions and stop their design hubris.
People bitched when Apple dropped floppy drives (Score:5, Interesting)
And SCSI, VGA, DVI, CD, DVD, RS232, Parallel ports, Modem, Ethernet jack, etc., etc.
Maybe the headphone jack will be the final straw. Or maybe you're being hysterical. Let's meet back here in a few years and if Apple is out of business then I owe you a Coke.
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe you're being hysterical.
Or maybe you're being an idiot. Hysterical does not mean "I disagree".
Re: (Score:2)
And SCSI, VGA, DVI, CD, DVD, RS232, Parallel ports, Modem, Ethernet jack, etc., etc.
Dropping the ethernet jack was a mistake, but back when Apples commonly had serial ports, they didn't even have one. They just had that AAUI connector, if you were even lucky enough to have one of those. And Apple didn't drop VGA, they just "never" used it (except once or twice, in rare exceptions.) They never had parallel ports, but they never needed them because they had RS-422 ports. The rest of that stuff was dropped in a very timely fashion. Displayport is now a common standard on PCs and is a smaller,
Re: (Score:2)
When did the title use the word desktop? (Score:2)
I thought this is an article on laptops? And memory is memory, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Very insightful question. I can tell you are really interested in the answer and not just asking questions to hear your own voice, so I did a little research on the subject. Hope it helps!
"Though Intel does make processors capable of addressing more than 16GB of memory, those particular chipsets rely on less efficient DDR4 RAM and are usually deployed in desktops with access to dedicated mains power. In order to achieve high memory allotments and keep unplugged battery life performance on par with existin
32gb ram = $300 upgrade vs $200 for it alone (Score:2)
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial... [amazon.com]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/... [newegg.com]
just an quick google.
apple will make it so that you can't install your own ram.
Re:32gb ram = $300 upgrade vs $200 for it alone (Score:4, Informative)
All "thin and light" laptops are like this. The RAM is soldered directly to the motherboard and is not upgradable unless you have a reflow oven. Apple is nowhere near alone on this point. I think the last machine I've seen that was field-upgradable in RAM is the Acer C710 or V5 (same time frame, just Chromebook vs. Windows). The next couple generations still had mSATA or M.2 slots, but even those are going away in favor of permanently attached eMMC. I think the upgrade to my C720 will be... a Core i3 motherboard to replace the Celeron that I have now. (They're about $100.) And maybe the touchscreen to convert it into a C720P. But the base unit is one I expect to have for a few years because everything since (save for the C740) has been shittier and non-upgradable.
So don't single out Apple. Everyone is shipping non-serviceable laptops now.
Re:32gb ram = $300 upgrade vs $200 for it alone (Score:5, Insightful)
So don't single out Apple. Everyone is shipping non-serviceable laptops now.
You couldn't be more wrong. This is absolutely not the case. Hell, even Dell ships pretty much all their laptops with upgradeable memory to some degree, and the Latitudes especially so (the memory is always easy-access, compared to some Inspirons where you might need to take out the motherboard first). I also continue to service many modern non-Dells that the unwashed masses bring to me in my side work, and see SODIMM sockets on pretty much all (although unfortunately sometimes only 1).
I do all the Dell purchasing where I work, and have for years. The only Dells I've gotten in without upgradeable RAM were the tablets, and even those were still crazy serviceable compared to Surface-junk and iPad-crap which are meant to be disposable and tossed if you look at them wrong. Even on the Dell tablets, the SSD storage is standard and removable, which is nice if you just need more space or if butterfingers drops and breaks his tablet but needs his precious data off it that he wasn't storing where he was supposed to.
Re: (Score:2)
If it has an optical drive, it is by definition not in the "thin and light" class that they're shooting for.
Apple's Hummingbird Battery might be a thing then? (Score:2)
(Might be obscure. Look up The Onion's "Macbook Wheel" video)
While I'm thinking about it, how is the desktop RAM different from what they already use? Is it just a matter of LPDDR not being able to run as fast of a clock speed because of the lower consumption or are there bandwidth differences unrelated to clock speed and such?
Or, you know... (Score:5, Interesting)
You could just put a bigger battery in it.
Instead, all I hear about is how they were working in such tight space constraints (a completely arbitrary constraint made up by their lead designer), and how kneecapping the system was to "maximize battery life"...
I remember my old Powerbook G4. I used to get 6-7 hours of battery life out of that thing. My old Macbook Pro (Core 2 Duo) was around the same. Every single laptop I've owned up until they discontinued the 17" used to last around 6-7 hours on battery. These were, of course, pretty thick and substantial machines, but I didn't care, they generally worked well and got the job done.
I recently bought a 15" MBP Touchbar (totally decked out, because it's not like I had a choice when the RAM and HD are soldered to the motherboard). It was one of the most expensive Apple machines I have ever purchased. I was lucky to get a consistent 3 hours out of it, running the same workloads my 17" unibody can perform for ~6.5. After spending a good week trying to troubleshoot this issue with AppleCare tech support, I eventually came to the conclusion that the machine was in perfect working order and that the battery was simply incapable of powering the machine for how long I needed it to. I later sent the machine back for a refund.
These problems will continue to plague Apple so long as they're obsessed with form over function, and refuse to admit that they were actually wrong for once. I can guarantee you the next machines will be even thinner, contain less ports (likely dropping the headphones port and one or two of the USB-C ports), and have the exact same operational issues due to over aggressive power saving features and an undersized battery.
Welcome to 2015 (Score:2)
Stealth brag I guess, but I've had 32 gb since 2015, think it costs $150 total. You know, on a hand built PC desktop.
Its magical (Score:2)
Also it will come filled with the magical and whismical blue anti shock filling, that will reduce the damage caused to the device on impacts in 20% (also make the device impossible to open because it is mostly made out of epoxy)
Or they could just make the memory removable (Score:5, Insightful)
...like all computers did for decades. Instead, they've managed to brainwash their zealot disciples into believing that thinner is better, disposable is ok, and they need a new computer every 2... no, 1 years!
These laptops aren't thinner than a SODIMM memory module or an M.2 drive. Until they are (and they shouldn't be, because they don't need to be and to do so would mean a battery even more insufficient than they already are), any manufacturer telling you that you can't have removable/expandable memory or SSD storage is feeding you marketing BS to justify their anti-consumer design choices. Just so that you needlessly buy more laptops more often instead of repairing/upgrading the one you already have.
There's nothing "Pro" about the MacBook Pro anymore. A Dell tablet has more ports, expandability and options. Hell, there's nothing "pro" about any Mac anymore. Apple has totally given the finger to the professional and high-end user. Where I work (thousands of employees) I see the pendulum swinging back from Mac to non-Mac again since, after a few years of people flocking to Macbooks because of some misguided fashion fad, they're realizing that Macs simply fall short on too many fronts and flat out cannot offer them a computer with the hardware they need to do their jobs. I can spec out a non-Mac that runs circles around the highest-end MacBook "Pro" and costs less. Don't even get me started on the "Mac Pro"... that thing was an useless abomination the day it was released and has only gotten worse as the hardware innards become more and more outdated over the years. It's a nightmare to service and an unexpandable, optionless junk creation not even worth the now-tainted branding of "Apple" it's so bad, let alone "Pro". It's not even white.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry but that comment is just flatly wrong. Have a look at teardown pictures and tell us where you would fit of the shelf RAM modules and connectors. Then also remember the equation is not the width of the module but that puts its support plus the board under it.
an minimal (Score:2)
Perhaps the first m is silent?
Great (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Apple needs to rediscover the wisdom of Frasier Crane: "If less is more, just think of how much more more would be."
They need to do a serious re-think about the missing ports, crappy Intel video, soldered RAM/SSD, glued batteries, etc. Apple has effectively discontinued the MacBook Pro and renamed a slightly beefed-up MacBook Air to take its place. If they're going to abandon the Pro market, they should at least be honest about it.
How about coming up with a developer desktop too? (Score:2)
Good move that you finally recognized the need for RAM in a hmm, you called it "Pro" machine?
I really hope it will be available without the emoji keyboard.
Now how about making a desktop machine that's actually useful for a developer?
only 32MB? (Score:2)
So, now they make their systems non-memory-expandable, and just as desktop chipsets increase RAM capacity to 64GB, they decide to offer 32GB of soldered-on chips. Very nice.
Yes, I did RTFA, and their reasoning is largely bullshit. It's more of "Buy what you need now, and if your needs change in a few months, don't worry about upgrading; we'll happily sell you a new shiny with more RAM! Just chuck your old shiny in the landfill."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well sprayed, coward, well sprayed.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a 2010-ear Apple that has 16 Mbytes of RAM.
You have an Apple with 2,010 ears?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Didn't you know? Macbook Pros demand *sacrifices*. Your battery life is backed by the precious life-blood of your slain foes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"Casuals" shouldn't buy "pro".
Pros want an actual pro tool.
Re: (Score:3)
"Casuals" shouldn't buy "pro".
Pros want an actual pro tool.
Please define "Actual Pro Tool".
Re: (Score:2)
Of course they can buy whatever they want. But don't drag down the high end that exists specifically for people with high-end needs to meet the needs of people that already have two product lines suitable for them (MacBook, MacBook Air).
Don't be an antagonistic fuckwit. This is how product design works - you have a target user, and you design to that user's needs. Apple didn't do that, and it appears they finally heard the message.
Re: (Score:2)
First, define what you think you need. Look at the tests this guy reports running: https://www.zdziarski.com/blog... [zdziarski.com]
I've done similar tests on a late-2013 16GB Macbook Pro, and I've seen similar results. The only thing that would make additional RAM a lot better for me would be the ability to spin up more vagrant instances simultaneously for testing of larger / more complicated stacks of applications. But I've had multiple VMs, terminal sessions, outlook, omnifocus, evernote, atom, 3 or 4 RDP sessions, half a dozen different messaging apps (hipchat, slack, messages, irc, twitter, instagram), tower git client, itunes, safari, word, excel, kaleidoscope, docker (with a couple containers running), xcode, dropbox, antivirus, crash plan, and corporate VPN all running, along with half a dozen little menubar utilities (alfred, dash, textexpander, cloak, moom, flux)... and my system hardly ever breaks a sweat, RAM-wise.
What, exactly, are you doing that *REQUIRES* more than 16GB of RAM? I wouldn't *mind* having more ram - I could spin up more (or larger) VMs, which would be nice since I often work disconnected. However, I have yet to hit any hard limits, and I've spent 3 years putting this laptop through some pretty heavy usage. If *I'm* still in the level of casual user, I'm really interested to know how you define that term.
I have the same experience with my mid-2012 MacBook Pro with 4 GB of RAM. OS X/macOS is simply (MUCH!) more efficient at memory-management that Windows.
Can't speak to Linux in that regard; but as far as my (pretty extensive) Windows experience, I have never seen a Mac in "swap file hell" like Windows routinely exhibits.
I think that those clamoring for more RAM either come from a Windows background, and are simply "scared", due to Windows-induced PTSD; OR they want to run multiple VMs.
You can never be
Re: (Score:2)
Seven years after I had an 8088 with 640k I had an 80386 with 4 gigabytes of RAM.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you didn't. Unless you had a memory cabinet sitting next to your desk. And a massive electric bill to run it and the chiller system needed to keep it cool.
A 386 with 4GB of RAM would have required 256 x 16MB 30-pin SIMMs, which is what 386 motherboards used for memory expansion. And I doubt there was any hardware available to do such a thing - if you needed something on the gigabyte scale for memory, you weren't doing it on a 386.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah sorry. I shouldn't post when I've been drinking. It was four megabytes. Still a large leap.
Re: (Score:3)
Normal people aren't developers so the very limited 16 GB is enough for us casual users.
Why do developers need more memory? My editor, compiler, and other tools all have relatively small memory footprints. My browser uses way more RAM than all my dev tools combined.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on what you're developing. If you are developing an application that works with a database, you may have a database engine running on your laptop (or in a VM).
I hear that databases and VMs might require a bit of RAM.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on what you're developing. If you are developing an application that works with a database, you may have a database engine running on your laptop (or in a VM).
I hear that databases and VMs might require a bit of RAM.
When they're coded like MS SQL Server, they do.
Other databases are less insane.
Re: (Score:2)
OSX is 1999 tech so it doesn't work with that much memory so they refuse to support it because it exposes their horrific shit.
You're a moron.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes but artificially limiting the memory for seven+ years is just going too far.
Um, Apple isn't "artificially limiting" ANYTHING.
Talk to Intel, Hater.
Re: (Score:2)
OSX is 1999 tech so it doesn't work with that much memory so they refuse to support it because it exposes their horrific shit.
That's why Mac Pros since at least 2009 work with up to 128GB?
Exactly.
And I believe that, since OS X 10.4, OS X/macOS has a RAM limit in the 18 Exabyte range [google.com] for VM, actually.
I can't find a definitive answer as to whether the physical RAM is limited in macOS to less than 18 exabytes; but at least 128 GB of physical RAM seems to be well-documented.
Re: (Score:2)
Give us back MagSafe charging Ports that are useful And Better tactile keyboard (e.g. Long travel keys) give the thin shit to the hipsters
I'll give you MagSafe (although Griffin kinda has that covered [amazon.com]).
But the "Ports that are useful" meme is just bullshit.
Here you go. All of this I/O is done with ONE of the MBP's FOUR USB-C/TB3 Ports [amazon.com]. And you STILL have 3 Ports left!. So, STFU.
Better Tactile Keyboard: Reports from people who have switched from the 2015 MBP to the 2016, report that the keyboard feels far less "mushy", and "more precise".
Re:a little late, no? (Score:5, Insightful)
this is indeed what happened...it's designing with marketing first instead of the user...
I'm fine with Apple having cheesey, trendy marketing, but they need to put the user first in their design decisions.
Marketing can figure out something...they pay them enough ffs...but they really need to change how they make design decisions.
One day, maybe far, far in the future, but some day Microsoft might figure out that if they avoid their garbage spyware/adware software they can ruin Apple due to their market penetration from government contracts....if Apple is still letting ad slogans guide design at that point, on that day Microsoft will kill Apple.
Re:a little late, no? (Score:5, Insightful)
this is indeed what happened...it's designing with marketing first instead of the user...
I'm fine with Apple having cheesey, trendy marketing, but they need to put the user first in their design decisions.
Marketing can figure out something...they pay them enough ffs...but they really need to change how they make design decisions.
One day, maybe far, far in the future, but some day Microsoft might figure out that if they avoid their garbage spyware/adware software they can ruin Apple due to their market penetration from government contracts....if Apple is still letting ad slogans guide design at that point, on that day Microsoft will kill Apple.
Apple and Microsoft released some laptops/devices with an i5 CPU and 16Gb of RAM and people on Slashdot who would not buy a MacBook or Microsoft device to save their lives screamed bloody murder. Apple and Microsoft then explained they'd done this for battery life reasons and because Intel dragged it's feet with the i7 CPUs [slashdot.org]. This had no effect other than to cause those same people to keep screaming bloody murder even louder. While it is nice to have an option for a i7 CPU and 32Gb of RAM for the minority of users that actually need that processing power, most people do not need that kind of performance any more than they need a car that is designed with the 24 hours of Le Mans in mind. While I can understand the frustration of people who need an i7 and 32 Gb of RAM I can also understand the decision to release the less powerful version of the MacBook first since it covers the needs of abut 80-90% of their users and follow it up with an i7/32Gb version later.
Re: (Score:3)
this is indeed what happened...it's designing with marketing first instead of the user...
I'm fine with Apple having cheesey, trendy marketing, but they need to put the user first in their design decisions.
Marketing can figure out something...they pay them enough ffs...but they really need to change how they make design decisions.
Maybe the simplest answer is to stop fucking listening the thinner/lighter/battery marketing idiots when designing "Pro" hardware.
One would have thought Apple would have learned that lesson after they released the iPhone model with the iBend feature.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you ever stopped for a minute and consider that for many people (like myself) a thinner and lighter laptop is much better that 32 gb? I have one of the new MacBook pro and my quality fo life during travels improved a lot.
Exactly.
I have recently been watching a Website that has an ongoing article/list of ALL the Laptops (the vast majority being NON-Apple) that support USB-C/TB3 Ports. Since I left a comment, I clicked the "email me when there are updates". This morning, I get an email showing a new comment from someone who was looking to buy a new laptop, and was looking for advice from the author of the article/list.
Their number-one stated criteria was LOW WEIGHT. In fact, they wanted something that did not exceed two p
Re: (Score:2)