MacBook Pro is a lie
theverge.com
theverge.com
The real use case for 16 GB + of ram is video editing or tons of memory hungry VMs. Edge cases. Not only that but people begrudge them for not waiting for Canonlake* with LPDDR4, but they'd miss the holidays and have to launch in the middle of the year! Intel is continually dropping the ball with deadlines. Is it that hard to wait for a refresh which will likely have 32 GB ram next year?
These laptops seem more than capable for most professionals, The Verge just seems to be giving in to the perennial fanboy hate whenever Apple does something new...
Or you know... running modern Electron apps. New Slack update burns over 1GB of RAM regularly and it's not the only thing running on the machine. 16GB might have been enough for year, but with current crazy wasting of memory for simple apps it's not that spacious anymore.
Is this right? This is a glorified chat client! Why so much?
Contemplate the alternative: new MBPs aren't announced until Kaby Lake is ready. Analysts fill the internetz with "OMG APPLE HATES PROS, NOT INNOVATING ANYMOREZ"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro#Third_generation_.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)
The annoying part is, you don't really know if 32GB model is coming out next year or not. This of course applies to most other vendors as well.
This is what I don't understand about the current criticism.
I bought my current mac 7 years ago, and though it has dedicated 3D hardware, it was never meant for heavy gaming or rendering 3D movies, and everybody loved it. It also came with very little RAM, even for the time.
But today it is apparently a travesty that MacBook Pro doesn't offer tons of memory and high-end 3D graphics. When did they ever do that? The hall mark of the pro has always been the form factor, battery life, screen, mousepad.
There has been a category of laptops that are classified as mobile workstations for quite some time now, including IBM/Lenovo's retired W5xx series and current Pxx series and Dell's Precision laptops. The MacBook Pro is (or was) considered to be Apple's equivalent.
(But they are heavier, power-hungry and more complicated than the MacBook Pro, which IMHO isn't really in the "mobile workstation" class, but . But in comparable form factor you get 32 GB right now in various ThinkPads. Some new models only offer 16 as well, maybe for similar CPU availability reasons. But you have the choice if you need it.)
When they became powerful enough to do it, and so more cost effective for companies to just buy laptops for everyone, rather than provide desktop computers as well as laptops for those that need to travel. Alternatively, when open plan offices and hotdesking became popular.
Everywhere I've worked for the last 5 years I've been given laptops as my main/only development device. Admittedly I'm not generally running multiple VMs, but 8GB isn't enough for my workload, 16GB would be, but I could easily see others wanting more for a future proof work laptop.
As for graphics and gaming, a few years ago they did have models with Nvidia graphics, and that doesn't seem to be the case now. That said, they were usually mid range GPUs, and Intel graphics have come a long way in that time, so there's probably not a huge difference in relative performance for modern games.
Form factor was always a secondary factor. First and foremost was high specs in CPU, memory, storage, connectors and screen. i.e. for a Pro-fessional user (photographer, graphics designer, film).
I think you're getting confused with the non-Pro macbooks and 'air' line.
I'm wondering what you've been using your mac for if performance isn't a concern... I'd be concerned that you might have been paying over the odds ...
In 2009 the difference between a professional and an amateur MacBook was literally screen, keyboard mousepad and aluminium vs. plastic.
> I think you're getting confused with the non-Pro macbooks and 'air' line.
The air was more expensive than a pro in the early days.
> I'm wondering what you've been using your mac for if > performance isn't a concern
Writing, researching and programming. I payed for high-quality components and a great form factor, and that has payed off well. It has always had good performance, but for the same price, I could have gotten much faster PC laptops.
> high-quality components and a great form factor
Yep you could have made do with a cheaper mac.
And what laptop in the Apple ecosystem are those who are running VMs and doing video editing meant to use? A Macbook Pro-Pro?
Those aren't edge cases in the "Pro" market, those are common professional use cases.
That said Apple memory limits are stil love for a pro line where people expect to be able to have as much as their budget can afford.
ps: maybe the iPhone mindset got to the MBP designers, iPhone are regularly behind in terms of ram specs, which somehow doesn't equate to low perf for users.
ps: got me thinking, maybe MBP refresh forced Apple to accept already on shelf intel model (compromising memory limits); so maybe next year new Intel chips => new MBP. Or ... maybe Apple will double down on their own CPU IP to ensure more options.
Also being a MBPr 2012 owner. When thinking about an upgrade, I was wanting MORE of the same but BETTER specifications.
This is what I am seeing, when I look at the MBP 2016.
- No magsafe
- No glowing apple logo
- No startup chime
- No SD card slot
- No HDMI
- No USB 2/3 ports
- No 32GB / DDR4 ram
- No Nvidia graphic card
- Reduced battery
- Reduced Keyboard travel
There is nothing that shows "Apple innovation" in this Macbook Pro 2016.
As such, no upgrade from me. I am more than happy to wait another 18 months for the next refresh. I really hope Apple takes on board why developers really loved the previous MBP line.
It however also was a good way to separate polite people from the more mindless ones, depending on wether or not they put a sticker or other obstruction on it.
After attending a hackathon yesterday, I was going to cover my Mac with the stickers I picked up. But just for you, I'm going to leave the logo uncovered.
Would you refuse, i would not start a fight, but just look for another place or another way to block the view for myself.
If i was Santa Claus, you would however get no gift.
That sounds like a pretty heavy safe space invasion. I don't think I'd appreciate you talking to me about my hardware preferences.
Good job I'm upgrading to the latest MBP and upon receipt will cease the ongoing infliction of my selfish ways on the general public.
If you expect people to cover the logo on their laptops, I can only assume you keep your phone on silent and never, ever, ever answer it in public, because a ringing phone is far more distracting as is a phone conversation. For that matter, so is in-person conversation, so I hope you never hold conversations in public either.
Or put another way, calling a glowing logo a public disservice is ridiculous and if you believe it you're either a recluse or a hypocrite.
But I do try to check it regularly whenever I get the chance.
Initially I thought it was a step backwards, but now I don't miss it, and it helped to improve battery life on mobile devices too.
But the rest of the points the OP/article made are spot on; this isn't a Pro machine.
Just walk in to any conference and you could instantly assess the Mac's popularity among the group
You see it in movies too
In fact Inwatched a movie the other day with an iMac and no glowing logo and it looked weird
Walking into a gathering with all those Apple logos lit while carrying a ThinkPad did make me feel like a bit of a rebel. Rather ironic.
http://vwordpress.stmarys-ca.edu/ame1ian/files/2014/03/think...
I want a machine that is customized to work the way I want it to work. I don't want a machine that is generalized to suit non-techs.
Someone knocked on the door and I got up, catching the power cord on my leg. The stool fell over and the screen shattered.
Magsafe is definitely a great feature on my MBPro 2012
The rest of your points are pretty funny e.g. no glowing apple logo!
[edit] For comments to this post, I add Apple is known for eliminating clutter before the industry does, without regard to cost. By making every user specifically buy adapters if they need it, they are simplifying the product, conserving resources, and making money too. Win, win, win.
My biggest gripe, however, is the sudden loss of Magsafe in favor of USB-C charging only. This is a huge step backwards as Magsafe was developed to protect the computer and the charger from damage in case of a sudden, omni-directional tug. I can't imagine the internals of a USB-C connector holding up to that abuse. While they say you wont need to charge it as frequently, I don't buy that this will always be the case, not to mention it is very difficult to change user behavior and people will still attempt to charge it casually.
In 3 years when you still own the machine and almost everything is USB-C, you'll probably feel differently about the ports.
> My biggest gripe, however, is the sudden loss of Magsafe in favor of USB-C charging only. This is a huge step backwards as Magsafe was developed to protect the computer and the charger from damage in case of a sudden, omni-directional tug.
This is my biggest gripe, too. Magsafe saved my ass more times than I want to think about.
At this point, many new computers have USB-C, and a growing number of computers have only USB-C. So there's a market of people who need USB-C connectors, and untapped markets with a strong demand and a proven willingness to spend premium money attracts device manufacturers heavily. So maybe I'm being optimistic, but I don't think overwhelmingly so.
I'm actually really surprised Apple didn't make it themselves.
Then why not include it in the box?
Apple increased the price and removed the mains extension cable, surely they could have done something to make the transition easier?
We've been told that early Thunderbolt 3 compatibility is not consistent. So at this stage it's probably safer to stick with Apple branded dongles and adapters.
Something as simple as connecting my existing monitor through Display Port now needs an adapter. £30 [1]
As it stands it's not even clear yet what will and won't work with the new machines.
E.g. do I need to buy another USB-c Superdrive for the 2 times a year I have to burn a DVD for someone? £79 [2]
The existing USB-A Superdrive won't even work through a generic USB hub, will it work through a USB-A to USB-C converter? £9 [3]
I don't use HDMI very often except when I'm doing presentations but that's another £49. [4]
Not to mention I now need to spend £19 to connect my iPhone and another £19 to replace the extension cord they were too cheap to include.
It all mounts up; nickels and dimes.
[edit] I should probably add that, yes, I can expense this stuff to my business but it's still, it's a pain on a such a high end product.
[1]: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MMEL2/thunderbolt-3-usb...
[2]: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MD564ZM/A/apple-usb-sup...
[3]: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MJ1M2/usb-c-to-usb-adap...
[4]: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MJ1K2ZM/A/usb-c-digital...
I suspect Apple developers would be able to afford the beefiest model, assuming they don't get it for free. So there's that.
People who don't think there isn't much wrong with the new MBPs aren't going to make a lot of noise about that fact.
Most of the patrons only use Word and Safari on them anyway.
- more efficient CPU (less battery is possible without less battery runtime)
- better display (Display P3 color, more nits)
- better sound
- lighter
- better structural engineering (all metal, even the hinges) and therefor also no apple backlight (which makes the structural part better).
- Charging with normal smartphone battery packs is now possible.
"less battery is possible without less battery runtime" -> doesn't work with CPU bound software like Hangouts or external appliances that need to be powered. Fact is the battery is much smaller.
- Better display: granted
- Better sound: Nope, there's no substitute for bass response, all of which gets better the larger the speaker and enclosure is
- Lighter: Yes. This is a professional's priority number 2749 though.
- Structural engineering: It's half as thin. If you know mechanics, you'd need a material double as tough in order to make up for the loss in structural stability. Not gonna happen, maybe their most recent super duper aluminum alloy is 20-30% tougher. Overall, a thinner structure is ALWAYS more brittle.
All in all, OP is completely right: This simply isn't a professional machine.
I use my laptop in a professional capacity and weight is a huge factor for me. I carry my laptop everywhere.
Incremental yearly changes in weight have generally not been that impressive but in aggregate the difference is huge. Go pick up a 10-year-old laptop and you'll probably agree.
> Structural engineering: It's half as thin. If you know mechanics, you'd need a material double as tough in order to make up for the loss in structural stability.
I'm no mechanical engineer, but I don't believe that's correct. There are a number of factors that impact the structural stability of an item. The internal structure has a huge impact, which is why I-beams exist.
It's also not as if the space saved is the result of just milling out half of the original aluminum. The actual metal case is probably the same thickness or close.
So a lightweight/reasonable performance Macbook line and a little heavier/high performance Macbook Pro makes so much more sense.
Forever people have said that they would prefer a heavier laptop with a bigger battery and for better or worse, companies have generally ignored that. I don't think it's really a "pro" issue either way.
But basically, for a laptop to be half the thickness and equivalently strong it will need the structure to be twice as heavy, as the skins and webbing need to be twice as thick. That leaves even less room for battery, quiet fans and replaceable components, a high price to pay for something which is labeled "Pro".
It's far from clear that this is 'simple'.
I was going to rebut this statement as useless (my instincts were telling me that it should be under 10% of the total built-in battery), then I did the math. Your typical high capacity charging pack providing 15,000 mAh actually has almost double the capacity of a built in battery for the 13" MBP.
15,000 mAh * 5V / 1000 = 75 watt-hours
Compared to ~50 watt-hours for the MBP
I'll say that again. A sub $50 battery pack provides almost double the battery life of the one built into a $1,500 laptop.
It would be less, given the (dis)charging efficiency. Quick look at search results suggests about 80% (so ~60Wh), which is still nice for that price though.
They have optimized for thinness and lightness where those should be nice bonuses on a machine focused on being a fantastic work machine for professional developers. Not a machine focused on being thin and light that developers can "make due" with.
I think i would be bothered by missing F keys more…
> Vintage supports these ctrl key bindings:
* Ctrl+[: Escape
[... others]
VSCodeVim doesn't have it by default, but it's an option. https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim#usectrlkeys
If you need Escape, there is always a way to get it. Whether you bind the touch bar top-left to Escape (which you should in an editing application basically and nowhere else) or you use the widely-held Ctrl-[ default bind from your favorite Vim mode. Plus, the agency of being able to dynamically rebind the rest of the keys or use it as a separate HUD could be seen as useful.
I agree the MacBookPro 2016 is bad. But this is a stupid reason to think it's bad.
You also forgot about the vga, mouse/kb ports, also no slot for CF cards :(
How am I supposed to connect to a printer with this pro machine? It has no printer port.
I work on an MBA 11" with 8GB and I'm using Parallels to run Visual Studio 2015 for a work related project (100k+ C#/C++ codebase). Other than that work I do some Haskell and C++ work locally. It chugs along just fine and I don't feel like I'm hurting with it compared to compiling on my dev box at work.
Are people just spinning up a lot of VMs? I've got a beefy box at work for when I need to do heavy lifting because I value battery life on the laptop over doing it locally. Additionally, I like the static context - work on code at work ok beefy workstation then go home and remote in if I still have more to do.
TL;DR: what are people's use cases for 32gb on a laptop if you're a developer? Why not remote into big box?
Internet is not reliable. Pls, we are talking about PRO work.
> What do people need with 32 GB of RAM on a dev laptop?
Databases. I run Sql Server, PostgreSQL, MySql, Firebird. All at the same time? Yes.
Also, the thing about "Big Data" is need as much RAM as possible.
---
I could live with a iMac (what I have) or a MacPro (that I can't buy because the dolar in my country double in price!) but the main issue here is the signaling. Apple is like telling "We don't care anymore about you".
How will be trust the (maybe next?) upgrades to the rest of the line will be almost good now? And what about the next after this ones?
I work from home 2-3 days a week so good internet is key - especially since my main machines need to be domain joined so RDP is ideal.
Just trying to understand what your scenario is.
Also the latency make some things slower.
Either way - fair enough. You don't like the reliability of your internet so the power of the machine locally is important.
<sigh> Because when you demo, being tied to a box on the other side of the planet is asking for trouble.
I really can't believe the "why do you need that much RAM?" question still gets asked.
I record my demos now as I don't care for live demos but that's just my way of dealing with it.
I'm not contesting people's needs, I'm curious what they are.
It's more realizing the promise of hibernate/suspend options- if you don't have to reboot or stop what you are working on to do something else, why would you? And when it's in a portable laptop you can just take it anywhere, where a big box may be unavailable/down. Not to mention the TCO of a big box versus a laptop in electricity and everyday costs is actually much lower and comes with free battery backup, embedded keyboard and screen! I repurpose many of my old laptops to be servers/development support for that reason and I want my systems to be expandable, because RAM is what I really want to keep things speedy.
Things that need a lot of RAM:
Solidworks, Fusion360 (I can't even run it on 8bg with and an integrated gpu) And using Solidworks remotely is a bad joke.
Robot Path planning, motion planning
AI Assignments,
ROS + RVIZ + Gazebo + actual robot software
Anything written in python
[EDIT almost forgot] Matlab, VMs
Playing music or having a web browser open while any of the above things are running...
16bg would probably be fine for 2 years. But >$2000 is a lot to pay for only 2 years of use. People seem to think that just because its no longer current_year-1 that their desktop app can use previous_version's_RAM+0.5gb
There are enough people with enough reasons for having only a laptop. The dell precision m5510 is around same price as mbp (depending on setup) and yet it comes with a real graphics card, and the option for 32 gb of RAM.
[0]: https://www.macintouch.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=1046 (Spotify is killing SSDs)
My usage is obviously not like everyones: lots of docker container and vagrant vms both with dedicated memory, unhealthy amount of browser tabs, memory hogging intellij (especially with scalaz implicits and having lots of projects open at the same time). And the biggest memory killer: working for clients with very large ecosphere stack of JVM based microservices that you spin most of up locally including dbs.
Whenever I pair with devs using 8gb MBAs on these projects they continually apologises for the MBA's slowness and their need to continually shutdown part of microservices stack as they run into 8gb constraints.
16gb is a sweet spot today, but not in 2 or less years.
Remoting into private/cloud vms or integrating with staging environments is possible sometimes, but I work on the train for 2 hours a day as well as from home a lot, and in demos, meetings, coffee shops. So relying on dodgy VPNs over fragile connections is painful. So spinning up the whole stack locally has always been a must for me. Again, this is not most people's pattern.
( Though spinning up microservices not just locally is a frustration why I in anger started https://github.com/flurdy/philharmonic )
And being reliant on connectivity to a "big box" to simply get your work done is suboptimal. Also, how big of box do you need when you've got hundreds if not thousands of devs? Much easier (and cheaper, since there's no upkeep) to throw another 16GB of memory inside every developer's system.
The message I'm getting from folks is that if you do contract/client work, you want everything local for many reasons.
In my case, I work for a Large Software Company so my scenario is more constrained.
:)
Oh, and that touch strip? too small for anything but emoticons. I went from being semi excited about this macbook to realizing just how mid grade this thing really is. If the next update doesnt put the features I need back in place, this will be the last of my apple purchases. I've owned a mac pro, 4 macbook pros, every iphone save for the 3g. I like that you make them out of nice materials and strive for better. But you are now just making luxury laptops for consumers, not pros.
> this year's Kaby Lake
You mean the processor which was announced two months before the MBP? The one that isn't available in a mobile processor with quad cores?
> lack of 32gb RAM option
You mean the fact that Intel doesn't support LPDDR4 on Skylake (or even Kaby Lake until ~2018) mobile processors? So was Apple supposed to just switch to desktop class processors in their unrealistically thin laptops? Have you used a laptop with it, they typically run extraordinarily hot and have terrible battery life, even with laptops with twice the battery.
The real story that the new MacBook Pros reveal is that Intel is REALLY dropping the ball. If Apple thought they were ready to switch to ARM, my money is on they would've. The fact they didn't indicates to me that despite every effort, they couldn't yet (yet being the opporative word).
(Now waiting for the downvotes from the folks who'd rather be cry Apple has lost its way rather than actually think about what could be the reasons. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to bash Apple for, but the above two aren't them)
DDR3L: 16gb (page 20)
DDR4: 32gb (page 21)
LPDDR3: 16gb (page 21)
So the only way Apple could've supported more than 16gb RAM would've been to support DDR4. [1]
I am far from an expert, but I believe DDR4 is only available in an SO-DIMM package [3]. Sure, we would all LOVE Apple to support upgradeable memory again, but that's very likely not going to happen. Just think how much thicker (teh horror!) the laptop would have to be to support that! [2]
I also suspect that Apple is using the Y-processor line which only supports LPDDR3 memory (per page 19), so that further negates the ability to use DDR4 memory. Again, this part is unconfirmed, but would make sense.
[0] http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...
[1] I'm still curious how Intel claims the processor supports up to 64gb RAM on the short form of the processor specs. I could not find a configuration in the detailed data sheets that allowed 64gb of RAM.
[2] (sarcasm intended there, obviously it could be easily thicker and most people wouldn't mind)
Edit:
[3] Seems I likely am wrong. DDR4 is supported in a "Memory Down" configuration as well. This would've allowed Apple to use DDR4 memory if they used a U-processor line and also used DDR4 memory. From what I am reading online (no official sources, so not linking to more speculation), this would've had a battery impact of up to 20%, thus very likely why Apple didn't do it. More info on "Memory Down" here: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...
(Edit: looking back on my posts here and elsewhere, seems I misspelled it more often than not, ugh)
This statement is worth pausing on. Many users with "pro" needs (developers, video editors, photographers, etc.) replace their computers on a 3-4 year cycle. It's reasonable to expect significant enhancements related to those pro needs at the end of that cycle.
Furthermore — and this is crucial — any new computer has to serve those pro needs for the next 3-4 years.
Worst case scenario I'll just buy the Pro they release next year, though. They probably know that there are many like me who would still go for the Pro even in its current incarnation, so I'm not keeping my hopes up that next year will be anything but an incremental update to the current, shitty Pros.
- have to buy a new power adapter so I don't have to carry one to work and I am still left with an unused wire appendix from the display
- have to buy a Thunderbolt to USB-C adapter for the display
- have to buy a new cable to connect iphone or USB stick, HDD, etc. to the laptop
- have to pay the premium for the touch bar although most of the time I use the machine it is closed and connected to my display and keyboard
- I can not connect the headphones from iphone 7 because of the missing lightning connector
Hopefully they will realize how broken this is now for existing users and fix some of this nonsense next year.
Well at least this one is optional. I'm hoping more people opt for the function-key model, so they actually release one with 4 usb-c ports instead of 2. Why did they do that, anyway?
16 GB of ram as the bare minimum for web development...come on now. Is there anything obvious I'm missing? That's even enough to run a couple of VMs with full web stacks and some testbrowsers + git and whatever editor you use
Unless some radical shift happens then I think 16GB will be completely fine in 5 years.
My prediction: In 5 years 16GB will be fine.
Why? Because RAM requirements passed from "We need more, it'll speed things up" to "We've got enough" a while back, and there just isn't much you can do with the extra. Once you're no longer space constrained it just ceases to move the needle.
I'm not defending Apple here, but generally it's hard to think of something that would require 32GB of ram that doesn't better belong on a server. Once you get to that kind of size you'll probably want ECC or stable uptime or other features you'll get on an actual server rather than a machine you turn on and off several times a day.
It's not a question of whether 16GB is sufficient. It's a question of whether 16GB is an reasonable maximum for a "Pro" machine.
OK, forget about expansion and maybe adding 16GB RAM and a few more TB of flash in a couple years. Clearly that ship has sailed.
But 16GB RAM is the absolute minimum I would buy with a new machine today. For that to be the Pro's maximum is wrong.
16G wasn't available and was considered overkill. I remember that quite clearly because it was 2011 and I bought my fully maxed out Macbook Pro from apple with 8G of ram and I was looking at 16G upgrade kits on iFixIt a year later.
So, no, 16G was not "fine", 16G was considered future proof.
And when that happens, some developers start getting lazy and careless with how they use memory, and we return to the "we need more" part of the cycle.
I can certainly do that part of my development on some bit of dedicated hardware that sits in the office, but that means I need networking there, which means I can't code on the road etc.
The only issue I have with the new MacBook Pro, from a personal perspective is the touch bar, it seems pretty useless. Mostly my problem is that I can't opt to not get the touch bar on larger models, so I have no means of indicating to Apple that I don't need it, or want it. Let's say it turns out the the touch bar is just a gimmick, and not of any actual use to anyone. Would Apple ever admit to that? I doubt it, so now we're stuck with it.
Also perhaps price. The MacBook Pro is somewhat overpriced.
I'm not a web dev, I'm a back-end dev and data herder. For me, 16GB is doable, but tighter than I'd like. I prefer new computers to be roomy, because of the way data volumes tend to grow over time.
Considering you can get a ThinkPad with 64GB ram (P50) for a couple of hundred more than Apple'a base price, they seem very overpriced. Apple's laptops were already thin and light enough for me, I don't see the point in paying more to get less anymore.
Overall, I find it sad Apple is ignoring the professional market. Even if it only brings a small portion of their sales, I think it's bad from a strategic point of view. Developers are those who made their ecosystem so nice. Alienating them is not smart.
At the same time, their design decisions have been copied by Lenovo, in a bad way. So ThinkPads are a bit different from what they used to be, and we are left with few good options.
Pretty sure you need that much just to resolve the npm dependency tree for many projects these days.
I guess my viewpoint is skewed as a developer. I spend most of my time making the product I work on use as little RAM and CPU as possible.
RIP js developer's RAM.
Sun tried that. Didn't go well.
You're missing the power price you have to pay for more RAM. This is not an Apple problem. This is a physics problem.
- Chrome alone eats 2-3GB of RAM
- Windows 10 needs at least 6GB allocated in a VM
- Slack, Skype, an editor, Firefox etc. take up another 2GB easily.
That's just 10-11GB for boring stuff. If you have Photoshop open or sites like Zeplin that consume a lot of RAM you can reach 16GBs easily.
No need to be dismissive.
(Sorry, I won't call it "macOS" anymore because my marketing services don't come free - I'll continue to refer to it as "the Mac OS" since it's the OS that you can only run on a Mac.)
Windows has a better business model for everybody. You can run it anywhere you want without restriction. It's also a vastly superior OS both technically and with regards to UX for Pro and Business users. For those that enjoy UNIX - Apple is still shipping 10 year old GNU utils with the Mac OS and meanwhile, Windows now comes with Ubuntu...and it's fucking awesome!
Somewhat agree: If Apple considers iOS the current "cash cow", then they should just open-source "macOS" and thereby expand its potential userbase. They could even charge to "certify" certain hardware or VM configs for it, while leaving the rest of the troubleshooting on uncertified hardware to the masses.
> You can run it anywhere you want without restriction.
Hahahaha no. I can copy my entire MacOS install/drive to literally any other Mac, or copy it to an external drive and hook it up to ANY Mac, and it boots just fine off it. It doesn't force me to re-validate, it doesn't force me to call Apple, it essentially doesn't assume I'm guilty until proven innocent. You absolutely positively cannot do this with Windows, which makes moving installs (such as to new PC's) ridiculously painful (to any experienced Mac user such as myself). And having to revalidate every time you upgrade your own hardware? LOL.
> It's also a vastly superior OS both technically
OK now you're literally smoking crack. The OS with the most security holes, by far, in history, is "vastly superior." The OS with such incredible UX oversights as completely removing the ability to shut down from the UI if you enable Fast Boot mode (which is really just a renamed "hibernate"), is superior for Pro users? That's just my most recent encounter of hundreds. LOLOLOL. (I use a Windows machine for gaming. Because that's all it's good for- it's too fucking naggy to tolerate if I want to get any actual work done. And forced reboots without saving the entire state of the apps you're running are fucking stupid... at least MacOS has a facility to save the entire state of a running application if there is EVER a need to involuntarily reboot... Which there almost never is.)
> For those that enjoy UNIX - Apple is still shipping 10 year old GNU utils with the Mac OS
Apparently you don't use a Mac at all for development or you'd know this: Everyone who's anyone who enjoys UNIX dev on MacOS has long since moved on to Homebrew http://brew.sh/ which puts all those latest utils into userspace.
If a pro is someone who earns their living through using a computer, what's more important? Saving a few hundred dollars on a laptop? Or purchasing the machine that you feel allows you to work the most efficiently?
Sadly XPS 13 and other "leading" windows laptops seem to fall victim to the same less than perfect manufacturing. Apple charges more, but there laptops are also well built.
Something I use every day for a long time I don't want to save a few bucks on it the short term.
Same thing for my wife. And we're both heavy users who use our machines all day for work. We've had every brand of PC and never had any problems. Ever. Not even kidding a little.
The only problems I've ever had were with Apple hardware. Their laptops would overheat and the Mac OS would crash often. In every Macbook Pro I've had, the batteries died sooner than any other laptop brand.
Macbook Pros are terrible overpriced crap. (But they're really thin now, yay!)
Furthermore, upgrades and repairs are next to impossible or a real pain in the butt with Apple hardware. One of my Apple machines is a 2012 Mac Pro that I want to get a new video card for - but can I go to Amazon and just buy one off the shelf? No. I must go to www.macvidcards.com to get a card that works fully. I must also buy special, non-standard internal power cables for it.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/laptops/LaptopReliability
The fact that various Macbook Pro models get very hot is a well documented issue. I wonder if we can get some data on how much the Mac OS crashes though, relatively?
Apple's extreme efforts to lock you into their hardware and prevent upgrading are also very well known.
That last one is my biggest gripe. They are anti-choice and ultimately, anti-consumer. The Apple hardware lineup is small, sterile and boring to me. There's so much more, better and newer stuff going on outside of Apple's tiny little world.
These are my main concerns before I make any jump back to Microsoft-world (which I'm really considering).
I don't use touchpads, even on my laptops. I use a vertical five button wireless mouse because I don't like to rotate my cuff all day since I get repetitive stress syndrome. However, my wife does use the touchpad on her Surface Pro 3 and it works just fine for her. Actually there is one touch pad that I do use for my entertainment PC in my living room and that is a logitech K400R. It also works just fine with two finger scrolling, swiping etc.
It's a fair point, but there's a limit. Pro's will pay over the odds for efficiency and ruggedness, but the new pricing has an air of exploitation. At some point, the prices become unjustifiable.
In what sense though? Because the premium they're charging doesn't feel fair? That sounds odd to me. Pros have a history of paying ridiculous sums to work on exotic hardware like SGI's because it was the best tool for the job. A few hundred doesn't seem like that big a deal.
But for the first time in my life as an Apple user (just short of 10 years, I think), for the very first time I feel the price is only barely justifiable and I actively looked into alternatives.
I suppose the fact that I couldn't find an alternative that was good enough validates Apple's current offering and pricing. But it's a solid chunk of goodwill gone, and the moment I find an alternative that is good enough, they'll lose at least one well-paying customer.
And even then it's probably not a problem for them. They make so much on their mobile devices that the Pro can be an afterthought.
But, I don't attach an infinite value to each of those. I will pay more for those things — even more than they're worth on a strictly rational assessment — because I can't get them elsewhere.
But at a certain point, the "Apple premium" becomes so obviously punitive that I start thinking that it wouldn't be so bad to deal with Windows or Linux, that the hardware from other manufacturers isn't all that inferior, that I'll put up with the support from a Lenovo.
But, on the other hand, I'll probably just hang on to what I have until the next iteration.
I personally love the latest MacBooks (Pro 2016 and 12"), they are beautiful and the most Apple-like computers they have released in years.
I say that as an owner of a bunch of Thinkpads. It's not that I favor form over function, but I kind of like Apple being Apple.
My research into alternatives made me think the Thinkpads are probably the best option. But I just can't buy them because they're so ugly (to me). I feel really silly about that but, dammit, if there's one object where I want it to be pretty as well as functional, it's the laptop I stare at most of my day...
Sure you can get the same quality in other devices but it takes research and most devices of equivalent quality are usually as expensive as Apple devices and sometimes even more.
The Dell XPS, Surface book or HP Spectre are not cheap or without issues. Even equivalently configured Asus Zenbooks with i5 and not core-m are not cheap.
For instance the previous generation 13 retinas were the only laptops with 28W i5 SKUs. The rest of the i5 ultrabooks in the Windows ecosystem were the standard 15W SKUs, so with the Macbook 13 Retina you got slightly better performance and Iris graphics.
The current dissappointment is valid as people rightly expect far more from Apple than boring incremental updates. The magsafe ommission is head scratching and 1299 to 1499 is a huge jump.
I think people are getting disenchanted with paying for 'let's make things thin' brand of engineering that adds little to no value to end users.
But I do care about my USB-A devices. I don't mind using an adapter because I only need it at home on my desk. However the description of the Apple USB-C to USB-A adapter says it doesn't work with some devices.
Great. Now what?
[I'm also a little ticked off that they don't include an adapter in the box. Most people will have legacy USB-A devices and should need one.]
CORRECTION: They don't say anything when I add the adapter to one of the new MacBook Pros during the purchase process.
But they do include the caveat when I add the adapter to the 12" MacBook which I've also been looking at (sorry, German page):
" Mit dem USB-C-auf-USB-Adapter kannst du dein MacBook mit USB-C-Anschluss an viele USB-Zubehörgeräte anschließen, z. B. an deine Kamera, einen Flash-Drive oder an ein Lightning auf USB-Kabel, um iPhone, iPad oder iPod aufzuladen und zu synchronisieren.*
*Einige USB-Zubehörgeräte werden nicht unterstützt. "
The last sentence reads: Some USB accessories are not supported.
I'd be genuinely surprised by that though. Isn't it just a passive adapter?
But they do include the caveat when I add the adapter to the 12" MacBook which I've also been looking at (sorry, German page):
" Mit dem USB-C-auf-USB-Adapter kannst du dein MacBook mit USB-C-Anschluss an viele USB-Zubehörgeräte anschließen, z. B. an deine Kamera, einen Flash-Drive oder an ein Lightning auf USB-Kabel, um iPhone, iPad oder iPod aufzuladen und zu synchronisieren.*
*Einige USB-Zubehörgeräte werden nicht unterstützt. "
The last sentence reads: Some USB accessories are not supported.
1. Three years ago before they had finally released the over due Mac Pro?
2. Final Cut Pro X?
3. After iPod and iPhone took over Apple's products?
[Yes, I realize 3/4 of the audience here is too young to remember: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke ]
I needed an emergency machine last week (My 2011 Pro finally died), and I opt'd for a £200 Chromebook (EDGAR), thinking all I need is a browser and a terminal right this second and I'd worry about what Apple is doing later.
A solid Linux laptop with working sleep, working wifi, great battery life. Tad underpowered but hey it's £200. I'm _really_ impressed.
If Google relaxed the constraints a little on the OS, or supported a Crouton-like workflow for containers without having to stick it in dev-mode, they could make A LOT of developers very happy.
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...
...but it feels like a bit of a hack. I have to have the laptop in dev mode and there's a slight fear that an automatic update might prevent the chroot from working, or that my stateful downloads directory might disappear.
My thought was that ChromeOS is kinda where OS X 10.0 was... a great UI on top of a great base that just works. That's what drove many of us to Apple when we got bored of re-configuring linux, it's what made many of us recommend Apple to friends/family.... Apple have dropped the ball, Google is in a pretty good place to pick it up.
My impression is that the MBP 2016 is simply released at an unfortunate timing. If you look at the MacRumors buyers guide, you can see that the release schedule for the MBP has historically been less then a year.
If they can get back to that schedule, they should be able to release a MBP with the specs people are nagging about around the time when a suitable Intel Processor with LPDDR4 is available.
As for other common complaints.
- Ergonomics: When has Apple ever had an ergonomic keyboard? If you're working long stretches, connect a proper keyboard and external display for gods sake - GPU: Apple has never pushed the boundaries there. If this hasn't been an issue for pro users before, I'm not sure it should be an issue now. - USB-C only: Typical Apple. Could pay of in a few years though. A world where everything is USB-C is definitely worth pushing for, and it's good that Apple sets an example there. In the meantime I think the 3rd party dongles look quite nice and very convenient. You could potentially have less cable mess by just getting a dongle with just the right ports for you: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/01/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-adap... - Lack of Magsafe: Sucks, but OK in the context of pushing for a industry-standard charger for everything. Third party cables can pick up this use-case just fine.
So I think the heart of the matter is that Apple has chosen to optimize the power envelope of the Pro line, which has caused them to have to postpone upgrade of processor/RAM. This might seem stupid, but I think it's the right choice in the long term. I think the way things are going, pro users will offload more work to servers/cloud and external GPUs making the niche for a really powerful laptop too small. I also think Apple is making the right reason in focusing more on SSD performance than RAM size. SSD is becoming the new RAM, and RAM is becoming the new cache. RAM is going to be more tightly bonded to the CPU, even in high performance applications. Especially once Intel 3D-Xpoint/Octane hits the market.
So what we're seeing is a generation shift in the tech, and Apple is simply skating to where the puck is going.
The old MacBook Pro keyboards were actually really good. Almost as good as the old (~2005) Thinkpad keyboards and definitely good enough for extended typing. While the ergonomics are obviously suboptimal when screen and keyboard are stuck together at least typing on the keys was pleasant and accurate.
https://smile.amazon.com/Griffin-BreakSafe-Breakaway-Chromeb...
The one thing I'll miss is you don't really need to aim a magsafe connector, just bring it around the slot and it'll jump in. Not a huge gain though, and probably offset by the ability to plug power on the right side, not have to snake around to the left.
But for me, the worst bit of hardware Apple has ever made is the MagSafe-to-MagSafe 2 adapter. _That_ is where the flakiness happens for me. If I'm plugging "native" plugs straight in, never a problem, but that darn little adapter — that can sometimes be 10 minutes of my morning getting it to connect.
However, in 4.5 years. I've only had 1 connector fray at the tip and ultimately fail. The second one I bought, has lasted for 18 months now and is doing just fine with very careful use.
Still, that said. Magsafe has saved my laptop a whole bunch of times. I'd rather have a laptop with it, then without it.
That's kind of a standard feature all around.
Moving to a standardised non-proprietary charging interface is a move ahead.
Thank you Apple for making a computer for people who don't need to type very much.
You answered your own question. I need a machine that is portable that I can hook up to multiple monitors at home and at work, and that I can use on the go for meetings, customer visits, etc.
How the hell will an iMac help me there?
I'm curious, what do you run on your computer to max out a brand-new MBP with 16GB of Ram?
I currently do design and dev work on a 3 year old MBP with 8GB Ram. This includes running VMs for I.E. and back-ends for various projects, using Xcode to build apps, editing Sketch files with 50+ screens, photo editing in Photoshop and motion graphics in AfterEffects. Naturally I don't everything at once, but even with a combo of some of them, everything runs just fine. So this makes me genuinely curious what people do that these brand-new machines can't handle. And are those demands really the majority use case? If not, then there is an argument for having different machines for the demanding work loads and maybe a smaller laptop or even iPad for meetings.
What are your thoughts?
128GB/Intel® Core™ i5-8GB- $1,499
With tax the price comes to 1650. (I do realize its touch screen) Is M$FT trying the Apple's path?
The Skylake CPUs I have seen all seem to be limited to 16Gb max RAM. Allegedly there are desktop variants that take more. The Skylake CPUs also have fewer cores in them than one might expect, e.g. two cores (with hyperthreading so '4') in a i7 CPU, for years one has expected four cores (with HT, so '8') in anything branded 'i7'.
There is NVMe for the SSD and I am sure the Apple folks have some nifty driver to swap to disk a lot quicker than in the olden days. So main memory is a bit more like 'cache' in that there is no need to be that hung up on the specifics. If your main program can reside in 16Gb RAM with operating system then all is good. Throwing more memory at the CPU is not how it works on Skylake.
Apple could have avoided the latest CPUs but imagine the outrage of 'old hardware' The new CPUs are low power, you get all day battery. I also wonder whether those people complaining about a lack of RAM are after selling website clicks or doing real work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)#Li...
Edit:
Maybe you're just confusing Skylake and Kaby Lake?