A MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM might be about to launch | Hacker News Reader

A MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM might be about to launch

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30 pointslnguyen20 comments

It’s fairly amazing the state of the laptop industry... the fact that we’d probably all be happy with worse screens, heavier chassis, smaller touch pads, worse speakers, worse battery life - in return for a functioning keyboard and as much ram as a solid PC from almost a decade ago... If you had told me this in 2002 I would have bet good money against it, and yet here we are...

I don't mean to single you out, but I decidedly am not happy with at least a heavier chassis, and to a lesser degree worse battery life. I used to be sympathetic to the argument, until I was issued an older generation MBP for $JOB; my personal MBP is the "dreaded" touch bar model. Just looking at the specs they are only ~200 g apart in weight, but it's annoyingly noticeable during daily carry.

The $JOB MBP also has worse battery life, necessitating me to carry its power adapter more often, which is another ~300 g. That said, $JOB requires me to run some battery-hungry software coughChromecough, that I don't run when I'm off, so it's not quite apple-to-apple comparison.

For that matter, the keyboard doesn't really bother me, either, but TBF I'm probably a more forgiving typist than most. I have no issues typing on the cheap thrown-in Dell keyboards, and they're practically disposable that I don't feel so bad when I inevitably spill something over one.

tl;dr: I like the current generation MBP over the previous generation.

While it's a welcome step forward, if they didn't fix the keyboard it really is moot.

It is worth noting that the Coffee Lake i7-8750H reported here can support up to 64GB of RAM, so Apple is still shorting customers the limits of the platform...

would require four so dimm slots

They solder the ram to the mobo anyway. I'm sure they could find real-estate, the chips are pretty small.

Not sure if it's the case now, but the previous reason given for such little RAM was lack of availability of high-capacity, low-power chips.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-again-breaks-do...

Yea Apple could have a problem fitting those chips in if they can't get in contact with that design team makes the chassis for MacBooks. I wonder how Microsoft solved the problem on the surface? ;)

The problem is that they keep shrinking the chassis, which leaves less and less room for anything besides the battery.

I wish they'd just stuck with the previous generation retina chassis, which was plenty slim and light - it would have left room for more memory AND a bigger battery.

I think this is a problem of Apple's making. They used to have 3 laptop lines.

The Air MacBook Pro

The Macbook was the cheapest laptop Apple could make. The Air was the lightest/slimmest. And the Pro was the one that sacrificed weight and slimness for functionality.

With time, the thinness of the Air didn't seem to add an additional cost to the product so it basically obviated the need for the Macbook. They were down to 2 product lines. The Air which was cheap. And the Pro that should have been as powerful as it can be. However, with the last refresh, Apple also decided to make slimness and weight a much higher priority with the Pro. So basically the differences in their product lines seem to boil down to price differentiation. All the product lines appear to have the same design constraints with the only difference being price allowed.

This situation is worsened by the lack of a great pro desktop which leaves Mac users with almost no powerful computing options. You can have all the money in the world but you cannot get computing hardware similar to that of a 2-3 thousand dollar PC in the Mac ecosystem anymore.

> lack of a great pro desktop

FWIW, I have had every generation of Power Mac G5 and every generation of Mac Pro except the very first, and the iMac Pro is by far my favorite of all of them. It's the best Mac ever made, not just in absolute terms (where it obviously should be) but also relative to everything else contemporarily available.

I love that machine as much as I hate my 2017 MBP.

(It did cost more than my car, though...)

> if they didn't fix the keyboard it really is moot.

I saw this mentioned in other comments but I'm not familiar with MacBooks - what is wrong with it exactly?

It has so little travel (like < 1mm) that it feels like typing on an iPad, and there are shitstorms of complaints on the Internet that tiny particles of dust get under the keys and then either a key doesn't work or it enters 2 characters when hit just once.

I don't have the latter problem (but here's s random one: https://theoutline.com/post/2402/the-new-macbook-keyboard-is...) but the consensus seems to be that the feel of the keyboard is shit.

I agree and I far prefer the previous generation of MBP keyboard, but a.) it is actually just chiclet shit too, you have to go back many years (maybe to the PowerBook machines?) to find an Apple laptop with a truly great keyboard, and b.) it sucks enough that if I have to use this machine at home or work, I always plug in an external mechanical keyboard so... uh, problem solved? :-/

Next time you're at a Best Buy or Apple store (or even nearby with a couple minutes to kill), go in and press a single key on the new Macbooks and you'll immediately understand. It's an awful experience.

I buy MB Airs and my current is a 2013 and I hate touching other keyboards now. Frustration mounts almost immediately with how clunky and odd they are. I'm so happy that I am sad, because I've maxed it out so bad that my Dr Clear is constantly showing 90%+ memory usage and so I know for sure I need to upgrade. I don't want to upgrade!! So while my pain is slightly different, I totally get how you MBP users feel when they screw with your experience. It sucks!

>if they didn't fix the keyboard it really is moot.

Exactly! You could give me 64GB Memory and 16 Core CPU and I still won't be happy. Without a keyboard, PC / Mac 's main user input paradigm, it is literally useless.

We need a keyboard that is thin, give more depth then the Third Generation MBP, water resisitant that is literally standard in all other similar priced machine from HP, Dell, and Lenovo Thinkpad, and reliability that is number one in the industry.

Macbook has had more keyboard failures then all other HP / Dell / Lenovo Business class machine before even the MBP Touch. And its replacement cost a fortune. A Keyboard Failure in the new MBP will set you back anywhere from $600 -$800. As the whole case needs to be replaced.

Getting a new battery for your MBP cost $200, and you get a new keyboard that comes with it.

It doesn't matter how much RAM it's got if they don't fix the keyboard. I don't think I've ever paid so much money for such a poorly designed piece of hardware.

32gb RAM, 6 cores - 12 threads! That would be a game changer and turn it into a powerhouse for docker/minikube/vagrant workloads.

For only $11,999. I wish I were only half joking.

ECC please...

For a laptop? Even my heavy usage is ephemeral workloads.

I care so much more that the dang thing works reliably without fussing or fiddling, which can not be said about 99% of laptops on the market.

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