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Comment by jarym | Hacker News Reader

Stupid Apple - I blame Schiller.

They won’t support 32Gb ram because it might decrease battery life and requires them to reengineer the logic board but they’re totally cool with a fragile ass keyboard GLUED to a battery! Really there’s no way to call this anything other than insanity.

I remember the media used to talk about the ‘halo effect’ - well I’m someone who has Almost every MBP between 2002-2012 and every iPhone until the 7 plus.... right now I doubt they’ll make a real pro laptop and so I’m likely gonna switch to a Dell XPS. /end frustration

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Apple (MBP15 late 2013, iMac 27 late 2009) user at home, Dell XPS 15 9550 (2015) user at work here.

While I totally agree with you about the new MBP, please just know that the XPS 15 isn't without it's problems too! It must just be that Windows users are more used to lower quality hardware/software that such things are accepted...

I really like my XPS 15 as it is fast and as compact as a MBP, but:

- Microsoft Surface Bluetooth mouse and keyboard don't work anymore after an idle period of maybe 10 minutes. Have to disable/enable Bluetooth to get it working again. I reverted to RF dongle keyboard and use the Surface Mouse with the included USB cable.

- I had a huge number of BSOD early on. It's still not perfect, but almost fine now.

- The web cam is at the worst possible position. It films your fingers and breast, rather than head!

- The microphone is even worse, no one will hear you talking.

- Headphone with microphone works fine. But after unplugging I don't have any sound anymore. Sleep/wake fixes it...

- I obviously do miss some of the Mac apps like OmniFocus, Pixelmator, xScope and others while working in Windows.

There is a XPS Developer Edition with Linux instead of Microsoft. I'm personally stuck with Win 7. Will never update to Win 10 and OSX does not seem to be a good choice nowadays. That means Linux will make the run the next years, hopefully.

Personally I like to just get the Windows version and load Linux with GRUB as a second boot option. The few times I need to do something on Windows (photo editing, some games) I just reboot.

I end up doing almost the same except that I ditch the Windows install. The hardware selection is much better and, unless you intentionally sabotage yourself, they work every bit as well as laptops that come with factory-supported Linux installs.

I did this once but this won't save you from forced updates keeping your laptop alive (and hot, and at risk of corruption if it happens when you have to fly/drive somewhere and you weren't expecting an update), plus once Windows took issue with the state of the disk I was sharing between it and Linux (NTFS format) and did a chkdsk which deleted most of the files from it. That was the last time I ran any Microsoft code outside of a VM (Or my employer's kit).

As an XPS 15 9560 owner who used to dual boot, I would highly recommend disabling Windows update as certain updates will ruin your Linux partition.

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2364091

OSX is still a fine choice. I've been using OSX since 2003 and only noticed substantial improvements over time like Spotlight, Airdrop, Facetime, Quicklook, not regressions. I'm really sick of constant doomsaying about OSX and Apple in general.

> - The web cam is at the worst possible position. It films your fingers and breast, rather than head!

As someone who's going bald, this is a feature rather than a bug.

Of course, I'd like 4 cameras on the corners and software that allows me to shift a virtual camera to the center of whatever video conference tool I'm using.

BTW, that would be a brilliant new feature for Apple laptops of the future. That and chroma/motion key built in the camera video processing pipelines or, perhaps, the full set of iPhone image processing options.

> As someone who's going bald, this is a feature rather than a bug.

I don't think filming my neck-rolls and the inside of my nostrils is much of a feature.

My nostrils are hairier than the top of my head.

> Microsoft Surface Bluetooth mouse and keyboard don't work anymore after an idle period of maybe 10 minutes

Go into device manager and disable their power saving settings. I had disconnection issues once or twice a week with my MS Designer Mouse and this fixed it.

Or dear! I tried about everything possible but didn't think it could be related to such a generic setting!

Found this article that shows where it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/189856/ask-htg-how-can-i-keep-my-b...

I searched the web, updated Dell drivers, found some Reddit thread where they explained cryptic settings in the device manager... All of that didn't help. I gave up when I found yet another blog post where a guy even replaces the internal bluetooth kit of his XPS 15!

In the hope that this fixes it once and for all: Thank you so much!

Make sure you return and tell us if it that fixed your issue.

https://xkcd.com/979/

Looks good so far. The Microsoft Surface Precision mouse still works in Bluetooth mode. Now I can definitely recommend this mouse.

Tomorrow I'll test the Microsoft Surface mouse, AKA Microsoft Modern mouse.

Update:

- So the bluetooth issue may be fixed with some stupidly hidden Windows setting in the device manager.

- I forgot to mention that 3 of our XPS 9550 had their trackpad (and battery) replaced after the batteries inflated and pushed the trackpad out of the case. Luckily this happened a few weeks before the end of the 2 year warranty.

Whenever I get a BSOD, I miss working on my older Macbook Pro. I just got BSOD this morning as I was reading this, on a brand-new high-end HP ZBook laptop nonetheless. It's the third time that BSOD had happened since I got it few weeks ago, and it turns out that the culprit was the HP's included bloated software called HP Velocity, which is supposed to improve network performance on laptop.

Technically no, not exactly. It’s intel’s fault. Their damn architectures won’t support DDR4LP - that’s the low power variant - because they’ve become complacent. Also the lack of PCIe lanes forced Apples’s hand on USBc only design, although it’s such a daft choice they should’ve just gone with 2 TB ports and keep the other “legacy” available. But no, they had to brag about dual 4K external monitors to it had to be 4 USBc ports and nothing else.

I’m seriously worried that the platform I’ve been so comfortable with the past 10 years will fall in disrepair because of some ill-advised management that chose to chase some other innovation...

It’s another problem I don’t need

There's a simple solution for the lack of DDR4LP: end the "thinner and lighter" insanity and provide normal DDR4 with a decent battery capacity by making the laptop 2mm thicker and 0.5 pound heavier.

I’d cut Apple some slack on the RAM front because Intel was supposed to ship DDR4LP a couple years ago, after years of being fairly good about hitting targets.

The larger point about recognizing that we’ve plateaued on size & weight benefits is important, though. As long as we need keyboards there’s not much point in taking on all of the other compromises.

Ironically, it was Steve Jobs' pep talk to new executives that went something like: "The difference between a janitor and executive is that VPs are not allowed to have excuses". So trying to share the blame with Intel is just silly.

Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.

> Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Book_2

> Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.

This is only partially correct: those are separate models which are bigger and have worse power and heat characteristics. Every laptop which is similar to Apple's shares the 16GB limit for the same reason; the difference is that Apple has decided not to offer that second tier.

> Apple has decided not to offer that second tier

MacBook Pro, a first-tier plaything. If they do finally release a "second tier", what the hell are they going to call it? MacBook Super Pro?

I'd imagine they'd call it Macbook Pro 17"

Dell's XPS is comparable in size and performance to the MBP and has 32Gb of RAM available. Does the standard DDR4 they use effect battery life? Possibly, but that's a trade off I and others would take for our $4000 laptops not to grind to a halt when we spin up a few docker containers.

Mah, there’s a mobile standard optimized for that use case... not using it because intel can’t get their act together would be asinine. I’d be shocked if there weren’t any Ryzen prototypes running in Cupertino, with daily performance test results CC’d to intel account managers. I’d to just that...

Part of the reason for Apple betting big on Intel was power efficiency. But with Ryzen going to 7nm before Intel makes it to 11nm(?) reliably, I have to think that Ryzen with integrated GPU starts looking damned attractive.

It's impossible to provide decent battery life in a laptop with normal DDR4, it uses 80% more battery in standby:

https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/

It’s possible by hibernating faster, which is the strategy lenovo used in my t460p with 32 gb ddr4. The downside is that leaving it with a closed lid for ten minutes makes waking it up a 5 to 10 second affair instead of instant.

"DDR4 would drastically decrease it from the 30 days of standby time that they get now to less than one week"

Fine, I'll take 32Gb of RAM and a less than a week of standby time thanks.

>"Also the lack of PCIe lanes forced Apples’s hand on USBc only design,"

Can you elaborate on this? Is this related to DDR4LP? Is there a connection?

>Also the lack of PCIe lanes

https://ark.intel.com/products/97462/Intel-Core-i7-7920HQ-Pr...

I don't think PCIe lanes and low power ram are directly related, but it is just another sign of Intel attempting to control the market via feature segregation.

The CPU only has 16 PCIe lanes. Which is flat out retarded when 4 of them will be used by NVMe, and 8 (and really 16 should be) can be used by video. This only leaves 4 additional PCIe lanes for any other devices, including USB-C and thunderbolt.

Simply put, if there were any competition in the market, that CPU look much different. Low power ram and 8 more PCIe lanes at least.

I think I read one comment here on HN some time ago about the lack of >16GB RAM on laptops. The reason was that DDR3 maxes out at 16GB and DDR4 which allows much higher amount of RAM lacks the low power requirements while sleeping. So one would pretty much sacrifice sleeping in order to get more RAM.

I've been very happy with my Surface Book, FWIW - as beautiful as it is powerful, though with a price to match. (But there are plenty of good options these days - I've heard good things about the XPS too, though personally I didn't like the feel of the keyboard).

The Apple I want figures out how you put 32GB RAM in a thin laptop while preserving battery life!

They could, in theory, have a "power saving" mode that tries to consolidate as much as it can into as few memory modules as possible (I'm currently using about 39% of memory, the rest being free and cache), virtual addresses would remain untouched and only physical addresses would change after a move and then it'd be possible to power down the memory modules that are not being used (PCIe-attached storage is slower than memory, but fast and power saving don't go together that well)

OSX is already proactively compressing memory in the background, if it deems a process worthy of compression.

Isn't it compressing caches only?

Probably would help if they freed up space and battery life by not having a totally unnecessary second screen taking up the top row of the keyboard.

And replace it with what, function keys? Keys which are thicker than the screen that replaced them and has far more functionality in a smaller footprint?

The Dell XPS 13 has been a solid work machine for me.

Portable, powerful, comes with USB Type A and C ports, Thunderbolt 3 and comes with one of the best keyboards in laptops.

The XPS 15 is a bit better, I got one from last year for about the same price as my 13

do you run Windows or Linux on it ?

Big fan of the XPS 13. I bought the developer Linux edition first, which had a 1080p (boo!) screen and matte finish (yeah!). It had an issue where the trackpad would just intermittently stop working or the cursor would just zoom around the screen, making it unusable. Dell sent out an engineer THE NEXT DAY TO MY HOUSE with a replacement trackpad. Insane customer support. I ended up swapping it for a Windows version for the same price but with the higher res screen (but gloss) as the HDMI out didn't work on the Linux version. I think this was software rather than hardware.

Ubuntu 18.04 :)

Well, the XPS13 has had its share of keyboard problems too:

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9370-Keyboard-Skip...

It took months for a BIOS release to make the keyboard workable.

Now if only they could get the webcam to work..

I couldn't agree more. The new MBPs are basically lemons. Mine absolutely is, and is unusable and sent out for repairs after only 1 year (defects include but are definitely not limited to this ultra brittle keyboard). I will definitely not buy another one of these awful machines.

What ever was the point of making this thing razer thin? What bizarre, mythical user did they have in mind that just couldn't stand a few cm of extra 'bulk'? None of this makes any sense, except it being a case of design driven engineering run amok.

I thought the RAM thing would decrease battery life, because it requires a different intel chipset — as shown by the contemporary laptops from other manufacturers with the same CPUs and chipset topping out at 16GB as well?

I could be misremembering, and it frustrates me either way, but I was certain that Intel also held some blame for this?

Dell XPS has up to 32GB with the exactly same CPU.

And it won’t be using low power memory modules. That’s the trade off.

Maybe, if their MacBook Pros were just a little bit thicker (say, the thickness of the 2013-2015 models), they'd be able to fit a big enough battery for the extra power draw to not matter too much?

"Considering that a 76 watt-hour battery is used in the 15 inch machines, they could have made the battery 30% bigger to hit the ceiling imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and they still wouldn’t have had the same battery life as they do now by using LPDDR memory." [1]

[1] https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/

I find it hard to believe that any decent chipset made in the last decade at least cannot support 32gb of ram. I had a reasonably cheap samsung laptop from 2012 that already did. If apple is not doing it, it's not by the lack of choices in the market.

Of course, but it's a tradeoff. These low power low profile Intel CPUs can support more memory, but only DDR4 which is desktop class RAM with more than double the power requirements in use, and four to ten times the power usage in sleep mode.

The logic board would also have the redesigned and bigger for the new chipset, putting pressure on battery space. You see Microsoft making the same choice as Apple with the new Surface laptop.

Fortunately Intel are launching new mobile chips with support for fast, low power LPDDR3E memory over 16GB this year.

https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/

I think the reason is LPDDR3 which only goes up to 16GB with Intels chipsets, they would need to use Desktop class ram to go above which uses a lot more power.

[1] https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/

You are correct, I bought an Intel NUC with an i7 in it and that had the 16Gb limit. Furthermore, it only had two cores and hyperthreading whereas I was 'used to' i7 having four proper cores and HT.

I wanted to have a desktop that I could leave on without it taking lots of power (CO2 matters) or needing a wind-tunnel grade fan to keep it cool (noise matters). So it had some variant of what Apple used. In my opinion this CPU was a dud, I had to upgrade the BIOS numerous times and it wasn't any quicker than my elderly i5 powered laptop. Plus it wasn't as silent as hoped:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits...

Apple used the same RAM limited CPU in 2015:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0QP3LL/A/refurbished-133...

The subsequent products with the useless keyboard were to use iterations of this lemon of a CPU.

My Intel NUC is actually in a drawer unused. I had lost a couple of keys on the elderly i5 laptop, I bought a new backlit keyboard for that on ebay, it came from China in an incredible 3 days and cost ~£50 including shipping. This is the keyboard I am using right now. It actually looks super cool as the laptop was originally all in silver, the replacement keyboard and surround is black and the design looks so good because the mousepad is still silver coloured. It looks like a high end German product due to that colourway combo.

For what it's worth, the keyboard and trackpad both keep breaking on my XPS 15 :/

My trackpad broke too, because the battery was inflating and pushed it out of the case...

Got a free replacement though.

Did you buy your previous MBPs because they are nice kit, or because of Mac OS X? Are you switching to a Dell, or switching to Windows or Linux?

If your work or personal use can so freely change Operating Systems, then, I guess I consider you lucky.

I can't really do my job from a Windows box without significant pain. I could probably use Linux, but it would add some additional frustration.

I mostly agree with you. But really, who needs +16GB RAM on their laptop?! I think the need for more RAM is correlated with the need for more CPU clock, more powerful graphic card, and a better Motherboard, all of which result in a huge decrease in battery life (which is supposed to be a laptop's main strength over heavy, power-consuming PC).

I would think most developers would like at least 16gb

I was about to buy a new MBP this year but held back because I already have 16GB of RAM and want more, actually need more. I often have the problem that my current MBP runs out of memory and when this happends it costs me like 30 to 60 minutes to get back to the point where I was when it ran out of it. So yeah, there are some of us that need more RAM.

I need the RAM. Network modeling, network simulation, dev installations of SDN platforms. This is a developer and programmer forum, right?

It's the reason I end up always looking at gaming laptops. I don't really need a GPU at all, it's nice but not needed. However yeah, Cores & RAM that's what I need.

As a developer, I need a machine that's powerful enough to develop on; being light and having battery life is a nice-to-have but not essential. If that means I have to buy a bulky gaming laptop rather than a sleek portable one, that's what I'll do. At the moment I can just about manage with 16GB, but it's definitely the limiting factor on my current machine (surface book 2, which is capable of some pretty good gaming).

As (mostly) a designer, even I'm pushing RAM usage at times. Some GPU wouldn't hurt either.

yet I don't feel like switching away from Mac is a realistic option for me. There are a ton of apps on which I depend. Can't exactly stick them in a docker image.

> But really, who needs +16GB RAM on their laptop?!

I need it on whatever machine is my development machine. Clojure REPLs are memory intensive. I'm sitting at 7GB in use right now, mostly thanks to Chrome, even without anything major running.

I could probably squeeze under 16GB if I was aggressive about shutting down server applications (e.g. Apache and MySQL) I'm not using at that moment and only starting them up when I need them, but that's just adding more chores to my workflow.

Having more than 16GB of RAM just means I never need to worry about it. It's one less headache to deal with.

For me, large datasets used for analytics. I don’t want to use a desktop, I want to do this stuff in a coffee shop, and in my hotel. The difference between in-memory and disk based operations is, understandably, very significant.

The reason I'm sticking to the Macbook is that despite these issues they are still way ahead of any competition. I'm running a mid-2014 retina. It is still way better than anything Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc.. can get me. 4 years later and the battery still get me a solid 5-6 hours despite strong usage.

But here is the following: Apple is really improving. It is just not meeting the expectations of its demanding users (and rightly so since we are paying a premium for Apple hardware).

I remember getting sick of macOS Sierra and decided to rollback to Mavericks. Holly crap, I then just realized how much more polished Sierra is with all its issues. The external screen resolutions were screwed, can no longer answer calls through my mac, notes no longer sync and a dozen other things that I just "assumed".

These advances are probably building technical debt. But also they are what attaching people to the Apple ecosystem.

I get my airpods connected to my iPhone easily and without issues. Then I quickly switch the input to my Mac. Then back to my iPhone. Good luck getting that to work correctly on Windows software and other hardware.

At same boat as you, and just have migrated all my activities to Windows on 64 Gb Core i7 8 gen CPU desktop. It's a real booster for my day to day work.

I love and miss the aesthetics of macOS and Magic Mouse swipes. However let's face it, Apple alone cannot stand the pace. It just cannot compete with hordes of companies from all over the world who do their part of job really really good. Gigabyte, ASUS, Samsung, Intel, Crucial, NVidia, AMD, Dell to name a few plus many other small and big suppliers vs Apple Goliath. Battle result is predetermined by the forces of nature. Apple gonna lose in the long run.

We all lose in the long run. Those companies all existed in 2005, but Apple was streets ahead of them for the average person. Apple pushed the industry forward. Remember what the typical phone was like before the iphone? Or the typical mp3 player before the ipod? Sure, the ipod may have had less space than a Nomad and no wifi, but it was what people actually wanted.

The question is, is apple really going backwards, or is it a case of "I don't like change".

The longer you use something, the more you don't like anything different. Is USB-C really a step back from magsafe? Is removing the function keys really a step back? How about removing 3.5mm jacks from a phone?

I've used /etc/network/interfaces to configure my network for 2 decades. Netplan is thus stupid and terrible. Except if I look at it objectively netplan is better. It deprecates those nice comfy hacks and configs I don't even think about, so of course I don't like it.

My local hifi shop tell me that the bose qc35s jumped off the shelves like hotcakes compared with the 25s, because they were wireless and rechargable. I don't like them because I like 3.5mm. But as the man said:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty- five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Apple is really going backwards, no doubt in that. It still has a lot of momentum though but it's been mostly downhill since Steve Jobs unfortunate departure.

USB-C versus magsafe is indeed a step backwards.

A single port on a mobile device for power OR audio? That port is NOT USB-C?

Trying to sell the market a set of customizable function bar replacement versus a touch screen?

>Is USB-C really a step back from magsafe?

Without a single doubt in my mind.

> Is USB-C really a step back from magsafe?

For magsafe, yes. But overall, I like the move to USB-C. I plug 1/2 as many things into my computer each time I sit at the desk as I used to. Once these docks come down a bit more in price I'll plug a single wire into my computer at the desk.

> Is removing the function keys really a step back?

Not sure. Right now I'm indifferent.

> How about removing 3.5mm jacks from a phone?

Definitely a tempest in a teapot.

As an aside, the few people I know with 2017 MBPs all like the keyboard. None of us have had issues so I'm sure that makes a difference. Personally, I like the key travel and how quickly I can type on the new keyboard.

In other words, these changes are all great if you pretend your laptop is actually a desktop.

I can't really answer at the macro level, but I really don't think this is just a knee jerk reaction to 'change'. Just personally :

* I don't miss the CD rom at all - even at the time. I think that was a totally valid design change

* I love QC35's and BT headphones in general, the convenience is undeniable

* I even like a bunch of soundcloud mumble rap, that's supposed to be anathema to my generation

* All that said, I can't stand the new Apple keyboard, it completely ruins typing, which is sort of a fundamental part of using a computer

I guess I'm saying it's possible to appreciate some change, while not appreciating other would-be innovations. I really have a hard time seeing how this keyboard is in any way a positive change - there isn't really much benefit to having a bad keyboard. It's all negatives, unless saving a literal couple of millimeters in machine thickness is somehow super desirable.

People wouldn't be so up in arms about MagSafe vs. USB-C if they had a choice, either by both ports being on the laptop or by being able to choose one or the other when the laptop is ordered.

You can classify MacBook users into two groups: people who hook up their laptops to lots of stuff, and people who don't. The people who hook up their laptop to lots of stuff are the kind of people who get to work, hook up their laptop to power + keyboard + mouse + headphones + maybe Ethernet + maybe other peripherals, at a desk where all this stuff is static. For those people, USB-C is a major improvement over MagSafe. The odds that your power cable is going to be tripped over with proper cable management at your desk is vanishingly small and the convenience gained by only plugging in one cable is enormous.

On the other hand you have the people who bring their laptops and power adapters with them to Starbucks or the university library or their co-founder's apartment, and are constantly looking for a power socket. You know, the ones in this thread complaining about the keyboard (because they never use an external keyboard) and won't buy anything else anyway (because they love the trackpad and never use an external mouse). For those people, USB-C is a major regression from MagSafe because even if Apple provided a USB-C dock in the box for free, for them it would be collecting dust in the bottom of a closet somewhere.

But this is typical for Apple, whose corporate ethos seems to consider the notion that allowing the customer to have a choice is a bad thing. Which means that the question isn't whether USB-C is a regression over MagSafe or not, it's whether you belong to Apple's core market segment and fit into Apple's core product strategy, which holds that the word "regression" is simply not part of the vocabulary used in the conversation revolving around Apple's products. Improvements are all doubleplusgood changes, simple as that.

Which means that the question isn't whether USB-C is a regression over MagSafe or not, it's whether you belong to Apple's core market segment and fit into Apple's core product strategy, which holds that the word "regression" is simply not part of the vocabulary used in the conversation revolving around Apple's products

Yes, this.

It's odd though, the apple ecosystem has "always worked" if you stuck with it, where linux and windows have needed various amounts of firtling (customising your workspace, switching etc)

People who plug in perhiphials seem to be against what I understood apple's view to be. I guess they want those of us who just have a laptop and don't connect anything up to be using ipads instead (perhaps that explains their choice to downgrade the keyboard --- you either dock into a fixed workstation with a decent keyboard, or you use a touchscreen. Eventually I wouldn't be surprised if the keyboard is completely removed from apple laptops. And we'll all be shocked. )

I never had a MagSafe laptop whacked off a table and I had them since introduction. It has happened at least once a year with my USB-C MacBooks Pro. What a silly own-goal.

I started to get cramp in my little finger using a magic mouse eventually I switched to an old ps2 ms mouse (the classic that they have just reintroduced) that I had stock piled years ago

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