Some MacBook Pro users complain about throttling issues
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Yeah, first by not releasing "MBPs with 32GB RAM" and then by releasing them.
They can never get a chance...
>USB C only means I always have a bunch of adapters dangling from my laptop
Or, you know, just buy USB-C to whatever cables and be done with it. It's like a $50 investment for a $2000+ laptop, if having an adapter is so much of a problem.
I have USB-C to A, USB-C to that bizarro USB B BS 2.5 external hard disks have, USB-C to lighting, and USB-C to HDMI. End of story, no adapters to carry. YMMV.
Or you can get just the USB-C to female HDMI alone, and a standard HDMI cable for your monitor. You aren't going to be carrying HDMI cables around anyway.
which is called an adapter
(edit to fit terminology in this thread)
Or they can leave an adapter at the office, along with the projector's cable, and everyone can get to use it.
The complain was about being "full of adapters", not about having to use a single adapter under specific requirements...
My $2000/$3000 laptop needs a $30 adapter to connect to a projector is as "first world's problems" as they come.
If it's the latter, the argument is moot vs USB-C, and if it's the former I just personally don't miss the HDMI port in earlier MBPs. Mostly because I would have to use a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI to get 4K@60Hz - the HDMI port in the latest pre USB-C Macbook Pro only support 4K@30hz.
The situation with display connectors is particularly sad even without USB-C, as we went quickly from still largely VGA and maybe DVI a few years ago to HDMI/DP/mini-DP co-existing, and now USB-C in the mix. I just recently had to buy a USB-C to DP cable even though my work laptop has HDMI and I've been using it fine, becaues this particular monitor does not support anything bigger than 1920x1080@60 over HDMI, and DP is only offered via USB-C on the laptop side. How often do you see this particular combination being required a year ago? But here we are, dealing with a quasi-N^2 problem.
It's enough that one of them is a female HDMI.
If an employer buys USB-C only laptops for employees I'd consider it very likely, not to mention smart, if there was a USB-C plug in the bundle.
I understand, but don't share, your bitterness over USB-C as a display interface, particularly since you can use it for so many other things even when it's obsolete for that purpose.
In the context we're debating (e.g. compatibility/convenience problems related to recent MBPs) it's also much simpler than the scenario you're portraying. In that case, the other end of the connection is the only variable as there's only one connector type, but fortunately USB-C/TB3 supports all the others :)
And that what people don't like is "dongle" and "multi-port" style adapters, not mere adapter cables that go from one form to another.
I'm pretty sure that disliking dongles and multi-port style adapters does not preclude disliking cables that serve as adapters (either as an additional dislike or as a replacement dislike).
There are plenty of comments here that imply that the primary objection for some people isn't the form of the adapter, but, rather, the need to carry anything additional/custom[1].
I do agree that your point that some of the cables-cum-adapters are not, in fact, additional, because they merely replace what used to be a standard cable (e.g. the one that "came with my phone") is being glossed over.
However, that only addresses the "additional" part of the complaint, not the "custom" part, which has to do with availability/ubiquity. It's not just that the aforementioned standard phone charging cable used to be carried already, but it's also the same cable that came with every other phone, which means that, if the user forgets it, it's very easy to replace (or even just borrow a replacement), often even with a choice of lengths at not even specialty-electronics stores. Lose or forget your custom adapter-cable, and you could be out of luck until that store opens, if there even is one in town.
[1] For lack of a better term. I realize USB-C is also a standard, so "less standard" isn't quite right, but "less widely accepted standardizationly" is too wordy and awkward, so please bear with my shoehorning in of this word.
I agree with most everything you said, but unless you're surrounded by nothing but MBP's these cables are not replacements; they are additional nonsense.
For the "road warrior" use case, one cannot, in general, assume that it will be possible to unplug an arbitrary cable (especially not within a reasonable amount of time), no.
Even assuming one could just unplug that cable, there's no guaranteeing that the substitute cable is long enough.
I've seen a remarkable variety of conference room cabling setups, and, though it speaks to the ingenuity of (especially startup) companies adapting to various facilities constraints, it also means that there are no safe assumptions one can make a priori about availability of connectors, including gender thereof.
We probably could have a better setup, but we don't.
Of course, if you look back in the past by only a few years, you would have been in a time where none of those adapters were even necessary with a MacBook Pro. And there are other models of computer (of comparable capabilities) where they're not even necessary today.
It's also probably good that you don't try and carry a USB-C to USB-C cable, since it would probably be out of spec for some use of USB-C.
People don't like to carry adapters in the form of "dongles" -- not mere adapters that are just cable sized.
The argument was against the extra bulk over cables, not against any added circuitry (not to mention that USB itself, whether A, B, or C, has circuitry anyway).
You listed the four adapters you have, then said "no adapters". :) Just because the adapter is more than 3" long doesn't make it something else. You still have to buy it separately and carry it with you. When a machine has more than just one kind of port, you're freed up to use whatever standard cable is already connected to the projector, or came with the hard disk, or was included with your phone.
Otherwise the USB-C to A + USB-C to HDMI is one adapter if you get Apple's version. So maximum one adapter is required here.
For my external audio interface (I do computer music).
It's also common in MIDI controller keyboards -- USB from the computer to USB B on the keyboard (though I have mine setup with BT MIDI).
But also many printers use one, especially older ones.
With my 2012 MBP, I don't need to buy extra cables for each device I have. I just use the standard cable that's included. Or the one that the conference room already has. HDMI for displays (or DP), USB for a keyboard or mouse, etc.
When all you have is the USB-C port, it's now your own responsibility to carry a cable for each situation.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think it's all that big of a deal. But I understand where complainers are coming from.
For those type of "foreign environment" (e.g. not your house or office) where you don't know what you'll meet, a single USB-C to HDMI and USB 3.0 adapter, which weights next to nothing, and is sold by Apple and many third parties (down to $10-$20) will do.
https://www.amazon.com/Pass-Through-Multiport-Supports-Throu...
I think the frustration dongle-haters feel is that Apple puts so much effort into slimming down their laptops, only to ruin it with the need to pack extra stuff. If the computer was just a few mm thicker, it would have better battery life, room for some USB-A ports, HDMI port, etc. And the backpack wouldn't need to have the dongle or extra cables in there.
Again, this is mostly academic for me. The only dongle I've ever had to use is a TB-to-GigEth one. But I was pissed the one time I forgot it and became the only person in the room unable to get on the network. Wi-Fi is way more common now, so that's not a hazard. But the other ports (USB-A, HDMI, etc.) are still in wide use, whereas USB-C is still a mishmash of incompatible cables, protocols, and connector types.
A few years from now, this whole argument will probably (hopefully) be looked at the same way the floppy drive's abandonment was in 1997.
No, I listed 3 cables. No adapters. E.g. I had 3-4 external hard disks with the "micro USB to USB" style cable (1). I bought micro-USB to USB-C. No adapter needed (if there's any circuity inside the cable, it was there in the micro-USB to USB cable too, which is even more bulky).
Similar, I sometimes connect to an external audio interface, which has a USB B type cable (2). I bought a USB B to USB-C and am done.
Finally, I had a HDMI to HDMI cable on my old MBP. I went out and bought a USB-C to HDMI cable and just use that.
I don't need a dongle or multi-port adapter to plug the old cables in. I just replaced the old cables.
(1) https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81w%2By3Rwq...
(2) https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/a2KtBcVnreIJ_5hunhd6Ul9UOng=/7...
My 2014 13" retina MBP can plug 2 USB devices 2 Thunderbolt devices a HDMI screen and power
If I go all USB-C my 2017 13" can plug screen and power anything more and I need to use dongles and from what I see looking around the offices I visit, most people end up using dongles.
MBPs have been USB-C only for years now and a dongle free future is still nowhere in sight, I'm starting to feel USB-C is going to be forever a dongle port.
I'm seriously considering buying a Windows laptop for the first time in almost a decade.
They run Linux well if you want that *nix goodness.
Personally I have been very happy with the touchpad on my Thinkpad with the libinput drivers under Wayland.
I can highly recommend Surface. W10 + WSL beats OSX + VirtualBox handily for dev work. Great keyboard, great screen too.
On the other, it's absolutely hilarious given the history of this community. Those of us with Linux-running Thinkpads remain ready to receive you guys. Seriously: it's pretty nice over here.
Personally I run a 2017 MBP for work and a heavily modified T430 running Debian at home. I often miss my personal hardware throughout the workday - having USB ports, ethernet, different display ports, and swappable batteries is invaluable. The OS differences are huge too - OSX is just not my cup-o-tea when it comes to package managers (brew sucks vs. aptitude), running a development environment, and even just running simple *nix binaries (there are significant differences with the OSX versions).
I know that some things may "just work" on the Apple ecosystem, but don't forget that you are paying a lot of money to get that ecosystem working and from all the complaining I'm reading It doesn't seem like a totally smooth experience at all.
edit: words, format.
Meanwhile my 2011 MBA (w/ a cheap replaceable battery) lasted 7 years before I sold it on to someone else, still in working order.
Between the two anecdotes above is a huge difference.
What I'll probably do is wait til the rest of the fall lineup is announced, including the rumored "MBA replacement", to see what the prices are before buying one. Then I'll just use my current MB as backup.
https://support.apple.com/mac/repair/service
It's pricy, for sure, but I assume that also includes the cost of a new OEM battery which usually isn't especially cheap.
1. I just mailed it in for the keyboard replacement yesterday.
2. I was slightly disappointed at the time that they didn't include a USB-C to Lightning cable for the iPhone 7, but it made sense as the iPhone 7 was released earlier. The fact that the iPhone X doesn't include that cable is inexcusable.
3. It's weird that there's an audio jack but my iPhone comes with lightning headphones. Not much of an issue in practice though as never really use either for audio, and AirPods work well on both devices.
So my issues with the MBP are mostly related to how it ties in to the broader Apple line-up, and the lack of out-of-the-box compatibility/connectivity between devices.
USB-C, and particularly Thunderbolt 3, is awesome though:
* Sure, the power brick doesn't have ears, but you can just remove the cable from the adapter. Seems like a better solution to me. The ears are no longer necessary because the cable isn't attached to it.
* The power brick can be used to quickly charge your iPhone or other USB-C PD devices. For instance, I also use it to charge a USB-C PD battery pack, which I can then use to charge my MBP at 30W on the go.
* I never have adapters dangling from my laptop. I've bought a few new cables, a USB-C display that charges my laptop over a single cable, and a USB-C SSD that's more compatible (e.g. not Thunderbolt 2) and faster than I could previously achieve.
* I'm contemplating getting a Thunderbolt 3 NVMe SSD and an eGPU soon. Both will provide near-desktop performance extremely conveniently albeit at the expense of backward compatibility.
* Touch ID makes it much easier for me to keep my computer safe. I can conveniently separate more activities with user accounts and use longer passwords, and I don't have to worry if someone or a camera is peeking while doing so.
* The few times I've had to use HDMI I've plugged in the HDMI cable, which now has a USB-C adapter permanently attached. Problem solved.
Clock speeds, because they're crystal-controlled, don't vary by more than several PPM between machines. Thermal capacity varies by ±10% easily.
The thermal resistance depends on a bunch of mechanical factors that are hard to control in manufacturing, like how well the thermal grease fills the tiny pores in the metal of the heat sinks, and how well the air flows through the ventilation ducts. And these usually get worse over time as bubbles form in the grease and dust sticks to the fan blades. And of course it depends on room temperature and pressure.
It means that benchmarks will have to be done under more tightly controlled conditions. The automotive world has standards for this, where horsepower measurements are adjusted by a correction factor that depends on temperature and pressure.
I mean I only own one and have watched it's clock speed while under load from a chess engine..what do I know.
Which raises the question - are there 'el-cheepo' motherboards out there which don't use thermally compensated oscillators?
It's yet another symptom of Apple's preoccupation with thickness. The 2015 MacBook Pro was 18mm thick. The new MacBook Pro is 15mm thick. After all the furore over USB-C and unreliable keyboards and the loss of MagSafe, was that 3mm of z-height a worthwhile tradeoff?
This is purely a mechanical engineering issue. They haven't designed it properly.
Thermal engineering is hard, but doable, most of all to the richest technology company in the world.
I don’t think it’s possible to design an ultrathin laptop around that CPU. That’s just too much heat. Many desktop CPUs are close to that, e.g. AMD’s Ryzen 5 2400G can be configured to be 45W too.
Maybe not, but I don't care about "ultra thin" for a professional machine. I want performance. Apple keeps making sacrifices in the name of dimensions and weight.
They seem to be fine selling "pro" machines to people who use it as little more than a web browser. They make a ton of money and I'm sure they know what they're doing, but they lost me as a customer.
A thick laptop from 5 years ago, with a 35W CPU and cooling system that can work under heavy load for long time: https://support.hp.com/lv-en/document/c03331546
Same lineup, 5 years later: https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-probook-640-g4-notebook-pc 5 generations difference, but because the TDP is now just 15W, the performance is very close: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3612Q... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-8550U...
For both the 13" and 15" MacBook Pro's, the performance differences between the base and upgraded CPUs are negligible (always less than 10% increase from the slowest to the fastest CPU for the same size, according to Geekbench). You'll get a higher frequency for a tiny amount of time before thermal throttling brings everything down to the same level anyway. They are not limited by Intel's software settings but purely by the cooling hardware.
For example, the cheapest 13" MBP from 2017 has a 2.3Ghz base / 3.6Ghz turbo and scores 9079. Most expensive one (3.5Ghz / 4.0Ghz) scores 9552. That is an increase under 6% for a price difference that is far, far larger. Madness.
If you buy a MacBook, please don't spend money on CPU upgrades. Thanks.
In fact, while charging performance might even be a bit lower because charging the battery generates some heat as well, further lowering performance.
You can custom order, of course, but if your goal is to take it home today it's difficult to, say, get an upgraded graphics card or more (soldered) memory or larger (soldered or buried) onboard storage without also getting the CPU upgrade with it.
They are too small and delicate and don’t connected solidly and ‘grasp’ firmly enough. Over the last year they have also worn to a shocking degree on a top spec 2017 15” model. There wasn’t enough friction in the first place and now there’s none.
I work with a professional touring musician and we’ve reverted to his 2015 model for stage use because wobbly poor connectors that have to be gaffer taped to the chassis are not fun.
That said, I have seen a badly tuned Funktion One PA vibrate out a USB A connector from a MBP port in just a few seconds...
They failed their TDP and die shrink projections when those machines were designed.
So, Apple would have had to redesign the whole case to match the new reality (which they could, but for their kind of redesigns it takes more time and people were already complaining about the lack of a 32GB option).
It's just that Apple gets preferential negative reporting (who would click on an Asus link?)
Plus, those with clunky "gamer" / "desktop replacement" style cases are not.
(1) https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-series-f...
(2) https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/7wqzhg/dell_not_solvi...
Sorry, but they've already demonstrated they had the time to build out a 32GB machine that could do this. They had the time. They just chose to invest it in a touch bar and a thinner design.
They've had the time.
That's the same 2016 design as the new model. So it definitely doesn't prove that "they had the time" -- and even less that they wasted it in "a touch bar and a thinner design". The touch bar and thinner design came at the time of the Intel promises, and matched OK with the performance seen at the time.
On 2016, when they presented it, Intel was still promising lowered TDP cpus in the pipeline.
Yes. They had the time. They chose to invest it in putting a touch screen on your keyboard.
Apple put the "touch screen on your keyboard" when they introduced the current design in 2016.
At the time, and for the next year, 2017, the design was perfectly fine for the then-current Intel CPUs models. And Intel was promising even more efficient models.
It's not like there was a thermal problem in 2016, when Apple introduced the design and they ignored it to concentrate on the touch strip. Not only wasn't there such a problem at 2018, it still wasn't in 2017 either.
One could argue that Apple should have created a new design in the 5-6 previous months during which they had Intels new chips at hand.
But that's a much shorter notice, and something totally different than the inane complain about "focusing on the touch screen on the keyboard" which gets the timeline backwards.
No, I have my timeline correct. You are just ignoring what I'm writing.
> Apple put the "touch screen on your keyboard" when they introduced the current design in 2016.
Yes.
So, prior to 2016, they could have been working on building out a 32GB machine, giving people what they wanted.
But they didn't.
> At the time, and for the next year, 2017, the design was perfectly fine for the then-current Intel CPUs models.
But it wasn't perfectly fine for people they are currently marketing to.
I get throttled after about sustained usage of a couple minutes.
Outside of that you are into the P range which are deathstars (Xeon's in a laptop...).
1) Freeze board under the bottom https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-Freeze-Board-800
2) Running this in reverse to help with airflow https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR
Will measure temps and blog on it
Similar PC notebooks tend to keep the CPU at 85C and run them at 15-20W. Apple runs the CPU at 102C before throttling them, and there aren't apparent power limits.
They're trying pretty hard to solve this problem and to be honest there's not very much more they could be doing short of putting last-mm^3 heatsinks everywhere or making the fans even louder. I'm personally okay with the form factor they've chosen and they've done their best with that.
My hands hurts, it's painful, tiring, enough for me to buy a new keyboard without much tough, and certainly enough to make me think twice about buying a Mac again.
Get your shit together.
However, issues like these make me resentful that my day-to-day is dependent on OSX. I hope that some other competitor really steps into the currently (admittedly slim) hole in the market that is growing between professional users and the average Macbook user.
EDIT: corrected my mistake about linux!
Macs aren't Linux-based.
Someone will point this out sooner or later, so I might as well do it ;)
Macs are neither Linux, nor the only. Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD. Linux machines usually come with GNU tools, and BSD have their own set, with subtle differences causing no end of confusion for the up and coming developers :) sed, grep, ls, etc. All slightly different interfaces (this is why brew offers a package to install the GNU version of all those tools, iirc “gnuutils” ?). The kernel itself is completely different, of course.
Android, however, would fit that description quite well.
As an example, I use a tiling window manager; I have the same theme used by my WM, my console & my editor; my entire computing interface is as minimal and distraction-free as possible. I simply couldn't get it this clean on anything other than Linux or BSD.
Or, if you're feeling adventurous, i3wm is really nice. That's what I run on my laptop, which is my main programming computer, and I would never again consider running a floating window manager instead of a tiling one for programming.
It's a little annoying that a lot of stuff assumes GNOME or KDE, but I'm able to get by.
I've heard good things about i3, dwm & exwm. The latter is written in elisp, of all things!
It's mostly a big hole with some silicone on the sides. That's not to say that it doesn't affect cooling at all; saying the keyboard is insulated is probably exaggeration though.
As to advertising, advertising the burst speed, with the appropriate caveat, is usually the correct decision too. Under full load, almost any modern laptop will get under 2 hours of battery life. Should they be advertised as such? No, that's a completely un-helpful metric. Under typical use, where the machine is idle most of the time, you will in fact get 8 hours or whatever of use.
Apple actually advertises these machines as 2.2 or 2.6 GHz machines, with "up to 4.3 GHz Turbo Boost" in smaller font below. This is actually probably deceptive (though in a way that is not favorable to Apple). In typical use, the machine will feel more like a 4.3 GHz machine than a 2.6 GHz one. (E.g. comparing it to your 2.6 GHz Haswell-era Mac.)
Apple, here, has sold a machine that thermally throttles at idle, basically guaranteeing that its quoted clock speed will never be used, even under load.
It seems a little misplaced to rail against Apple as if this is a design flaw. That's how this CPU will perform even in a completely different form factor without sufficient cooling. Want to prevent throttling? Here's a big heatsink with a couple fans attached to it. Want even more cooling? Here's a tank of water and a giant radiator.
Want a slim form factor and an i9? It's going to throttle because it will get hot when you actually use it for something that makes use of that processor. Unless you live where I live and want to use the computer outside in the winter when it's -20F.
If your customers want an i9, be more honest with them. Don't just sell them what ends up being a crippled i9.
If Intel could make an i9 that burned less, I'm sure they'd be happy to. (Well, at least now, given their increased need to compete.)
I guess in that regard, you could "blame" Intel. If AMD really has pulled ahead in the race to 7 and 5 nm, interconnect data throughput, and whatever else.
Exactly. We accepted (or endured, but it wasn't a mystery) the DDR3 limit of 16GB in laptops for years after the desire for more arose.
This is totally my personal opinion, but the MacBook Pro 2015 was the perfect laptop. I still use one as my main driver, and I'm agonizing on what my next (long overdue!) move will be.
When a customer sees "i9" they expect to be able to get the performance of which the i9 is capable.
If I were to purchase a laptop with an i9, I'd expect to be able to run full-throttle numerical simulations and data analysis on it. If I didn't plan to do that, I wouldn't have purchased a fast chip.
Frankly, this feels like false advertising to me. If I'm going to drop $3k on a MacBook with a Core-i9 chip that flies, I better get what I paid for. And clearly people aren't.
They should've redesigned the chassis to address this, but instead they got caught shipping a subpar product. So "brave"...
CPUs have very specific TDP figures in their manufacturer datasheets, the problem is with laptop makers trying to cram too much wattage into a package that is too thin and light.
Isn't sufficient cooling a design decision by apple?
It would be like a car manufacturer saying "The engine in this sedan can take you from 0 to 60 in 2.4 seconds", and then later finding out that they meant if the engine was mounted on a 300 lbs PVC frame, and not the actual frame of the car they were advertising when they told you that fact.
How dare they.