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Comment by ly | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to see they upgraded the RAM, but still kept it LPDDR3, even though all other Macs have DDR4 (except for the MacBook Air, which as LPDDR4X). At this price point I would honestly expect DDR4 in a "Pro" machine.

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It's interesting. From the GPU and the remainder of the configuration (2 USB-C ports), the two cheaper models seem to be the same as the 2019 MacBook Pro, but with the fixed keyboard plus double the SSD storage for the same price. If this is the case, then the CPU/GPU are even weaker than the mid-2018 4 USB-C ports model.

Which raises the question, why would anyone (who doesn't care about the Touch Bar) buy the 1499 MacBook Pro and not the 1499 MacBook Air? The Air is slower in multi-core benchmarks, but offers double the SSD at that price (512GB), has 3733‑MHz LPDDR4 memory, and has a more power-efficient 10th generation CPU, AVX-512, and probably better GPU.

To get the 32GB of RAM option, you have to select the configs that have the 10th gen chips which change over to 3733MHz LPDDR4X.

Wait, what? Hasn't DDR3 been phased out nearly everywhere about 5 years ago?

LP = low power. It gives Apple laptops incredible sleep times, and Apple will take LPDDR3 over DDR4 given that choice.

LPDDR4 (X) is a thing...

IIRC there was some problem with LPDDR4 having issues with sleeping power consumption that slowed Apple’s adoption of it.

That is DDR4 (no LP). MacBook Air 2020, MacBook Pro 16", and the most expensive MacBook Pro 13" configuration use LPDDR4.

I wish I could find the old HN comment I’m thinking of; there was some combination of memory size, board compatibility, chipset and ram that slowed Apple from moving from LPDDR3 to LPDDR4. Such restrictions might still apply to the older chips used in their non-flagship machines.

That is, if I could remember the specific details.

Intel CPUs don't support LPDDR4(X) until Ice Lake. So previous MacBooks stuck at LPDDR3 (then max capacity is limited to 16GB) or go to DDR4(more max capacity but more power consumption).

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