Apple Doubles MacBook Pro R/W Performance

Lucas123 writes Benchmark tests performed on the 2015 MacBook Pro revealed it does have twice the read/write performance as the mid-2014 model. Tests performed with the Blackmagic benchmark tool revealed read/write speeds of more than 1,300MBps/1,400MBps, respectively. So what's changed? The new MacBook Pro does have a faster Intel dual-core i7 2.9GHz processor and 1866MHz LPDDR3) RAM, but the real performance gain is in the latest PCIe M.2 flash module. The 2014 model used a PCIe 2.0 x2 card and the 2015 model uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 (four I/O lanes) card. Twice the lanes, twice the speed. While Apple uses a proprietary flash card made by Samsung, Intel, Micron and SanDisk are all working on similar technology, so it's likely to soon wind up in high-end PCs.

Comments

Oxygen!

[For a Free Internet]

I am running out of it. Put your finger in the hole, let him die!

Re:Oxygen!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running out of it. Put your finger in the hole, let him die!

why dont you put YOUR finger in a niggers butt hole!

As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[l0ungeb0y]

I am pretty miffed to read this. Nothing like paying a load of cash for a shiny new laptop only to find out a couple months later that you'd have been way better off waiting.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like any other technology purchase :(

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[l0ungeb0y]

Not necessarily. Sure speed bumps are common, but usually incremental. Doubling performance over a single generation is not too common in desktop computing these days. I was going to buy another laptop next month since I always have a spare and I just retired my spare. But was planning on going with the new Macbook or an Air for their slightly smaller form factor. Now it looks like I'll might be opting for another 13" MBP.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[reactor451]

I know it's a little late, but for your next apple purchase (if there is one) be sure to check:

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

They generally stay on top of most of the rumors surrounding new product launches. Well enough to know if it's worth waiting for a few months before buying the new model or holding out till the next big Apple event.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[DRJlaw]

You bought a Haswell-based MBP knowing full well that Broadwell had been released and would work its way into the MBP line shortly.

You also ignored the fact that Apple has been updating the Retina MacBook Pros like clockwork.

If you're miffed, be miffed at yourself. Nobody hid this from you.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[dbraden]

Happened to me a long time ago, but even worse. Just two months after buying my first new MacBook Pro, Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel. I still feel slighted about that, but I got 6 years of good use out of it. Still works fine as long as it's plugged in. And the software is horribly out of date, of course.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd check the benchmarks on real work you might be doing. Unless you're doing some very specific unusual tasks, doubling the continuous write and read speeds over an already fast SSD won't gain much.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[plopez]

face it. tech has the shelf life of fresh fruit.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Doubling performance of one subsystem only counts as 'doubling performance' against specific workloads(of which there are some, hence the enthusiasm among users of Big Serious Databases for buying SSDs that cost substantially more than this laptop, or even a pallet of these laptops, once you get the whole storage system up and running); but your usual laptop activities probably won't be quite as dramatic.

What is somewhat notable about this change is that these days are the first time in ages that storage systems(outside of contrived scenarios involving hanging gigantic fiber channel arrays off the lousiest PCI-X HBA you can find, then adding a cheapie PCI device to the same bus just to cut the bandwidth further, or similar silliness) have actually been bottlenecked by their connection to the rest of the system, rather than by their own inadequacy.

With HDDs, and the earlier SSDs, the alleged link speed was a mostly theoretical value that determined little except how fast you could access the drive's cache RAM. Now, it seems, adding a couple of extra PCIe lanes can actually double performance. Not bad at all.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you 20? This has been the case with technology since the dawn of technology.

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[armanox]

I consider a 13" laptop to be small form factor....I wouldn't be able to use an 11" laptop.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, after a year Apple will release a new OS upgrade which makes your existing machine so slow that you need to buy another mac.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[docone]

Hi, I bought a base 2014 MBP 13 inch also and bought and upgraded to a 1TB PCIe x4 drive off Ebay. Works perfectly at the faster speed, and was cheaper overall after the educational discount.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[sethstorm]

If you're miffed, [libertarian bromide redacted]

On the other hand, other manufacturers (like Lenovo) are better at letting you make a return(within 30 days) for those kind of conditions.

That, and they're engineered to use standard parts, not exotic and maintenance-hostile ones.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[ahabswhale]

I bought my MBP at Best Buy and I could also return it within 30 days. Whoopie-fucking-do. Not that it matters because he bought his two months ago. Additionally, it would not have been possible to for Lenovo to provide an upgrade to an existing model with this new tech since it's an entirely different part that uses a PCIe 3.0 interface rather than a standard SATA interface. In short, none of your arguments apply.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the price of an apple computer and the speed of technical improvements, the best way to avoid this feeling is to buy it when ready and not care/look for the planned duration of the investment (ex. three years) until the next cycle. To do that you have to pre-plan the duration and stick to it. A sort of mental "capitalization" of the non-commodity goods. It works better if you don't buy the lowest specs so that you don't get the urge to buy a year later because you ran out of disc space or you don't have enough non-upgradable RAM to run Photoshop.

Of course, this is applicable to upgraders and not to people who buy the bare minimum every 10 years to read emails ;)

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[sexconker]

PCIe-connected flash drives have been around in the PC space for years, and M.2 slots (which for high-end storage devices are nothing but connectors tied to X lanes of gen Y PCIe) have been increasing in popularity significantly over the past year.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you can't possibly help it, never buy a new Apple product more than 2 months after it's introduced. If it's later than that, just get it on the used market.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pretty miffed to read this. Nothing like paying a load of cash for a shiny new laptop only to find out a couple months later that you'd have been way better off waiting.

OK, that's like being butthurt after buying a new 2014 car and hearing there's a better 2016 model out. If you didn't get what you thought was a good deal on it, why did you buy it? Time marches on...

For those who don't know, "mid 2014" is not someone's estimate, that's what the hardware is officially billed as in the OS About screen. Note there have been nine updates in the past six years...

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[DigiShaman]

Traded my bank account reward points for several BestBest gift cards. I did my homework, the dollar amount was fair. Anyways, popped them down on a MBP for a big saving :)

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Enry]

It depends on where your bottleneck is. Hard drives are typically the lowest performing pieces of hardware, mostly because they're spinning media. You can have the fastest CPU in the world, but if you're waiting on a 5.25" full height MFM drive, your performance is going to suffer.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[antdude]

That is why I stopped buying the (lat/new)est stuff. I just get the older models for being cheaper, more stable, etc.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what he was saying:

What is somewhat notable about this change is that these days are the first time in ages that storage systems(outside of contrived scenarios involving hanging gigantic fiber channel arrays off the lousiest PCI-X HBA you can find, then adding a cheapie PCI device to the same bus just to cut the bandwidth further, or similar silliness) have actually been bottlenecked by their connection to the rest of the system, rather than by their own inadequacy.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[AK Marc]

Stupid M.2 is why it's harder for me to get good toys for may mSATA. My 256GB boot drive will have to suffice.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

The blackmagic benchmark they did, I would assume, is from BlackMagic, the company that makes video recording/production products.
So I am guessing it is benchmarking how fast you can write uncompressed video to your SSD, which, outside of that task, is probably not a relevant workload test.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[hawguy]

I am pretty miffed to read this. Nothing like paying a load of cash for a shiny new laptop only to find out a couple months later that you'd have been way better off waiting.

How do you ever buy anything if you're upset that technology keeps improving and you want to wait until the next leap in performance? If you're looking for the best performance, you're *always* better off waiting, but if you need a computer in the meantime, you have to draw a line in the sand and declare that the price/performance is good enough where it is now.

Though for most uses, you won't see a significant difference between a 650MB/sec SSD and a 1300MB/sec SSD.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[l0ungeb0y]

Well, considering that one of the areas I'm not entirely happy with is media transcoding times between various audio and video formats on some fairly sizable files, with this I think I'd see a profound effect on FFMPEG's performance.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Define recent. IIRC you still have the option of returning it to an Apple store and paying the restocking fee if you bought it less than 30 days ago.
Just make sure you copy all of your data onto something you own zero the hard drive before you return it.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Arcanek]

Yes. Either buy a new one right at introduction, or buy the older ones at a slight discount. Found that out with the mini I bought, but it had more USB ports, which I run short of.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[bricko]

More of these M.2 SSD drives on the way, some 2-3 times faster than this one. http://www.thessdreview.com/ou... http://www.intelgamingpromo.co... http://www.zdnet.com/article/c... http://forums.hardwarezone.com...

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[ERJ]

Nope, I can pretty much say you would get no benefit from the faster drive for transcoding. The cpu will be the limiter. You would see benefit for non-linear video editing where you are working with massive raw files but the conversion is going to be limited in other ways.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always wait until advances in technology have slowed down enough for your taste.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[UnknownSoldier]

What is why you check the Mac Buying Guide to see if a new release is imminent so you don't end up with buyer's remorse:

http://buyersguide.macrumors.c...

Future proofing doesn't exist in tech. EVERYTHING eventually becomes obsolete. :-(

--
PHP: A language designed by a noob for boobs

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

So it was a powerbook then.. macbook is an intel naming convention.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[John Bokma]

Sell it, you will get a very good price for it, and buy the 2015 version if you really need this update.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Gr8Apes]

I can tell you I have a faster processor than anything in any MBPs, and disk I/O is not the bottleneck in transcoding. What you're really looking for is a much faster CPU, or multiple faster, preferably many cored CPUs as a preference.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Gr8Apes]

but it had more USB ports, which I run short of.

Look into a USB hub....

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to look at how transcoding works to understand this.

Transcoding, at most, benefits from 2 CPU cores, because depending on the codec, the extra cores aren't really doing much of anything. The bottleneck is the file i/o which was traditionally a blocking call, so you could literately not write to two parts of the file at the same time. When you take things multicore, in a live transcoding sessiuon (eg livestream/twitch/picarto) you will never use more than two cores, and since the machine only has two cores, that's the perfect match up. However if you are trancoding something that is already on disk, you can quite literately transcode it from both ends (burning the candle at both ends) or slice the file up into the number of cores available, or slice the vertical/horizontal space by the number of cores available. But the point is that without the ability to read/write to two or more parts of the file, the file i/o is the blocking part of the process.

Streaming is 3500Kbit, Blueray is 20-50Mbit. The quality difference is substantial.

But you would never be mastering Bluerays out on the field with a laptop. No no, you would be pre-editing the files on the road so you can dispose of footage that you don't need, or bad takes.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[jcr]

Whenever anyone asks me if they should buy a computer now or wait for a new model, I tell them to wait until 2025, because those machines are going to be INCREDIBLE!

-jcr

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[jcr]

Actually, when it comes to transcoding, the GPU is the limiter. Apple's codecs use it heavily.

-jcr

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[default luser]

Basiclly, this is just a bulk transfer rate benchmark of the SSD.

Like most other SSDs, the fastest ones will not actually result in quicker real-world performance, because your brain cannot see the files load on screen any faster.

Enjoy your overpowered 4x PCIe crap. I'll be just fine here with my SATA6 SSD I've had for four years.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Paradise Pete]

But was planning on going with the new Macbook or an Air for their slightly smaller form factor.

The new Macbook enjoys the same increase, though of course there might be other reasons to not choose it.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Hamsterdan]

Agree.

I swapped my old Core 2 Duo E7200 (2.53) O/Ced to 3.8 with an OCZ Agility2 SSD for an i3 with a Kingston SSDnow 300 (*old* retired machine that was given to my dad). Altough the new machine boots way faster, and the new SSD is about twice as fast in benchmarks (even if low-end), I find it faster, but not *blew me out of my chair* faster.

Once you go from HDD to SSD, even the cheapest lowest performing SSD is gonna be much faster than anything with spinning platters.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Billly Gates]

This is why I am a PC. Not a Mac (paraphrased in the commercials)

When something goes obsolete I replace.

In 2013 I got my first SSD in my 2010 AMD phenom II. Then a dual SSD in raid. Then an i7 4770k. Then a another SSD raid. New video card and last a new workstation class computer.

With a mac it is soldered on. Throw away and buy anew.

The old argument it halves performance every 12 months at an exponential rate is so 1990s and those with very obsolete Pentium IVs with 512 megs of ram with XP just keep rocking as who cares if things are better. Word 2003 and Firefox still run fine etc So no biggie anymore. But still like the option

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Billly Gates]

Gamers need them.

IN Star Wars the Old Republic MMO Correlia took almost 4 to 5 minutes to load. I blamed my CPU at the time. Got an SSD. It loaded in 35 seconds.

Newer games all take 50 to 70 gigs like Wolfenstein and others. Having a Raid 0 SSD with a 1 gig transfer rate over SATA (not even .m2) makes a difference but it is the loading of 50,000 assets a level in parallel make an SSD as fast as 100 disk array more than the transfer rate.

I do VMware like many other slashdotters studying CISCO and MCSE and Linux certifications. No one I would bother with a mechanical disk to load 5 virtual machines at the same time to emulate an enterprise network. I remember shutting them down at 7pm and by 7:20 they would finish if I had 6 or more. With an SSD raid 0 this takes about 45 seconds.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[zieroh]

I am pretty miffed to read this. Nothing like paying a load of cash for a shiny new laptop only to find out a couple months later that you'd have been way better off waiting.

You were expecting that any manufacturer should stop improving their products the moment you buy in?

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[shitzu]

This will have a great impact on starting and suspending virtual machines. Which i do a lot, benchmarks or no benchmarks.

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[shitzu]

Maybe but Lenovo simply gives you much slower ssd and cpu FOR THE SAME OR EVEN BIGGER PRICE (x1 carbon).

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[shitzu]

It was technically impossible to buy a powerpc macbook pro just before they went to intel. Since macbook pros have ALL been intel...

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[fnj]

The terminology police hereby fine you for incorrect terms. There is no "SATA6". You probably mean SATA3, which is 6 Gbps.

Which in no way detracts from your point, which is entirely correct.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[fnj]

Using a USB hub is like distributing a garden hose to many nozzles. When you turn them all on, the spray from each one slows to a trickle.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[davester666]

No. If he had bought a Dell, they would have put out a new laptop with a different random model number that was only 5% faster.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about transcoding software that support the use of GPUs.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[MrL0G1C]

No longer true, ddr3 has been around for years, an i7 from a couple of years back is still good, upgrading a SSD from a SSD of a couple of years back won't make much system performance difference for a normal desktop.

The increments are tiny these days, you're lucky if you get 5% speed boost from the latest CPU or GPU.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[TheRaven64]

I was quite surprised by the numbers they had for the old model. On my 2014 MBP, I recently did some tests doing sha calculations of VM images. These were multithreaded and not CPU-bound, but they ended up getting almost 2GB/s reads from the SSD. The benchmark is interleaving reads and writes, so that may account for it, but if you're just loading game data from disk then the old model can fill the whole of physical RAM in 8 seconds, so I doubt that's the bottleneck.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[ruir]

I have no idea why this comment was modded down. It is very relevant to the discussion...please do not mod on opinion. As for the answer to lounge boy. I was planning in buying a new one in a huge black friday promotion, but hold out because the high end models already were using this technology, and it was a given it was a matter of time for it to trickle down. Next time, you should do better your research.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever bought a laptop before?

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pretty miffed to read this. Nothing like paying a load of cash for a shiny new laptop only to find out a couple months later that you'd have been way better off waiting.

Nothing like paying a load of cash for a product you failed to research beforehand...

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac

Guides like this have been around for years. Wise up, you're already spending a premium on Apple anyway.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Cederic]

Which is why I have to acknowledge, Apple's given a nice uplift in speed there.

Those write speeds are frankly impressive. I'd be sorely tempted, if I could think of a decent use case :)

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[ruir]

There was even no need for that. The higher end 15'' models were already using the technology by the time he bought his machine. It was expected to trickle down, as Apple usually launches the new technologies in the higher end models to boost sales.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Golden_Rider]

Agree.

I swapped my old Core 2 Duo E7200 (2.53) O/Ced to 3.8 with an OCZ Agility2 SSD for an i3 with a Kingston SSDnow 300 (*old* retired machine that was given to my dad). Altough the new machine boots way faster, and the new SSD is about twice as fast in benchmarks (even if low-end), I find it faster, but not *blew me out of my chair* faster.

Once you go from HDD to SSD, even the cheapest lowest performing SSD is gonna be much faster than anything with spinning platters.

True, that is simply "diminishing returns". Just going from a HDD to ANY SSD will make your computer incredibly faster, but then going to any faster SSD will not give the same benefits, because that one only will be faster on continuous access (like copying large files). Booting the OS or accessing small random files will not benefit much anymore. So going for a super expensive SSD will only be worth it if a.) you read/write lots of LARGE files (e.g. movie editing) or b.) need the long-term reliability of a SSD designed for multi-year writing of tons of data.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

I am still holding out for the technology to level out and have yet to buy a computer because I don't want to get burned. I started looking in 1994 with the DX2 series processors and the PCI bus.
I was close to buying one in 2001 because there was not much going on and I thought leveling was happening and the only real changer was the Duron and video cards like the Radeon series showed up and then I had to start all over.

Some day I will buy that computer!
 

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In fairness to Enry, I (in retrospect, not very clearly) tried to make two somewhat similar points and kind of mushed them together). My intent was the following:
1. Only for certain, fairly specific, tasks does doubling 1 subsystem's performance = 'doubling performance'. In the case of mass storage, databases seem to be the particular sweet spot. For most of what laptops are used for, the near-zero latency of an SSD makes a huge difference; but the difference between 'near zero latency, 2 PCIe lanes of bandwidth' and 'near zero latency, 4 lanes' is very unlikely to double performance across the board.

2. What is remarkable, even if 'double the performance' of the storage subsystem doesn't double the performance of the tasks you use it for, is that we now have (and relatively cheap, at that, unlike DDR-based hardware RAMdisks) storage hardware that is good enough that doubling its interface bandwidth genuinely does double its performance. With pretty much any mechanical storage, and some of the earlier SSDs, it barely mattered what the nominal performance of your interface was, because the storage device would let it down. You wanted to avoid PIO, because losing DMA meant more CPU load; and SATA has cables that are less annoying than PATA; but only with big, expensive, HDD arrays or contemporary SSDs does the speed of the interface actually make much difference in terms of performance.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of SSDs, and use them myself for everything except backup/NAS stuff where I don't have nearly enough disposable income to cover my demand for capacity. However, the biggest improvement is not absolute throughput speed(if you can actually keep a read or write nice and linear, a high density platter HDD is pretty damned fast); but the fact that you'll get almost the same speed under a pathologically random access condition as you will under a nice linear access condition. HDDs, by contrast, absolutely fall off a cliff if you do that to them.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[goarilla]

That, and they're engineered to use standard parts, not exotic and maintenance-hostile ones.

When was the last time you replaced a "standard" laptop GPU ?

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[tlhIngan]

I am pretty miffed to read this. Nothing like paying a load of cash for a shiny new laptop only to find out a couple months later that you'd have been way better off waiting.

Apple stuff is fairly predictable. Unlike everyone else, Apple generally releases on a set schedule the same time every year. Enough so that there are many "buyers guide" for Apple products.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.c...

If you're ever contemplating an Apple purchase, check that out first. Anything beyond midlife is a caution - if you can wait, then wait. Anything marked as "Don't Buy" is basically meaning it's going to come out in the next 3 months.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[rthille]

This is so wrong in so many ways.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[LordLimecat]

Your existing m.2 SSD is on a slot with 1GB (8gb) of bandwidth. I really dont think you're going to be maxing that out with any non-enterprise SSD, so you're probably OK-- and even if you somehow did, I seriously doubt you would notice.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Gr8Apes]

And what software would this be, other than perhaps FCPX?

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Gr8Apes]

But but but... USB 3.0 is the snizzle! Or so everyone says.

I personally think USB should be retired to the same place as IDE, RLL, ATA and all those other bad idea shared bus solutions. The only ones that worked well, IMNSHO, are SCSI type solutions, including SATA, which can now be overwhelmed by a couple of top end SSDs running in RAID0.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Transcoding, at most, benefits from 2 CPU cores...

Really? So when I start Handbrake (or iriverter, or mencoder, or Transmageddon, or WinFF, or XCFA, or almost any other transcoder) on my old 4-core system, all 4 cores are maxed out. Previously, the cores were near zero, so what are two of them doing? Unless you're full of shit, of course.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Blaskowicz]

It is perhaps more useful now : for years, you could install linux (debian, buntu) on a ppc mac, but you got no binary for the adobe plugin Flash. So, it was shit, but now you can try to look at the HTML5 video, or try some software that loads the video in a regular video player.

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

While it may not necessarily be he case depending on your device, you realize that many of the USB ports on a computer are on an internal USB hub right? Some desktop PCs usually do maybe 2-4 ports to a hub and have a couple of different root hubs.

My point being, don't count on multiple built-in ports meaning they don't share resources exactly the same way as an external hub.

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Tamerlin]

When working with nonlinear video editing, compositing, and color grading, the GPU is the biggest bottleneck in most laptops. The CPU is a secondary limiter, but most of the high end professional video software out there use the GPU heavily.

There are a few exceptions, a small number of high end applications like Edius and Clarisse are primarily optimized around using the CPU instead of the GPU, but they're getting increasingly rare these days.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[jeremyp]

I gave my first gen MBP Retina to my brother when I refreshed it . It's three years old but he still considers it a pretty fast computer. Admittedly, I maxed out the specs when I bought it.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[DRJlaw]

If you're miffed, [libertarian bromide redacted]

Be miffed at yourself, and the fool who thinks that properly researching your own major purchases is a "libertarian bromide."

So sayeth this democrat to the fool.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Plumpaquatsch]

Agree.

I swapped my old Core 2 Duo E7200 (2.53) O/Ced to 3.8 with an OCZ Agility2 SSD for an i3 with a Kingston SSDnow 300 (*old* retired machine that was given to my dad). Altough the new machine boots way faster, and the new SSD is about twice as fast in benchmarks (even if low-end), I find it faster, but not *blew me out of my chair* faster.

Once you go from HDD to SSD, even the cheapest lowest performing SSD is gonna be much faster than anything with spinning platters.

True, that is simply "diminishing returns". Just going from a HDD to ANY SSD will make your computer incredibly faster, but then going to any faster SSD will not give the same benefits, because that one only will be faster on continuous access (like copying large files). Booting the OS or accessing small random files will not benefit much anymore. So going for a super expensive SSD will only be worth it if a.) you read/write lots of LARGE files (e.g. movie editing) or b.) need the long-term reliability of a SSD designed for multi-year writing of tons of data.

I bet you stuck to ATA for your hard drives, because you were used to floppys, and those ATA dries were soooo much faster, everything beyond was just diminishing returns.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Plumpaquatsch]

This is why I am a PC. Not a Mac (paraphrased in the commercials)

When something goes obsolete I replace.

In 2013 I got my first SSD in my 2010 AMD phenom II. Then a dual SSD in raid. Then an i7 4770k. Then a another SSD raid. New video card and last a new workstation class computer.

With a mac it is soldered on. Throw away and buy anew.

Yeah, buying everything but the case, floppy (I bet you still have a floppy) and the big, inefficient power supply new makes for such a cheaper buy.

Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Plumpaquatsch]

Using a USB hub is like distributing a garden hose to many nozzles. When you turn them all on, the spray from each one slows to a trickle.

In the case of of USB 3, the trickle would burst your USB 2 hoses, and fill several mass storage hoses. Wasn't that the point of USB 3? Or were all the USB fanboys lying?

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[Gr8Apes]

Most PCs only have 2 or 3 USB controllers tops, which explains the absolutely abysmal performance you get as soon as you start plugging in lots of USB devices, since each controller serves as a hub to 2-4 ports.

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[dbraden]

True, it was a Powerbook G4, I've just gotten used to saying MBP over the years.

Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP

[shitzu]

Apple announced the transition to Intel more than half a year before actual machines with Intel shipped...

Wrong units

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard disk speed is measured in MB/second, or Gigabyte/second.
Using MegaBIT is only common in networking, but poster seems to need to amplify numbers.

1300MBit/sec = measely 162MB/sec. Good rotational devices could do that.

Re:Wrong units

[Anonymous Coward]

1300MBit/sec = measely 162MB/sec. Good rotational devices could do that.

On sequential reads, sure. If your data is perfectly laid out and your reads happen in the correct order.

These m.2 SSDs can do that on random reads, because, hey, no seek time.

Re:Wrong units

[slashdime]

They said MBps which is MegaByte per second. You misread it.

B=byte
b=bit

Re:Wrong units

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that be MiBps?

Re:Wrong units

[Anonymous Coward]

MB/s is megabyte per second.
Mbps is megabit per second
MBps is unconventional gibberish. For all anyone knows it could be MiniBuses full of thumbdrives Per Season.

Re:Wrong units

[zippthorne]

Good question - does the bus speed match the ram convention, or the hard drive storage convention and all other communication speed conventions?

Re:Wrong units

[ToasterMonkey]

Good question - does the bus speed match the ram convention, or the hard drive storage convention and all other communication speed conventions?

Um, the test - is it moving bits serially, or multiples of bytes?

Neato!

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll, no doubt, be even more impressive as soon as the tech finds its way into computers that grown-ups use.

Re:Neato!

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, you've been able to get a SM951 in e.g. the Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 3 for a while.
And it's even in a standard m.2 form factor and not Apple "fuck you, that's why" proprietary.

Re:Neato!

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about, I've got one on my Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 based system now... A bit pricier than traditional SATA SSD, but hell, 512gigabyte on a part literally screwed into the motherboard is hella fast and hella cool.

The Samsung m.2 XP941 based are the first to market, but the new SM951 will be even faster in the 2nd half of 2015.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147366&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC-_-pla-_-Enterprise+SSDs-_-N82E16820147366&gclid=CNv1qNfFv8QCFQmpaQodQBMAIQ&gclsrc=aw.ds

This is a very well priced entry level m.2 256GB card for the OS performance you crave.

sigh, now I'm wanting to get the SM951 when it's released...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8979/samsung-sm951-512-gb-review

Re: Neato!

[Anonymous Coward]

^grownups^1337 gamerz

No WAY!

[Narcocide]

So now its on-par with a equivalent hardware in a PC laptop?

Re:No WAY!

[sexconker]

Pretty much.

M.2 slots and SSDs are now fairly common place in laptops.

For desktops, direct PCIe flash drives have been around for years. PCIe adapters also exist if you want to use an M.2 drive now and your motherboard doesn't have an M.2 slot. Newer desktop boards ship with SATA Express ports, and drives should show up this summer offering the speed benefits of M.2 (running off PCIe lanes) as well as the benefits of NVMe, along with the possibility of being thrown into RAID (depending on your controller, of course). Many newer boards also feature a M.2 slot if you hate cables or are very space constrained.

Re:No WAY!

[Anonymous Coward]

But the problem with M.2 slots is that between the single-sided and double-sided boards, there are eight different sizes of thicknesses. There are five different standard lengths. Eight times five is forty different combinations. It's going to get worse since widths other than the current standard of 22mm wide are going to be added. The standard is a mess. I thought having to file the plastic to get an mSATA SDD to fit in my old Dell Latitude E6440 was bad enough. I have a Plextor M6e that hasn't fit in anything I've tried. IIRC, it is 80mm long which is too short for my personal laptop and too long for my work laptop. I would just plug it into my personal laptop and tape it in place, but the M.2 connector is only rated for sixty cycles! I wasted about half of those trying to find a drive that fits.

Re:No WAY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Was the standard created by a Republican? Wow, that is really dumb, and it explains why none of the M.2 drives I tried in my Dell Venue 11 Pro wouldn't fit. What a mess is right!

Re:No WAY!

[Anonymous Coward]

We're already seeing the first offerings taking advantage of the PCIE speeds in M2. Plextor offers one that actually does better on an M.2 slot with PCIE lanes then on SATA (50 percent improvement) but like you said, we'll see the bulk of the come out over the summer but for most of us, wait until 3rd Quarter before even considering them as I expect quite a few improvements to hit after the new year.

This will make it EVEN faster ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2866858/samsung-mass-produces-laptop-ssd-with-21gbps-speeds.html

Semicolons!

[SammyIAm]

While Apple uses a proprietary flash card made by Samsung, Intel, Micron and SanDisk are all working on similar technology...

What a missed opportunity for a semicolon after "Samsung", and what a confusing sentence as a result.

Re:Semicolons!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, that would not be correct.

Re:Semicolons!

[Zero__Kelvin]

It's actually pretty humorous to see how many Grammar Nazi's have no idea what they are talking about. The sentence could certainly be re-written to make it more clear, but you absolutely couldn't put a semi-colon after Samsung. You would literally be taking a syntactically correct though awkward sentence and converting it to a syntactically broken aggregation of words desperately wanting to make sense, but never quite getting there.

Re:Semicolons!

[SammyIAm]

Well I'd like to be as tactful as possible here, but there's not much bush to beat around: you absolutely can use a semicolon after Samsung. Here's a great reference on semicolon use. You can use it lowercase that "P" in your signature that's been inappropriately capitalized. ;)

Re:Semicolons!

[SammyIAm]

Ack! Use it *to* lowercase that "P". (Figures I've leave out a word when trying to be pedantic)

Re:Semicolons!

[memeplex]

Making the word "Nazi" plural does not call for an apostrophe. Damned Nazis.

Re:Semicolons!

[Zero__Kelvin]

In this case Physics has been anthropomorphized and so just as you would write: Bill didn't kill him; John did" one would also write,as I did, "Billy isn't the one who runs around killing people; Physics is the slimy grease-ball that goes around killing people!"

That's two English lessons I gave you now for free; fancy a third intellectual and philosophical beating?

Re:Semicolons!

[Zero__Kelvin]

No. You are missing the big picture. You can "lowercase" the P all you want (erroneously) but don't surround it in quotes, and don't use "lowercase" without quotes since it isn't actually a verb.

You keep prattling on like you have something to teach; you'd do far better to accept the fact that you lack a basic understanding of the English language. Don't feel bad. I don't speak whatever your primary language is and so I give you credit for grasping my language to the level that you have! I have no doubt that I would perform equally as miserably if I tried to teach you lessons in whatever language it is that you know how to speak and write properly.

Re:Semicolons!

[Anonymous Coward]

fancy a third intellectual and philosophical beating?

That last sentence just makes you sound like APK with his incessant need to claim victory over and over again.

Re:Semicolons!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually pretty humorous to see how many Grammar Nazi's have no idea what they are talking about.

Grammar Nazi's what?

If you'd like to play Grammar Nazi, try to attain some degree of competence yourself before disciplining others.

Re:Semicolons!

[gnasher719]

Looked through the reference you posted in case there was some new knowledge about English grammar that I had missed; there is nothing there that would allow a semicolon after a sentence starting with "While" like the one we are discussing.

Re:Semicolons!

[Cederic]

don't use "lowercase" without quotes since it isn't actually a verb.

Hey, this is our language. We can verb an adjective if we want to.

Re:Semicolons!

[dave420]

So smug, yet you missed that apostrophe in there. Good stuff.

Re:Semicolons!

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than being a known troll (you) who I see people here want to beat your head in for and who fools himself he knows something about computing and defends that security issue riddled PHP (the only tool a fool like you can manage to use, along with libraries others wrote). Your post history can verify all of the above for anyone interested. Must suck to be a known asshole like you.

Re:Semicolons!

[Curate]

don't use "lowercase" without quotes since it isn't actually a verb

(2) lowercase verb lowercased lowercas-ing Definition of LOWERCASE transitive verb : to print or set in lowercase letters First Known Use of LOWERCASE 1908

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com...

Re:Semicolons!

[Zero__Kelvin]

You seem to be of the mistaken impression that pointing to an online definition proves something. Using your technique everything is a word! "Mah Niggaz!" is valid English if you buy into the "If enough people mangle it it becomes correct" bullshit. One can readily determine from your link that "lowercase", while not a verb, has been commonly misused as one beginning in 1908.

Re:Semicolons!

[Curate]

And you seem to be under the impression that languages are static, and/or you are deliberately trolling. I've cited a reputable dictionary, not someone's tweet or other random drivel on the Internet. It's not just Mirriam-Webster that lists it as a verb, but also Random House and Collins. The only one of the four major dictionaries that doesn't list it as a verb is Oxford. These are all well-established sources that have been in print a long time. The fact that they've made their references available for free (ad-supported) online hardly diminishes their authenticity.

Re:Semicolons!

[Zero__Kelvin]

So you are saying Oxford knows it isn't a verb. I suppose that is why it is still considered the go to source then, isn't it :-)

Language evolves? True. Lowercase is a verb? False. See how easy it was to understand both facts together!

Cheer up, you are batter off in some ways.

[SuperKendall]

So buy another one next year after the next jump, and then it will someone who bought the 2015 MBP will be all sad they are missing whatever.

As it stands, I have a late 2013 MBP. I accepted when I bought it, that things would advance without me... eventually I will get a new laptop, and the balance will be restored.

Personally I'm really looking forward to a Force Touch version of the MBP, so I would be kind of sad to buy a 2015 MBP knowing that very soon I'd have a strong reason to buy a newer version. At least you will get a good bit of use out of your MPB before the next one with that and other nice features comes out.

Re:Cheer up, you are batter off in some ways.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I'm really looking forward to a Force Touch version of the MBP, so I would be kind of sad to buy a 2015 MBP knowing that very soon I'd have a strong reason to buy a newer version.

I assume you are talking about the 15" MBP. The 13" already has the Force Touch pad.

Re:Cheer up, you are batter off in some ways.

[SuperKendall]

Yes, very true. I'm just not sure the 15" will be updated very soon; I was thinking fall...

Misleading story title...

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung doubles Apple's MacBook performance.

That's what it should have read.

Apple didn't do squat to improve performance except buy faster parts from Samsung, the company that it is constantly suing.

Go figure...

Re:Misleading story title...

[default luser]

This.

And along those same lines, there's not a normal user on earth who can tell the difference between an SATA 6 drive, and the same drive running off PCIe. There's enough 4k I/O operations bandwidth on either interface to satisfy any desktop or light workstation user, but Samsung will tell you proudly how much faster the exact same drive controller and flash hooked up by PCIe!

But the industry has nowhere else to grow except lower prices for higher capacity, so we're all making the transition to M.2 and NVMe JUST TO BLOAT WORTHLESS BENCHMARKS!

Instead of letting NVMe be the thing of servers and high-end workstations, EVERYBODY GETS multi-Gigabit block transfers!

Pretty soon the things will be faster than ram at block transfers, but still too high a latency to actually replace it. But what use is that to anyone, when you're still limited bb the rest of your system that has to process the data?

Re:Misleading story title...

[zieroh]

To be fair, Samsung sues Apple too. They just usually lose.

Re:Misleading story title...

[gnasher719]

Oh, poor little misunderstood Samsung. We feel so sorry for them.

While their Mobile division is crashing down hard, and other divisions that build refrigerators and the like do as well, their electronics division is quite possible, mostly because Apple buys their stuff. However, for the average Slashdotter it is quite irrelevant who is building parts. Very few people in the world are interested in Samsung's electronic division, mostly one guy at Apple, one guy at HP, one guy at Dell. There are millions interested in performance of Macs.

Four times the speed

[Anonymous Coward]

>The 2014 model used a PCIe 2.0 x2 card and the 2015 model uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 (four I/O lanes) card. Twice the lanes, twice the speed.

This is inaccurate - PCIe version improvements also increased the speed capacity. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCIE, PCIe 2.0 transfered at 5GT/s for an effective data rate of 500MB/s per lane. PCIe 3.0 upped this to 8.0GT/s and reduced the encoding overhead for an effective data rate of 1000MB/s per lane. So, the 2014 theoretical max would be 1000MB/s, the 2015 would be 4000MB/s. So, four times the speed.

File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[sethstorm]

It doesn't matter if it's "faster", but it doesn't matter if it's a proprietary solution. The more standard solution will win out at Apple's expense.

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[BasilBrush]

Poor beleaguered Apple. All those predictions of doom always coming true. They've hardly got $100 billion to rub together these days.

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, nothing's compatible with Firewire or Thunderbolt. "Standard" matters when you need to interoperate with something.
But that's not the case here.

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[Jax Omen]

M.2 PCI-E SSDs are nothing new. The samsung drive referenced here is the successor to an "OEM Only" drive that has been readily available to consumers through various retailers for a year.

It's "proprietary" in the sense that right now, Samsung's product has far better performance than ANY competing product. The connector is 100% standard, and included in most high-end laptops nowadays and many desktop motherboards as well.

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[Bing Tsher E]

They've been dead in a lot of our worlds for years.

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[Zero__Kelvin]

PCIe is not Apple proprietary standard so your post is just a babbling stream of surreal non-sequitur,

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[AK Marc]

It's not a proprietary solution. It's a single OEM-only drive that's similar to (and meets the standards of) many others available now and before. The article inappropriately calls a standards-based OEM drive "proprietary".

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[Gr8Apes]

and yet they, and their profits, keep growing. Hope denial becomes you.

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[Gr8Apes]

Let me find that video camera again... how do I hook that up? Oh yeah, IEEE 1394....

Re:File it with Firewire and Thunderbolt as fail.

[BasilBrush]

That's your loss. It doesn't mean Apple won't continue to thrive without you.

TAILS Linux 1.3.1 is out (March 23, 2015)

[Anonymous Coward]

** Because someone doesn't have the balls to post the story (spooks suppressing it?) **

Home:
https://tails.boum.org/

Announcement:
https://tails.boum.org/news/ve...

Changelog:
https://git-tails.immerda.ch/t...

Transition to a new OpenPGP signing key:
https://tails.boum.org/news/si...
https://tails.boum.org/tails-s...

Numerous security holes in Tails 1.3:
https://tails.boum.org/securit...

Download:
https://tails.boum.org/downloa...

Direct Download - Latest Release - 1.3.1 ISO image:
http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tai...

Direct Download - Cryptographic Signature:
https://tails.boum.org/torrent...

SHA256 checksum for ISO/Direct Download:
897fc177af159610136816e0396e85c36922da4ce86a74da3fe47c5bae7832cf

Verify the ISO image:
https://tails.boum.org/downloa...

BitTorrent download:
https://tails.boum.org/torrent...

BitTorrent Cryptographic signature:
https://tails.boum.org/torrent...

"Seed back! Seeding back the image once you have downloaded it is also a nice and easy way of helping spread Tails."

The Tails-dev Archives:
https://mailman.boum.org/piper...

Re:TAILS Linux 1.3.1 is out (March 23, 2015)

[Em Adespoton]

...and I just attended at talk at CanSec West that showed them first remotely flashing UEFI and then doing a quick 30 second "plug this in and press a button" to a separate computer, after which both devices started sending all data entered while TAILS was loaded back to a third computer via serial-over-TCP baked in to the UEFI and outside the OS.

Let me reiterate: they demoed something two guys cobbled together in 4 months. Something we have proof that many national governments have been doing for years.

TAILS doesn't even recognize that it's being skimmed, let alone provide any protections against this type of attack.

So while TAILS is better than many of the alternatives out there, if it is run on a computer that's been targeted by some third party (like a repressive government or megacorp), TAILS will do nothing to prevent data exfiltration. here.

Fucking Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

When ever did they do something good, or a first in the tech world?

Re:Fucking Apple

[ahabswhale]

QQQ

Re:Fucking Apple

[rjstanford]

Other than putting the first mass-market GUI onto a UNIX product that people could actually use, giving us the first real "year of *NIX on the desktop" ever?

Oh, and redesigning the mobile phone (go back and watch the iPhone launch keynote and remember just how much was new, even things like "visual voicemail"?

Launching products that look obvious in retrospect yet were somehow not readily available before is a mark of good design.

Re:Fucking Apple

[Coren22]

Is that "Quit Crying Cunt"?

And one single USB-C port

[retroworks]

So you can hook up to an external monitor OR charge your Iphone OR make a powerpoint presentation! In 2016, it will be even lighter when they reduce the number of letters in the alphabet for the keyboard.

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Anonymous Coward]

.

...Or the charger!

"College Humour entertainer Jake Hurwitz dresses up as Apple CEO Tim Cook and says: “The new MacBook charger does the exact same thing as the old charger. The only difference is now you cannot borrow a friend’s when you forget yours. “Instead, you will ask ‘do you have the new Macbook charger?’ and they’ll say some s*** like ‘I have the new one, but not the new new one.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/l...

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Jeremi]

So you can hook up to an external monitor OR charge your Iphone OR make a powerpoint presentation! In 2016, it will be even lighter when they reduce the number of letters in the alphabet for the keyboard.

Dunno if you were joking or not, but in case you weren't, note that the MacBook Pro has (by my count) 8 ports. It's the new MacBook (not Pro) that has only the single USB-C port.

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, I didn't know that USB-C dropped support for hubs. Thanks for the heads up! </sarcasm>

Re:And one single USB-C port

[retroworks]

Right that was the Macbook Air

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Anonymous Coward]

Cook said he would not allow them. He hates us and screws us over like this. He is such a Republican. They hate us.

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Anonymous Coward]

Cook said he would not allow them. He hates us and screws us over like this. He is such a Republican. They hate us.

Cook is gay. There are no gay Republicans, all gays are staunch Democrats. I saw that on Fox News.

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that was the MacBook. Neither Air nor Pro.

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you never heard of a pink elephant?

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Anonymous Coward]

So you can hook up to an external monitor OR charge your Iphone OR make a powerpoint presentation! In 2016, it will be even lighter when they reduce the number of letters in the alphabet for the keyboard.

Gee, ever think that the hardware engineers just might have thought of the average number of times a user has had to do any ONE of those things in the last month, let alone all three at the same time?

Not sure why I find people desperately trying to charge their phones off a laptop during the day as lazy and unorganized, but I do. Charge your phone overnight like the rest of us, and consume battery during the day. If your battery can't even last a day, then turn your phone off. You'll learn very quickly how much you're willing to spend on a replacement battery and stop the bullshit excuses.

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Cederic]

Wait? You're saying that Cook's only pretending to be gay to increase Apple's appeal to a specific market segment? That's dedication, that is.

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Cederic]

What the fuck? People should spend money buying a new phone battery instead of using the simple, obvious and convenient option of charging it from their laptop?

Forgive us all for being sensible.

Re:And one single USB-C port

[rjstanford]

So you can hook up to an external monitor OR charge your Iphone OR make a powerpoint presentation! In 2016, it will be even lighter when they reduce the number of letters in the alphabet for the keyboard.

Or they can just introduce a slipstream charger adapter so that you can plug the power cord and the monitor cord into the same thing, leave that on your desk, and only connect one cable when you get home. And once monitors start supporting USB-C natively, they'll just do the same.

Just as with dropping PS/2, floppy drives, and optical drives, someone always has to go first.

Keep in mind that the target audience for the Macbook is far less likely to use an external monitor, or even to plug it in at all during the day (made possible by using that port space for more battery).

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Parker Lewis]

But they said that after analysis of customer data, they've found most of users don't need all the letter in keyboard :P

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Coren22]

Especially on the iPhone with its non replaceable battery. :)

Re:And one single USB-C port

[Em Adespoton]

Who on earth modded this insightful???
We're talking about the 2015 13" MacBook Pro here (I've got one, 3.1GHz model). It's FAST. And it comes with a plethora of ports, including two lightning ports, HDMI port, two USB3 ports, a combo audio jack (mic/headphone), magsafe charger, etc.

This is reactionary vitriol (or attempted humor) to the entry-level MacBook that hasn't even been released yet. Of course, it will also likely have the improved PCIe throughput, but it's not what is under discussion.

noatime,nodiratime

[MrKaos]

:wq

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, enjoying speeds that the linux SSD folks have been having for the last year.

Apple just playing on basic consumer wisdom (being 1st is being best! Go USA!):

"It's 2x better than the last model"

BTW, every SSD laptop will likely have better speed than the MBP in 6 months. Apple's got there 1st since it pays to the manufacturers (e.g. Samsung and intel) for the latest stuff... first and nothing more.

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[Gr8Apes]

I'm still waiting for the next laptop to even meet 2 years ago Apple's model. Hint: 750Mbs continuous speed is the limit of SATA-III. Show me a standard SSD that hits that. Hint, the brand new relatively well thought of top brand I just bought only comes near that number, and not on continuous mixed R/W operation, even in a 2 drive RAID0. Last year's MBP handily beats it in disk I/O performance. Maybe if I get 4 in RAID0 I'll be equal. Unless, of course, you're talking about those PCIe drives (they're a whole different class of SSD, and priced appropriately.)

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[MrKaos]

I'm still waiting for the next laptop to even meet 2 years ago Apple's model.

Well, I'm a linux guy too, but to be fair to the windows folk HFS+ only achieves that performance by using a 16kb block size, not by having a performance filesystem and thus was very wasteful with disk space - especially when you consider how many small files exist on an fs.

No the disk performance crown still resides with Linux users that have access to enterprise grade filesystems like murderFS, ahem I mean reiserfs, xfs and other performance kings of that ilk.

I'm sure that there are macOS users out there who know how to retrofit such a filesystem into their BSD kernels, but that is hardly a stock MAC, it's BSD functionality. Even then I'm not sure if BSD supports configurable IO and CPU schedulers or a pre-emptable kernel - not that 99% of mac users would even understand why that is important.

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[tlhIngan]

I'm still waiting for the next laptop to even meet 2 years ago Apple's model. Hint: 750Mbs continuous speed is the limit of SATA-III. Show me a standard SSD that hits that. Hint, the brand new relatively well thought of top brand I just bought only comes near that number, and not on continuous mixed R/W operation, even in a 2 drive RAID0. Last year's MBP handily beats it in disk I/O performance. Maybe if I get 4 in RAID0 I'll be equal. Unless, of course, you're talking about those PCIe drives (they're a whole different class of SSD, and priced appropriately.)

Actually, SATA3 is 6Gbps, which could be 750MB/sec full tilt, but after protocol and PHY stuff, 540MB/sec is the practical limit. Which all SSDs pretty much hit these days - both reading and writing. It's not that it's a magic limit, it's what the practical limit is for SATA3.

It's why Apple went PCIe for their SSDs because SATA is a bottleneck, and SATA3 only came out a couple of years BEFORE we maxed it out.

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[Gr8Apes]

Well, I'm not sure the disk performance crown resides with Linux anymore, unless you're running full bore PCIe X4 at a minimum, however you manage to get there, on a single drive. I'm 100% positive that Linux takes the crown in other configurations, but that won't be on a laptop you can quickly take with you, unless I missed a product announcement recently.

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[Gr8Apes]

They theoretically hit it, I can tell you real world speeds are significantly lower, even for heavy I/O tasks. The Samsung 840s run about 120 MB/s, the 850s are supposed to better than double that, and in RAID0, I should hit a consistent 400MB/s minimum. As soon as I have the time, I'll plug them in and see.

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[goarilla]

Well, I'm a linux guy too, but to be fair to the windows folk HFS+ only achieves that performance by using a 16kb block size, not by having a performance filesystem and thus was very wasteful with disk space - especially when you consider how many small files exist on an fs.

What benchmark made you conclude that HFS+ is faster than NTFS when using big block sizes ?

No the disk performance crown still resides with Linux users that have access to enterprise grade filesystems like murderFS, ahem I mean reiserfs, xfs and other performance kings of that ilk.

Does anybody still use reiserfs and what makes it "enterprise grade" ?

I'm sure that there are macOS users out there who know how to retrofit such a filesystem into their BSD kernels, but that is hardly a stock MAC, it's BSD functionality. Even then I'm not sure if BSD supports configurable IO and CPU schedulers or a pre-emptable kernel - not that 99% of mac users would even understand why that is important.

Mac OS X still depends on old mac system 6/7 filesystem functionality like resource forks, these are not that easy to "retrofit" in ufs/zfs.
A lot of the IO schedulers are implemented mainly to have some IO fairness because mechanical hard drives are very easy to saturate.
These aren't that useful anymore when you can push 500.000 IOPS to a set of SSD's. And don't diss the FreeBSD storage subsystem: ufs allows for consistent backups without having to use volume management and creating a snapshot beforehand (LVM2+ext4).

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[MrKaos]

Nah, I neglected to consider the on board controller quality of laptops - Apple have usually been pretty good in that regard - filesystems though - blech. It might be interesting to do a comparison with linux on a T series lenovo - which is a similar build quality an a mac but in reality mine was an observation about filesystem performance over hardware.

Even more interesting would be a comparison of similar macs with one hosting linux, but even that would just be limited by how well linux supports the apple controller under linux.

I have done extensive testing of filesystem throughput though, however those have been on higher end kit than laptops.

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[MrKaos]

What benchmark made you conclude that HFS+ is faster than NTFS when using big block sizes ?

None, NTFS is a crap filesystem. I was just pointing out the comparison there is wasteful vs sluggish.

Does anybody still use reiserfs and what makes it "enterprise grade" ?

It's the fastest filesystem I've tested vs ext(s), xfs, and a few others. I had to do a lot of throughput testing on different filesystems so I wrote a battery of tests that helped me figure it out years ago.

Windozes server 2012 uses some of the principles from reiserfs, I don't know if that counts and I can't speak to who users reiserfs commercially but I use it whenever I need something fast and reliable.

The guy may be a killer but he knows how to write a filesystem and I doubt the US military has given up on their investment in it.

Mac OS X still depends on old mac system 6/7 filesystem functionality like resource forks, these are not that easy to "retrofit" in ufs/zfs.

Interesting - I didn't know that - but still sucks for mac users.

A lot of the IO schedulers are implemented mainly to have some IO fairness because mechanical hard drives are very easy to saturate.

and also to make it look like all the processes running behave smoothly - if you have a dedicated application though your still s.o.o.l on a mac

These aren't that useful anymore when you can push 500.000 IOPS to a set of SSD's. And don't diss the FreeBSD storage subsystem: ufs allows for consistent backups without having to use volume management and creating a snapshot beforehand (LVM2+ext4).

Now way would I dis FreeBSD - I'm might be a linux guy but I still think BSD is a solid offering - and good on them for having apple use their work - they deserve more credit. Though ext4 suffers its own issues if you need to have big directory structures.

I'll stick with my guns here though, any limitations on linux disk performance is a function of how well the controller drivers implement the hardware functionality. Configurable I/O, CPU scheduling, software and hardware raid coupled with filesystem choice make Linux reign supreme in terms of achievable I/O performance.

Re:noatime,nodiratime

[Gr8Apes]

Hands down, Apple's HFS system should be replaced with something better, one of the more modern FS's out of Linux/BSD land would be perfect. However, I should mention you can plug other fs's into OSX today, and I've been considering ZFS for a while now, just haven't had the time to plug it in and test it.

Why would you care?

[Sycraft-fu]

It went from "faster than matters" to "even faster than matters". All SATA drives are fast enough, you don't notice the difference between normal ones and ultra fast ones.. I have a Samsung XP941 (the "proprietary" drive that you can easily buy) and a regular 840 Pro in my desktop. You can benchmark the difference easily, but you don't notice it, at all, in day to day operation.

Re:Why would you care?

[swb]

I hope it eventually becomes "fast enough to settle on one standard". It's getting to the point where if the software support was there we could just settle on a standard like USB3.1 gen 2 (the 10 Gbit one) for internal disks and external peripherals with some kind of PCIe slotted flash solution for people who wanted stupid fast speed that only shows on benchmarks.

Maybe by the next major revision they will figure out how to come up with a way to unify interface standards. The bus speed increases are making it increasingly about who has the best connector and longest usable cable lengths, not who is 1-2 GBits/sec faster. What's crazy is that a SSD on USB3.1 is probably capable of the kind of disk I/O only the biggest 8 gig fiber channel SANs with spinning disk could deliver just five years ago.

Re:Why would you care?

[Loopy]

I have a Samsung XP941 (the "proprietary" drive that you can easily buy) and a regular 840 Pro in my desktop. You can benchmark the difference easily, but I don't notice it, at all, in day to day operation, in my particular use-cases; yours might noticeably benefit from it depending on what you're doing with the system.

Fixed that for ya.

Re:Why would you care?

[Anonymous Coward]

If by SATA you mean solid state, you're right.

"Flash Module" == "SSD"

[MobyDisk]

Since when did we start calling SSDs Flash Modules or Flash cards? (The article uses both). Can I now call platter hard drives magnetic modules?

Re:"Flash Module" == "SSD"

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did we start calling SSDs Flash Modules or Flash cards?

When we realised there weren't any disks in them. Admittedly, this took a while.

Re:"Flash Module" == "SSD"

[Burdell]

Since when did we start calling flash chips SSDs? I remember when SSDs were a bunch of RAM chips behind a disk target chipset, so you got a really small (but really honking fast!) disk for your database logs, mail queues, etc.

Re:"Flash Module" == "SSD"

[MobyDisk]

We started calling them SSDs when they presented themselves as hard drives. While these connect through the PCI bus, the BIOS sees them as hard drives.

You can upgrade your 2014 MBP

[Chaset]

According to this: http://blog.macsales.com/25878... OWC put a 4x PCIE SSD from a mac pro into a 2014 MBP and got the extra performance gain. i.e. the 2014 MBP has 4x PCIE wired to the connector, but by default ships with a 2x PCIE SSD. They expect to ship SSD upgrades for MBP "soon", so you're not out of luck if you have the previous model.

Raid by any other name.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, it's raid by any other name. Apple is finally getting something right in the storage arena.

Why the hell did it take so long???

Re:"Flash Module" != "SSD"

[Neo-Rio-101]

There's a bit of confusion, but essentially there is a big difference to flash memory that is presented as a replacement hard disk and talks over SATA, and a flash card that talks to the computer over PCIe through a motherboard PCIe slot.

Essentially, PCIe is a darn sight faster than SATA, so when you hook up a flash drive to it, it goes at ludicrous speeds.

Four times the speed not twice.

[YouGotTobeKidding]

"Twice the lanes, twice the speed"...man someone doesnt understand the PCIe standard or how to do simple math. Its actually twice the lanes, FOUR* times the (theoretical) speed. 2x500MB/s vs 4x985MB/s * rounded up

Re:Four times the speed not twice.

[cdrudge]

Isn't it kinda arguing semantics? Can't you argue that the speed has doubled (500 -> 985MB/s), as well as the number of lanes, but your bandwidth has quadrupled.

Re:Four times the speed not twice.

[Chrontius]

Strictly speaking, Apple shipped 4-lane PCIe2 SSDs in the Mac Pro. The Macbooks' motherboards are wired for it, in the name of future proofing perhaps, so the switch to 3x4 is only a single doubling over the state of the art, even if most people didn't realize what the state of the art was.

OWC provides proof!

Neo Luddite

[SuperKendall]

They've been dead in a lot of our worlds for years.

I guess you must be the modern equivalent to the Amish, shunning useful technology because it is the work of something you designate arbitrarily to be the Devil.

How sad for you and your kind, though I look forward to buying whatever the equivalent is of fine wooden furniture from your group of castaways at some point in the future.

Re:Neo Luddite

[zieroh]

How sad for you and your kind, though I look forward to buying whatever the equivalent is of fine wooden furniture from your group of castaways at some point in the future.

Artisanal compilers, no doubt.

2x PCIe 2 vs. 4x PCIe 3

[Mal-2]

The raw bandwidth available for transfers isn't doubled, it's quadrupled. PCIe 3.0 is twice as fast as PCIe 2.0, channel for channel, so the bandwidth would have doubled even if they had not added two more channels. They doubled it in two different ways at the same time.

That said, the old flash was probably not being that badly constricted by the older standard, and the current generation is only capable of twice the throughput. However, adding even more bandwidth than that is a nice bit of future-proofing and quite welcome.

Re:2x PCIe 2 vs. 4x PCIe 3

[fgouget]

They say the SSD is PCIe 3.0 but is the slot it's plugged into PCIe 3.0 or still PCIe 2.0? Too little is known to be sure that this combination actually doubled the bandwidth per lane, though it's certainly plausible.

Re:"Flash Module" != "SSD"

[default luser]

Essentially, PCIe is a darn sight faster than SATA, so when you hook up a flash drive to it, it goes at ludicrous speeds.

I see you've been reading the press release.

Do you believe ever piece of BS you read in PR? There's a buttload of crap where that one came from. It's the salesman's job to sell you fancy NEW MOAR BETTER CRAP, so I guess if it's working, he's gonna keep his job :D

Re:"Flash Module" != "SSD"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not referring to the drive in the article, but if you think it's all marketing bull, measure it yourself. In NVMe's case, getting rid of the SATA and SAS translation layer has cut out over 60% of the CPU overhead, and cutting out the max 6Gbps or 12Gbps speed means the drives can go insanely fast. That's a lot of real change by using NVMe. Now, I am one of those marketing guys who work for one of these companies, but I can tell you it's not all BS.

Re:"Flash Module" != "SSD"

[Xygon]

Meant to be logged on as I posted this, not an anonymous coward. That was me who said that...

Not Convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm keeping by late issue 2009 MBP 10.6.8 and telling Mrs Cook and Mrs Ivy to KISS MY ASS and EAT GAY SHIT.

Ha ha

It is moving to one standard internal

[Sycraft-fu]

These M.2 drivers are PCIe. It is a different slot form factor, but it is just PCIe.

USB would not be desirable for internal system use, too much overhead. It is well designed for the purpose it has but you wouldn't want it for everything.

There are reasons to want multiple transports, different ones are good at different things.

Re:It is moving to one standard internal

[swb]

USB would not be desirable for internal system use, too much overhead. It is well designed for the purpose it has but you wouldn't want it for everything.

But what is "too much overhead" when the transport link gets fast enough? If USB4 ends up with 20 GBit/sec, overhead for anything but SAN shelf backplanes really won't matter.

I actually think I *would* want it for everything. One connector for disks and other peripherals, usable internally and externally. The way they package SSDs now you wouldn't even need to bother with an enclosure.

I think the real problem USB specifically has is a marginal performance history with USB2 devices (high CPU usage, low throughput) and Microsoft's steadfast refusal to allow Windows installs to USB devices, even USB3 (which makes no sense, really, when I can benchmark an ordinary PNY USB3 stick @ 110 MByte/sec read and 60 MByte/sec write).

If Windows could boot off USB3, eSATA would be largely forgotten as faster but with clunky, limited cabling and even SATA as a connector internal standard might get relegated to "enthusiast" boards where some minor performance boost was seen as valuable. M.SATA adoption would end up only in places where extreme miniaturization matters or the same enthusiast crowds.

I know it sounds crazy, but it sure seems a lot less crazy with USB3.1 supposed to hit 10 Gbits.

Re:It is moving to one standard internal

[Sycraft-fu]

Overhead on the CPU and in terms of interconnect latency. Because USB is higher level, it incurs a decent amount of load on the CPU. No big deal for basic use, but you wouldn't want it for your main drive or the like. Also USB's latency isn't great, on the order of 100 microseconds or so. Fine for many uses, but high by SSD reckoning and not something you want time critical system components on. PCIe latency is so low you tend to measure it in cycles, not in time.

Also 20Gbit/sec doesn't cut it for some of the internal shit. Graphics and compute hang on 16x slots those are 16GByte/sec in the 3.0 spec (half that in 2.0) per direction (it is completely full duplex). That's 128gbits/sec. For all that it is still extremely performance limiting if you regularly have to use it to access system RAM.

Really interfaces usually are designed for purpose, and not everything is compatible. When you are trying to balance cost, speed, complexity of implementation, complexity of signaling, distance, etc, etc something has to give. There's reason to have PCIe for internal connections, USB for devices, and Ethernet for network, and not try to cram all that in to one bus that is not well suited to them.

Already exists in PC systems.

[Kelxin]

Most of ASRocks high end motherboards including the X99's and Z97's have the 4x PCIe msata card already. I'm running one of these boards with a Samsung XP941 and getting the same speeds as the new MacBooks. http://www.asrock.com/mb/intel... plus http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-... and you're done. 1300+ mb/s SSD speeds on a desktop.

Re:Already exists in PC systems.

[goarilla]

You need the 512 GB model to reach speeds above 1080 MB/s according to the specs.

Re:Already exists in PC systems.

[rjstanford]

Having a very lightweight laptop get the same performance as a high end desktop is still newsworthy, isn't it?

Stojnic

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully it doesn't have ar coating malfunction like the previous models. Check the stain gate website http://www.staingate.org and the damaged ar coating retina group.

Apple Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

You can say whatever you want but Apple is taking the front runner role again with these new PCi-Express based SSD interfaces.
Which other Laptop has +1000 MB/s sequential writes on its systemdisk ?
Hell this bests high-end STEC Zeusram and Toshiba SAS SSD's.

"likely to soon wind up in high-end PCs"

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it already in high-end PCs? Like the 2015 MBP?

Re:"Flash Module" != "SSD"

[Coren22]

No, it was me! /sarcasm

Shouldn't the title be

[Anonymous Coward]

*Samsung* Doubles MacBook Pro R/W Performance ?

Funny how big a role Samsung...

[chasm22]

seems to play. Just kidding. I'm sure Sir Jon Paul engineered and designed everything, rounded edges and all. It does have rounded edges, right?