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New MacBook Pros Max Out At 16GB RAM Due To Battery Life Concerns (macrumors.com)
The new MacBooks Pros have been improved in nearly every way -- except when it comes to RAM capacity. With faster, more energy efficient Skylake processors, faster SSDs, and better GPUs, one would think the amount of RAM wouldn't be capped off at 16GB. However, that is the case. The reason why the MacBook Pros continue to max out at 16GB RAM is due to battery life concerns, according to marketing chief Phil Schiller. MacRumors reader David emailed Apple to get an explanation: Question from David: "The lack of a 32GB BTO option for the new MBPs raised some eyebrows and caused some concerns (me included). Does ~3GBps bandwidth to the SSD make this a moot issue? I.e. memory paging on a 16GB system is so fast that 32GB is not a significant improvement?" Schiller's answer: "Thank you for the email. It is a good question. To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook design at this time would require a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn't be efficient enough for a notebook. I hope you check out this new generation MacBook Pro, it really is an incredible system."
For the 2016 MacBook Pro, Apple was able to reach "all-day battery life," which equates to 10 hours of wireless web use or iTunes movie playback. That's an hour improvement over the previous generation in the 15-inch machine, and a small step back in the 13-inch machine. While none of Apple's portable machines offer more than 16GB RAM, 32GB of RAM is a high-end custom upgrade option in the 27-inch iMac.
For the 2016 MacBook Pro, Apple was able to reach "all-day battery life," which equates to 10 hours of wireless web use or iTunes movie playback. That's an hour improvement over the previous generation in the 15-inch machine, and a small step back in the 13-inch machine. While none of Apple's portable machines offer more than 16GB RAM, 32GB of RAM is a high-end custom upgrade option in the 27-inch iMac.
Give users the option, 16GB is 2011.... Just like spinning down drives and dimming displays, turn on and off banks of memory or something. I'm passing on this MacBook until they get serious about RAM.
It's OK, 32GB of laptop memory is $160., and 64GB is about $360. Since this is a product targeted at professional users, I'm sure I can open the back and swap out the RAM, if I want to give up a few minutes of battery life for it.
Err.... right?
of Apple ramming their design decisions down our throats.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
"Try it, you'll love it, it's YUGE."
Make it one millimeter thicker. Fucking a.
Now ask me how I think iPhone battery life could be improved...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
using Macs this seems ridiculous. I'm a Windows guy myself. It could be better but to be honest Win 10 on an SSD is fine and I haven't had a virus since I stopped hanging around abondonware sites when snesorama closed.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"I don't know the reason, so I'll just make some daft technical-sounding shit up to placate this one guy."
And this is called "Pro"??
Butt fucker!
That's stupid. 640,000 of RAM? What you need to know is not some unitless number, but a unitfull number.
640 KB of RAM. K, as in 1024, and B for byte. Not k. Not b. Not neither. But both!
Live for yourself! There's no one else worth living for!
apple needs to have real pro hardware and not this have to make it thinner shit.
I just installed 31 terragigs myself
There seem to be numerous demands for more than 16GB, and I wonder if battery life is the real reason. After all, Apple could sell most of their MBP with 16 GB and answer their more demanding users by selling a few 32 GBs - warning them the battery life is likely to suffer a bit. No, it's likely there are some other technical concerns that will be revealed by iFixit sooner or later, that had Apple take that decision.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I would think the Dell XPS line is probably the nearest competitor to these laptops and the 13 inch comes with 4GB or 8GB of RAM while the 15 inch comes with 8GB or 16GB. So, in this case, I don't really think that Apple has done anything too boneheaded. Though, having said that, my 12.5" ThinkPad from 2011 has had 16GB of RAM since the day it arrived. So, Apple doesn't really deserve any praise for 16GB either.
What are people doing that requires so much memory?
Broadwell 84 TDP
Skylake 99 TDP
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
If they had NOT made it 20% thinner they could have fitted a BIGGER battery and THAT would have enabled 32G of RAM.
I have NEVER bought anything because it was 20% thinner, especially IT gear. What I do buy it on is how useful it is, does it do the job(s) I do, does it fit my work flows, is it cost effective..... see, so far no Jonny Ive wank factor "make it thinner" bullshit.
How much of the price is caused by the engineering hurdles to fit it into that shell ?
How many $ for a bloody worthless wank factor bullet point which does NOTHING to make it more useable ????
STOP making the user one of the engineering compromises.
So, anyway, instead of spending my $$ with you I have chosen to open them on installing SSDs into my current hardware, huge performance increase for me, I am able to delay new hardware until you stop trying to sell unicorn shit encrusted "thinny things" to suckers, and maybe I try a Hackintosh in between too.
Because the Macbook Pro specs are inferior to top end models from other manufacturers, we can expect the Apple laptops to be discounted appropriately.
Idiotic answer, users that require/need more than 16GB aren't going to give a shit about giving up a little battery life for it. Now though they will simply give up on MBP as 16GB really is NOT enough in many of the creative industries.
SSD speeds (and it is really access time we are talking here, bandwidth is pretty irrelevant for paging) is somewhere between traditional disks and RAM, but closer to disk than RAM. This means paging will be a bit faster, but still dog-slow. For Swapping, it is not much better either. You cannot fake RAM well, although countless bad engineers have tried and countless unscrupulous marketeers have tried to sell the inadequate results as the next revolution.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
have a higher capacity battery! Don't mention the physical thickness of the system- previous gen already thin enough. Added benefit: better keyboard also possible.
apple needs to have real pro hardware and not this have to make it thinner shit.
Exactly. At the root, his answer is "To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook design at this time would require we make it an angstrom thicker and we'd rather chew off our own testicles than do that so fuck you very much and please keep sending us money."
"Oh no... he found the
Half of the people I've seen with a MacBook Pro are people too proud to admit that a MacBook is more than enough for them. My company won't buy Macs for developers, but will for a manager pushing around Office documents all day. That's hardly atypical. Apple is doing to the MacBook Pro roughly what Microsoft did to Windows 8 where they relied on the input of the people who left telemetry on and noticed THOSE users weren't using the start menu anymore.
Ask most technical users of MacBook Pros (including artistic types) and I bet you'd see a strong preference for a thicker, more durable and easily repaired laptop with higher specs than Apple offers.
I have 31.4159 infrachronoflips of memory in my system.
Bill Gates never said anything remotely like that. And Apple is not implying that you don't need more than 16GB.
I realize though that the nerds who inhabit this particular website are locked in a feedback loop of misinformation and rumor.
Who cares? The development platform requirements have been surpassed for a very long time. Complaining about 16GB is so beyond stupid, it's scary. Most people on this website have such unidimensional skills, it's ridiculous. Why would you monkey people actually think you need a lot of processing power? Get real. You can push all you want against a puzzle with as much force as you have. It's still a puzzle.
I am writing this on an early 2009 17 inch matte screen Macbook Pro. DIY upgrades to a 512 SSD and 8GB RAM cost about $500 total. With a refurbished battery it still gets 8 hours of charge.
What has Apple accomplished in eight years? A smaller screen that has distracting glare and reflection, removal of the best feature (Magsafe), no escape key, and a modest boost in performance.
Oh yes, its also thinner because that is the most important feature in a professional tool.
What is the consumption of 16 GB, 32 GB and so forth? Is it linear growth or something more extreme?
I can't (with half-serious googling) find actual wattage figures for LPDDR3 RAM,
I'd wager for some reason 32 GB is more than double 16 GB in power consumption, but not like 10x or anything, and I have a hard time believing the consumption would enough to have more than 15 minutes of battery impact over the device's useful battery life.
I'd also expect it be actually offset demands for disk I/O through caching and reduced paging, which would reduce its negative impact, although I think the use PCI-E SSDs really would decrease the user perception of paging delays for all but the most extreme use cases.
Do we need to have an article to complain about every single decision made on the new line of MBPs? I propose next apple product we just have 2 articles "The new is out and i hate it for N reasons" and "The new is out and its the greatest thing ever because N reasons"
Then we'll just pile all "screw you apple for forcing this product i by no means am obligated to purchase down our throats", "Hey you just posting here to hate on apple what if X made it instead?!" and of course "Shutup fanboi"(s) in one places
Nice theory, but I doubt that any engineers or management at Apple have testicles -- they probably all voluntarily had them removed (or, perhaps, bitten off by their boyfriends).
I have a 17" Matte Macbook Pro also, and a late 2013 15" MacBook Pro with an anti-glare screen - it's not quite as good as the matte but very close, in practical use almost never notice glare on the 15". It's not like matte meant no-glare either, just greatly reduced as with anti-glare coatings...
I would have loved to see the 17" form factor revived, who knows perhaps in some future iteration we'll see it again. At least the actual screen resolution of the 15" (old and new) is identical to the 17", I just keep the scaling stuff off and have a bit smaller text sizes.
Also all of the hate over no ESC is totally incorrect. You can get to the traditional FN row (including ESC) at any time just by pressing the FN key in the corner. But the reality is you'd pretty much never need to do that because any key where ESC could be used will leave ESC in the TouchBar.
It is sad to see Magsafe go though, that I will miss. I like the flexibility of being able to charge from any port but I feel like the safety and usability of Magsafe was worth more than the flexibility gained. A great idea for a USB-C charging cable that had a magnetic breakaway connector in the middle...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have a MBP Retina 15" from 2013. Even on a good day, I never get more than 3 or 4 hours on it.
Huh?! Since when were you forced to buy Apple products?
Well if you buy one of the new MacBooks you'll find that now there is literally no escape so it's best to get out now while you still can.
As sort of a curiosity, I want to ask you all, what do you need with more than 16GB? Entertain me and others, cite examples of things you do that need more than 16GB memory.
I'm asking as a person who has 16GB in their desktop machine and.. uh.. I've never seen it all get used..ever. I think I'm rather demanding of my PC too, as I run PC games of all manner, Second Life viewer, compilers, Visual Studio, etc. Not a lot of photo processing, but I do do that too, with GIMP, fussing with 6000x4000 jpg's from my DSLR.
It's a serious question though I'd love to see some interesting answers to. What do you need with more than 16GB? Lastly, don't put the obvious one: Virtual Machines. I use those too and I agree it's one case for more than 16GB. But OTHER than Virtual Machines...
Because 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
The base model has a lower power CPU/GPU, no touch bar, and a 5kwh larger battery. If the battery is really the limit, then allow the 32GB option only on the base model. Hard to imagine the 32GB upgrade taking more than 5kwh (of 50).
For mobile work I use an early 2011 17" with matte screen. It's now 1TB SSD + 1TB SSHD (removed the optical drive) and 16GB RAM, and I do end up paging rather often. I do marketing work for a dot-com and these days, and in the modern world that involves big data hosted on Amazon, extensive analytics, lots of R programs to cook the data, video production, lots of photoshop work, and many, many browser windows open at the same time.
I use gfxSwitcher to try to exercise some control over the graphics system and SMCFanControl to keep the fans running at 6k RPM because I know this machine's days are numbered due to the infamous AMD GPU mainboard heat issue (all of the 2011 MBPs with integrated AMD chips will eventually die due to a failure of the soldering on the GPU resulting from heat).
I was actually hoping it would die last year because Apple was replacing mainboards on these machines for free (official policy) until the end of February this year due to the problem—but they were just NOS mainboards, no actual fix for the long term issue, so while they might have extended the life, they didn't solve the problem definitively. None of these will be running in another 10 years, zero of them.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do when this machine goes up in smoke. Most of the features I care about are gone:
- More RAM? Nope.
- Integrated ethernet port for gigabit? Nope.
- Ability to install extra storage? Nope.
- 17" display? Nope.
It looks like when this machine goes south, I'll be back to Wintel hardware (running Linux) for my portable computing.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It would seem that users are confusing a Mac with a gaming laptop. It is not. It has now degenerated to be a laptop for the masses - for the common denominator. Only gaming laptops have 32G or 64G RAM. Only they have 2x2T SSD drives, with additional PCIe drives possible. Not to forget dual GPUs. Yes, 17" screens too. Macs are not sexy; they're for ordinary people. Do you like ordinary?
"16MB is enough RAM for everybody."
Or was that 640K??
The new MacBooks Pros have been improved in nearly every way
Unless you buy the smaller, cheaper Macbook Pro, (that probably should have been called an "Air Plus" or something), the new Pros have no dedicated function keys. (People are already posting instructions on how to configure a physical Escape key). But you DO get a whiz-bang OLED strip that gives you, (among other things), stuff like emojis and more streamlined online payments. Also, you can't charge an iPhone with the new MacBook Pro, unless you buy a pricey adapter; and then you'll have yet another piece of hardware cruft to be broken, lost, or forgotten. How is this "improved in nearly every way"? For that matter, how does it qualify as "Pro"?
The new MacBook DOES have a stereo headphone jack though. I guess their 'courage' failed them this time. Apple should get rid of their courage altogether - their products would be the better for it. I've never liked Apple, but mostly I at least respected them. With their latest product decisions, even that respect is gone.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
If you want more than 16 GB on a laptop you're doing it wrong. When I have actual number crunching to do, 64 GB (as much as I've ever seen on a laptop) isn't going to cut it. Plus, laptops are compromised for heat dissipation. I just by a mac laptop every 10 years and put some money in a server that does any actual hard work. The >16 =32 GB crowd is a pretty thin market.
I was wondering how anyone could fit 640 kilometers of ram in their computer.
You saved the day again Captain Pedantic!
I used to play video games and be a benchmark nerd, I know hardware fairly well and I always figured more than 16GB was a waste of money.
Ever since I STOPPED playing games and did a little graphics work or fired up some VMs I realised you really can require a lot of memory in a system.
I've now got 24GB in my machine, despite an upper mid range 2013 CPU, regular business style desktop model, nothing but onboard, but I do exceed 16GB fairly regularly.
If you want to future proof a machine for developers or graphics people (previously Apples bread and butter!? years ago) then you need to be able to go to 32GB
I must admit I figure exceeding 32GB would be rare but I'm sure some video editing guys could / would need it.
They really are just making devices for the average consumer to feel cool now.
If they kept it 3mm thicker they could have put in a battery that would have allowed 64gb ram, socketed ram and socketed M.2 SSD's AND give you 12 hours of battery life.
All for the sake of the biggest stupid in computing.
Thinner and lighter.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They should have called it the MacBook Plus or something, then made an actual Pro machine because this thing as it currently exists is an overpriced joke. If it's not lack of standard ports and SD slot, it's lack of RAM and battery life all traded for "thinness" that nobody cares about now that most laptops are thin enough already.
The whole thing is a really stupid trade-off.
16GB can be downright painful. 8GB taken up by a work-essential VM, and running lots of memory-intensive programs. Even with the fancy compressed memory algorithms that the system runs, it easily max out physical memory usage, and the system slows to a crawl when it fills up. I'm really disappointed that the 32GB option still isn't available. Oh well. Memory "witch hunts" looking for things that I can close to free up a bit more ram so that my computer stays usable is productive, right?
Just got a last 6s, you know, the one with that legacy port, the headphone jack.
I guess I have to watch the laptops too, as my 2011 Air still works, but I like the magport charger, the USB 1 ports, and the thunderbolt port for TV, and have....zero....dongles.
I get staying up with the times, or even pushing them a bit, but why make the new product WORSE ?
For many of the Pro user crowd, a drop in battery life due to enabling of pro-level resource accomodations is something that wouldn't cause anyone to bat an eye. Some of us could really use the option of 32G of RAM; I would find a drop in battery life to be a totally acceptible tradeoff for that build option. Alas, they continue to not offer it. Perhaps they've done research showing they wouldn't sell enough to justify adding that option?
Ive's ongoing mania for thinness led to this. There's no room for more battery because he wanted to shave 3 millimeters off the thickness of the laptop. If they added a whole *centimeter* to the case depth, there'd be enough battery for days. Ives is crippling all the devices, and no one can tell him to stop-certainly not the users. Who asked for thinness? Like robot cars and connectivity for my toaster, I don't recall asking for this.
Cook is Apple's Balmer.
Just wait. At the next product launch he'll start running around the stage hooting and hollering while chanting "developers, developers, developers", I mean "hipsters, hipsters, hipsters."
. "Does ~3GBps bandwidth to the SSD make this a moot issue? I.e. memory paging on a 16GB system is so fast that 32GB is not a significant improvement?"
No.
The fastest SSD is still 4 times slower than LPDDR3. Adding the overhead of page faulting and accessing the page file via the filesystem and it is probably an order of magnitude slower than RAM.
And high number of random accesses will knacker the SSD wear levellimg in no time.
Omg. You are stupid. Period. I have a iPhone. I use it as a phone and camera; some apps and ebooks. That's it. I don't play with it like a child. I have a MacBook. I use it for my personal laptop - email, web browsing, and whyni purchased it: video editing. I think it has the lowest learning curve editor. I'm not a paid editor, it is not my profession, I don't have time to once again 'play' with it.
My profession is a software developer. Mainly backend projects. Apis, data analysis, etc. some front end projects like angular and ther frameworks. Java and .net. Some c++ for time intensive applications for financials.
I walk in to your office with my iPhone. You doubt me? I can say confidently I get paid more than you, have gone to a better school, and work with much better people than you. Judging by your phone assessment comment.
You are yourself look bitter, arrogant, and just small minded with no real experience working with and managing real highly trained professionals.
Can I assume if I wear a nice watch, you would judge me as well? Maybe you have an inferiority complex?
the balance of the force
Yes, you are. Me too. Let's meet at the park public bathroom to do his dads accounting.
The next version has an external battery connected via dong and is super long and thin. thin.
Do you think this is clever? 6 other very stupid people also wrote this. But you are the only one who added quotes - to misquote. You win the prize of biggest dumbass on slashdot. Never post this again, please.
I'm using ALL of the functional keys all the time. In particular, F1 is a shortcut to bring up iTerm which I'm using in ALL contexts.
What part of "FN key brings up traditional FN row" did you not understand? Why not just continue to use F1 as you have been, which is available ALL OF THE TIME when you simply press the FN key.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So you're saying that if I run Linux, or Solaris, NetBSD or (even) Windows in a VM on one of the new Macintosh laptops, it will magically know that I am running the vi editor inside the Xterm and give me an ESC key on the glass touchstrip?
It wouldn't "magically" do anything except show the normal TouchBar (including ESC) for any app that does not define a custom TouchBar. Why on earth would you expect it to do anything else? What exactly would it do besides show ESC + F1-F12?????
???!?!?!
Oh, that's right. 16M memory limitation. I probably won't run very many VMs.
Ever hear of this thing called swap....
Although I agree with you really that 16GB is a bit light, I would have personally liked 32GB.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How do you type? I don't even touch type but I can easily hit FN and ESC today without looking, they are at the corners after all - and when I'm typing I'm looking at the screen, not at the keys.
I think it si mind-boggling that people who type without looking are raising the issue that you may need to dupe without looking!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Good question about taking the full 90w power for the Pro but even if not i'm sure it will be updated soon - exactly what I was thinking of. I knew something that made so much sense had to exist!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually that one specifically says in the specs rated at up to 60 watts, so I'll have to wait for an update as noted. Thanks again for showing me someone at least bothered to make one!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't even touch type
Well I'm glad you took yourself out of the example. Wait but you look at the screen while typing but don't touch type? What do you have some special tongue activated head shakey control that people who don't have finger mobility use to interact with computer? Or are you just magic in that you know where your body is at all times in free space and that you can make movements in the correct direction without any kind of external feedback that the other 7bn people on this planet rely on? (hint that external feedback being touch, and the key part of touch typing when you don't have something like visual feedback).
I'm glad this is a non issue for you, so please take yourself out of the discussion as the rest of the world finds such stupid interfaces are real problem, regardless of how much Apple claims you can write your university thesis on an iPad by paying people to do it and saying "See! in the advertisements. "
Seriously, I don't think ANY laptop should be called PRO if it only can handle 32gb of RAM. Are the non-pro limited to 16gb?
And the reason why? Seriously....
. Wait but you look at the screen while typing but don't touch type?
Yes, by that I mean I have my own resting position for fingers that is not the home row, that cab change deeding on task. I type where the keys are, and I do that without feeling them first, I just tap. All touch typist do the same thing.
Or are you just magic in that you know where your body is at all times in free space
That's not magic at all it's how touch typing actually works.
Yes your body does subconsciously know where your hands are.
without any kind of external feedback that the other 7bn people on this planet rely on? (
I am doing what ALL of the 7 billion people do, including you.
I'm glad this is a non issue for you
It is for you do; sad you cannot realizing it and are so angry that you don't even understand dhow your own body works.
I'll not respond again as you cannot be helped further. But seriously think as you are typing what you are really doing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley