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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.
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Make it one millimeter thicker. Fucking a.
Now ask me how I think iPhone battery life could be improved...
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And this is called "Pro"??
apple needs to have real pro hardware and not this have to make it thinner shit.
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.
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Broadwell 84 TDP
Skylake 99 TDP
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Because the Macbook Pro specs are inferior to top end models from other manufacturers, we can expect the Apple laptops to be discounted appropriately.
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.
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
> I would think the Dell XPS line is probably the nearest competitor to these laptops
Ok...
> while the 15 inch comes with 8GB or 16GB.
Here's one with 32 gigs of RAM:
http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop...
> What are people doing that requires so much memory?
1- Multitasking
2- Running their own code that requires a lot of memory
3- VMs
4- Any or all of the above
Bonus: Ramdisking!
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 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.
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
On some level... who cares? I can plug in rhe xps if it runs low. I cant add ram to the mac.
Dell precision laptops can run xeons with 64gb ecc if i want. Its nice to have choice so you can get what you need and make your own decisions about weight / battery vs perfomance. Dell has xps and precision so you can get what ylu need.
Apple just has something like xps... and its less capable then the xps. Its a joke next to the precision.
And its not like apple even had to make it thinner. They could have added ram and battery and made it a touch thicker.
> What are people doing that requires so much memory?
MS Paint
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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.
Firefox.
Editing very high resolution (RAW) images in photoshop.
Editing/Rendering 4k video.
And keep in mind that it is often not just one program consuming it all. There is often a workflow requiring several programs to be open even if they are not running simultaneously all the time.
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.
Nope I'm not. I've consistently said that 2012 MBP I have (with gigabit and a DVDRW) was perfectly fine as a form factor.
In 2016... the same form factor would be awesome, keep the ethernet port, keep the magsave, use all the extra space for more battery... and an extra SSD bay, upgradeable ram sockets.
My 2015 macbook pro... its thinner and faster and has better battery than my 2012 one. But I'd much rather it have been thicker with even MORE battery, upgradeable ram, and an ethernet port.
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.
For fuck sake. Do NOT tell me what I should or should not be doing with my fucking laptop.