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Apple To Offer 32GB of Desktop RAM, Kaby Lake In Top-End 2017 MacBook Pro, Says Analyst (appleinsider.com)
AppleInsider has obtained a note to investors from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that says Apple's 2017 laptop line will focus on internal component updates, including the platform-wide adoption of Intel's Kaby Lake architecture. What's more is that Apple is expected to manufacture a 15-inch MacBook Pro with up to 32GB of RAM in the fourth quarter of 2017. AppleInsider reports: Apple took flak in releasing its latest MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models with a hard memory cap of 16GB, an minimal allotment viewed as a negative for imaging and video professionals. Responding to customer criticism, Apple said the move was made in a bid to maximize battery life. Essentially, the Intel Skylake CPUs used in Apple's MacBook Pro only support up to 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM at 2133MHz. Though Intel does make processors capable of addressing more than 16GB of memory, those particular chipsets rely on less efficient DDR4 RAM and are usually deployed in desktops with access to dedicated mains power. In order to achieve high memory allotments and keep unplugged battery life performance on par with existing MacBook Pro models, Apple will need to move to an emerging memory technology like LPDDR4 or DDR4L. Such hardware is on track for release later this year. As for the 12-inch MacBook, Kuo believes next-generation versions of the thin-and-light will enter mass production in the second quarter with the same basic design aesthetic introduced in 2015. New for 2017 is a 16GB memory option that will make an appearance thanks to Intel's new processor class.
That need more than 16 GB of RAM.
they could have chosen the 32 gb option and used a bigger battery, but it "has to be thin" so they went with the lpddr3.
We can get a macbook that has a computer inside? How much is that going to cost? 5k?
it boggles the mind that they use battery life as the reason for not making the option available initially, for people that have a legitimate need for more than 16GB of ram battery life is a secondary factor, especially when the lack of that memory will significantly impact your productivity and considering their target market of video and photographic professionals who legitimately have needs for that memory it really was a strange move.
I am a Steve Jobs era apple Fanboi.
Apple has lost that mojo.
This is a press release saying they will put memory in their "PRO" computer in 10-11 months.
Where is the desktop?
What happened to OpenCL pushing the limits?
What happened to COCOA making everything easier?
What happened to the pro level apps I searched for "PRO video editing osx" and Final Cut was the 7th hit on website.
How far Apple has fallen and they can't get up...
Give me the ability to install commodity RAM and storage after I buy the device.
Without that ability, I will be looking elsewhere. If this means leaving the macOS ecosystem or going with a "hackintosh," so be it.
Golden showers reference is inappropriate for the Slashdot!
are idiots that need to die so the 32 GB news is fake news. They want us to die for wanting more RAM. Wanting me to die means that I am happy with my April 2010 MacBook with 16 GB or RAM since I don't want to die. I would rather suffer for seven years with only 16 GB of RAM rather than die.
They are the company of death.
To squeeze in the extra RAM, they might decide they need to remove the few ports which were left. #courage
#DeleteChrome
This is a good step, but there's a greater fallacy at work at Apple here: The triumph of marketing demands over technical needs of the user.
Apple is great...they are better than Microsoft at making both hardware and software (especially software). Apple's OS is basically Unix with a candy coated shell and it is the best for basically anything except gaming (I know broad statement...I'm sure there are other applications that are better on Windoze but I'm speaking broadly...chill).
Apple's mistake, and it's a big one, is letting advertising phrases like "Our thinnest Macbook Pro yet!" override user centered design.
Same goes for their port nonsense...removing the headphone jack was a huge mistake, it's a *data port* that is backwards compatible with 100 year old tech. They wanted to advertise their phones as "waterproof" so instead of making the port waterproof like other companies, they just remove it and let marketing handle it. Disgusting.
Apple can easily regain their footing by putting the users first in their design decisions and stop their design hubris.
Thank you Dave Raggett
get out of your damn distortion lens Apple. Everything you've made since Jobs died is second or third tier at best. You don't know what the hell you're doing. Your workstation makes no sense. The 2012 pro is superior to the trashcan in most ways that matter. The laptops are a waste of my time, sacrifice a ton of usability in ports and add a marginally useful touchbar? Seriously? You're supposed to actually do some research before replacing shit that people are still using, I have no desire to have a rats nest of cables to connect my shit together.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
I thought this is an article on laptops? And memory is memory, right?
Jobs was right that thinking people don't need much memory.
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
just an quick google.
apple will make it so that you can't install your own ram.
Thin is the real issue if the system was bigger then the systems will be better.
for people that have a legitimate need for more than 16GB of ram battery life is a secondary factor
What laptop owners would that really be true of though? A handful, even among pros... if it's going to be plugged in all the time, and battery life is of secondary or no concern - then my not just use a Mac Pro? It's also fairly portable and will be much faster (yes, even before any updates to the current model).
I personally cannot see Apple releasing a laptop with an option that has way worse battery life just to add more RAM at the very top end - nor making a whole other variant of motherboard to support that option, or adding complexity to the existing design.
In the end it's just a matter of a single year before truly top-end purchasers will get a laptop with more than 16GB of RAM. For the past few years CPU improvements have not been all that large, so not being able ot buy now is not that huge a hit...
What I'm hoping to see in the next revision of the MacBook Pro is an even better GPU.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
(Might be obscure. Look up The Onion's "Macbook Wheel" video)
While I'm thinking about it, how is the desktop RAM different from what they already use? Is it just a matter of LPDDR not being able to run as fast of a clock speed because of the lower consumption or are there bandwidth differences unrelated to clock speed and such?
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
You could just put a bigger battery in it.
Instead, all I hear about is how they were working in such tight space constraints (a completely arbitrary constraint made up by their lead designer), and how kneecapping the system was to "maximize battery life"...
I remember my old Powerbook G4. I used to get 6-7 hours of battery life out of that thing. My old Macbook Pro (Core 2 Duo) was around the same. Every single laptop I've owned up until they discontinued the 17" used to last around 6-7 hours on battery. These were, of course, pretty thick and substantial machines, but I didn't care, they generally worked well and got the job done.
I recently bought a 15" MBP Touchbar (totally decked out, because it's not like I had a choice when the RAM and HD are soldered to the motherboard). It was one of the most expensive Apple machines I have ever purchased. I was lucky to get a consistent 3 hours out of it, running the same workloads my 17" unibody can perform for ~6.5. After spending a good week trying to troubleshoot this issue with AppleCare tech support, I eventually came to the conclusion that the machine was in perfect working order and that the battery was simply incapable of powering the machine for how long I needed it to. I later sent the machine back for a refund.
These problems will continue to plague Apple so long as they're obsessed with form over function, and refuse to admit that they were actually wrong for once. I can guarantee you the next machines will be even thinner, contain less ports (likely dropping the headphones port and one or two of the USB-C ports), and have the exact same operational issues due to over aggressive power saving features and an undersized battery.
Intel told Jobs he want powerful enough to force them to do their jobs, and they were right.
My girlfriend has a 13.3 inch "Macbook Pro" I have taken to calling it the Macbook Air Pro... In my opinion it's hard to do professional work on a 13 inch machine. A professional machine should come in larger form factors like 14 and 16 or maybe 17 inch but not 13 and 15.
And SCSI, VGA, DVI, CD, DVD, RS232, Parallel ports, Modem, Ethernet jack, etc., etc.
Maybe the headphone jack will be the final straw. Or maybe you're being hysterical. Let's meet back here in a few years and if Apple is out of business then I owe you a Coke.
I think I'll update my Macbook Pro next year with a 32 GB model and then and go Full Retro Old Skool on my older retina model with Slackware.
To try and bolster stock.
Stealth brag I guess, but I've had 32 gb since 2015, think it costs $150 total. You know, on a hand built PC desktop.
They want to anally rape us with rebar until we bleed to death. That is onlyly slightly less painful than dealing with the San max memory for nearly seven years.
Intel only support 16 GB of low power RAM so it is Intel's fault that they have done this to us rather than Apple's. I am so distraught and am considering suicide because of this, but this is not Apple's fault.
He's been dead for years. We should be allowed to have more memory.
Also it will come filled with the magical and whismical blue anti shock filling, that will reduce the damage caused to the device on impacts in 20% (also make the device impossible to open because it is mostly made out of epoxy)
...like all computers did for decades. Instead, they've managed to brainwash their zealot disciples into believing that thinner is better, disposable is ok, and they need a new computer every 2... no, 1 years!
These laptops aren't thinner than a SODIMM memory module or an M.2 drive. Until they are (and they shouldn't be, because they don't need to be and to do so would mean a battery even more insufficient than they already are), any manufacturer telling you that you can't have removable/expandable memory or SSD storage is feeding you marketing BS to justify their anti-consumer design choices. Just so that you needlessly buy more laptops more often instead of repairing/upgrading the one you already have.
There's nothing "Pro" about the MacBook Pro anymore. A Dell tablet has more ports, expandability and options. Hell, there's nothing "pro" about any Mac anymore. Apple has totally given the finger to the professional and high-end user. Where I work (thousands of employees) I see the pendulum swinging back from Mac to non-Mac again since, after a few years of people flocking to Macbooks because of some misguided fashion fad, they're realizing that Macs simply fall short on too many fronts and flat out cannot offer them a computer with the hardware they need to do their jobs. I can spec out a non-Mac that runs circles around the highest-end MacBook "Pro" and costs less. Don't even get me started on the "Mac Pro"... that thing was an useless abomination the day it was released and has only gotten worse as the hardware innards become more and more outdated over the years. It's a nightmare to service and an unexpandable, optionless junk creation not even worth the now-tainted branding of "Apple" it's so bad, let alone "Pro". It's not even white.
Apple should realize that limiting a "pro" device never gets you positive reviews. Obviously most users will never need more than 16 GB of RAM ever. But the fact that a "pro" device from Apple was limited to this when cheaper PC alternatives were not is going to get you some bad press. Especially when hardware specs allow for more RAM. The other negative still not resolved is that a user should be able to simply upgrade the RAM in a "pro" device.
Perhaps the first m is silent?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
American? Thought so.
Give us back
MagSafe charging
Ports that are useful
And
Better tactile keyboard (e.g. Long travel keys) give the thin shit to the hipsters
Time to state the obvious again. Apples "Pro" selection of products have essentially been consumerised and are no longer really targeted at professional users. Rather than opt for expandability and a useful selection of ports they have removed these in favour supposedly of design, when in fact this is really cost reduction in the construction to increase margins labelled as forward thinking with regards to connectivity.
Apple should remove the "Pro" label from these machines and redesign a proper machine targeted at professional power users. As an Apple user, I would continue to pay a premium for such a machine, but would expect normal USB ports, thunderbolt, maybe one USB-C port (to match the severe minority of products that actually come with a USB-C cable) and HDMI at least, with bonus points for SD card. I guess expecting ethernet is too much as it will make the laptop a fatty.
No-one wants to carry around a massive dongle with all the ports you actually need. Doing a big bang move to USB-C ports was a terrible move. I'm going to hang on until generation next hoping they will see the error of their ways, and I expect that the machine stated above in the article will not be the one I want.
Considering how pervasive macbook is in the developer community it's about damn time!
My workload requires around 25 gig of memory. So, my $3000 MBP is just a remote terminal to an ESX box and a sandbox for my side projects.
Still an overpriced peace of sh*te.
not just 1 arm and 1 leg like you normally would with a crApple product, but an additional arm to pay for the overpriced memory they will use!
Now if they can add some USB ports, a MagSafe port, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, more storage, an NVidia GPU, keys with more travel, a clickable trackpad, function keys, and a longer lasting battery, I might actually buy one. Less isn't more; more is more.
Good move that you finally recognized the need for RAM in a hmm, you called it "Pro" machine?
I really hope it will be available without the emoji keyboard.
Now how about making a desktop machine that's actually useful for a developer?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
So, now they make their systems non-memory-expandable, and just as desktop chipsets increase RAM capacity to 64GB, they decide to offer 32GB of soldered-on chips. Very nice.
Yes, I did RTFA, and their reasoning is largely bullshit. It's more of "Buy what you need now, and if your needs change in a few months, don't worry about upgrading; we'll happily sell you a new shiny with more RAM! Just chuck your old shiny in the landfill."
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If Steve Jobs were still alive he'd offer 32 TB of RAM.
Intel only support 16 GB of low power RAM so it is Intel's fault that they have done this to us rather than Apple's. I am so distraught and am considering suicide because of this, but this is not Apple's fault.
Yeah, I don't understand why Slashdotters, who THINK they are smarter than the average Apple Engineer, don't get it that the issue is INTEL, not Apple.
Why would Apple be forced to use "Desktop" RAM when Kaby Lake supports DDR4L and LPDDR4?
My suggestion for Apple is to update the current Macbook Air. The only changes required: update SkyLake-U to Kaby Lake-U with a choice of 8, 16 or 32GB of RAM and replace the Thunderbolt2 port with Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C).
Re-design the MBPro to include everything people want from it (quad-core cpu, fast GPU, lotsa ports, battery life, ram, magsafe) and abandon the crippled Pro-with-Air-specs.