Had one for about 10 days, returned it for a variety of factors, but overall, it was a nice machine. But for my workload, I think I'll move to a 2015 if I can get the config I want - should be ~ $1000 cheaper for about 95% of the benefit (some weight, some speed, retina screen, etc). $3700 ($3500 + tax) ended up feeling just a bit too much for the speed/value. Apparently, though, if I wait a bit longer, we might see a 32g model next year?
Would have been if Intel had released a 32GB capable mobile chip that's not slower than the last generation.
Probably it got delayed after the overall shape and size were set in stone, so Apple had to go with the previous gen and work a miracle.
Or it was a conscious decision since this shape/size will be the base of all laptops for the next few processor generations and will be supported for the next 10 years or so.
How does the Dell XPS 15in or the Razer Blade laptops have 32gb of ram if Intel doesn't support that much? Do they use different chips in their laptops?
Because the chips aren't optimised for that much RAM they sacrifice a lot of battery life. Apple could theoretically ship these MacBook Pros with 32 gigs, but their battery life would probably be halved.
More like quartered, from what I've read, i.e., reduced by 3/4.
Those gaming laptops which use full-power desktop RAM also weigh 8-10 lb and they STILL have terrible battery life. They are effectively unusable without being plugged in.
The battery life on the 14 inch model is 6+ hours of streaming video out of the box which isn't bad at all I think. The real question is how well it holds up over time. Also, it is one of the few laptops available with the new 10X0 video cards. I'm honestly probably going to hold out for the newer XPS 15s with kaby lake and the 1060 cards, which are supposedly out in January sometime.
The Razer Blade Pro also has a laughable battery life: 2 hrs 45 min for WEB SURFING. That's hilarious.
What that means is, probably less than an hour of battery life if you are actually gaming, which is the raison d'etre of this laptop.
Laughable.
What would people say if Apple made a high-end professional machine with half an hour of battery life? We'd never hear the end of it. Perfectly acceptable in the PC world, though.
Nice cherry-picking, though. The desktop-replacement gaming laptops category in general is indeed 8-11 pounds, just like I was saying:
If the ram's power use is the main problem, then that disproportionately affects low-power uses. There's no reason to think gaming would have a similarly crippled battery life.
Any idea how long the MBP lasts if you peg the GPU?
I wonder if it would be possible for the OS to consolidate "hot" memory into as few modules as possible and power down the ones holding relatively cold data when memory pressure is low.
Oh wow, thanks for that info. Really good to know as I am in the market for a high end laptop and the 32gb xps was on my short list. I guess I'll be sticking with the 16gb version unless the kaby lake processors in the new xps 15s solve this issue.
Apparently the battery life on the 32GB XPS 15 suffers quite a bit. The RAM the are using isn't the low-powered RAM that future Intel chips will support.
My only complaint with Dell's approach of offering the 32GB option is that they don't seem to advertise the fact that it comes with a significant trade-off in terms of battery life. I'm all for "let the users decide," but they should have given the users the information they need to make the choice. As is someone buying an XPS 15 is sort of left with the impression that the 32GB option is a straight-up upgrade.
And it would have landed, if Apple had not decided to arbitrarily shrink their batteries, hence requiring low-power options for their components (in this case, RAM) that are not available yet.
No, it wouldn't. And no, the slightly smaller battery was not "arbitrary". And thirdly, no, it's not that LPDDR isn't available; it's that this generation of Intel CPUs usable in a laptop don't support the current generation of LPDDR yet.
In other words, it's Intel's fault, not Apple's, as posted above.
> this generation of Intel CPUs usable in a laptop
Dell XPS says hi. I don't care if it doesn't have much battery life - give me the choice, dammit. If I wanted ultraportability and umpteen hours on battery, I would have bought an Air.
> the slightly smaller battery was not "arbitrary"
I must have missed the day a tank threatened to blow up Cupertino unless they reduced the battery size. Again, nobody asked them to have an MBP as thin as an Air. It was an arbitrary choice, and (IMHO, of course) a bad one.
They've really done their homework though. Price sensitive buyers get to feel frugal for skipping upgrades, while others get to enjoy a premium good. For me it makes sense to max out the options, but just barely.
I could spec out a laptop (pick a vendor) with a 500SSD, i7, 32GB RAM and still be under 2K. I don't want to say their hardware is overpriced. . .but they're stuff is WAY over priced.
You aren't doing your homework here. Top spec on a MBP is not only a 2 TB SSD, four times what you are citing here; it's also a MUCH faster SSD than you can get on that HP at any price. The HP would get trounced in every benchmark available. It also has a markedly inferior display.
When I used to buy macbooks, they did carry a premium, but usually not the sort of premium you're implying here. The problem is you have to compare apples to apples - not "I don't need that fancy XXX anyways". Which is an argument, but not an argument that macbooks are overpriced to the extent you're thinking here.
With the touchbar, it will probably be more difficult to do fair price comparisons.
From the former, you can't even get to a 16GB laptop, despite the same price points. What the hell is up with that? They target consumers with a crappier box at the same price, or what?
Edit: I guess the 4k option is standard on the 1699 on the former page, and costs extra for the business version. That's pretty absurd though. The models are labeled exactly the same.
You can upgrade the Dell XPS 15 (9550) to 32 GB though. Only the XPS 13 has soldered-on RAM. And if I remember right, it is a user-servicable part, so no loss of warranty if you upgrade it yourself.
EDIT: and price search sites show 32 GB models, so maybe you can have one upgraded directly from Dell somehow.
my previous computer was an HP Elitebook with SSD and 32g ram, and it was a piece of crap compared to my 2015 MBP. Hot, loud, super heavy, no battery life, inelegant.
I'm in the same boat. My current MBP is a 2012 model, yet it has 16GB of RAM already. The biggest boost I would hope to see in a new MBP would come from increasing the RAM (I do a lot of work with large data sets and ETL, plus I run VMs concurrently with MacOS).
There are now enough competitors (Dell and Lenovo for sure) with 32GB that I was among those who were genuinely surprised that Apple kept the cap at 16GB.
"updates" say that "cannonlake" just won't be out, and there's no plans from apple on this, but this was the rumor mill a month ago. I not necessarily ruling any of this out, and we'll see in 6 months.
They can make 32GB with current chipsets but chose not to for battery life.
Given the outcry, they can put less efficient RAM in a newer model. The people asking for 32GB aren't newbies and presumably are willing to pay the price in battery life in exchange for the extra RAM.
If I were in the market for a new Macbook Pro (I'm not), I'd be willing to make the sacrifice in battery life for the extra RAM, because I would try to make the MBP last for at least 5 years. For all the talk about USB-C only being a future-proof choice, limiting RAM to 16GB is not future-proofing.
> They can make 32GB with current chipsets but chose not to for battery life.
This is false dichotomy. There are alternatives, parallel decisions.
They could've decided to not sacrifice weight or size for battery power. This'd have made the MBP Pro, not Air like it is now. You used to buy a MBP for several years, so it'd need good battery power. The new MBPs are all less good with battery power, than the 2015 version. They're also so-called "future proof" with USB-C only yet you're gonna need adapters. Furthermore, you can't swap the SSD or the RAM so you're gonna need the amount you plan to use years forward (e.g. 2021). The USB-C move is contradicting to all the other moves. It doesn't add up, and people don't fall for it. That's why there's so much uproar on it.
My theory is that Apple wants the MBP to be more like the iPhone/iPod/iPad: disposable hardware you replace every year or so, for professionals who earn a lot of money in the creative industry. Not programmers, not power users, not people who make an investment for several years.
There is a reason that all the PC laptops that have great battery life either have big external batteries (T460), or also use LPDDR and have a 16GB limit (Surface Pro, XPS13). Comparably-sized machines that use regular DDR (e.g. XPS15), either downgrade to a much less power-hungry 1080p display, or have only 5-6 hours of battery life.
Laptops with long battery life are still a bit of a novelty to me -- it's probably because I'm older and the average battery life since my very first laptop (a Powerbook 170) is probably well below 3 hours. I'd be super happy with 5-6 hours of battery life.
That appears to be true. I looked up at Tweakers Pricewatch [1] looking for 32 GB RAM DDR4. I ended up with either 1080p or gaming laptops like Razer Blade Pro or certain MSI. Which aren't meant to be portable in the same sense a normal laptop is (worse than a MBP ever has been).
Apple still could've gone different routes here, or provide alternatives. This also doesn't make it a MBP; it makes it (together with the obsession on size and weight) more akin to MBA.
It also raises another question. Perhaps, there isn't a good laptop in the market right now which provides a long term usage pattern.
Absolutely no evidence for your "theory", which is the same old "planned obsolescence" canard we hear over and over about Apple. Always without evidence, and it always looks silly 3-4 years down the road when, lo and behold, all the machines in question are still working very nicely.
Also, once the market catches up to USB-C, which will take 12-18 months, you'll no longer need those adapters.
Lastly, it's just silly and inaccurate to call the iPhone "disposable", when in fact it leads the industry in terms of how long the product lasts, how long the OS is supported for older hardware, etc. By a wide margin.
> Absolutely no evidence for your "theory", which is the same old "planned obsolescence" canard we hear over and over about Apple. Always without evidence
My current MBP from 2010 shipped with a broken GPU Apple refuses to replace in warranty (even though I bought a 3 year support contract which is pretty much an anti harassment tax). Yeah, premium support right there. The only reason I can use it is because some intelligent and nice people released a piece of open source software (with various 3rd party fixes to make it keep working in later OS X revisions) allowing me to swap to integrated instead of discrete graphics card.
> Also, once the market catches up to USB-C, which will take 12-18 months, you'll no longer need those adapters.
You do, well maybe you don't. But I would, and many other too. For all the devices you are currently using which you're not replacing with USB-C devices.
> Lastly, it's just silly and inaccurate to call the iPhone "disposable", when in fact it leads the industry in terms of how long the product lasts, how long the OS is supported for older hardware, etc. By a wide margin.
Well, you need to upgrade to the latest iOS or you can forget about security fixes. According to reports this leads to a lot less uptime and/or a slower device. So its far less rose tinted than you claim. Besides, the iPhone 4 doesn't get software updates anymore.
On top of that, yes an iPhone is disposable from a hardware PoV as well. You can't upgrade any of the hardware, replacing the screen costs (in my country) 150+ EUR, you can't replace the battery (even though you are recharging daily which means after 3 years the battery is ripe for replacement).
By contrast, my phone is getting security backports to its older Android version (5.1.x). I can replace the battery and screen myself without a problem.
Sorry, but you're wrong about iOS not supporting security fixes, and you're having to create an artificial situation to justify your argument: the situation where a user doesn't stay updated to the latest iOS, when in fact, the user has every motivation to do so.
Meanwhile, in your Android world, there are basically NO devices that are able to stay fully up-to-date with current Android for more than about 12-18 months. Apple wins here by a wide margin, supporting devices for 4-5 years, universally, no need to get lucky and have one of the 2-3% of Android phones that actually get updated a tiny bit longer.
iPhones are just as easy to replace the battery and screen in as any modern Android device; in addition, Apple provides screen and battery replacements.
Did I mention that Apple's warranty and warranty support are also vastly superior? Because they are. Especially with AppleCare, but even without.
> Sorry, but you're wrong about iOS not supporting security fixes, and you're having to create an artificial situation to justify your argument: the situation where a user doesn't stay updated to the latest iOS, when in fact, the user has every motivation to do so.
Read, comprehend, and then post.
I said the current iOS version. The latest iOS versions vastly decrease the performance, especially on the older iPhones. So the user has a choice:
* No security updates.
* The latest and the greatest with decreased performance.
Have fun with your insecure or slow iPhone. (The same applies for iPad.)
> Meanwhile, in your Android world, there are basically NO devices that are able to stay fully up-to-date with current Android for more than about 12-18 months.
Yes, with security updates, there are and its improving as well. Any Google Pixel. The Fairphone 2. Samsung Galaxy S series. And many others.
You carefully worded "stay fully up-to-date with current Android"; that is irrelevant. I don't give a shit about this hipster hype of needing the latest features. All I want is a phone which keeps working, and remains secure.
> iPhones are just as easy to replace the battery and screen in as any modern Android device; in addition, Apple provides screen and battery replacements.
Like I said, with my phone I just replace the screen or battery myself. Without even needing a (special) screwdriver.
Repairing iPhone screen is very expensive. I see youth all the time running around with their broken iPhone screens. I've never heard of someone going to an Apple store to replace their battery?
I have zero interest in Apple's locked down iDevices, and I want the MBP to stay away from that world. Unfortunately for me (and the many others who agree) it is exactly where macOS and the Macbooks are heading towards.
> Did I mention that Apple's warranty and warranty support are also vastly superior? Because they are. Especially with AppleCare, but even without.
AppleCare = anti harassment tax. Completely pointless. You have the same rights already from EU law, but you may have to enforce them via a lawsuit if they don't oblige.
Besides that, I had AppleCare with my MBP 2010 and they claim that their design flaw didn't fall under it. Fool me once, ...
>> Besides that, I had AppleCare with my MBP 2010 and they claim that their design flaw didn't fall under it. Fool me once, ...
I feel for you. A lot of people who had the defective Early 2011 15" MBPs with discrete GPU issues (also a defectivd design, imo) also had mixed outcomes when dealing with Apple. Mine bricked right after my AppleCare lapsed (had logic board replaced once under applecare, only took 2 months for problem to recur because of its defective design). I ended up buying a PC laptop. A few months later, Apple issued the repair order/recall. I was lucky I didn't recycle it or sell it for parts before the order was issued.
> Read, comprehend, and then post.
I said the current iOS version. The latest iOS versions vastly decrease the performance, especially on the older iPhones. So the user has a choice:
* No security updates.
* The latest and the greatest with decreased performance.
--
You shouldn't snark when you're not even right. You don't know what you're talking about. Apple is able to push out vital security updates WITHOUT doing a full software update, first off, and second, you have no evidence that older iOS versions are lacking for any important updates.
You're also wrong about "vastly decreased" performance. I work with lots of iPhones for a living. Those models are slower because they are slower to begin with; Apple actually works quite hard to maintain acceptable performance with current iOS even on older models. I concede that the 4S is really too slow now under iOS 10, but the 5 and 5S are just fine, and as I've claimed in this thread, that constitutes MUCH better support by Apple for older devices than by the Android market. You citing the Google Pixel is just a fantasy and shows how hilariously off your argument is; that's a device with TWO MONTHS of history behind it thus far. You actually have no clue how long it will be supported; you're guessing and hoping about the future in response to a solid argument about the present and the recent past. Apple is kicking Android's ass in this department, that's universally understood.
>Yes, with security updates, there are and its improving as well. Any Google Pixel. The Fairphone 2. Samsung Galaxy S series. And many others.
Another distorted lie-response to a claim I didn't make; I didn't say "with security updates". I said full compatibility with the fully-updated software.
>I've never heard of someone going to an Apple store to replace their battery?
That's because you don't know anything about iPhones. Clearly. It's a very very common repair.
>I have zero interest in Apple's locked down iDevices
Yes, your bias is evident, but thanks. Tragically what you're missing here is that locked-down nature also makes the devices secure. You are boasting about security "updates" for a platform that is fundamentally insecure. Do you recall reading any stories about FBI pressuring Google or Android phone makers to unlock a phone for a vital terrorism case? Yeah. Me neither. Got any idea why that is?
>Repairing iPhone screen is very expensive.
You probably have no clue what it actually costs.
>I don't give a shit about this hipster hype of needing the latest features. All I want is a phone which keeps working, and remains secure.
Things can't "remain secure" that weren't secure in the first place. And updated OS software is not "hipster hype", no matter what you think.
> That's hilarious. That device was just released.
Pixel/Nexus then. The reason Pixel is valid is because Google has been giving these devices (since you're not very good at reading: 'these devices' refers to 'Pixel/Nexus') good support for a long time.
> You're also wrong about "vastly decreased" performance.
I am not; it is widely documented.
> Apple is kicking Android's ass in this department, that's universally understood.
Did you read what I wrote? Did you comprehend? I haven't been comparing to all Android devices. I never did, never have, in none of my posts. Why would I? I know there are Android vendors who deliver shit support. What I am not saying is that all Android vendors do this. Motorola, for example, when still part of Google delivered good support, and all the examples I previously gave also still count.
> Another distorted lie-response to a claim I didn't make; I didn't say "with security updates". I said full compatibility with the fully-updated software.
Yes, I know you didn't claim that because you're unable to see I am the one who claimed that because your claim was, well, I'll be friendly: "inaccurate". I don't want full software support, I don't give a shit about full software support. I want security and reliability fixes, and, quite frankly it should fall under warranty. Nobody tosses their fridge, car, oven, PC after 2 or 3 years yet in handheld (smartphone/tablet) market this is somewhat normal. We agree there is a problem here, and on average compared to Android, yes Apple does better. At a premium price though.
> Apple is able to push out vital security updates WITHOUT doing a full software update
Yeah, with magic fairy tale patches. Get real. I don't have proof? All the vulnerabilities found and patched lately (good part of 2015, and all of 2016) in iOS 10 are not available in iOS 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_8
"Support status Third-party application support only"
Great that means my mother's iPad from 2012 isn't supported anymore. Yeah, great software support...
> Yes, your bias is evident
Pot, meet kettle.
> Tragically what you're missing here is that locked-down nature also makes the devices secure.
My Android phone is not rooted, and I'm talking about locked down in the sense that I am not able to replace the hardware. In the sense that I'm more or less leasing the device since I am not allowed or easily able to get root if I desire. In the sense that an American company is putting their values on me as an European which means: violence is good, sex is bad. Fuck those values, I decide what is good and bad for me, my wife, and my children.
I'd also argue that every phone is fundamentally insecure to nation states if the attacker has physical access.
> You probably have no clue what it actually costs.
I do, I bought an iPhone SE for my mother and had the shop install a screen protector for her. While they were attaching it, I informed how much it'd cost to repair. Like I said, 160 EUR at minimum.
>> Lastly, it's just silly and inaccurate to call the iPhone "disposable", when in fact it leads the industry in terms of how long the product lasts, how long the OS is supported for older hardware, etc. By a wide margin.
That might be the case post iPhone 5 (maybe someone can verify this), but it wasn't the case before that. The last available update of iOS for every model pretty much made the iPhone 4S and earlier unusable to all but the most patient users, and that's with very little software installed.
Wrong; iOS 10 support does extend back to the iPhone 4S. Just Google it for 10 seconds and you will see that.
Further, this proves my argument, not yours. Even if you were right and the iPhone 5 was the earliest model now supported, that device is more than FOUR YEARS OLD. There are zero Android phones from 2012 which can run the latest Android version. In fact, I'm not sure that there are even any 2014 devices that can fully update right now.
Meanwhile Apple's still supporting a device from 2011, FIVE generations ago.
>> Wrong; iOS 10 support does extend back to the iPhone 4S. Just Google it for 10 seconds and you will see that.
You misunderstood my point. The last available operating system update on any 4S or earlier tends to be unusable because of performance issues. That's because each successive update adds bloat. I have a clean iPad 1, iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S - all with the last available OS updates. They're barely usable as phones unless you have a lot of patience.
>> Further, this proves my argument, not yours. Even if you were right and the iPhone 5 was the earliest model now supported, that device is more than FOUR YEARS OLD. There are zero Android phones from 2012 which can run the latest Android version. In fact, I'm not sure that there are even any 2014 devices that can fully update right now.
Once again, you misunderstood my point. My mention of the iPhone 5 is as a placeholder for when the iPhone CPUs hit a maturity point in terms of performance where they would probably still be usable on the final version of the operating system that it will support.
>> Apple wins here, and it's not close.
Nobody's referring to this as contest, but ok, you can have that point if you want.
> If I were in the market for a new Macbook Pro (I'm not), I'd be willing to make the sacrifice in battery life for the extra RAM, because I would try to make the MBP last for at least 5 years.
If you can afford an rMBP with 32GB of RAM, why do you need it to last five years? I buy Apple laptops refurbished 6-8 months after they come out, then sell after two years (when they still have a good amount of value). Comes out to about the same cost as buying new and running it to the ground for five years.
I thought I'd do this when I bought my RMBP in 2012... but the hassle of finding a buyer, move my stuff out etc etc, felt so painful that I'm still using it 4.5 years later. (TBH it might well be that the newer models never looked particularly appealing, even before the current abominations were released).
Refurb supply is less predictable than BTO supply.
Because we're talking about soldered on RAM on a super high priced laptop, I tend to think refurb supply of those machines is going to be very small since fewer people are buying them in the first place.
And even if I bought a 32GB refurb, I'd expect it to last at least 5 years if the CPU is recent. IMO, you're not getting big enough performance gains every two years on the top quad core i7 chips that would make it worth the hassle to flip the computer. It's not like the old days where you could just pop your SSD/HD out and stick it in the new Mac. I find CCC/Time Capsule restores to be a pain in the ass.
