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12" Macbook review, after having used every single laptop in Apple's lineup since 2006
- Thread starter unixunderground
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Absolutely, while they never went to 0 on my 2014 rMBP 13", probably because of the endless things I always have running in the background, they were always completely silent under relatively light workload, like a few safari tabs, taking notes on evernote, playing some music on spotify, or writing on dayone.
What I was referring to in my post, was how loud they get under "Pro" workload, which by their name they should be able to handle better, and how quickly they get throttled down from the "turbo boost" frequency.
You need to keep in mind that the 15" Macbook is something completely unique in the laptop world. Apple has fit a 47w cpu and dGPU into a chassis not much different than the 13" model. To get that combination in a Windows laptop, you are generally looking at a dedicated workstation that is something on the order of 7lbs (before the 1-2lb power brick) and half again to twice as thick as a MBP - and even those models often have complaints of throttling.
So loud fans under load should be expected.
So loud fans under load should be expected.
I've been saying it for a while the performance is good and it's a complete replacement for the MBA.
Indeed i cant see why anyone would now purchase an air other than for cost reasons.
Indeed i cant see why anyone would now purchase an air other than for cost reasons.
You need to keep in mind that the 15" Macbook is something completely unique in the laptop world. Apple has fit a 47w cpu and dGPU into a chassis not much different than the 13" model. To get that combination in a Windows laptop, you are generally looking at a dedicated workstation that is something on the order of 7lbs (before the 1-2lb power brick) and half again to twice as thick as a MBP - and even those models often have complaints of throttling.
So loud fans under load should be expected.
Indeed, and I think there's a simple point that we need to keep in mind... It's great that the MBPs, 13" and 15" both don't make a loud racket with their fans all the time and don't throttle unless pushed. Makes them versatile and useful, which is great. However, the problem is that especially in the case of the 15", the principle reason people are buying that model is because they either _sometimes_ need to push it hard, or _always_ need to push it hard.
For example in my use-case, a power laptop for my work means _always_ running hefty Logic or ProTools projects on it, filling up every last bit of RAM, realtime streaming of (sometimes literally over a hundred) tracks of very large sample sound libraries from a thunderbolt drive, heavy CPU use for realtime plug in calculation, software instruments and samplers etc, the whole time driving several displays (on one of which, full screen HD video is being played concurrently) and running an audio interface on thunderbolt. Basically from the second I start working, everything gets pushed into the red and it stays there, all day. On paper and looking at the specs, the high end 15 inch quad cores are fabulous for this, indeed for the first 10 minutes of work (if you're lucky), they run like clockwork and give even a fully pimped iMac a run for its money. However, as soon as it heats up, it's game over. The fan noise becomes something that's shall we say, not especially conducive to working on composing music (to put it nicely), and the actual performance compared to the theoretical performance becomes a sad shadow of what it was supposed to be.
Now of course this isn't unreasonable given that we're talking about a very slim and compact portable machine. Not to the degree of the rMB, but it's class-leading in terms of compact design for a laptop of its type. And that for me is where the problem lies. When it comes to the consumer/personal laptop space, the class-leading portability combined with quality of use features of the rMB (retina display, extremely low power consumption and good battery life, no fan) are of actual value. But at the professional end, having the slickest, thinnest pro laptop is of less value to me when it imposes tradeoffs where it counts - being able to work at the high end of CPU use all day long with performance staying reliable. For the rMB and other ultracompacts, the miniaturisation of everything makes it _more_ fit for purpose. For the MBP, it can make it _less_ fit for purpose, at least for certain users.
Obviously I'm aware that I'm not the only kind of pro-user out there - for plenty of people the balance between form factor and performance of the MBPs as they are today is absolutely spot on. It must be otherwise no one would want one. But it remains a category with issues for people like me... Because we definitely have a use for workstations that can give us similar or the same performance as our "fixed location" setups in a portable package - but we don't need it in a package that is also great for writing emails in a café.
It's not an easy problem to solve because really, in terms of what people "see" as a modern laptop now, the horse is already out of the gate. There's no going back to thicker, chunkier designs or at least I can't see Apple doing so. So really, we either all wait for the internal components to play catch-up to what has already leapt forward (perhaps prematurely) in our expectations of form factor design. Or, there's possibly a case for a new category to emerge. Look at the Mac Pro for example. It's almost something you could consider portable, I mean it fits in a backpack and could conceivably be taken to a studio to work for a project, where it would live for a couple of months till you're done. But you need a display, a keyboard.. it's not compelling enough to really make it obvious to use in that way. It's still too heavy, not clearly intended to be portable and it's ultra expensive too. I don't get the feeling it's exactly selling like crazy though. However, if there were a new kind of Mac Pro alternative model that was a standalone box.. I dunno, something like a small iMac that folds up to a clamshell briefcase like a laptop only just not as thin, then that might be a category of Mac Pro I could see a real use for. They've already dispensed with the idea of internal upgradability entirely, so what's the point of trying to stick to a "tower"-ish design anymore anyway?
OK my suggestion is probably a dumb idea... but my point is that there's a type of portability which seems to be increasingly forgotten about, and it's not about being able to casually whip out a laptop on a plane.
If a heftier Pro portable machine allowed for performance with no thermal throttling ever along with much much more internal storage and RAM, like an all-in-one Mac Pro that's portable like older laptops used to be... then I can see people in my industry (and maybe others too) thinking hmm, I didn't care about the Mac Pro but this thing I could actually use. It wouldn't be so much about trying to sell a fat laptop again - more like merging the idea of the Mac Pro and iMac into a machine that is easily transportable. Well you can dream anyway...
The air is a bit of a niche product now but you do need to bear in mind:
Stronger CPU
Stronger GPU
Better battery
SD card reader
Regular USB ports
HDMI port
Separate charging port
Half the price for entry level
There are plenty of reasons to buy an MBA instead of a Macbook, the thing is the advantages above don't matter to a very large number of people, and a lot of those who do find those things desirable will spring for a Pro.
But if your budget is say $1000-1200 (and in particular, if you want ports, instead of a single USB-C) then the Air is a fairly attractive option.
I completely agree, unfortunately Apple`s focus is on the consumer not "industrial" usage. I have said for several years now, that if the 15" MacBook Pro meets your needs it`s more by coincidence than design.
The trend is clearly set, I have no doubts that Apple will "thin" the 15" as soon as they possibly can, equally this will continue the trend from 2006 of running excessively hot, with associated reliability issues, should Apple continue to offer the 15" with dGPU. Personally if I have a need for a portable workstation, I will be looking at other hardware, for one simple reason Apple does not have one in their line up.
Q-6
If you're using a Macbook to do extensive CPU or GPU intensive work on a regular basis you should probably reconsider your workflow... farm jobs off to a rendering machine when you're back at the office, etc.
Of course there are niche uses where you need decent power or a big screen on the go (maybe you don't HAVE an office), but trying to use a portable machine for heavy duty workloads as a routine thing is always going to be sub-optimal.
This is the conclusion i've come to after trying to use high spec portables as "desktop replacement" machines for the past 6-7 years. They just don't work anywhere near as well as a real desktop due to the laws of physics - there's only so much thermal headroom in a portable enclosure - and it is way, way less than in a proper desktop.
e.g., the thermal/power budget for a macbook pro GPU is something like 45 watts.
In a desktop it's 200 watts (per card) or more.... and there's no way you're getting the same performance (or anywhere close) out of 45 watts vs. 200.
Basically your choice is throttling, fan noise, larger physical size, lower performance or a combination of all four. Portables only have so much power and heat they can deal with, and even workstation class PC laptops aren't a hell of a lot better. Laws of physics don't change.
Of course there are niche uses where you need decent power or a big screen on the go (maybe you don't HAVE an office), but trying to use a portable machine for heavy duty workloads as a routine thing is always going to be sub-optimal.
This is the conclusion i've come to after trying to use high spec portables as "desktop replacement" machines for the past 6-7 years. They just don't work anywhere near as well as a real desktop due to the laws of physics - there's only so much thermal headroom in a portable enclosure - and it is way, way less than in a proper desktop.
e.g., the thermal/power budget for a macbook pro GPU is something like 45 watts.
In a desktop it's 200 watts (per card) or more.... and there's no way you're getting the same performance (or anywhere close) out of 45 watts vs. 200.
Basically your choice is throttling, fan noise, larger physical size, lower performance or a combination of all four. Portables only have so much power and heat they can deal with, and even workstation class PC laptops aren't a hell of a lot better. Laws of physics don't change.
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True, equally the Air only makes sense if you stick to the base models, once you start to up the specification, it far less attractive. To me the air`s one redeeming feature is Thunderbolt, equally we should see this on the next Gen rMB.
Q-6
And full circle, the air is just a cheap entry level model. its about time apple killed them off.
The rMB does everything the air can do. Who uses ports these days? Next to no one, so its really a pointless debate and those that do use ports are normally at home. So a USB C hub is a simple, cheap and small accessory that addresses this need. If you want power, you have the rMBP.
The rMB does everything the air can do. Who uses ports these days? Next to no one, so its really a pointless debate and those that do use ports are normally at home. So a USB C hub is a simple, cheap and small accessory that addresses this need. If you want power, you have the rMBP.
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Funny how apple can sell real disadvantage (no ports) as a advatgane/breakthrough feature.
Yep totally agree, it's the reason why I went cold on the laptop as desktop replacement idea as well. But still, in my work, most of us tend to have at least one main "fixed location" production setup, and we try to maintain a "mobile" version of the same thing - same plug ins, same sound library, same software. This way any project we start work on with the main setup is immediately compatible on the portable one so you can work from home, or continue working when you set up in a different studio... or even have an assistant or a colleague take over a project and finish it off while you concentrate on another one. It just would be nice if there were some options in the mobile area that were less penalised by having to put minimal footprint and weight forwards as the primary design constraints. Of course when you need power and power alone, any kind of physical constraints are a parameter you ideally completely ignore - thus the reason why a bulky tower workstation that doesn't pay the slightest heed to weight or shape is always going to be the best way to go. Still, it would be nice if there were a something in the middle ground to choose from these days. But in all honesty I think it's going to remain the way it is for quite some time, probably won't be until there's a fundamental breakthrough that makes power and heat issues a thing of the past before Pro laptops get some performance headroom back again.
Would the 13" model be powerful enough for you, while being quieter? Even the 13" model has quite the work-horse processor, that is basically equivalent with the 15" in anything but highly parallel workflows, and is considerably more powerful than the processors fitted to the vast majority of Windows laptops. Do you need the dedicated GPU for your sound work? It might be that you could give up a tiny bit of power in order to gain a quieter, more portable system for on the go.
Nope it's really the quad cores that are of interest to music production. Not that anything less is unusable of course. But Logic, Protools etc very much make use of HT, you even see the virtual cores displayed as if they were actual cores in Logic's own CPU monitor, and it really makes a huge difference to see those eight bars sharing the load.
As a general rule, if for example I work on a large orchestral arrangement on the main iMac workstation using the full arsenal of big sound libraries, plug ins, audio tracks and HD video for the scene I'm working on, then a top end MBP of today is pretty much always able to play back exactly the same project if you have a clone of the sound library on a thunderbolt drive and an identical install of software and plug ins. A 13" would probably be able to play back some projects, but not the bigger ones. And that's where the value comes into the dual setup for people like me. A fixed workstation where you do work most of the time, and a portable one that has enough juice to run the same projects. Bear in mind that in music/audio work it's not like video or photo work where waiting for an offline render is the main difference you experience in power. In music production, if a machine can't run a project in realtime, then well, it just can't play it at all. So you need to do all kinds of workarounds to be able to (sort of) continue working on a lesser system - printing heavy realtime FX tracks or software instrument tracks to the drive as audio so as to free up enough CPU until it will play back. This is doable, but not what you want to be doing all the time.
Currently the balance really does work... most of the time. A top spec 15" MBP will play back everything I create on a desktop machine, it's just that it pretty quickly gets very hot and so the fans go to max speed and stay there. Also it will throttle to the point that if you want to say, play a live piano track on top of an arrangement you're working on, it will just sputter and cough and the instrument won't play in real time.
So yes there's definitely plenty of value in a secondary limited system for doing some writing with a 13", heck even the rMB could pull that off up to a point too. It's just that when it comes to having a close enough parity in performance to really be able to interchange between the two systems, it gets a little dicey. It's not that I expect miracles, it's just that it's so frustrating when you _know_ the laptop absolutely does have what it takes to run the project - it's just let down the minute it starts getting hot, purely because of the fact that people want super slim compact laptops nowadays and no other reason. I've even wondered about if anyone makes refrigerated cases for laptops, so you could just keep it inside, wire it up to external displays and hey presto - it would perform like it says on the tin. Ha!
As a general rule, if for example I work on a large orchestral arrangement on the main iMac workstation using the full arsenal of big sound libraries, plug ins, audio tracks and HD video for the scene I'm working on, then a top end MBP of today is pretty much always able to play back exactly the same project if you have a clone of the sound library on a thunderbolt drive and an identical install of software and plug ins. A 13" would probably be able to play back some projects, but not the bigger ones. And that's where the value comes into the dual setup for people like me. A fixed workstation where you do work most of the time, and a portable one that has enough juice to run the same projects. Bear in mind that in music/audio work it's not like video or photo work where waiting for an offline render is the main difference you experience in power. In music production, if a machine can't run a project in realtime, then well, it just can't play it at all. So you need to do all kinds of workarounds to be able to (sort of) continue working on a lesser system - printing heavy realtime FX tracks or software instrument tracks to the drive as audio so as to free up enough CPU until it will play back. This is doable, but not what you want to be doing all the time.
Currently the balance really does work... most of the time. A top spec 15" MBP will play back everything I create on a desktop machine, it's just that it pretty quickly gets very hot and so the fans go to max speed and stay there. Also it will throttle to the point that if you want to say, play a live piano track on top of an arrangement you're working on, it will just sputter and cough and the instrument won't play in real time.
So yes there's definitely plenty of value in a secondary limited system for doing some writing with a 13", heck even the rMB could pull that off up to a point too. It's just that when it comes to having a close enough parity in performance to really be able to interchange between the two systems, it gets a little dicey. It's not that I expect miracles, it's just that it's so frustrating when you _know_ the laptop absolutely does have what it takes to run the project - it's just let down the minute it starts getting hot, purely because of the fact that people want super slim compact laptops nowadays and no other reason. I've even wondered about if anyone makes refrigerated cases for laptops, so you could just keep it inside, wire it up to external displays and hey presto - it would perform like it says on the tin. Ha!
Shortly after buying my 2015 15"MBP, Apple sent me a survey to fill out. It asked why I chose the MBP over say, the latest MacBook. I chose lack of ports as one of the reasons the survey offered. I'm not ready to deal with having one port and needing an adaptor to add some.
These two are not true. The MBA does not have a HDMI port, only the MBP do. The second is also not true because the MBA also has half the memory and disk space. When you configure the MBA to be at the same level when it comes to cpu/gpu, memory and disk you only have a difference of 100 euro or so. That's not much.
Actually you don't. You either want something very mobile or you want something mobile and powerful. In those cases you either want the MacBook or the MacBook Pro. The MBA is the odd ball here, not the MBP line!
Btw, the use of USB Type-C is only a problem at the moment due to not having that much stuff with the connector/cable. In a few years time this will be different. We may be seeing issues with notebooks with USB A ports being incompatible due to the amount of USB Type-C products. Obviously this isn't a problem for those that don't use the USB port that often.
How are ports that you don't use at all or very little an "advantage"? Because they collect dust? When I look at how most people use it at say school and work then the only port they use when mobile is the charging port. The other port is used at their desk and mostly that is just the docking port. It is just so much easier to undock or unplug 1 cable then all of them (display, keyboard, mouse, network, charging cable). On the go they use a wireless mouse and cloud solutions/centralised storage because you can access it everywhere and use it in a team setting. Good example of that is Microsoft OneNote. They even have special tools for OneNote for educational use.
This isn't a breakthrough feature though, just natural evolution just like losing the floppy drive, optical drive, etc. You could argue that it would be nicer if there were 2 USB ports or 1 USB and 1 charging port but we have to accept the fact that mobile computing has changed over the years. Or computing itself. We went from desktops to notebooks to tablets to smartphones. Continuum from Microsoft is a technology that turns the smartphone into both a smartphone and an ordinary computer. Without docking it is a smartphone, when you dock it, it becomes an ordinary computer. That might be breakthrough because it changes how we use the computer.
OP's review was very good to read. I like my 12" Macbook but have been plagued with intermittent slow wifi, and odd issues that have caused me to reinstall the OS several times. The latest was that iTunes demanded my password, but wouldn't let me type it in or quit the demanded login window. Yep, another reinstall of OS X "fixed" it. In the meantime I'm keeping everything I need in the "cloud". All this is forcing me to treat the 12" Macbook like an iPad. Good enough to surf, but not good enough to do any heavy duty lifting.
I guess I'll go back to Apple Care and try again. Still loving it though, but until I can work out the issues I can't abandon my late 2009 Macbook Pro that has been a trooper (I did upgrade it with an SSD)
I'm hoping I don't have a hardware problem and it is just an OS X update away from becoming the perfect machine.
I guess I'll go back to Apple Care and try again. Still loving it though, but until I can work out the issues I can't abandon my late 2009 Macbook Pro that has been a trooper (I did upgrade it with an SSD)
I'm hoping I don't have a hardware problem and it is just an OS X update away from becoming the perfect machine.
But all those issues are OS X issues and not limited to the rMacbook, i have had the wifi one..
I still don't understand why it only has 1... I hope Apple tells us, or someone finds out... Mind bugging that they didn't think it would piss others off....... I REALLY want this laptop.. But I simply can't do it.. And the 2 ports won't come for at least another year. No way Apple will re-design the next macbook to add a port. Next one will just be a speed bump and probably price reduction. But I wanted to love that laptop. Such awesomeness. I guess a 15 inch pro and ill just keep my air for when i need to travel.
I still don't understand why it only has 1... I hope Apple tells us, or someone finds out... Mind bugging that they didn't think it would piss others off....... I REALLY want this laptop.. But I simply can't do it.. And the 2 ports won't come for at least another year. No way Apple will re-design the next macbook to add a port. Next one will just be a speed bump and probably price reduction. But I wanted to love that laptop. Such awesomeness. I guess a 15 inch pro and ill just keep my air for when i need to travel.
Well said. Very good review. I couldn't agree more with the OP. I love mine a lot. 1.2Ghz Grey.
More likely.. 2 ports won't come ever. A single port on 12" rMB is a fundamental design choice, that won't change in future refreshes. If you can't live with 1 port - this is simply not a laptop for you.
Why would you assume that two ports will come later down the track? Doesn't seem like they're headed that way at all for this machine. However, I doubt there's any likelihood at all they'd see value in culling ports from the Pro series, or the Air if it stays around for a while longer. I think we can quite likely expect an even more appealing 13" Pro some time soon which will almost inevitably be thinner, so for users who can't go without multiple ports, that's going to be model to go for.
I too have owned every MacBook in Apple's lineup, and the 12" is my favorite one thus far. Scored myself an open box digital AV adapter at Best Buy for $50 and I've been LOVING this thing on its own and hooked up to my 2560x1440 HP monitor.
Things I love: design, screen, portability (overall size & weight), speakers, battery life, trackpad, forward thinking.
Things I don't love: keyboard had a long adjustment period, forced into needing an adapter of some kind.
It's not the most powerful machine around, but I've run into zero performance issues in my use case: a few tabs in Safari, Messages, iTunes, and Mail open all the time and some light video editing in iMovie.
Things I love: design, screen, portability (overall size & weight), speakers, battery life, trackpad, forward thinking.
Things I don't love: keyboard had a long adjustment period, forced into needing an adapter of some kind.
It's not the most powerful machine around, but I've run into zero performance issues in my use case: a few tabs in Safari, Messages, iTunes, and Mail open all the time and some light video editing in iMovie.