Anyone else abandoning ship?

[09872738]

This very well might be so. Then again, you do not define the standard of computing. Apple was never about pleasing everybody, they have a fairly focused vision of how an ideal laptop should be and they have been following this vision very consistently over Thea years.

True. I never said I'm the standard, did I?
Anyway, please tell me: they call most expensive Notebooks Macbook Pro. For what kind of "pro" folk would that machine be? Any pros out there striving for unreliable keyboards? T2 crashes? Lack of drivers? Overpriced, unmaintainable products?

Battery life once was in a class of its own. Actual Macbook Pro's battery life has actually decreased quite a bit, in particular if pushed a little. My (former) MBP 15 from 2016 hardly made it to 3 hours once virtualbox was active.
My MBP from 2013 is capable of around 6 hours with the exact same workload to this day (new battery installed recently).

 

[leman]

What exactly are those more expensive components the Mac is using?

Thunderbolt controllers, WiFi chips, surge protection, system coprocessor (T2 chip), GPU multiplexers, and (this is just my speculation from looking at the mainboards), it also seems that the MBP has a more expensive power submodule. At any rate, its mainboard is way busier and has more components than say, a Dell XPS 15.

Anyway, please tell me: they call most expensive Notebooks Macbook Pro. For what kind of folk would that machine be?

The MBP is a very flexible machine that can fulfil a lot of different roles. I don't think that there is one specific target demographics. I'd say that its great for folks that need flexibility or work with large amounts of heterogeneous data (macOS is still the superior OS for that purpose). Not so much for people who work with a singular task within a single software suite (so I don't really understand why photographers are so fond of Macs, I don't think that Mac makes a good machine for them).

Any pro's out there striving for unreliable keyboards? T2 crashes? Lack of drivers? Overpriced products?

We buy Mac laptop in non-singular quantities per year and we haven't observed any increased reliability issues with the latest models. There was one keyboard problem — out of over 20 laptops in 2.5 years, and that about it. I am not really sure what do you mean with lack of drivers since I don't think that I ever had to install a driver on a Mac — for anything, really. As to overpriced, sure, they are expensive, but we save more money on maintenance and support so its a good deal for us. A good quality PC business laptop with similar characteristics is not much cheaper anyway, but the support effort is substantially higher.

 

[09872738]

(...) lack of drivers since I don't think that I ever had to install a driver on a Mac (...)

So then get a 2014 Macbook Pro with nVidia GT 750 (or any other Mac w nVidia card) running Mojave and try do CUDA development using that machine. Good luck.

 

[mkelly]

Generalising much?

So actually all those computers had less problems than the MacBooks and where way cheaper? /S

Pot and kettle anyone? Or is it the blame game? Or just simple old fashioned biased polarizing bashing?

Huh?

Wow. Go pick a fight somewhere else. All I'm saying is that in my particular experience, I tried those machines and ran into those issues. You'll note that at the end of my post I say "for my use case". Yours may be different. In the end, for me, the cost savings and supposed increases in performance on those various machines weren't worth the issues I encountered, and I ended up back on my 2016 15" MBP.

Speaking of cost, the Thinkpad X1C6 and Surface Book 2 are pretty close to MacBook Pro territory when properly configured (even when factoring in Lenovo's frequent "sales" as the average selling price of an X1C6). I'm in Canada though, so maybe that makes a difference.

So glad there's an "Ignore" feature. If you don't like my opinions on the hardware I've bought and tried, then by all means, please feel free to ignore me too.

 

[Thysanoptera]

What laptop would that be? Sure, there are laptops of comparable size that fit a 1060 or even 1070 inside, at the expense of thermals and battery. None of them offers 20% better CPU though. For that, you need to look at larger gaming laptops.

MSI GS65.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/and-my-next-laptop-is-msi-gs65-rtx2080-max-q.2168171/

1250 Cinebench, 80W GPU, rtx2080 Max-q. 2 mm thicker than MBP, 1.8 kg. Able to run dissipate continually 115W between CPU and GPU. It can be done. Now if MSI can do it just imagine what Apple could do if they tried.

 

[Hater]

I'm stuck in 2013 as far as my current hardware goes (see sig), i'm not sure what to do once my current gen goes out of support.

Won't be for a few years yet at least.

 

[richinaus]

MSI GS65.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/and-my-next-laptop-is-msi-gs65-rtx2080-max-q.2168171/

1250 Cinebench, 80W GPU, rtx2080 Max-q. 2 mm thicker than MBP, 1.8 kg. Able to run dissipate continually 115W between CPU and GPU. It can be done. Now if MSI can do it just imagine what Apple could do if they tried.

specs specs and more specs.

If people are just interested in specs then yes there are better specified PC's.

For myself I prioritise the following :

1. services [store / built in software / OS etc]
2. aesthetic [what it looks and feels like]
3. quality
4. specs

specs are important but I have 3 other qualifications above it. Not one manufacturer can beat Apple on my requirements, hence I made the decision to stay.

I think everyone needs to have their own guidelines of what they actually want, rather than knocking any specific brand, as HP, Dell and Lenovo all make good computers. For me, Apple remains the best choice, based on my needs.

 

[elmarjazz]

Back to the future
Had a refurbished MBP 13” on order and just couldn’t do it. Price, value, problems, but also am not ready to give up MacOS. So I got a less than 1-year old (still has some warranty left) MBP 2015 15” boxed and all, looking mint, only 13 recycles on the battery, 2.8GHz, for $1,000, and will be happy with this till I’m confident in APPLE again. My son is going to be getting a THINKPAD/windows for his first computer because of the situation.

 

[Thysanoptera]

For myself I prioritise the following :

1. services [store / built in software / OS etc]
2. aesthetic [what it looks and feels like]
3. quality
4. specs

I couldn't come up with real life example of a situation where I would use such order of priorities to select one item over another, so I asked my wife. Without hesitation she immediately replied - "choosing a husband". Hmmmm....

 

[leman]

MSI GS65.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/and-my-next-laptop-is-msi-gs65-rtx2080-max-q.2168171/

1250 Cinebench, 80W GPU, rtx2080 Max-q. 2 mm thicker than MBP, 1.8 kg. Able to run dissipate continually 115W between CPU and GPU. It can be done. Now if MSI can do it just imagine what Apple could do if they tried.

Ah, yes, the MSI GS65 is a quite impressive gaming laptop, easily beating all the competition in regards to thermals. You need to be aware of the cost to achieve that though. MSI's trick is a three fan design, and the laptop is literally covered in exhaust ports. The bottom part of the computer is essentially an open mesh for air intake. MSI uses very thin frame to achieve that weight which results in a case that flexes easily and doesn't make very solid impression overall. And of course, being a gaming laptop, it uses a lower-quality old-tech display (albeit overclocked), slow WiFi, als relatively slow SSD, and its battery life is quite lacking, as with any gaming laptop. .

So yes, Apple could achieve similar performance by using thinner metal and covering the laptop in mesh + exhaust ports, but would it make a better machine? The MSI is great for gaming, and it would also make a reasonable work station if you need a fast GPU (e.g. you work with CUDA) — not really suitable for graphical work due to poor display though — but is not something I'd replace my MBP with. I don't think that MSI is a laptop you can work on while traveling or moving from meeting/class to another.

P.S. Also, didn't the guy in the blog say that he repasted CPU and GPU? Thats the point I didn't really get. I'd wait for the notebook check review of the refresh for a more in-depth results.
[doublepost=1549345606][/doublepost]

So then get a 2014 Macbook Pro with nVidia GT 750 (or any other Mac w nVidia card) running Mojave and try do CUDA development using that machine. Good luck.

AFAIK, Nvidia still offers CUDA drivers for download. But why would you want to do CUDA development on a Kepler that became outdated years ago anyway? Macs haven't shipped with Nvidia tech in a while. Its like me complaining that Windows has lack of driers since I can't do Metal 2 development on it...

 

[Steve121178]

The Surface laptop 2 also unfortunately has an iFixit of 0 which is even lower than a 2018 MBP. Microsoft unfortunately seems to be coping the bad parts of Apple without giving you the advantages (iOS integration, BSD Unix based OS).

Who cares? I have 2 years warranty & accidental damage with Microsoft. If it develops a fault, they will fix or replace. Same with my Macs & iOS devices. It's a non-issue.

 

[badsimian]

Who cares? I have 2 years warranty & accidental damage with Microsoft. If it develops a fault, they will fix or replace. Same with my Macs & iOS devices. It's a non-issue.

It is after the warranty period which is the issue. Basically becomes very expensive after that. Part of the value of Macs was in resale value. I don't know if the knock on effect of this gen is lower resale as probably a bit too early. I know I wouldn't ouch one without warranty though - I can't be the only one.

 

[Steve121178]

It is after the warranty period which is the issue. Basically becomes very expensive after that. Part of the value of Macs was in resale value. I don't know if the knock on effect of this gen is lower resale as probably a bit too early. I know I wouldn't ouch one without warranty though - I can't be the only one.

Mac resale was great until about 6 years ago, now the market is flooded with used machines.

I remember selling my 1-2 year old Macs and getting 85% of my money back. That won't ever happen again in the age of disposable tech.

 

[Thysanoptera]

Ah, yes, the MSI GS65 is a quite impressive gaming laptop, easily beating all the competition in regards to thermals. You need to be aware of the cost to achieve that though. MSI's trick is a three fan design, and the laptop is literally covered in exhaust ports. The bottom part of the computer is essentially an open mesh for air intake. MSI uses very thin frame to achieve that weight which results in a case that flexes easily and doesn't make very solid impression overall. And of course, being a gaming laptop, it uses a lower-quality old-tech display (albeit overclocked), slow WiFi, als relatively slow SSD, and its battery life is quite lacking, as with any gaming laptop. .

So yes, Apple could achieve similar performance by using thinner metal and covering the laptop in mesh + exhaust ports, but would it make a better machine? The MSI is great for gaming, and it would also make a reasonable work station if you need a fast GPU (e.g. you work with CUDA) — not really suitable for graphical work due to poor display though — but is not something I'd replace my MBP with. I don't think that MSI is a laptop you can work on while traveling or moving from meeting/class to another.

P.S. Also, didn't the guy in the blog say that he repasted CPU and GPU? Thats the point I didn't really get. I'd wait for the notebook check review of the refresh for a more in-depth results.

Whats wrong with three fans and mesh? I'll take improved air flow over tiny slots every time. Although they could have left some grid, I don't like going from one extreme to another. The flex is rather due to material used and layout of support ribs, I just made a pitstop at Microcenter, they didn't have GS but some other MSI laptop and yeah, they all flex like crazy, even the 17 inch full size gaming behemoths, it was somewhat disheartening to be honest. I felt like I will destroy the thing while just holding it. They supposedly improved this on 2019 GS, we'll see.

• Display, don't care, not a graphics designer, prefer matte FHD due to scaling in Windows and glare on 4k panels, and the one MSI uses is actually a good one.
• WiFi - I dare you to find me a public hotspot in a hotel or airport, that is going to give you 3x speeds, or actually anything higher than good old 802.11g. Besides you can always replace this with another card, I prefer Intel over Killer for stability reasons. Personally I don't understand the craze about all this number of channels etc, is everybody living in a lab or something with a single device connected to AP? I have 40+ WiFi devices listed on DHCP page of my router, 5k sq ft house I can forget about 5GHz completely. I run Cat6 cables everywhere I can, have a mesh of APs connected to them and it still gives me nowhere near the max theoretical throughput. 2x or 3x on laptop WiFi card makes no difference for me.
• SSD - it has 2x m.2 ports, 970 Pro or even Evo is significantly faster than MBP in reads, just a tad slower in writes. And Samsung just released the 'Plus' version. But again, I didn't see much real life difference when transitioning from SATA based SSDs to NVMe in the first place. If I need a fast storage device I create a RAM disk with couple orders of magnitude faster access times than the fastest SSD on the planet, being able to upgrade anytime to 64 GB of RAM will help with that.
• Battery - it has similar battery size as MBP, unlike other gaming rigs, I can make it last similar amount of time, not a problem.
• Repaste - you can order this with custom repaste job done by reseller, with the compound of your choice. That's what the guy did. Costs $50 to $100. I prefer to do it myself if needed.

Effectively, I would give up on the chassis rigidity, but in return get a machine that's a lot faster across the board, is fully user upgradeable to specs beyond what's possible in MBP, and is fully repairable with the use of a screwdriver as opposed to screwdriver combined with soldering station, hot air rework and reflow oven required to touch the MBP. I'll have a look at the 2019, if I'll find that structural integrity is compromised too much - it will go back. But damn, otherwise it is perfect.

 

[leman]

Whats wrong with three fans and mesh?

Nothing wrong per se, but it limits the usability of a laptop somehow (as I mentioned, more difficult to use it on the go, you want a proper desk for this one). Just wanted to make clear that there are obvious tradeoffs — in every case. MSI's goal was to design a lightest and thinnest possible gaming machine with beefy hardware, Apple's goal is making a flexible-use business computer. They both do what they are supposed to do, and there are merits and disadvantages to both designs. My point is that if you value what MBP has to offer (sturdiness, battery life, great mobility), the MSI laptop isn't really a good alternative for it. If of course, what you care the most about is performance, and you were grudgingly buying Macs because they were a bit smaller then the competition, the GS65 could be a great fit.

 

[windowstomac]

1. services [store / built in software / OS etc]
2. aesthetic [what it looks and feels like]
3. quality
4. specs

Interesting, I think I'm more 3, 2, 1, 4 - which puts MacBook Pros with shady keyboards in a bad place because it means they fail on my top two priorities. Doesn't matter how good it looks when keys feel sticky and poor quality...

 

[maflynn]

For myself I prioritise the following :

1. services [store / built in software / OS etc]
2. aesthetic [what it looks and feels like]
3. quality
4. specs

I'd agree, and I do like the look of the MBP, but not when it turns form over function. That is the laptop is too thin they introduce a new keyboard that feels worse and is less durable.

The reason why I left the Mac family, is because #3 primarily with some headaches that are caused from #1. While Apple is rated #1 in service and deservedly so. The process of getting service has been getting worse. Yes, I can go to an apple store and have them handle my repair, but when making an appointment pushes me out 2 weeks, and even then i have to wait 40 minutes just for someone to start the process, that seems a little much.

Apple's repair program for the keyboard also leaves something to be desired, only from the fact that they're fixing the keyboard by replacing it with the same flawed keyboard, meaning it will fail again. My concerns are not out in left field, since we see many people here and elsewhere mention the multiple repairs that they have to endure. This reminds me so much of the struggles people had with the 2011 MBP and the defective GPUs, many of them had multiple repairs. The repair was in affect buying them time, and kicking the can down the road. I did not want to face that in all honesty.

 

[09872738]

AFAIK, Nvidia still offers CUDA drivers for download. But why would you want to do CUDA development on a Kepler that became outdated years ago anyway? Macs haven't shipped with Nvidia tech in a while. Its like me complaining that Windows has lack of driers since I can't do Metal 2 development on it...

Mentioned drivers are High Sierra max, there are no drivers for Mojave. There is no information on why, some say Apple won‘t approve, some say nVidia‘s got no drivers ready. Since there is no official information, neither by Apple nor by nVidia, we don‘t know what is going on.

Your „Metal 2“ comparison is void imo. Apple sold the MBP with the nVidia card. Microsoft never had anything to do with Metal. So it‘s Apple‘s responsibility to at least not block respective drivers; whereas MS has no such responsibility.

Why CUDA on Kepler? Easy: because there is no better option from Apple. I use this machine for dev when on the go; also doing som App development.
Sure, I could switch to a Windows/Linux machine. But can I do iOS dev on that? No. Also, I very much dislike Windows. So for now I am ok with the GT 750 for the lack of a better on; may well be I‘ll have to switch in the future nonetheless

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

Mentioned drivers are High Sierra max, there are no drivers for Mojave. There is no information on why, some say Apple won‘t approve, some say nVidia‘s got no drivers ready. Since there is no official information, neither by Apple nor by nVidia, we don‘t know what is going on.

Your „Metal 2“ comparison is void imo. Apple sold the MBP with the nVidia card. Microsoft never had anything to do with Metal. So it‘s Apple‘s responsibility to at least not block respective drivers; whereas MS has no such responsibility.

Why CUDA on Kepler? Easy: because there is no better option from Apple. I use this machine for dev when on the go; also doing som App development.
Sure, I could switch to a Windows/Linux machine. But can I do iOS dev on that? No. Also, I very much dislike Windows. So for now I am ok with the GT 750 for the lack of a better on; may well be I‘ll have to switch in the future nonetheless

Yes there is information from nVidia:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ards-its-up-to-apple-to-approve-them.2151615/

 

[09872738]

I know there‘s a bunch of statements in forums; however, even though these might stem from nVidia devs these are not official statements.
They are also somewhat contradictory at times

 

[agaskew]

Anyone who thinks Apple builds better quality laptops these days, needs to bite the bullet and watch some Rossman. Anyone who thinks Dell, Microsoft, Lenovo or anyone else does a better job of designing or building - I'm afraid they really don't, and there is a ton of info out there on all the big brands.

Don't like the way the MBPs have gone? Fine, look elsewhere, vote with your wallet, but don't expect there is no possibility of picking up a lemon just because someone else made it

 

[tomscott1988]

Super unlucky or sums this thread up nicely

 

[DCIFRTHS]

Super unlucky or sums this thread up nicely

Great video. Presented rationally, and professionally.

 

[doitdada]

Super unlucky or sums this thread up nicely

Logic board failure

 

[9081094]

Super unlucky or sums this thread up nicely

I had the same experience with my iMac 5K. Terrible service experience 2x.