Do you agree with this? (Make MBP thick again)

[LogicalApex]

MBP should be thicker with all the ports.

MacBook Pros aren’t true workstation laptops so it is fine IMHO for them to focus on portable power.

The biggest problem I see for Mac professionals is a weak desktop lineup. The Mac Pro needs a refresh and the Mac lineup needs powerful and affordable workstations.

The ideal flow is a professional grade laptop for medium duty while away from the desk and a real workstation to abuse with the heavy lifting. Where space, weight, power, and heat are all minor concerns.

Apple needs to fix their desktop lineup. The Mac mini shouldn’t be their core offering there.

 

[PeterJP]

I strongly disagree. There seems to be the feeling in these forums that because Apple built a thinner laptop, it now breaks. That's not the case. They have a problematic keyboard design, but there is no law of physics that dictates that thinner keyboards will automatically fail.

Also about the cooling. When using a Vega with an external screen (forcing the laptop to use the dGPU), the Vega stays cooler than 560X. Why? Beter cooling system in the laptop than before.

The problem is that many here are looking at things the wrong way around. Making the laptop thicker won't automatically fix everything. Apple should first fix the problems. If that happens to make the laptop thicker, then I'm sure Apple will find a way to make it thinner again. Did you know that most prototypes of laptops start as a big fat bulky desktop setup? Well, every manufacturer slims them down. Apple just pushes the limits more.

As for what Apple needs to fix: keyboard and T2 reliability. In the rumored 16” version, I'd also like to see RAM Slots and an M.2 for an extra SSD. But none of these things are related to thickness as the LG Gram does have a RAM slot and an M.2 one.

 

[Chancha]

I strongly disagree. There seems to be the feeling in these forums that because Apple built a thinner laptop, it now breaks. That's not the case. They have a problematic keyboard design, but there is no law of physics that dictates that thinner keyboards will automatically fail.

Asking Apple to go back to thickness is with the assumption that they cannot fix the issue that were introduced by them going thin. And this is a sound conjecture judging by their recent track records.

The MacBook Pros are supposed to be tools for, well, pros. They shouldn't be some experimental test bed to see how thin Apple could go before problems surface. If and only if they do get it right with thin + performance in the same chassis, then they can roll it out.

 

[iGobbleoff]

The Pro name should come with a Pro size. Make it a touch thicker, get rid of the keyboard and make the Touch Bar an option, not mandatory. The extra thickness will also help with cooling, a better keyboard, and a bigger battery, because it is a Pro after all. And hell, while you’re at it, throw some ports back on it. That’s a Pro, not an Air with a better CPU and GPU

 

[Queen6]

Hardware aimed at professional use function should be prioritised simple as that, thicker or thinner. Right now Apple simply isn't getting it right, resulting in far too many compromises & issues, hence why many professionals with higher needs are dropping the MBP...

Q-6

 

[smetvid]

I'm not entirely sure every MBP user is as power hungry as the OP thinks. There are a ton of MBP users who are perfectly fine with the performance of the MBP and can't use a MB or the MBA due to those being significantly under powered.

I would also like as much performance as possible but I think Apple does a really good job balancing user experience and performance. What kind of market share would there be for a thicker MBP? Part of why the 17" MBP went away is it just didn't sell very well for Apple. Market and sales data can kind of tell you exactly where the priorities are for most MBP users. They want power and portability balanced as much as possible. So why it would be cool to have a 17" MBP again with twice the thickness to suck every last once of turbo speed from a i9 I just don't think it would be a big seller.

What exactly is it about the 2018 MBP that is held back? I edit video, develop mobile apps and do 3D animation although not nearly as much as I used to. I still have a 2011 17" MBP that is feeling its age but the 2015 MBP I had at work could do all of those things extremely well. My new job provided me a 2014 MBP which also seems to be very capable of doing what I need it to do. I can also tell you I really hate hauling around my 2011 17" MBP vs the 2014 15" MBP I use at work due to the size and weight. It really does make a huge difference and even if they both performed the same or magically my 17" was faster I would still likely prefer to haul around the 15".

portable computers are supposed to be exactly that. That is why we still have desktops and workstation class computers. As tempting as it might be to think a laptop is a desktop replacement that will likely never be the case. They get very close today and when focused on video projects from start to finish I see FCPX on a MBP get jobs done faster than Adobe Premiere on a beefy decked out desktop PC. I don't blame Apple for the crappier performance of programs like Adobe Premiere on the MBP because thats on Adobe for writing bloated software. Adobe likes t oracle software design by throwing megahertz at the problem. Thats all well and good but it forces users to constantly be spec chasers. In my experience most Mac users are focused on tasks or daily activities and if the experience feels satisfying. I rarely hear of a Mac user feeling held back and thats from working at a company with a ton of graphic designers, UX designers and software developers. I used to teach at a college as well and none of my students were focused on specs or benchmarks. I doubt any of them even knew what that stuff was.

I hate to say it but those wanting a thick MBP and want to suck a few extra percentage of benchmark performance out of a MBP are the extreme yet vocal minority.

I'm not saying I wouldn't welcome the change but as one who is already annoyed at the size and weight of the 2011 17" I doubt I would accept a significant increase in size and weight. I also doubt it would make a huge impact on day to day activities anyway. I along with many MBP users rarely ever push the CPU and GPU to even cause the fans to kick in.

 

[technano]

As an Macbook collector, I'm now in possession of 4 macbook. My daily macbook is a MBP 15 2015. I just got a MBP 17 2010.

Wow boy, the thickness is real. However, if the 2010 MBP felt much much sturdier as compared to my 2015 and without saying, it should felt sturidier as compared to 2016-2019 MBP.

I would say, returning back to 2015's would be a good depth.

 

[PeterJP]

Asking Apple to go back to thickness is with the assumption that they cannot fix the issue that were introduced by them going thin. And this is a sound conjecture judging by their recent track records.

The MacBook Pros are supposed to be tools for, well, pros. They shouldn't be some experimental test bed to see how thin Apple could go before problems surface. If and only if they do get it right with thin + performance in the same chassis, then they can roll it out.

I can see that many here make this assumption, but I disagree with it. Other manufacturers make thin computers that don't have the problems that Apple currently has. Apple just has had a spell of technical problems with specific components, just like any manufacturer has every so often. I don't agree that it is all due to the fact that they put it in a thinner chassis. If others can do it successfully, then Apple will figure it out eventually as well.

I don't see the MBP as a test bed for thinness. The new macbook is there for that reason. Before that, it was the MBA. Both are much more extreme in design than the MBP.

 

[leman]

I am always for lighter and easier to use, but there is a limit where you have to start sacrificing one thing at the expense of another. And I think that Apple has chosen wrong one. People who buy MacBook Pro need power and versatility at first.

First of all, the MacBook Pro was always conceived as a thin and light laptop that packs as much power as possible into as portable enclosure as possible. Second, what exactly did Apple sacrifice? They still use same-class hardware in their current thin chassis as they did in the older, thicker chassis, and the Vega GPUs they currently offer are in fact the fastest in their power bracket. As far as flexibility goes, not many laptops can compete with the MBP, with its fastest-in-class WiFi and 4 TB3 with a combined bandwidth of 16x PCI-3.0 lanes.

Third and finally, what exactly do you guys expect? In order to fit hardware in that will truly make a difference, you'd need to increase the TDP of the laptop by 50-60 watts at least. It's not something you can do by just slightly increasing the form factor. You'd have to rework the cooling system completely, most likely abandoning the side vent intake design, resulting in a laptop that cannot be used on the go, has piss poor battery life and in general trades flexibility for performance. Just like every large gaming or workstation laptop out there.

Users who prefer more portability than power, shall look at other options, such as Air, and plain MacBook.

And what about users who prefer operability and power and are perfectly serviced by the current 15" MBP? I don't want to trade 30% of weight and volume for a measly 5% increase in performance. And I don't want my flexible laptop to become one of those bricks that are unusable outside of a stationary work station.

If Apple decides to introduce a niche larger, more powerful desktop replacement laptop that sacrifices mobility for sustained performance, that's absolutely fine with me. However, if that means that my beloved 15" is getting butchered, I'd be absolutely furious. At any rate, doing something like this would be directly agains what Apple stands for and would completely throw away their design philosophy and continuity.

 

[maflynn]

I strongly disagree. There seems to be the feeling in these forums that because Apple built a thinner laptop, it now breaks. That's not the case. They have a problematic keyboard design, but there is no law of physics that dictates that thinner keyboards will automatically fail.

Apple made a thinner laptop and in doing so they had to go with an unproven (and soon to be unreliable) keyboard design. Because they went thinner the laptop has thermal issues, especially at the higher end i9 laptop. Because its thinner we have less port selection.

The thinness is the root of the issues with design of the MBP. I agree, thin in of itself is not bad, but there is a case of diminishing returns and the sacrifices made in the name of thinness has caused problems for MBP owners.

 

[leman]

Apple doesn't "wish" for anything. Corporations don't have wishes.

Apple is known for having a strong vision for computer design which has been consistently followed by them for the last 15 years. It's this vision that made them change the computer market as we know it — be it by popularising the concept of ULV CPUs, or retina displays or many other things they did. So yes, they certainly have "wishes" in this regard. They don't just go by whats "popular". They do what they think will be "better". Whether their vision alignes with the vision of the user base or parts thereof is a different question, obviously.

 

[StellarVixen]

First of all, the MacBook Pro was always conceived as a thin and light laptop that packs as much power as possible into as portable enclosure as possible. Second, what exactly did Apple sacrifice? They still use same-class hardware in their current thin chassis as they did in the older, thicker chassis, and the Vega GPUs they currently offer are in fact the fastest in their power bracket. As far as flexibility goes, not many laptops can compete with the MBP, with its fastest-in-class WiFi and 4 TB3 with a combined bandwidth of 16x PCI-3.0 lanes.

Third and finally, what exactly do you guys expect? In order to fit hardware in that will truly make a difference, you'd need to increase the TDP of the laptop by 50-60 watts at least. It's not something you can do by just slightly increasing the form factor. You'd have to rework the cooling system completely, most likely abandoning the side vent intake design, resulting in a laptop that cannot be used on the go, has piss poor battery life and in general trades flexibility for performance. Just like every large gaming or workstation laptop out there.



And what about users who prefer operability and power and are perfectly serviced by the current 15" MBP? I don't want to trade 30% of weight and volume for a measly 5% increase in performance. And I don't want my flexible laptop to become one of those bricks that are unusable outside of a stationary work station.

If Apple decides to introduce a niche larger, more powerful desktop replacement laptop that sacrifices mobility for sustained performance, that's absolutely fine with me. However, if that means that my beloved 15" is getting butchered, I'd be absolutely furious. At any rate, doing something like this would be directly agains what Apple stands for and would completely throw away their design philosophy and continuity.

Five percent? It is way more than 5%. All tests show that MBP with i9 throttles heavily due to inadequate thermals. It is way more than 5 percent hit. And you can bake pancakes on it whenever you do something that stresses the CPU.

 

[maflynn]

And what about users who prefer operability and power and are perfectly serviced by the current 15" MBP? I don't want to trade 30% of weight and volume for a measly 5% increase in performance. And I don't want my flexible laptop to become one of those bricks that are unusable outside of a stationary work station.

My laptop is a scosh thicker then the MBP and yet it has USB-C, USB-A, Card reader, HDMI, Ethernet punch-out. The added thickness allows the ram, battery and storage to be replaced.

My "thick" laptop runs a heck of a lot cooler and doesn't have a keyboard that requires a repair program and it only weighs 4.06 lbs (1.8 kg) vs. MBP's 4.02lbs (1.83 kg).

It is by no means a stationary workstation

 

[chad_has_a_mac]

The way I see it, if this thin trend continues in the Pro line of macbooks, Apple is going to inevitably converge on a bit of product ambiguity. I would argue that they already have, especially with the introduction of the new macbook Air model refresh.

It's apparent to me that the Air and Pro line are iteratively becoming the same product after each generational refresh. The new Air is now equipped with a retina display, and dimensions on the newest Air now closely match the dimensions of the Pro models as it were in 2015 while still being ever so slightly thicker than the Pro at its thickest point.

The MacBook product line in 2015 looked a bit like this:

MacBook - Ultra-Ultrabook in lightweight, size, and portability
MacBook Air - Ultrabook in lightweight, size, and portability
MacBook Pro - Power User Pro-level notebook

The vanilla MacBook's main selling point and appeal was its ultra-ultrabook portability and retina display. Drawbacks: Much less powerful, limited ports.

The MacBook Air's main selling point and appeal was its ultrabook portability, battery life, and price point. Drawbacks: Slightly less powerful, no beautiful retina display.

The MacBook Pro's main selling point was portability, battery life, powerful hardware, more ports, etc. Drawbacks: price point.

The current MacBook product line (Q1 2019)

There are some problems for the product line as a whole, since all the products are effectively competing over the same features. The vanilla MacBook is largely unchanged. The MacBook Air is now equipped with a retina display, but the entry price is higher. The MacBook Air is now only $100 less than the base 13" Pro. The only difference is slightly less hardware power. There is no longer a substantial difference in size due to the taper design of the Air in relation to the 13" Pro. The biggest difference in size is only felt ergonomically. The advantage in portability due to size+weight discrepancy is negligible. The MacBook Air, as it was in the state of the product line in 2015 is slightly thicker at the thickest point than the Pro. Technically, the Pro can fit into a smaller enclosure.

Now that the Air has "caught up" with the Pro model in its latest refresh, what separates them now? Hardware, touch bar option, an ever-so-slightly tapered chassis and a 1/4 lb. With a less powerful processor, the Air also enjoys longer battery life (on paper). If we're considering base model to base model, it's a measly $100 difference. With how close they are now, if this trend continues one might reasonably conclude that the next refresh of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro will result in the exact same product.

What gives?

Customer feedback.

The Pro model gets smaller and more powerful, and the Air model gets more expensive and powerful while matching more features of the Pro. It is clear to me that Apple may have a bit of a disconnect in the department overseeing product development. There are obvious and glaring issues with increasingly more powerful hardware in an increasingly smaller chassis. Currently, the best product on the lineup is hands down the MacBook Air. Apple is simply trying to do too much. To quote the wisdom of my father, you can't shove 10lbs of **** into a 5lb bag. To quote one of my favorite best one-liners ever in cinema from the Blade film, "Some motherf***ers are always trying to ice skate uphill." Why try to do-it-all for every product in your lineup? It doesn't make sense.

Solution:
Pro model
1) Give the power users what they want--More powerful hardware that is respectable for a professional-grade mobile workstation.
2) Do what Apple does best and design that want with the sexiest, slimmest possible chassis and features while respecting the technical limitations that is out of your control in regards to utilizing the most powerful hardware available (Edit: i.e., respect thermal headroom limitations on chassis design). Separate your product line by drawing a line and make the Pro line specific for a professional-grade mobile workstation.

Air model
1) Give the non-power users what they want--The slimmest and sexiest chassis, long battery life, a beautiful display and nominal port expansion for peripheral connectivity.
2) Take your current 13" MacBook Air chassis and scale it to a 15" MacBook Air model.

Now, power users and professionals have a reliable platform option for their needs in the Pro lineup and others have an alternative option for a larger, slimmer MacBook Air in a 15" version. These users don't need the beefy hardware professionals do. There's a clear market here, why aren't you adapting the product line to simply target it instead of converging on a one-size-fits-all solution that makes tradeoffs on the most important use cases for each type of consumer? That is shoddy product management.

 

[StellarVixen]

1) Give the power users what they want--More powerful hardware that is respectable for a professional-grade mobile workstation.
2) Do what Apple does best and design that want with the sexiest, slimmest possible chassis and features while respecting the technical limitations that is out of your control in regards to utilizing the most powerful hardware available. Separate your product line by drawing a line and make the Pro line specific for a professional-grade mobile workstation.

It already has powerful hardware, which is constrained by form factor. Is there more powerful mobile CPU than i9? No, currently no.


The only thing it's missing is GPU. I see it in every comparison, GPUs from Nvidia, like GTX 1070, 1080 destroy the Vega 20 inside MBP.

 

[chad_has_a_mac]

It already has powerful hardware, which is constrained by form factor. Is there more powerful mobile CPU than i9? No, currently no.


The only thing it's missing is GPU. I see it in every comparison, GPUs from Nvidia, like GTX 1080 destroy the Vega 20 inside MBP.

Are you saying the current MacBook Pro chassis is optimal to handle the thermal limits of the mobile i9 processor? Edit--AND a more powerful GPU?

 

[StellarVixen]

Are you saying the current MacBook Pro chassis is optimal to handle the thermal limits of the mobile i9 processor? Edit--AND a more powerful GPU?

which is constrained by form factor

I think it is comprehensible enough.

 

[leman]

Five percent? It is way more than 5%. All tests show that MBP with i9 throttles heavily due to inadequate thermals. It is way more than 5 percent hit.

I happen to use an i9 MBP for work. It performs well within its advertised spec, running steady 0.4-0.5 Ghz above its base frequency in sustained full-core workloads.

I get 1092 points running Cinebench CPU multi core and 183 in Cinebench CPU single core. That is using a flawed benchmark setup, with multiple apps running and under OS X (never benched it in Windows). This is within 5% of Dell XPS, a laptop thats 10% larger in volume and also uses an open-bottom vent design for cooling. The multi-core performance also within 30% of multi-threaded performance of large 17" laptops like Aorus X9 and MSI Titan that more than over there times larger and more than 2 times heavier. The single-core performance is actually identical to Aorus and 10% below the MSI Titan. Thats the laptop that has desktop-class cooling and MSI has boasted how it can cool down the CPU from 120Watts.

The point is that you, like most people, are falling into the trap of Intel's marketing. The i9 is a CPU that strictly speaking should not exist. Look at laptops like MSI Titan — it is only able to pull out 30% performance by running the CPU at 2-3 times its advertised TDP!!! Essentially, you only see this performance increase if you run it as a desktop CPU. Which is unsustainable and frankly, ridiculous.

Where the i9 does make a difference in a laptop, is its great single-core boost. Which is the reason why I got it. Since most of the workflows I care about are bursts of 1-2 seconds of CPU activity.
[doublepost=1552475275][/doublepost]

The only thing it's missing is GPU. I see it in every comparison, GPUs from Nvidia, like GTX 1070, 1080 destroy the Vega 20 inside MBP.

Of course they do. They have 2-3 times the power consumption At the same time Vega 20 outperforms any GPU with similar power consumption by a healthy margin.

 

[MBAir2010]

Make
Macbooks
Thick
Again!

we need hats, t-shirts and bumper sticks to promote this ideology!

 

[Queen6]

Five percent? It is way more than 5%. All tests show that MBP with i9 throttles heavily due to inadequate thermals. It is way more than 5 percent hit.

5% LOL, i9 in MBP is just a marketing gimmick, bigger numbers for bar talk. There's notebooks with the base 2.2 i7 8750H that are way more performant...

Apple can do as it wants, equally if it want's professional's on the platform it better get it's act together, as it's fast becoming a joke. Apple needs to get back to having a more differentiated computing line up, not multiple variations of the MacBook Air. Others are producing notebooks that are not flawed by design, or massively larger, offering a balance of usability and portability.

As I've said before "I've never see so many drop the platform" this is not people that hate Apple, it's professional engineers and designers who have been with the Mac for years if not decade's they have simply had enough...

Q-6

 

[MBAir2010]

well i need to purchase a new laptop this month, i could care less about thickness.
my concern is the processor speed and size because i'm stuck with what i select.

 

[PeterJP]

My laptop is a scosh thicker then the MBP and yet it has USB-C, USB-A, Card reader, HDMI, Ethernet punch-out. The added thickness allows the ram, battery and storage to be replaced.

It's not because it's thicker that you get those ports and replaceable RAM/storage. It's because Lenovo decided the laptop should have that.

For example, the Huawei Matebook 13" is about as thin as the Macbook Pro. It offers only USB-C, but the RAM is upgradable.
Another example, the MSI PS43 14" is about as thin again. It offers USB-A and USB-C and both the SSD and the RAM are upgradable.

It's not the thinness that causes the Macbook to have its selection of ports or non-replaceable RAM/SSD. It's because Apple decides this, despite the fact that it's technically possible to fit it into the chassis. As is clearly demonstrated by other laptops in the market. That leads me to think that, even if Apple would make a chassis that is thicker, you would still not gain other ports or upgradeability. So, in the end, you get thickness with very few of the advantages. Probably better thermals, but nothing more. For me, that's not worth it. I wouldn't mind trading in 2mm extra for RAM slots and an extra M.2 slot next to the boot drive, but not just for better thermals. And because Apple will (most likely) never add upgradeability, thicker makes no sense except for the vocal 5% mentioned above.

 

[maflynn]

I get 1092 points running Cinebench CPU multi core

My thick stationary workstation ThinkPad X1E (which is an i7 8850H) is getting 1243 in cinebench. Math isn't my strong suit, but I'd say my i7 is faster then your i9 by more then 5% This points back to Apple painting themselves into a corner by being so obsessed with thinness that it affects performance, thermals, and as mentioned components (ports, and what not).

 

[chad_has_a_mac]

I think it is comprehensible enough.

If we can't agree that the chassis is objectively, unquestionably unfit to nominally handle the thermal headroom of the most powerful mobile i9 processor, then I don't think a discussion can take place. We simply live in two different realities. There are numerous data sources online testing the thermal efficiency of the 2018 MacBook Pro 15 inch with both the i9 and the i7-8750H. I personally own the 2018 15" with the i7-8750H using it for professional work, and while performing tasks with heavy processor loads I will enable an app that disables turbo boost on the CPU completely to attempt to mitigate (not prevent) obnoxious fan speed noise (6000+ RPM) while I am working as much as possible. Without the turbo boost disabled, the system caps the turbo boost frequency and ramps the fans to maintain ~97-98 degree C temp on the CPU. Further, under full load (all 6 cores) the turbo boost's thermal ceiling is 2.4 GHz. That is only 200 MHz higher than the base clock of 2.2 GHz. Mind you, the i7-8750H is capable of turbo boosting to 3.9 MHz on all 6 cores provided sufficient cooling keeps the CPU from throttling turboboost to keep itself under TMax (100 degrees Celsius). I would be glad to post screenshots.

 

[Queen6]

It's not because it's thicker that you get those ports and replaceable RAM/storage. It's because Lenovo decided the laptop should have that.

For example, the Huawei Matebook 13" is about as thin as the Macbook Pro. It offers only USB-C, but the RAM is upgradable.
Another example, the MSI PS43 14" is about as thin again. It offers USB-A and USB-C and both the SSD and the RAM are upgradable.

It's not the thinness that causes the Macbook to have its selection of ports or non-replaceable RAM/SSD. It's because Apple decides this, despite the fact that it's technically possible to fit it into the chassis. As is clearly demonstrated by other laptops in the market. That leads me to think that, even if Apple would make a chassis that is thicker, you would still not gain other ports or upgradeability. So, in the end, you get thickness with very few of the advantages. Probably better thermals, but nothing more. For me, that's not worth it. I wouldn't mind trading in 2mm extra for RAM slots and an extra M.2 slot next to the boot drive, but not just for better thermals. And because Apple will (most likely) never add upgradeability, thicker makes no sense except for the vocal 5% mentioned above.

Very likely Apple does this to reduce manufacturing cost and force in-house upgrades with far higher margins nothing more complex. Should Apple produce a 16" MBP with a thicker chassis to allow for better thermals, you can be assured RAM & SSD will be soldered on the board for the very same reasons…

Q-6