Done with Macs

[leman]

Very few laptops ship with Polaris because the NVidia 10 series easily beats the AMD chips in both performance and power usage. Almost every windows laptop that is going with a dGPU is going with a NVidia 1050(soon) or 1060 GPU.

The relevant fact here is that 460RX offers more or less the same performance as the GTX 1050. And the mobile Pro 460 is actually a 16 CU version (opposed to the 460RX with is a 14CU version). Which would make the Pro 460 identical or faster than the mobile GTX 1050 (which is not out yet btw).

BTW, very few (basically, none) laptops ship with Polaris simply because Apple has most likely bough out the entire Polaris 11 stock.

The Razer blade released months ago is 1.9 kg and beats the 15" MBP in performance as it has a 1060 inside. It is also smaller than the MBP. Oh and it starts at $1799.

And has a reported battery life of 2-3 hours. Very useful.

 

[altair7]

Like what? Razer blade? 3 hours battery, really? Dell XPS 15? That is certainly a decent "budget" version of the MBP, but the specs are significantly worse. Then there is the new MB Surfacebook, which starts at $2400 or so for a 256GB model. Sorry, I just don't see your point.

The Surface Book starts at $1349 right now which is expensive but justifiable for the features you get. The new performance version starts at $2400 and guess what? That's overpriced!

The Dell XPS is a direct competitor to the MBP. I'm typing this on an XPS 13 right now and it is every bit the equivalent to the MBP.

The Razer Blade's battery life is double what you state at around 6 hours. Please stop spreading misinformation out of your need to justify Apple's decisions.

 

[chriscl]

What's annoying is that with the removal of the 11" MacBook Air, and that the "Classic" MacBook Pro has gone as well, you cannot now buy a MacBook for under £1100 or so, and even that price point gets you a compromised hardware choice.

I have a 2012 cMBP and was looking to this keynote potentially for my next MacBook Pro model.

I upgraded my cMBP to 16GB RAM for £90 (thanks, Crucial!) - can't do that any more with factory-fitted RAM

I upgraded my cMBP to a 500GB SSD for £120 (Crucial again) - the equivalent sized factory option adds over £250 to the cost.

For me, they've just pushed up the prices to such levels that they've now priced a decent chunk of market share out of reach. Maybe that's the plan?

in the UK, a 13" "Touchbar" MBP with 16GB and a 512GB SSD would cost me £1,809.

That's an awful lot of money for a laptop.

Even the "basic" non-touchbar model would cost £1,789 with 16GB and a 512SSD.

That's a frankly outrageous price.

Decisions, decisions. Don't want to have to switch to Windows (I'm also fully embedded in to the Apple ecosystem) but these prices, for what you get?

Sorry, I'm not seeing value there at all.

 

[altair7]

And has a reported battery life of 2-3 hours. Very useful.

It has 6 hours and that's with a higher res screen. The 1080p screen version has a higher bettery life.

I think you are looking at battery life while playing games...

 

[Impatientmac]

But it's not, the previous top end version was not $4k plus .

With the iPhone we got 256 for what was the old price of 128Gb. Do max for max comparison , big jump ....

Comparing Mac configuration to max configuration isn't fair. For one the only difference in a max configured is the CPU which went from 3.1 to 3.3 so yes you are going to pay more for a higher CPU. Secondly, older models of iPhones tend to go down in price after they are no longer the latest model. These MacBook Pro prices had already come down. Third it would make no sense for them to sell old retina MacBook Pro at basically the same price as the newest model. You're suggesting that the highest model of the old be the same price as the highest model of the new version? The only way that would make sense is if they also lowered the price of the old model again.

 

[Tommo66]

Has anyone considered the free OS in this equation ? As part of Microsoft's software as a service model the use of Windows 10 on a PC will allegedly come with a monthly cost which could add to the considerably to the cost of a Windows PC over the life of the system.

 

[0488568]

If I was not personally tied to the apple ecosystem I would jump ship. Try out something like ubuntu desktop and if is still not ironed out I would just go win10.

 

[Stingray454]

+1 to what people said above. I was also looking at XPS 13/15 or similar, honestly it's a MUCH better deal. There are more competitors too. Take for example the Razer Blade:
Quad core i7, 2.6 ghz
Nvidia GTX 1060, 6 GB
14" 3200x1800 IGZO multitouch display
Thunderbolt 3
1 TB PCI-e SSD
16GB 2133MHz memory
USB 3, HDMI 2, TB3 connectivity
Size and weight around that of the MBP (in between 13 and 15")
And best of all, they sell an external GPU case tailor made for it, to dock the computer to a desktop gpu for gaming / serious work
Price fully specced: $2699

The eGPU case also works for the XPS, I should add. I wanted something like that since thunderbolt was introduced. My main issue with the Blade though it that the trackpad has two physical buttons at the bottom for left/right click. What is this, 2005?

Anyway, I think it should be pretty easy to have OS X boot in VMWare or similar with plenty of resources (almost all) assigned to it. You can egen assign physical hardware to a guest OS, so it should be able to run on a GPU as well. The update at least has me seriously looking into these other models.

 

[David58117]

Has anyone considered the free OS in this equation ? As part of Microsoft's software as a service model the use of Windows 10 on a PC will allegedly come with a monthly cost which could add to the considerably to the cost of a Windows PC over the life of the system.

Isn't that just enterprise..? For security and features that apply to them..not so much consumers..

 

[Tommo66]

Isn't that just enterprise..? For security and features that apply to them..not so much consumers..

Maybe to start with, but Microsoft software licensing is one of the more tricky dark arts. MS not known for giving stuff away for free, could see it being done on their hardware but not others.

 

[Easttime]

You do realize there are cheaper macs than top-spec' don't, latest release ones, right...? Still more expensive than competition, but not the absurdity you seem to think.

I was thinking like you until I saw what "hello again" means. But the mid-range late 2016 MacBook, while it would be perfectly fine for me for a couple of years, will not give me the future proof peace of mind that I need. I need a five-year laptop.

 

[macfacts]

It's almost as if Apple know that they've taken so long to significantly update the MBP that they know there's a captive market out there desperate to upgrade and have priced it accordingly?

I think Apple raised the prices on the laptops so they would not cannibalize the iPad pro sales.

 

[\-V-/]

I think Apple raised the prices on the laptops so they would not cannibalize the iPad pro sales.

I think they raised the prices cuz they just felt like it.

 

[Easttime]

Has anyone considered the free OS in this equation ? As part of Microsoft's software as a service model the use of Windows 10 on a PC will allegedly come with a monthly cost which could add to the considerably to the cost of a Windows PC over the life of the system.

Now there's a consideration.

 

[facemeat]

I love apples laptops, but man, here in Sweden the 13 inch starts at 2300$, the 15 at 3000$ :/
Tax and import obviously bumps it up, but damn, it's still really pricey, esp if you want more storage/ram.

 

[Euro_Guy]

Like what? Razer blade? 3 hours battery, really? Dell XPS 15? That is certainly a decent "budget" version of the MBP, but the specs are significantly worse. Then there is the new MB Surfacebook, which starts at $2400 or so for a 256GB model. Sorry, I just don't see your point.

Exactly how do you think the specs of the XPS 15 are "significantly worse". It has 4k screen, 100% Adobe RGB, near-borderless screen, 16 or 32 GB of RAM as you choose, or to upgrade later, Skylake processors.

For the XPS 13, Dell is actually now starting to offer Kaby Lake, just a few weeks before Apple moved to Skylake.

 

[leman]

It has 6 hours and that's with a higher res screen. The 1080p screen version has a higher bettery life.

I am talkIng about real life experience of Blade owners. There are enough discussions on the internet and so far the max I have found is in the ballpark of 4 hours with light browsing. That's absolutely useless for a professional user

 

[meduzarija]

Original Retina Mac prices came down by $200+ in a year. Next year I think we'll see some price adjustments.

Changing $1400 for 2TB of SSD is really pushing it.

I thought about that the same way! But the thing is, at the time Retina Macs were revealed Retina screen was the one that was pushing price. And it was justifiable cause you were getting best screen on the damn market, and something that was ahead of it's time in terms of quality compared to rest of the competition. What is driving prices now? I look at the non Touch bar model and can't wrap my head around it. Anyway I maxed out (except hard drive) 13" 9 months ago, and I think I am going to stick with it for at least 2-3 years, prices should come down on new models until then, and plus it may have some improvements.

 

[Stingray454]

I love apples laptops, but man, here in Sweden the 13 inch starts at 2300$, the 15 at 3000$ :/
Tax and import obviously bumps it up, but damn, it's still really pricey, esp if you want more storage/ram.

This. I'm in Sweden too, and the top model (15", 2.9GHz, 2 TB, 460 GPU) is 48 000 SEK which at the current exchange rate converts to $5300 US. No. Just no.

 

[facemeat]

This. I'm in Sweden too, and the top model (15", 2.9GHz, 2 TB, 460 GPU) is 48 000 SEK which at the current exchange rate converts to $5300 US. No. Just no.

Heh, sold my rMBP 13 last week, had only a 128gb ssd, want more. Expected the base model to retail for maybe 14k SEK top? Leaning towards buying some 2013-15 model now instead with some beefed up specs instead.

 

[Stingray454]

Heh, sold my rMBP 13 last week, had only a 128gb ssd, want more. Expected the base model to retail for maybe 14k SEK top? Leaning towards buying some 2013-15 model now instead with some beefed up specs instead.

I'm currently on a 2012 iMac, which I like very much - I use it for work and it performs perfectly. I would however like to have more portability, ie use a laptop that docks into a separate keyboard, mouse, screen and such for office work, but still portable to enough to bring on travels / meetings / whatever. But to replace the iMac completely I'd need 1TB+ of space and a minimum of 16GB memory. So with these prices I would have to pick an older MBP instead, which feels like a downgrade .

Looks like I'd have to go with something like an updated iMac (if we'll ever see one) + a Macbook for travel, but it's far from ideal, and also pretty expensive. If a decent windows computer turns up (and there are some candidates) I just might jump ship.

 

[Ma2k5]

I agree with OP.

From the Skylake thread:

Guys I wanted to ask, how have you managed to convince yourself to stick to Apple. I am looking for an eco-system for the long term and there are a few things Apple have done recently that have made me think, I need to move away.

I am not trying to hate, if anything, looking for reassurance/convincing that these Macbook Pro's are worth purchasing?

Now let's remember, usually when things get updated yearly or every 2 years etc, a spec bump is expected for it to be worth purchasing at whatever price point. So I don't believe a spec bump justifies huge price increases. If you bought a 4th generation i7 3 years ago at £100 for example, I don't expect a 7th generation i7 to suddenly cost £250 because it is x times more powerful than the 4th generation - because of the power of time. That 4th generation is now worth maybe £35.

Now let me try evaluate without being biased what Apple has done in the past year.

On the iPhone:
- They have no longer kept to their 2 year major update cycle, the iPhone 7 really was just an iPhone 6S+
- Removal of headphone jack, I could somewhat get with, if not for the fact they didn't do it across all their new products (note new macbooks).
- Still lightning, why not USB-C like the 12" rMB

On the 12" Macbook:
- The Keyboard on 12" rMB has serious quality issues in design (many threads about this)
- Why no HD camera, I am sure there are thinner laptops out there which hav at least 720p

iPad
- The donkey method of how you charge the iPad pencil. Also, why not an elegant attachment solution like the Surface?

On iCloud:
- Too little space for free
- iCloud mail still somewhat sluggish compared to my Outlook/Gmail (which is funny since my Outlook has ads!)

Now the new Macs
- No way to connect flagship Macbook to iPhone without buying a cable. This makes me question Apple as a company to support, like what kind of flawed philosophy is this.
- 25% battery capacity hit on both 15 and 13" laptops. Sorry but just saying "But skylake efficiency" does not justify this kind of battery drop. Skylake laptops are not anything new and they don't increase your battery life by 25%. If anything, I wanted the new ones not to EQUAL the old ones, but to exceed them. This has been the biggest downside to get over for me, if the battery capacity was kept the same (99.5kwh/75khw instead of 75khw/54khw for 15"/13" respectively), I would have already purchased one I think, possibly..
- Somehow the 13" has a better iGPU now than the 15".
- Both have really old CPU's, making their release more in line with coming out 6 months+ ago
- The screen is "Meh", just talking about brightness and wider gamut is fodder. 4k resolution or 100% Adobe RGB/HDR is what I was really hoping for. I could live without touch screen, don't want that.
- Touch Bar looks so cool, except when you realise, you don't want to be staring at your keyboard area when using a MacBook.
- Maximum 16GB Ram.
- Keyboard has had some bad reviews already.
- Why do we have a touch swimming pool instead of a touch pad? What was wrong with it before?
- The prices, oh the prices. I can afford it, but do I want to buy old tech at that ridiculous price?
- Weaker GPU option than expected, and to boot, you have to upgrade to the Pro 460, when we was expecting a RX460 as default. Funny thing is, no one was THAT happy expecting the RX460 in the first place!
- no iGPU version of 15", combined with the 25% battery capacity hit, say goodbye to your battery life.
- The new Air replacement, not only being MUCH more expensive, it will have probably half the battery life! Half!
- The complete lack of upgrades for the Mac Pro, Mini, iMac etc - kick in the face to developers who drive their iOS app business.
- Intead of a new Thunderbolt display, they ended up advertising one from LG. Not what I was hoping for.

I wish I kept my 2015 rMB 15", that was actually good value in my opinion. These laptops, I feel like if I buy them, I am already using outdated tech and I cannot say for sure if they will last the 4/5 years I wanted with the CPU and RAM limitations.

I know a lot of you have used Apple for a long time and are hoping this will all be fine, but sorry to say, give it a month or so, I can almost guarantee people will feel that Apple went a step back with these. The previous generation MacBooks were best in class when they came out, these are not. I am even worried about benchmarks coming out showing how some of the newer ones are weaker, or so minutely different that you are better off with the old generation.

Next year will be my switch away from Apple, they have not done anything interesting for a long time now. I actually liked my Apple watch so will be sad to see that go, but I don't really mind parting with my iPhone 7. I was also actually happy with Apple Music, but I heard I can use that on Android so I'll keep that going.

 

[maflynn]

I don't want to say I'm done with Apple, but I think in a sense, Apple is done with me. I've always prescribed by the philosophy that I pick the right tool for the job, I don't buy just because of the fruit logo, though I've been a loyal customer because I got a great computer, albeit for a premium price.

Now, I see that I'm getting less for more money, and that bothers me. I like the touchbar, I think that can be something that would be useful, though I don't think that should have been the major upgrade to the MBP, it should have played a backup roll to more pronounced changes - just my $.02

We get a thinner laptop, with less ports, a current CPU, and the touchbar, oh and a keyboard, I'm not really jazzed up about. All for over 2400 for the 15" and close to 2k for the 13"

I'd say Apple is positioning the MBP that is counter to my needs at a price point, I'm simply unwilling to pay.

I have a 2012 MBP, I think I'll be looking to replace the battery so it will last me longer, and I have a Surface Book laptop that I got for around 1200 which has everything I need, such as a SD card port and a good keyboard

 

[leman]

Exactly how do you think the specs of the XPS 15 are "significantly worse". It has 4k screen, 100% Adobe RGB, near-borderless screen, 16 or 32 GB of RAM as you choose, or to upgrade later, Skylake processors.

I admit that I was wrong! I didn't realise that XPS 15 had a display with 100% adobe RGB coverage! It indeed makes it around $800 cheaper for a comparable MBP 15". The MBP has a slight edge in mobility and performance (marginally faster CPU and faster SSD), but not enough to really justify the price increase. I admit that XPS looks very nice in comparison for someone who looks for a premium laptop.

For the XPS 13, Dell is actually now starting to offer Kaby Lake, just a few weeks before Apple moved to Skylake.

Yes, but thats a low-powered (15W) models. They are slower than the Skylake used for the 13" MBP.
[doublepost=1477651158][/doublepost]

I'd say Apple is positioning the MBP that is counter to my needs at a price point, I'm simply unwilling to pay.

Threre is a lot of sense to what you are saying in your post, and I tend to agree with you (even though I am still buying a bunch of new MBPs — because we can afford it). Just a minor comment here: the prices will go down over time. Its the same as what happened to the retina Mac.

 

[maflynn]

Just a minor comment here: the prices will go down over time. Its the same as what happened to the retina Mac.

I'm less optimistic about seeing the price being reduced, I don't think its a coincidence that Apple reported shrinking profits a couple of days ago, and we now see more expensive Macs.

I'm sure the new MBP will be very popular and help stave off the bleeding, but that doesn't mean I'll use my limited funds for it.