So let's see, my 4 year old Mac Mini is nearly twice as fast. And this "Pro" machine is no faster than a 6.5 year old iMac? It's a whopping 25% faster than my 4.5 year old 1.8Ghz Air. I'm not going to spend $1500 to get a barely usable, obsolete laptop that at best is less than half the speed of my 5K iMac that is 2 years old! Maybe I should buy a refurb newer Air while they still sell laptops with SD card slots. I can't imagine buying a laptop without one.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New 13-Inch MacBook Pro Sans Touch Bar is Marginally Faster But More Efficient Than Last Year's Base Model
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
And let's keep in mind that the 15" MBP is thicker than the 13". The last time I recall them doing this was when they had a 17" that was thicker than the 13 and 15" models.
Knowing that we can infer that Apple's focus here was getting 10 hours of usable battery life from the machine with a given performance while including all these updated and/or new components, otherwise they would have made it thinner to match the 13" MBP and then allowed it to have 2(?) hours less battery.
Except it actually is if the market lets you get away with it.
Last edited:
But Apple won't release higher end machines. We know that because they are only interested in the thin little aluminum bodies that can get blown off the picnic table by a strong breeze.
This has been fun reading 
. SO much hate for apple xD.
I get why no one owning a MBPr from 2014-2015 would want to upgrade, but what would you bunch recommend to a person buying their first Macbook.
My base requirements are a portable laptop with good build quality and battery life, and adequately powered. I wont be playing games (duh) but will be doing some video editing (mostly 1080p) and ofcourse programming (Masters in Computer Science Student). Since most of my assignments are run on clusters I dont really need much computing power for that either
I am thinking of getting The MBPr Without Touch. Here in Netherlands it will cost me 1590 Euro after the student discount for the baseline model (gotta hate how expensive laptop's get in Europe).
My other alternative was Dell XPS 13 9650, which surprisingly also cost 1510 Euro (windows 10, 7th gen i5 and 256 GB SSD, non touch FHD).
With MBPr i get better screen, better build quality (purely personal preference but i do prefer the aluminum over carbon fiber) Better SSD , Better Integrated Graphics and of course Mac OS.
Dell XPS 13 gives me better ports and better CPU
Though reading all this, it makes met think maybe I should opt for MBPr 2015. The base model with 256GB SSD would cost me 1530 Euro, so its hardly cheaper.
From Benchmarks results I think, the performance is good enough for some one new to opt for the 2016 version. It is better on single core than the base model, and on multiple core its almost as good as i7 version. And I have seen some youtubers (Austin Evans for example) run the bench marks with actually higher values.
So I dont get why people would rather prefer buying the 2015 model, as when you bump up the SSD to 256 GB, the price difference shrinks to almost nothing, and benchmarks show it performs better than the 2015 model. Yes you get less ports but that can be solved from a single hub that costs like 35 dollar.
Ok so my post turned more from a question to a statement, but I really want to hear people, why would they rather opt for the 2015 base model, and would they prefer the Dell XPS 13 (considering the EU prices i have mentioned above. I get why in US you would opt for XPS 13 as it would cost like 300$ less)
. SO much hate for apple xD. I get why no one owning a MBPr from 2014-2015 would want to upgrade, but what would you bunch recommend to a person buying their first Macbook.
My base requirements are a portable laptop with good build quality and battery life, and adequately powered. I wont be playing games (duh) but will be doing some video editing (mostly 1080p) and ofcourse programming (Masters in Computer Science Student). Since most of my assignments are run on clusters I dont really need much computing power for that either
I am thinking of getting The MBPr Without Touch. Here in Netherlands it will cost me 1590 Euro after the student discount for the baseline model (gotta hate how expensive laptop's get in Europe).
My other alternative was Dell XPS 13 9650, which surprisingly also cost 1510 Euro (windows 10, 7th gen i5 and 256 GB SSD, non touch FHD).
With MBPr i get better screen, better build quality (purely personal preference but i do prefer the aluminum over carbon fiber) Better SSD , Better Integrated Graphics and of course Mac OS.
Dell XPS 13 gives me better ports and better CPU
Though reading all this, it makes met think maybe I should opt for MBPr 2015. The base model with 256GB SSD would cost me 1530 Euro, so its hardly cheaper.
From Benchmarks results I think, the performance is good enough for some one new to opt for the 2016 version. It is better on single core than the base model, and on multiple core its almost as good as i7 version. And I have seen some youtubers (Austin Evans for example) run the bench marks with actually higher values.
So I dont get why people would rather prefer buying the 2015 model, as when you bump up the SSD to 256 GB, the price difference shrinks to almost nothing, and benchmarks show it performs better than the 2015 model. Yes you get less ports but that can be solved from a single hub that costs like 35 dollar.
Ok so my post turned more from a question to a statement, but I really want to hear people, why would they rather opt for the 2015 base model, and would they prefer the Dell XPS 13 (considering the EU prices i have mentioned above. I get why in US you would opt for XPS 13 as it would cost like 300$ less)
I find it rather sad because outside of the lack of ports, the keyboard and trackpad I hate, and that it doesn't run Mavericks, the baseline 13" Pro is basically the MacBook (Air) I've always wanted. They finally trashed the wedge design, added a black bezel, 16GB RAM, a retina display, Skylake, and low-power graphics that can probably actually power it, while (likely) maintaining most of the power efficiency. So close...
I dream of that.
Sooo... it's 7% faster then a computer from nearly 2 years ago, is 13" and in the UK costs £1449. I can buy the Alienware 15" model with the Nvidia 1060 GPU with 8GB of GDDR 5 video RAM and a Intel i5 and 1 terabyte spinning hard drive and 8GB system ram both of which I can upgrade myself, all for £1399..... and that's the rrp from Alienware.
Yeap says it all.
Yeap says it all.
In my opinion not worth adding cost and weight for that luxury. And the casual user is just using that laptop a few hours per day, right? So they probably don't have to charge more often than every couple of days even if the laptop just has 10 hour life.
[doublepost=1477945321][/doublepost]
Wait, have you used the keyboard and trackpad on the new Macbook Pro?
Some people should buy it then, But it does not work for me. They need to offer faster processor and more ram in the same design. If that kills battery life, then let me choose since I could care less about batter life and would gladly buy a laptop without a battery if they offered it. Or if they are still stuck on this battery thing then offer a bigger package with bigger battery.
Heck if they offered a Mini that was not so crippled, I would put that in my backpack when I travel. But a mini is not even worth it any more.
Not true on the dongles. Lightning to USB 3 exists as a standalone cable from Apple. We're just changing standards. Don't lose your mind.
And I think Linus from Linus Tech Tips gave the perfect response to the new Macbook Pro's. His stance was that these are no longer "Pro" machines. They arent bad machines and a lot of consumers will like them, but in 2016 you can not really call a machine pro that has max RAM of 16GB. Professionals need powerful machines, not lighter. And apple has moved from offering machines for Professionals to offering lighter and thinner machines.
Pro line up no longer seems to be "Professional Grade Laptops", they are more ultra portable laptops now
Pro line up no longer seems to be "Professional Grade Laptops", they are more ultra portable laptops now
The new 15"MacBook Pro hasn't been released so there has been no tests done by third parties but if you watch the keynote you will see it is faster than the model it is replacing. Am I wrong?
I agree that the goal for Apple is too make money, but this is an odd situation where they really didn't have to innovate this time to make it thinner... they used the latest Intel to get an automatic reduction in power, they reduced the size of the battery significantly, and they removed all the guts needed to have various IO ports.
They are no longer trying to hide that it's a money grab since they believe people will still buy it. Isn't this what happened with the first iPhone. It was something like $600 to start and in two months they dropped the price to $400 and gave all early adopters a $200 refund. I feel like this may happen here cause a lot of internet chatter is showing that people are not spending that kind of money for something that is labeled is "Pro", is about the same level of capability as the MB Air, which is not "Pro". Just an interesting phenomenon happening here.
I remember when I bought my late 2007 MBP in the beginning of 2008. I was waiting for that moment for over a year just to save enough money.
I absolutely love this laptop (I'm still typing this post on it). In the first couple of years I awaited every single software update with anticipation because I knew the update would improve performance noticeably. Since the starts of Mavericks it has just gone downhill.
When Tim Cook came into action, a lot of talk was going around that this was going to be the end of Apple as we know it. I also believed this and although I love to be right, in this case it saddens me. I hope he resigns as quickly as possible or the new campus will be a perfect scene for some horror movie or zombie apocalypse in a few years and Apple will make history as how a company that was once so great, got too much of an ego and destroyed itself.
I hope enough people will shout their voice so they can get off their pedestal and realize they're on the wrong path. But in this case, I think the money has too much of an influence...
Goodbye Apple and goodbye dear old trusty Macbook Pro. You have served me well, you deserve a laptop that is a true and deserved follow up to you, unfortunately it will not be one from Apple.
I absolutely love this laptop (I'm still typing this post on it). In the first couple of years I awaited every single software update with anticipation because I knew the update would improve performance noticeably. Since the starts of Mavericks it has just gone downhill.
When Tim Cook came into action, a lot of talk was going around that this was going to be the end of Apple as we know it. I also believed this and although I love to be right, in this case it saddens me. I hope he resigns as quickly as possible or the new campus will be a perfect scene for some horror movie or zombie apocalypse in a few years and Apple will make history as how a company that was once so great, got too much of an ego and destroyed itself.
I hope enough people will shout their voice so they can get off their pedestal and realize they're on the wrong path. But in this case, I think the money has too much of an influence...
Goodbye Apple and goodbye dear old trusty Macbook Pro. You have served me well, you deserve a laptop that is a true and deserved follow up to you, unfortunately it will not be one from Apple.
Apple updated form and function. A faster processing is irrelevant for most of what is to be done on these machines. If you equate updates only by the speed of your processor, then go visit dell.
You don't see people buying Toyota's and complaining that the new models don't go faster than than last years. It's a mindset. But yeah too pricey.
You don't see people buying Toyota's and complaining that the new models don't go faster than than last years. It's a mindset. But yeah too pricey.
According to the chart (MB Pro 2016 versus MB Air 2015):
6970 / 6561 = 1.062
So the new MB Pro 6.2% faster. As an engineer, I would say "Far far faster" is not quantifiable, but the way many people refer to speed differences would probably use "slightly faster". I'm not trying to cause controversy, but just trying to put it in perspective.
This is an easy test and I have been posting real world benchmarks and tests on the Mac Pro forum for over a year to test the latest hardware upgrades for a Mac or PC workstation.
We have tested SATA 2, 3 and PCIE SSDs. In all tests we saw almost no difference going from the slowest to the fastest unless your work was capable of utilising the extra bandwidth. Photoshop and Lightroom saw no real world improvement upgrading from a SATA2 SSD to anything newer. CPU and RAM mattered most.
GPU helped to a degree in Photoshop but that didn't mean a GTX 980 was any better than a GT 120 in real world terms.
Final Cut saw benefits from AMD GPUs but not Nvidia. If handling a lot of RAW 4K data then there were benefits to using PCIE based storage but there were also diminishing returns. More and more faster SSDs did not result in even better performance because most video editing apps play video back from a lower bit rate cache rendering in the background.
For Premiere and Media Encoder the biggest way to spread them up was using the Windows versions. On the same Mac Pro these Adobe apps were up to four times slower at rendering...purely on the CPUs! This one shocked all of us.
The word "Pro" is just a marketing term. There are many different professions in the world which means there are many different types of professionals. I've a feeling this machine appeals to a lot more professionals than you think.
I will search out your posts and read up.
In my experience, I have seen significant differences between slower SSD and GPUs on my personal system with encoding long videos, as well as batch processing 2000+ photos.
I could have another anomaly, however overall it would be hard to see where else the speed came from. Since I am due to replace this system's main board and processor (Haswell), I am curious what your findings are in the Mac Pro forum and will take a look.
No, because 1) that's not the topic, and 2) that's why the MBA still gets sold. Eventually, the MacBook Escape's price point will go down to $1099-ish, killing off the MBA in the process.
