I have an original rMBP and I've not heard a single peep out of the SSD. It's solid state storage, there's nothing in it to make noises? Unless you're sensitive to electronic impulses?
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New 15-Inch MacBook Pro With Kaby Lake and 32GB of Desktop-Class RAM Coming Later This Year
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I have an original rMBP and I've not heard a single peep out of the SSD. It's solid state storage, there's nothing in it to make noises? Unless you're sensitive to electronic impulses?
Nice to know the advice to avoid the first generation of most Apple products still holds. Wish it was a different story, but it is what it is. I know some will come to Apple's defense, but if you're honest, you know this MBP is "incomplete".
And being one of those out in the field, I much prefer the slim design & long battery life as opposed to more RAM. With SSD speeds hitting 2-3 GB/s, it hardly is a huge inconvenience from when we had 0.1GB/s read/write speeds.
We all know this isn't true. Apple does not work this way and they have NEVER worked this way. The new 15" machines will simply be a bump in specs and that is it. Unless for some reason the "significantly redesigned product" is the result of Apple actually listening to the power users out there, culminating in an increase in battery size to help with the addition of 32 GB of RAM, there will be no new designs. Apple never redesigns their product within 1 year of their latest redesign.
You don't seem to understand my lineup.
1) I agree, the 12" MacBook is for modern consumers who are used to iPads and iPhones. The 13" would only be moved there so that there aren't loads of MBPs, with only the 14" and 15" being quad-core machines.
2) Wasn't focus on it. To stop development isn't to discontinue. To stop selling it would be. I am not basing anything from the MacBook Air, in fact I was one of the few saying that there will be no future models, when a lot of people were convinced they would bring out a retina MacBook Air with the same design and ports.
3) No, it's a 1.5" difference. The 15" has a 15.4" screen, while the 13" has a 13.3" screen.
But that's not the point - you are focusing too much on screen size. The reason for the 14" screen would be to make the volume larger without increasing thickness too much, therefore being able to include higher end internals more suitable for professionals. If you wanted you could have the 13" screen with MacBook Air bezels. I said that in my post, a 14" screen without any performance difference is pointless and simply stupid.
4) I said consumers may not understand it. I understand it, along with everyone on this forum, but that does not speak for all 13" MacBook Pro buyers. I'd say that most of us, who do not seem to agree with everything Apple does, would like what I would do if I was running Apple. But you don't know what I would do nor do you know the opinions of all users (and neither do I). Your judgement is based on a lineup you can't get your head around.
So is he claiming their will be a more Pro Pro model? It's rather confusing... and I'm not certain how many people would buy a more pro computer and ultimately more expensive one, over 4 grand isn't expensive enough apparently?
The biggest problem a Pro will encounter
Get a grip. If the biggest criticism you have of the new ports is that you can't plug in an iOS device to charge it, just maybe it's not the right computer for you. However for other users it's much better than previous gens with what it can do – the controller for your static workstation. In fact you need to use less wires than the previous generations, as everything comes to life just by plugging in one cable, rather than 10.
So it's all a matter of perspective, really. It's either the most limited or most expandable MacBook Pro, depending solely on how restricted your way of thinking is.
I understand there is notable performance in the new ports. It seems as though buying a new computer requires new hardware all around to get the aforementioned performance. Which is great if you have 10k to drop.
But, taking something as ubiquitous as USB-A away is a bit annoying when the rest of the ecosystem still uses it as a standard. Further, Apple used to always work with itself at least. Now it is segregating the market of its own products.
That's the question MANY of us have .... but at the same time? I'm quickly seeing the Mac Mini become more of a single-purpose kiosk machine? For example, my office has several of them deployed in conference rooms for dedicated videoconferencing solutions (using the software from www.zoom.us).
In that capacity, there's really no need to have the latest technology in it. About all we try to do is use Minis with at least 8GB of RAM in them and an SSD of some type, just so it dramatically cuts down on reboot times.
I could be wrong, but the trend I've seen in recent years is for people to get away from using desktop computers, except for the high end (or alternately, a used PC purchased at a big discount - often just to run Linux). I think the traditional "draw" of the Mac Mini as a good entry level Mac for people who want to try out OS X has been superseded by systems like the Macbook Air.
In that capacity, there's really no need to have the latest technology in it. About all we try to do is use Minis with at least 8GB of RAM in them and an SSD of some type, just so it dramatically cuts down on reboot times.
I could be wrong, but the trend I've seen in recent years is for people to get away from using desktop computers, except for the high end (or alternately, a used PC purchased at a big discount - often just to run Linux). I think the traditional "draw" of the Mac Mini as a good entry level Mac for people who want to try out OS X has been superseded by systems like the Macbook Air.
Don't be silly (@Impulses).
There's no mechanical parts.
There's plenty of magnetostrictable and/or piezodeformable parts.
For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised if they've got coils in there, too. I'll leave it to Apple, or an EE with an interest in it and the relevant measuring equipment, to track down the offending parts. I'm simply telling you what the end result is, as confirmed by my ears, my wife's ears and my microphones (plural): this noise is real and correlates reproducibly in time and intensity with disk throughput, and is loudest close to where the SSD is found in those models I could find a floorplan (which I searched for after locating the source, not before, being- at the time- curious whether I was losing my mind, as I had the same assumption about SSDs you do).
The dominant components are from 18kHz and up, a range where most of us have significant hearing loss by adulthood, except for a few medical conditions, environmental histories and diligent care, the latter three being applicable to me and the latter two being applicable to my wife. Luck of the draw. Makes it hard to get customer service to take you seriously, too, of course, until you show up with a microphone and show them how the FFT plot responds to a disk benchmark. And ecstatic to find a machine that doesn't have the problem.
There's far more cost there than you realize. It would mean manufacturing cases to include both with and without which in tooling alone is potentially tens of thousands of dollars. It would also mean adjustments to assembly lines which again has huge cost. It would mean changes to packaging and countless other costs.
There's a reason companies don't do this.
Rules to live by!!
If Apple fans learned to avoid 1st gen releases, it might just force apple to release the product we wanted in the first place. I feel for all those who purchased the current release who really needed 32gb.
Glad I held out.
Most companies don't drop prices even when removing item. Car companies don't. Other computer makers don't. TV manufactures don't. It's rare anyone drops their prices with new generations.
When Apple removed the DVD drive they added a larger battery. They've offered other advantages over their previous models without much increase in price. You're also simply assuming the cost of manufacturer is the same no matter what the product. Do you believe that it costs the same to make the aluminum block the current MBP goes in, that it did to make the previous plastic and metal cases? That the lithium-polymer batteries used now, cost the same to manufacturer as the previous lithium-ion or NiMH? Those were all changes that didn't add additional premiums to the cost.
It's still too early for that, If it's gonna be during Q1 or Q2 2017 then hell they screwed their early adopters...
That's not how the world works. If people didn't buy the original iPhone because it lacked 3G and other features, it would have failed. If people don't buy the 2017 Toyota Camry, the 2018, 2019 and 2020 won't all magically have every feature people craved.
This type of thinking is silly.
For many, the current MBP is awesome. It meets their needs and they're enjoying what it has to offer.
I'd be willing to bet less than 1% of all current MBP owners really NEED 32GB of RAM. Want and need are two totally different things. Most of those here WANT rather than need but they'll claim they have some special silly use for it. The truth is that most MBP owners would be just fine with an Air as they just do web browsing, email, word processing, and play music.
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When has Apple released a laptop update that quickly? The soonest will be a mild refresh in Sept or later, possibly announced at WWDC.
Bingo. They knew Apple had gotten complacent, and they knew they had a great product, and they had the courage to trust they had the upper hand, much like Jobs used to do. And, as you say, the balls to launch at the time when it was going to have the greatest impact, win or lose, on both companies. A very focused presentation, and a convincing one. Clearly, this is not the MS we're used to, and the competition has just started for real.
Presumably because the touch bar, though an interesting concept, isn't really all that helpful. Jobs outlined this some time ago, how the keyboard area is something you use by muscle memory. TB is the antithesis of that, being dynamic, visual, obscured by your fingers and lacking any of the tactile guidance you've learned to rely on as a touch typist. (Predictive typing is probably useful for hunt and peck, but the reason we have it on cell phones is to compensate for the lack of a proper keyboard, not because it's inherently fast.)
There is another modality that suits the touch bar, however, which is visual interaction, based on hand-eye coordination. This requires an unobstructed view of the hands and what they're interacting with, such as on a touch screen. It's very useful in some contexts, and very useful to the non-pro segment, as well. But the TB is, again, the antithesis of that, as its visibility is low due to its placement, it offers little real estate to work on, and it's being conceptualized as a keyboard element, as well as cluttered with controls that -do- belong on a keyboard.
I could see enlarging the trackpad further and turning it into a full featured multitouch secondary display. That might have some potential. I suspect a lot of potential. But it would also be more expensive, among other things, and would require a lot of development to mature into something to put on a product. Especially an already expensive premium product that's weighed down with expectations.
If I were in charge of the process that led to the TB, my approach would have been to launch a revised Magic Trackpad, even larger, featuring a high resolution OLED display surface and pencil support, as a seperate product to be used as a testbed for further development, but functional out of the box and incentivized with the pencil. Update some apps for it, throw in useful widgets/dock elements on there, work on polishing the way it interacts with the system, put great APIs over there. Then let that mature until it's ready for prime time and add it to the MBP generation after that, expanding it further to cover the entire area below the keyboard if the cost/benefit allows for it.
'Course, that's just my top-of-my-head naive idea of how it could've been done. Got no experience with this stuff.
Yeah, the SP4 was nice in that regard. And the pen for it, almost as good as the pencil, and with an eraser (my number one request for the pencil, other than being supported on more devices than just the iPad Pro). Frankly, the SP4 was a computer, not just a tablet. True two in one. Would've loved to see it with macOS or iOS as a dual boot option. Except, noisy SSDs are a dealbreaker for me.
Surface is an experiment, and holds its own against finished products, which is promising. Much like how Google Pixel, the first in-house product, went up against serious long term refined competition and didn't get KO'd in the first round. Really stunning. Refined and polished, they will be impressive, and force Apple to step up their own game. Maybe that's what it takes. Hit the wallet, make them hungry again. I dunno.
I'm actually liking the tMBP without touch bar, and am excited about the ports change, except I think they should've kept the SD card (harder to replace and easier to do well internally) and included some legacy ports until the update (by then, the problem will be resolved, and the timeline would've avoided the current situation of every product being sold out due to people switching all at the same time). Maybe not launched with broken HDMI support. Waited to get the full battery capacity in there, rather than rushing for the Q4 sale season. Perhaps a keyboard that won't get me thrown out of the library for being loud. Upgradeable RAM and SSD would've been nice, too, but hey. What was I saying again? Oh, yes. Love it. Not a peep from the SSD. Just adore it.
Reading your rundown of the flaws of the touchbar, as implemented in these laptops, and agreeing - It makes me realize how far off Apple has gotten from their once beloved 'human interface guidlines. The TB, and the interface and clumsy nature of the new apple tv remote are just a couple of examples
of apple making things that may look good on the showroom floor, but totally ignore ease of use.
You know the machine will try its best to use all of the ram? That's how it's designed. There's no point having 16gb of ram with 6 sitting idle.
If the memory pressure is still in the green then you have nothing to worry about.
I haven't bought into it, just seems to be what Apple is pitching, through their own promotional videos and images.
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Would it really be that hard to offer it? Or are we really all stuck in the same anorexic offerings.
Don't get me wrong I am all for having mobility, but when you are sacrificing performance for shaving millimeters off the device, it really is becoming nothing more than a fashion/design statement fit only for a coffee table.
I guess you didn't see the article where Mac sales rose 2.4% and "others" fell 20%. MS wasn't listed as an individual manufacturer so I presume is in other. Hardly the Mac killer your lovely imagination makes out...
Don't get me started on the TV remote. Sadly missed the return window on that one.
That said, I don't think they ignored ease of use with the touch bar. They simply zeroed in on their target market: the consumers. Prosumers are unlikely to make up a significant source of income. Far more money to be made off content consumers than producers and maintainers. It's a smart move. Lots of emojis and all that, almost as good as Gboard. Very visible scrubber with fine step. That will probably be a success.
Heck, I may get one when the standalones arrive, depending on cost and availability of function keys in addition to the bar.
Every laptop design sacrifices something. Apples laptops have always put portability as a priority. The G4 Aluminum PowerBook was the first 1" "thin" laptop and Apple marketed that fact heavily.
The current models are a good balance imo. Quad i7 skylakes, super fast ssd. Double the graphics speed and 4 TB3 ports in a case that is thinner and lighter than the previous model.
There are no signicantly faster mobile chips made by Intel until the 6 core coffee lake comes along.
If you need faster in the mean time then you need a desktop. Or buy a PC workstation "laptop" with desktop components. But expecting Apple to make a mobile workstation is just a vehicle to complain about. They never have. They never will.
The current models are a good balance imo. Quad i7 skylakes, super fast ssd. Double the graphics speed and 4 TB3 ports in a case that is thinner and lighter than the previous model.
There are no signicantly faster mobile chips made by Intel until the 6 core coffee lake comes along.
If you need faster in the mean time then you need a desktop. Or buy a PC workstation "laptop" with desktop components. But expecting Apple to make a mobile workstation is just a vehicle to complain about. They never have. They never will.
The bigger picture is that huge pile of discarded still working cables, drives and other accessories that either overload the local waste dump or if you're lucky are shipped to a third world country somewhere for destitute people to pick through and fight over. Great. Magical even!
This guy gets it.
Thank you!
Nowdays every kid needs a machine with 32gb ram and 5 Gpus because...reasons. Ow and it must be the latest model! If the model is 3 years old then the machine is useless, incapable to work and TOO OLD!
The Consumerism is real.
Actually, yes.
Supporting more than 16GB would require including a seperate chip and using a different type of RAM, which means a longer development cycle and a significant hit to battery life (not from the extra RAM, but from the longer traces, the dedicated controller chip and the less efficient chips used with that solution). On this point, they made the reasonable tradeoff for the CPU they chose to use, and for a majority of customers (that battery life is a factor in choosing Apple).
Since when do the self-styled "pros" get to what features ought to be included in a product and what ought to be left out over the typical average consumer?
There's more than one way to skin a cat. Notice how all this talk about compromise invariably boil down to "it's okay for Apple to compromise in areas I don't care about".
You might be okay with the MBP being as thick and heavy as is, but what about another consumer who happens to prize portability as much as specs? Maybe there is some consumer out there who wants a 15" display for typing but is turned off by the thought of having to lug that beast around?
And if the customer ends up not buying your MacBook Pro because they feel the tradeoffs (namely increased bulk and weight) are not worth it, then I don't think it's a bad thing for Apple to want to redesign their product so as to appeal to a wider consumer base.
With the new 15" MacBook Pro, a user can now get the best of both worlds. They get a 15" laptop with awesome specs that is more portable than ever. 16 gb ram suffices for even heavy lightroom work, and only an extremely small (and apparently very vocal" group of users are going to need more than that (assuming it isn't simply for bragging rights).
USB C ports isn't a professional or consumer-facing feature. It's just Apple being Apple and trying to push its own agenda once in a while and it's going to affect all users (albeit some more than others).
As for battery life and wherever other gripes you have about the product, I take your quote about tradeoffs and throw it back at you. Everything involves tradeoffs. Live with it, just as you advise other people to do.
That's the the Macbook/Macbook Air is for. And what a good % of the "I'm a pro too" crowd could be using, instead of the Macbook Pro.