New 15-Inch MacBook Pro With Kaby Lake and 32GB of Desktop-Class RAM Coming Later This Year

[Aldaris]

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.

My issue is with Apple letting the workstation Mac Pro languish and push the new MacBook Pro as the standard for video editing with their dual raid arrays and 5k's on Thunderbolt 3. That's what Apple is marketing. I argue that it isn't sufficient. Venture into the Mac Pro forums and you'll see there are a lot of Apple customers who are pissed at the lack of attention to the pros.

I'm not advocating the MacBook Pro as the "professional" solution. Apple is with its promotional material.

* I do believe it is important for Apple to offer a strong powerful notebook, but not to replace the Mac Pro which is what is being promoted. The reality is in the future 32 GB RAM will be standard, just like 2 and then 4 and now 8 GB is. Just because it could handle 32 doesn't mean you have to have it, just as the original rMBP was based at 8 and had the upgrade option.

In all of life we don't have to all fit into the same box.

 

[zuiram]

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...

Witty, but misses the point.

I'm talking about a specific segment of the market. You're talking about consumer sales as a whole. Apples and lunchtime fruit baskets. Part of the success of the Apple ecosystem lies with the critical mass effects in content creation and related fields. Those are never going to be the bulk of the market.

As a mere platform of preference, the Mac is seeing competition from newer generation Wintendo boxes. So long as there is critical mass in content creation and the like, the platform will remain competitive. If that segment is neglected, while a major competitor makes it ever more attractive for that segment to migrate away, the critical mass can shift, making Mac an entirely optional platform with little to distinguish itself, and feedback effects can then kill it.

To be clear, there is no Mac killer platform, just intersections of effects that appear neglected and possible futures.
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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!

Would've ended up there sooner or later anyway. Not sure this is a factor.

 

[576316]

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.

Okay I just held my ear very close to my rMBP. All I hear is the very faint whirring of the fan. However, there is a very, very slight monotonous 'buzzing' coming from somewhere. If that's what you're talking about...

 

[ocnitsa]

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.

I agree that people who NEED 32 GBs of RAM don't use a MBP. I also imagine that people who WANT 32 GBs of RAM likely do for a reason. I don't want 32 GBs of RAM.

I think the part about how most people would be fine with a MacBook Air is a little overly reductive...the whole want vs need vs capabilities of a given piece of hardware is a bit obfuscatory...I mean I'd be using it a heck of a lot more for gaming if it was more capable of that. On the other hand it does email and internet well...know what I mean?

 

[zuiram]

Because you also want or need a laptop and having only one computer is more convenient that having to deal with two.

With TB3, it should be feasible to freeze the in-core image of a process and spool it to your future TB3 Mac Pro where it can be thawed out seamlessly. Heck, even TB2 could probably do this reasonably well. Could be a nice feature.

Shutting down the missing-SD-card-slot critics is worth much more to Apple than the $3 saved per machine.

The SD card slot cut is probably the least understandable one. Lots of video and photo hardware still needs it, ranging from cheap cameras to top end models. Most of the adapters are poor quality and end up hanging off another adapter. Many have poor I/O speeds. They're more readily lost unless inconveniently diligent about them, and not terribly wear resistant. When you do lose one, you can't get a decent replacement at a nearby store. Doing it internally allows Apple to do it right, with high quality, and you never lose it.

The USB ports are less of an issue, as cables are readily available now.
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However, there is a very, very slight monotonous 'buzzing' coming from somewhere. If that's what you're talking about...

Could be the one, "buzzing" isn't terribly specific. If memory serves, the sound should be strongest over the Q key. Have a listen in a quiet room without the fans running, maybe. If you're interested. I'm not trying to make a fuss over it, rather noting it's not a problem with the tMBP models (and not noticeable at all on the w/o toucbar version), and noting that the assumption that solid state can't make a sound is false.

It's faint, certainly, but utterly impossible to ignore (for me), especially when I'm concentrating in a quiet room, trying to wrap my head around something difficult. I can tolerate it if I'm not trying to concentrate, but wifey will not allow that machine in the same room as her, being more sensitive to such noises than me.

ETA: Listening for it may not be the best idea, incidentally, if you're one of those people who never stop noticing a dead pixel after you initially spot it. Guessing not, just pointing it out in case.

 

[Cavepainter]

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.

If nobody drops the prices when they remove components, then your earlier argument for saving millions of customers a few bucks by removing SD card capability is invalid.

I see what you're saying however- it is hard to ultimately value new component costs vs old component costs from the outside of the company, but unfortunately Apple did add a premium to this new Pro laptop- to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

 

[dysamoria]

I don't care. I want a new Mac Pro that is an actual pro machine for content creators, with its own Apple-made Retina display, and not a disposable/suicidal envelope of overheating/throttled laptop parts.

Apple think that the majority don't need "truck" computers, and they're right. But, even without being the majority, there's still a market for people that DO need trucks!

What do Apple do? They abandon the truck (Mac Pro, still sitting unchanged for three+ years, at the initial release price) and then they give us a replacement for the laptops they're still pushing updates to yearly (MacBooks):

The iPad Pro doesn't obsolete the truck. It doesn't even obsolete the high-powered MacBook Pro (that Apple refuse to continue making). The iPad Pro obsoletes the thin and low-powered MacBooks. If you're a writer and have to use a tiny and short-traveling keyboard, you might as well use an iPad Pro with attached smart keyboard, instead of using a hot laptop slowly cooking your hands.

There's still a need for the heavy lifters and the current Apple attitude on MacBook Pro construction is not doing it for those that really need trucks. I'd gladly trade "portability" for "reliable powerhouse".

Right now, perhaps (although it depends on what you're doing with it), but if you intend to keep the machine for more than 3 or 4 years, that's going to change. In 2011, 4 GB was plenty for my MacBook Air, it seemed very fast for such a small machine. I rarely came close to hitting memory compression and massive page swapping was a rarity. Now, in 2017, the RAM is frequently maxed out (most of it is already used right during the boot process) and in compression mode, startup takes a lot longer, and swapping things in and out of RAM slows it to a crawl at times (occasionally it will literally lock up for minutes at a time if I have a lot of things open).

That's because Mac OS has been wrecked by all the iOS-integration bloat. Some of the features added are absolutely the right way to go, but the implementation is piss poor and they don't bother focusing on efficiency of software anymore. We desperately need a new Snow Leopard.

I love this forum. Apple takes crap for not releasing updates to its products more frequently. Then, when they do release updates more frequently, they still catch crap as well.
You can't have it both ways guys!
I sometimes wonder if the whiners actually own Macs!

As if both complaints are coming from the same people. You have just invented a straw man argument for two different groups of people.

Rule# 1: Never buy extra RAM from Apple

But Apple have made sure we can't act on your advise by forcing us to buy machines with no RAM slots at all.

 

[Abazigal]

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.

The touchbar strikes me as the perfect example of an "anti-pro" feature. Not every user has all the keyboard shortcuts committed to memory, and I see the touchbar as aiming to bring the benefits of shortcuts to this group of users. Now I can open a new safari tab with the same amount of ease even if I don't know the "cmd + T" function.

Quite in line with the theory of Apple trying to make the 15" MBP more appealing to the mass market.

 

[Larry-K]

Apple think that the majority don't need "truck" computers, and they're right. But, even without being the majority, there's still a market for people that DO need trucks!

What do Apple do? They abandon the truck (Mac Pro, still sitting unchanged for three+ years, at the initial release price) and then they give us a replacement for the laptops they're still pushing updates to yearly (MacBooks):

The iPad Pro doesn't obsolete the truck. It doesn't even obsolete the high-powered MacBook Pro (that Apple refuse to continue making). The iPad Pro obsoletes the thin and low-powered MacBooks. If you're a writer and have to use a tiny and short-traveling keyboard, you might as well use an iPad Pro with attached smart keyboard, instead of using a hot laptop slowly cooking your hands.

There's still a need for the heavy lifters and the current Apple attitude on MacBook Pro construction is not doing it for those that really need trucks. I'd gladly trade "portability" for "reliable powerhouse".

Best selling car in America is a truck.

Bring back the 17" "FatBoy" MacBookPro!

 

[macTW]

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.
3) 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.
4) I said consumers may not understand it.

Ultimately, the flaw with your ridiculous lineup is production. I'll leave the small details you don't seem capable of understanding and focus on that.

It is pure stupidity to make identical laptops with the sole difference being screen size, with such a small difference in size. You should never run a business because you'd run it into the ground with these ideas.

The 12" or 13" would canabalize the 13" or 12" MacBook market. Barely a screen size difference, which leads to meeting the same consumers' demand, is a complete waste of resources.

Having a 14" MacBook Pro to a 15" pro alone is idiotic, for the same similar screen size issue I already said. On top of that, having the 14" be a lesser version of the 15" is as bad as you could come up with. Why would a company try to create a less-spec'd version of a laptop and change the size?? There is ZERO reason. Apple would, as would any company in existence, just make a lesser version of the 15", using the same screen parts in production.

Remember, companies do what profit shows. If there's profit, there's an idea. Your ideas would waste billions to execute and would gain nothing. Differentiated markets is what every company that sells multiple products has. I'm done with your absurd and backless idea.

 

[carlob]

I think most of you fail to realize that kabylake, which was launched last week, is a minimal improvement over skylake (maybe 6% for the i7700k vs i6700k which is currently top of the line) and still does not support LPDDR4. So long for your 32GB.
The bottleneck is Intel not Apple. Apple is doing what is allowed to do given the current processor technology, sure they could use desktop DDR4 but you would end up with less than 5 hours battery life.

 

[Larry-K]

I sometimes wonder if the whiners actually own Macs!

I'm sure you actually meant to say: "Astute, discriminating, long-time, professional Mac Users, with a keen perspective and sense of history".

 

[Daniel Reed]

...sure they [] could use desktop DDR4 but you would end up with less than 5 hours battery life.

Sounds Great to me! I'd buy one, perhaps two.
Heck, my 2011 15" MBP rarely got more then 90mins.

Make the 2017 MBP a pound heavier and I'll definitely get two.
The current MBP is too light and is a liability.
It's dangerously easy to bump off tables!

 

[iop]

How about a 4k laptop? And by 4k I mean its price.

 

[carlob]

Sounds Great to me! I'd buy one.
Heck, my 2011 MBP rarely got more then 90mins.

Make it a pound heavier and I will definitely get one.
The current MBP is too light & a liability - Its dangerously easy to bump it off tables!

That would be very un-apple. They are in the business of making slim, light, elegant and powerful laptops with 10 hours battery life, the latest thunderbolt tech and the most powerful chip on the market. They are not making ugly mammoths with a couple of hours battery life.
Sorry, at the moment you can't also have 32GB. Intel fault. Live with that or buy an acer predator and keep it plugged all the time.

 

[dantroline]

... regarding wastage of good stuff because of 'new technology' like a new, incompatible shaped plug.

Would've ended up there sooner or later anyway. Not sure this is a factor.

Later is better. If rubbish dumps are full of actually broken and worn out stuff then there's no argument - that's just life. I am talking about genuine wastage and inefficiency by planned obsolescence in whatever form it takes, in this case 4 USB-C ports and no backwards compatibility without dongles. People are rightly annoyed at Apple for this for a number of reasons, including poor environmental stewardship.

 

[Pentium]

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.

but it hurts to see the world talking about the new MacBook Pro and you just paid 4300$ for yours lol

 

[Daniel Reed]

That would be very un-apple. They are in the business of making slim, light, elegant and powerful laptops with 10 hours battery life, the latest thunderbolt tech and the most powerful chip on the market. They are not making ugly mammoths with a couple of hours battery life...

That's marketing.

The reality is a MBP used for visual/creative/dev work rarely gets more then 2-3 hours battery life.

Those I know/see (myself included) using a MBP for code/GFX/video, plugs into AC regardless of release year.

Don't take my word for it.

Walk into a coffee shop and count the Apple AC cords in use.
The folks not plugged into AC are almost always MBA users and usually in sales.
For every one person not using AC, there are 5-10 using AC, including 2016 MBP owners.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Call me there's a 17" version.

 

[lowkey]

.

* I do believe it is important for Apple to offer a strong powerful notebook, but not to replace the Mac Pro which is what is being promoted..

Where has Apple promoted the MBP as a replacement for a Mac Pro?

An alternative perhaps. But a quad i7 is never going to replace a 12 core Xeon machine.

I think you are drawing your own false conclusions. I've. Or seen any ad from Apple saying anything remotely like "the MacBook Pro our new Mac Pro replacement". I've seen it advertise the fact it can run dual 5k monitors and edit video. But that's a different think all together.

 

[Appleaker]

Ultimately, the flaw with your ridiculous lineup is production. I'll leave the small details you don't seem capable of understanding and focus on that.

It is pure stupidity to make identical laptops with the sole difference being screen size, with such a small difference in size. You should never run a business because you'd run it into the ground with these ideas.

The 12" or 13" would canabalize the 13" or 12" MacBook market. Barely a screen size difference, which leads to meeting the same consumers' demand, is a complete waste of resources.

Having a 14" MacBook Pro to a 15" pro alone is idiotic, for the same similar screen size issue I already said. On top of that, having the 14" be a lesser version of the 15" is as bad as you could come up with. Why would a company try to create a less-spec'd version of a laptop and change the size?? There is ZERO reason. Apple would, as would any company in existence, just make a lesser version of the 15", using the same screen parts in production.

Remember, companies do what profit shows. If there's profit, there's an idea. Your ideas would waste billions to execute and would gain nothing. Differentiated markets is what every company that sells multiple products has. I'm done with your absurd and backless idea.

As I said, you don't understand a thing about the lineup.
If you had read anything I said you would see that the whole point of the different models is performance, while screen size is secondary and not really important. But you got so triggered by the screen sizes, you didn't listen to the rest. They are not identical laptops. The 13" MacBook could be 14", and the 15" MacBook Pro could be 16" - It doesn't matter because it is irrelevant to my point, which was a reshuffle and improvements to the existing lineup.

I run a very successful business and have done for over 4 years, so your advice is a bit too late. Maybe part of that success is the fact I listen to consumers and consider the market. I am not so fixated on my view that I ignore everything else others have to say without attempting to understand it.

Anyway, it's clear that you will never make the effort to understand the lineup and I'm getting bored. Let's agree to disagree (although we are not in complete disagreement).

 

[tech4all]

I love this forum. Apple takes crap for not releasing updates to its products more frequently. Then, when they do release updates more frequently, they still catch crap as well.
You can't have it both ways guys!
I sometimes wonder if the whiners actually own Macs!

I do. So what's your point?

 

[Count Blah]

The touchbar strikes me as the perfect example of an "anti-pro" feature. Not every user has all the keyboard shortcuts committed to memory, and I see the touchbar as aiming to bring the benefits of shortcuts to this group of users. Now I can open a new safari tab with the same amount of ease even if I don't know the "cmd + T" function.

Quite in line with the theory of Apple trying to make the 15" MBP more appealing to the mass market.

And is a perfect example of Apple alienating the ACTUAL pro users, with the removal of the physical ESC key.

Thanks for helping us prove our point, though you will violently oppose the above statement, no doubt.

 

[Daniel Reed]

Where has Apple promoted the MBP as a replacement for a Mac Pro?

During the "Hello Again" Mac event, the MBP was shown at a desk w/ a $35,000+ RED camera while boisterously announcing, "This is your new workstation".

An alternative perhaps. But a quad i7 is never going to replace a 12 core Xeon machine.

Absolutely, but the 10-core Skylake-X i7 will run circles around the now-four-year-old Ivy Bridge 12-core Xeons Apple still offers (for $1,500 over 2013 OEM costs).

I think you are drawing your own false conclusions. I've. Or seen any ad from Apple saying anything remotely like "the MacBook Pro our new Mac Pro replacement". I've seen it advertise the fact it can run dual 5k monitors and edit video. But that's a different thin[g] all together.

I fail to see the difference between a video editing solution and the market a Mac Pro would aim at. Professional creatives, scientists, extreme hobbyists, and indie artists needing a workstation prefer lots of RAM, CPU cores and big GPUs, regardless of it's for 3D, Video, Simulations, DL, AI, VR, AR development, Music Videos, TV Shows, or feature length movies.

 

[lowkey]

I do. So what's your point?

I think his point is there's too many whiners.