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Thinking Differently

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 30, 2023
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Was hopeful, as wanted to upgrade, but now disappointed. Pretty much the same old thing, just faster. Will likely sit this product model out. Certainly NOT interested in the product at current feature/cost price points. Am even considering switching.

I do care about weight, but the extremist focus on thinness is misguided. Anyone with basic engineering knows that, all other things being equal, a thinner case is going to bend more easily. That is exactly the idea behind the shape of a structural "I" beam. Would rather have my laptop a bit thicker and less fragile.

Maybe if Apple made it a bit thicker, they could include more reliable, better keyboards? Or maybe an Ethernet jack?

Frankly, I'd take the trade-off of a few mm thicker for better keyboards and built-in ethernet (maybe 10G;-) Not remotely a fan of a gazillion dongles. Maybe in an Air or iPad, but not in a Pro.

Would appreciate the addition of a USB-A type jack. Still have to plug in stuff with USB-A connectors. Again, not a big dongle/adapter fan.

Note: INVZI has a 9-in-1 100W GaN Charger Docking Station Hub, which isn't a terrible work-around for this problem. But it is a bit large, and still a work-around.

A high end MacBook Pro is very expensive. A "loaded" 16" unit can price out to $7,349.00 USD. And thats without the extra software. If one is going to pay that kind of $$$$$, they probably want something that is repairable, maintainable, and upgradable. There was once a time when Apple products were far more repairable, maintainable and upgradable than most Windoze Pee Cees. But current models are not remotely any of those things!!

By the way, of that $7,349.00 price, the extra charge for adding the 8TB of SSD storage is $2,200.00. Go to your favorite search engine, find and price 8TB of storage on the retail market. You will discover just how hefty the "Apple Tax" is. It's even worse when you realize Apple undoubtably buys memory at super high volume discounted wholesale pricing. So Apple probably doesn't pay nearly what you do.

Since memory is now soldered in, any memory problems, even if it is just a single bad bit, are very expensive to repair. Instead of just replacing a memory stick/module, in many cases you now have to replace the complete mother board. Sometime the cost is so high, that you might as well replace the entire computer.

It would be really nice if macOS supported something similar to the Linux BadRAM feature which allows the OS to avoid actually using known bad memory. It would be also be nice if one could just swap out a memory stick, for a new, good one. It would be even nicer, if one Apple supported industry standard replaceable memory modules AND mapping out bad memory.

Free Advice: As soon as you get a new Mac test its memory. If bad, return it immediately for a different unit. Test the memory again just before the warranty expires. Let Apple pay the expensive repair bill for their bad choice, so you don't have to. MemTest86 used to be great for this. However, I don't think MemTest86 is compatible with Apple's very latest products, but it claims to x86 (32/64-bit) or ARM64 based hardware including Windows, and Linux. But not sure if that includes Apple. Otherwise, the free version should be great, unless you want to test multiple units.
 
1. What are you talking about regarding bad bits, is there literally any evidence this is a thing? Please share it, new member.

I think once they go to 512GB memory on the Mac Pro there will probably be some additional error correction but I don’t see anyone reporting problems with the current lot of them.

2. Either this or next year’s MBP will be the last one with the current (thicker) design. If anything, now is the time to buy as it’s a proven chassis, can keep the chips cool quietly, and now has an amazing matte screen option.

3. Macs are expensive as always and the Apple tax on upgrades is high. It’s never changing. Get a desktop that supports TB5 and use an external drive or suck it up.

4. USB-A is over, get an A to C cable, or a dongle, or a dock. I think this is just a troll post. What are you going to do next, complain about the iPhone headphone jack like it’s 2016? Good grief.
 
I think once they go to 512GB memory on the Mac Pro there will probably be some additional error correction but I don’t see anyone reporting problems with the current lot of them.
I agree with most of your points, except this one. Of course nobody is reporting problems when the mechanism to detect and report these problems is missing! Apple should do the right thing and put full end-to-end ECC on all RAM.
 
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I agree with most of your points, except this one. Of course nobody is reporting problems when the mechanism to detect and report these problems is missing! Apple should do the right thing and put full end-to-end ECC on all RAM.
Yep I absolutely agree they should have a more robust implementation, and I think they will adopt it within 2-3 years because once these get that much RAM they will be extremely useful for precision scientific work and the amount of memory will be in the zone where it’s more necessary. I also agree about the tooling, yes, more is better.

Although my post was snarky I am genuinely interested if anyone has seen problems with results being non-deterministic etc. if they should be. It feels like that should have been reported by now but who knows. The only thing I’ve seen is some conspiracy theory posts from years ago about how Apple “doesn’t want you to know” about data corruption.

It wouldn’t shock me if the current M2 Ultras being used in the servers at Apple have some modification but that is totally baseless speculation on my part. I just don’t think they’d deploy them at scale unless they had a solution, either hardware or software, because that’s really where it matters the most, once the numbers get enormous.

Another thing is that assuming there’s a speed penalty with full ECC implementation Apple may want to hit some number with memory bandwidth before they dedicated a portion of that to error correction. My guess it that it’ll be reserved for Ultras first and then trickle down to the Max, assuming the CPUs stay in a similar configuration in the future which is not guaranteed. If they do the “hidra” desktop silicon I bet it will be introduced there.

edit: Apple apparently has some patents around LPDDR ECC implementations, so I definitely think this is coming down the road and may be used internally first with a variant.

Here’s a good thread discussing ECC in another forum: https://techboards.net/threads/lpddr5-and-ecc.4437/
 
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Yep I absolutely agree they should have a more robust implementation, and I think they will adopt it within 2-3 years because once these get that much RAM they will be extremely useful for precision scientific work and the amount of memory will be in the zone where it’s more necessary. I also agree about the tooling, yes, more is better.
The need for ECC has nothing to do with large amounts or RAM or scientific applications. Most people do online banking on their computers or phones.
Although my post was snarky I am genuinely interested if anyone has seen problems with results being non-deterministic etc. if they should be. It feels like that should have been reported by now but who knows. The only thing I’ve seen is some conspiracy theory posts from years ago about how Apple “doesn’t want you to know” about data corruption.
Well, and I'm quite serious when I say that it's hard to report a problem when the "sensor" is missing. Processors used to be prone to overheating, now they measure the temperature in a dozen places and adapt. That time your Mac randomly crashed last week? Could have been buggy software. Could have been a bit flipped in memory. Without ECC we'll never know.

We also don't need a conspiracy theory to know that Apple doesn't care enough about our data. APFS checksums metadata and nothing else. That was a recent and public and deliberate design decision they made. The idea that performance is more important than data integrity would be seen as utterly insane if it hadn't been too common for way too many years.
 
Maybe if Apple made it a bit thicker, they could include more reliable, better keyboards? Or maybe an Ethernet jack?
The lack of an Ethernet jack could be seen as a sign that Apple is better at naming their products "Pro" than actually making them "Pro". Then again people in a "Pro" setup will use a decent USB-C dock that includes Ethernet.
 
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