New MacBook Pros Max Out at 16GB RAM Due to Battery Life Concerns

[The Mercurian]

How many people have an existing laptop with 32GB of RAM? Just wondering. From the amount of complaints, sounds like majority here have existing laptops with 32GB of RAM, and thus looking for a new laptop with the same feature.

Nope, actually I do want to know. And if you were actually using 32GB of RAM, you would have a detailed answer like Polymorphic that also responded to my question with exact usage scenarios instead of just being defensive and calling people names.

Again, users that actually used that much RAM can detailed down their scenarios, just like the user I mentioned. And again, that's what I'm curious about. Sounds like you are complaining just because, and then you end up only calling others names. So I guess it is difficult for you to have a discussion without resorting to calling names.

Anyway, why stop at 32GB then? Dell Precision 7000 can go up to 64GB. If you complain about future proofing and know the kind of usage that demand that huge amount of RAM, you would've wanted more. But you only stop t 32GB without even being able to describe any specific scenarios. But let's start calling names instead.

Just a comparison, Surface Pros and Surface Books are also maxed at 16GB RAM, and they are targeted towards Pro as well.

So I don't have 32GB RAM in my laptop - because at the time I bought it the only real option for a laptop with 32GB RAM were specialised machines by small companies I never heard costing lots of money for volcano proof, briefcase sized laptops. I do alot of complicated statistics and I travel often - I don't need a volcano proof bulky object - I need to be able to use it on an airplane seat. Sometimes I make models with tens of thousands variables in them - and that needs CPU speed and lots of RAM. So I got the MBP with 16GB RAM as the best non-32GB option at the time. However because I do sometimes need over 16GB RAM for certain tasks - some of the software I use does not play well with swap space - if you hit the RAM limit it can crash - and you might not notice for 24hrs because only then do you know it is not completing its task. So I then had to separately purchase a second hand Dell PC which I upgraded to 32GB RAM. This gets me out of a jam but its not an elegant solution, because setting up and managing two systems is time-consuming and makes for a bad work-flow. I would get more done if the laptop had 32GB. The second point is - even for those times that I don't absolutely need 32GB - i.e. 16GB can just about do the job - then a 32GB machine would be still be quicker than a 16GB machine because RAM is quicker than swap space even in these days of fast SSDs (or have we all forgotten this).

So I want a 32GB machine to replace both my 16GB MBP and the desktop. I would have liked it to be an MBP. I wil probably be a Dell XPS since they have no problem making a laptop with 32GB (I dont' care that the battery live is 5 hours in the 32GB version - in my experience a MBP under load only gets 5 hours also)

Edit: If you think my usage case is unusual -> anyone doing bioinformatics, genetics, big data, physics, statistics, maths, economics, computer science could easily have similar needs. So you can add those tasks to the ones you've already been told about that either need or would benefit from a 32GB MBP

 

[rickyipcw]

Am I the only one who think the late-2016 razer blade is a better buy?

 

[Wolfram66]

So the most RAM you can get in the 15" MacBook Pro has stayed the same for 6 years ! Wow so thats why market share is declining, genius.

 

[darkandlong]

Why? For the VERY few people who will buy it? Im pretty sure Apple has a pretty good R&D department and they know the vast majority of people are never going to need more than 16GB (hell, most people dont even need 8GB), so why spend all that money on a niche model thats going to sit on shelves? People who think a company should meet their every wish and demand are quite comical. There are other options for people who need an 32GB of RAM, go forth and buy it and stop complaining in here, no one cares.

This is such rubbish. A large proportion of people, if not the majority of people who buy this for professional reasons will need that RAM. If not today then one or two years down the line. For fanboys and casual users like yourself it isn't an issue. You have money to spend and you like having the latest, most expensive model. You don't need extra RAM because the hardest you'll push it is watching Game of Thrones episodes with Quicktime. That's fine, but stop claiming to speak for the majority.

 

[shaunp]

how about you tone it down a bit, nobody is wrong. we responded to specific cases. nobody is stating absolutes.

LOL - tone it down!! Those comments were said in jest as a response to people saying that Dell, etc had better support than Apple. Saying they were 'wrong' was kinda tongue in cheek as I was really saying 'dude, it's actually better than you'd hoped for". I was simply agreeing with their point of view, and people were stating absolutes - you do know what the competing products are don't you?, this is why people were stating absolutes.

Perhaps learn to understand the context of a message before telling someone to tone it down.

 

[Workerbee Redux]

That's a load of ******** they are spewing there.

The i7 6700 is capable of driving 64GB RAM. The RAM controller is built into the CPU, so what kind of "memory system that consumes much more power" would there be to design and include, apart from a couple of lanes and maybe some driver chips?

Apart from that, the CPU could use low-power DDR3 RAM which cuts down on power consumption, because it can use lower voltages. Or DDR4, which is also less power-hungry.

I bet that anyone with a reflowing station could replace the chips in the MBP with 32GB and it would work, right out of the box and with absolutely minor impact on battery life, if any. Sad I don't have access to one any more.

As a software developer, I am constantly pushing my 16GB RAM, running an IDE, a VM or a couple of Docker containers, a browser with lots of tabs and a Tomcat application server in parallel. There is simply no way 16GB would last me more than another year before becoming a major burden.

It's a sad anniversary for me - 25y ago, I bought a IIsi with a LaserWriter and portrait monitor as my first mac. Unless the RAM in the MBP is exchangeble, this year will also be the year I switch to Ubuntu on a DELL XPS 15 with its gorgeous 4K display and 32GB RAM. Maybe I can hackintosh it, but I think my time with Apple is up.

Thanks Tim, thanks Phil for prioritizing planned obsolescence and the race to the thinnest laptop over needs of a relatively small but loyal customer group.

 

[sofila]

You're in a pretty unique position to TEST Phil's nonsense, I mean technical answer. If you happen to have 2x8GB sticks (16GB) and a KillAWatt you could measure the power consumption of your NUC performing a basic "benchmark" and expose the delta of the power draw between them. The LENGTH of the test is less material to the difference in power draw between them; otherwise the "battery" (total energy available) is relative. If your NUC draws Y Watts with 16GB and Z Watts with 32, the difference between Y and Z would answer the Question. If Y/Z is greater than 80% (which I'd bet it is) than Schiller is full of *****. That would mean that a 10hr test on 16GB would yield >8hr on 32GB, and I don't think too many "Pros" would lose sleep over that.

For the record, this was the same nonsense that Apple spouted about the iPhone 6/+ with its 1GB of RAM. Funny how that turned out… the iPhone 6s/s+ shipped with 2GB and the iPhone 7 with 2GB and 7+ with 3GB! And yet NOBODY is complaining that the iPhone 7+ has half the battery life of the 6s+, nor the 6s half that of the 6. It was all nonsense. Yes, RAM uses power, the more RAM, the more power consumed. However USING RAM consumes power too, so the actual benchmark itself—how much it hits the RAM and how much RAM it hits—influences battery life. Finally, the CPU, GPU, SSD, LCD & backlight, keyboard backlight… these are ALL things that MUNCH power. To say that doubling RAM somehow disproportionately gobbles MUCH MORE power is absurd. (Then again, we should all have come to expect such nonsense from Phil the Schill.) So I'd love to see sofila run such a test with similar hardware (the NUC –IS– similar) and see what comes of it. Somebody will, and I'd bet a beer Apple is ********ting the community. Which is a risky proposition, considering, in this case, "Pros" inherently include engineers who know how to disprove such bullpucky.

i'd love to be helpful, but while I could have a Killawatt by the hand, I don't have same specced sticks 2x8. Some iFixit or similar will come along and surely provide a measured response.
Both you and I and a few others in here know that 99% of Phil's speech is totally BS, but he's not talking to us.

 

[racingbull]

so they have power to feed that stupid led bar but not keep 32GB of RAM running?

what idiots are running apple

LoL: straight to the point. )

 

[asiga]

The funny part of this conversation is how many people think they "need" 32GB of RAM... but are probably really only needing 8GB.

Man, do I really need to upload an Activity Monitor screenshot showing that my 32GB system does go into memory swapping when I do serious work?
[doublepost=1477741077][/doublepost]

Hahahaha using a picture of an explosion to lead stories of these new machines is perfect.

He is saying that they will have to redesign the laptop to ever fit >16GB in it.

Which means 3-5 years from now.

There is no way they are not doing this on purpose.

They are milking the last of the loyal for the few remaining years prior to the EOL of MacOS.

They will show amazing margins on these things but falling demand -- exactly what they need to get permission from shareholders to pull the pin.

The narrative will be "iOS can do what 95% of users need. iOS has massive adoption. iOS is the future. The old Desktop OS from 2001 is from an obsolete paradigm and is getting expensive to maintain. We think the market is telling us to focus on the future, not the past."

Which is horse puckey of course.

How sad, and how true. As sad as true. I still remember the unboxing moment of my 20'' G5 iMac, or my late-2010 MBA. I maxed them up, and the specs were higher than PC competitors (man, even the late-2010 MBA: I maxed it with 4GB and 256GB SSD --top specs for the 2010 year if we exclude Alienware dinosaur monsters).

Now make yourself this question: Would this new MBP has these specs if the iOS <> MacOS market size was the opposite? The point here is not that you must go where money is. Steve found money going in directions opposite to the crowd. Because if you invest more money in something (eg: iOS), it will obviously tend to grow, but it doesn't mean success. If you build a road wider, you'll attract more cars, so you may believe "my decision was right, the road needed to be wider", just until you realize you changed the city in a wrong way. But then you'll probably won't have the option to undo the damage.

 

[Workerbee Redux]

So, you think DDR4 is the answer?

Then explain why the similarly-speced (but DDR4-based) Dell XPS 15 only gets FIVE HOURS of battery life.

Maybe because of its 56Wh battery, where the old MBP had 99Wh and the new ones 75 or something like that? In the high-end config with the 84Wh battery, Dell includes a touch-4K display which eats up the capacity increase. Or it could be the relatively powerful, but also 60W GeForce GTX 960M.

 

[gnipgnop]

16GB of RAM is perfectly fine for pro applications. You're not really going to find any current pro apps where 16GB RAM doesn't fall into the 'recommended' range:

Photoshop- 2GB base, 8GB recommended
Final Cut Pro- 4GB base, 8GB recommended for 4k
AutoCAD- 3GB base, 4GB or higher recommended
Pro Tools- 8GB base, 16GB or higher recommended
Maya- 8GB base, 16GB or higher recommended
[doublepost=1477742697][/doublepost]

This is such rubbish. A large proportion of people, if not the majority of people who buy this for professional reasons will need that RAM.

Large proportion? Probably not. The developers of the most commonly used pro apps certainly don't target people with 32GB of RAM as their primary market. More like 8GB to 16GB.

 

[Appleaker]

The card was probably too thick to fit AND thy probably wanted to sell bigger storage instead of letting people continue to use Micro SDXC as cheap internal storage..

If they didn't want people to upgrade the storage then they wouldn't have made the storage user replaceable.
[doublepost=1477744044][/doublepost]

Schiller's answer: 16GB is 'AMAZING'

Just like Craig Federighi said 2 Thunderbolt ports is "a ton of I/O".

 

[Zea74]

Yes, and they will charge 1000 dollar extra for it.
[doublepost=1477728687][/doublepost]

Completely correct, most people also don't need cars with more than 200 Bhp, lets call Ferrari and Lamborghini right now!!!!

Makes me think - that Apple Car will probably not go faster than 100km/h as most people don't go any faster than that... will save battery life...

 

[Wowereit]

Good answer. 99% of all users value battery life over masses of unnecessary RAM that macOS really doesn't need. I'm glad Apple remains focused on the important things.

Because Apple would offer a 32 GB model only and you would have no way to, I don't know, just not buy RAM you don't need?

 

[The Mercurian]

16GB of RAM is perfectly fine for pro applications. You're not really going to find any current pro apps where 16GB RAM doesn't fall into the 'recommended' range:

Photoshop- 2GB base, 8GB recommended
Final Cut Pro- 4GB base, 8GB recommended for 4k
AutoCAD- 3GB base, 4GB or higher recommended
Pro Tools- 8GB base, 16GB or higher recommended
Maya- 8GB base, 16GB or higher recommended
[doublepost=1477742697][/doublepost]

Large proportion? Probably not. The developers of the most commonly used pro apps certainly don't target people with 32GB of RAM as their primary market. More like 8GB to 16GB.

I wasn't sure if you were being ironic or not - its hard to tell these days the way the world has gone - bue seemingly you are being serious.

You do understand what "16GB or higher recommended" means ? The program can and will use more than 16GB and it will do better with more RAM. Also read the thread plenty of people have posted their reasons for needing more RAM. Also, as a pro user (whatever that is) who needs more than 32GB ram - I've never used any of the programs you mention and not even heard of two of them.

 

[Bacillus]

We could better stop reasoning here.
Phil and Tim - their statements inherit their abysmal knowledge. They are a couple of CPU illiterates, and talk like 3 yr olds that expect the Pro world to get excited by their playdough-like TouchBar gimmicks.
Joni lives on an island, occasionally waking up to record movies with his standard content.
Greg has to keep in line with them but you can clearly see his irritation between the lines.
This "team" is a Borderline case of immense proportions...so sad.

 

[Stella]

Wrong. I DON'T WANT A SMALLER LAPTOP. I NEED A PRO MACHINE. I'm a professional musician and developer, and I WORK ON MY LAPTOP 10+ hours a day.

A (software ) developer, eh?

Then coming out with a statement such as:

oh, and really, 32GB memory may not be such a big deal, since I'd imagine swap file usage will be blazing fast on the new SSDs...

A Swap file is going to be vastly slower than RAM, even on the SSDs provided. Swap file is going to make an application noticeable slower than if that memory could be thrown all in RAM.

Its not uncommon that developers want several VMs. I've needed to do that in the past, but could not due to lack of memory ( 16gb ), or huge data sets that make the machine crawl. The performance isn't good.

Apple are treating its "Pro" customers like children, giving this reason for not including an *option* of 32GB.

If you don't want 16GB, don't upgrade... and your battery life will be as is. Just at least, Apple should give the option.

 

[brdeveloper]

For the record, this was the same nonsense that Apple spouted about the iPhone 6/+ with its 1GB of RAM. Funny how that turned out… the iPhone 6s/s+ shipped with 2GB and the iPhone 7 with 2GB and 7+ with 3GB! And yet NOBODY is complaining that the iPhone 7+ has half the battery life of the 6s+, nor the 6s half that of the 6. It was all nonsense. Yes, RAM uses power, the more RAM, the more power consumed. However USING RAM consumes power too, so the actual benchmark itself—how much it hits the RAM and how much RAM it hits—influences battery life. Finally, the CPU, GPU, SSD, LCD & backlight, keyboard backlight… these are ALL things that MUNCH power. To say that doubling RAM somehow disproportionately gobbles MUCH MORE power is absurd. (Then again, we should all have come to expect such nonsense from Phil the Schill.) So I'd love to see sofila run such a test with similar hardware (the NUC –IS– similar) and see what comes of it. Somebody will, and I'd bet a beer Apple is ********ting the community. Which is a risky proposition, considering, in this case, "Pros" inherently include engineers who know how to disprove such bullpucky.

RAM is always an issue for Apple. Even Stevie Jobs wanted more RAM in the first Macintosh computer, but the board of directors preferred higher profit margins.

 

[gnipgnop]

You do understand what "16GB or higher recommended" means ? The program can and will use more than 16GB and it will do better with more RAM. Also read the thread plenty of people have posted their reasons for needing more RAM. Also, as a pro user (whatever that is) who needs more than 32GB ram - I've never used any of the programs you mention and not even heard of two of them.

You do understand what "recommended" means when it's coming from the software developer? It means they consider that spec to deliver high quality performance with their software. It's not the base spec to get it to run.
[doublepost=1477747032][/doublepost]

RAM is always an issue for Apple. Even Stevie Jobs wanted more RAM in the first Macintosh computer, but the board of directors preferred higher profit margins.

RAM used to be the be-all-end-all, but now it's more about the GPU. My 2009 Mac Pro had a 512MB GPU. Now you have laptops (like the 2016 MBP) with 2GB GPUs etc. I haven't even bothered to upgrade the RAM in the Mac Pro beyond 14GB. I did upgrade the GPU to 4GB.

 

[The Mercurian]

You do understand what "recommended" means when it's coming from the software developer? It means they consider that spec to deliver high quality performance with their software. It's not the base spec to get it to run.

Yeah.....thats what professional users need. The base spec to get the thing to run. Who needs speed and performance sure ? There are nice pretty emoticons to distract yourself with while the computer takes twice as long to get things done...

 

[Workerbee Redux]

16GB of RAM is perfectly fine for pro applications. You're not really going to find any current pro apps where 16GB RAM doesn't fall into the 'recommended' range:

Dude, there are other professions than sitting at Starbuck sipping latte. Data scientists? Software developers? Statisticians? Just because Adobe doesn't sell them applications does not mean they don't exist.

 

[moep]

If the 32 GB RAM limitation is indeed because of a power concern then why does the 16GB CTO option for the 13" have no affect on the rated battery runtime?

 

[gnipgnop]

Yeah.....thats what professional users need. The base spec to get the thing to run. Who needs speed and performance sure ? There are nice pretty emoticons to distract yourself with while the computer takes twice as long to get things done...

If they recommend 16GB or higher, that means 16GB gives you high quality performance. It doesn't mean you actually need the "or higher" to get high quality performance. Photoshop recommends 8GB, but the reality is that 4GB will give you smooth performance for pretty much anything other than their 3D tools.
[doublepost=1477748304][/doublepost]

Dude, there are other professions than sitting at Starbuck sipping latte. Data scientists? Software developers? Statisticians? Just because Adobe doesn't sell them applications does not mean they don't exist.

Dude...name the programs and their recommended system requirements. Most pro applications are legacy, which means they were running just fine on lower spec machines years ago.

 

[brdeveloper]

I wasn't sure if you were being ironic or not - its hard to tell these days the way the world has gone - bue seemingly you are being serious.

You do understand what "16GB or higher recommended" means ? The program can and will use more than 16GB and it will do better with more RAM. Also read the thread plenty of people have posted their reasons for needing more RAM. Also, as a pro user (whatever that is) who needs more than 32GB ram - I've never used any of the programs you mention and not even heard of two of them.

It's like the stereotype of people who use Macbooks Pro were only designers and people who deal with image, video and architecture. There's a big community of software developers, scientists and engineers (not only the civil/mechanical ones) who don't give a s*** for those apps. Those people need stuff like VMWare, Weka, Python, R language, Java (and its RAM-hungry tools), C++, Fortran, huge spreadsheets, huge local database queries and so on.

 

[macsmurf]

That's a load of ******** they are spewing there.

The i7 6700 is capable of driving 64GB RAM. The RAM controller is built into the CPU, so what kind of "memory system that consumes much more power" would there be to design and include, apart from a couple of lanes and maybe some driver chips?

Apart from that, the CPU could use low-power DDR3 RAM which cuts down on power consumption, because it can use lower voltages. Or DDR4, which is also less power-hungry.

I bet that anyone with a reflowing station could replace the chips in the MBP with 32GB and it would work, right out of the box and with absolutely minor impact on battery life, if any. Sad I don't have access to one any more.

As a software developer, I am constantly pushing my 16GB RAM, running an IDE, a VM or a couple of Docker containers, a browser with lots of tabs and a Tomcat application server in parallel. There is simply no way 16GB would last me more than another year before becoming a major burden.

It's a sad anniversary for me - 25y ago, I bought a IIsi with a LaserWriter and portrait monitor as my first mac. Unless the RAM in the MBP is exchangeble, this year will also be the year I switch to Ubuntu on a DELL XPS 15 with its gorgeous 4K display and 32GB RAM. Maybe I can hackintosh it, but I think my time with Apple is up.

Thanks Tim, thanks Phil for prioritizing planned obsolescence and the race to the thinnest laptop over needs of a relatively small but loyal customer group.

Yeah we have the same problem. All our developers (except one) are on macs right now but I think we'll be seeing more Dell XPSs and Thinkpads in the future. Then again do you really want to deal with a company that bullsh*ts you? Seems like the rational choice to switch, although MacOS is a nice OS.
[doublepost=1477749250][/doublepost]

It's like the stereotype of people who use Macbooks Pro were only designers and people who deal with image, video and architecture. There's a big community of software developers, scientists and engineers (not only the civil/mechanical ones) who don't give a s*** for those apps. Those people need stuff like VMWare, Weka, Python, R language, Java (and its RAM-hungry tools), C++, Fortran, huge spreadsheets, huge local database queries and so on.

Plus we are getting heavily into data analysis which benefit from non-sh*tty graphic cards.