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

gnipgnop said:
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.
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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.
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For your first post, See post this post: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...y-life-concerns.2010291/page-22#post-23819197
Any demanding program that uses close to 16GB WILL run faster in 32GB because you don't need to use swap disk.

For your second:
R, Python, Java, C++, Jags, Stan, to name a few. Give me more RAM and I can make bigger models incorporating more data. It is as simple as that.

Friend -you are not informed on what all 'pro users' do with their macbooks.
 
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cppguy said:
That's ridiculous. They should just give the option anyway, at our own risk. Most of us are connected to an outlet 99.99% of the time.
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I think, at least for the initial release period, they are crippling the machine in terms of options in order to get better reviews and battery life scores. Maybe in a couple of months they'll add it as an option.
 
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Workerbee Redux said:
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.
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Very good point. Maybe it's how Apple executives think. So please, Apple, make a scientific tool which requires a lot of RAM and costs thousands of dollars :D
 
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brdeveloper said:
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.
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Bingo. I think the days of seeing Apple logos all over the place at developer conferences is numbered.
I regularly run into the memory ceiling running multiple large VM's so that I can experiment with things when disconnected from my client's datacenters. ie: A pair of 4GB ESXi hosts + a 5GB vCenter appliance eats almost my entire machine.
When I'm up for a laptop refresh, in about a year, unless Apple offers something with more RAM I think I'll be moving to a Dell with Ubuntu (or similar)

Sad for me because I've been an OS X user since the betas and a NeXT enthusiast (and occasional user) before then.
 
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brdeveloper said:
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.
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So all of those applications and uses were never feasible prior to 32GB of RAM? Or perhaps the recommended requirements for those things are all pretty much the same as they used to be, but the laptops keep getting more and more powerful.
 
If these fools were in charge of the 2012 rmbp it would have only had 4gb ram like every other mid range pc laptop at the time and none of us would have switched to macs.
 
gnipgnop said:
So all of those applications and uses were never feasible prior to 32GB of RAM? Or perhaps the recommended requirements for those things are all pretty much the same as they used to be, but the laptops keep getting more and more powerful.
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More RAM equals more power and bigger more sophisticated models that you had to run on servers before. Now these laptops are available. Just not from Apple.
 
You know if Dell and others ran a sale on high spec laptops right now they would steal alot of market share from Apple. If I saw am XPS with a discount I'd probably buy one - even though I don't plan to change till next year that would make me jump
 
shaunp said:
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.
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and yet, another rude response from you. perhaps learn to take a little in return when your opening is calling multiple people wrong "in jest", who are not.
 
shaunp said:
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.
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Just a small point. If my mac breaks I need to drive 2 hours and cross a border to an Apple store, or send it by courier (i will not go to the local mac reseller again after last time - they had my machine for a month). If my Dell desktop breaks Dell send someone to my house. Which is better support ?
 
The Mercurian said:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...y-life-concerns.2010291/page-22#post-23818641

I posted that about 3 or 4 posts before you joined in. Try reading the thread first before telling everyone how wrong they are.
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I already read that, and it doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying. Laptops are much more powerful than they used to be, which means that people using pro apps are able to put a heavier workload on them now than they used to in the past. It has nothing to do with the specs not being good enough for the professional applications being used. It has to do with individual views on "how many concurrent tasks do I think I need a laptop for"?
 
They should put more effort into making a model for professional use instead of trying to make an 15inch MacBook Air.
 
gnipgnop said:
I already read that, and it doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying. Laptops are much more powerful than they used to be, which means that people using pro apps are able to put a heavier workload on them now than they used to in the past. It has nothing to do with the specs not being good enough for the professional applications being used. It has to do with individual views on "how many concurrent tasks do I think I need a laptop for"?
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So in software development there is no such thing as too much power. If we can run things locally that generally equals less development time and less time to fix a bug. That is what developers care about the most because development time is crazy expensive. The price of the computers almost doesn't matter.
 
gnipgnop said:
I already read that, and it doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying. Laptops are much more powerful than they used to be, which means that people using pro apps are able to put a heavier workload on them now than they used to in the past. It has nothing to do with the specs not being good enough for the professional applications being used. It has to do with individual views on "how many concurrent tasks do I think I need a laptop for"?
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Try reading it again it is nothing to do with concurrent tasks.
I can and occasionally do create a single statistical model that won't run in 16GB RAM. Thats why I had to buy the desktop.
And if I make a model that takes up 14GB RAM - it will run, but slow as all hell and would run much quicker in 32GB.
 
gnipgnop said:
So all of those applications and uses were never feasible prior to 32GB of RAM? Or perhaps the recommended requirements for those things are all pretty much the same as they used to be, but the laptops keep getting more and more powerful.
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They were, but not running in parallel(s)/VMs(or with simpler models) and not in the massive data sets world we live in now. You sound an awful lot like Billy G. with his "640K ought to be enough" supposed statement about memory.


Apple is artificially limiting the memory, while other manufactures are allowing double/quadruple. If your usage can benefit from more than 16Gigs of memory, then Apple is looking like less and less of an option for you. And lets not forget, Apple themselves tell us "if you think you may need more memory in the future, it is important to upgrade at the time of purchase." An since the max is 16Gigs, and people are finding that an issue in 2016(or earlier), then what do you think these people are going to be needing in 2018+

Thanks Apple, because your own words are showing PROFESSIONAL users to the exit door, because you obviously don't want their kind around your ecosystem.
 
gnipgnop said:
So all of those applications and uses were never feasible prior to 32GB of RAM? Or perhaps the recommended requirements for those things are all pretty much the same as they used to be, but the laptops keep getting more and more powerful.
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They were and still are feasible with way less than 32GB. The problem is: doing near to real world simulations or generating statistics over huge arrays needs more data, and more data needs more RAM to be stored and promptly available to the CPU (or the dGPU these days). In the academic world you need results which can give a new insight about a current knowledge, so the more comfort you have to test your hypothesis, the more you can get something relevant for the next conference. In the scientific world, a lot of times we just build a bad performing algorithm just to give some proof of concept, and this first prototype eats a lot of RAM. Scientists don't have time to make the most optimized algorithm in the world for processing data that they don't even know if this is the way to go.

In short, the most RAM you have, the most comfort you have, the sooner you'll get good (or bad) results and the life goes on.
 
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brdeveloper said:
Yes, they exist. Look at Amazon for mobile DDR3 modules of 16GB. They're pretty recent, but yes, they exist.
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct204864bf160b
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Damn, if these did work in the 2012 cMBP, I wouldn't need a new MBP for another 5 years - barring system failure of course. But I'm pretty sure the 2012 motherboard, CPU or Apple firmware limits it to 16Gigs.
 
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macsmurf said:
So in software development there is no such thing as too much power.
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Okay, but I think you would agree that current technology for laptops vs. desktops isn't equivalent. It sounds to me like some of the complaining is really just refusing to get a desktop involved in some of the tasks.
 
gnipgnop said:
Okay, but I think you would agree that current technology for laptops vs. desktops isn't equivalent. It sounds to me like some of the complaining is really just refusing to get a desktop involved in some of the tasks.
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Well, we sometimes work from home and other places. I think what you see is disappointment not complaining. We will just readjust and move along with better suited hardware from a different company like we always do. I will concede that Apple has moved away from developers and scientists for a long time, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. The problem is that developers actually like MacOS, and would rather not change.
 
gnipgnop said:
Okay, but I think you would agree that current technology for laptops vs. desktops isn't equivalent. It sounds to me like some of the complaining is really just refusing to get a desktop involved in some of the tasks.
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No, the real argument is that the laptops ARE powerful enough to do the work, they are just missing a single component - MORE RAM!!!! Yet Apple refuses to make it an option.

But get this, other manufacturers ARE giving that option. So because of this Apple is going to hemorrhage even MORE professionals like when they put out the trashcan mac Pro(plus the refusal to update), allowed MArketing to absolutely screw up the release of professional software tools, refused to put in a quad core in the downgraded 2014 Mac Mini.

Add this memory screwup to the long list of Apple literally begging professionals to leave.

Apple wants to sell phones and pretty thin laptop to starbucks hipster duffs. Professionals are WAY down the list of priorities now. Between price increases, non asked for tool bars, lack of ports, memory, etc... Apple is truly turning their backs on a good portion of the customer base that kept it afloat during the lean times.
 
macsmurf said:
Well, we sometimes work from home and other places. I think what you see is disappointment not complaining. We will just readjust and move along with better suited hardware from a different company like we always do. I will concede that Apple has moved away from developers and scientists for a long time, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. The problem is that developers actually like MacOS, and would rather not change.
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Precisely.
I often want to work from an airplane where WiFi access to my company and client's datacenters is unreliable so having the RAM to run scaled down versions of the server systems in VM's is necessary. FWIW - If I was buying today, I'd probably go with a 32GB System76 machine (Lemur 14" or Gazelle 15" would be a nice one that fits well on a plane)
 
Count Blah said:
Apple wants to sell phones and pretty thin laptop to starbucks hipster duffs. Professionals are WAY down the list of priorities now. Between price increases, non asked for tool bars, lack of ports, memory, etc... Apple is truly turning their backs on a good portion of the customer base that kept it afloat during the lean times.
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Well, to be fair I think that's totally reasonable. I have no particular loyalty towards Apple, and I don't expect them to be loyal to me. A company needs to go where they think the money is. In this case I think they're wrong and may realize it a few years down the line. Then again, maybe they made the right call. Who really knows?
 
This is the MacBook Air Pro, not a MacBook Pro. For those of us who simply need more RAM to do our jobs, battery life does not matter at all. Anything that requires 20 - 30GB of RAM will want to be plugged in anyway. Stupid explanation that makes zero sense. Their number #1 priority was thin, get it thinner. I don't need it thinner, I want a 17 inch, thick MacBook Pro that has serious cooling fans and 64GB of memory.

Some of us just need the RAM period. I put off buying a new laptop for a year waiting for this junk. This is a MacBook Toy, not a MacBook Pro.

I will be maxing out this http://www.eluktronics.com/P670 or this http://www.eluktronics.com/p770dm-g

If they are not going to build us what we need, they should at least let us run macOS in a VM, but they don't allow that either.

Apple has lost its way.
 
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