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

just sad on all levels from apple... this is the full embodiment of a rip off scam.. lets look at the numbers and do the math

Apple Macbook pro 15
2.7 ghz i7 6700hq
16gb 2133 mhz LPDDR3 ram
4gb amd redeon pro 460
2tb flash storage
RETINA 2800x1880 221 ppi non touch HDR screen
1" 2170x60 resolution OLED 10 point multi touch touchbar (replaces function keys)
4x thunderbolt/usb-c connections
76watt-hour battery
.61 inches thick 4.02 ilbs weight
**no free software**
...........................................$$4,099 +tax/shipping

RAZER BLADE PRO
2.7 ghz i7 6700hq
32 gb 2133mhz DDR4 ram
8gb GDDR5x gtx 1080 desktop
2x 512gb samsung m.2 ssd in raid 0
4K IGZO 10 point multi touch screen with nvidia G-Sync tech
3x usb 3.0
card reader
2x thunderbolt/usb-c connections
99watt-hour battery (highest watt battery legally allowed on airplanes)
.88inches thick 8ilbs weight
** offers office 15 and FL studio free**
.........................................$$4,000 +tax (free shipping)


yea apple hasn't lost their god damned minds ......
 
Last edited:
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djcgeez2189 said:
just sad on all levels from apple... this is the full embodiment of a rip off scam.. lets look at the numbers and do the math

Apple Macbook pro 15
2.7 ghz i7 6700hq
16gb 2133 mhz LPDDR3 ram
4gb amd redeon pro 460
2tb flash storage
RETINA 2800x1880 221 ppi non touch HDR screen
1" 2170x60 resolution OLED 10 point multi touch touchbar (replaces function keys)
4x thunderbolt/usb-c connections
76watt-hour battery
.61 inches thick 4.02 ilbs weight
**no free software**
...........................................$$4,099 +tax/shipping

RAZER BLADE PRO
2.7 ghz i7 6700hq
32 gb 2133mhz DDR4 ram
8gb GDDR5x gtx 1080 desktop
2x 512gb samsung m.2 ssd in raid 0
4K IGZO 10 point multi touch screen with nvidia G-Sync tech
3x usb 3.0
card reader
2x thunderbolt/usb-c connections
99watt-hour battery (highest watt battery legally allowed on airplanes)
.88inches thick 8ilbs weight
** offers office 15 and FL studio free**
.........................................$$4,000 +tax (free shipping)


yea apple hasn't lost their god damned minds ......
Click to expand...


You know. I just decided to buy an HP Z840 workstation and I can config it anyway I want and its super powerful. I can use their free RGS software to control it through my MBP or even an iPad which is like having a turbo boost of power and the files are all created on the z840 so I don't have to clutter my MBP and use one device to control two. I can do that from the same room or 1,000 miles away.

So now I don't have to worry about Apple's BS anymore. I can upgrade ANY component I want and HP backs it up with 30 day money back, awesome 3 year warranty, etc, etc. So my recco is for anyone curious to checkout HP's workstation website. You can even call them and they'll walk you through it and get you special discounts. Better yet check out the RGS (remote graphics software) which has a MAC centric webpage and videos to explain how you can use your mac to work with the z.

Knowing is half the battle.
 
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bobdobalina said:
And so long as we usually got the hottest (or it seemed that way)
Click to expand...

Only in some weird fantasy world. Apple have been shipping mostly iGPUs since the Intel transition (and they were pretty poor at the start. They're now far more capable). Every dGPU they've shipped, including in that Mac Pro three years ago, have been well behind the curve of what's available for generic PC's. This is rose tinted spectacles personified.
 
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bobdobalina said:
Yeah, you're correct. But that notion is out there, and the seed of it came from times past. For me, it was the G4 Powerbooks and the G5 Powermac (lusted, never owned). I'll bet we agree, I'm just thinking on a timescale where the 2012 rMBP feels like yesterday, and everything since 2012 feels increasingly disappointing.
Click to expand...

While I get that the RDF has gone and the constant piling on of everything Apple does has some kind of psychological effect (congrats, astroturfers) the machines are built along the same lines. The intel transition was 2007 and Apple have followed the same patterns ever since. (And before for that matter)
 
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djcgeez2189 said:
just sad on all levels from apple... this is the full embodiment of a rip off scam.. lets look at the numbers and do the math

Apple Macbook pro 15
2.7 ghz i7 6700hq
16gb 2133 mhz LPDDR3 ram
4gb amd redeon pro 460
2tb flash storage
RETINA 2800x1880 221 ppi non touch HDR screen
1" 2170x60 resolution OLED 10 point multi touch touchbar (replaces function keys)
4x thunderbolt/usb-c connections
76watt-hour battery
.61 inches thick 4.02 ilbs weight
**no free software**
...........................................$$4,099 +tax/shipping

RAZER BLADE PRO
2.7 ghz i7 6700hq
32 gb 2133mhz DDR4 ram
8gb GDDR5x gtx 1080 desktop
2x 512gb samsung m.2 ssd in raid 0
4K IGZO 10 point multi touch screen with nvidia G-Sync tech
3x usb 3.0
card reader
2x thunderbolt/usb-c connections
99watt-hour battery (highest watt battery legally allowed on airplanes)
.88inches thick 8ilbs weight
** offers office 15 and FL studio free**
.........................................$$4,000 +tax (free shipping)


yea apple hasn't lost their god damned minds ......
Click to expand...

If I look at your numbers correctly, that Windows laptop is twice the weight of the MacBook. I also dare say the razor blade pro will have way worse battery life and slower SSD performance.

If you are in the market purely for performance, then yeah, the razor blade pro appears to offer better value for money (I say probably because it still runs windows, and I am not in a hurry to switch back anytime soon).

But with a Mac, I am essentially paying for performance wrapped up in a sleek and thin and light package. All that engineering to cram all the components into as small a form factor as possible doesn't come cheap.

I wouldn't be so quick to write off the new MacBook pro's pricing as a scam. There are legitimate benefits to choosing it, it's just a matter of whether you care about those benefits or not.
 
bobdobalina said:
Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to have more stuff crammed in this year, and save a couple of mm's thinner for next year? Rather than thinner and costlier now, and more stuff squeezed in later?
Click to expand...

Depends on what the stuff being crammed in is. DDR4 ram is supposedly more battery intensive, and Apple being Apple, took the liberty of prioritizing battery life for us, at the expense of having the option to get 32 gb of ram.

I can how this annoys users who really need that much ram, but going this route means that users who are satisfied with 8 gb or 16 gb of ram are disadvantaged unnecessarily. I really don't think there was any right move here.

Now that I have time to digest more of the feedback, it seems the main issue is that the processors that Apple wanted are simply not ready yet. Kinda reminds me of the 2012 retina MBP. It barely ran on ivy bridge, and really required haswell for the better battery life and graphics performance.

So I guess the best advice is if you can wait, wait for intel to hopefully update their processors on time next year such that it can support 32 gb of lpddr4 ram. Looks like that there is some truth behind the age old saying to always skip the first generation of any new Apple product.
 
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BL4zD said:
According to this article bashing Apple for using a proprietary SSD they claim the RAM is user upgradeable
https://www.overclock3d.net/news/gpu_displays/apple_s_macbook_pro_will_use_a_proprietary_ssd/1

And unless it's just a stock picture, there appears to be some RAM laying on the table.
Click to expand...

Thats not a RAM chip its the SSD and they are just plain wrong about the RAM being use-upgradable. See ifixit teardown:
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Function+Keys+Late+2016+Teardown/72415
 
I thought they were wrong but that picture confused me. They got other technical details wrong in the description, as well.
 
gnipgnop said:
If you're slowing down your workload simply because you're running too many memory related tasks at the same time, then you can solve that problem by reducing the number of concurrent tasks. That's going to be true of any memory configuration: don't overload the memory and you'll get the optimal performance. As I said earlier in the thread, anyone can overload their system memory, regardless of what tasks they're doing. Doesn't matter if it's 8, 16, or 32.
[doublepost=1477841069][/doublepost]

The interesting thing about VMs is that the software companies that program them often tout how little system memory each VM will require due to the efficiency of their programming. VMWare actually uses the phrase "drastically reduced" on their web site.
Click to expand...

I don't run them in the sense that I scale them high like in production, I run multiple VMs of different flavors and need to assign enough memory to them so that they don't thrash or help me work faster, as well as CPU resources. So the more memory and CPU power the better. I was hoping there would come a point where the notebooks hit the sweet spot of speed and memory that I could embrace the portability of a good notebook and dock it at my desk with multiple monitors for heavy duty development.
 
djcgeez2189 said:
Still is just bs because there are plenty of skylake machines that run DDR4 ram and ram hardly uses any power and most DDR4 systems run at 1.35 volts
Click to expand...
You sure you're accounting the difference between DDR4 and LPDDR4?
 
spacebro said:
This is such a ******** insulting answer. If 32gb ram would really kill battery life, they have enough engineers who could figure out how to turn off all but 16gb when on battery or to only turn on the other 16gb when it is needed. Schiller is saying its raining out while he is pissing on all your faces. Steve jobs would have never allowed this middling piece of **** to be released, he would have thrown a temper tantrum until they included a 64gb option.
Click to expand...

It's not a case of amount, but type.

The Intel Skylake CPU can support up to 16GB of LPDDR3; or up to 64GB of DDR3/4 RAM (if we're talking about the i7 in the 15" MacBook Pro; which we pretty much are if we're talking about high-end needs). Apple uses LPDDR3. The "LP" in "LPDDR" stands for "low power".

What Phil Schiller was really saying is, "We chose to use low-energy RAM which is capped at 16GB on Skylake and Kaby Lake CPU's, because using the standard RAM would use too much power". This limitation exists with Kaby Lake too (bizarrely, it doesn't on the "U" series used in Ultrabooks. But again, we're talking about the 15" here. Someone who needs 32GB of RAM almost certainly needs a quad-core i7, and a Kaby Lake quad-core i7 is still limited to 16GB of LPDDR3). Cannonlake with support LPDDR4 and 32GB, in 2017/2018 timeframe.
 
el-John-o said:
It's not a case of amount, but type.

The Intel Skylake CPU can support up to 16GB of LPDDR3; or up to 64GB of DDR3/4 RAM (if we're talking about the i7 in the 15" MacBook Pro; which we pretty much are if we're talking about high-end needs). Apple uses LPDDR3. The "LP" in "LPDDR" stands for "low power".

What Phil Schiller was really saying is, "We chose to use low-energy RAM which is capped at 16GB on Skylake and Kaby Lake CPU's, because using the standard RAM would use too much power". This limitation exists with Kaby Lake too (bizarrely, it doesn't on the "U" series used in Ultrabooks. But again, we're talking about the 15" here. Someone who needs 32GB of RAM almost certainly needs a quad-core i7, and a Kaby Lake quad-core i7 is still limited to 16GB of LPDDR3). Cannonlake with support LPDDR4 and 32GB, in 2017/2018 timeframe.
Click to expand...

or Dell, now with 32GB RAm.....hmmm...decisions decisions....
 
el-John-o said:
The Intel Skylake CPU can support up to 16GB of LPDDR3; or up to 64GB of DDR3/4 RAM (if we're talking about the i7 in the 15" MacBook Pro; which we pretty much are if we're talking about high-end needs). Apple uses LPDDR3. The "LP" in "LPDDR" stands for "low power".
Click to expand...
Ugh… apparently you flew right past the page where I took the time to post about this. Yes, "LP" stands for "low power"… but what you all types seem to NOT BE GRASPING is that while DDR3 uses "x" amount of power, and LPDDR3 uses y% of x" amount of power (say 40-60% of DDR3), DDR4 came after both and—as is often the case with the march of tech—uses "(y+ ~(8…10))% of x" of power (so, for those playing at home, ~50-65% of the power of DDR3). DDR4, the full bore no LP version, is closer in power consumption to LPDDR3 than it is to DDR3. Significantly. So, for all intents and purposes, just get it through your head that LPDDR3 and DDR4 are similar in power consumption! Sheesh.

Apple didn't NEED to use LPDDR4 because plain-jane DDR4 is power-performant equitably to LPDDR3 BY DESIGN!

The reason that Skylake and Kaby Lake aren't targeting LPDDR4 is because LPDDR4, using even LESS power, is more geared for use in stuff like the Surface Pro pad—tablets and and the such—and embedded systems. Intel has follow-on chipsets to target that market, coming in late 2017 or early 2018. The kind of chips that will be used in the MacBook, not a MacBook PRO.

The only CONCEIVABLE reason Apple could have for using LPDDR3 over DDR4 is: PRICE! And I'm sorry, I've been told that Apple doesn't design for price, so I can't abide that. The cost of using DDR4 would have been higher, but it would have allowed 32GB of RAM, now. (Actually, Dell, et al, have been shipping laptops for over 6 months, so "now" is even "old" competitively.)
 
Okay, so my current plan is to replace my ethernet-based, headless 2012 Quad Core 2.3/16GB Mini VEP6 slave with an HP HP Z840 workstation (Thanks HappMacGuy!) While keeping my other Quad Core 2.6/16GB Mini as the main machine. I just really like the Mac OS. My main programs are Pro Tools 12.6, VEP6, Lightroom 4 (Adobe broke LR6), and Firefox. I'll keep some sort of Mac system around because I like the tight integration between it and my phone and my ipod and the family devices I have to help manage. With Windows, I resent having to clog a studio machine with antivirus software, but you have to be connected at some point to register software, licenses, and the inevitable patches.

Anybody here ever turn an HP-Z or a Boxx workstation into a Hackintosh?
 
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