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New MacBook Pros Max Out at 16GB RAM Due to Battery Life Concerns
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"Do they? So if they NEED 32gb of ram they can't have been using a Mac to do any work on all this time."
...or they were using two, but would love to ween it down to one for 90% of their work.
...or they were using two, but would love to ween it down to one for 90% of their work.
That reasoning (battery life) makes no sense when taking into account the other decisions and considerations. As some have pointed out, DDR 4 would have reduced that power draw, so instead they opted for a less power efficient, cheaper RAM type? Second, power efficiency is increased with more RAM because the computer is not paging back to system disk when it runs out of physical RAM. When it has to resort back to using disk, not only is it slower, you got the disk power penalty as well. More RAM would actually increase power reserves as it can keep more there instead of slow access.
My suspicion is that this is a financial and logistics choice. Just level with your consumers. As the RAM is now soldered direct on the board, you need special tooling and increased cost on variant types. So for scale you make only a few options (two RAM spec models) and you roll out thousands of those limited variants and your cost per scale is reduced. If you add a 3rd option you start messing with economic variables. This is a purely cost effective decision not a performance one.
My suspicion is that this is a financial and logistics choice. Just level with your consumers. As the RAM is now soldered direct on the board, you need special tooling and increased cost on variant types. So for scale you make only a few options (two RAM spec models) and you roll out thousands of those limited variants and your cost per scale is reduced. If you add a 3rd option you start messing with economic variables. This is a purely cost effective decision not a performance one.
So...if it is so important, why didn't they increase battery life then, instead of making it thinner and lighter?
If I was still doing development, I might want a machine with 2 TB storage and 32 GB RAM....wonder what this market segment will do.
LOL I love the word "dongle". To me its hilarious. This whole thing has been hilarious; just think about many people will have wires just hanging connected all around them sitting in a coffee shop. DONGLE away! LOL.
Its obvious that from a hardware point of view it was possible to include 32 GB of RAM with good efficient in energy that will not have drop the 10 hours battery life (but the cost will not have been in plan of Apple with their margin, MBP is Super Expensive)
Or they could have
Take a Engineering technic on the logic board to activate and inactivate (Module or slot) of RAM
So you could have been able to use 16GB when you are on battery and 32 gb when you are connected on a outlet
Simple
Or they could have
Take a Engineering technic on the logic board to activate and inactivate (Module or slot) of RAM
So you could have been able to use 16GB when you are on battery and 32 gb when you are connected on a outlet
Simple
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What's simple is just make a bigger battery and sacrifice the thinnest for F-sake. That's the image you get from an apple product - all show and no go.
This is ridiculous. I have 6gb and I do audio. I use most of the ram with a 50 track song with multiple sample based VSTs loaded into ram and 50 - 100 plugins. 8gb is a good month but it is not the base. For many applications 16 gb will be far more than necessarily. For video/3d they will have issues. But for me 16 is great.
"But, but...it's got a brand new piece of glass that supports multi-touch!! And look at all the pretty colors the new glass bar can make!! Ooooh...magical!!"
my macbook air has 4gb of ram and is totally fine for what I do. I am not a pro at all but it seems to run parallels with windows 7 just fine also. I wonder what the people on here complaining about not having 32gb of ram do on their computer that needs that much?
No one has to engineer to spec for you. The only thing you control is your money. If you trade your money for the product they choose to produce, then you are free to do what you want with "your" computer at that point.
But then why would you need a Macbook Pro ? Why not get a Macbook Air ? Or a Mac Mini ? It's plenty of power for productivity .
Who do you think buys the MacPro ? Accountants ? Writers ? Wall Street traders ? Dentists ? Those are all pros but none of them needs that much crunching processor or graphics power.. So yes, it's mostly audio/video pros and scientists/engineers. And same thing for the high end MBP.
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DDR4 uses less power than DDR3, but how is that relevant? Skylake doesn't support DDR3. It only supports DDR3L, LPDDR3, and DDR4. And Apple isn't using DDR3L, they are using LPDDR3. I haven't seem any information that indicates DDR4 uses less power than LPDDR3. I don't think power savings from LPDDR3 are as significant as Apple is suggesting, but they are probably technically correct that they are there.
If removal of the headphone jack in the iPhone was Courage, then what does that make the MacBook pro then?
Fearful? Non-courage?
Fearful? Non-courage?
Not very "Pro" is it, without a 32 GB RAM option.
Waiting to upgrade my late 17" 2011 MBP till there is a 32 GB option... A 2160P display would be nice too. Not to mention DisplayPort 1.4!:
http://www.vesa.org/featured-articles/vesa-publishes-displayport-standard-version-1-4/
Maybe the iPhone 7 & 8 should have a USB C connector instead of USB A!
Waiting to upgrade my late 17" 2011 MBP till there is a 32 GB option... A 2160P display would be nice too. Not to mention DisplayPort 1.4!:
http://www.vesa.org/featured-articles/vesa-publishes-displayport-standard-version-1-4/
Maybe the iPhone 7 & 8 should have a USB C connector instead of USB A!
it is: "do you use the battery in your current retina Macbook Pro?"
- yes
- no
- not sure.
but seriously, check at those batteries, they are small!! unless skylake is doing miracles, i can't believe they'll last 10hours. i'm on mobile so i can't check mAh values quickly, but please do!!
Apple, please give us the 32GB RAM option in the next year microprocessor update!!! Don´t let us wait another 4 year to the next all new generation for the 32 gb ram option....
While I agree that the lack of a 32GB option in such a high-end computer is lame, I'm also sick to death of the form vs function pseudo-argument. The very definition of a notebook computer demands that form is an aspect of function (it wouldn't be a "notebook" otherwise). For a notebook, portability is part of its function. And notebooks have always been less performant than desktops, because of this functional requirement of smaller form. The colour, on the other hand, is pure form (though an industrial designer might be able to reasonably argue otherwise!). Having a smaller, thinner, lighter form may not be a priority for you—or may be a lesser priority for you—but that doesn't change the fact that these are still functions of a notebook computer.
How much RAM will the system theoretically support? 64GB? Find out what kind of RAM they used and have a place that repairs logic boards solder it on for you. Then we can test the battery life explanation. I've read some people have done that to other rMBPs to upgrade the RAM.
I've run into many cases of RAM depletion on 16 GB Macs with After Effects. And when it starts swapping out uncompressed 4K frames to disk, it's not pretty (even with SSD). In my case, for heavy After Effects work, no 32 GB option is a non-starter. That makes me angry and it makes me sad. I use a 64 GB Mac Pro at work, but not being able to be portable for some things sucks.
Does anyone think that Schiller/Apple is going to give the real reason? Of course not. The reason there's no 32 GB option is because they're holding back. They want to keep some features for the future.
I don't think he nailed it at all. He sounds like the guy who thinks I don't need a 70cc chainsaw because his 40cc chainsaw works just fine. Never mind that I have 28"+ hardwoods all over my property, while he doesn't.