PowerBook Incoming..?

[kschendel]

And as I have said before - as someone who does want 32GB option I don't care if ther eis a bttery life hit. I'm a grown up let me make my own choice about it instead of deciding for me. Like Dell do.

Nobody will force you or anyone else to buy a 32GB option if they don't want to.

The problem is, it's not an option. It was a design choice. It's not like they could have stuck in 32 Gb if they had wanted to -- in order to do that, they would have had to move to DDR4 (which is NOT low power) because Skylake doesn't support LPDDR4.

In other words, if they were to have satisfied you with 32 Gb, there would not have been the possibility of a smaller memory / longer life option. It's 32 Gb or long battery life, and the choice had to be made at board design time. It's impractical to ask them to ship two completely different machines, one with DDR4 and one with LPDDR3, that sort of thing is a good way to make sure you lose money across the board.

 

[Ries]

AFAIK, they are not.



There are two ways I see for the MBP to support 32GB — either it goes for DDR4 RAM (and takes a neat hit to battery life), or Apple engineers try to cramp twice as much LPDDR3 RAM modules into the laptop (there will still be a battery life drop though).

All DDR3 memory types are limited to 8GB/"Stick" (Dual channel = 16GB) by the standard (DDR4 is 128GB/Stick). You can get larger modules, but they require special support/server chipset as they are bastard modules.

 

[leman]

And as I have said before - as someone who does want 32GB option I don't care if ther eis a bttery life hit. I'm a grown up let me make my own choice about it instead of deciding for me. Like Dell do.

Nobody will force you or anyone else to buy a 32GB option if they don't want to.

That might very well be, but that would also mean maintaining two different logical board layouts that will most likely require differently configured assembly lines, not to mention increased logistics complexity. This would raise costs for all Mac users. All that for a spec that will unlikely amount for what, 1% of all sales? Or would you be willing to pay a hefty premium on top of an already expensive Mac to offset these extra costs? Its really not a trivial situation.

 

[venom600]

I can't see them recycling the PowerBook name for a couple reasons. First is that the "Power" stood for the PowerPC architecture, which Apple was using at the time

Apple used the PowerBook name long before they ever had PowerPC processors in their notebooks. The names are mutually exclusive.

 

[Santabean2000]

Apple used the PowerBook name long before they ever had PowerPC processors in their notebooks. The names are mutually exclusive.

It's a name synonymous with Apple, has positive connotations and it was recently re-trademarked worldwide.
https://hypebeast.com/2017/3/apple-powerbook-return-trademark
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...Try to remember that Steve Jobs originally hired Tim Cook to handle supply chain, logistics and manufacturing, all of which are very numbers and results driven aspects of the business so you can be pretty sure sales figures affect his judgement pretty heavily.

This is exactly Apple's problem: driven by numbers and not user experience.

Tim's great. Just has the wrong job.
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I don't think Apple has ever really gone backwards in their mobile devices in terms of size and weight without increasing the screen size at the same time except to create a budget model like the iPhone SE and non-retina 13" MBP...

iPad retina, iPhone 7, Apple TV just to name a few.

 

[SarcasticJoe]

This is exactly Apple's problem: driven by numbers and not user experience.

This was my point...

iPad retina, iPhone 7, Apple TV just to name a few.

- The 3rd gen iPad is exactly the same width and height as the 2nd gen one while being 0.6 mm thicker so we're talking about an insignificant size increase

- The iPhone 7 is 0.2x0.1x0.2 mm bigger than the 6 so the argument that it's bigger is purely academic

- The 3rd gen AppleTV didn't have any internal storage while the 4th gen had.

 

[leman]

This is exactly Apple's problem: driven by numbers and not user experience.

I don't see how your statement is even remotely true. Then again, user experience is a very subjective matter. Reading this forums, I am surprised to realise that for many user experience seems to boil down to legacy port support.

 

[The Mercurian]

I don't see how your statement is even remotely true. Then again, user experience is a very subjective matter. Reading this forums, I am surprised to realise that for many user experience seems to boil down to legacy port support.

Why does that surprise you? Its a pain in the ass to have to carry round a little bag of dongles when you travel for example.

 

[Santabean2000]

I don't see how your statement is even remotely true. Then again, user experience is a very subjective matter. Reading this forums, I am surprised to realise that for many user experience seems to boil down to legacy port support.

There are any number of examples I could choose, but one that sticks out relates specifically to storage.

What do I mean? HDDs still being sold in Macs as default.

Yes, they are capacious, but slow they're as slow can be. An embarrassment in 2017. Disgraceful.

The simple answer, until Flash storage drops in price, (assuming Apple wants to hold onto their massive margins), is to pair a HDD with some SSD. Perhaps call it a Fusion Drive... oh wait, they did that - 128GB with a 1tb drive, (for additional extra $$!!)

And then they did what?! That's right, gimped it but stripping it back to a measly 24GB. As Flash got cheaper, Apple got cheaper still. That's just a pure d### move, pure and simple.

Greed at the expense of user experience. Ugly as it gets.

Apple has so much cash, they can, and should, be creating the greatest computers on the planet.

But instead Tim is focussed on pushing the share price. Horrible stuff.

Short sighted and far removed from Apple's original values.

Look after your staff, your customers and shareholders. In that order. But Apple (Tim) has flipped it and got it all backwards.

 

[leman]

Why does that surprise you? Its a pain in the ass to have to carry round a little bag of dongles when you travel for example.

I just don't see how it is any different from before. Only with my previous several MBPs I had to carry around a bag of dongles, while now I just need a single mini-dock that has all the relevant outputs (and its still lighter then the old MBP).

And then they did what?! That's right, gimped it but stripping it back to a measly 24GB. As Flash got cheaper, Apple got cheaper still. That's just a pure d### move, pure and simple.

Oh, I was not aware of that. That is indeed a big thumbs down. I was thinking more in the context of the 2016 MBP though.