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Professional Mac Users' Complaints List Grows After 'Disappointing' Apple Event

NT1440 said:
Why are you doing that on a laptop (other than while traveling) in the first place? I'm just curious because you'd think if you've got deadlines to hit and angry client's you'd be using the appropriate tool for the job, no?
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Because we need to be on set/on location at times and bringing a fully fledged workstation everywhere just isn't always an option. The last thing you want is having to tell a Michael Bay or James Cameron, guys with no time and even less patience to be looking at a spinning beachball instead of your work. Believe me, this **** happens and it can be a bad experience to put it mildly.
 
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I find this fixation on the 16 GB limit on RAM bizarre. The complaints usually start with, "I am a pro user and 16 GB is just not enough ...".



Do most of these self-proclaim "pros" even understand the relationship between RAM, virtual memory and mass storage? There is NOTHING you can do with 32 GB of RAM that you cannot do 16 GB or even 8 GB!



When you're low on RAM, you start to get more disk activities. In the old days of hard drives, that was a big deal. Things slow to a crawl and you can *hear* thrashing (the hard drive head would be jumping all over the place). But with the switch to SSD: 1. You no longer hear thrashing and 2. Even when paging occurs, it isn't that slow anymore



The new MacBook Pros have much faster SSDs. Extra RAM has benefits only for a very limited number of users and then only in very limited situations. I am willing to wager that the vast majority of these so-called "pro users" won't even be able to tell if they are on a 16 GB or a (hypothetical) 32 GB MBP in a blind test (self-proclaim pro users are the new self-proclaim wine connoisseurs?).



I develop software and routinely have multiple virtual machines running in VMWare. My 4 year old MBP has 8 GB of RAM and the only way to find out I am low on RAM is by looking at Activity Monitor.



To sum up, how much RAM you have does not determine what you can or cannot do. It is just another aspect of performance. So basically the pro-users-need-32GB complainers are saying these new MacBook Pros don't meet their performance needs. But I have a question for you: how do they even know this? These MBPs aren't even out yet! The new MBPs have faster CPU, faster RAM and faster SSD. How do they know the overall system is not fast enough for them?
 
lhammer610 said:
Given the disappointment with the Mac Pro; what makes you think that the rumor of an iMac upgrade in January will happen, and if it does, Apple will come out with anything that meets my needs at a reasonable price point?
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If you haven't noticed, there isn't any rumors floating around about January, I'm just telling you that's when the Mac Pro and iMac are going to be updated.

IF it meets your needs, you should probably get it, it is a productivity tool anyway. If an extra $200 makes the difference you probably didn't actually need it to begin with seeing as that's $28 a year for the 7 year lifespan you've been operating anyway.
 
cube said:
How are the delays on Intel when you can buy laptops supporting 64GiB RAM since over a year ago?
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The reason behind the lack of 32 GB or DDR4 is Intel. Skylake does not support LPDDR4 (LP for low power) RAM. Kabylake is set to include support, but only for the U category of chips.
 
Lone Deranger said:
Because we need to be on set/on location at times and bringing a fully fledged workstation everywhere just isn't always an option. The last thing you want is having to tell a Michael Bay or James Cameron, guys with no time and even less patience to be looking at a spinning beachball instead of your work. Believe me, this **** happens and it can be a bad experience to put it mildly.
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So you carry around a portable workstation like an HP Z17 instead....right? Or are you currently carrying around a MBP?
 
pookynubber said:
Mac "PRO" users are not the company's base. Get over yourself if you think that's the case. Mac didn't become this "wealthy" because of Mac Pro's, but from most things i. iPod, iPhone, iPad, even iMac. The people that read MacRumor sites are not the 'base' we all know many people who have those iDevices (as well as music and content subscriptions) that don't ready this site. The sky isn't falling at Apple, and Time Cook is wearing clothes.
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Well, what's he's done is replace a core piece of infrastructure in many business with an ultrabook, and all the associated limitations that brings.

There's nothing wrong with ultrabooks (there's several in my household!) but this is the direction that the Air should have taken. Consolidating your 3 lines down to the line in the middle means that those on the bottom tier are priced out, and those on the top are power/usaged out.

So yes, people who bought in the bottom tier are irritated, and those who bought in the top tier are irritated. This is even more dramatic because those exact two market spaces are the two Apple has focused two decades of energy to win over: the student market and the creative professional market. So there are a lot of people in those groups in the MacOS ecosystem, so they are a lot of people annoyed.
 
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Michael Scrip said:
Yes... Intel has had some delays in these recent families of processors.

But what about the Mac Mini and Mac Pro? Are you telling me Intel hasn't made suitable processors for those machines in 2-3 years?
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No idea and that's not the focus of this particular thread.
 
sleepydinosaur said:
The reason behind the lack of 32 GB or DDR4 is Intel. Skylake does not support LPDDR4 (LP for low power) RAM. Kabylake is set to include support, but only for the U category of chips.
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The reason is Apple. They did not need to offer just an ultrathin machine.
 
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Mac 128 said:
Oh that must be why I paid a $200 premium to get a black one, the only other difference being it had an 80gb HD instead of a $60 GB one?
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No, you paid full price for a Macbook because it was that much better than any PC laptop at the time. You paid the premium because you wanted something unique, like a custom paint job on a car. If you think you were getting ripped off and bought it anyway, that's your problem.

I won't be buying the 2016 Macbook Pro, because I don't have that problem.

(Also, the video in my post was for the iBook, which never came in black.)
 
canadianreader said:
32GB ram option exists in many laptop running windows example

View attachment 669879
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You don't need to get into the gaming-slab arena.

The Dell XPS15 comes with a 32GB option for around $2000, and that's still in the ultrabook+ territory.

dell.jpg
 
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El Cabong said:
No, you paid full price for a Macbook because it was that much better than any PC laptop at the time. You paid the premium because you wanted something unique, like a custom paint job on a car. If you think you were getting ripped off and bought it anyway, that's your problem.

I won't be buying the 2016 Macbook Pro, because I don't have that problem.

(Also, the video in my post was for the iBook, which never came in black.)
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Macbook was never better than PC. At least in case of performance.
 
NT1440 said:
So you carry around a portable workstation like an HP Z17 instead....right? Or are you currently carrying around a MBP?
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It depends on the project and the capacity in which I or the company I work for needs to be present on location. There are many variables at play which decides the setting in which the sessions with the client/director takes place. Of course, where possible, the workstation approach is chosen, but in reality it doesn't always work out and stuff ends up being presented in quick impromptu sessions on laptops.

Other situations in which a laptop is preferable is when you freelance at small VFX boutiques which do not assign you with a workstation, so its "bring your own". These jobs can sometimes be as short as just one or two days. Carrying a big-ass Mac Pro + 24" display on the tube during rush hour is cumbersome to say the least. Hence a high powered laptop + your Wacom tablet is preferred.
 
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DEATH TO DONGLES. HOW are they innovative? Sleek? Courageous?

Weak upgrade.
Apple gave up on being a computer maker for creatives and professionals when they gave up on the mac pro.
 
cupertinojay said:
I find this fixation on the 16 GB limit on RAM bizarre. The complaints usually start with, "I am a pro user and 16 GB is just not enough ...".



Do most of these self-proclaim "pros" even understand the relationship between RAM, virtual memory and mass storage? There is NOTHING you can do with 32 GB of RAM that you cannot do 16 GB or even 8 GB!



When you're low on RAM, you start to get more disk activities. In the old days of hard drives, that was a big deal. Things slow to a crawl and you can *hear* thrashing (the hard drive head would be jumping all over the place). But with the switch to SSD: 1. You no longer hear thrashing and 2. Even when paging occurs, it isn't that slow anymore



The new MacBook Pros have much faster SSDs. Extra RAM has benefits only for a very limited number of users and then only in very limited situations. I am willing to wager that the vast majority of these so-called "pro users" won't even be able to tell if they are on a 16 GB or a (hypothetical) 32 GB MBP in a blind test (self-proclaim pro users are the new self-proclaim wine connoisseurs?).



I develop software and routinely have multiple virtual machines running in VMWare. My 4 year old MBP has 8 GB of RAM and the only way to find out I am low on RAM is by looking at Activity Monitor.



To sum up, how much RAM you have does not determine what you can or cannot do. It is just another aspect of performance. So basically the pro-users-need-32GB complainers are saying these new MacBook Pros don't meet their performance needs. But I have a question for you: how do they even know this? These MBPs aren't even out yet! The new MBPs have faster CPU, faster RAM and faster SSD. How do they know the overall system is not fast enough for them?
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Flat out wrong! Running time sensitive simulations is not possible with swap space. Some of us do real computing with our pro machines, not just run basic apps. I currently run 128gb in my cMP, need an upgrade there - but was also hopeful to see 32gb in the laptop to run the code we write using a fraction of the data set (which can be trimmed to about 20gb memory resident by shrinking the data set) for development work.

I know I'm not the majority user, however, Apple has supported our usage for a very long time - and right now I'm feeling abandoned.
 
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cube said:
You can find many laptops supporting 32GiB, starting at around $500.
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Yes, but I think the issue here was also thinness, portability, build quality, and being in generally the same usage ballpark.

You can get support for all these things is giant slabs, and in cheaper plastic machines: I was just showing that's it's also out there in the MacBook Pro-type corner of the market.
 
Lone Deranger said:
It depends on the project and the capacity in which I or the company I work for needs to be present on location. There are many variables at play which decides the setting in which the sessions with the client/director takes place. Of course, where possible, the workstation approach is chosen, but in reality it doesn't always work out and stuff ends up being presented in quick impromptu sessions on laptops.

Other situations in which a laptop is preferable is when you freelance at small VFX boutiques which do not assign you with a workstation, so its "bring your own". These jobs can sometimes be as short as just one or two days. Carrying a big-ass Mac Pro + 24" display on the tube during rush hour is cumbersome to say the least. Hence a high powered laptop + your Wacom tablet is preferred.
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Sorry I might have laid this out wrong. What I was asking is if power is the crux of what you need, why aren't you using something like an HP 17" Zbook workstation laptop (not a desktop machine)?
 
sleepydinosaur said:
You'd rather bitch about updates when you have to rely on Intel who can't find their ass with a road map?

That's not clear thinking. Especially considering Apple went from using mostly off the shelf processors to making arguably the best mobile processors on the planet.
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You do know it was John Sculley's decision to go with a CPU other than Intel (Power PC), which ended up costing Apple, and ultimately led to him getting shown the door...right? Going with anything other than Intel CPU's for the Mac line would be a huge mistake.
 
NT1440 said:
Sorry I might have laid this out wrong. What I was asking is if power is the crux of what you need, why aren't you using something like an HP 17" Zbook workstation laptop (not a desktop machine)?
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For myself, as a freelancer, I've got a lot invested in terms of OSX software licenses (many thousands of pounds) as well as being dependant of platform specific, proprietary tools. Switching to another platform wouldn't be cheap nor easy. I and many others like me are caught between a rock and a hard place. And the longer Apple keeps catering solely to the consumer, the more painful the situation gets. Which is why we are a bit vocal about it. Eventually a decision will have to be made.
 
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pat500000 said:
Why aren't mr posting grievances of Mac Pro.
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Because the MacPro forum has already gone toxic and many of us are about to give up all hope and move to HP-Z workstations. I'm beyond frustrated with Apple right now - moving my whole company off apple hardware isn't an easy transition, but to keep up with our client demands and be competitive vs. similar firms we simply need more powerful desktop hardware. Big Linux workstations are a possibility, but the convenience of a powerful workstation combined with productivity apps and great support for our IDEs on OSX was very appealing.

Secrecy in consumer devices is fine, but it sure as heck makes it hard to run a business.
 
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