rMBP irreplaceable RAM is a deal breaker!

[B...]

I somehow doubt that's a realistic option. Updating your software (which by the way includes the operating system) is almost an essential task to do. No serious user wants to use out-of-date software.



Well I'm glad we're all polite here

Actually, many Pro users are still on 10.6 because the last two OSs have been filled with useless consumer animations and "junk". So, yes, even a pro user can get by on "outdated" Snow Leopard, which I am still on and love it. As for software, things will get more RAM hungry, but not exponentially. And having an SSD in case Outs occur is very helpful. But sure, get 16 GB at the start. If you can afford it, might as well.

 

[xShane]

Actually, many Pro users are still on 10.6 because the last two OSs have been filled with useless consumer animations and "junk". So, yes, even a pro user can get by on "outdated" Snow Leopard, which I am still on and love it. As for software, things will get more RAM hungry, but not exponentially. And having an SSD in case Outs occur is very helpful. But sure, get 16 GB at the start. If you can afford it, might as well.

I run Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and haven't had any issues at all.

With regards of having 16GB RAM, it's better safe than sorry. There would be nothing worse (and I've seen it happen) than needing/wanted to upgrade to 16GB RAM, but oh wait, you have 8GB soldered in. Whoops, time to replace the entire machine.

 

[splitpea]

Also, IF you in a (very very) rare case should use up all the 16GB of RAM (which is sufficient for 99.999% of all people!), the SSD will be fast enough for the pagefile to run great. Pagefiles ran slow with traditional HDD's, but it's not really that noticeable with SSD's.

To be honest, I don't think you will ever exceed the 16GB limit, unless you run some really really bad coded software with huge memory leaks.

You clearly never run virtual machines. 8GB starts feeling crowded mighty quickly. All it takes for me to fill 8gb is mail, iTunes, a complex site design open in photoshop, a text editor, and two web browsers - one with a couple dozen tabs of debugging research and the other with debugging extensions enabled.

If I then need to test the stupid thing in Internet explorer it requires shutting off iTunes plus at least one, usually two of my crucial tools in order to fire up a VM.

Another scenario that always seems to eat up GBs of RAM is operations on large databases (been doing a bunch of those lately). Actually, my DBs aren't even especially large overall (hundreds of MB; I know people pushing the terabyte limit on their databases), but doing a select-plus-insert on a join of two tables with 5 million rows and two small columns snarfs memory like you wouldn't believe.

Even 12GB would significantly improve my workflow and productivity. And I don't even work with audio, video, or 3D media.

But then, 640kb should be enough for anyone, right?

 

[Crzyrio]

You clearly never run virtual machines. 8GB starts feeling crowded mighty quickly. All it takes for me to fill 8gb is mail, iTunes, a complex site design open in photoshop, a text editor, and two web browsers - one with a couple dozen tabs of debugging research and the other with debugging extensions enabled.

If I then need to test the stupid thing in Internet explorer it requires shutting off iTunes plus at least one, usually two of my crucial tools in order to fire up a VM.

Another scenario that always seems to eat up GBs of RAM is operations on large databases (been doing a bunch of those lately). Actually, my DBs aren't even especially large overall (hundreds of MB; I know people pushing the terabyte limit on their databases), but doing a select-plus-insert on a join of two tables with 5 million rows and two small columns snarfs memory like you wouldn't believe.

Even 12GB would significantly improve my workflow and productivity. And I don't even work with audio, video, or 3D media.

But then, 640kb should be enough for anyone, right?

If I run 4 VM's I can easily pass 20GB of ram too! No **** Sherlock, if your doing all that is completely different then someone who is buying a rmbp for basic use.

The OP clearly doesnt do anything close to what you use your machine for.

 

[xShane]

If I run 4 VM's I can easily pass 20GB of ram too! No **** Sherlock, if your doing all that is completely different then someone who is buying a rmbp for basic use.

The OP clearly doesnt do anything close to what you use your machine for.

Actually many MacBook Pro buyers use it for serious use.

If you just want to do "basic" use, why not buy an iPad?

But I'm sure offending him really helped/contributed.

 

[jafingi]

You clearly never run virtual machines. 8GB starts feeling crowded mighty quickly. All it takes for me to fill 8gb is mail, iTunes, a complex site design open in photoshop, a text editor, and two web browsers - one with a couple dozen tabs of debugging research and the other with debugging extensions enabled.

If I then need to test the stupid thing in Internet explorer it requires shutting off iTunes plus at least one, usually two of my crucial tools in order to fire up a VM.

Another scenario that always seems to eat up GBs of RAM is operations on large databases (been doing a bunch of those lately). Actually, my DBs aren't even especially large overall (hundreds of MB; I know people pushing the terabyte limit on their databases), but doing a select-plus-insert on a join of two tables with 5 million rows and two small columns snarfs memory like you wouldn't believe.

Even 12GB would significantly improve my workflow and productivity. And I don't even work with audio, video, or 3D media.

But then, 640kb should be enough for anyone, right?

Actually, I run virtual machines every day.

1) One for my Linux/Centos testing VM
2) One for C# development (which I am "forced" to do on work)

Furthermore, I was speaking about 16GB - not 8GB as you. I would buy the 16GB, but no way I would buy a 32GB version. That's simply overkill.

Regarding databases, I know a lot about them (I have a B.Sc in Software Engineering).

Of course you can hit the limit if you have a very very very very large Photoshop file, run several VMs, have Chrome open with 30 tabs, WHILE joining (unoptimized) tables.

But with the use the OP have (and, as I said, 99.9999% of all people), he/they will _never_ hit the limit. If you hit the limit, you must be one of the 0.0001%

 

[splitpea]

If I run 4 VM's I can easily pass 20GB of ram too! No **** Sherlock, if your doing all that is completely different then someone who is buying a rmbp for basic use.

The OP clearly doesnt do anything close to what you use your machine for.

Its the "theres no point in a laptop with more than 16GB" invective (see below) that gets to me.

Actually, I run virtual machines every day.

1) One for my Linux/Centos testing VM
2) One for C# development (which I am "forced" to do on work)

Furthermore, I was speaking about 16GB - not 8GB as you. I would buy the 16GB, but no way I would buy a 32GB version. That's simply overkill.

Regarding databases, I know a lot about them (I have a B.Sc in Software Engineering).

Of course you can hit the limit if you have a very very very very large Photoshop file, run several VMs, have Chrome open with 30 tabs, WHILE joining (unoptimized) tables.

But with the use the OP have (and, as I said, 99.9999% of all people), he/they will _never_ hit the limit. If you hit the limit, you must be one of the 0.0001%

I don't know why you think it's quite such a tiny percentage. My non-technical co-workers are teaching themselves photoshop and learning video editing for fun. (And digital video resolutions even for home video users are set to jump again with 4K tvs and cameras hitting the market.). Another runs Excel on windows in a VM because the Mac version bites (both performance and interface-wise)... In fact, I think there was a thread in this very forum about that last week. And half the people I know are trying to learn programming because entrepreneurship is trendy. Well, there go a couple gigs for the phone simulator.

No, I wouldn't exceed 16GB tomorrow, and neither would they, but 2 years from now, when video has quadrupled in size, the memory footprint of the latest photoshop and $browser_of_choice have doubled, and phones are running with 4gb of memory (didn't that Samsung just get released with a gig?) plenty of people will be pushing the boundaries of 16GB and the guy who bought the 8GB non-upgradable MBP today will be frustrated because the computer he dropped a couple hundred extra bucks on because he expected it to last 3-4 years can't handle the ultra-hi-res baby videos from his phone.

 

[maflynn]

I went for 16gb for future, based on your needs as others stated 32gb is certainly over-kill.

If soldered ram is a huge sticking point for you, get the cMBP which you have the freedom of upgrading the ram.

 

[Count Blah]

I went for 16gb for future, based on your needs as others stated 32gb is certainly over-kill.

If soldered ram is a huge sticking point for you, get the cMBP which you have the freedom of upgrading the ram.

I would never consider buying one with non-upgradeable 8 gigs of RAM. What you are doing today is not what you will be doing in two years. kernal task plus the OS taking up more and more RAM in every dot release is also going to be eating into what is available as well.

I went with the 15" cMBP simply because I can upgrade the RAM easily, upgrade the HD more easily than the rMBP, and because I can plug in the cMBP to a BA monitor if need be. Heck, in two years, I expect to be replacing my present 16 gigs of RAM for 32 gigs.

Spending over $2K on a laptop and being stuck at 8gigs of RAM? No thanks.

 

[urkel]

If soldered ram is a huge sticking point for you, get the cMBP which you have the freedom of upgrading the ram.

When referring to the soldered RAM situation then the fact that the word "freedom" is so accurate is exactly what makes this so sad. Telling a Pro user that they are stuck with the GPU that was built into their laptop is acceptable, but telling them that if they no longer have the ability to change the memory post-sale definitely does feel like handcuffs.

While I agree that 8GB+ isnt necessary for "most" users, I think all this deflection is silly because things like "thin and light" are nice benefits, but they aren't the reason that the rMBP is such an appealing product and NOBODY would complain if they added a millimeter here or there to accomodate user replacable standard parts (which would allow for memory, mSATA or Fusion Drive options). This is supposed to be Apples flagship MacBook, but due to the lack of upgrade options then this may be the fastest depreciation we've seen on an Apple product. Even if someone can justify 256GB/8GB standard on a Pro machine, how much is someone going to pay in the used market when 1TB/16GB is standard?

In no way do I think the rMBP is bad because (IMO) its Apple's best looking machine to date. But I just feel that its a bit ahead of its time and the limitations of its specs will hurt its long term value.

 

[octavianguti]

Thanks guys for all the feedback, I eventually did it and got the rmbp 2.7ghz 15 inch 16 rmp and 512 gb model, i reckon the rendering could really go faster on première, it has been great with CS 6 on other applications though, but have yet to install windows to test out the quality of my fav game f1 2012 with a wheel set and FM with mass data.

But still we never complain when things could go better and have the liberties of an upgrade or change, it might have to do with the fact of the design which makes sense as its so much thinner and lighter than my old mbp, its a dilemma. But other than the rendering things have been gd.

Still everyone who plays fm with mass data knows how memory consuming the game is and while doing work and the game together is why I whined about the not being able to upgrade the ram.

That was my old one, its with mountain lion and was told it can not go higher than 8, but if i bought either the 17 or 13 inches of the same model, I would then be able to go 16, damn what a bummer.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...-2.66-aluminum-15-mid-2010-unibody-specs.html

 

[thekev]

Short of Hollywood-level digital video projects, 16GB is overkill right now, and will still be next year. And the year after that. There's no new image or video format on the horizon that anyone working on a laptop will be wrangling.

It's fine to have a philosophical objection. But from a practical standpoint, unless you're going to be editing two 4K-quality videos simultaneously, you aren't going to run into the 16GB ceiling.

Oh, and there will not be 32GB MacBook Pros this year. Definitely not going to happen.

I'm curious what you've done or whether you have tried the difference. 16GB can make a significant difference if you're dealing with applications that use a lot of memory, especially if others are open in the background. Creative Suite is a prime example. Several of Adobe's apps write a lot of data to disk. Even if you have an SSD, they can be more responsive when it stays in ram. Don't talk about it unless you have at least tried it. With the rMBP, the markup on the upgrade is fairly high relative to aftermarket purchases, but it's not a huge issue to me. It's about $80 to buy 16GB off newegg. There might be some better deals. The extra $120 from Apple at the time of purchase isn't that big of a deal if you need it. Seeing as I used the example of Creative Suite, After Effects suggests 2GB per assigned core. A macbook pro has 8 logical cores. It doesn't have to be 4k. Layers, alpha channels, etc. tack on a lot of bulk and the ram is used to run these as parallel processes. You could see some benefit even if you only dealt with 1080.

 

[yusukeaoki]

You wont be needing 32GB in just 2 years lol
I have 16GB and I dont even use all of them.
If 8GB is enough for you, then it will be enough for the next year or two.

 

[eminemead]

good read so far.

I just wanna chime in to ask a rookie question.

I'm on a 8G ram 15'' mbpr, i just fired up parallel 8 with win 8 running in it.

No other apps running except for chrome in OSX with 9 tabs.

and i got this....

what happened?

 

[~~Hello~~]

How does soldering on ram make it faster? I can just see Apple saying to to mask the fact they've glued/soldered everything down to force people to upgrade after 3 years. If your laptop goes pop after 3 years because of faulty ram, or the battery dies then how are you going to replace it? you'll be forced to buy another one.

It won't be long before apple stops the non retina model. I like macbooks but I don't like the path apple are taking. Many users probably won't give a toss, but some of us do. The next thing we'll be hearing is that apple are going to dump intel chips.

The good thing for apple though, is that they seem to make the best laptops. I've looked into others but they just fall short.

 

[Freyqq]

Hi guys, some might suggest I am trying to make sth out of the retina debate. To start with I kinda want to buy the 15 inch model second fastest cpu, 16 gbs ram and 512 flash drive which isn't cheap for me.

Well, after going online and doing some research. Here is my situation, I have the first gen 2.66 15 inches i7 mbp, 8gb of ram. The performance has been alright, doing preimere, PS, Au. playing some footie manager....though I was told mine should be able to cope with 16 gbs of ram, and with 16 gbs of ram slotted in my old one. I really don't feel like spending over 3gs on a fancier display without the capability to go beyond 16 gb of ram.

Does that make sense to anyone? I mean I buy the idea of a lighter case and better screen, but I'd feel a lot better, if I would be able to upgrade its ram in case I might go broke 1 day, I mean its not like I am not broke enough anyway.

Can anyone confirm whether it is true that my i7 model above can be supported with 16gbs of ram.... And should I wait for the next wwcc or wwc or whatever that annual press con is called, then wait for the 32gb ram model? I heard from the guy b... who has been extremely helpful saying none of the retinas are upgradable ram-wise and I think it really sucks.

Many Thx once again!!!!

In order for 16gb to slow down your computer, you'd have to actually 1) use all the 16 gb of ram and 2) be doing something where caching to a SATA III ssd would cause problems. Nothing you described would meet those limitations.

 

[theuserjohnny]

How does soldering on ram make it faster? I can just see Apple saying to to mask the fact they've glued/soldered everything down to force people to upgrade after 3 years. If your laptop goes pop after 3 years because of faulty ram, or the battery dies then how are you going to replace it? you'll be forced to buy another one.

It won't be long before apple stops the non retina model. I like macbooks but I don't like the path apple are taking. Many users probably won't give a toss, but some of us do. The next thing we'll be hearing is that apple are going to dump intel chips.

The good thing for apple though, is that they seem to make the best laptops. I've looked into others but they just fall short.

I'm pretty sure it dose not make it any faster. If anything I think it just saves space but even then I'm not even sure. It's just something Apple has decided to do to maybe just gain more money and prevent people from going to 3rd parties for RAM.

 

[swerve147]

How does soldering on ram make it faster?

http://macperformanceguide.com/mbpRetina2012-speed-memory-bandwidth.html

Neither proven nor disproven beyond this one benchmark but the explanation makes sense.

 

[Crzyrio]

I'm pretty sure it dose not make it any faster. If anything I think it just saves space but even then I'm not even sure. It's just something Apple has decided to do to maybe just gain more money and prevent people from going to 3rd parties for RAM.

It does make it faster! by a couple of nanoseconds cause the electrical pulses have a shorter distance to travel and stuff

In all honesty, Yes apple does make money of you because of the soldered RAM and I am sure that it was a reason but at the same time having user replaceable ram takes up a LOT more space than soldered ram.

User replaceable ram would require 2 slots, meaning that the user replaceable ram would take up 4-5 times more space than soldered, this is without considering the holder/connection to the logic board.

Have you seen how tightly packed the inside of the retina macbook pro is? It is amazing they were able to fit all of that in there. You cant have everything without compromise.

Just look at it, its beautiful. Do you see there any space to add anything else?

 

[Freyqq]

good read so far.

I just wanna chime in to ask a rookie question.

I'm on a 8G ram 15'' mbpr, i just fired up parallel 8 with win 8 running in it.

No other apps running except for chrome in OSX with 9 tabs.

and i got this....

what happened?

page outs are 0, which means no caching to the ssd is occurring. You're fine.

 

[eminemead]

page outs are 0, which means no caching to the ssd is occurring. You're fine.

but what does the swap memory mean?

I thought it has to be paging out when swapping memory.

 

[Freyqq]

but what does the swap memory mean?

I thought it has to be paging out when swapping memory.

pageouts are swaps from memory --> SSD/HD. If it is 0, that means everything is being cached in the memory only.

 

[Mackan]

It does make it faster! by a couple of nanoseconds cause the electrical pulses have a shorter distance to travel and stuff

In all honesty, Yes apple does make money of you because of the soldered RAM and I am sure that it was a reason but at the same time having user replaceable ram takes up a LOT more space than soldered ram.

User replaceable ram would require 2 slots, meaning that the user replaceable ram would take up 4-5 times more space than soldered, this is without considering the holder/connection to the logic board.

Have you seen how tightly packed the inside of the retina macbook pro is? It is amazing they were able to fit all of that in there. You cant have everything without compromise.

Image

Just look at it, its beautiful. Do you see there any space to add anything else?

They could have used the same format for the RAM as they do with the SSD. It would be thin and slim, sliding in and secured with one screw. No need for 2 slots or anything.

I am sure they could have done it if they cared. Looking at the current design means nothing.

 

[stevemiller]

The replies in this thread fill me with despair.

I am far from the top end of motion graphics and animation, and I make use of my full 16gb of ram on a daily basis. Aka when I only had 8 my system was regularly becoming unbearably sluggish and unresponsive, often while running only a single application.

Once upon a time apple's pro laptops were marketed to people who actually used them for heavy computer work. Now it seems like people are buying them as fashion accessories (whatever, it's your money) and for some reason like to make sweeping generalizations that almost no one has needs any greater than there own.

Sigh.

 

[~~Hello~~]

Apple shouldn't be pandering to those people who want the macbook pro to be thin and as light as a feather. That's what the air was designed for. Macbook Pros should be designed for people who want more power. I don't really care if the soldered in ram is a few nano seconds faster. I would like a macbook that is future proof, and one where I can eventually put in 32gb of RAM. You might not need it now but a few years down the line you might. For those of us who run VMs they eat up a lot of RAM if you want multiple ones running in the background.