I do need a laptop, though. While I often work hooked up to another display using my MBP as a laptop, I switch offices regularly and I often need to get out of the office. I'm not a fan of paying out the wazu for dropbox, and being able to run Lightroom/Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/Coda/CodeKit/MAMP all while having Safari and Chrome open for browser testing is generally a necessity. As these programs continue to require more resources, the computer will need to be upgraded. It's much nicer to drop $100ish dollars on new RAM rather than drop upwards of $2k on a new computer.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
rMBP irreplaceable RAM is a deal breaker!
- Thread starter octavianguti
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I do need a laptop, though. While I often work hooked up to another display using my MBP as a laptop, I switch offices regularly and I often need to get out of the office. I'm not a fan of paying out the wazu for dropbox, and being able to run Lightroom/Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/Coda/CodeKit/MAMP all while having Safari and Chrome open for browser testing is generally a necessity. As these programs continue to require more resources, the computer will need to be upgraded. It's much nicer to drop $100ish dollars on new RAM rather than drop upwards of $2k on a new computer.
I think the point trying to be made is that *likely* you will never be able to upgrade the cMBP's RAM to anything more than 16GB because the cMBP only has 2 DIMM slots and there's no market for 16GB sticks of notebook memory right now. With DDR4 just around the corner 16GB DDR3 sticks may also be made further moot.
In other words if you're willing to pay Apple their $200 USD up front then there's no difference between the rMBP and cMBP with regards to RAM upgradability. 16GB is what you'll get at maximum, whether classic or Retina.
I do however think that being able to swap RAM out as a user replaceable-upgradable part is a definite advantage the classic has. I'd much rather be able to choose and order a pair of sticks from Newegg and install on my own rather than pay Apple to do it. This is in the event that the RAM goes bad, or I want to upgrade from 4GB to 8GB or 16GB. Overall it's more flexibility/freedom for the end user.
I almost always use an external monitor. The 2 or 3 places I work have external monitors for you to plug in to.
Also as this is server software, having the VMs running doesn't mean I need to interact with them personally on screen. Only one of the VMs has dev tools in that I need to work with on screen.
A desktop is no good in a single location for me as I need to work in different locations. I represent a fairly unlikely working scenario and I realise that, there is no incentive for Apple to support people like myself, it would just be nice to have the option of 32GBI am sure they could squeeze another couple of RAM slots in there somewhere....
There will always be a trade-off. I am familiar with the W530 setup running as a beefy hyper-visor dev machine.
I personally use a T420 w/ 16GB and three SSDs (mSATA, internal and dockbay). My colleagues all use W520/W530s. I carry both a Thinkpad and a Macbook. Heck, I run ESXi 5 on my Thinkpad so I think I have domain experience here.
Yes the W530 is a beefy box but it is also heavy and a brick. It is also twice as thick as a Macbook and the power-supply is huge.
Running *NIX with the optimus card is a bitch, you pretty much have to drop down to integrated igp to run in Linux/FreeBSD. Battery life under Linux is 4 hours top. If you add a big fat slice +27 battery (which I have), you bump that up to 7-8 hours and you have a laptop that is nearly 4 inches thick and weighs over 10 lbs using a slice battery add-on. Having more than 2 2560x1600 display is also taxing any of the T or W series despite the W530 having 2GB video. It is a breeze on macs w/ thunbderolt chaining. There is something with the optimus card that relegates so much bandwidth per video port. If you want three displays, you'll need to get the mini-dock (which I also have and use).
The one thing that Macs that is cool over the Thinkpads (I love thinkpads btw) is thunderbolt. I mean, it sure beats using eSATA, USB3 when you have to copy and shuttle around 100-200GB worth of Virtual Machines daily. Like I said, my setup is with 3 SSDs annd all my colleagues have similar 3 SSD set-ups on our Thinkpads.
But it still doesn't beat a Macbook/MacMini when you start plugging in TB drives. They're actually cheaper compared to high capacity SSDs. A 512GB Samsung SSD is $500. A LaCie 4TB drive which will give you real world 300MB/sec can be had for $300. And when you start plugging in SSDs via USB 3.0 on the W530, the speed drop down to 200MB/sec.
32GB is nice to have. I use 24-28 GB on average on my desktop. However, one has to consider disk bottlenecks. I've ended up just running my hypervisors on dedicated whiteboxes because of disk I/O instead of RAM limitations. My slow down was mainly due to disks. My VM are Linux lamp stacks and they run 512MB-1Gb each so I can run a dozen or so on any 16Gb laptop. It was the disk slowness that was killing me.
You can build an 8-core AMD FX-8320 32GB Ram box for under $400. 6 core setup can be done for $300.
Thats what I ended up doing. I built an AMD and an i7 3770K ESXi VM servers. I can add infinite amount of storage and RAID, multiple NICs,etc. They run about 20 VMs each. I can do real failover and migration testing,etc..
Now, I just use my laptop to provision my VMs. I'll run at most 4 VMs on my laptops and 16GB is enough for me. I understand people have different workflows.
I almost always use an external monitor. The 2 or 3 places I work have external monitors for you to plug in to.
Also as this is server software, having the VMs running doesn't mean I need to interact with them personally on screen. Only one of the VMs has dev tools in that I need to work with on screen.
A desktop is no good in a single location for me as I need to work in different locations. I represent a fairly unlikely working scenario and I realise that, there is no incentive for Apple to support people like myself, it would just be nice to have the option of 32GB
Gotcha
Yes and no.
It's a laptop.
Yes
It sucks on toast that Apple's "Pro" line of MacBooks... their most powerful offering... no longer offers user-upgradable RAM. Sure, it's probably one of the best laptops on the market now, but that's NOW. In a couple of years you'll want to upgrade it. Especially if its your desktop replacement.
Add to that, bad RAM chips are somewhat common. So if in a year you realize your crashes are due to RAM (MemTest86) then they'd have to replace the whole motherboard to repair it. Which then might have something ELSE wrong.
16GB is quite fine now.. it's one of the higher offerings of RAM. But in 3 years? 4? You might want more to run that latest version of OS X and its tools.
Add to that, bad RAM chips are somewhat common. So if in a year you realize your crashes are due to RAM (MemTest86) then they'd have to replace the whole motherboard to repair it. Which then might have something ELSE wrong.
16GB is quite fine now.. it's one of the higher offerings of RAM. But in 3 years? 4? You might want more to run that latest version of OS X and its tools.
No
I realize many use it as a desktop replacement, but my impression is... if you get 16GB now then by the time that's no longer sufficient for your needs the CPU and GPU will be just as deficient.
In 2 years time (maybe 3) that 16GB is going to be the standard laptop offering. But a Quad 2.7Ghz with x flops? That will probably be off the board for anything less than a cheap Black-Friday-Deal laptop. Add to that your video card is going to be quite weak (for gaming).
So already, after 2 years that laptop is not going to be "PRO" material anymore, it will just be average by the day's standards. And by 4 or 5? I doubt you'd want to be using it for much more than browsing, writing documents, or playing classic games.
So honestly, if you NEED a FAST laptop (for actual work or heavy stuff) then in 3+ years it's already going to be past the point that RAM will help. Unless you're running your old 2013/2014 tools in which case it won't be running any slower either.
At least with a PROPER desktop you could replace the CPU and GPU fairly easily. Unfortunately the Mac Pro is all but abandoned and the iMac can't upgrade much (perhaps the CPU if you're ballsy).
Add to that, it looks like Apple is dropping OS X support for their laptops after X years (Mountain Lion won't install on 2007 or 2008? laptops) then there's only "so far" you can go with wanting to run the latest software anyway.
In 2 years time (maybe 3) that 16GB is going to be the standard laptop offering. But a Quad 2.7Ghz with x flops? That will probably be off the board for anything less than a cheap Black-Friday-Deal laptop. Add to that your video card is going to be quite weak (for gaming).
So already, after 2 years that laptop is not going to be "PRO" material anymore, it will just be average by the day's standards. And by 4 or 5? I doubt you'd want to be using it for much more than browsing, writing documents, or playing classic games.
So honestly, if you NEED a FAST laptop (for actual work or heavy stuff) then in 3+ years it's already going to be past the point that RAM will help. Unless you're running your old 2013/2014 tools in which case it won't be running any slower either.
At least with a PROPER desktop you could replace the CPU and GPU fairly easily. Unfortunately the Mac Pro is all but abandoned and the iMac can't upgrade much (perhaps the CPU if you're ballsy).
Add to that, it looks like Apple is dropping OS X support for their laptops after X years (Mountain Lion won't install on 2007 or 2008? laptops) then there's only "so far" you can go with wanting to run the latest software anyway.
Last edited:
I am hopeful that they might and the reason is that they aren't using normal SO-DIMMs are they? If you look a the teardowns, they have proprietary RAM soldered on and it isn't in two batches or anything.
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Mid+2012+Teardown/9462/2
I tried emailing Tim Cook on the subject but no reply as yet