Thunderbolt 3 Ports on Right Side of 13-Inch MacBook Pro Have Reduced PCI Express Bandwidth

[tigres]

The limitation on charging through the Digital AV Multiport adaptor seems really silly at this point. It honestly tells me they didn't update their dongles to fully support the new MBP systems. In addition to that issue, the Multimedia adapters HDMI port doesn't support 60hz video on anything larger than 1080P. The low charging speed, and video limitation really makes it a worthless / inadequate product for the new MBP.

There is so much to like about the new 15" MBP, but honestly may just keep my 2015 15" Radeon equipped MBP for a bit longer. I hope the aftermarket can catch up with more affordable connectivity options. As it stands, I would need to spend over $200 to match the current ports my MBP has, to be able to use my existing drives / monitors / accessories.

And here I sit, with a 2013 13' air just waiting for the 15 mbp. It came and i did not pull the trigger. Funny that I have 3 friends and co workers feeling the same and have also not ordered.

I need to run vm for work, but was really expecting 32gb in ram- As it was nearly a forgone conclusion they were going to give it. Nope

In fact, after having Macs for ages I am simply not sure what to buy. If I did not love osx so much I would walk over to MS and buy a surface book maxed out.

I have to make a decision quick as my air can't take what I throw at her any more.

 

[Mescagnus]

It just works.

 

[darkbrain85]

And finally, was it too soon to introduce the Kaby Lake 12" Macbook? It had the most logical update possible and the CPU was available - are they waiting for the rest of the range to go Kaby Lake?

What's wrong with you people? Kabylake is out a few Weeks. The Macbooks are in development for a long time. After developing, it has to be tested. The OS has also to be adjusted for a new CPU. This process takes a very long time, so there was no chance to release a Macbook with Kabylake in 2016.

As alternative we had to wait until 2017 for new Macbooks. But that was no solution!

So the Macbook Pro with Skylake is a Macbook with the newest possible CPU available. So why you People are crying?

 

[gnasher729]

What's wrong with you people? Kabylake is out a few Weeks. The Macbooks are in development for a long time. After developing, it has to be tested. The OS has also to be adjusted for a new CPU. This process takes a very long time, so there was no chance to release a Macbook with Kabylake in 2016.

If anyone disagrees that things need to be tested carefully, remind them of the disaster called "Galaxy Note 7". That's what happens if you don't take your time.
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So I'm guessing, just like with the slower storage on the low end iPhone 7, Apple won't exactly be forthcoming with this news with its buying customers... I bet it's not on the box or on its website...

Bunch of con artists.

Actually, that news was completely incorrect. The speed of the iPhone 7 32 GB flash memory is exactly in line with every other high end phone. The iPhone 6 and 7 with large memory is the outlier. The iPhone 7 128GB has memory that is eight times faster than any other phone on the market.

 

[xflashx]

I have just one word to say: Wow.
Seriously Apple, what the fu*k are you thinking?
The only thing you are good at right now is fu*king with your (loyal) customers. Otherwise you wouldn't offer a notebook like this. I remember when they actually used the latest technology in their products. What were they thinking about using just usb-c ports? Seriously. 2 USB-C ports on the left, 2 usb 3.0 ports, HDMI and a SD-card reader plus headphone jack would be perfect. I actually don't care about having very very fast ports. They are totally meaningless when im not able to plugin a usb stick or connect my macbook to an external display while im not at home. So whats their new "definition" of mobile? Having to carry around a backpack full of adapters? Just one word: insane.

So many bad things about it and they are charging even more money for this. I hope Apple will lose tons of millions of dollars because nobody wants to buy this crap. I (and a lot of other here) are so disappointed. Apple is sleeping and give a sh*t about us, only thing they obviously want is to please their shareholders. Im sorry Apple, the competition is not sleeping. I bought a rMBP in 2015 and if they don't change their mind my next notebook is for sure not a macbook. Im not stupid enough to pay this huge amount of money for something like this.

Now a lot of people will say: thats not a lot of money. Fine maybe for you it isn't, but for a lot of other people here who already own apple products it is. And please think ahead. If this product doesn't fail you might be surprised what Apple will have for you in 3 years. Same (old) underpowered technology, maybe no ports at all, starting at just 3999$.

I can't justify that last years base model rMBP has a more powerful processor than current gen rMBP for a higher price.
And the keynote itself was a pain in the a*s. Totally missed the point with "hello again". I actually expected new Mac Pros, new iMacs, new Macbook airs and new Mac minis. Never thought somebody can talk 1 hour about a little display above the keyboard. Absolutely ridiculous. I even feel ashamed when the Jony Ive video appeared. He became a parody of himself.

I hope some people here stop defending Apple for their bad decisions. Apple can't take us for idiots.

Im afraid of whats coming next.. im afraid of the new Macs. I just hope they will continue to make great products (which the mbp clearly isn't at all), but for gods sake, keep the damn ports, keep the price, just don't keep old technology and don't fu*k with us. Just look at what microsoft has to offer. I never imagined such great products from them, while Apple tries to rob us. No, im not a microsoft fanboy, no I don't have any of their products (yet). But if apple keeps its current direction, I believe many people here are out. macOS is great but im not really sure that it is worth the price and having to carry around tons of adapters. You are NOT a fashion company, you are a computer company. Time to act like it.

 

[FreshBoy]

And here I sit, with a 2013 13' air just waiting for the 15 mbp. It came and i did not pull the trigger. Funny that I have 3 friends and co workers feeling the same and have also not ordered.

I need to run vm for work, but was really expecting 32gb in ram- As it was nearly a forgone conclusion they were going to give it. Nope

In fact, after having Macs for ages I am simply not sure what to buy. If I did not love osx so much I would walk over to MS and buy a surface book maxed out.

I have to make a decision quick as my air can't take what I throw at her any more.

You do realise how silly that sounds? Your air can't take what you throw at her anymore which means it was once suitable and now you suddenly need a 32gb powerhouse MacBook?

 

[darngooddesign]

...Still, both normal and advanced users would know, going to need to purchase tons of 30 dollar adapters for the things needed...ridiculous apple, ridiculous.

Why would you spend $30 on an adapter. Cheaper ones are already on Amazon and so are the USB-C cables.

 

[chabig]

?..and the 13" without TouchBar has fewer/slower components inside, so they both had enough lanes spare to connect all ports at full speed.

That's close. The non-touch bar model only has two ports. The touch bar machine has those same two ports PLUS another two.

 

[Ries]

So how should apple please you, highly important internet whiner?
- put 2 high + 2 low ports, you want 2 high ports (already are there) or 3 (would be 2 high + 1 low, already there)
- put 2 high ports, you whine macbook has just 2 ports
- put a cpu that handles 4 high ports (it’s called the 15 inch quad core)
- put everything above in a 13 inch machine? (if you know how to do that why not start your own company like jobs did)

And most of all, who *** cares if you buy their new laptop? They have no obligation to you. Is BMW obliged to set the power split in the new xdrive like you want it to? Spoiler they also don’t care about you. And neither do we, except for other whiners...

Lol at the hypocrisy of you calling someone a whiner. You can have three high ports, but I guess you didn't have the smarts to figure that out. Apple cares if people buy their laptops, they care actually a lot. You think im the only one no buying it? Apple produced a product that is not worth the price and I'll call them out on it. That you can't handle that, is between you and your shrink. And who are those "we" you talk about? You shrink must rate you high on superior complex scale.

 

[Santabean2000]

...Never thought somebody can talk 1 hour about a little display above the keyboard. Absolutely ridiculous. I even feel ashamed when the Jony Ive video appeared. He became a parody of himself....

Exactly. The whole thing was an embarrassment from start to finish.

You do realise how silly that sounds? Your air can't take what you throw at her anymore which means it was once suitable and now you suddenly need a 32gb powerhouse MacBook?

People's needs change. Is that a hard thing to see..?

Why would you spend $30 on an adapter. Cheaper ones are already on Amazon and so are the USB-C cables.

Why do we need so many damned adapters in the first place?!

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I'm disappointed in many aspects of the new MBP 13". However, I really do wonder how many people need 4 full-speed TB3 ports. I'd like to hear some use cases where you'd be fully utilizing all of them at TB3 speeds. As someone else pointed out earlier in the thread, this is not the first time that ports on high-end machines (including the Mac Pro) have had different speeds.

 

[blackcrayon]

a normal user would be confuse from the title alone.

A advanced user would be baffled to put up with limitations but they would be smarter..or not to spend on a 15 inch.

Still, both normal and advanced users would know, going to need to purchase tons of 30 dollar adapters for the things needed...ridiculous apple, ridiculous.

As if you are charging 3k for a 1.8tflop gpu is bad enough
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You are just use to taking it from behind i guess.

it takes no genius and even apple fans to know this and buying a bunch of 30 dollar adapters is waste

You must be just used to misunderstanding technology, after I and several other people explained how this works. Must be rough to live in such a cold, hard world where things like the new MacBook Pro exist that appear to be great products that you don't have to buy but instead whine about every little thing no matter how small the implication.

As for "adapters", it's called progress. If no one "big" takes the plunge on a superior set of ports, devices will never use them. If you can't afford to transition to better tech simply wait or buy a device with old ports.

 

[jont-fu]

I need to run vm for work, but was really expecting 32gb in ram- As it was nearly a forgone conclusion they were going to give it. Nope

If you often need VM's with more than 8 GB RAM you should consider running them in separate physical machines. I use usually two VM's: a 2 GB shell-only Linux machine with a dev environment, and a 2 GB Windows 10 machine for testing with IE/Edge. They both run fine and smooth and consume only 4 GB of memory combined. That leaves plenty of memory for my macOS apps (I have 16 GB total). Of course, you might have different needs. If I was on a tight memory budget I could run the Linux machine in the cloud for a few bucks/month.

 

[kstotlani]

How many actually need that bandwidth on even ONE port much less 3 to 4? And are actually in the market for the 13" Pro right now? How many were truly planning to get the 13" and hook up 4 TB3 devices that need that bandwidth? How many pay zero attention to far more significant positives, from screen quality to giant trackpad?

How man a actually expected a pro machine because it has Pro in its name?

 

[blackcrayon]

Where did it all go wrong for Apple? I don't believe it was just demise of Steve Jobs. A company that big, with that much resource, expertise, collective intelligence and reach should not have failed like this. It's painful to watch Apple fail as a twenty year customer and at one-time a sort of self confessed fan boy, I guess. But this...this is just a diabolical train wreck of a company now who's products have totally lost focus and functionality. Apple seem to want to take anything that works and change it, break it, just so they can say they've changed things. While I never thought I'd say it, I think I'm likely to try out the new Microsoft Surface Studio - this is the sort of product Apple was meant to make. Microsoft is the new Apple. I never thought, in a million years I would ever say that, but there you go.

Why are you posting that on this article though? This is not an example of anything in particular, nor is it even a drawback (it's a massive improvement from previous models that either had only a single thunderbolt port with far less bandwidth). This is a huge improvement.

Interesting you mention Microsoft - while the new Surface Studio has some highly niche but also highly innovative features, it also has some terrible backward hardware choices - it has no Thunderbolt at all, even on a $4000 machine!

 

[bice]

...

If you're planning to purchase a new MacBook Pro and are confused about which adapters you're going to need so it will work with your existing equipment and accessories, Apple's support document is a good reference to check out.
...

That fact that they needed to publish an extensive support article with all the adapters needed says it all.

Oh the times of "it just works" are so gone.

 

[blackcrayon]

How man a actually expected a pro machine because it has Pro in its name?

Please explain how having two 40 Gb/sec ports and 2 others that are at LEAST 10 Gb/sec does not fit the definition of what a Pro would use. We'll wait. As a hint, that's more external port bandwidth than any Apple computer has EVER had and also probably more than most other computers in general.

As an example, it's a whole lot more than The Surface Studio has even if you spend > $4000 for it.

 

[darkbrain85]

I have just one word to say: Wow.
Seriously Apple, what the fu*k are you thinking?

LOL... what is wrong in your life?

 

[Val-kyrie]

So what do you suggest they should have done? Have two 10 GB/s USB-C ports instead of two TB 3 ports running at 20 GB/s*? And thus also prevent the use of any TB chains (most of which would be fine with 20 GB/s)? Or any of the other features that TB enables but USB-C not? Not to speak of allowing for the use of existing TB devices?

* Assuming that 'reduced' means half.

I am suggesting that two TB3 ports would have been sufficient.

* Since no one yet knows what the real bandwidth is without some tests, let's work with your assumption of 10GB/s. I only hope it does not mean that there is only 10GB/s split across both TB3 ports on the right, in which case Apple should have just used USB-A 3.1 ports.

Let me clarify: the TB3 ports on the left side handle 40GB/s split. Fine, but tell consumers. There are those who will experience a performance penalty when using an (unsanctioned) eGPU with any other TB3 device on the same side. For most other purposes, the bandwidth will likely be sufficient for two standard TB3 devices, both of which can be daisy chained, thus eliminating the need for gimped TB3 ports on the right.

The TB3 ports on the right side offer no advantage over USB-C 3.1 Gen 2. By claiming these are TB3, which they kind of sort of are, Apple has introduced another variant into modern ports. First it was USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 (MacBook) and Gen 2 (MBP); now it is TB3 full (left side) or reduced (right side) bandwidth with no indication about which is which. I bet most reps in the Apple Store are also unaware.

Since TB3 on the right side has limited bandwidth, Apple could have offered more common ports that are still in use today (USB-A, SD card reader). But this is too practical and asymmetrical for Apple.

I love the concept of TB3, but any computer with TB3 only is 2-3 years ahead of its time, minimum. I will repeat what I have said so many other times: Apple could have kept the previous port layout and updated the TB2 ports to TB3, or at least presented that update alongside this new form factor. Keeping TB2 around is confusing and has convoluted their product line. Every manufacturer other than Apple seems to realize that computers are used in the real world in a mixed environment, where ports which Apple have declared to be legacy are actually ubiquitous. The use of adapters for everything only introduces one more point of failure, especially for something as simple as a thumb drive.

The 15" is already losing one TB3 port which will have to be dedicated exclusively to power when needed because even Apple's own adapter doesn't provide enough power pass through to (maintain a) charge while using the adapter! Really? Since that is the case, Apple should have kept MagSafe.

These new machines may represent the future, but the technology doesn't match the design. Apple is free to push the envelope, but most people have to do real work. For those people whom I advise about purchases, there is little to commend the updated version over the previous one and only a lot more headaches.

 

[moosington]

How man a actually expected a pro machine because it has Pro in its name?

Pro pro pro pro pro it's not a pro device! I don't know how many times I've read that exact line from countless people on the internet. Can we just stop with it? It adds nothing to the conversation. At least other people are talking about the physical limitations of the chip.

Serious question -- What would you even plug into this computer that would need more than one full speed TB3 port, let alone 2 or 4? Monitors seem like the biggest thing, but the igpu can only handle so many pixels. dGPU on the second one?

 

[69650]

They're trying to save component costs on a 3 grand laptop. Even for Apple that's just plain greedy.

 

[definitive]

These will go along nicely with the slower 32GB iPhone 7 series...

 

[Abazigal]

Lordy. Another thread chock full of whining and complaints.

This place is really going to the pits.

 

[xflashx]

LOL... what is wrong in your life?

Same question for you if you like this thing and all the compromises, go and buy. At least I know when a company tries to sell you ****.

 

[BruceEBonus]

You are NOT a fashion company, you are a computer company. Time to act like it.

Well written. It's as if Apple are sitting it out and hoping those who remember when they were the market innovators will be overtaken by new Apple 'thusiasts who know no better. Unfortunately (for Apple) the majority still lie in the former camp.