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Waiting for the 2019 MBP [Merged]

sosumi99 said:
What I don't understand is how can Apple's own engineers stand using these things. Surely many of them use MBPs to develop the software and to get their work done. I don't believe they find these things any more suited to their needs than we do, and they must have the same problems with the keyboard, the useless TB, the awful battery life, etc. etc. In the past you could count on Macs being made for humans because the engineers who make them also use them, but the way this design cycle has gone makes me question the assumption.

I wish I could understand why Apple is making such terrible machines (I'm mainly talking about usability, not raw specs). Could it be that Jony Ive just doesn't use MBPs and has no idea of the pain? (We know Tim Cook doesn't, so he's useless on this)
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I can chime in on that. I reckon a hell of a lot of professional developers probably use an external keyboard, hence eliminating the keyboard and TouchBar issues. Their time on external vs laptop is probably like 90%:10% ratio.

You mentioned poor battery life - any particular model?
 
DanUC6 said:
TouchBar isn't going anywhere.
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I suspect that the Touch Bar has been only the first product of Apple experimenting with ARM chips and how they could enhance the user experience, so they went ahead and released the touch bar together with Touch ID in 2016.

Then they went ahead with the iMac Pro, evolved the chip for more security, and there was no TB to be seen.
With the Mac Mini / MBA in 2018, they actually got the poor reception, ditched the TB nonsense, and kept the good part as an ausiliary chip.
I think the road is paved.
 
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The TB, large touchpad and keyboard are likely just steps toward an all glass keyboard in a few years.

For that they would need haptics. So rather than removing the TB i would expect an enhnaced TB with haptics.
 
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I don't love the Touch Bar but I don't hate it either. I agree that it's likely the first step to having an all-glass keyboard down the road.

Back on topic, I'm NOT waiting for a 2019 machine. I think the 2018 machines (especially the 13" Pro) are amazing, given that it's the first time ever that we get a quad-core CPU in such a small form factor.
 
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Ma2k5 said:
I can chime in on that. I reckon a hell of a lot of professional developers probably use an external keyboard, hence eliminating the keyboard and TouchBar issues. Their time on external vs laptop is probably like 90%:10% ratio.

You mentioned poor battery life - any particular model?
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The 13 inch. Here’s a post from Marco Arment, a prominent developer, showing that he gets less than 4 hours out of his 13 inch. https://marco.org/2018/07/31/mac-low-power-mode My experience is similar.

Even if folks at the spaceship are on external keyboards 90% of the time, they still take their machine home sometimes or bring them to meetings though. I just cannot believe that the people inside Apple aren’t as annoyed by these machines as we are.
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gpat said:
I suspect that the Touch Bar has been only the first product of Apple experimenting with ARM chips and how they could enhance the user experience, so they went ahead and released the touch bar together with Touch ID in 2016.

Then they went ahead with the iMac Pro, evolved the chip for more security, and there was no TB to be seen.
With the Mac Mini / MBA in 2018, they actually got the poor reception, ditched the TB nonsense, and kept the good part as an ausiliary chip.
I think the road is paved.
Click to expand...

This makes some sense to me. I hope this is all just part of the pain of building up to full ARM MBPs.
 
sosumi99 said:
The 13 inch. Here’s a post from Marco Arment, a prominent developer, showing that he gets less than 4 hours out of his 13 inch. https://marco.org/2018/07/31/mac-low-power-mode My experience is similar.
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Ah yep I agree, I was wondering if it was against the 15" or the 13". That is probably the biggest let down of the 13", that is houses only a ~55Wh battery, now consider some 15W CPU laptops have the same or more battery size as this and then remember that this MacBook has not only a 28W CPU/better iGPU, but a TouchBar and a 500nit screen to drive! They really need to up that battery to ~70Wh to be honest.

This makes some sense to me. I hope this is all just part of the pain of building up to full ARM MBPs.
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Just wait for the real pain once ARM kicks in!
 
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I think a lot of people will be shocked when Apple makes the switch to Arm...no more bootcamp, & most 3rd party software won't work until it is rewritten for Arm. That's about the only thing that would drive me back to a windows machine.
 
I think there's a lot of hearsay right now about Apple switching to ARM from Intel/x86. Yes, Apple's A-series chips are dominating the MOBILE space but it doesn't offer the scalability on desktop as much as synthetic benchmarks may want you to believe. I also do not believe Apple will divert to invest in producing desktop/laptop chips and the necessary R&D to maintain that performance. There was a real reason to switch away from the PPC architecture because the G4 was left behind the pack and the G5 faced a development stop-gap. Intel may be having significant issues with it's 10nm production but it's still delivering the performance with it's revised roadmap as demanded for Apple's notebook/desktop line. This rumor has been going on for the last 8 years and just doesn't seem to want to go away.

For now, I'm going to soldier on with my mid-2014 MacBook Pro 15" until Ice Lake comes through in late 2019/2020.
 
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XenoXelloss said:
I think there's a lot of hearsay right now about Apple switching to ARM from Intel/x86. Yes, Apple's A-series chips are dominating the MOBILE space but it doesn't offer the scalability on desktop as much as synthetic benchmarks may want you to believe. I also do not believe Apple will divert to invest in producing desktop/laptop chips and the necessary R&D to maintain that performance. There was a real reason to switch away from the PPC architecture because the G4 was left behind the pack and the G5 faced a development stop-gap. Intel may be having significant issues with it's 10nm production but it's still delivering the performance with it's revised roadmap as demanded for Apple's notebook/desktop line. This rumor has been going on for the last 8 years and just doesn't seem to want to go away.

For now, I'm going to soldier on with my mid-2014 MacBook Pro 15" until Ice Lake comes through in late 2019/2020.
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I completely agree. If Apple were to go ARM, we would likely see an iPad with a mouse pointer, a built in keyboard, & a gui mod to reflect the current MacOS design. The rest would be simply iPad software. ARM is efficient because it does not have to be designed to keep supporting windows.

Going back to the CPU, they're now running into limits in the quantum realm & thus we are seeing what some have predicted: more cores in lieu of raw single core performance. At some point, the CPU can't shrink down any more & will only get larger to add more processing power...which cases heat issues & requires more voltage. That's why they die shrink in the first place...cut the size, keep the performance, drop the voltage. They can't die shrink much anymore so now there is a space issue. Voltage will always go up with the size of the CPU layer surface...be it a stacked CPU or having multiple physical CPUs installed in the motherboard.

We're even seeing the deviation from the tick tock cycle: tick: die shrink; tock: improve efficiency. At some point, I think we will see the end of the tick cycle until a new material is used to design CPUs. Until that happens, constant efficiency improvements will have to be made to get the voltage lowered to either make the CPU larger or overclock the CPU. We may even see software going crazy on adding GPU instructions to help improve performance. That's a different world of limitations altogether.
 
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I dunno what I'm waiting for, nothing.

Might re evaluate my laptop purchase when my 2016 nTB is out of warranty and the thing breaks again. I like macOS though... a lot more than windows. on Sierra still

its a lovely machine in general but

Not impressed with where Mac hardware is headed, or rather, not headed and stagnating. The prices are absurd too imo even for nice screen / build ,etc

and the keyboard issue still seems up in the air, that whole thing leaves me sour in general from reading about it and knowing its gonna fail at some point in most likelihood and apple saying its just for acoustics but making changes that prevent dust from getting through as much underneath the keys by the sensors, and refusing to put '3rd gen' in 2016/2017 even for repeat repair customers
 
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therocksome said:
Personally, not much should change. Apple is most likely to do a redesign in 2020/21 as its usually every 4 years. Also their A chips will prob make its machine a lot thinner. I expect the 12 incher will use Arm next year, which will give Apple enough time to make sure macOS is able to handle A chips well with the software - They are probably working with big people already such as BMagic, Adobe, Microsoft, Sketch, Affinity, and more.

2019 will be incremental at best. Chassis will prevent full advantage cause Intel failed in their roadmapping. 2020/21 is the year of the beast
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Sure but my point was about making the storage tiers less unreasonable... so are we to take it you wouldn’t be pleased to see them add more value to the 2019 model by upping the storage tiers for the base/ upgraded stock models? £2,349 is a lot for a laptop with just 256GB storage. For that price I don’t think 512GB is unreasonable. Ditto for the upgraded model, is 1TB really too much to ask for on a £2,699 machine? I’d rather that than they make the SSDs faster again, surely at this point it’s a fraction of a fraction of users who actually benefit from faster SSDs? Larger drives also tend to be faster anyway, so rather than wasting money on even faster drives in the next refresh they could simplify to 512/1TB with 2 and 4TB BTO options.
 
best laptops were created when Steve was around ... look at the AIR -- best keyboard, magsafe, ports... battery life!
 
Regarding ARM, I want to be able to run parallels - windows, not bootcamp.
 
IdentityCrisis said:
Because Windows does not work on ARM period.
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ARM is probably the future of Windows period. Microsoft wouldn’t be investing the effort into making it run for no reason - the Windows transition will brobably be a lot longer and more open ended than the Mac one, but I can still see the endgame being Windows becoming an ARM platform that may also still support legacy x86 programs and processors.
 
Falhófnir said:
ARM is probably the future of Windows period. Microsoft wouldn’t be investing the effort into making it run for no reason - the Windows transition will brobably be a lot longer and more open ended than the Mac one, but I can still see the endgame being Windows becoming an ARM platform that may also still support legacy x86 programs and processors.
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The reason why MS invest money into running Windows on ARM is that we will see more and more mainstream computers based on ARM architecture, for light use.

If you need a desktop, but you do not game, or do anything intensive, what do you need x86 for? ARM is cheaper for consumer, can be run fanlessly, will do the job done(spreadsheets, office software, web browsing, Youtube, netflix, Twitch, etc).
 
koyoot said:
The reason why MS invest money into running Windows on ARM is that we will see more and more mainstream computers based on ARM architecture, for light use.

If you need a desktop, but you do not game, or do anything intensive, what do you need x86 for? ARM is cheaper for consumer, can be run fanlessly, will do the job done(spreadsheets, office software, web browsing, Youtube, netflix, Twitch, etc).
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Precisely - the bulk of Windows computing will move to ARM, almost certainly, while x86 will probably still be supported as a legacy and enterprise option, at least until it’s depreciated sufficiently. I’d imagine once Windows ARM computers really start taking off it probably won’t be long before intel throws in the towel and starts making PC grade ARM cpus. I don’t think it’s completely beyond the realm of possibility they’ve already started given their problems getting their x86 designs down to 10nm.
 
There is a sufficient problem with ARM that people will find out if Windows does make the move. Intel & AMD have their own set of instructions built into the chips that have been developed for decades to optimize how software & windows performs. Both could easily complete & probably blow away the ARM CPUs by simply removing these instructions. So why don't they do that now? A lot of software would slow down or not even be compatible any longer. Its similar to removing x264 & x265 CPU acceleration. This often happens with competitors attempting to gain a foothold on a marketshare. ARM is designed for portability, but not actual full instruction sets. Developers can try converting software over, but their software would slow down significantly as they can no longer use acceleration as it does not exist.

Different Chips are designed for a very specific job & attempting to abandon that would be the equivalent of CPU rendering graphics acceleration...it just can't handle most modern games...or having GPUs trying to compute certain CPU instructions...it either is too slow or flat out can't process it. ARM is not the same as intel & it would amaze me if it did take off for the following reasons:
1) it would be like introducing another major computer player...as different as OSX is to Windows is to Linux is to iPads is to Chromebooks. In the world of aviation, we succeed with fewer/more versatile models of planes, less maintenance per plane, less school houses. That is why Southwest was the only company that didn't suffer during poor economic times. The same thing would apply to most manufacturers, they won't likely create more lines with a high risk of low demand.

2) Most windows software would be become abandoned. I just don't see that happening. A lot of companies would suffer a massive economic hurt from needing to reprogram from the ground up. Shareholders won't tolerate that in mass. Maybe private companies, but legacy would slow adoption to hurt point #1

3) Software slowdown...people would realize that ported software performs really poorly. People would just blame the porting process, but near 100% of all ported software would be slower on what should be a faster CPU...that has happened before everywhere. Game counsels are a perfect example...they have slower chips, yet can run stuff far faster. Blame it on windows or Macs running everything & the developers will laugh at you. Gaming systems have different instructions that windows & Macs don't have...ones that drastically increase processes. Pick your favorite games...they will be slow...could be as bad as running at half speed. But hey, you'll have more battery life.
 
Trebuin said:
There is a sufficient problem with ARM that people will find out if Windows does make the move. Intel & AMD have their own set of instructions built into the chips that have been developed for decades to optimize how software & windows performs. Both could easily complete & probably blow away the ARM CPUs by simply removing these instructions. So why don't they do that now? A lot of software would slow down or not even be compatible any longer. Its similar to removing x264 & x265 CPU acceleration. This often happens with competitors attempting to gain a foothold on a marketshare. ARM is designed for portability, but not actual full instruction sets. Developers can try converting software over, but their software would slow down significantly as they can no longer use acceleration as it does not exist.

Different Chips are designed for a very specific job & attempting to abandon that would be the equivalent of CPU rendering graphics acceleration...it just can't handle most modern games...or having GPUs trying to compute certain CPU instructions...it either is too slow or flat out can't process it. ARM is not the same as intel & it would amaze me if it did take off for the following reasons:
1) it would be like introducing another major computer player...as different as OSX is to Windows is to Linux is to iPads is to Chromebooks. In the world of aviation, we succeed with fewer/more versatile models of planes, less maintenance per plane, less school houses. That is why Southwest was the only company that didn't suffer during poor economic times. The same thing would apply to most manufacturers, they won't likely create more lines with a high risk of low demand.

2) Most windows software would be become abandoned. I just don't see that happening. A lot of companies would suffer a massive economic hurt from needing to reprogram from the ground up. Shareholders won't tolerate that in mass. Maybe private companies, but legacy would slow adoption to hurt point #1

3) Software slowdown...people would realize that ported software performs really poorly. People would just blame the porting process, but near 100% of all ported software would be slower on what should be a faster CPU...that has happened before everywhere. Game counsels are a perfect example...they have slower chips, yet can run stuff far faster. Blame it on windows or Macs running everything & the developers will laugh at you. Gaming systems have different instructions that windows & Macs don't have...ones that drastically increase processes. Pick your favorite games...they will be slow...could be as bad as running at half speed. But hey, you'll have more battery life.
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This has been discussed ad nauseam in countless threads over the years, but to summarise:
  • A majority of users likely only ever use a browser, word processor and maybe a couple of built in apps like photos. This functionality would be there out of the box on a windows ARM machine.
  • Where specialist software is necessary, either it would be updated to run on ARM as well, or a new version released that does, or it will run fine via emulation. It will be a small subset of apps indeed that are intensive enough that an emulation penalty will make any noticeable difference.
  • Gaming may be one area negatively affected, but in a lot of cases games are more GPU dependent than CPU dependent. The Surface book ran a dual core U series CPU alongside a GTX 960M and could pretty well keep up with dedicated gaming computers running H series chips and a similar graphics card.
  • For everything else, x86 PCs will likely remain available for a good while at the top end, while ARM will start from basic computers and work it's way up the food chain.
 
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