Slower ram, a low power MBA CPU, slower GPU, yeah no. I would rather buy last years MBP
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"Hello Again" Apple holding mac-centric media event October 27th 10am PST
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Spiral Insanity
Banned
...when were their pro products ever priced to reach a non-wealthy audience?
Still rated for the same battery time so its offset by other stuff. This is the same thinking as Apple has for other products. They set a battery life they think is fair and then they work at keeping that whichever way they can.
jts
...hate me...
In April 2010 I bought a just-released MacBook Pro 13 for 1150, with student pricing or other always possible discounts, it was around 1000.
That was peak Apple Prosumer. Now the base 13 with the bells and whistles costs over 2000, and the heavily gimped version costs over 1700.
I'm thinking of buying the same computer, and don't really understand what you're saying.
Aren't the both 8GB of RAM? How do you tell if a CPU is worse? Where do you tell if a GPU is worse?
I think I can justify it because the screen is apparently a lot better?
I've been on an 11 inch 2010 MacBook Air since early 2011, and am not used to needing to pay attention to specs.
formasymphonic
Member
Yes, I've long used enough Apple hardware to know that efficiencies in other parts will allow current levels to be maintained. The point is that instead of trying to hit the same point, they could have achieved more. Instead of limiting to DDR3 and 16GB RAM, they could have had more. With USB-C peripherals being able to draw more power than ever, would a larger reserve be a downside in any way?
Let the MBA & nMB be the units for compromises and balances to pursue thinness. But for anyone in the demographics that a MacBook Pro appeals - who of them honestly values the current thinness over the possibility of having 24-35% battery?
Yeah but imagine a world where Apple keeps making battery-efficiency progress but actually keeps the battery size.
Exactly.
I see battery improvement as akin to moving from dialup / metered connections to broadband / unlimited usage. Alternatively 2G / early 3G to 4G. When you no longer need to think about power or data or cost as a limit, it can truly change the way you use your device for the better. And the pursuit of that is infinitely more valuable to all of us than "we shaved __% off even though size & weight stopped being an issue several iterations ago".
For me, it's specifically the 4k decoding. Intel claims you will see a huge jump in battery life when dealing with 10-bit HEVC or 4K VP9, and testing pans that out. PC World took three generations of the XPS 13, including the newest one with Kaby Lake, and pit them against each other in an attempt to isolate the improvements from the new CPU. While most of the results are hardly surprising (a ten percent improvement or so in most cases), the Skylake equipped XPS 13 couldn't handle the 1080p 10-bit version without dropping frames and hitting max turbo, while the Kaby Lake version handled the 4K file without hassle.
Does that make a major different right now? No, not really. 10-bit stuff is rare at the moment. But my perspective is unique; I'm using a laptop that basic Youtube 1080p has passed by, so perhaps I'm overemphasizing future capability after being stuck in the past. I fully intend for my next purchase to last as long as the machine is physically capable, and that's the one thing I will give Apple major credit for; eight years is a hell of a long time for any piece of computer hardware to withstand as a daily driver, and if it wasn't for the display cable giving out (and the fix being outside of my abilities), I'd probably sit on it for another year. But that brings me back to my point: if, unlikely as it may be, my next purchase breaks the five year barrier, we may be encountering 10-bit videos fairly often by that time, so I'd like a machine capable of handling it.
I also want to note that a dGPU would work probably play the above just fine, but most 13-inch models don't come with one, and given what 4K screens have a tendency to do to battery life on their own (it's not good), I would have to see how well a 960M (or a future 1050) does in respect to power usage and heat management on a 15" before I'd call it a wash at that form factor.
eyeball_kid
Member
Sure, I agree with you in terms of pushing the specs with power savings from other areas. No argument there. I really wanted 32GB RAM. But I imagine because Intel's roadmap is so anemic, Apple is saving DDR4 as a product feature for the next update.
formasymphonic
Member
Let's worry about this first.
I've been using Minis for almost ten years now and I would be heartbroken if they decided to just cut them out of their products. I have my own screens and I only work at home - it's the only viable desktop Mac for me.
The one I'm using even still has the lid in the bottom that you can just screw off with your bare hands to switch new RAM into. Of course they sealed that off in the model after that - Apple needs to sell their own RAM, right?
Shogmaster
Member
Apple: Sure, mrklaw. Your wish is our command. *introduces Apollo Lake Pentium/Celeron CPU Mac Minis*
a) There are keyboard shortcuts
b) There are (were) mouse utilities for the lazy which snapped the cursor to any dialog buttons.
Both those options allow you to keep your eyes focused on the screen unlike the touchbar.
I assuming the touchbar doesn't have any for of haptics/feedback (otherwise Apple would have trumpeted it during the event) which means you'll have to lift your finger and purposefully look down to tap the graphic button each and every time as you can't really build muscle memory with a constantly changing glass display
The touchbar seems cool in theory but ugh without physical feedback I don't know how useful it can be in practice. It sucks because the trackpad does have feedback, and iirc Apple did the a similar Final Cut demo with the force touch but that hasn't really been developed further and everybody will abandon for the shiny new touchbar
whs.
For any professional there are already tools...
electrotonus
Neo Member
That actually wasn't that expensive compared to the competition. Laptops back then were really high-end, cutting-edge machines. Computer Chronicles
The new MBP looks great, and I will get one. But the price is still hefty, especially since it doesn't pack that much power.
boneyjangles
Member
What's all this noise about not having DDR4 ram? Skylake doesn't support LPDDR4 ram, and I believe neither will Kaby.
As for not having Kaby, it's not out yet for that TDP.
As for not having Kaby, it's not out yet for that TDP.
edgefusion
Member
I did just this! Bought last years MBP at a significant discount to the current lineup and better specs/ports. Arrives tomorrow
Sorry I disagree. A computer should never reboot without the user's say so.
It's very noticeable for me because OS X is my default boot so I come back to the computer to a different OS than what I was using!
It's one of the top 5 reasons I switched to Macs 11 years ago. I can't believe they still haven't fixed it.
edgefusion
Member
I work in an office full of Macs, but we have parallels installed for Office because some of the spreadsheets we use cause the Mac version of Excel to crash. The amount of times I hear people crying out because windows 10 has suddenly decided to restart for updates causing them to lose all their work makes me wonder if we're not better off just sticking to Mac Excel!
It turns out the new MBP without the Touch Bar has a removable SSD.
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/new-macbook-pro-removable-ssd/
Well then. That's the one I want.
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/new-macbook-pro-removable-ssd/
Well then. That's the one I want.
Rocky Raccoon
Banned
Isn't it expensive to put in another SSD in that MacBook? What are the benefits of a removable SSD?
It really is baffling. Luckily I only use Windows for games because if I used it for work I would be using some pretty colourful language.
Repairs.
Being able to put a 2TB SSD in there a few years from now when you don't need to re-mortgage your home to buy one.
It lets your laptop keep up with your needs. Buy one with 512 GB today, upgrade to 1TB in a couple of years.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Does anyone know if it's possible to see and test the new MBPs (or at least the 13" one that ships now) in Apple Stores?
Zeyphersan
Banned
And yet the Thunderbolt 3 cable they sell says:
"This compact 0.5-meter cable supports Thunderbolt 3 throughput (up to 40 Gbps), USB 3 throughput (up to 10 Gbps), 4K or 5K display connectivity, and up to 60W of charging power to your Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C devices"
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/H...b&fs=f=15_mbp_thdblt3_late2016&fh=4595%2B4804
Mr. Wonderful
Member
More likely they're leveraging the 64MB L4 Cache on the 13" MBPs, combined with higher clock speed DDR3 RAM to offset the speed benefit and also save battery life.
Heck, in some scenarios, the 64MB L4 cache will make the 13" faster than a system without the L4 cache and faster DDR4.
For whomever suggested that 4K (HDR) Netflix is going to look gorgeous on the new WCG MBP screens, I'll believe it when I see it.
Only the 15" contains a GPU capable of DHCP 2.2 and 10-bit h.265 video acceleration. Apple would need to add support in Safari for that playback to happen, and Netflix hasn't added support for 4K/HDR playback through any web browser yet. Add to that that even if Netflix detected the screen's native resolution, these are only 2.8K screens, not 4K, meaning Netflix would have to either choose to deliver to us 4K, wasting bandwidth and server resources, or 1440p video. Finally, given how careful Apple has been to specify their displays are wide color gamut and NOT HDR, I'm not even sure if the displays are capable of doing HDR10 justice, and they sure as hell don't contain a Dolby Vision chip at this point.
Rocky Raccoon
Banned
Is it worth upgrading GPU on MacBook Pro 15 from Radeon Pro 450 2GB (1 Teraflops) for Radeon Pro 460 4GB (1.86 Teraflops) for $200 more?
How is there performance per watts compared to the Pascal cards?
How is there performance per watts compared to the Pascal cards?
Also due to reduced surface area.
Old 13: 12.35 in × 8.62 in × 0.71 in
New 13: 11.97 in x 8.36 in x 0.59 in
Diff: .38 in x .26 in x .12 in
Volume:
Old 13: 75.58 cu in
New 13: 59.04 cu in
[Hypothetical] 13 with same thickness but reduced surface area: 71.04 cu in
[Hypothetical] 13 with reduced thickness but same surface area: 62.8 cu in
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
If you even remotely want to play any games on it, it's worth it.
Rocky Raccoon
Banned
Is it worth the $200 more? Would it retain its resale value when I sell the MacBook?
What other options can I get with $200? GTX 1050TI, 1060?
No idea but $200 for almost double performance was a no brainer. If the removable SSD hold through for 15 inch MBP too then it works out even better for me. Performance per watt of Polaris is closer to Maxwell than Pascal but these laptop chips are under volted and underclocked.... I don't think nVidia even offers 35 Watt GPUs yet.
Spiral Insanity
Banned
Nazgul_Hunter
Member
Are touchbar MBPs in store for demo yet?
I have a question. I'm thinking of getting the new 13" base mbp for my wife. She's a pretty casual user (just web surfing, paying bills, email, watching movies etc..). I'd like for it to last 3-4 years at least and not suffer slowdowns/performance issues with future versions of OS X.
With that said, do you guys think the 256 gb of flash storage and 8 gb of RAM is enough? I haven't used OS X much, but I always hear how optimized the OS is, so I'm not sure if 16 gb of RAM and the extra storage space would be worth $400 in upgrades.
Any advice?
With that said, do you guys think the 256 gb of flash storage and 8 gb of RAM is enough? I haven't used OS X much, but I always hear how optimized the OS is, so I'm not sure if 16 gb of RAM and the extra storage space would be worth $400 in upgrades.
Any advice?
formasymphonic
Member
as I understand it, roughly the 450, 455 & 460 are 1Tflop, 1.3 Tflops (XB1) & 1.83 Tflops (PS4) respectively. Obviously this doesn't account for stuff like RAM, OS layer. etc but on terms of performance windows - hopefully thinking of it in that way helps.
tiredheadcrab
Member
These systems are using Skylake cpu's. Are they using the regular mobile variant or are they using the LP cpus we see in the Surface line? Either way that wouldnt bother me. But it does give MS a year head start on updating the cpu. Plus the Surface pro 4 would be more comparable to the Macbook pro 13 and and Surface Book more comparable to the Macbook pro 15. At least in terms of price and not ergonomics.
Touchbar Macbook Pros use higher power CPUs. The 15 inch comes standard with quad-core CPU. The non-touch MacBook Pro 13 uses the low power CPU.
With casual usage that hard drive space is probably fine. It's mostly photos and stuff that'll take up space so if she does photography then maybe upgrade, but you can mostly just throw those on an external and be good to go.
I think 8GB ram is probably ok for what she's doing, but then again $400 in upgrades split over 3-4 years of usage... that's $100 per year to make sure it lasts well into that 4th year or more. I'd probably do it if I were you, but it's probably not worth sweating if you can't make that work now.
The specific CPU models used in the new ones are in the Wiki page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro
The Surface Book only compares with the 15" in terms of price. It only uses a dual core CPU while the 15" comes standard with a quad core on all models. The SB is really more comparable to the 13" MBP IMO.
tiredheadcrab
Member
Thats what I thought. Reading comments hear suggest it was the same.
Even so for my work load, in terms of performance, any of these would be fine. I am a web developer and graphic designer and have had no issues running any Adobe Software (I dont use premier that much) on my Pro 4 i5 with 8gig of ram.
Yeah I was leaning towards those upgrades.
What about the processor, which would be another $300 upgrade? The base has the 2 ghz i5 (boost to 3.1)and the upgrade is a 2.4 ghz i7 (boost to 3.4). I would assume the memory/storage would be more than enough.
SP4 is using 15W chips and if you were to really force a comparison, only the i7 version with the Iris 540 would stack up. That version (i7, 8GB ram, 256GB flash) is $1600.
So if my current 2010 15" MBP with a GeForce GT 330M dGPU -- looking the specs up online it has like 182 gigaflops of performance. The 460 in the new 15" MBP is 1.85 teraflops.
182 gigaflops = 0.182 teraflops -- so the new 460 is 10x as powerful as what I have now? Nice. Should be a nice upgrade.
182 gigaflops = 0.182 teraflops -- so the new 460 is 10x as powerful as what I have now? Nice. Should be a nice upgrade.
TheGuardian
Member
So when do you guys think the iMacs are likely to be updated?
I've been doing iOS development on my 2015 MBP for a while now and my neck and shoulders need some rest
I've been doing iOS development on my 2015 MBP for a while now and my neck and shoulders need some rest
So when do you guys think the iMacs are likely to be updated?
I've been doing iOS development on my 2015 MBP for a while now and my neck and shoulders need some rest
The 27" already has Skylake (and has for a year), the only thing you'd really be missing is Polaris GPU performance and Thunderbolt 3.
My guess is they (and the 21" model) will get updated once Kaby Lakes for desktops ship.
So when do you guys think the iMacs are likely to be updated?
I've been doing iOS development on my 2015 MBP for a while now and my neck and shoulders need some rest
Next year.
TheGuardian
Member
I do some stuff that's pretty GPU intensive so I definetly want the Polaris upgrade. I guess I'll be waiting for a while :/
badcrumble
Member
Winter/Spring 2017.So when do you guys think the iMacs are likely to be updated?
I've been doing iOS development on my 2015 MBP for a while now and my neck and shoulders need some rest
The good news is that they'll be sufficiently due for an update that we might see a new form factor in addition to Kaby Lake/DDR4/Polaris/Thunderbolt 3.
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