
Why the MacBook Pro Is Limited to 16GB of RAM - feelix
https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/
======
jacquesc
Come on, are we really blaming the RAM for battery life? Apple chose to put a
much smaller battery in this model (75 watt) compared to last year (100 watt)
for the purpose of thinness.

Find me a single review that laments the thickness and bulkiness of the 2015
model.

This is plain and simple industrial design gone amuck. Apple has beautiful
hardware, but day to day use is important too (performance, ram, battery).
Shaving millimeters and ounces hits the point of diminishing returns,
especially when you focus on it to the exclusion of all else.

~~~
chrischen
The claim that the new macbook will have issues with day to day performance is
insane.

I run a browser with 20 tabs, linux VM in the background, and webpack and gulp
in the background. I do all this on 8GB ram on a macbook from 2012 and it runs
fast and smoothly, even with up to 4 hours of battery life. I can't imagine
the new one would be _less_ performant in any way.

It's completely understandable that now they can optimize for other things,
since performance is generally a nonissue now.

Apple is not blaming anything. They've _designed_ a computer for a purpose
instead of pumping specs and numbers to gratify a bunch of vocal geeks. I'd
rather much trust in Apple's design than a collaboratively designed PC by
technical dilettantes with maximum performance everything. It's not just a
about specs, especially in a laptop. Versatility, weight, battery, ease of
use. These all come into play aside from raw technical component power.

~~~
MaulingMonkey
> The claim that the new macbook will have issues with day to day performance
> is insane. > I run a browser [...]

Building a single config & platform - with no other significant processes
running - will cause OOM crashes on 12GB CI boxes with swap files enabled,
when 4-5x 4GB linker process spin up in parallel when building my projects.
This is my bread and butter, and it's still way too slow for my tastes on a
16GB box that isn't swapping excessively, which is the new MBP's _maximum_
"give Apple all my money" spec.

Your day to day works on it? Great. Mine hasn't for around a year at least,
nevermind next year's. I could theoretically use it as a dedicated docs
machine, or as a dumb terminal to an actually decent machine... or I could buy
a quad-core laptop with twice the RAM - throw in an extra 4K monitor for good
measure - and _still_ end up paying less than a MBP configured with half the
cores and down 0.6Ghz in speed.

> It's not just a about specs, especially in a laptop. Versatility, weight,
> battery, ease of use.

MBP's max specs aren't enough to handle my workload. MBP's 8GB models may not
even handle Chrome, if the people bellow are to be believed. That's not
"versatile". Weight is just another spec - 33% (~1.5lbs) lighter than the
laptop I'm comparing against is nice, but not "who cares about any of the
other spec" nice. Battery? More specs! Battery wattage just went down, as
pointed out in the post you're replying to. Ease of use - finally something
squishy and subjective! ...I'll prefer the numpad over the touch bar. Perhaps,
on that front, I'm a weirdo.

But hey, if it works for your specific case, and you like 'em, enjoy!

~~~
chrischen
Whatever you're using it for, clearly it's the 1%. Expecting Apple to
completely gimp the macbook for the average pro user (dev, photoshop, video
editing) to satisfy your computing needs is unreasonable. They can't cover all
use cases, but they can cover most.

For your use case I recommend buying a spec'd up PC, such as a gaming laptop
or desktop replacement laptop.

~~~
pavanky
> Whatever you're using it for, clearly it's the 1%

Dude, are you seriously suggesting a laptop marketed for developers not be
used by people writing and compiling code?

Seriously any project of decent size written in a systems language just
consumes all the ram you can throw at. If you think this only happens to 1% of
the developers, you need to step out of your echo chamber and see what other
developers are doing.

~~~
gaius
_Dude, are you seriously suggesting a laptop marketed for developers not be
used by people writing and compiling code?_

I know right - it's like everyone has forgotten that Pro means "for
professionals". And also forgot that the booming sales of the iPhone and iPad
owe everything to the ecosystem of apps and content created on Macs.

People doing 3D, engineering simulations, computational bio and chem,
financial modelling, yadda yadda, there are loads of people who can make use
of every byte of RAM and every core for Real Work. So some guy can make
websites adequately on a smaller machine - he or she needs to look up and
realize that that's a tiny corner of what computing is about...

~~~
sjwright
Nobody for whom absolute CPU power is paramount is crunching on a laptop
anyway. The sorts of examples you cite are better off implemented on a grunty
workstation or even cloud computing. If portable access is needed, remoting in
is the answer.

~~~
gaius
For many people these days their laptop is their only computer and they value
the ability to work without cheap, fast connectivity, while traveling say. You
know, the entire use case for portable computers existing _at all_.

~~~
sjwright
You don't need to "own" a workstation to take advantage of cloud processing.
It's the cloud. You rent the CPU cycles when you need them. And they can even
be crunching away on your most difficult engineering simulations while you're
mid-flight.

The number of people on this planet who _need_ to have 16+ cores of CPU power
_on the tray table_ of an aeroplane could probably be counted in single
digits.

------
lunaru
Alright, it's time to make a confession: my "laptop" is actually just a
desktop. It's plugged in 90% of the time and the other 10% is composed of 9%
of time spent under 2 hours away from the plug and the last 1% is sitting in
an airplane pretending I can get work done.

Does this sound familiar for anyone else?

Give me the 32GB memory and an extra few mm of thickness. I'll just keep it
plugged in and not notice the difference.

~~~
pentae
It’s really the "Macbook Air Pro” imo.

Portable and powerful is PERFECT for digital nomads and business travellers. A
portable powerhouse that can be thrown in a day bag and taken to cafe’s,
coworking spaces, lugged through airports and around new cities.

But that’s not the “Pro Market"

Apple should have released this iteration as the new Macbook Air or dropped
the Air and called it a “Macbook”. Nobody would have complained.

Then, released a new lineup of Macbook Pros around the same size as the
previous generation and dropped quad core processor in the 13” model. Maybe
even squeeze in a discrete GPU like the new GTX 1060 or GTX 1080. Nobody would
have complained then.

~~~
freehunter
>But that’s not the “Pro Market"

Every time I come into a thread about the new MacBook Pro, I'm always being
told that I'm apparently not a professional. And it kinda hurts a little bit.

Maybe it doesn't meet your particular needs, but insulting everyone who
doesn't use 32GB+ of RAM on a day to day basis isn't very nice. Yes, saying
"you're not a professional" is an insult to people who are very much
professionals.

If you guys want a machine with multiple processors and 128GB of RAM and 5TB
disk storage with terribly battery life, you should pressure Apple for a new
desktop. The MacBook Pro is not and never has been a mobile workstation. It's
a notebook first and foremost.

~~~
pentae
First of all, i’m pretty sure the Macbook Pro has always been a mobile
workstation (and their only computer) for 10s of millions of people since it
was released.

Second of all, This isn’t about you. nobody is saying you’re not a
professional because this new Macbook suits your needs. It’s about the
branding.

The whole “Heres our affordable, portable consumer laptops” and “Here’s our
more powerful pro laptops” defined the brands. The “macbook/air” and “macbook
pro” were branded for two different groups of users.

Now what’s happened is Apple combined them into the one machine and our
preconceptions of those brands have been shattered.

Many including myself have been holding out for years for a portable Apple
computer (13”) that can be a workhorse (Quad core) and by making the pro thin
and light it’s meant that’s no longer possible. It should have just been a
Macbook. Hence my previous post about keeping them segregated into two
machines.

~~~
freehunter
But that's wrong. All of that is wrong. Literally throughout Apple's entire
history, everything you just said has been completely false.

Let's start with "they've combined them into one machine". Then why do the 12"
and the Air exist? _Those_ are the "consumer" devices. If what you're saying
is true, the MacBook Pro and the 12" MacBook are the same machine. That's not
true at all, there is a substantial difference.

And then let's tackle "the MacBook Pro has always been a mobile workstation".
Which again, is completely not true. It's always been _exactly the opposite_
of that. What I have sitting on my desk behind me is a mobile workstation.
It's a Thinkpad W530. Go ahead and look up the specs, you'll see what I mean.
32GB of RAM, a quad core i7, a massive screen, and it weighs about three
hundred pounds. It also gets 4 hours of battery life, and that's _with_ the
extended battery sticking out of the back. A MacBook has never been a mobile
workstation. It's always been a notebook that's been as portable and battery-
efficient as technology has allowed, while also being able to easily run the
tools that most professionals require. Not once has Apple ever said "Pixar
ditched their rendering farm for a single 13" MacBook Pro!"

I'm sorry if your preconceptions of the brand have been shattered. I'm also
sorry to say that your preconceptions have always been wrong. You're upset
because Apple didn't make a device that you were waiting for, but they've
never made that device. So maybe instead of complaining that "the new MacBook
Pro isn't made for professionals!" you can understand that your definition of
professional doesn't necessarily line up with Apple's. It never has.

------
mantis369
I don't understand the imperatives to make the machine thinner and increase
battery life.

I would have paid for a 32 or even 64 GB model, but instead I'm going to delay
my upgrade for 6-8 months so that I can see if something better than the new
MBP comes along.

I am of the opinion that a Pro machine does not need to be the thinnest
available model.

~~~
hanief
Because it's a MacBook; with batteries in it. The value is in the mobility. If
you don't need the batteries and mobility, you could buy a Mac Mini, iMac or
Mac Pro.

~~~
mantis369
But they didn't upgrade the Mini, iMac, or Mac Pro. The Mac Pro has been the
current model for at least two years. The iMac is a hack that uses two logical
display panels to produce the 5K resolution, because there isn't enough
bandwidth for a single one. The Mini is nearing the 3 generations old mark.

~~~
tomwilson
Why even mention the way the iMac display works? Using the machine you would
never know and its a very nice computer. The complaints about the mini and pro
are legit but there is barely anything to complain about with the iMac.

~~~
gurkendoktor
It will matter once Apple decides to drop support for the current iMac. (Who
knows, maybe the ARM switch will eventually happen? The G5 iMacs became
obsolete over night when the Intel switch happened.)

As it stands, you can neither recycle it as an external display nor can you
run Linux on it at full resolution.

Not really a "pro" complaint - just something to keep in mind if you plan to
hand it on.

------
thaw13579
Since the latest release, I've found that mentally substituting "Deluxe" for
"Pro" helps to clarify Apple's design choices. I just can't see how a machine
without USB non-C or display ports can be meant for professionals. I'd gladly
pay for a heavier, thicker machine to have those things (and to avoid the
dongles).

~~~
lowbloodsugar
Exactly. There's nothing "Pro" about it. Maybe "Executive" or "Limited".

~~~
josho
Maybe this is all the natural progression towards the final marketing scheme.
Eg. The automotive industry.

Did you want the DLX, GS, or GX trim package?

Obvious extreme sarcasm here. But it seems to be the trend.

------
userbinator
_The Intel chipset being used supports the following kinds of RAM: DDR3 RAM,
Low Power DDR3 RAM (LPDDR), and DDR4 RAM. However, LPDDR3 only goes up to 1600
megahertz in speed, but Apple uses 1866Mhz RAM. How is this possible? That is
because there yet another RAM standard, known as LPDDR3E (E for enhanced) RAM,
that does go up to 1866Mhz.

LPDDR4 is not supported by Intel’s CPU, and the DDR4L (another low voltage RAM
type) standard is not finished yet. So desktop class memory (plainly spoken
DDR4) would be the only option if they wanted to go past 16GB._

I don't follow the argument here. Why not just put another 16GB of LPDDR3E on
the board?

~~~
rincebrain
AIUI Intel's non-Xeon chipsets won't go over 16GB for DDR3 in most cases.

~~~
Dylan16807
Does Apple not have enough pull to get that already-existing feature on the
chips they're buying?

My ivy bridge laptop supports 32GB of DDR3, for what it's worth.

~~~
rincebrain
I would guess that it would require more than one vendor, even one as large as
Apple, to request it aggressively earlier in the dev process for something
like that to get done, because of the amounts of QA required.

I would further guess that 4 DIMMs, more than just memory controller support,
might have required too much precious board space - which, when combined with
the power requirements and additional feature enhancement requirements for
Intel, might have made it a nonstarter.

------
Spooky23
I'm sure they've focus grouped this to death. Everyone wants battery life. It
differentiates the product and sells computers.

Many people claim to need >16GB, but many of those folks really don't. The
folks who need to run VMs (the biggest group, IMO) have workarounds.

The folks left are a small number and have alternatives, mostly in the cloud.
And they make the Mac Pro to address those folks, although obviously that's a
flawed product as well.

~~~
dvtv75
I know quite a few people who require >16GB, and not one of them is a power
user nor do they use a VM. What they do is edit large amounts of 4K video in
FCP, and they're rather screwed without an actual MacBook Pro.

No, there are no cloud options for them, they need the RAM for the video. No,
the Mac Pro isn't a viable option for them at that price, nor is it portable.

I'm pretty sure they don't give a damn about battery life, either. They do
their editing at a desk, and then take the MBP with them.

So, for now, they're stuck with old models until there's a better one, or they
spend a fair amount of money building a new pipeline and purchasing new
software.

~~~
comex
What old models? As far as I know there aren't any older MacBooks that support
more than 16GB of RAM either.

If you're going to compare to desktops, start with the iMac, which is "only" a
year old at this point, unlike the Mac Pro which is several :(. The iMac with
5K display starts at $1,800 and is configurable to 32GB RAM, while the MacBook
Pro 15" starts at $2,400, and then you probably want an external display too.
(That doesn't include the rather high price of actually configuring the iMac
for 32GB, but its RAM is [still] user-upgradeable, so better to buy it
somewhere else.) Actually, considering that the Mac Pro starts at $3,000,
which is not that much more than $2,400, I'm not sure why you think the price
puts it out of range...

But I definitely understand why you'd want it in a laptop.

~~~
FireBeyond
Well, the 32GB MBP price is "unknown", but the Mac Pro at 32GB is $3,500, not
$3,000.

------
jawngee
This is why I built a hackintosh last week. 64GB, 4.5ghz OC, 6GB CPU. I'll
keep trudging along with my 2012 MBP when I travel, but considering I work
from home 80% of the time it was more important to optimize that time.

FWIW, building one is far easier than it used to be. Everything is working
great, took me about an afternoon to get it there. Watching Photoshop open as
quickly as Sublime text will never get boring.

Edit: This is my build if anyone is interested,
[http://pcpartpicker.com/list/gwV6qk](http://pcpartpicker.com/list/gwV6qk)

~~~
omni
How is Xcode support nowadays? I got a Hackintosh VM working circa 2013 but
had a lot of problems getting the latest version of Xcode to function at all.

~~~
jawngee
No problem here, though I haven't submitted anything to the store, but I can't
imagine its an issue.

The only thing that isn't working is handoff, but you can get a card that
enables that.

------
al_biglan
The market forces around laptops would seem to be a ripe area for serious
academic study. I honestly can't find a laptop I _want_ to buy only ones I
weigh silly trade-offs. (to be fair: my biggest complaint is around the lack
of keyboard choices). It seems that the market desires either can't drive
laptop options, or the market is vastly different than I perceive. For
example: Why did it take so long for 720 screens to die as an option? For $50
more you get a 1080. I watched this for 6 years (2009 to 2014) and really
can't fathom it.

Now... this is for Windows based machines, and I'm sure the forces are
different for Apple, but it would be lovely to read a serious study on this. I
suspect there is something along the lines of cost and supply chain factors
dominating the "refresh cycle" but this used to be handled by different
product lines with wildly different configurations. (it still kinda is...
Alienware vs Inspiron vs Yoga vs T vs P series but Apple seems to buck this
trend completely) Anyway... I just need the cathartic release of posting
(venting) with these laptop articles.

~~~
lotsofpulp
My theory behind this is that the most efficient functioning market needs
intelligent buyers and sellers. The buyers have to be able to discern what the
specs mean, what the quality of the parts are, what the expected lifetime is,
and with computers not only that, but they have to be able to evaluate the
software options (Windows vs OS X, malware subsidized laptops versus not)?
Even explaining malware to a layman is difficult.

So you had the two markets, business and professional consumers who knew what
they were buying, and then regular consumers who mostly cared about price but
are also swayed by large numbers (more GB, more HZ, bigger screen, more
software a.k.a. malware).

Then I think the tide sort of turned in the past decade where even the common
populace had realized Windows consumer laptops were full of crap that caused
it to run slow and unexpectedly and people noticed Apple's laptops were more
consistent with user experience (which they were), so now Apple has a
reputation of being the no nonsense brand (which they deserve). Of course, now
Apple can also charge a premium for this so you see people with disposable
income sticking to Apple's ecosystem, and then the rest of the OEMs fight for
price conscious consumers and getting barely any profit out of it.

Obviously for Apple, keeping things simple keeps their operating costs down,
so they don't need to cater to every purchaser, and they probably decided that
now they're the default brand to purchase if you have the money, they don't
need to waste resources chasing after a small segment of the market looking
for extremely high specifications.

------
meshko
I wonder if it would be possible to design a system which would power down
some of the memory when not plugged to a power source. I do all my dev on an
MBP and would be more or less fine if the memory-intensive things were only
available when plugged in. That said, I don't really feel like 16gb limits me
in any way except for doing data processing, but that should be happening on
the cluster anyways.

~~~
qb45
Possible but hard because:

1\. OSs are generally unaware of the details of memory controller
configuration, everything is preconfigured by firmware. Apple's vertical
integration could help here, but they would probably need help from Intel and
it would work only in OSX.

2\. It's not the case that if you install four 8GB sticks they will be mapped
at 0-8G, 8-16G, etc. and the OS can simply move data from one area to another.
For performance, data are striped RAID0-style across all modules. They would
have to disable this.

3\. I don't know if OSX supports non-identity VM-mapping of kernel memory
pages. Linux for example doesn't afaik. Without this it's impossible to move
arbitrary kernel objects because you can't find and update all pointers
pointing to them.

------
nodesocket
Great writeup and detail. However:

> Even if it weighed 10 kilos and cost $10k I would still buy it.

> (To show you exactly what I mean in terms of personal needs, I recently
> rendered a music video in HD using a neural net called Style app. Due to the
> 16GB RAM limitation it took several days and wrote 20.44 Terabytes to my
> drive in swap space (yes, over 20,000 gigabytes). This would have been an
> order of magnitude faster on a system with 32GB of RAM).

If your rendering video and can afford a $10k computer, then you should be
using a Mac Pro. You can get a 2.7GHz 12-core with 30MB of L3 cache and 64GB
of memory for around 8.5k.

~~~
lolive
Why not rent a supercomputer on the cloud just for the time of such an
experiment?

I rent a 16 core/128GB machine at a cloud provider. I use it for heavy
database treatments. And my laptop merely became a tmux terminal ever since.

~~~
nodesocket
I don't know of a cloud provider that rents OS X machines do you? OS X is
needed for Final Cut Pro, etc. If you're using Adobe Premier then you could
use Microsoft Azure or another cloud provider that supports Windows.

~~~
Laforet
Depends on how the workload is split and such. Using AWS for video encoding is
actually quite viable as long as Amazon don't charge for incoming bandwidth
and dirt cheap spot instances could be found at the right time of the day.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Cloud render farms have been a thing in CGI for nearly a decade now. It can -
sometimes - be cheaper to buy time than to buy hardware.

But there are a lot of disadvantages. The process only really works for final
renders. All the creative work needs to be fast and local, but thumbnail
renders don't always give you enough detail to make good decisions.

It doesn't work for audio, because audio isn't great with low-quality previews
and often needs hands-on changes.

It doesn't work for many kinds of ML - not unless the render machine has the
latest graphics cards.

It doesn't work for renders with huge asset libraries spread around a LAN.

And so on. Basically there is a list of use cases, but it's not even half of
all possible use cases.

Meanwhile dual-Xeon servers have really started to kick ass. These are
workstation grade machines with high four and low five figure prices. You can
have up to 48 independent cores on a dual-CPU board, which is excellent for
video rendering.

Or you can get a blade rack. Depending the project, they can be better value
than an off-prem cloud account. (Sometimes).

Apple has turned its back on this space. I don't entirely understand why.
Xserve had real potential, but they decided to go dumbed-down consumer
instead.

~~~
nodesocket
In terms of Xserve, I think it made sense to drop it. If you're buying a
server, nearly all applications make more sense using Linux and commodity
hardware. The exception are desktop based (GUI) applications which Mac Pro
targets. There really is no viable market for a Mac Server.

------
mark-r
So the blame is on Intel, not Apple. What does it matter? Apple is a big
enough customer of Intel's that their needs should have been accommodated in
the chip requirements before they were designed. Either way it makes no
difference to the pro customers who need >16GB.

~~~
chrischen
Of course the computer can always be improved. But the point is Apple is
improved it the best they can, and certainly better than any competing
manufacturer.

~~~
peonicles
Competing laptop manufacturers have options for more ram.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Competing laptop manufacturers have options for more ram.

And not just for 32GB, many mobile workstation makers offer up to 64GB. You
can also get ECC and mobile Xeons too.

------
n1000
The weird thing is that Apple did not use all the space they possibly could
for the battery. Have a look at the teardowns. There is room to put ca. 5%
more battery. Supposedly they wanted to stay below 3 pounds.

That is the amount the other RAM type would have used... So this was likely
more about weight than battery life.

------
einarvollset
I wish Apple would do a portable computer without a battery. I work on power
99% of the time, and would love e.g. A portable iMac.

~~~
disordinary
Isn't that the mac mini?

~~~
jacquesc
Apple should actually make a mac mini (again)

~~~
disordinary
The apple store still has them for sale, they just haven't been upgraded for a
couple of years.

------
rasz_pl
The real why is: Because we say so, you will buy it anyway.

Its cheaper(no slot) and easier(same production line) to manufacture, and as a
bonus forces users to upgrade earlier, not to mention planned obsolescence.
Same goes for the SSD.

Anybody want to guess how an official Apple data recovery procedure looks like
in case of soldered SSD and no cloud backup? I can tell you how - there isnt
one, just like with phones.

------
rileymat2
>"However, LPDDR3 only goes up to 1600 megahertz in speed, but Apple uses
1866Mhz RAM. How is this possible? That is because there yet another RAM
standard, known as LPDDR3E (E for enhanced) RAM, that does go up to 1866Mhz."

Why does apple claim 2133Mhz?

~~~
Chyzwar
Probably because its single channel. They bump voltage and freq to catch up in
performance.

If they would choose 2x16 and lower freq, voltage resulting performance would
be even better with similar power usage.

Apple prefer to make more money. They use power of brand to sell overpriced
products to clueless crowd. Just go apple store to see audience, most people
there do not even know what is RAM.

[1] [http://nucblog.net/2015/09/dual-channel-vs-single-channel-
do...](http://nucblog.net/2015/09/dual-channel-vs-single-channel-does-it-
matter/)

------
pasta
What I find interesting in this PRO debate is that most +16GB users don't even
use Apple, but brands like Dell, HP, Siemens and others.

Apple is not stupid. They know the market. And imho the anger here on HN is
mostly HN bias.

~~~
PuffinBlue
Not sure I agree with you. I'm here because I'm moving into the tech world but
I'm coming from a background in photography.

Nearly all my friends in that world (me included) use topped out MacBooks for
portable stuff and the video folks are using Mac Pros or hackintosh's. They
certainly need more RAM, I know at least two guys who would have killed for
64GB RAM in a Macbook for their 4k video work. And I could certainly use it to
speed up batch operations of hundreds of images, or even to be able to
basically use the laptop when pushing around several 24mp RAW images in
photoshop or even use a single RAW edit on a 42mp file from a Sony A7r2 which
utterly killed my current MacBook with 8GB RAM.

I see loads of retorts like 'just use a desktop for the heavy lifting stuff'
but that's so ignorant of the requirements on some markets. Needing to edit on
the go is essential for many creators, especially for location shoots, and not
even particularly complex ones, so power in a portable package is absolutely
essential to folks well outside the 'developer' or tech world.

No one I know is thinking about getting the new MacBook. Some are hoping for
next years update but others who are running older models and need an upgrade
now are now casting around for alternatives.

They may know their market, but their market might not be what we think it is.
It may be their market is moving to be like their phone market with a
significant portion buying the brand jewellery Apple carries.

So I guess I'm saying that there is a large segment of media creators (who are
often suckers like me for the styling of the Apple laptops) who are now not
seemingly part of Apple target market, and that might be bad for the wider
Apple brand.

I'm not particularly beholden to any manufacturer and nor are most of my
friends. They go where they need to to get the kit that lets them do their
job. There's an elastic period where a few issues can be overlooked but for me
and others coming from this creation world the limit has been reached.

~~~
pasta
But didn't the video world already switch to Dell over two years ago because
Apple could not keep up with high res video editing?

I might be totaly wrong, but I think the real pro world doesn't look for a
nice looking tool but for one that does the job. That's why I think +16GB
users already use other brands.

------
nathanvanfleet
I kind of feel like Apple's design philosophy is off. It's not like the Oxo
brand of having tools that are easy to use.

\- I still can't hold my iPhone 6 without it slipping out of my hand (and I
even have a case) \- My Macbook Pro Unibody is very sleek but it just slides
off my lap because the bottom surface is so smooth. \- Off-boarding useful
connections like USB, HDMI, DisplayPort etc meaning you have to purchase and
carry around a bunch of dongles for whatever tiny saving they get from the
battery / footprint. \- The new Macbooks are, as always choosing sleekness
over just making a laptop that is more powerful than they've made over the
last 4 years. \- People are complaining about the trackpad in the new MBP not
having space to rest their wrists.

etc etc

They seem to just be optimizing for design's sake and not really considering
the use case of what people use the computers for. It's starting to be a great
little sleek computer for an executive to put in their carry-on and less like
a strong office computer that can do hard work (for me it's software
engineering) and be good enough to USE ALL DAY.

------
DonHopkins
I would prefer a MacBook Pro that was 1" thicker, if only it had better
cooling and kernel_task didn't go up to 3700% and freeze up all the time.

------
pier25
Because of Apple's anorexia, that's why.

The 10-15% increase in battery consumption could have been easily solved by
having a 10-15% bigger battery.

------
kimshibal
Touch bar uses more power than ram.

~~~
nicky0
Source?

------
overcast
I'm basically going to run my 2008 Mac Pro desktop until it completely seizes
up. It's been constantly upgraded since then, and is still going strong. When
the day comes, I'll have to make the decision on whether to continue with
MacOS, because nothing is going to replace this anytime soon apparently.

------
bartread
Be that as it may, I'd sacrifice some battery life to have the option of 32GB
of RAM.

The moment you need to start running Windows VMs on top of OSX along with
Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc., that 16GB limit becomes incredibly
aggravating.

Battery life is an especially crappy excuse when you consider that most of the
time I'm running on outlet power - it's very rare that I don't have access to
a power point for 5 - 6 hours at a time.

And lest we forget, this is a machine called the MacBook _Pro_. Pro, as in,
for the use of professionals. And professionals need more system RAM. Hello
Apple, are you getting this?

I'd also like an option for a 2TB SSD and more (not less) ports, particularly
USB, because I don't want to have to carry around a pile of dongles everywhere
with me that all too easily become lost. Remember: the machine is called the
MacBook PRO.

~~~
metafunctor
A lot of these fights seem to revolve around the word _Pro_. I'm a
professional: I've worked with computers and software my whole life, and I am
very good at it.

I don't think I'll particularly need 32GB of RAM or USB ports on my laptop.
Does this mean I'm not a true professional? Real men need 32GB and USB?

That said, I'd probably opt for 32GB and a bit more weight.

There is a 2TB option, by the way.

~~~
bartread
That's a fair point and it wasn't my intent to start a "real men need X" style
of discussion. Nevertheless, VMs, and particularly Windows VMs with VS and the
rest - at least on the kind of systems I always seem to end up working with -
are resource hungry. I'm not suggesting that 32GB is for everyone, but I'd at
least like the option available knowing that I might be trading some battery
life by selecting it.

(Worth knowing about the 2TB option - thanks for the tip. I refreshed last
year when 1TB was the top end. Fortunately I think the drive is still user-
upgradeable.)

------
halilim
I am divided on this. I think we as the software industry have serious
performance issues, maybe except for some legitimate use cases like number
crunching, video editing etc.

I don't know of a non-trivial Rails app which uses less than a couple hundred
MBs of RAM. We have a VM with a minimum RAM requirement of 8 GBs at work which
runs a conglomerate of Rails APIs, which makes 16 GB a minimum on my laptop.
The only reason the memory bloat/leak of a freelance Rails project I'm working
on goes undetected is that Heroku restarts their dynos daily. For comparison,
an Elixir/Phoenix app is using < 40 MB right now.

AFAIK base RAM requirements of many Java apps are even worse.

Opening Gmail in Chrome immediately eats 1 GB of RAM, vs. 60 MB for Apple Mail
app. Many Electron apps like Slack, Atom and Spotify use hundreds of MBs to
GBs of memory, vs. 150 MB for Sublime Text (5 MB for Vim!). And they are
sluggish. As much as I love the open web (and I'm mostly a web/backend dev
myself), I hate the fact that I often have to prefer native apps.

I'm seriously considering other laptops right now, but can't find a serious
alternative, especially considering the fact that there are no Linux-rated
laptops close to my location. And shoehorning Linux into Windows machines is
pain, I tried that for ~1 years both at work and at home. The best non-Mac
laptop candidate I'm considering right now has a long article written by
someone describing how to install Linux on it, with some "slight" annoyances
like a non-functioning webcam and a problematic wifi in the end. Windows?
Nothing there comes even close to iTerm2 and oh-my-zsh combo (and many other
tools, workflows etc). And I haven't even touched the subject of design.

None of this is heavy computing. I think we seriously need to consider slowing
down this madness and try to improve. I'd normally love the 16 GB limitation
so that we'd be somewhat forced to that direction but since there is no "kill
the bloat!" initiative or something, we sadly need beefier machines for the
short/mid term.

------
frusciante29
Great article. However, good arguments have never convinced some people. I'm
so tired of this hand-wringing over the amount of RAM in a computer. The
entitlement of some people is ridiculous. Apple, unlike Microsoft, does not
produce software and hardware products for software engineers. It's time for
software engineers to accept that and move on. I have.

------
jandrese
16MB may be enough for today for 95% of the users, but in 3 years when Apple
is still selling this model it is going to be an issue, especially when you
consider that those laptops sold 3 years from now will be expected to run for
another 5 years or so.

------
asadkn
Too many factual errors in the article. Many of the comparisons state DDR3 -
but DDR4 is not DDR3.

> the difference of power draw between DDR3 and DDR4 is almost negligible.

It's NOT. The article he's citing mentions IDLE standby power consumption. Not
the same thing as active power consumption.

\- Correction: Power draw of DDR4 and LPDDR3 is very similar under active
usage (i.e. not in standby). DDR4 might be possibly slightly lower.

I couldn't find a direct comparison, but according to Samsung:

    
    
      * LPDDR3 vs DDR3L uses 15% less power in operation [1]
      * DDR4 vs DDR3L uses 37% less power [2]
    

\- Correction: LPDDR3 is much more efficient for STANDBY (yes, you can have
that 30 days standby). [3]

So without LPDDR3, in my opinion, the standby of MBP would be reduced to ~15
days from 30 days (haven't done proper calculations but it's roughly half).
But it wouldn't matter in normal usage.

I still believe Apple didn't consider DDR4 due to size concerns as even SODIMM
DDR4 on the logic board would larger.

[1]:
[http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/global/file/media/Samsu...](http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/global/file/media/Samsung_Mobile_DRAM_2013_Final_HR-0.pdf)

[2]:
[http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/file/me...](http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/file/media/DDR4_Brochure-0.pdf)

[3]: [https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/product-
fl...](https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/product-
flyer/why_dram_for_ultrathins_lo.pdf)

------
kartickv
I agree with many posters in this thread that Apple is taking "thin and light"
to an extreme. I'd want other things than thinness and lightness, like being
able to configure it with a 4TB spinning hard disc + a small SSD, configured
as a Fusion Drive. This 4TB bus-powered hard disc
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTRXFBA/?tag=thewire06-20&linkC...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTRXFBA/?tag=thewire06-20&linkCode=xm2&ascsubtag=WC24562)
is only 0.8 inch thick, as opposed to the Macbook Pro's 0.6 inch thickness.
I'd gladly take the additional 0.2 inch thickness for having lots of storage.

I'd also want it to have an upgradeable memory and storage.

SSDs are still unaffordable — the Macbook Pro with 2TB SSD costs more than
$4000! While the aforementioned 4TB hard disc costs only $100.

------
bjn
I don't mind 16GB of RAM, I get the job done with 8GB (2013 model) using
(Chrome, Atom/Sublime, Xcode, Terminal, Spotify, External 4k monitor..), what
I want is dedicated GPU and Quad Core CPU by default for a normal price.

------
tdkl
Apple are just victims of their own game - making stuff thinner/lighter every
year as it's somehow the next world wonder. Unless they'll finally admit it
and stop this BS, they'll get themselves cornered soon enough.

I mean just use the advantage of new technology to fill up the gained space
with batteries. The premise of limiting RAM is also pretty much BS - if I get
a device with 16GB RAM I still get the same battery life as now, but if I put
more memory inside, I do this willingly to sacrifice battery. NOTHING CHANGES
for people with 8/16GB configuration.

Unless they're doing this with the classic Apple smug "we know what's best for
you" reason. Oh and to sell more adapters.

~~~
4ad
> I do this willingly to sacrifice battery. NOTHING CHANGES for people with
> 8/16GB configuration.

Did you not read the article? Everyone would be affected because they would
have to use a completely different RAM technology. Even for people with 8/16GB
configurations.

~~~
panda88888
It probably won't affect 8/16 GB people. Since the RAM are soldered, each
config will be a different board, so they can keep existing 16GB config, and
offer a 32GB config with DDR4 + required controllers, etc.

~~~
4ad
Oh, yeah, they should design and produce a completely different board that
virtually nobody buys. That makes a lot of financial sense.

~~~
panda88888
I agree with you that it doesn't make financial sense. Maybe Apple can simply
state the demand isn't there for 32GB, or just don't respond at all.

Edit: Want to add that I think some people are not happy since they perceive
the line between thin (Air/Macbook) and powerful (BMP) is being blurred and
MBP is becoming too MacBook-like.

I am currently a 2014 MBP user. I love it, but my next laptop probably won't
be a MBP. I don't own a desktop, and I am running out of storage. My next
laptop will have upgradable storage that uses a standard part (M.2, etc), and
the new MBP doesn't fit my need. I tend to keep my laptop for a few years, and
lack of upgradability impacts me significantly.

------
bradfa
Lenovo T460p comes with quad core Intel 6th gen processors and up to 32 GB of
DDR4 and claims up to 12 hours battery life on a 72 Wh battery. Why is it
neglected in the comparison?

~~~
scholia
I'm not familiar with the ThinkPad T460, but the T560 has two batteries. If
you need longer life, upgrading the second battery from 47WHr to 72WHr costs
an extra £12.

------
srott
On the other side the SSD is very fast (rumors say 2.2GB/s, that is not so far
from DDR2) so at least swapping will be seamless...

------
faragon
I would expect 64GB of RAM, and not 16. The MacBook Pro 2016 is supposed to be
a powerful laptop, not a cheap netbook.

------
strooper
Just curious relevant to this topic- who needs RAM over 16 GB in a thin, mid-
range laptop whose processor ends with the letter "U"?

An advice for the multimedia pros- please stop whining about the RAM
limitation of MBP 2016 and get a real workstation. a Mac pro (and some iMac)
of any generation available in the market shall deliver several multiple of
power that any MBP can do.

------
mianos
The credibility of the whole story fell to the floor when he said that sleep
mode would kill more batteries because they fail when completely discharged.
Apple has had top notch battery protection for years. Totally draining a
macbook battery to failure has not been possible for many years.

~~~
willtim
Continued deep discharge does however shorten the life of lithium ion
batteries.

~~~
mianos
I'd really like to see a recent reference on how much. Given the discharge
maintaining the batteries is very small and very manageable I highly doubt it
is significant over any lesser depth with these lipo batteries manufactured
specifically for Apple.

------
pkd
The RAM thing is a myth. LinusTechTips, the YouTube channel, even did their
own survey about it and the results are here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axZBbgfEZf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axZBbgfEZf0)

~~~
kmike84
Have you read an article? It mentions LinusTechTips and explains what's wrong
with their analysis.

------
pedalpete
I think this article misses the point that it seems many customers are
disappointed they can't get more than 16gb and many would be willing to have
the trade-off of 50% less battery life.

How many people work away from power for more than 5 hours at a single
stretch?

~~~
debinguy
This exactly. As a developer applications like docker and vagrant are part of
my normal activities. The 16GB limit just does not work in this model. FWIW I
was waiting on a laptop upgrade, and after seeing the new lineup from Apple I
ordered a Linux laptop with 32GB of memory.

~~~
corv
A major point of containerization is more efficient resource utilization,
memory in particular.

How has it come to this?

~~~
SoreGums
To run the whole system need multiple VMs. It's not enough to just run the app
container anymore. There are a bunch of support containers and if you want to
experiment with failure then there are even more VMs & containers to run. sure
we could just dump $1,000 into a cloud provider for a couple months usage, for
me I'd rather put that $1,000 into my laptop (i7 3.8GHz, 64GB RAM, 2x SSD,
1x2TB HDD) and be able to experiment at my leisure. Plus it's quicker to
iterate if the experiment is running all the time, cloud is expensive to run
stuff that doesn't generate income.

~~~
tonyarkles
What on earth laptop do you have with all that for $1000? Or maybe you mean
$1000 in upgrades, but still... what laptop will take 64GB of ram and 4
disks?!

~~~
scholia
A ThinkPad P-series workstation takes four disk drives: two SSDs, one HD, and
one DVD. It has four RAM slots so you can have 64GB. Low-end CPU is an Intel
Core i7-6820HQ but you can upgrade to a Xeon.

It's a highly configurable, professional machine.

[http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p70/](http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p70/)

The Dell Precision M6800 (no longer available) supported a 4 drive
configuration if one was a Mini Card plugged into a slot on the motherboard,
It had three 2.5in drive bays. You could have a look at the current Dell
models, or an HP Z Book.

------
onetom
I have a Mid 2015 15" rMBP w 16GB RAM. I'm actually worried about the SSD wear
and that's why I would like to have 32GB RAM.

I'm quite okay with its performance but I routinely have ~4GB of memory
swapped out, even though I'm trying hard to keep my browser tab count below
20.

I have 4-5 Clojure/ClojureScript projects open in IntelliJ; that eats ~1-2GB
RAM.

For 3-4 of them I'm running a REPL; that's around ~1GB each, which is ~3-4GB
in total.

Safari with 10-20 tabs; 1-2GB

Google Chrome Canary 4-5 tabs for the webapp under development (logged in with
different type of users into different environments [dev/stg/prod]);
~300MB/tab => ~1-1.5GB total

Everyday utilities also add up to 1.5GB at least:

• Slack 0.4GB

• (sometimes Gitter 0.3GB)

• Spotify 0.3GB

• AirMail 0.3GB

• OneNote 0.2GB

• SublimeText 0.2GB

• iTerm 0.1GB

• 1Password 0.1GB

(and I don't even mention Box Sync or Dropbox or Google Drive or Ethereum or
IPFS node because I usually keep them turned off while I'm coding...)

My kernel_task is usually round 1.5GB but sometimes grows up to 2+GB

So that's 2 + 4 + 3 + 1.5 + 1.5 + 1.5 = 13.5GB Then there is only 2.5GB left
for disk cache and ~0.2GB memory is compressed at this point.

So that's the minimum memory requirement after a cold boot for _work_.
Anything else I do start to force memory to be compressed then swapped out.

BUT THEN I also have a personal account for non-work related things which
obviously forces swapping.

I have to say though I see very little stuttering or beach balling, though
typing in IntelliJ can get jittery while it's indexing. I think macOS' memory
management is quite good for desktop usage.

I do try Ubuntu/Fedora from time to time on Macs and I do envy how much less
RAM they require, BUT everything else is rather clunky on them compared to
macOS, IF they even boot.

• TouchPad dynamics are terrible.

• Gestures; forget it.

• WiFi connects a lot slower.

• Skype?... no comment.

• Multiple thunderbolt or HDMI displays with mirroring.

• HiDPI support with lower than physical virtual resolutions.

• Stable Built-in VNC server and client, especially when there are multiple
screens?

• Wake up after sleep can still be a problem in 2016 (eg it sets the display
brightness to 100%).

and finally why is there no desktop environment which provides macOS' keyboard
shortcuts out of the box?

That would really help transitioning from macOS to Linux.

(just to put things into perspective I was an
[http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/](http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/) user for a
year back in the day...)

------
youdontknowtho
I can't even imagine buying an Apple laptop if performance was a critical
issue.

------
chx
That FAA thing is bullshit, 160 Wh is allowed in hand luggage just not checked
in but who checks a three thousand dollar machine in.

