BearX220

What are you hearing, update-wise? If they address battery life they might bring me around. Or I can soldier on with my four-year-old non-Retina 15" MBP.

wco81

Mainly CPU.

Just brought it up because it sounded like the poster was ready to buy.

dinanm3atl

Wow. A swift kick to the gut for those that jumped on it earlier. When some of the main complaints were lack of the latest CPUs AND on top of that not offering more RAM than previous generation(which was essentially 6 years old).

Good old Apple. I love my Mid 2012 MBP and iPhone but the way they harvest sales and the people just keep coming back is crazy.

comptr

yup, well its apple. I am one of the early adopters who bought the Touch Bar MacBook Pro & compared to the Retina MBP it takes some getting used to with the keyboard & USB-C ports.

dinanm3atl

I'm sure it does. I work in an industry where it's 95% MBP and they are used hard. Most people are on Mid2012-2015 MBP Retina. A couple people got the new one. The issue is the actual performance upgrade is basically non existent.

Them dropping new CPU and some more RAM I'd become more interested. USB-C is whatever and I'd get used to it. However not paying 3K for the same specs that are inside my 2012 edition +5-10%.

nkedel

If they offer a 32GB option -- as seems likely -- I don't even want to see what they're going to charge for that.

The new CPU is largely irrelevant; the Core ix-7xxx is a half-generation upgrade because the next-generation one was delayed. The iGPU on the processor is a more signifcant upgrade, but that doesn't make a difference on higher end machines with a dGPU.

FlyingDoctorwu

Is it just me or does it feel like computer technology has stagnated? I've been on a mid 2012 retina and it's doing great. Fully loaded when we bought it; it's been great. Only reason to upgrade is to get a smaller package in my mind...

fdw

reft

Apple was concerned with increased power consumption by the memory controller required to go past 16G. They designed for battery life, not performance.

16G max caused howling among major YouTubers who video edit on Apple laptops.

So maybe Apple addresses this, maybe not.

The Dell Precision 4800 mobile workstation isn't light, but has a 32GB option. The newer 5520 variant does as well and seems to have slimmed down. So there is competitive pressure for Apple to up their game.

wco81

Moore's Law is broken?

cardsqc

More like misunderstood. Moore's law is about the number of transistors that you can fit, and not necessarily explicitly about the speed of computers. Sure, in general, when you can fit more transistors on a die, you're likely to improve the speed also, but it's not necessarily directly related. A lot of those extra transistors have gone into putting multiple cores in a cpu, which depending on the task you're working on, may or may not yield any benefit in speed.

nkedel

I'd call that "reaching maturity," but yes -- even if they did come out with a much faster version, it's not like there's much advancement in what to do with it.

The memory controller has been built into the CPU since the 2010-era CPUs that introduced the i3/i5/i7 branding to the mobile world (desktops had them a little longer, since part way through '09. Well, in most models; I think the Air 11" of that generation still used the older Core 2.)

If Apple has concerns about the power consumption, it's of the memory itself. Given the battery life complaints about the MBP 15", they may have been founded.

If Apple had used DIMM sockets for memory on their high performance full size machine, like pretty much every one else does (although on smaller, 13" machines like ultrabooks, it's much more common to copy Apple and solder all the memory) people would have had the choice on battery life vs. memory.

Having done quite a bit of amateur video editing, I am absolutely baffled why one would need 32GB for it. Faster CPU and/or bigger GPU, yes, depending on which you use for encoding. Bigger SSD? Certainly, although that's one where Apple was ahead of the PC world -- there are 2TB SSDs available as upgrades usable on the PC side, but I haven't seen many preinstalled in new PCs (and none of those yet as of when the touch bar models first came out).

Then again, a 2TB SSD that will fit in a machine that small is frightfully expensive, with our without the Apple tax ($1400 upgrade on on Apple.com, $1200 on Amazon for a PC upgrade, vs. about $425 for a close-enough-to-comparable 1TB drive on the PC side and $600 for the 1TB upgrade on the Mac.)

Plus PCs still have traditional SATA SSDs available... not nearly as fast, but for most people it won't matter, and $300 (as low as $200 on sale) for 1TB and $500 for 2TB is a much, much better price.

Tl;dr: The 5520 is slimmer because it's not a comparable machine to the M4800 (much closer to the Macbook Pro 15.)

The Dell M4800 could take 32GB because it has 4 memory sockets, and could take 4x 8GB (indeed, that was true for the M4700 and the similar models from Lenovo, the W530 and W540.) None of those machines could take 16GB DIMMs because of limits to the processors they used, and they all were configurable at the high end with much bigger GPUs and had much more cooling than the Macbook Pros of the era.

The M5520 is not a comparable machine -- the M3800, M5510, M5520 sequence is basically Dell's "Macbook Pro 15" clone of thin, powerful-but-not-full-power "workstations" which are really rebadged versions of their XPS 15 consumer machine. Nice enough machines (I've got a personal M3800, and an M5510 from work -- the first by choice, the second I'd have preferred another option) but only two memory sockets, and like the MBP 15, they do make some choices I wouldn't have made in ergonomics and power in concession to thinness.

OTOH, they still manage the standard two DIM sockets for memory. The late 2013-2015 generation one (M3800) could only take 16GB total because no machine with the i7-4xxx processors could take 16GB dimms. The newer pair are both able to go up to 32gb.

As an aside, if anyone wants to consider that, if you don't run Autocad/Maya/Solidworks or something like that which requires professional OpenGL and perhaps more importantly the ISV-certified video drivers, the M5520 is a terrible choice for general use this generation compared to the XPS 15: the GPUs that NVidia released for professional workstations are based on the last-generation "Maxwell" core, while the consumer ones are based on the new and much better "Pascal" core -- as a result, the XPS 15 will have significantly better video performance for what most people do (including gaming, video encoding, and things like Photoshop) all at a lower price on comparable configurations.

The current-generation full-scale 15" workstations (comparable to the M4800 or W530 -- from Lenovo that's the P51, from Dell the M7520, and there's some similar model from HP) are smaller, but still have 4 DIMM sockets, in some cases have slotted video cards or future upgrades, and industrial-strength cooling solutions. While the 15" versions of those quite light by the 7+lb standards of a few years ago, they're still quite heavy and bulky compared to the MBP 15 or the semi clones (M5520, HP Zbook Studio.) And, of course, Dell and Lenovo (not sure about HP) still make full size 17" ones as well. All of these go up to 64gb.

It's not yet clear when 32gb laptop DIMMs will come out, nor if the present generation processors will be able to work with them when they do, but it's possible that two-DIMM machines might be able to go to 64GB then and 4-socket ones to 128GB.

(OTOH, you don't want to see the 2+lb 200W+ watt power brick the 17" models use, nor hear the fans needed to cool the 100W GPU in those 17" laptops...)

Actually, Moore's "law" has been slowing down; it's a reason why the "Kaby Lake" 7th generation Core-i processors came out, because the next generation process (10nm rather than 14nm) has been delayed at Intel (and just about everyone else.) There aren't substantially more transistors on a die than on the prior generation; the next generation ones "Cannonlake" will be out hopefully later this year on 10nm, although like the prior odd-number generations (before this one) the better process will mostly go to power and cost savings (and potentially higher clock speed), with the architectural improvements coming even later.

Ceteris paribus, a smaller process will let you pick between three options:
* more functionality (cores, specialized stuff, complexity per core)
* lower power consumption (given the same basic architecture and clock speeds)
* higher clock speed (given the same level of power consumption and basic architecture.)
.... assuming other limits like current leakage and architectural limits on seed don't get in the way. The awful Pentium 4 designs, with super-long pipelines are a great example of what happens when they try to optimize on the third.

For laptop CPUs,

Laptop CPUs worth buying have been topping out at 4 cores since 2011 (technically 2010 on PCs; but the 1st generation 45nm quad cores like the i7-740qm were awful -- the Sandy Bridge/i7-2xxxQM were the first worth buying).

We've gone from 32nm to 22nm to 14nm in that time. Someone could produce an 8-core laptop CPU (AMD has, to make up for very slow cores) and on the server and high-end desktop side where power isn't really a limiting factor and cost isn't a big deal, the number of cores goes all the way up to 32...

Given how software is written these days and the tendency of running a million background apps, the jump from 2 cores to 4 will almost always see an improvement in real world responsiveness. There are very few full-power 2-core CPUs still available, and with the current/semi-current the much higher thermal/power envelope on 4-core models means they usually have the highest short-term single-core speeds.

A lot of transistors have also gone to having more features on the CPU itself that used to be on the motherboard -- including integrated GPUs that don't suck, and integrated memory controllers which lower latency hugely, plus accelerators for things that aren't that efficient for the processor to do the regular way (most notably encryption, built into the CPU, and video decoding and in some cases encoding, built into the iGPU.)

dinanm3atl

For sure. I'm on Mid-2012 retina right now.

1st born child. 16gb maxed-out is what now on a 15"? 3200-3500? With the way Apple prices increases in CPU, GPU and RAM(the most crazy) I'd figure 16 to 32gb is 1000+ dollars.

Here is my axe to grind. Where did the 15" and 17" version go... a PRO(it is called the MacBook Pro)? Apple seems to keep pushing slim, dropping ports and dumbing it down. Plenty of people would be fine if the laptop was slightly thicker, added more batteries and more performance. Instead they make it slimmer(always the latest selling point) and remove ports. I want the ports, I want more power and longer lasting battery.

nkedel

Fully maxed out with the 2TB drive is $4,299.

It probably won't be that bad, since RAM is a lot cheaper. There's no 8GB-16GB upgrade on the new 15" (they're all 16GB) but -- going from 8gb to 16GB on the 13" Pro is $200, so if I had to guess, it'll probably be somewhere closer to $600. But you never know.

The retail price difference on the PC side from 16GB to 32GB is about $150 (about $110 for a 16gb pair of 2x GB DIMMs, about $260 for a 32gb pair of 2x 16GB DIMMs.)

I'm surprised that Apply only put in a 76 watt-hour battery. Pretty much every PC manufacturer has at least the option of a just under 100 watt hour (e.g. 97 for the Dell MBP clones) as it has to be under 100 watt hours to be able to go on an airplane without special handling.

I have a bit more sympathy for Apple on the ports; 4 is a good number (more wouldn't be bad) and USB-C+Thunderbolt is the future. This was probably premature, but Apple's burning the ships (starting with the not-so-good only 2 on the rMB) pushes the adoption rate along a lot.

My other complaint about all these machines -- Mac or very thin PC -- is that the keyboard travel is another thing that's compromised. Keyboards today are uniformly terrible across the industry, but the thinnest machines tend to be the worst.

dinanm3atl

Maybe not so bad then. I didn't fully price a new model but I always remember that Apple used to charge an arm and a leg for RAM. Maybe not anymore.

100% agree on battery/thickness. Which then relates to the keyboard. Mid-2012 keyboard feels excellent. Thinner the laptop the cheaper and worse it feels to me. Personally preference and what not is fine but it just isn't better.

Ports Apple likes to push change. Which is fine. Still not having a single standard USB is silly. And more silly is removing their single best laptop feature... magsafe. It has saved who knows how many laptops. The few people I know with 2016 models have bought adapters to have 'magsafe' on their USB-C charging.

reft

You're correct. https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/ suggests it was the type of RAM that created the memory/power concern.

As far as RAM requirements for video, it depends. What else is going on? Using other programs while waiting for a background render to finish? The video resolution? -- 4K is growing. Is the video simple cuts or more complicated? A real YMMV situation. I supposed it's amazing at one level that a recent model iPhone or Galaxy or Pixel can do some on-phone video editing at all, but there are also a lot of de-shake, content aware fill and other tools that have come to the desktop systems that may suck RAM either generically in a disc cache or specifically if the frames are rendered into an on-app frame cache for image processing.

RAM is one of those things that responds to latent demand. Upgrade a system from X using 60%, to Y, and all of a sudden it's using "120%", all other things being equal.

There's a chance it's a perception of 'more is better' so I better get more.