If you are actually using it as a laptop carrying it around, you don't need so many dongles. If you're putting it on a desk connected to mouse, keyboard, external monitor, etc. then it's dongle city. Apple realizes people use it this way, hence the promoting of the fancy LG monitor, they just seem to love dongles.
I never understood their dongle love affair. Yeah, it makes the device itself nicer when nothing is connected to it. But If you setup a PC notebook on a desk with a docking station it ends up being nicer with minimal cabling all hidden in the back. A Macbook on a desk looks hideous with a scary cable mess hitting it form all sides.
Also, I never understood why they don't bump the specs. At $3000 or even $3500 if they offered 16/32GB of RAM, an NVidia 10(60/70/80), and an i7 there would be no argument. Best laptop in existence. Everyone else is fucked. Game over. At the current spec, it's just not enticing.
I carry my laptop around a lot! I also haven't used it on a desk with a monitor ever, and haven't plugged in a mouse or keyboard since the last time I played an FPS on it, which was probably about three years ago.
I'm like the perfect target customer for this new laptop.
Except, yeah, I'd prefer a bit more RAM and stuff for the price.
I've been looking at the lenovo thinkpad p50. 4 RAM slots in a laptop makes me drool given the soldered 4GB RAM I have on my junky old s230u. With upgrades the p50 should last me many many years.
I've been looking at the lenovo thinkpad p50. 4 RAM slots in a laptop makes me drool given the soldered 4GB RAM I have on my junky old s230u. With upgrades the p50 should last me many many years.
No Lenovo. Remember when they shipped malware pre-installed? They can never be trusted again, even if they make the best device you have ever seen.
I'm in the same situation as Luke except that I have a late-2012 retina MBP. There's really nothing new here that's better than what I have: 8GB, 500GB SSD, 2.9GHz i7. I'd have to upgrade from these new base offerings to even match specs—the ram would be faster and the video card would be better, but that's about it. Maybe I'll replace it in a year or two.
Not trying to convince anyone to move off of Mac if they are happy and set with that ecosystem, but if you're open to Windows, I can't say enough good things about the Surface Book.
Not trying to convince anyone to move off of Mac if they are happy and set with that ecosystem, but if you're open to Windows, I can't say enough good things about the Surface Book.
Is the RAM in that user-upgradeable? Can I get an 8GB Surface Book and up it to 16 or 32?
All the new MacBooks Pro come with 16GB RAM, as far as I could see, which is double my current RAM.
Dropping from a 256gb SSD plus a 1tb HD to just a single SSD will have both upsides and downsides. My current laptop only has USB 2 though, so USB 3 and thunderbolt external storage is going to become waaaaaay more useable, and I won't have to be loading so much stuff onto my internal drive so much.
My old Lenovo x230 plays Civ V and Civ VI fine, and can actually run Premiere pretty fuckin' well. Its only drawback is that it's very old and starting to physically deteriorate due to heavy use!
Not trying to convince anyone to move off of Mac if they are happy and set with that ecosystem, but if you're open to Windows, I can't say enough good things about the Surface Book.
Is the RAM in that user-upgradeable? Can I get an 8GB Surface Book and up it to 16 or 32?
Nope. Zero user-upgradeable parts. Mine (last year's model, is 8GB. Rumor is that full line revision with upgraded specs across all models will be in about 6 months).
My old Lenovo x230 plays Civ V and Civ VI fine, and can actually run Premiere pretty fuckin' well. Its only drawback is that it's very old and starting to physically deteriorate due to heavy use!
At least with (oldish) Thinkpads there is still a large amount of parts on the secondary market. Case gets busted? You can likely find a decent case on its own or buy a cheap bricked one of the same model that still looks fine externally.
My old Lenovo x230 plays Civ V and Civ VI fine, and can actually run Premiere pretty fuckin' well. Its only drawback is that it's very old and starting to physically deteriorate due to heavy use!
As long as there are aluminum laptops, I can't see myself ever buying a plastic computer ever again. I'm constantly astounded how good my 6.5 year old MacBook Pro looks and works.*
* Pity the camera and SD card reader are both broken.
Oh, the case itself (plastic) is fine. The deterioration is the LCD and the SSD. The latter I can replace if need be. The former probably has a couple years left.
The thing is, Apple has never had the top specs. They've always charged too much money for not enough horsepower. This is nothing new. It's just that the gap this time is exponentially worse than it was before. They made the price higher, the specs were bumped even less, the the time since the last time the product was updated is extremely long.
I think Apple realizes it too. If you watch older Apple keynotes about Macs, they usually spend some time bragging about the internals. They didn't do that too much this time. The hardware is so boring they couldn't even hype it up with magical Apple language.
Apple is so crazy about making their stuff thin, but there is a point at which a product is small and light enough, and shaving off another couple millimeters doesn't matter, especially if it comes at such a huge sacrifice in power. I'm really curious. If Apple made a new Macbook Pro in the same exact body of the 2012 model, how much power and battery life could they fit in there? Could they get the NVidia 10 series mobile chip in there?
If my 2009-10 I forget MBP stayed exactly the same size but had new guts, it wouldn't be primarily working as literally a paperweight, on a box, under my desk at home. At this point if I need to travel with laptop, I'm packing the fucking Dell behemoth.
Do Apple products *need* the horsepower the way Windows PCs do?
A few years ago I powered up an old Win98 machine. I cleaned it out and did a fresh OS install. That beast ran on par with my current Win10 machine for general OS tasks. The dated software that I installed also ran fine. Once I applied all the updates and service packs? Ran like crap.
Does Apple OS have the same issues as Windows does where every update requires more and more power to do the same thing? Is the OS properly tuned to not need the latest hardware?
I grant you that future proofing a new purchase is a valid reason to want the higher end parts but does it need the parts and can the parts currently being offered in the systems last?
Do Apple products *need* the horsepower the way Windows PCs do?
The software needs the horsepower, not the OS.
No one needs good hardware if they're not doing anything performance intensive.
What is the curve on performance vs new software requirements? When I see people here saying they have had the same machine for 5+ years it makes me wonder if the initial purchase was of an overpowered machine or if the software requirements didn't grow as fast as I am used to under Windows.
Software requirements are slowing down bigtime for vast majority of users. Unless you are running high-end games, editing 4k video, or running heavy algorithms, you are gonna make it to that 5yr mark with a modern PC.
Every PC I have ever had since 1999, that didn't break, hit the five year mark.
For example, I never bought the absolute top of the line ridiculously overpriced components, but have always bought relatively high end stuff. My first PC that I built had a Pentium III 450Mhz when I think the max was maybe 500 or 550. It had an NVidia TNT2 video card, which was just released. I pre-ordered it. It was still only the second best. There was a turbo model with faster clock and more video ram and such.
My current desktop has a 680 that I got when that was hot and new. It will be 5 years old next year, but will probably last to 2018 at least, since it's still an i7 with 32GB of RAM.
The only times I need the horsepower on my computer is when I am using Creative Cloud Apps, especially video related. Playing fancy 3D games. Coding with virtual machines and such. That's it. If not for those use cases, I could get by with an old iPad. Most of what I do on a computer is read the web, write stuff, communicate, etc. I use my iPad Pro for all those things, and I expect it to last for as long as Apple keeps supporting it with iOS updates (a long time).
The main reason my Macbook is dumped on a pile of papes under my desk is because it just runs slow as dogshit compared to my other machines rocking SSD and 4x the RAM and much better graphics cards. Plus it just runs slower than it used to, and the battery is shite.
I could probably drop a few hundred and get it running good as it used to but I still have better machines.
Plus the one downside is the aluminum cases do still get beat up, and when they do its leaving dents and sharp edges. Mine probably needs a file to deburr a few corners.
Is it just me or are all these news sources quoting this dude on his impression of the Skylake processor and they're all copying each other saying it's 3 years old?
I just bought a new camera that records 60fps 1080p video, which is the same as my GroPro and phone.
My 2010 MacBook Pro is no longer a machine that can edit such video without issues, like it could 25fps video.
When I bought it, it was more power than I needed. Now I'm running up against the limitations when video editing and music/sound mixing in Logic and other programs.
I've been looking at the lenovo thinkpad p50. 4 RAM slots in a laptop makes me drool given the soldered 4GB RAM I have on my junky old s230u. With upgrades the p50 should last me many many years.
No Lenovo. Remember when they shipped malware pre-installed? They can never be trusted again, even if they make the best device you have ever seen.
Comments
I never understood their dongle love affair. Yeah, it makes the device itself nicer when nothing is connected to it. But If you setup a PC notebook on a desk with a docking station it ends up being nicer with minimal cabling all hidden in the back. A Macbook on a desk looks hideous with a scary cable mess hitting it form all sides.
Also, I never understood why they don't bump the specs. At $3000 or even $3500 if they offered 16/32GB of RAM, an NVidia 10(60/70/80), and an i7 there would be no argument. Best laptop in existence. Everyone else is fucked. Game over. At the current spec, it's just not enticing.
I'm like the perfect target customer for this new laptop.
Except, yeah, I'd prefer a bit more RAM and stuff for the price.
Dropping from a 256gb SSD plus a 1tb HD to just a single SSD will have both upsides and downsides. My current laptop only has USB 2 though, so USB 3 and thunderbolt external storage is going to become waaaaaay more useable, and I won't have to be loading so much stuff onto my internal drive so much.
* Pity the camera and SD card reader are both broken.
I don't really care about any of the hardware in it; my main concern is just going to be testing out all the keyboards. Mechanical has spoiled me.
https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/10/benjamin_button_reviews_the_new_macbook_pro/
Benjamin Button reviews the new MacBook Pro
I think Apple realizes it too. If you watch older Apple keynotes about Macs, they usually spend some time bragging about the internals. They didn't do that too much this time. The hardware is so boring they couldn't even hype it up with magical Apple language.
Apple is so crazy about making their stuff thin, but there is a point at which a product is small and light enough, and shaving off another couple millimeters doesn't matter, especially if it comes at such a huge sacrifice in power. I'm really curious. If Apple made a new Macbook Pro in the same exact body of the 2012 model, how much power and battery life could they fit in there? Could they get the NVidia 10 series mobile chip in there?
A few years ago I powered up an old Win98 machine. I cleaned it out and did a fresh OS install. That beast ran on par with my current Win10 machine for general OS tasks. The dated software that I installed also ran fine. Once I applied all the updates and service packs? Ran like crap.
Does Apple OS have the same issues as Windows does where every update requires more and more power to do the same thing? Is the OS properly tuned to not need the latest hardware?
I grant you that future proofing a new purchase is a valid reason to want the higher end parts but does it need the parts and can the parts currently being offered in the systems last?
No one needs good hardware if they're not doing anything performance intensive.
For example, I never bought the absolute top of the line ridiculously overpriced components, but have always bought relatively high end stuff. My first PC that I built had a Pentium III 450Mhz when I think the max was maybe 500 or 550. It had an NVidia TNT2 video card, which was just released. I pre-ordered it. It was still only the second best. There was a turbo model with faster clock and more video ram and such.
My current desktop has a 680 that I got when that was hot and new. It will be 5 years old next year, but will probably last to 2018 at least, since it's still an i7 with 32GB of RAM.
The only times I need the horsepower on my computer is when I am using Creative Cloud Apps, especially video related. Playing fancy 3D games. Coding with virtual machines and such. That's it. If not for those use cases, I could get by with an old iPad. Most of what I do on a computer is read the web, write stuff, communicate, etc. I use my iPad Pro for all those things, and I expect it to last for as long as Apple keeps supporting it with iOS updates (a long time).
I could probably drop a few hundred and get it running good as it used to but I still have better machines.
Plus the one downside is the aluminum cases do still get beat up, and when they do its leaving dents and sharp edges. Mine probably needs a file to deburr a few corners.
My 2010 MacBook Pro is no longer a machine that can edit such video without issues, like it could 25fps video.
When I bought it, it was more power than I needed. Now I'm running up against the limitations when video editing and music/sound mixing in Logic and other programs.