Appleinsider:
Schiller in a brief response to an article published by developer Ben Slaney explained Apple’s decision to use speedy and efficient LPDDR3 memory, of which Intel’s latest processors can handle up to 16GB, was in large part due to battery life concerns.
“The MacBook Pro uses 16GB of very fast LPDDR memory, up to 2133MHz,” Schiller said. “To support 32GB of memory would require using DDR memory that is not low power and also require a different design of the logic board which might reduce space for batteries. Both factors would reduce battery life.”
The response clarified an error in Slaney’s attempt to explain why MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models maxed out at 16GB of RAM, which claimed the LPDDR3E specification tops out at 1866MHz.
These comments from Schiller point very clearly to Apple’s focus and direction when it comes to their laptops.
The current MBPTB is an iteration that some customers are obviously – and vocally – passing on. But a year from now, when the next iteration is announced, RAMgate will be a thing of the past.
I’m not all in with the sky’s-falling crowd, but I remember a time, not long ago, when there was a ton more customer goodwill.
Or is Apple’s situation more serious than that? Where’s the tipping point, where meaningful customer attrition begins?
Out of touch with customer expectations “these days”? Since then did Apple care about customer expectations? The only difference between Apple of today and of yesteryears is that, in today’s world of social media, every reaction is exaggerated. Apple has always designed what it thought was the right thing to do next.
What do Thunderbolt displays and the Airport line have to do with “pro” customers?
They rightly dropped the display – there’s very little reason aside from brand to buy an Apple display now, the price is out of whack with the quality. Consider this – as I type this I’m looking at a 24″,4k LG display – that I bought for $329. My second screen is a very nice 24″ Asus that’s 2k. Bought it for $170 a couple of years ago. Both are very good quality.
Airports are, I think, the same but that’s a bit more problematic because while I can get a nice router for little money, the Airports have some very nice Apple specific features.
On RAM… VERY few people really need more than 32g. A couple of weeks ago The Loop linked to a pro video editor who was quite pleased with the performance of his new 15″ MBP:
First off, It’s really fast. I’ve been using the MacBook Pro with the new version of FCP X and cutting 5k ProRes material all week, it’s buttery smooth. No matter what you think the specs say, the fact is the software and hardware are so well integrated it tears strips off “superior spec’d” Windows counterparts in the real world
The RAM didn’t limit him at all, nor will it limit virtually any of us. Some? Sure. But most of the stink if from people who compare specs and bigger is better to them.
Desktops and the Pro absolutely need an overhaul and I think Apple needs to get back to more frequent updates… but if they just updated the CPU and stuff you’d hear whining about how Apple is stagnant and this is just a spec bump…
“…as indicators Apple is steering away from the PRO community in favor of the iOS platform. “
I don’t think they’re doing anything of the sort. I think the pro community has always been outsized in its reaction to anything they don’t like and they tend to be active on blogs, social media, etc. But come on – are you REALLY limited by 16gig of RAM? REALLY? Or is this a case of a shiny thing that you can’t have? Spec wars have never been the Apple way.
And before someone brings up the “but they could have done at least one model with the other RAM” bit… read the post again. It would perhaps have required a different logic board. Apple really should build an entirely different machine for the small number of people who can’t live wit 16gig?
Nothing, but it’s a change and a reason to complain.
I do wonder why they didn’t just throw their weight around and just asked Intel to raise the RAM limit. Doesn’t seem like raising the limit would have been very hard but I could be wrong.
Disparaging other users… How professional. I’m happy Apple doesn’t cater to that group of “pros.”
this is nonsense. i and many pros use imacs, in addition to our MBPs. i maxed out my 2011 imac and it’s still sitting on my desk, running VMs for software dev.
are you a microprocessor engineer? if not, then yes, you could be wrong that work in that field doesn’t seem very hard.
Or, perhaps, when the next Intel processor is released, they will offer a 32GB option. All this noise is silly. Apple didn’t say the MBP will never have ≥ 32 GB of RAM.
I don’t
think it’s the absolute capacity of RAM that has users pissed. I believe it has more to do with Apple telling pros how to do their work, what hardware complement to invest in and ultimately what is considered PRO.
I hate to say it, but Drump won an election by giving lip service to people who thought they weren’t being heard. Now we have to live with the consequences.
Apple could be a little more conciliatory to its user base. BTW- I was one of those users who bought Apple products during the leant times. So, we do feel like we’re being snubbed for iphone users. Apple will have a dilemma soon as the smartphone/iPad category levels off.
So you’re saying the cranky self described “pros” are the alt-right of the tech world? They want to have their ego and self-importance stroked so they don’t have to deal with the changing world around them? Not a bad analogy.
Except without your apparent disdain. I don’t
think the pros are cranky at all, nor do I think their concerns are unfounded.
I’m saying that Apple has a lot of hubris that they seem intent on throwing around. I couldn’t treat my customers in such a fashion without eliciting some sort of uproar.
Apple is not God
Apple has always prided itself in skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. I’m not sure how anyone could be surprised by any of their recent actions in that light.
If they had simply named it the MacBook, and ended the presentation with “… more to come.” – implying that there would be an actual Pro version – I don’t think anyone would have complained. Pro equipment doesn’t need to be 3 mm thinner when making it 1.5 mm thinner would have also allowed professional level provisioning.
Your monitor story reminds me of one of ours. It wasn’t all that long after I got a 24″ Apple Cinema Display that we bought a similarly sized Dell Ultrasharp for my wife. Hers was—and remains—noticeably better, and cost a lot less.
I suspect that the MacBook Pros might do better than people think. I haven’t actually touched the Bar but I’m betting it’s better than it looks than the ads. Also the fit and finish plus weight makes a lot of difference to people. I know that sounds shallow, but hey.
And this is coming from a guy who spent a good chunk of his day using Xcode, Atom, IntelliJ, and iTerm.
Here is what you do:
Since Touch Bar is something like a $500 part, you can probably keep things about the same price.
And by the way, I need a MacPad Pro more than a MacBook Pro also. For all the exact same reasons that iPad Pro is great. Note that I use the same set of hands all day when I work, whether I’m running iPad software or Mac software. Same exact hands.
i guess they’ve already reached that tipping point. the narrative until now was “apple lost focus under tim cook and tried to do too many different things at the same time”. they’ve probably been working on that by eliminating some products (displays, routers, car project) with maybe more to come (mac mini, mac pro, ipod, macbook air,…). but it has already changed to “they’ve gotten even more greedy, out-of-touch and conservative than they’ve been for a long time”. maybe they’ve already set the tracks to change themselves again, but it will be harder than ever – as the most valued company in the world, they are no longer in the position of the beloved underdog.
i don’t think the mbptb-thing is really about the lack of ram. it’s the lack of ram or other higher-end options (however unrealistic they might be) in combination with a big price increase (what used to be the €2800 model now sits at €3550). it feels like you get less but have to pay more for it. the touch-bar and bigger touchpad are perceived as nice gimmicks, but not as added value, a speed increase is expected with a new model – but on the other hand, there’s less connectivity, even more cost and less convenience due to adapters, no more optical-out, expensive ssd soldered to the mb, no more glowing apple-logo,…
macs have always been the choice of creative one-person-companies. however you spin it – talking about “real pros” and the value of a good tool – they’ve always been quite an investment for many of those professionals. but they felt, that they got something for it and vocally defended their choice of computer and recommended it to colleagues. since the second coming of steve, apple has always counted on emotions – at least half of today’s mac-users don’t know a time before jobs. now some of the formerly fanboys and -girls feel betrayed (the similar iphone7-headphone-jack-thing didn’t help), and at the same time, some of the old guard who’d stuck with apple through worse times feel left out – and they voice their disappointment even more loudly than they did voice their love before – which might become a problem for a company that works on positive emotions.
i think, it’s the “shiny thing you can’t have” but you still have to pay a higher price as if you had it.
that pro video editor is probably the minority in the minority – most video pros don’t use final cut any more (or still use version 7) but avid or premiere, where more ram and a decent gpu matter more. i’m one of those who use fcpx, but i can only do so because most of the time i work alone. the guy got his mbp early, so it was probably a review sponsored and distributed by apple – it’s true that the macbooks fly with fcpx, and i love that app and use it professionally ever since it came out – but it’s a very favourable-to-apple point of view that isn’t necessarily grounded in day-to-day working reality.
I think the RAM issue is silly. But 16 GB is not where the puck is going to be. So the metaphor is a misfit in this discussion.
I’m not in the sky’s falling camp, but you make some solid points.
This is interesting. Phil Schiller might have acknowledged this with his comment about courage.
Capped RAM’s getting most of the venom, but I mostly agree. We’ll see in time whether or not limitations such as expansion/upgradability impact adoption of the MBP’s new design direction.
This is closer to the heart of my tipping point question. Are Apple products still exceeding expectations, which attracts new customers and retains existing customers?
Is that giddiness customers express over owning and using Apple hardware and Apple software still abundant?
Or, has enough personality (read: magic) been designed out of the Apple experience (the purchase, the package, ownership, community) that the company’s draining its incredibly deep well of customer goodwill?
Agree. Not too long ago the most vocal critics of Apple were non-Apple customers, or haters.
Apple customers were busy recording and watching unboxing videos, queuing in ridonkulous lines, and tweeting about Apple’s now-deceased “Wholly sht” guarantee.
That equation appears to have been inverted. Now, it seems, Apple customers are doing the bulk of the hating.
http://www.businessinsider.com/does-apple-replace-phones-for-free-2015-9
Design is about compromises. Apple feels the puck is heading towards portability and usability. They likely would have offered more RAM if they could do it without impacting their other priorities (and future MBPs will likely support more RAM once Intel releases their updated chipsets).
If you spend 10 seconds looking at the pricing, you’ll see that the Touch Bar is obviously a $100-150 part.
I can’t speak to the details but I’ll say this – it’s a little annoying to take all criticism at face value but any positive notes are suspect.
My new MBP is a significant boost from what I had before. Obviously if you have a recent MBP, the boost won’t be as significant. But can we PLEASE stop whining about the 32gig RAM issue as if you cannot possibly do any pro work with ‘only’ 16gig? It’s ridiculous.
The issue I have is that computers slow down with age as you update software with newer more resource demanding features. It may work really well now with 16 GBs of ram, but after a few OS upgrades and pro software upgrades it will slow down. For $5000 I want my computer to last as long as possible.
No, computers DO NOT slow down with age. That’s simply not true. It IS true that as computers age people write software that pushes their capabilities so that older computers seem slower with age… but if you archived your drive 6 months after you bought your Mac and then restored that 5 years later the Mac will be just as fast.
So, yes, new software will be written that strains current hardware. Hopefully, that’s because it does more and not just because the developers are crap… but that’s why you upgrade every few years. Now…
1) With a Mac you can resell your computer for a decent fraction of its purchase price when it’s 3-4 years old. I know, I’ve done so. This is how I upgrade… instead of adding stuff to my Mac and spending money, I simply sell my current one every 3 years or so, pocket about 40-50% of the price I paid and buy a new one. That means the Macbbook Pro I’m writing this on cost me about $1000 in incremental dollars. That’s about $1/day over the 3 years I use it for. Meh.
2) Aside from the fact that even the tricked out 15″ MBP won’t cost $5000 (it’s about $4300) here’s a thought… don’t spend $5k unless you can really justify it. If you can’t wait another year to see if they release a model with 32gig, buy a MBP around $2k which will get you a very nice machine, still.
3) It’s tiresome to have people constantly define ‘pro’ as things that need 32gig of RAM as if the CPU speed, I/O, ability to connect external peripherals at a high data rate and more don’t count at all. The fact is that most of what actual pros do is more defined by all of those singly and in combination.
4) aside from the people who will snark at Apple no matter what (I strongly suspect some would bitch that there’s not a 64g model if Apple had shipped 32g) and the clickbait blogs, it seems that a lot of you who are upset at the lack of a 32g option are spec hunters… you look at spec sheets and go “AHA! It doesn’t check THIS box….” Are some of you also people who really need 32gig? Yeah. But do most people who use MBP to get real actual pro work done need 32gig? Nah. Many are fine with 16g or even 8gig – they’re limited by CPU or I/0 and not so much RAM. Some could use 32gig but it falls into the nice to have camp. And yes, a few genuinely NEED that much RAM. I feel for this last camp – they are left without an option and after waiting so long I’m sure it’s incredibly disappointing. But acting like they’re the vast majority of pros is just not true.
I said specifically that computers slow down “as you update software with newer more resource demanding features”.
Also, a maxed out 15 inch MacBook Pro is $4798.98 with Final Cut X & Logic Pro X. That’s before taxes. $5,182.90 after taxes.
That’s nice that you like to sell your computers. I like to keep mine.
Don’t lump me in with other people whom you have a problem with, I was very clear in stating that it was MY opinion.
I’d love to have one of these new MacBook Pros, but I can’t afford it. I couldn’t afford it if it was $2000, but I still have an opinion.