Ask Apple. Maybe it's about the amount of space available on the motherboard. Maybe it's about the amount of energy used. I would guess the former, but it's really irrelevant. The fact is that you can't get 1 TB. Why would the reason matter?
So you're pretending that you know more about that tradeoff than Apple?
I suspect that Apple knows just a bit more about designing a computer and finding a good balance between RAM and SSD size than you do.
Besides, your argument is still irrelevant. No one is complaining about a 16 GB limit on the old MBP. The new MBP has the same limit, but since it's swapping to SSD, it will suffer far, far less as the RAM usage approaches the limit.
As for wear on the SSD, why don't you tell us what the life of the SSDs that Apple is using would be and point to anyone who has had problems with that type of unit?
Man, are you bent out of shape. It's not generally practical to address questions being asked by someone who's upset/irrational.
It matters because it suggests a possible limit to what third parties might ever be able to offer.
The new MBP uses microprocessors capable of using 32 GB of memory, except Apple ships the units with memory soldered to the mainboard. Oops.
I already suggested (indirectly) cost. While many customers would pay the price, if the denser flash is a scarce resource, every system sold with 1 TB would likely prevent the sale of two systems with 768 GB. It's more profitable to sell two systems with 768 GB than one system with 1 TB. Of course the 1 TB option could be priced so outrageously high that the sale of a single system would be at least as profitable as two with 768 GB, but that would open the door to third parties to sell 1 TB drives for much less.
In case it hasn't been covered yet, as I'm not going to read the entire thread, I see nothing proprietary about the SSD card. It looks like it's physically a mini-PCIe slot with a unique electrical pin-out. So how his that proprietary and not just custom? What patents and/or licensing is keeping others from creating their own MBP compatible SSD cards?
In case it hasn't been covered yet, as I'm not going to read the entire thread, I see nothing proprietary about the SSD card. It looks like it's physically a mini-PCIe slot with a unique electrical pin-out. So how his that proprietary and not just custom? What patents and/or licensing is keeping others from creating their own MBP compatible SSD cards?
It's said to be proprietary because it uses a controller not found anywhere else. Nobody knows what secrets reside there.
It's said to be proprietary because it uses a controller not found anywhere else. Nobody knows what secrets reside there.
Looks like the controllers are Samsung and Toshiba. It's a flash on a PCB. I see nothing that another vendor can't make work in the new MBP in dependent of Apple's permission which means the connector is not proprietary.
My previous post should have provided enough clues for you to know those are poor questions.
The questions are valid. There is only a modern human desire to cut things off at the top of the hour or at base-10 quantities, not a practical reasoning to suggest that 768 is somehow wonky.
From AnandTech:
In the Retina MacBook Pro, Apple standardized on a dual-sided PCB for the SSD. The larger physical dimensions of the SSD allowed Apple to accommodate a total of eight flash packages (at least in the 512GB model). At 8GB per NAND die, you're looking at the highest density MLC NAND available on the market today at 64GB per package.
Looks like the controllers are Samsung and Toshiba. It's a flash on a PCB. I see nothing that another vendor can't make work in the new MBP in dependent of Apple's permission which means the connector is not proprietary.
The questions are valid. There is only a modern human desire to cut things off at the top of the hour or at base-10 quantities, not a practical reasoning to suggest that 768 is somehow wonky.
From AnandTech:
Quote:
In the Retina MacBook Pro, Apple standardized on a dual-sided PCB for the SSD. The larger physical dimensions of the SSD allowed Apple to accommodate a total of eight flash packages (at least in the 512GB model). At 8GB per NAND die, you're looking at the highest density MLC NAND available on the market today at 64GB per package.
Sorry, "Samsung" on the controller doesn't mean it operates like any other Samsung controller known to the world. I'm not saying third party solutions won't appear, but one can't assume that third party solutions will be easy or as reliable.
Yes, Anandtech presents a good basis for there being a 1 TB option if 768 GB is offered.
Man, are you bent out of shape. It's not generally practical to address questions being asked by someone who's upset/irrational.
It matters because it suggests a possible limit to what third parties might ever be able to offer.
The new MBP uses microprocessors capable of using 32 GB of memory, except Apple ships the units with memory soldered to the mainboard. Oops.
Who was upset or irrational?
You asked a foolish, irrelevant question and I pointed that out. Then I pointed out the fallacy of your criticism of Apple's design decisions.
As a consumer, though, I much prefer a system with fewer points of failure. I'd rather have a system with 1 chance in 1000 of failing rather than one with 1 chance in 100 of failing - even if it costs more to repair the former (especially since I always recommend AppleCare for laptops, anyway).
With better control of manufacturing I would posit the points of failure goes down with more modularized system. It also makes for a more thoroughly testable manufacturing process. With fewer chunks, test harnesses can be used that are completely impractical with assemblies that need multiple cross connections before they are workable. Soldered on RAM just follows the same process as every other soldered component on the motherboards. Have we been complaining about those components? No. And there are hundreds of them.
Soldered electronics that work after assembly tend to be far less subject to later problem than those that are seated via pins so I'm not even sure why there is a reliability question in the first place.
It's said to be proprietary because it uses a controller not found anywhere else. Nobody knows what secrets reside there.
I'm sure OWC will be along shortly enough with an aftermarket card. Not sure what all the fuss about the SSD card is. Unless people dislike slim laptops, because that's not going to happen with a bastardized 2.5" SSD.
You make a good point about small savings adding up. It occurs to me that longer standby time equals fewer charge cycles, extending the usable lifetime of the batteries.
I actually don't mind the soldered RAM (too much), but the glued in batteries? I'd like to hear the real story behind that decision.
I'd bet a dollar that it is the fastener caused shorts which have cause most of the Apple li-ion battery issues in iPods, iPhones and laptop battery bricks. And if Apple designed the batteries to last 4-6 years at normal use with little degradation, how many will ever even be candidates for replacement? Even after that period the battery will still be good for a half dozen plus hours. How many folks would want to spend a hundred bucks for a battery on a 6 year old machine today? Very few, it makes more sense to buy a new machine due to the performance differences of 3-4 generations of improvement.
Soldered electronics that work after assembly tend to be far less subject to later problem than those that are seated via pins so I'm not even sure why there is a reliability question in the first place.
Failures due to pin seating may be more common but they're easy to diagnose and remedy. Cold solder joints are hard to find and a pain to fix. And if one device in a million has a bad solder joint, that unit will be the one they send to me.
What gives me pause is not the relative volatility of the connection point but the difficulty associated with fixing what seems to be a fairly common failure point (i.e. failed RAM chip), that's all.
If you right, and this is a deliberate choice, and not one commanded by haste, then John Gruber’s comment is right: this MacBook retina is a hardware Back to the Mac from iOS. We are beginning to behold engineering practices that were reserved to consumer products (sealed bodies, glued parts, whatever) like the iPad slowly creep into what is deemed a "professional computer". That "professional" adjective means, to me, a machine almost fully user-serviceable, with standard screws, easy accessibility to parts, etc. In this sense, the 2008 MacBook I own is more professional that this new machine: care has been taken to ensure more-than-easy swap of HD and battery and memory upgrade, albeit requiring to remove some screws, is straightforward and officially supported. Since that first Unibody model, Apple has made a U-turn: the recent MacBooks Pro are trickier to upgrade, let alone this new retina one.
I don't know what's unclear. It's just that Apple engineers taking an entire device lifetime into account rather than just the original specifications. And I don't agree with your pro computer means fully serviceable. pro simply means the ability to get professional quality business done efficiently. One dimension of that is fast, another often ignore dimension is how much maintenance is required. Less downtime makes the machine more valuable to the professional user.
I find I now spend far less time on hardware and software maintenance than I did even five years ago. The software stack has dramatically made that better for everyone except server admins (that still sucks by every account I've heard and read). But I don't do server applications, I hardly ever even go to the utilities folder any more. That used to be a nearly daily trip. With a couple years of SSD use I have not had a single drive failure, that used to be about once a year with heavy travel/daily movement -- that alone saves probably 2-3 days of downtime or slaving to where the external backup mirror system was. I don't even have a mirror for emergency boot anymore so that maintenance is gone too. And most of those changes in the software stack were enabled by hardware choices of one sort or another. With Apple it is to the point that you cannot separate the HW and SW functional design processes totally because now they feed off each other and the efficiencies they reinforce.
Binary size matters for a different reason nowadays. If you notice, Mountain Lion is now doing the same thing as iOS: keeping binaries in memory after you quit them (with the program counter frozen of course).
OS X has done quite a bit of that already with how inactive memory was managed. That's been tweaked since OS X debuted, so while it looks like a totally new functionality, it's really a small and logical extension from what Apple has been already doing for years. NAND Flash SSDs across the line as defaults just motivated Apple to finish a first optimization for how their virtual memory subsystem works. There are substantial differences in best practices for spinning drives and SSDs, and enough uncertainty that the CS research has only been generating useful papers on it for a year or so now. Most of the previous stuff was either bunk or too early to use commercially.
Failures due to pin seating may be more common but they're easy to diagnose and remedy. Cold solder joints are hard to find and a pain to fix. And if one device in a million has a bad solder joint, that unit will be the one they send to me.
What gives me pause is not the relative volatility of the connection point but the difficulty associated with fixing what seems to be a fairly common failure point (i.e. failed RAM chip), that's all.
I'll take those odds. And with you soaking up those bad apples that do come off the line it just lets the rest of us get on with our work. Thanks for the assist!
I as really hoping for two hard drives since the optical drive is going away ( 1 ssd, 1 hdd). If you use a mbp for content creation as well as your personal machine you run through 500 gigs pretty quick.
The ram thing is weird. I wonder if you can take it to Apple for an upgrade later on. Not a big fan of these moves. Not really pro in a few ways. Good specs though.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Ask Apple. Maybe it's about the amount of space available on the motherboard. Maybe it's about the amount of energy used. I would guess the former, but it's really irrelevant. The fact is that you can't get 1 TB. Why would the reason matter?
So you're pretending that you know more about that tradeoff than Apple?
I suspect that Apple knows just a bit more about designing a computer and finding a good balance between RAM and SSD size than you do.
Besides, your argument is still irrelevant. No one is complaining about a 16 GB limit on the old MBP. The new MBP has the same limit, but since it's swapping to SSD, it will suffer far, far less as the RAM usage approaches the limit.
As for wear on the SSD, why don't you tell us what the life of the SSDs that Apple is using would be and point to anyone who has had problems with that type of unit?
Man, are you bent out of shape. It's not generally practical to address questions being asked by someone who's upset/irrational.
It matters because it suggests a possible limit to what third parties might ever be able to offer.
The new MBP uses microprocessors capable of using 32 GB of memory, except Apple ships the units with memory soldered to the mainboard. Oops.
So, why isn't a 1 TB option available?
Quote:
Originally Posted by fredaroony
Cost probably or even space.
I already suggested (indirectly) cost. While many customers would pay the price, if the denser flash is a scarce resource, every system sold with 1 TB would likely prevent the sale of two systems with 768 GB. It's more profitable to sell two systems with 768 GB than one system with 1 TB. Of course the 1 TB option could be priced so outrageously high that the sale of a single system would be at least as profitable as two with 768 GB, but that would open the door to third parties to sell 1 TB drives for much less.
At some point the cost, component supply, space, performance and reliability for denser NAND make it unfeasible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
In case it hasn't been covered yet, as I'm not going to read the entire thread, I see nothing proprietary about the SSD card. It looks like it's physically a mini-PCIe slot with a unique electrical pin-out. So how his that proprietary and not just custom? What patents and/or licensing is keeping others from creating their own MBP compatible SSD cards?
It's said to be proprietary because it uses a controller not found anywhere else. Nobody knows what secrets reside there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Why not 1.15GB? Why not 1.25GB? Why not 2.50GB?
My previous post should have provided enough clues for you to know those are poor questions.
The questions are valid. There is only a modern human desire to cut things off at the top of the hour or at base-10 quantities, not a practical reasoning to suggest that 768 is somehow wonky.
From AnandTech:
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Looks like the controllers are Samsung and Toshiba. It's a flash on a PCB. I see nothing that another vendor can't make work in the new MBP in dependent of Apple's permission which means the connector is not proprietary.
The questions are valid. There is only a modern human desire to cut things off at the top of the hour or at base-10 quantities, not a practical reasoning to suggest that 768 is somehow wonky.
From AnandTech:
Quote:
In the Retina MacBook Pro, Apple standardized on a dual-sided PCB for the SSD. The larger physical dimensions of the SSD allowed Apple to accommodate a total of eight flash packages (at least in the 512GB model). At 8GB per NAND die, you're looking at the highest density MLC NAND available on the market today at 64GB per package.
• http://www.anandtech.com/show/6005/apples-new-ssd-its-fast
Sorry, "Samsung" on the controller doesn't mean it operates like any other Samsung controller known to the world. I'm not saying third party solutions won't appear, but one can't assume that third party solutions will be easy or as reliable.
Yes, Anandtech presents a good basis for there being a 1 TB option if 768 GB is offered.
Where is the real Solipsism?
Who was upset or irrational?
You asked a foolish, irrelevant question and I pointed that out. Then I pointed out the fallacy of your criticism of Apple's design decisions.
Where did you get 'bent out of shape'?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Who was upset or irrational?
You asked a foolish, irrelevant question and I pointed that out. Then I pointed out the fallacy of your criticism of Apple's design decisions.
Where did you get 'bent out of shape'?
Who? You.
Where? From your own post.
You now show that you are quite ignorant of computer technology as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by enzomedici
That's bullshit. Buying AppleCare is NOT the solution. What happens after 3 years?
In 3 years you'll have an out of date notebook with a slow CPU and not enough storage. Until then, you have a new computer with AppleCare.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sleepy3
EWWWWWWWWW
SAMSUNG PARTS???!!!
NOT GONNA BUY!!!
All Apple products have Samsung parts. Ever since the original iPhone and iPod. Even the original iMac had Samsung parts.
Perhaps you should ban purchasing Apple products all together because of your disgust of Samsung parts.
Your tactic has certainly failed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
As a consumer, though, I much prefer a system with fewer points of failure. I'd rather have a system with 1 chance in 1000 of failing rather than one with 1 chance in 100 of failing - even if it costs more to repair the former (especially since I always recommend AppleCare for laptops, anyway).
With better control of manufacturing I would posit the points of failure goes down with more modularized system. It also makes for a more thoroughly testable manufacturing process. With fewer chunks, test harnesses can be used that are completely impractical with assemblies that need multiple cross connections before they are workable. Soldered on RAM just follows the same process as every other soldered component on the motherboards. Have we been complaining about those components? No. And there are hundreds of them.
Soldered electronics that work after assembly tend to be far less subject to later problem than those that are seated via pins so I'm not even sure why there is a reliability question in the first place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stompy
You make a good point about small savings adding up. It occurs to me that longer standby time equals fewer charge cycles, extending the usable lifetime of the batteries.
I actually don't mind the soldered RAM (too much), but the glued in batteries? I'd like to hear the real story behind that decision.
I'd bet a dollar that it is the fastener caused shorts which have cause most of the Apple li-ion battery issues in iPods, iPhones and laptop battery bricks. And if Apple designed the batteries to last 4-6 years at normal use with little degradation, how many will ever even be candidates for replacement? Even after that period the battery will still be good for a half dozen plus hours. How many folks would want to spend a hundred bucks for a battery on a 6 year old machine today? Very few, it makes more sense to buy a new machine due to the performance differences of 3-4 generations of improvement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
Soldered electronics that work after assembly tend to be far less subject to later problem than those that are seated via pins so I'm not even sure why there is a reliability question in the first place.
Failures due to pin seating may be more common but they're easy to diagnose and remedy. Cold solder joints are hard to find and a pain to fix. And if one device in a million has a bad solder joint, that unit will be the one they send to me.
What gives me pause is not the relative volatility of the connection point but the difficulty associated with fixing what seems to be a fairly common failure point (i.e. failed RAM chip), that's all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EauVive
If you right, and this is a deliberate choice, and not one commanded by haste, then John Gruber’s comment is right: this MacBook retina is a hardware Back to the Mac from iOS. We are beginning to behold engineering practices that were reserved to consumer products (sealed bodies, glued parts, whatever) like the iPad slowly creep into what is deemed a "professional computer". That "professional" adjective means, to me, a machine almost fully user-serviceable, with standard screws, easy accessibility to parts, etc. In this sense, the 2008 MacBook I own is more professional that this new machine: care has been taken to ensure more-than-easy swap of HD and battery and memory upgrade, albeit requiring to remove some screws, is straightforward and officially supported. Since that first Unibody model, Apple has made a U-turn: the recent MacBooks Pro are trickier to upgrade, let alone this new retina one.
I don't know what's unclear. It's just that Apple engineers taking an entire device lifetime into account rather than just the original specifications. And I don't agree with your pro computer means fully serviceable. pro simply means the ability to get professional quality business done efficiently. One dimension of that is fast, another often ignore dimension is how much maintenance is required. Less downtime makes the machine more valuable to the professional user.
I find I now spend far less time on hardware and software maintenance than I did even five years ago. The software stack has dramatically made that better for everyone except server admins (that still sucks by every account I've heard and read). But I don't do server applications, I hardly ever even go to the utilities folder any more. That used to be a nearly daily trip. With a couple years of SSD use I have not had a single drive failure, that used to be about once a year with heavy travel/daily movement -- that alone saves probably 2-3 days of downtime or slaving to where the external backup mirror system was. I don't even have a mirror for emergency boot anymore so that maintenance is gone too. And most of those changes in the software stack were enabled by hardware choices of one sort or another. With Apple it is to the point that you cannot separate the HW and SW functional design processes totally because now they feed off each other and the efficiencies they reinforce.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
Binary size matters for a different reason nowadays. If you notice, Mountain Lion is now doing the same thing as iOS: keeping binaries in memory after you quit them (with the program counter frozen of course).
OS X has done quite a bit of that already with how inactive memory was managed. That's been tweaked since OS X debuted, so while it looks like a totally new functionality, it's really a small and logical extension from what Apple has been already doing for years. NAND Flash SSDs across the line as defaults just motivated Apple to finish a first optimization for how their virtual memory subsystem works. There are substantial differences in best practices for spinning drives and SSDs, and enough uncertainty that the CS research has only been generating useful papers on it for a year or so now. Most of the previous stuff was either bunk or too early to use commercially.
Quote:
Originally Posted by v5v
Failures due to pin seating may be more common but they're easy to diagnose and remedy. Cold solder joints are hard to find and a pain to fix. And if one device in a million has a bad solder joint, that unit will be the one they send to me.
What gives me pause is not the relative volatility of the connection point but the difficulty associated with fixing what seems to be a fairly common failure point (i.e. failed RAM chip), that's all.
I'll take those odds. And with you soaking up those bad apples that do come off the line it just lets the rest of us get on with our work. Thanks for the assist!
The ram thing is weird. I wonder if you can take it to Apple for an upgrade later on. Not a big fan of these moves. Not really pro in a few ways. Good specs though.