2016 expected to be a big year for Apple's MacBook lineup, upgrades to arrive in coming months

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  • Reply 41 of 49
    afrodriafrodri Posts: 190member
    eightzero said:
    I appreciate your perspective. But about 12 years ago, I bought a house. When I moved in, it was completely empty, and I showed it off to my friends, took them on tours, and had a nice party in it with lots of people in attendance. Now it is so jammed with stuff, I can't show it off to people. I actually have to keep some of my stuff somewhere else. The amount of stuff I have expands to the amount of space I have for it. I don't need a new house: I need less stuff. I've started throwing things away.

    That's a great philosophy for a house, but doesn't always work for a place of business. For instance, you own a workshop or factory and buy some machine tools. Your business expands and you have to buy more tools to take on different projects until the house is filled. You could start throwing out tools, but that might limit your ability to take on new jobs of various sorts. So, maybe you might consider a bigger workshop? 
  • Reply 42 of 49
    mj webmj web Posts: 918member
    Looking to replace 2011 MBA with 13" rMBP this year. Question is, go for last year's heavily discounted model or pay a few bucks more for must have features/performance on new model? Time will tell! Would like to see 16MB RAM on all new 13s. I want that plus a 512GB or 1TB SSD.
    argonaut
  • Reply 43 of 49
    ben20ben20 Posts: 126member
    Apple really has to upgrade it's hardware,  most notebooks have no 4k/5k support for external monitors at 60HZ and no retina display on the MBA ? And how about 16 GB Ram for those of us that run virtualization ?  
  • Reply 44 of 49
    linkman said:

    Your requirements for a laptop are quite challenging. You probably represent the upper 2% of power users in terms of CPU and storage. If 1TB isn't enough for you right now then it sounds likely that even the largest single SSD available right now, a 2TB in a 2.5" form factor, won't be enough and you need a hard drive.

    If I were you I'd consider myself fortunate in that so much can be done on a laptop that doesn't weigh 9 pounds and isn't 1.5" thick.
    What do you expect when people keep saying that laptops are going to replace desktops, desktop systems are obsolete, etc?  Make claims like that and desktop power users will expect those claims to be backed up.

    The last 17 inch MacBook Pro was 0.98 inches thick and weighted 6.6 pounds.  This was before the Retina models.  A current 17 inch Retina MBP would certainly be thinner and lighter.
    edited January 2016
  • Reply 45 of 49
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    ben20 said:
    Apple really has to upgrade it's hardware,  most notebooks have no 4k/5k support for external monitors at 60HZ and no retina display on the MBA ? And how about 16 GB Ram for those of us that run virtualization ?  
    16 GB of RAM have been available on Apple laptops since 2011.
    edited January 2016
  • Reply 46 of 49
    In June 2012 I purchased the MacBook Pro with Retina Display as soon as it was announced.  I maxed it out - 16GB RAM, 750GB SSD storage, Intel 3d generation i7 2.7GHz processor.  It was the most incredible computer.  Showing it to others was a delight as it was so quick (graphics could be better).

    This machine is now 3 years 6 months old.  I’m always running out storage space and needing to use external drives for day to day usage.  16GB RAM is insufficient for the number of virtual machines I need to run and my other workloads.  It’s also starting to have issues - for instance the “e” key is dodgy and I don’t quite understand why the fan seems to need to run continually.  It’s out of warranty.

    I’d love to buy a new notebook.  In fact, I would have loved to have bought a new notebook 12 months ago which is my typical cadence (2.5 years).

    But Apple have effectively released the same machine continuously in all the time since I purchased it - if I bought a fully spec’d MacBook Pro as refreshed last year I’d still be stuck with 16GB RAM, storage would only be 1TB which is still insufficient for my usage, and the processor would be an Intel 4th generation i7 2.8GHz processor.  Effectively the same machine as I have now.  (admittedly graphics would be better, SSD storage speed has improved).

    Intel had released the 5th generation processors (i7-5950HQ) when Apple refreshed the notebook last year that would have allowed 32 GB, and SSD over 1TB was also available.  But instead we got a new touchpad - woopty do.

    Suitable Skylake processors (i7-6920hq and E3-1535M V5) were announced back in Q3 last year and have been available but still Apple still haven't released anything.

    I’d also love to marry a new MacBook Pro with a 4K (or 5K) monitor.  But the Apple monitors haven’t seen a refresh in over 4 years.  My 30” Cinema display is not going to last forever (it has to be at least 8 years old at present and is having issues - but why would I want to buy an outdated monitor that they’ve kept in market for so long, with so many 4K screens so cheaply available?).

    It’s fantastic that Apple are releasing / developing all these new product categories (watch, Macbook, iPad Pro, “car”) - but it seems to be at the abandonment of existing product lines and customers (MacPro was unloved for so long, updated and since “abandoned” with no real updates in 2 years; Mac Mini seems the same - I have two of these also needing to be replaced but the last update was a step backwards).  It seems like they have completely abandoned any form of power users.

    I’ve been a long time Apple user and want to stay that way, but it’s difficult when they don’t release updated products.  It’s great that they always want to do a new revolutionary design, but just having the innards updated on a regular basis and be technically competitive would suit me.


    You've hit the nail on the head. Thank you. I've been voicing the same concerns over the forlorn Mac(Book) product lines, and Apple's switching focus towards milking the dominant mobile presence with a complementary wearable line.

    Same story as you, I've bought a maxed out retina 15" MBP immediately upon release and I'm in dire need of a beefed up upgrade, yet no current offering cuts it as a serious futureproof mobile workstation. The chassis's and internals are effectively stuck in time in 2012. I was even considering to make the leap to Mac Pro, in light of my ageing iMac, but got dissuaded by its state of abandon. 

    Shaving a millimetre off here, a gram off there, or a new touchpad shouldn’t be the major design criteria that drive each iteration. 
  • Reply 47 of 49
    Yawn. Not interested unless Apple introduces a MacBook with an A series CPU. 

    I passed up the MacBook and waited for the iPad pro. I am extremely pleased with that decision. 

    By the time Intel fixes the yields of their Skylake Core M processors, the release of the A10X will be imminent. 
    You'll be waiting a long time then. If Apple switched to their A series, they would either have to abandon every scrap of software that came out before its release, or create a new version of Rosetta to run legacy apps in VM. Surprise surprise, the A series isn't anywhere near powerful enough for that. It can barely run complicated apps that are coded specifically for its architecture. That's why your precious IPad pro runs a gimped version of Adobe instead of the full version like the Surface Pro. And why should Apple abandon Intel when their processors are doing just fine for them, just to assuage fanatics that never got over the "betrayal" of abandoning the PowerPC for Wintel chips? Let's say they did, and went full Apple inside and out. The first few versions would be a mess performance wise, but that wouldn't matter because Apple would save a bundle fabbing their own parts versus outsourcing. It would be naive to think Apple would pass those savings onto the end users though. MBP's would continue to retail at a thousand and a half and up, third party software would be buggy or nonexistent for years. That's really something you're keeping your fingers crossed for? 
    Exactly. The Intel switch, and the PowerPC switch before it, both worked because the new processors were sufficiently more powerful than the older ones to be able to run the old software under emulation without too bad of a performance hit. The A series processors are less powerful than the Intel chips that Apple currently uses. Trying to emulate a Core i5/7 on an A would result in something that ran slow as molasses, and if you didn't include an emulation layer, the thing would have no software at all for it, and you'd have the same sort of PR disaster that MS had with the original Surface which purported to run Windows, and then threw customers for a loop when none of their apps would run.

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again; an ARM-based Mac makes no sense. Something that's not expected to run OS X, like a Chromebook competitor or an iPad with a keyboard or something, but not a Mac.
  • Reply 48 of 49
    Yawn. Not interested unless Apple introduces a MacBook with an A series CPU. 

    I passed up the MacBook and waited for the iPad pro. I am extremely pleased with that decision. 

    By the time Intel fixes the yields of their Skylake Core M processors, the release of the A10X will be imminent. 
    You'll be waiting a long time then. If Apple switched to their A series, they would either have to abandon every scrap of software that came out before its release, or create a new version of Rosetta to run legacy apps in VM. Surprise surprise, the A series isn't anywhere near powerful enough for that. It can barely run complicated apps that are coded specifically for its architecture. That's why your precious IPad pro runs a gimped version of Adobe instead of the full version like the Surface Pro. And why should Apple abandon Intel when their processors are doing just fine for them, just to assuage fanatics that never got over the "betrayal" of abandoning the PowerPC for Wintel chips? Let's say they did, and went full Apple inside and out. The first few versions would be a mess performance wise, but that wouldn't matter because Apple would save a bundle fabbing their own parts versus outsourcing. It would be naive to think Apple would pass those savings onto the end users though. MBP's would continue to retail at a thousand and a half and up, third party software would be buggy or nonexistent for years. That's really something you're keeping your fingers crossed for? 
    Exactly. The Intel switch, and the PowerPC switch before it, both worked because the new processors were sufficiently more powerful than the older ones to be able to run the old software under emulation without too bad of a performance hit. The A series processors are less powerful than the Intel chips that Apple currently uses. Trying to emulate a Core i5/7 on an A would result in something that ran slow as molasses, and if you didn't include an emulation layer, the thing would have no software at all for it, and you'd have the same sort of PR disaster that MS had with the original Surface which purported to run Windows, and then threw customers for a loop when none of their apps would run.

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again; an ARM-based Mac makes no sense. Something that's not expected to run OS X, like a Chromebook competitor or an iPad with a keyboard or something, but not a Mac.
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