As much as we hate to admit it, these MacBooks are more about style than function but that is the market that they are shooting for. They are suited for high school , college students, professionals that aren't looking for performance but quick access to e-mail and internet access and an occasional spreadsheet. There are many more of these customers than high powered users. It's absolutely crazy to complain about the higher price of a Macbook compared to a Windows laptop when you are facing $20,000/yr for college tuition, room and board.
That's true and it makes such a machine meaningless with the availability of the iPad Pro.
Intel's glacial pace of CPU development these days is in contrast to the incredible advancements of the A series which powers up the mobile devices. The pencil also makes note taking far easier and quieter than typing on a keyboard.
I just don't see much value in a MacBook. For the same price, a fully tricked out iPad Pro or the MacBook Pro with a real GPU makes far more sense.
That's why Apple makes products for a variety of use cases. Running FCX on this seems to me an attempt at making this machine look pathetic while ignoring the intended use for this machine, except in passing. It is a core M CPU, not an i5 or i7 quad core. It's meant for light use in the go in a wireless world. It seems the machine works for its audience if it is indeed Apple's best selling laptop,
As much as we hate to admit it, these MacBooks are more about style than function but that is the market that they are shooting for. They are suited for high school , college students, professionals that aren't looking for performance but quick access to e-mail and internet access and an occasional spreadsheet. There are many more of these customers than high powered users. It's absolutely crazy to complain about the higher price of a Macbook compared to a Windows laptop when you are facing $20,000/yr for college tuition, room and board.
How frack is in style over function if it meets the needs of the target public. Find a god damn dictionary and a good logic book.
Most people blabbing about performance don't actually need as much as their blabbing about; it's all preening and posture.
Only people doing heavy CAD, engineering, Video editing and possibly running a complex windows app in a virtual machine would need significantly more power than those machines. That's why PC sales are going down the tube.
I always laugh at people yapping about "spreadsheets", ran huge complex spreadsheets on machine 1/5 the speed of this 10 years ago. Ran big ass databases on Unix machines 1/10 the speed of those 15 years ago.
The hand wringing about performance for most peole is a pure bullshit narrative.
I noticed that both MacBooks were running without a charger connected, on battery power. I wonder, if the full performance was available? MacBook Pros reduce speed to conserver battery, as far as I know. Maybe the same is true for MacBooks? What if the actual peak performance was only available when connected to a power source?
You're testing a mobile machine, especially in a 12 inch form factor, unplugging them is a given...
Or, how about no MacBook Air at all? Just fanless MacBook 12" plus 14", and fanfull MacBook Pro 14" plus 16", the latter powerful enough to drive the ever-imaginary 5K external Thunderbolt Display. If Intel can't do that maybe AMD can. The 14" size commonality can work as part of the up-sell.
Agreed. Bin the "Air" moniker; we all get it now. And "Retina" too. Two laptop lines that share a 14" size, one consumer oriented and the other more powerful to do the heavy lifting, with a modest weight and thickness penalty.
Ran big ass databases on Unix machines 1/10 the speed of those 15 years ago.
I run a nice sized database that I use for development on my 12" Macbook. Oracle Enterprise RDBMS running under Linux within VMWare with a simulated 50,000 accounts with financial transactions.... it actually works great and the performance as a single user is very snappy. Most people have computers that typically idle on the CPU at 80% or 90% on average...
In other words, RAID 0 in Toshiba SSD inside MacBook? RAID 0 is not good, because if one disk or the controller fails, all is lost.
Or it could be a custom SSD not in Toshiba's catalog.
Sure, and I would love that is true, but:
-As iFixIt discovered, there are two SSD MLC NAND Flash chips inside the MacBook (see above), which strongly points to RAID 0.
- If it is a custom SSD, it would be revolutionary, since no other manufacturer has such development with such 2x read and 2x write speeds when compared to competitors (400 to 500 MB/s read/write speeds), not even the current SSD leader (Samsung).
- Toshiba (and all other SSD competitors) are considered years behind Samsung in SSD innovation and deployment.
- For sure Toshiba would have announced (boosting shares for shareholders) and would be selling such innovation by now if available (millions in benefit and taking the SSD market by storm, displacing all competitors).
- I doubt Apple would choose such top innovation (extremely expensive) for a low-of-line MacBool (cheap in Apple standards). Remember that Apple charges 2x to 3x more price for the very same RAM or SSD (very same make and model, albeit being shocking!) inside Macs. Simply, it does not make sense that this is a custom SSD from Toshiba for Apple MacBook, because then such Mac would cost twice or more than current price (already high).
^ So it has 2 chips and you base that it is RAID 0 based on using 2 chips.... Chips can only go up so much, then they are stacked together to make larger drives. If it were RAID 0, it would be pretty easy to check since it would show it as a RAID device if you queried the partitioning/formatting.
The hardware for the actual SSD is exactly the same as last year (looking at the teardown), which means the change was in the controller. BTW, I believe if any chip fails completely in any SSD the entire drive fails (at least in consumer models).
2016 Macbook
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF 128 GB MLC NAND Flash (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
2015 Macbook
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF NB2953 128 GB MLC NAND Flash memory (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
^ So it has 2 chips and you base that it is RAID 0 based on using 2 chips.... Chips can only go up so much, then they are stacked together to make larger drives. If it were RAID 0, it would be pretty easy to check since it would show it as a RAID device if you queried the partitioning/formatting.
The hardware for the actual SSD is exactly the same as last year (looking at the teardown), which means the change was in the controller. BTW, I believe if any chip fails completely in any SSD the entire drive fails (at least in consumer models).
2016 Macbook
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF 128 GB MLC NAND Flash (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
2015 Macbook
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF NB2953 128 GB MLC NAND Flash memory (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
Both should be RAID 0 (MacBook early 2015 has 845 MB/s sequential read and 477 MB/s sequential write speeds) as shown here:
Apple MacBook 1.1 GHz review (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015): The future of Apple laptops
Simply, there is no such SSD with such speed with such prices in the market as single SSD. You need two in RAID 0. See the Toshiba (and other) catalogs. Get the facts (specifications and pricing), not hypotheses.
^ So it has 2 chips and you base that it is RAID 0 based on using 2 chips.... Chips can only go up so much, then they are stacked together to make larger drives. If it were RAID 0, it would be pretty easy to check since it would show it as a RAID device if you queried the partitioning/formatting.
The hardware for the actual SSD is exactly the same as last year (looking at the teardown), which means the change was in the controller. BTW, I believe if any chip fails completely in any SSD the entire drive fails (at least in consumer models).
2016 Macbook
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF 128 GB MLC NAND Flash (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
2015 Macbook
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF NB2953 128 GB MLC NAND Flash memory (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
Both should be RAID 0 (MacBook early 2015 has 845 MB/s sequential read and 477 MB/s sequential write speeds) as shown here:
Apple MacBook 1.1 GHz review (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015): The future of Apple laptops
Simply, there is no such SSD with such speed with such prices in the market as single SSD. You need two in RAID 0. See the Toshiba (and other) catalogs. Get the facts (specifications and pricing), not hypotheses.
It is probably doing the same thing as RAID 0 but it is not likely RAID 0. The data is likely interleaved between the two chips so the data access is spread among the two chips.... as opposed to a sequentially going from one chip to another. As data is read and written (and used) it becomes fragmented and non-sequential since reading and writing to defrag only serves to wear out the chips.
Even if you look at the upper end of the Samsung 950 line you will see the board containing a couple of chips on one end, one near the connector and multiple smaller chips in-between. I would guess that the two at the end are SSD chips connected to a controller that interleaves the data for the controller.
Chips have always been limited in size and typically when buying a 2.5" SSD 128GB would have x chips, 256GB would have 2x chips, 512 4x chips etc. If any of those chips fail hard - the drive is dead.
Again you like almost everyone else is pushing the narrative that "the MacBook Pro is far better for editing photos". The Geekbench of the MacBook is very similar to the 2015 macBook Pro i5. Yes 2015 Pro.
This is a machine that can do what 99% of people need - it's not "slow" or for lighter tasks. Do this test agains the MacBook Pro - and actually do some real world tests - it can easily do all we need as CPUs have been fast enough for almost all tasks for 5-10 years...
Unbelievable how a company with 2.5 billion R&D budget has a such a slow upgrade pace. Where is all the money going to?
The MacBook is limited by Intel. Apple could perhaps put a 15W Core i5/i7 with an active cooling system into a 2.5-2.75lb notebook with a larger footprint, the way some other manufacturers like Razer, HP, and Acer have done, but perhaps that's what they have planned for the MacBook Pro.
Simply, there is no such SSD with such speed with such prices in the market as single SSD. You need two in RAID 0. See the Toshiba (and other) catalogs. Get the facts (specifications and pricing), not hypotheses.
It is probably doing the same thing as RAID 0 but it is not likely RAID 0. The data is likely interleaved between the two chips so the data access is spread among the two chips.... as opposed to a sequentially going from one chip to another. As data is read and written (and used) it becomes fragmented and non-sequential since reading and writing to defrag only serves to wear out the chips.
Even if you look at the upper end of the Samsung 950 line you will see the board containing a couple of chips on one end, one near the connector and multiple smaller chips in-between. I would guess that the two at the end are SSD chips connected to a controller that interleaves the data for the controller.
Chips have always been limited in size and typically when buying a 2.5" SSD 128GB would have x chips, 256GB would have 2x chips, 512 4x chips etc. If any of those chips fail hard - the drive is dead.
Whatever, Apple should reveal how such MacBook SDD works, advantages and disadvantages. If it is RAID 0, that is not good as said above. Otherwise, it depends how it works.
It is probably doing the same thing as RAID 0 but it is not likely RAID 0. The data is likely interleaved between the two chips so the data access is spread among the two chips.... as opposed to a sequentially going from one chip to another. As data is read and written (and used) it becomes fragmented and non-sequential since reading and writing to defrag only serves to wear out the chips.
Even if you look at the upper end of the Samsung 950 line you will see the board containing a couple of chips on one end, one near the connector and multiple smaller chips in-between. I would guess that the two at the end are SSD chips connected to a controller that interleaves the data for the controller.
Chips have always been limited in size and typically when buying a 2.5" SSD 128GB would have x chips, 256GB would have 2x chips, 512 4x chips etc. If any of those chips fail hard - the drive is dead.
Whatever, Apple should reveal how such MacBook SDD works, advantages and disadvantages. If it is RAID 0, that is not good as said above. Otherwise, it depends how it works.
It is not like spinning hard drives where they crash and burn.... more like memory chips... with the exception that they they may have spots wear out and be marked as no longer useable. You typically have 8 or 9 - 8 Gbit chips making up your memory and one dies.... the computer is dead. The most likely death of SSD is that it wears out overtime and shrinks a little.... but still accessible. The mean time between failure for any one chip is exceptionally long and even if you interleave or "RAID 0" over 10 chips, the MTBF would still be considerably longer than a spinning hard drive. Add to that that it is much better at withstanding extreme shocks and temperature ranges .... and you have something much more resilient to a hard failure.
Whatever, Apple should reveal how such MacBook SDD works, advantages and disadvantages. If it is RAID 0, that is not good as said above. Otherwise, it depends how it works.
It is not like spinning hard drives where they crash and burn.... more like memory chips... with the exception that they they may have spots wear out and be marked as no longer useable. You typically have 8 or 9 - 8 Gbit chips making up your memory and one dies.... the computer is dead. The most likely death of SSD is that it wears out overtime and shrinks a little.... but still accessible. The mean time between failure for any one chip is exceptionally long and even if you interleave or "RAID 0" over 10 chips, the MTBF would still be considerably longer than a spinning hard drive. Add to that that it is much better at withstanding extreme shocks and temperature ranges .... and you have something much more resilient to a hard failure.
Sure. But it is also good to know the specifications of what paid for when purchasing.
It is not like spinning hard drives where they crash and burn.... more like memory chips... with the exception that they they may have spots wear out and be marked as no longer useable. You typically have 8 or 9 - 8 Gbit chips making up your memory and one dies.... the computer is dead. The most likely death of SSD is that it wears out overtime and shrinks a little.... but still accessible. The mean time between failure for any one chip is exceptionally long and even if you interleave or "RAID 0" over 10 chips, the MTBF would still be considerably longer than a spinning hard drive. Add to that that it is much better at withstanding extreme shocks and temperature ranges .... and you have something much more resilient to a hard failure.
Sure. But it is also good to know the specifications of what paid for when purchasing.
You need to know the specifications of the device you are buying, just not the specifications of every component in the device. Early reviews fill in the details of what to expect with benchmarks of each of the subsystems. You are buying the computer, not a collection of components. Like any other product you also judge a product revision within the history previous revisions and previous products from that product (failure rate high - or low; build quality good or bad or excellent). Just because the teardown indicates Toshiba parts, it does not mean that later in the cycle it could not be another manufacturer - it just has to live up to benchmarks that the company has stated were its selling points (i.e. SSD 50% or so faster than last version; or significantly faster). Do you go out and demand that the toaster manufacturer tell you exacltly how they heat and maintain the grill in the toaster to x degrees.... no, you only know it toasts toast and from reviews it is consistent based on setting.... and from previous models or current models it's failure rate is low. You also are aware of how long the warrantee is for, and if there is an extended warrantee or you are going to self-insure the product after the base warrantee is over.
The obvious change to the SSD subsystem is that the SSD controller handling the chips is accessing the chips in parallel rather than being limited by a lower speed by accessing data synchronously from one chip then the other. The how is not important though, what most customers want to know is how fast on average and how long the device will last on average. They don't want technical schematics of something they cannot fix or change anyway.
I wouldn't in a million years edit a FCP project on a 12" display. I even find a 13" display small for watching films on.
That's good for you, but the question is — could you? If you can't work on a FCP project because the screen is too small, that's a weakness of you, the operator, instead of a weakness of the machine. Workflows can be 3-dimensional. On my 13.3" screen, I'm just as, if not more productive than my work colleagues when they have much larger screens. Why? Because I can switch between applications (working with depth of the OS) instead of spreading things horizontally and vertically. Of course, I'm not a video editor, so the smaller screen is probably a drawback with the large, sophisticated interface that FCP has.
Really depends on what you are doing. I do enjoy and I am more productive using a multi-screen set up, But if you are in the field or traveling, while constraining, the screen real estate is secondary to the ability of the machine to process and render the project. The 12" doesn't seem to do well in the horsepower department. If you are doing any type of serious film work, you are probably not traveling extremely light to begin with and would be better served by investing in a 15" MBP. If, on the other hand, I was a writer or blogger I would probably want the 12" Macbook or an iPad Pro with keyboard.
I noticed that both MacBooks were running without a charger connected, on battery power. I wonder, if the full performance was available? MacBook Pros reduce speed to conserver battery, as far as I know. Maybe the same is true for MacBooks? What if the actual peak performance was only available when connected to a power source?
The GeekBench3 splash screen suggests both models were running their processors at 1.1 GHz, but they weren't running identical versions of OS X, and it's hypothetically possible other parts of the system are slowed when running on battery, particularly during intensive tasks like benchmarking.
Comments
Which values? 947 MB/s read and 845 MB/s write as reported here?
Apple's updated MacBook is indeed faster with longer battery life
http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/25/apple-macbook-review-2016
But SSD inside MacBook are from Toshiba as reported here:
Retina MacBook 2016 Teardown
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF 128 GB MLC NAND Flash (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+MacBook+2016+Teardown/62149
Yet, latest Toshiba catalog (March 2016) does not have such SSD with 947MB/s read and 845MB/s write but half such values (!!!):
http://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/info/docget.jsp?did=13479
In other words, RAID 0 in Toshiba SSD inside MacBook? RAID 0 is not good, because if one disk or the controller fails, all is lost.
Most people blabbing about performance don't actually need as much as their blabbing about; it's all preening and posture.
Only people doing heavy CAD, engineering, Video editing and possibly running a complex windows app in a virtual machine would need significantly more power than those machines. That's why PC sales are going down the tube.
I always laugh at people yapping about "spreadsheets", ran huge complex spreadsheets on machine 1/5 the speed of this 10 years ago. Ran big ass databases on Unix machines 1/10 the speed of those 15 years ago.
The hand wringing about performance for most peole is a pure bullshit narrative.
I run a nice sized database that I use for development on my 12" Macbook. Oracle Enterprise RDBMS running under Linux within VMWare with a simulated 50,000 accounts with financial transactions.... it actually works great and the performance as a single user is very snappy. Most people have computers that typically idle on the CPU at 80% or 90% on average...
-As iFixIt discovered, there are two SSD MLC NAND Flash chips inside the MacBook (see above), which strongly points to RAID 0.
- If it is a custom SSD, it would be revolutionary, since no other manufacturer has such development with such 2x read and 2x write speeds when compared to competitors (400 to 500 MB/s read/write speeds), not even the current SSD leader (Samsung).
- Toshiba (and all other SSD competitors) are considered years behind Samsung in SSD innovation and deployment.
- For sure Toshiba would have announced (boosting shares for shareholders) and would be selling such innovation by now if available (millions in benefit and taking the SSD market by storm, displacing all competitors).
- I doubt Apple would choose such top innovation (extremely expensive) for a low-of-line MacBool (cheap in Apple standards). Remember that Apple charges 2x to 3x more price for the very same RAM or SSD (very same make and model, albeit being shocking!) inside Macs. Simply, it does not make sense that this is a custom SSD from Toshiba for Apple MacBook, because then such Mac would cost twice or more than current price (already high).
The hardware for the actual SSD is exactly the same as last year (looking at the teardown), which means the change was in the controller. BTW, I believe if any chip fails completely in any SSD the entire drive fails (at least in consumer models).
2016 Macbook
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF 128 GB MLC NAND Flash (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
2015 Macbook
Toshiba TH58TFT0DFKLAVF NB2953 128 GB MLC NAND Flash memory (+ 128 GB on the reverse side for a total of 256 GB)
Simply, there is no such SSD with such speed with such prices in the market as single SSD. You need two in RAID 0. See the Toshiba (and other) catalogs. Get the facts (specifications and pricing), not hypotheses.
Even if you look at the upper end of the Samsung 950 line you will see the board containing a couple of chips on one end, one near the connector and multiple smaller chips in-between. I would guess that the two at the end are SSD chips connected to a controller that interleaves the data for the controller.
Chips have always been limited in size and typically when buying a 2.5" SSD 128GB would have x chips, 256GB would have 2x chips, 512 4x chips etc. If any of those chips fail hard - the drive is dead.
The obvious change to the SSD subsystem is that the SSD controller handling the chips is accessing the chips in parallel rather than being limited by a lower speed by accessing data synchronously from one chip then the other. The how is not important though, what most customers want to know is how fast on average and how long the device will last on average. They don't want technical schematics of something they cannot fix or change anyway.