One side of this that nobody seems to have noticed. For the first time in a number of years the new Macs are out in time for Back To School shopping. For once you can get a new Mac for school and actually get a NEW Mac for school.
Except Apple didn’t update their cheapest Macs. How many students are buying the 13 or 15 MBP for school?
Some of the complaints I’m seeing from people like Marco Arment are ridiculous and disingenuous. Complain about pricing, fine. But expecting Apple to basically revert back to the 2015/2012 design? Marco knows damn good and well Apple isn’t going to abandon a new design only a couple years after introducing it and certainly isn’t going to re-introduce ports that were removed. Also there is no evidence the keyboard issue was because of the butterfly design (John Gruber claims he heard it was due to a specific metal parts supplier issue) so people complaining about that are being disingenuous too. Especially considering most of them hated it to begin with. IMO the only valid complaints would be pricing and the non-TB model not being updated.
I think Marco is just hating for the sake of it. I know he says he criticizes because he loves Apple and I believe that, but he also is being unreasonably obtuse about this issue.
1. Apple says it’s a tiny fraction of their customer base, and they are the ones with the data. 2. The data collected by AI shows a normalization back to KB failure rates consistent with the 2015 model.
I dont understand all these Apple pundits suddenly willing to accept anecdotes over data when they normally are against such illogical thinking.
Marco hated the keyboard even before these issues surfaced. He thinks Apple is obsessed with thinness over all else (even though there are Windows laptops as thin or thinner than the MBP). Marco also makes assumptions without having facts to back it up. In this case he’s assuming the keyboard issues are due to the laptops being too thin. He has no hard data to back up that assumption. As far as the other complaints I think it’s disingenuous to feign outrage over things you know Apple was never going to do (like go back to the 2015 design).
I've been very vocal about not liking the new keyboard design. I don't type as fast and I make more errors. I've even stated that whenever I jump back to my previous MBP it feels as good as a brand new pair of socks. The reason I don't use that MBP is because the 2017 model has a much better display and overall better performance than my 2013 model.
That said, I see no evidence that the reason for the keyboard issues are about the MBP getting thinner. As AI detailed with a Dell XPS review, it's thinner than the MBP and has a much better keyboard.
Btw, I think Apple’s messaging to the Verge was confusing. They could have answered the question in a way that would leave the impression issues have been resolved without admitting anything. The way that statement was worded is probably not the way Phil Schiller would have worded it.
I wonder what the difference between the Radeon 560X and previous generation 560 is?
We don't know either, we're trying to find out.
If this can be believed, it’s just a slightly faster clock speed.
We're hoping its more than that. A whole 73Mhz faster will amount to precisely diddly squat. We're expecting machines in on Saturday or Monday, and we'll let you know.
If possible, could you also test thermals and sustained performance?
I wonder what the difference between the Radeon 560X and previous generation 560 is?
We don't know either, we're trying to find out.
If this can be believed, it’s just a slightly faster clock speed.
We're hoping its more than that. A whole 73Mhz faster will amount to precisely diddly squat. We're expecting machines in on Saturday or Monday, and we'll let you know.
Do you know exactly what the T2 chip does over the T1, besides offers "Hey Siri"?
Of course, the whiners and Apple-haters are out in full force yet again, with absolutely zero clue what they're talking about.
I bought a new MBP last October, and when I priced out the same configuration for the new one, the price was about the same for what I paid for back then.
That 4TB SSD drive which is faster than just about anything out there in the market is what's boosting the price so high. Find another laptop with the EXACT SAME configuration and specs, and get back to me.
Haters will put out any kind of garbage propaganda to suit their agenda.
Where’s the “no one needs 32GB of RAM” crowd? Clearly Apple thinks the customers need it...........
The market demanded it, Apple listened.
Or is because Intel is too slow so it doesn’t worth to wait another year. DDR4 sounds more like a compromise.
Or is it because Apple wouldn’t design a custom controller (which they do constantly and do a wonderful job at it) and make the computer a little thicker, boosting the whr rating of the battery? Or just put the DDR4 in there with a little bigger battery. Sure it’s a compromise, that’s engineering. Sure, it’s Intel’s screw up but it can easily be designed out.
You're right - engineering is always a compromise.
Apples compromise was to limit the RAM to 16GB and not have to put up with the additional battery drain or expense of designing a custom controller when a new Intel processor would soon support 32GB anyway. Who's to say which compromise is better?
The only reason it was a comprise was due to the fact Apple lowered the battery over 20% in the pursuit of thinness. How about go slightly thicker and not comprise on a working machine?
Sigh.
have you listen everything that I said?
But then, if you just wanna blaming on thiness for blaming on thiness, go ahead.
IMO, obsession with thinness and not having any "lines" in the case is the source of many of Apple's design issues. If they weren't so obsessed with thinness and lines in the case, they could go back to having user-replaceable/upgradable memory, battery and storage as my late-2008 MBP had. I would trade away thinness in a second to get those other attributes back and it also would have potential to improve battery life. My late-2016 MBP never came close to getting advertised battery life until the last OS upgrade (currently running 10.13.5). For some reason, after that upgrade, battery life improved substantially. Before that, I never got more than four hours.
But using Apple's current design, they can force users to have to buy a new Mac every few years. Apple was supposed to be better than this.
You seem to be ignoring the speed and performance benefits of using integrated components. They're faster and more reliable, that's a fact. That's what Apple is prioritizing, over DIY tinkering. This is perfect for me as I'm interested in weight and speed for my mobile, and have no interest in DIY tinkering. If you do, get a Dell and stop being an unhappy victim. What's stopping you?
Congratulations on it being perfect for you but that doesn't mean it's perfect for everyone and Apple could just as easily stop prioritizing those aspects in favour of others or offer a solution to both groups.
Whatever they do, your conclusion is condescending. Speed and performance are entirely relative. Yesterday, Apple's fastest laptop option was 'X'. Today it is 'Y' and up to 70% faster. Yesterday they were were selling three year old hardware that didn't have the fastest performance. Clearly there is a proportion of Apple users who are willing to sacrifice speed and performance.
Complete fabrication. Speed and reliability are real, quantitative, measurable things. Integrated components of the sort Apple went with are better in both. Sorry that offends you.
Link?
Related, the service numbers collected about the MacBook Pro keyboards bear out that the 2016 and 2017 models are more reliable than the 2015 is overall.
"The 2014 MacBook Pro model year saw 2120 service events in the first year, with 118 related to keyboard issues necessitating an upper case replacement —5.6 percent of all MacBook Pros serviced in the first year. The 2015 has 1904 service tickets, with 114 relating to the keyboard, making 6.0 percent.
The two numbers are very similar, which is to be expected. The keyboards were essentially unchanged since the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, and should have failure rates similar to each other.
Apple released the new keyboard with the MacBook, and moved the design to the 2016 MacBook Pro. In the first year of the 2016 MacBook Pro, our data gathered 1402 warranty events, with 165 related to only the keyboard and not including the Touch Bar —11.8 percent.
We don't have a full year of data for the 2017 MacBook Pro yet. But, since release in June 2017, our data set has 1161 captured service events with 94 related to keyboard issues also not including any Touch Bar issues —8.1 percent."
Given that the sales per year of the MacBook Pro are steady, the total number of service claims for each year -- the first year of availability of each model -- is what you want to look at.
Of course, the whiners and Apple-haters are out in full force yet again, with absolutely zero clue what they're talking about.
I bought a new MBP last October, and when I priced out the same configuration for the new one, the price was about the same for what I paid for back then.
That 4TB SSD drive which is faster than just about anything out there in the market is what's boosting the price so high. Find another laptop with the EXACT SAME configuration and specs, and get back to me.
Haters will put out any kind of garbage propaganda to suit their agenda.
The 4 TB of SSD storage is rare, although people aren't exactly wrong about the price of the regular models.
For example:
2018 XPS 15 (4K version) - $3,299
Intel Core i9-8950HK
32 GB DDR4-2666
NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti 4 GB
2 TB PCIe SSD
2018 MacBook Pro 15 - $4,699
Intel Core i9-8950HK
32 GB DDR4-2400
AMD Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB
2 TB PCIe SSD
That's $1,400 more for the MBP with a much weaker GPU and slightly slower RAM.
Of course, the whiners and Apple-haters are out in full force yet again, with absolutely zero clue what they're talking about.
I bought a new MBP last October, and when I priced out the same configuration for the new one, the price was about the same for what I paid for back then.
That 4TB SSD drive which is faster than just about anything out there in the market is what's boosting the price so high. Find another laptop with the EXACT SAME configuration and specs, and get back to me.
Haters will put out any kind of garbage propaganda to suit their agenda.
The 4 TB of SSD storage is rare, although people aren't exactly wrong about the price of the regular models.
For example:
2018 XPS 15 (4K version) - $3,299
Intel Core i9-8950HK
32 GB DDR4-2666
NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti 4 GB
2 TB PCIe SSD
2018 MacBook Pro - $4,699
Intel Core i9-8950HK
32 GB DDR4-2400
AMD Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB
2 TB PCIe SSD
That's $1,300 more for the MBP with a much weaker GPU and slightly slower RAM.
Can you provide a link to Dell's website for this setup and price?
Where’s the “no one needs 32GB of RAM” crowd? Clearly Apple thinks the customers need it...........
The market demanded it, Apple listened.
Or is because Intel is too slow so it doesn’t worth to wait another year. DDR4 sounds more like a compromise.
Or is it because Apple wouldn’t design a custom controller (which they do constantly and do a wonderful job at it) and make the computer a little thicker, boosting the whr rating of the battery? Or just put the DDR4 in there with a little bigger battery. Sure it’s a compromise, that’s engineering. Sure, it’s Intel’s screw up but it can easily be designed out.
You're right - engineering is always a compromise.
Apples compromise was to limit the RAM to 16GB and not have to put up with the additional battery drain or expense of designing a custom controller when a new Intel processor would soon support 32GB anyway. Who's to say which compromise is better?
The only reason it was a comprise was due to the fact Apple lowered the battery over 20% in the pursuit of thinness. How about go slightly thicker and not comprise on a working machine?
Sigh.
have you listen everything that I said?
But then, if you just wanna blaming on thiness for blaming on thiness, go ahead.
IMO, obsession with thinness and not having any "lines" in the case is the source of many of Apple's design issues. If they weren't so obsessed with thinness and lines in the case, they could go back to having user-replaceable/upgradable memory, battery and storage as my late-2008 MBP had. I would trade away thinness in a second to get those other attributes back and it also would have potential to improve battery life. My late-2016 MBP never came close to getting advertised battery life until the last OS upgrade (currently running 10.13.5). For some reason, after that upgrade, battery life improved substantially. Before that, I never got more than four hours.
But using Apple's current design, they can force users to have to buy a new Mac every few years. Apple was supposed to be better than this.
You seem to be ignoring the speed and performance benefits of using integrated components. They're faster and more reliable, that's a fact. That's what Apple is prioritizing, over DIY tinkering. This is perfect for me as I'm interested in weight and speed for my mobile, and have no interest in DIY tinkering. If you do, get a Dell and stop being an unhappy victim. What's stopping you?
Congratulations on it being perfect for you but that doesn't mean it's perfect for everyone and Apple could just as easily stop prioritizing those aspects in favour of others or offer a solution to both groups.
Whatever they do, your conclusion is condescending. Speed and performance are entirely relative. Yesterday, Apple's fastest laptop option was 'X'. Today it is 'Y' and up to 70% faster. Yesterday they were were selling three year old hardware that didn't have the fastest performance. Clearly there is a proportion of Apple users who are willing to sacrifice speed and performance.
Complete fabrication. Speed and reliability are real, quantitative, measurable things. Integrated components of the sort Apple went with are better in both. Sorry that offends you.
Link?
It’s well understood in the electronics industry that soldering components in is more reliable than plugging them in. This isn’t an argument, it’s a fact. What you don’t know is that most connectors are rated for, at most, 25 insertions. Many are rated for less. And they add cost and include size restraints. Reliability either way is pretty high these days for stationary equipment, such as iMacs. But mobile equipment gets knocked around far more than people realize. A bump here and there, and things start to move in the sockets.
Where’s the “no one needs 32GB of RAM” crowd? Clearly Apple thinks the customers need it...........
The market demanded it, Apple listened.
Or is because Intel is too slow so it doesn’t worth to wait another year. DDR4 sounds more like a compromise.
Or is it because Apple wouldn’t design a custom controller (which they do constantly and do a wonderful job at it) and make the computer a little thicker, boosting the whr rating of the battery? Or just put the DDR4 in there with a little bigger battery. Sure it’s a compromise, that’s engineering. Sure, it’s Intel’s screw up but it can easily be designed out.
You're right - engineering is always a compromise.
Apples compromise was to limit the RAM to 16GB and not have to put up with the additional battery drain or expense of designing a custom controller when a new Intel processor would soon support 32GB anyway. Who's to say which compromise is better?
The only reason it was a comprise was due to the fact Apple lowered the battery over 20% in the pursuit of thinness. How about go slightly thicker and not comprise on a working machine?
Sigh.
have you listen everything that I said?
But then, if you just wanna blaming on thiness for blaming on thiness, go ahead.
IMO, obsession with thinness and not having any "lines" in the case is the source of many of Apple's design issues. If they weren't so obsessed with thinness and lines in the case, they could go back to having user-replaceable/upgradable memory, battery and storage as my late-2008 MBP had. I would trade away thinness in a second to get those other attributes back and it also would have potential to improve battery life. My late-2016 MBP never came close to getting advertised battery life until the last OS upgrade (currently running 10.13.5). For some reason, after that upgrade, battery life improved substantially. Before that, I never got more than four hours.
But using Apple's current design, they can force users to have to buy a new Mac every few years. Apple was supposed to be better than this.
You seem to be ignoring the speed and performance benefits of using integrated components. They're faster and more reliable, that's a fact. That's what Apple is prioritizing, over DIY tinkering. This is perfect for me as I'm interested in weight and speed for my mobile, and have no interest in DIY tinkering. If you do, get a Dell and stop being an unhappy victim. What's stopping you?
Congratulations on it being perfect for you but that doesn't mean it's perfect for everyone and Apple could just as easily stop prioritizing those aspects in favour of others or offer a solution to both groups.
Whatever they do, your conclusion is condescending. Speed and performance are entirely relative. Yesterday, Apple's fastest laptop option was 'X'. Today it is 'Y' and up to 70% faster. Yesterday they were were selling three year old hardware that didn't have the fastest performance. Clearly there is a proportion of Apple users who are willing to sacrifice speed and performance.
Complete fabrication. Speed and reliability are real, quantitative, measurable things. Integrated components of the sort Apple went with are better in both. Sorry that offends you.
Link?
It’s well understood in the electronics industry that soldering components in is more reliable than plugging them in. This isn’t an argument, it’s a fact. What you don’t know is that most connectors are rated for, at most, 25 insertions. Many are rated for less. And they add cost and include size restraints. Reliability either way is pretty high these days for stationary equipment, such as iMacs. But mobile equipment gets knocked around far more than people realize. A bump here and there, and things start to move in the sockets.
This.
For RAM soldered to the motherboard you have a SINGLE point of failure:
- The solder connection between the actual memory chips and the motherboard.
With socketed RAM you have THREE points of failure.
- The solder connection between the memory chips and the circuit board they are installed onto. - The solder connection between the motherboard and the actual socket itself. - The physical connection between the socket and the memory module.
Soldering directly is FAR more reliable than sockets (it's also one reason why those stupid modular phones were doomed to fail - far too many connections between too many components that are constantly being subject to vibration or impacts).
nice update, i just wish we saw face id come in it. dada needs a new computer.
The Windows laptop i bought earlier this year had the equivalent feature. After a few updates they had it working fairly well. It was crap when first purchased.
Unfortunately i wiped the disk with a Linux install. So i cant say how it works today but i can honestly see it being very well accepted if Apple ever gets there. Windows 10 simply was terrible otherwise. One thing as an example here is that Windows has significant issues with WiFi. I constantly had to dick around with Windows to get it to connect even on commonly used WiFi access points. Back in the day my Mac never had this problem and Linux on the same computer works fine. Lets not even get into the bugs and stupid GUI interfaces.
In any event off on a tangent there. I have to agree that the lack of Face ID is an issue, shortcoming if you will. It can be a very useful feature to have in a laptop.
I've been very vocal about not liking the new keyboard design. I don't type as fast and I make more errors. I've even stated that whenever I jump back to my previous MBP it feels as good as a brand new pair of socks. The reason I don't use that MBP is because the 2017 model has a much better display and overall better performance than my 2013 model.
Don't give up on your MBP, Soli. I got my 2016 MBP TB keyboard replaced (it includes new battery, etc) and initial tests show all the difference in the world. I'd put mine on the shelf because i couldn't type quickly and accurately on it: post repair, it seems to work perfectly.
Some of the complaints I’m seeing from people like Marco Arment are ridiculous and disingenuous. Complain about pricing, fine. But expecting Apple to basically revert back to the 2015/2012 design? Marco knows damn good and well Apple isn’t going to abandon a new design only a couple years after introducing it and certainly isn’t going to re-introduce ports that were removed. Also there is no evidence the keyboard issue was because of the butterfly design (John Gruber claims he heard it was due to a specific metal parts supplier issue) so people complaining about that are being disingenuous too. Especially considering most of them hated it to begin with. IMO the only valid complaints would be pricing and the non-TB model not being updated.
I think Marco is just hating for the sake of it. I know he says he criticizes because he loves Apple and I believe that, but he also is being unreasonably obtuse about this issue.
1. Apple says it’s a tiny fraction of their customer base, and they are the ones with the data. 2. The data collected by AI shows a normalization back to KB failure rates consistent with the 2015 model.
I dont understand all these Apple pundits suddenly willing to accept anecdotes over data when they normally are against such illogical thinking.
Marco hated the keyboard even before these issues surfaced. He thinks Apple is obsessed with thinness over all else (even though there are Windows laptops as thin or thinner than the MBP). Marco also makes assumptions without having facts to back it up. In this case he’s assuming the keyboard issues are due to the laptops being too thin. He has no hard data to back up that assumption. As far as the other complaints I think it’s disingenuous to feign outrage over things you know Apple was never going to do (like go back to the 2015 design).
I've been very vocal about not liking the new keyboard design. I don't type as fast and I make more errors. I've even stated that whenever I jump back to my previous MBP it feels as good as a brand new pair of socks. The reason I don't use that MBP is because the 2017 model has a much better display and overall better performance than my 2013 model.
That said, I see no evidence that the reason for the keyboard issues are about the MBP getting thinner. As AI detailed with a Dell XPS review, it's thinner than the MBP and has a much better keyboard.
When the new MacBooks came out everyone was complaining about the lack of a 32GB option - I wonder how many people will actually shell out $6k for a laptop with 32GB of RAM
Comments
That said, I see no evidence that the reason for the keyboard issues are about the MBP getting thinner. As AI detailed with a Dell XPS review, it's thinner than the MBP and has a much better keyboard.
Has anyone seen what OSX version is running on this? Seems the Verge had a test unit....
Related, the service numbers collected about the MacBook Pro keyboards bear out that the 2016 and 2017 models are more reliable than the 2015 is overall.
Specifically:
The two numbers are very similar, which is to be expected. The keyboards were essentially unchanged since the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, and should have failure rates similar to each other.
Apple released the new keyboard with the MacBook, and moved the design to the 2016 MacBook Pro. In the first year of the 2016 MacBook Pro, our data gathered 1402 warranty events, with 165 related to only the keyboard and not including the Touch Bar —11.8 percent.
We don't have a full year of data for the 2017 MacBook Pro yet. But, since release in June 2017, our data set has 1161 captured service events with 94 related to keyboard issues also not including any Touch Bar issues —8.1 percent."
For example:
2018 XPS 15 (4K version) - $3,299
2018 MacBook Pro 15 - $4,699
- Intel Core i9-8950HK
- 32 GB DDR4-2400
- AMD Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB
- 2 TB PCIe SSD
That's $1,400 more for the MBP with a much weaker GPU and slightly slower RAM.This.
For RAM soldered to the motherboard you have a SINGLE point of failure:
- The solder connection between the actual memory chips and the motherboard.
With socketed RAM you have THREE points of failure.
- The solder connection between the memory chips and the circuit board they are installed onto.
- The solder connection between the motherboard and the actual socket itself.
- The physical connection between the socket and the memory module.
Soldering directly is FAR more reliable than sockets (it's also one reason why those stupid modular phones were doomed to fail - far too many connections between too many components that are constantly being subject to vibration or impacts).
Unfortunately i wiped the disk with a Linux install. So i cant say how it works today but i can honestly see it being very well accepted if Apple ever gets there. Windows 10 simply was terrible otherwise. One thing as an example here is that Windows has significant issues with WiFi. I constantly had to dick around with Windows to get it to connect even on commonly used WiFi access points. Back in the day my Mac never had this problem and Linux on the same computer works fine. Lets not even get into the bugs and stupid GUI interfaces.
In any event off on a tangent there. I have to agree that the lack of Face ID is an issue, shortcoming if you will. It can be a very useful feature to have in a laptop.