thewhitefalcon

hmm said:

altivec88 said:

Soon the current top of the line 2013 MacPro will be considered Vintage and its still for sale (as if it were new pricing). A wise man named Phil Schiller once said that its "really sad" that more than 600 million PCs still being used are more than 5 years old. I am really interested to know if he thinks its "sad" that Apple is selling their NEW MacPro's that soon will be heading into its fourth year without an update? or is it the people that buy them today will be considered "sad" in one years time because they own new 5 year old tech?

That's incorrect. The vintage list doesn't always match the availability of software updates. Once something is marked vintage, it's not guaranteed to be repairable. Repairs are contingent on availability of parts. The 5 year timer typically starts when a model is replaced, not when it is released. The early 2011s macbook pros were replaced in October 2011, so they hit the list this year. The late 2011s will be in the next batch, as they were replaced in 2012.

cjones said:

misa said:

A Mac with 32GB or 64GB is overkill

For you, maybe. I'm currently using a MBP Retina (Late 2013) with 16 GB of RAM and it's definitely RAM-limited when it comes to my non-professional desktop usage. Let's see... I currently have several browsers open (lots of tabs), Preview, TextEdit, various Terminals, and a few other inconsequential apps. Glancing at my Activity Monitor I can see that it's currently using 14.00 GB of RAM, with 1.46 GB of cached files... oh, and 16.3 *GB* of swap (sic). I haven't even fired up any of my virtual machines!

So, yes, clearly my SSD (and my system performance) would appreciate the extra RAM. Lord knows what this would be like if I were doing something serious with the machine, such as software development.

For the sake of not destroying a SSD quickly, more RAM is preferred because it means the page file is rarely used. In fact I have it set to 0MB on my system.

...you haven't disabled swap on Mac OS, I'm guessing. Quick test: do you even know how to do that in Mac OS? On Windows accomplishing that goal is done with a few, user friendly clicks in the GUI; on the Mac it requires arcane invocations within Terminal. Anyhow, last time I disabled swap (on Snow Leopard) it was "amusing" to see how poorly Mac OS handled out-of-memory conditions compared to Windows or Linux. Maybe it's gotten better since then, but it's inconvenient having Mac OS develop spinning beach balls of death that require power-cycling the machine so I haven't tried it lately. Windows handles this scenario especially gracefully, first by warning of impending memory exhaustion, then by slaying a RAM heavy app if the limit is exceeded.

strells said:

jorgie said:

Yeah because there's no way you could make the device thicker and give it a bigger battery.

And why stop with these notebook-grade components. They should put desktop-grade components in there because professionals don't care about portability or battery life¡

The lack of 32 GB in a laptop would be less of an issue if Apple would get their act together and release a new new Mac Pro, rather than keeping the 1000+ day old current "new" version on the market. I'd prefer to buy a trash can Mac Pro, but I'm not dropping thousands of dollars on a brand new machine that's already several generations out of date.

Soli said:

strells said:

jorgie said:

Yeah because there's no way you could make the device thicker and give it a bigger battery.

This.

The thin and light design requirement is the problem, not the technology.  Trust me, I honestly want one of these machines, but I don't care if it weighs an extra pound and is a little bit thicker due to a bigger battery that can power more RAM.  I'm sure most pros don't care as well.

And why stop with these notebook-grade components. They should put desktop-grade components in there because professionals don't care about portability or battery life¡