bobolicious

...is there finally a purpose for all those white Apple logo stickers...?

I understand PV as having large environmental impact in raw material extraction, production, transport and disposal. Are they possible to contemplate without fossil fuels for use ? Is care required in such comparisons given the many apparent assumptions and possible narrow criteria ?

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/

http://www.solarscorecard.com/2014/

StrangeDays said:

bobolicious said:

wizard69 said:

The thermal throttling is a huge problem in a professional machine.   Sadly AI is seeing throttling in extremely light usage imagine how much you would loose over 8 hours. 

Frankly this is not unexpected!   Apples history with the word "pro" and cramming hot parts into a tight enclosure isnt good.  Every day im becoming more and more convinced that Apple just doesnt understand the "PRO" market.   

As a point of record i was looking at a iPad Pro in a store yesterday.    Nice device but there is nothing about it that stands out as being pro.   I do believe that common sense has left the building at Apple and has been replaced by marketing morons that likely have never engaged in professional work.  Sad.  

Indeed I have mixed feelings about the latest design decisions, without knowing more of course... On the one hand 'Apple giveth' (back) - the new thermal design seems to have allowed restoration of user changeable VESA mount ie. something that in my work I have found very useful... And yet the RAM is inaccessible...? Time will tell if ram and drive upgrades are possible, if bizarrely inconvenient - and I do ask about 'common sense' and any number of design decisions relating to future proofing of such premium hardware since the passing of the torch, so to speak...

We already know the answer — the RAM is slotted and can be removed or upgraded, even if inconvenient. This makes sense however as the primary aim of the machine is performance and cooling today, and not making it convenient to DIY tinker years later. 

Is the term 'inconvenient' appropriate?  I view the potential more like open heart surgery if at all ?  Surely a ram access door might have been added at minimal cost? Years later it may be for others, yet perhaps not for some, and I've even swapped applicable ram from one machine to another as 'pro' usage changed and drives and configurations became reprioritized in house. I'd also still ask for a more affordable base configuration similar to the current Pro, ideally starting under $4k, but hey that is just a customer (since system 7) request, since some apps can use the speed but maybe not the current base (and expensive) memory, and of course Apple isn't my business to run - and so possible upgrades may now meet greater resistance...

Mike Wuerthele said:

appex said:

Why not tell the full story? MacBook Pro is great (albeit expensive), but Apple should use standard ports and connectors, not soldered proprietary components. Apple should allow to use custom SSD for instance, like the awesome Samsung 960 PRO SSD. Besides not charging two to three times more for them, as now does with iMac RAM, for instance when compared to market price at sites like Amazon. Do not get me wrong. I love the Mac, but Apple does not do it right sometimes. And this is a positive criticism to make happy customers and boost market share.

They are. LPDDR isn't socketed, and is standard. The "awesome" 960 Pro SSD you're speaking of is half the speed of the storage in the MBP. USB-C is standard.

Adding socketed RAM and replaceable SSDs to the 15-inch won't boost marketshare in any significant way. Believing it will because you, yourself want it (and to be fair, I wouldn't mind it) flies in the face of facts.

Sorry Mike for pros (this is labelled such) flexibility would seem basic, for some investing in higher capacity vs the crazy fast & crazy pricey Apple ransom drive, at perhaps $1k per seat, or the 32GB ram portable desktop vs 'all day' battery life...

How does this serve Apple? By ransoming power users to buy 2 machines perhaps, making iCloud more compelling, or indispensable, despite being illegal in some jurisdictions? The whole thing feels surreptitiously unhelpful to the pro customer...

As I've said before one cannot now even delete Photos now from MacOS. Really? Since when did an auto image tagging consumer grade photos app belong on a pro user machine? Why can't photos be deleted from contact manager...? Is AI trolling being baked in?

In the past pro macs were upgraded roughly every 3 years with Applecare here - that stopped with the 'onboard' approach, fixed iMac mounts, pentilobe screws and the take it or leave it stance, with the last 2 test mbp designs being sent back, so literally thousands of dollars per seat stopped flowing to Apple, despite the logic of optimizing speed by more closely matching the memory... Every pro mac here has had ram and drives upgraded over time. It is so bloody basic.

By all means offer top tier, yet would such be better simply as a BTO, to actually serve the customer...?  One might hope...

eric nanneman said:

I have the late 2015 with the 395x. Can anyone tell me how much faster the new Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB is?

Another favourite review site: barefeats.com/imac5K_vs_pros.html