Macbook Pro (2016)

[ThunderGuts]

[skahigh]

offshoreeddy said:

I've a 2012 MBP 15" Retina, 2.6 i7, with 16GB RAM and a 750GB SSD that I bought from new - I paid £2867 for it at the time, less the VAT which I claimed back, so effectively £2389.

A new 15" MBP with a 2.7 i7, 16GB RAM and a 1TB HDD is £3059, or again about £2500 with the VAT knocked off.

I expect the current one would fetch about £650 used.

So, cost to change - probably £1900. Which isn't too bad. But as I sit here typing this, I'm wondering exactly what reason I would have to change, and the answer is 'none at all'. This works perfectly well. It's got a few scratches from when I dropped it out of the boot of the car onto a concrete floor, but other than that there is no reason to 'upgrade' it. I was hoping for something revolutionary, which is what Apple used to be known for, but this is more evolutionary than anything and hence the reason Apple won't be getting any more of my hard earned this time around. Plus, I really dont want to shell out for adapters for everything just to make it work with USB-C.

Anyone want to make me a tempting offer for my existing workhorse, all the same?

Edited by offshoreeddy on Friday 28th October 09:10

I am in a very similar situation however, I only got the 500GB SSD and paid £2500.

My biggest reason for looking to upgrade now is to run a 4k or 5k display at a decent refresh rate as I've started working from home a lot more and I do love the idea of having my stuff all setup at home and then just plugging one cable in to the MacBook to connect it all up.

[craigjm]

I love the way that in a thread about computers we have people seriously talking about -

Cost to change
Residuals

and

Trade in value

[Tycho]

leglessAlex said:

ukaskew said:

Tycho said:

You need to define "work machine" as no one I know needs more than 8Gb in a PC really. What work would you need 16Gb for?

I did wonder this. I'm regularly processing thousands of D750 RAW files (up to 30MB each) in LR very briskly with 8GB of RAM in my MBP, outputting to a 4K screen as well. Never felt the need for more.

I use CATIA, NX and ANSYS for uni and all of them are far faster with 16GB of RAM. I guess it is still arguable as to whether it's a true need or not but it certainly makes things easier.

The other thing is the 15" is a minimum of £2,300 and for that much I'd want the very best whether I really needed it or not.

That's the thing though. If I'm doing all that then I'd probably get a decent spec desktop, not a laptop.

[Craikeybaby]

Is RAM really as important now with fast SSD memory, instead of spinning disc hard drives?

[craigjm]

Tycho said:

That's the thing though. If I'm doing all that then I'd probably get a decent spec desktop, not a laptop.

Hmm, that's my thought too. The vast majority of people who buy Macbooks are only really doing light work on them really which also doesn't justify the 2500 price tag.

Saying that genuine question now.....

Why are people speccing these machines with 2TB drives? Isnt the whole idea that stuff should now be in the cloud or in your own personal cloud from your NAS? what do you need to keep locally that requires such storage?

[RobDickinson]

Craikeybaby said:

Is RAM really as important now with fast SSD memory, instead of spinning disc hard drives?

Fast ssd's (samsung evo 960 pro) get about 3GB/s, whilst DDR4 gets 25GB/s

And main memory can be written to a lot more times than SSD, you would run out of writes and end up with a trashed ssd I think.

[BrewsterBear]

I was looking forward to speccing and ordering a new MBP to replace my late 2012 MBP retina. However, to get it to the same spec as my 4 year old MBP would cost £3k. To upgrade the SSD to 1TB would take it to £3300. It's just too much for too little upgrade. I use bootcamp to play games (Fallout 4, etc) and I think this would struggle. That, with the lack of connectivity, will see me buying a Windows laptop for the first time in a long time.

Sorry Apple, you've dropped the ball with this one. Koby Lake for me when it arrives.

[768]

craigjm said:

Hmm, that's my thought too. The vast majority of people who buy Macbooks are only really doing light work on them really which also doesn't justify the 2500 price tag.

Saying that genuine question now.....

Why are people speccing these machines with 2TB drives? Isnt the whole idea that stuff should now be in the cloud or in your own personal cloud from your NAS? what do you need to keep locally that requires such storage?

I don't know about other people, but as a software dev (and many of them use MBPs) I build software regularly, run it and exercise it on reasonably large data sets.

I could do it in the cloud, but a client I work with switches off their cloud servers at the weekends, EC2 at least is quite expensive, it doesn't work on a train/plane and I'd be restricted by the speed of an internet connection.

[ukaskew]

craigjm said:

Why are people speccing these machines with 2TB drives? Isnt the whole idea that stuff should now be in the cloud or in your own personal cloud from your NAS? what do you need to keep locally that requires such storage?

Intrigued by this also. 128GB SSD in my MBP works fine for me despite shooting a few hundred thousand photos per year. Pretty much all my work is done directly off of a tiny USB powered 2TB USB3 SSD (£70!) and then goes straight to a NAS (and Amazon Drive) for safekeeping when I get home. My actual MBP SSD only contains the OS, software installs and a few GB of music/podcasts.

I guess more storage is always useful if you've got the cash, but the financial penalty is huge compared to perfectly workable external options.

[sjg]

RobDickinson said:

Craikeybaby said:

Is RAM really as important now with fast SSD memory, instead of spinning disc hard drives?

Fast ssd's (samsung evo 960 pro) get about 3GB/s, whilst DDR4 gets 25GB/s

And main memory can be written to a lot more times than SSD, you would run out of writes and end up with a trashed ssd I think.

The only thing I used to need lots of RAM for was running VMs, and these days I either do that on a big desktop at home or in the cloud if I need plenty short-term.

Storage Review ran an endurance test on some SSDs, constantly overwriting 24/7. It took several hundred TB of writes to kill them and some went well past 2PB. In anything approaching normal usage patterns it's unlikely to be an issue.

[leglessAlex]

Tycho said:

That's the thing though. If I'm doing all that then I'd probably get a decent spec desktop, not a laptop.

Of course, a laptop will always be a compromise but considering the price I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that the machine is able to do those things. I mean, the 'Pro' moniker that Apple themselves use even suggests to me that the laptop should be capable of running any pro level software in almost any field reasonably well.

[Rawwr]

TechRadar are staying true to form in gulping down the Apple-flavoured cum. I'll summarise the hands-on review for you:

"It's the best MBP yet! It meets expectations and MORE! It's thinner and lighter! We have literally no idea what that touch bar is good for and the lack of ports is bad."

Oh how I hate TechRadar.

[EricE]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Yes. I just ordered a new Razer Blade, my first Windows notebook ever after buying 10 Apple notebooks starting with the Titanium Powerbook G4.
There's a good chance that I'll end up buying a new MBP in a few weeks but I at least have to give it a try. If things work out I'm definitely leaving the Apple ecosystem in its entirety.

It's becoming very clear that Cook is all-in on iOS and the iPad Pro. macOS is a dead end.
That's fine to be honest. iOS is a better solution for the 90% of the people out there but not for me.

[XMT]

MikeGTi said:

I'm a little bit underwhelmed, I have to say.

+ 1 - the changes apple are coming out with are actually embarassing.

Microsoft on the other hand are now game changers. Anyone see the new surface studio - looks epic

[scorp]

Tycho said:

You need to define "work machine" as no one I know needs more than 8Gb in a PC really. What work would you need 16Gb for?

I build Android firmwares (from source) which requires 16gb, it will work for 8gb if you like waiting a couple more hours. I don't do this on a Mac, obviously.

[Digitalize]

New GPU does actually look pretty decent from AMD, decent speed bump which should drive a 5k display and have more than enough power left over to do other things. Something my 2014 rMBP struggles with.

CPU wise theirs not much better they can use really, they have to meet power/heat specs and they're the best that fit in, Intel changing to a Tic Tock Tock cycle has hurt the usual upgrade pattern.

As for the ports, most cables will soon be very cheap to rebuy with USB-C ends on, or for desk use just seriously buy at least a dock! Ironically the new LG displays announced would still need a dock attached to them, but it's possible at least. Belkin have already announced a TB3 dock, the only downside for me at least is that I'll need at least one USB hub plugged in to that, but that's my fault for having lots of external drives etc.

[silentbrown]

craigjm said:

I love the way that in a thread about computers we have people seriously talking about -

Cost to change
Residuals

and

Trade in value

At least nobody's asking about balloon payments and GAP insurance (yet!)

All my old tech used to live in a cupboard for years after it was obsolete before finally ending up at the tip. Now it all goes on ebay within weeks of being replaced.

I switched from Windows Desktop + Windows Laptop to a Retina MPB in 2012. Justified the (then) eye-popping prices of £2K+ on the basis that a: I'd only need a single computer, not two, and b: unlike most Windows gear, it would still be worth something in a year or two.

Roll on to 2016 and my MBP is still going strong and probably still worth £5-600, and unless it fritzes itself it will probably be OK for another year.

[eps]

Tycho said:

You need to define "work machine" as no one I know needs more than 8Gb in a PC really. What work would you need 16Gb for?

I do software development - running 1-2 VMs (Windows Client and sometimes Windows Server concurrently) and sometimes some large databases. Visual Studio needs a load of RAM as does SQL Server and other software development tools. Plus I want to be able to use the MAC for photo editing.

8GB doesn't really cut the mustard when you chuck all of this in to the mix - although I did get someone to purchase my current MBP in the US and the previous one was a Refurb (actually that was an MBA, which was still quite decent). I think Refurbs are the way to go or Stateside purchases.

Maybe a desktop would be a good idea, but as I work freelance I need to be able to take my 'office' with me.

[ukaskew]

EricE said:

It's becoming very clear that Cook is all-in on iOS and the iPad Pro. macOS is a dead end.
That's fine to be honest. iOS is a better solution for the 90% of the people out there but not for me.

That's a fair point. But I think there was a hope that at the very least the 'Pro' line of Macbooks would still exist to, you know, fully support pros. For the 10% that iOS is no good for macOS looks to be heading the same way also, so it's not surprising that people are looking elsewhere.

The Air, MB and MBP lines are suddenly converging at an alarming rate now. Even the iPad Pro, which seemed to be heavily marketed towards photographers, is no real use to most professional photographers, where as something like the Surface Book or Pro actually have the functionality to deserve the 'pro' name.

Somebody said earlier 'what are they doing with all their billions?', I think that's a good question. Surely they have the staff/funds to be able to put out an updated Mac Pro, or give us a few more options with the Mini, etc?