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Doesn't anyone else remember that these early intel units had overheating problems? Later versions had GPU failures en masse and had a recall. Not to mention

Doesn't anyone else remember that these early intel units had overheating problems? Later versions had GPU failures en masse and had a recall. Not to mention that pre unibody the cases were fragile and able to be bent unintentionally. The optical drives basically all failed from poor design on these units as well. These were not as well designed as we like to remember. I still have an early one I keep on hand to tinker with from time to time and love what they represent but let's not kid ourselves. The MacBook Pro had come a long way since then. That said how they decided not to offer a 32GB ram offering on a MacBook Pro in 2016 is beyond me.

slantyyz 10y ago
>> That said how they decided not to offer a 32GB ram offering on a MacBook Pro in 2016 is beyond me. I'm the first to join you in this critique (I jumped off the Mac bandwagon a year or so ago), but in fairness, macOS does do memory compression where I don't think the other major OSes do. 16GB goes a little further (in theory) on macOS than it does on Windows.
- op00to 10y ago
  Also, maybe paging to a super fast SSD is good enough to justify not having more memory.
rbanffy 10y ago
I assume they designed the board to accommodate 32GB but couldn't get adequate supplies at the low volumes expected. 16GB is still more than most people need (me included). Also, adding more memory will shorten battery life.
op00to 10y ago
Easy - they ran the numbers and saw the engineering benefits for keeping a simpler chipset that only supported 16GB outweighed the value of a few people getting pissed off that there's no 32GB option. Frankly, if I need more than 16GB of RAM, I'm going to want to develop on a box in a datacenter somewhere, not my laptop.
parasubvert 10y ago
Yes I had an original MBP, I had to get the repair done with the thermal paste replacement due to overheating issues. That mostly fixed sudden shutdowns but it still ran very hot. The most perfect MBPs IMO were the 2008 model (pre-unibody) and the first rMBP. The 2008 was fast and fluid; the rMBP introduced me to high capacity SSD and the high res display. Both were hardcore professional workhorses. The lack of 32 GB on this one is profoundly disappointing but I am hearing it has a major impact on battery life. I'd have to test an equivalent XPS 15 to know, but it's telling that the Surface Book Performance Base (most comparable with this new MBP) is also limited to 16 GB, though they claim some crazy battery life numbers (16 h?). I'm curious the impact of the new generation SSD and DDR4 RAM will have in overall experience.

slantyyz 10y ago

>> That said how they decided not to offer a 32GB ram offering on a MacBook Pro in 2016 is beyond me. I'm the first to join you in this critique (I jumped off the Mac bandwagon a year or so ago), but in fairness, macOS does do memory compression where I don't think the other major OSes do. 16GB goes a little further (in theory) on macOS than it does on Windows.

op00to 10y ago
Also, maybe paging to a super fast SSD is good enough to justify not having more memory.

rbanffy 10y ago

I assume they designed the board to accommodate 32GB but couldn't get adequate supplies at the low volumes expected. 16GB is still more than most people need (me included). Also, adding more memory will shorten battery life.

op00to 10y ago

Easy - they ran the numbers and saw the engineering benefits for keeping a simpler chipset that only supported 16GB outweighed the value of a few people getting pissed off that there's no 32GB option. Frankly, if I need more than 16GB of RAM, I'm going to want to develop on a box in a datacenter somewhere, not my laptop.

parasubvert 10y ago

Yes I had an original MBP, I had to get the repair done with the thermal paste replacement due to overheating issues. That mostly fixed sudden shutdowns but it still ran very hot. The most perfect MBPs IMO were the 2008 model (pre-unibody) and the first rMBP. The 2008 was fast and fluid; the rMBP introduced me to high capacity SSD and the high res display. Both were hardcore professional workhorses. The lack of 32 GB on this one is profoundly disappointing but I am hearing it has a major impact on battery life. I'd have to test an equivalent XPS 15 to know, but it's telling that the Surface Book Performance Base (most comparable with this new MBP) is also limited to 16 GB, though they claim some crazy battery life numbers (16 h?). I'm curious the impact of the new generation SSD and DDR4 RAM will have in overall experience.