4 ms·

Personally, USB-C is the least of my problem. I care about having a fast, powerful laptop with 32 or 64GB ram (I run a lot of VMs for my work, I could offload i

Personally, USB-C is the least of my problem. I care about having a fast, powerful laptop with 32 or 64GB ram (I run a lot of VMs for my work, I could offload it to the cloud but then it's more of a hassle). I complain because Apple decided to make the macbook pro 15 inch lighter and thinner resulting in 25% less battery (going from 99.5 watt-hour to 76.0-watt-hour), this means that they have to make more compromises to keep a good battery life and instead of having a decent graphic card like the nvidia gtx 1080 or 32GB ram, the new macbook pros are underpowered. Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors. And to add insult to the injury, switching to usb-c forces users (at least for a year or two) to carry a lot of extra adapters which makes the weight loss moot.

snowwrestler 10y ago
> Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors. Once the next generation of Intel processors land, I bet we'll see Macbook Pros with faster processors and 32GB or more of RAM. At that point they will catch up to their competitors. But it's important to remember who Apple considers their competitors. They've never competed on the cheap end--everyone knows that--but they've also never competed on the high-power end. For at least the past 8 years it's been possible to buy laptops that deliver more horsepower than a Macbook Pro, by caring less about size, weight, and battery life. I think that will always be true.
- nicolas_t 10y ago
  It's true, but I don't remember having ever seen such a big gap in term of performance (or at least since apple switched to intel). The macbook pro 17 inch used to be not bad when compared to competitors.
- benologist 10y ago
  I think once Apple detaches iOS development from macOS all bets are off.
natch 10y ago
Which adapters do you need to carry? I would love a 32G or 64G machine too, but did you see what Phil Schiller said about the 32G issue? It sounded like it wasn't a matter of a little bit more power, it was a LOT more. We really don't know how much more. Apple does know. If the new design was two inches thick people would be complaining about that. Personally I'm expecting that no matter what the vendor. desktops will always be more powerful than laptops, and some people will always complain that the gap is too large. For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation.
- falcolas 10y ago
  > Which adapters do you need to carry? USB-A adapter for my wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse. A gigabit ethernet adapter. Mini-DP x2 adapter, for my desktop screens. I may be able to leave those attached to the screens, though. I'd need another one for home in that case. Power adapter, HDMI adapter and two USB-A, for attaching to any external screens, speakerphones, and webcams when in a conference room. If I include my hobbies, I will also be needing a USB-C to USB-B cable for my USB hub (or a few new USB-C to Mini- and Micro-USB cables), and a SD card adapter. > For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation. Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs.
  - melq 10y ago
    > Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs. Perhaps not compared to memory, but that gap continues to look smaller and smaller. The new PCIe/NVME drive's bandwidth looks to be within 1(-ish) order of magnitude of ddr3. Apple is claiming ~3GB/s read ~2GB write and iirc 1600mhz ddr3 is somewhere around 20GB/s rw. I don't know what the latency numbers are, but I know the NVME/PCIe bus is a dramatic improvement -- not saying it will be measured in nanoseconds, however. I have some fusion ioDrives at work that have about 3GB/s r 2.5 w with ~30 microsecond latency over the PCIe bus. Exciting times we live in for io :)
    - 10y ago

snowwrestler 10y ago

> Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors. Once the next generation of Intel processors land, I bet we'll see Macbook Pros with faster processors and 32GB or more of RAM. At that point they will catch up to their competitors. But it's important to remember who Apple considers their competitors. They've never competed on the cheap end--everyone knows that--but they've also never competed on the high-power end. For at least the past 8 years it's been possible to buy laptops that deliver more horsepower than a Macbook Pro, by caring less about size, weight, and battery life. I think that will always be true.

nicolas_t 10y ago
It's true, but I don't remember having ever seen such a big gap in term of performance (or at least since apple switched to intel). The macbook pro 17 inch used to be not bad when compared to competitors.
benologist 10y ago
I think once Apple detaches iOS development from macOS all bets are off.

natch 10y ago

Which adapters do you need to carry? I would love a 32G or 64G machine too, but did you see what Phil Schiller said about the 32G issue? It sounded like it wasn't a matter of a little bit more power, it was a LOT more. We really don't know how much more. Apple does know. If the new design was two inches thick people would be complaining about that. Personally I'm expecting that no matter what the vendor. desktops will always be more powerful than laptops, and some people will always complain that the gap is too large. For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation.

falcolas 10y ago
> Which adapters do you need to carry? USB-A adapter for my wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse. A gigabit ethernet adapter. Mini-DP x2 adapter, for my desktop screens. I may be able to leave those attached to the screens, though. I'd need another one for home in that case. Power adapter, HDMI adapter and two USB-A, for attaching to any external screens, speakerphones, and webcams when in a conference room. If I include my hobbies, I will also be needing a USB-C to USB-B cable for my USB hub (or a few new USB-C to Mini- and Micro-USB cables), and a SD card adapter. > For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation. Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs.
- melq 10y ago
  > Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs. Perhaps not compared to memory, but that gap continues to look smaller and smaller. The new PCIe/NVME drive's bandwidth looks to be within 1(-ish) order of magnitude of ddr3. Apple is claiming ~3GB/s read ~2GB write and iirc 1600mhz ddr3 is somewhere around 20GB/s rw. I don't know what the latency numbers are, but I know the NVME/PCIe bus is a dramatic improvement -- not saying it will be measured in nanoseconds, however. I have some fusion ioDrives at work that have about 3GB/s r 2.5 w with ~30 microsecond latency over the PCIe bus. Exciting times we live in for io :)
  - 10y ago