20 ms·

Come on, are we really blaming the RAM for battery life? Apple chose to put a much smaller battery in this model (75 watt) compared to last year (100 watt) for

Come on, are we really blaming the RAM for battery life? Apple chose to put a much smaller battery in this model (75 watt) compared to last year (100 watt) for the purpose of thinness. Find me a single review that laments the thickness and bulkiness of the 2015 model. This is plain and simple industrial design gone amuck. Apple has beautiful hardware, but day to day use is important too (performance, ram, battery). Shaving millimeters and ounces hits the point of diminishing returns, especially when you focus on it to the exclusion of all else.

ant6n 10y ago
It's also important to have a bit of travel for the keyboard - I for one don't like tapping on a hard surface to type.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  With the size/weight you saved, you can now carry a much nicer external keyboard if you really care. Personally I think the new keyboard is marginally nicer than the old one: more snap, but less travel. In that case, I’d rather have the thinner one. But then again, in my opinion laptop keyboards have been crap ever since they decided laptops needed to be usable on a lap and couldn’t be 3 inches thick or weigh 10 pounds, sometime in the early 1990s. ;-) (The IBM P70 and 5140, the Macintosh Portable, and the NEC Powermate Portable all had amazing keyboards. Toshiba and Zenith luggables of the same era also had nice enough keyboards. Of course, those machines aren’t exactly “laptops” by any reasonable standard.)
  - Aldo_MX 10y ago
    I like most laptop keyboards, just not the one from the recent macbooks, it feels... exaggeratedly flat
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      Have you tried the new MBP keyboard? It’s substantially different than the one from the 12" Macbook. (You still might not like it; it’s not my favorite either, but it’s definitely an improvement. Hopefully they’ll put the new keyboards on the next iteration of the 12" Macbook.)
  - hueving 10y ago
    "carry another keyboard" is a bullshit excuse with a laptop. There is no way to feasibly use an external keyboard while on the train/plane or in many other situations where you actually rely on the portability of a laptop.
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      Laptops suck on modern no-legroom planes. Total ergonomic nightmare. An external keyboard on your lap hooked up to a smartphone or something is a much nicer way to handle any significant amount of typing. I think a stand + split external keyboard at appropriate tent and tilt angles could be designed to clip to a laptop where the laptop is opened to a 135° angle and propped up at the back. Maybe more trouble than it’s worth though. Would take a lot of design effort, and would be a niche product to be sure. Overall I think you just need to accept some level of compromise when typing on a plane or train. If the new Apple laptop keyboards bother you that much, get something else I guess.. Among people who have tried them opinions overall seem split. I know several people who much prefer the new Macbook Pro keyboards to the old ones. And several others who prefer the old ones. In my opinion (as a very snobby keyboard connoisseur) both are comparable – acceptable but uninspiring; same goes for all laptop keyboards since about 1992, most of which are even crappier than anything Apple has put out.
- el_benhameen 10y ago
  I've been using the new 13" for the last few days, and I'm surprised at how much I like the keyboard. I despised the one on the MacBook and figured I'd feel the same about this one, but the keys are much more responsive, tactile, and clicky. I don't feel like I'm tapping on a piece of metal with this one.
chrischen 10y ago
The claim that the new macbook will have issues with day to day performance is insane. I run a browser with 20 tabs, linux VM in the background, and webpack and gulp in the background. I do all this on 8GB ram on a macbook from 2012 and it runs fast and smoothly, even with up to 4 hours of battery life. I can't imagine the new one would be less performant in any way. It's completely understandable that now they can optimize for other things, since performance is generally a nonissue now. Apple is not blaming anything. They've designed a computer for a purpose instead of pumping specs and numbers to gratify a bunch of vocal geeks. I'd rather much trust in Apple's design than a collaboratively designed PC by technical dilettantes with maximum performance everything. It's not just a about specs, especially in a laptop. Versatility, weight, battery, ease of use. These all come into play aside from raw technical component power.
- thinkmassive 10y ago
  A single VM, sure. I get by with 8GB RAM (not a Mac) and can easily handle that. For more complex architectures I use cloud instances. It would be nice to run as many VMs as necessary locally. What is the purpose for which the "Pro" model is designed, with its limited memory? Other laptops on the market support double the memory, which is useful for numerous applications... video editing, analysis of large datasets, development of applications that require more than just a webserver.
- jacquesc 10y ago
  This is supposedly the Pro model. Until my video processing and compile times are instantaneous, there's always room for performance increases. Phil Schiller specially blamed RAM battery drain for it being limited to 16GB. http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13460496/apple-macbook-pro-16gb-ram-battery-life-phil-schiller http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13460496/apple-macbook-pr...
  - mpweiher 10y ago
    Your compile times not being instantaneous is not a hardware problem and will never be solved by throwing hardware at it. "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster" -- With's Law. I just ran some experiments with tcc: it compiled + ran 300KLOC in around 0.158 seconds. My system cc (clang+llvm) took 9.3 seconds, so roughly a factor 60 difference. And clang+llvm is considered fast by today's standards, languages such as Scala or Swift are typically at least an order of magnitude slower than that. So compile times will improve when we make it a priority.
usaphp 10y ago
> "Find me a single review that laments the thickness and bulkiness of the 2015 model." There are plenty of reviews that blame Apple for not updating their design and only improving internals, and I don't really see how you can change a perfect (imo) laptop design unless you make it thinner. Nevertheless I agree with your points here, I would want to keep old design for 32gb ram and bigger battery
carsonbaker 10y ago
> Apple chose to put a much smaller battery in this model (75 watt) compared to last year (100 watt) for the purpose of thinness. You mean watt-hours (Wh).
deanCommie 10y ago
I can't share a link because it's on a podcast, but when the retina Macbook came out in 2015 both co-hosts of the show Cortex (https://www.relay.fm/cortex https://www.relay.fm/cortex) talked about how after traveling with it for one trip, going back to the MacBook Pro was like putting a brick in your backpack. NOW. These two independent creators are also hardcore minimalists and invest heavily into optimizing their iPad-based workflow, so their use cases aren't particularly relevant to the developers on HackerNews. However I do think they are VERY representative of a substantial subset of the Apple user base. And unlike us, they have podcasts with hundreds of thousands of users to project their influence. Ultimately, I'm not defending the new MBP direction. I think even to this class of creatives it misses the mark. But size does matter to them all the same.
- gurkendoktor 10y ago
  It really makes you wonder how the MBP would have been received if it was called the MacBook Air Retina, or just MacBook 13"/15". Traveling with a laptop sounds like the scenario the MBA is perfect for, and I think there are actually many people on HN who do just that.
agumonkey 10y ago
They should release a MacBook Fat, without the thin mindset, even with a bit of Panasonic rugged line influence. The Titanium industrial design added to the pro feel.
asadkn 10y ago
What's worse is that those blaming the RAM and being defensive can't even get their facts straight. Explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998629
feelix 10y ago
So you think they should have included DDR4 RAM? (that'd be their only option to support >16GB). DDR4 has a bunch of really huge caveats, as outlined in the article. Did you read it?

ant6n 10y ago

It's also important to have a bit of travel for the keyboard - I for one don't like tapping on a hard surface to type.

jacobolus 10y ago
With the size/weight you saved, you can now carry a much nicer external keyboard if you really care. Personally I think the new keyboard is marginally nicer than the old one: more snap, but less travel. In that case, I’d rather have the thinner one. But then again, in my opinion laptop keyboards have been crap ever since they decided laptops needed to be usable on a lap and couldn’t be 3 inches thick or weigh 10 pounds, sometime in the early 1990s. ;-) (The IBM P70 and 5140, the Macintosh Portable, and the NEC Powermate Portable all had amazing keyboards. Toshiba and Zenith luggables of the same era also had nice enough keyboards. Of course, those machines aren’t exactly “laptops” by any reasonable standard.)
- Aldo_MX 10y ago
  I like most laptop keyboards, just not the one from the recent macbooks, it feels... exaggeratedly flat
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Have you tried the new MBP keyboard? It’s substantially different than the one from the 12" Macbook. (You still might not like it; it’s not my favorite either, but it’s definitely an improvement. Hopefully they’ll put the new keyboards on the next iteration of the 12" Macbook.)
- hueving 10y ago
  "carry another keyboard" is a bullshit excuse with a laptop. There is no way to feasibly use an external keyboard while on the train/plane or in many other situations where you actually rely on the portability of a laptop.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Laptops suck on modern no-legroom planes. Total ergonomic nightmare. An external keyboard on your lap hooked up to a smartphone or something is a much nicer way to handle any significant amount of typing. I think a stand + split external keyboard at appropriate tent and tilt angles could be designed to clip to a laptop where the laptop is opened to a 135° angle and propped up at the back. Maybe more trouble than it’s worth though. Would take a lot of design effort, and would be a niche product to be sure. Overall I think you just need to accept some level of compromise when typing on a plane or train. If the new Apple laptop keyboards bother you that much, get something else I guess.. Among people who have tried them opinions overall seem split. I know several people who much prefer the new Macbook Pro keyboards to the old ones. And several others who prefer the old ones. In my opinion (as a very snobby keyboard connoisseur) both are comparable – acceptable but uninspiring; same goes for all laptop keyboards since about 1992, most of which are even crappier than anything Apple has put out.
el_benhameen 10y ago
I've been using the new 13" for the last few days, and I'm surprised at how much I like the keyboard. I despised the one on the MacBook and figured I'd feel the same about this one, but the keys are much more responsive, tactile, and clicky. I don't feel like I'm tapping on a piece of metal with this one.

chrischen 10y ago

The claim that the new macbook will have issues with day to day performance is insane. I run a browser with 20 tabs, linux VM in the background, and webpack and gulp in the background. I do all this on 8GB ram on a macbook from 2012 and it runs fast and smoothly, even with up to 4 hours of battery life. I can't imagine the new one would be less performant in any way. It's completely understandable that now they can optimize for other things, since performance is generally a nonissue now. Apple is not blaming anything. They've designed a computer for a purpose instead of pumping specs and numbers to gratify a bunch of vocal geeks. I'd rather much trust in Apple's design than a collaboratively designed PC by technical dilettantes with maximum performance everything. It's not just a about specs, especially in a laptop. Versatility, weight, battery, ease of use. These all come into play aside from raw technical component power.

thinkmassive 10y ago
A single VM, sure. I get by with 8GB RAM (not a Mac) and can easily handle that. For more complex architectures I use cloud instances. It would be nice to run as many VMs as necessary locally. What is the purpose for which the "Pro" model is designed, with its limited memory? Other laptops on the market support double the memory, which is useful for numerous applications... video editing, analysis of large datasets, development of applications that require more than just a webserver.
jacquesc 10y ago
This is supposedly the Pro model. Until my video processing and compile times are instantaneous, there's always room for performance increases. Phil Schiller specially blamed RAM battery drain for it being limited to 16GB. http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13460496/apple-macbook-pro-16gb-ram-battery-life-phil-schiller http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13460496/apple-macbook-pr...
- mpweiher 10y ago
  Your compile times not being instantaneous is not a hardware problem and will never be solved by throwing hardware at it. "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster" -- With's Law. I just ran some experiments with tcc: it compiled + ran 300KLOC in around 0.158 seconds. My system cc (clang+llvm) took 9.3 seconds, so roughly a factor 60 difference. And clang+llvm is considered fast by today's standards, languages such as Scala or Swift are typically at least an order of magnitude slower than that. So compile times will improve when we make it a priority.

usaphp 10y ago

> "Find me a single review that laments the thickness and bulkiness of the 2015 model." There are plenty of reviews that blame Apple for not updating their design and only improving internals, and I don't really see how you can change a perfect (imo) laptop design unless you make it thinner. Nevertheless I agree with your points here, I would want to keep old design for 32gb ram and bigger battery

carsonbaker 10y ago

> Apple chose to put a much smaller battery in this model (75 watt) compared to last year (100 watt) for the purpose of thinness. You mean watt-hours (Wh).

deanCommie 10y ago

I can't share a link because it's on a podcast, but when the retina Macbook came out in 2015 both co-hosts of the show Cortex (https://www.relay.fm/cortex https://www.relay.fm/cortex) talked about how after traveling with it for one trip, going back to the MacBook Pro was like putting a brick in your backpack. NOW. These two independent creators are also hardcore minimalists and invest heavily into optimizing their iPad-based workflow, so their use cases aren't particularly relevant to the developers on HackerNews. However I do think they are VERY representative of a substantial subset of the Apple user base. And unlike us, they have podcasts with hundreds of thousands of users to project their influence. Ultimately, I'm not defending the new MBP direction. I think even to this class of creatives it misses the mark. But size does matter to them all the same.

gurkendoktor 10y ago
It really makes you wonder how the MBP would have been received if it was called the MacBook Air Retina, or just MacBook 13"/15". Traveling with a laptop sounds like the scenario the MBA is perfect for, and I think there are actually many people on HN who do just that.

agumonkey 10y ago

They should release a MacBook Fat, without the thin mindset, even with a bit of Panasonic rugged line influence. The Titanium industrial design added to the pro feel.

asadkn 10y ago

What's worse is that those blaming the RAM and being defensive can't even get their facts straight. Explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998629

feelix 10y ago

So you think they should have included DDR4 RAM? (that'd be their only option to support >16GB). DDR4 has a bunch of really huge caveats, as outlined in the article. Did you read it?