12 ms·

Nobody can call the new Macbook Pro "best in class" when they don't even ship with the best in class GPUs from Nvidia. These machines are essentially build bea

Nobody can call the new Macbook Pro "best in class" when they don't even ship with the best in class GPUs from Nvidia. These machines are essentially build beautiful traps. So, please don't give Apple your money. You don't need the most recent Macbook Pro. Just wait 6 months and buy a used one. Please don't support a company that actively works against you in order to secure their infamous 40% profit margin for doing nothing more than severely limiting your choices. I always buy used or third-party refurbished Apple equipment and I avoid buying apps from either of their app stores. I hope you do the same.

Nullabillity 10y ago
> Please don't support a company that actively works against you in order to secure their infamous 40% profit margin for doing nothing more than severely limiting your choices. Or, better yet, don't support the people who did support Apple's profit margins, and buy your stuff stuff from a less crappy manufacturer instead.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Just picked up an XPS 15 9550 from eBay with a quad-core i7-6700HQ, up to 32GB of DDR4-2400 (mine has only 16, but it's SODIMM so upgradable), m2 2280 pcie3x4 + 2.5" sata drive bay, GTX 960m, 4K igzo touchscreen (I don't personally care for the touchscreen) and dimensions slightly smaller than the 2015 15" rMBP. For $1200.
gcp 10y ago
when they don't even ship with the best in class GPUs from Nvidia. Bah, when heavily constrained by TDP and being able to (being required to) lower voltage and clock speed accordingly, it's far from clear NVIDIA would have any advantage in those Macbooks. It would bring Polaris cards back into their sweet spot, in fact.
- moyta 10y ago
  Yeah, given a sizable power budget and the right benchmarks, Nvidia can outperform Radeon cards, but Apple has an exisistung relationship with AMD and there is not a compelling performance case to switch to Nvidia. Plus with Supercomputing Clusters eating up most of Nvidia's production, Apple is not guaranteed to get the quantity & bin of GPUs they need on their schedule. This is the same reason why Apple didn't release any fusion based Macbooks, the bin of chip they wanted was not available in the quantity Apple needed by launch.
spronkey 10y ago
Ten years ago, I was a staunch Apple fan. I liked their product line-up - it was simple, easy to understand, and the products were good. If you needed power, you bought a Pro. If you needed value, you bought the non-pro. Both sides had good parts, were generally well built, repairable, and at the time used standard stuff. The OS was improving at a rate of knots as well. Some time in the last 5 years, I've gone from being a big fan, to really not liking Apple much at all. Primarily because they've gone back to their older attitudes toward standardised parts; they've removed user-serviceability on batteries, memory, storage, yet haven't offered any real concessions to their ridiculously expensive upgrade prices. Their non-US pricing is infuriating, too. With current currency conversion rates, the base MacBook Pro is $250 USD more expensive in New Zealand after all taxes are taken into account than it is in the USA, and it only gets worse from there. Computers do not need to be disposable appliances. The used market for Macs is awful now, flooded with 2GB/64GB MacBook Airs that are near useless, and 128GB storage on the lower end rMBPs with only expensive custom third party upgrades available from OWC or Transcend putting a premium on the more spec'd out models. In the past, you could just buy whatever used (or new) Mac is approximately right for your needs, and fill it to the brim with RAM and a fast SSD when you needed to. I got 3 usable years out of my 2006 MacBook, 4 usable years out of my 2008 MacBook Pro, and only 1.5 years out of my 2013 15" rMBP. At the time, it was already just over the limit for my work machine budget, and I had to retire it due to needing more RAM. I'm quite positive I would still be using it today had I been able to upgrade it. But instead I bought a second hand MacBook Air for iOS development and put up with Linux and Windows on an Ivy Bridge-E desktop that I could only use properly half the time. Many things they've been doing recently have been actively hostile to users with basically no legitimate recourse. Pentalobe screws? Bricking iPhones with third party home buttons? Limiting availability of genuine parts, causing Chinese counterfeit market flooding? Multiple proprietary SSD blade card formats that are essentially pin swaps of existing standards? Glueing batteries? Lightning instead of USB? It might be semi alright if you live in the USA near an Apple Store, and can take advantage of some of their better policies, but the point is that they don't need to do any of this stuff in the first place.
- pier25 10y ago
  Same here. I live in Mexico and the pricing situation is just ridiculous. We are paying 20-25% more than in the US. Not only for buying the products themselves, but also for the repairs which are way more expensive. When all the 2011 MBP GPU fiasco I was asked for $1500 when in the US Apple asked for about $300 for the exact same repair. I've been with Apple for over a decade and just bought a Surface Book. Windows is not perfect, but Microsoft is doing all the right choices lately and Apple only produces eye rolls.
ksec 10y ago
I used to be baffled and surprised. But now i know, developers and hardware nerds are different. Or basically they have different fields of knowledge. There isn't a better CPU at Apple's required TDP. And there isn't a better GPU at these TDP either. If people constantly complain and said they should have waited 3-4 more months for Kaby Lake, or 6 months for Nvidia. Then MBP will never get released.

Nullabillity 10y ago

> Please don't support a company that actively works against you in order to secure their infamous 40% profit margin for doing nothing more than severely limiting your choices. Or, better yet, don't support the people who did support Apple's profit margins, and buy your stuff stuff from a less crappy manufacturer instead.

seanp2k2 10y ago
Just picked up an XPS 15 9550 from eBay with a quad-core i7-6700HQ, up to 32GB of DDR4-2400 (mine has only 16, but it's SODIMM so upgradable), m2 2280 pcie3x4 + 2.5" sata drive bay, GTX 960m, 4K igzo touchscreen (I don't personally care for the touchscreen) and dimensions slightly smaller than the 2015 15" rMBP. For $1200.

gcp 10y ago

when they don't even ship with the best in class GPUs from Nvidia. Bah, when heavily constrained by TDP and being able to (being required to) lower voltage and clock speed accordingly, it's far from clear NVIDIA would have any advantage in those Macbooks. It would bring Polaris cards back into their sweet spot, in fact.

moyta 10y ago
Yeah, given a sizable power budget and the right benchmarks, Nvidia can outperform Radeon cards, but Apple has an exisistung relationship with AMD and there is not a compelling performance case to switch to Nvidia. Plus with Supercomputing Clusters eating up most of Nvidia's production, Apple is not guaranteed to get the quantity & bin of GPUs they need on their schedule. This is the same reason why Apple didn't release any fusion based Macbooks, the bin of chip they wanted was not available in the quantity Apple needed by launch.

spronkey 10y ago

Ten years ago, I was a staunch Apple fan. I liked their product line-up - it was simple, easy to understand, and the products were good. If you needed power, you bought a Pro. If you needed value, you bought the non-pro. Both sides had good parts, were generally well built, repairable, and at the time used standard stuff. The OS was improving at a rate of knots as well. Some time in the last 5 years, I've gone from being a big fan, to really not liking Apple much at all. Primarily because they've gone back to their older attitudes toward standardised parts; they've removed user-serviceability on batteries, memory, storage, yet haven't offered any real concessions to their ridiculously expensive upgrade prices. Their non-US pricing is infuriating, too. With current currency conversion rates, the base MacBook Pro is $250 USD more expensive in New Zealand after all taxes are taken into account than it is in the USA, and it only gets worse from there. Computers do not need to be disposable appliances. The used market for Macs is awful now, flooded with 2GB/64GB MacBook Airs that are near useless, and 128GB storage on the lower end rMBPs with only expensive custom third party upgrades available from OWC or Transcend putting a premium on the more spec'd out models. In the past, you could just buy whatever used (or new) Mac is approximately right for your needs, and fill it to the brim with RAM and a fast SSD when you needed to. I got 3 usable years out of my 2006 MacBook, 4 usable years out of my 2008 MacBook Pro, and only 1.5 years out of my 2013 15" rMBP. At the time, it was already just over the limit for my work machine budget, and I had to retire it due to needing more RAM. I'm quite positive I would still be using it today had I been able to upgrade it. But instead I bought a second hand MacBook Air for iOS development and put up with Linux and Windows on an Ivy Bridge-E desktop that I could only use properly half the time. Many things they've been doing recently have been actively hostile to users with basically no legitimate recourse. Pentalobe screws? Bricking iPhones with third party home buttons? Limiting availability of genuine parts, causing Chinese counterfeit market flooding? Multiple proprietary SSD blade card formats that are essentially pin swaps of existing standards? Glueing batteries? Lightning instead of USB? It might be semi alright if you live in the USA near an Apple Store, and can take advantage of some of their better policies, but the point is that they don't need to do any of this stuff in the first place.

pier25 10y ago
Same here. I live in Mexico and the pricing situation is just ridiculous. We are paying 20-25% more than in the US. Not only for buying the products themselves, but also for the repairs which are way more expensive. When all the 2011 MBP GPU fiasco I was asked for $1500 when in the US Apple asked for about $300 for the exact same repair. I've been with Apple for over a decade and just bought a Surface Book. Windows is not perfect, but Microsoft is doing all the right choices lately and Apple only produces eye rolls.

ksec 10y ago

I used to be baffled and surprised. But now i know, developers and hardware nerds are different. Or basically they have different fields of knowledge. There isn't a better CPU at Apple's required TDP. And there isn't a better GPU at these TDP either. If people constantly complain and said they should have waited 3-4 more months for Kaby Lake, or 6 months for Nvidia. Then MBP will never get released.