3 ms·

"Love letter to developers"?! If Apple wants to send me a love letter, they can tell their design team to put 32gb of RAM into a MacBook Pro that has an upgrade

by chb 9y ago

"Love letter to developers"?! If Apple wants to send me a love letter, they can tell their design team to put 32gb of RAM into a MacBook Pro that has an upgradeable drive, expandable memory and a reasonable configuration of ports.

Sheepsteak 9y ago
I remember hearing the lack of a 32GB option was due to the chipset or something.
- acdha 9y ago
  It was: 32GB required LPDDR4 memory but Skylake didn't support that. It sounds like that's dependent on shipping Cannon Lake which was originally slated for 2017 but has been pushed back to 2018.
- mort96 9y ago
  Even then, who chose the chipset?
  - rsynnott 9y ago
    Intel. Currently, if you want to use low power RAM with an Intel mobile chip, you have to use LP-DDR3 in a config that maxes out at 16GB. You can also use non-LP DDR4 up to 32GB (Dell makes a laptop that does, for instance), but at that point you have a somewhat increased power draw when the system is running, and a _dramatically_ increased power draw on standby (IIRC about five times the power). Apple laptops have traditionally had excellent standby battery life; they're presumably not willing to sacrifice this. Upcoming Intel mobile chips will resolve this, allowing use of LP-DDR4.
    - mort96 9y ago
      I'm looking at this Intel CPU: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i7-processors/i7-7660u.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/... That claims to support up to 32GB memory, and it claims to support, among other things, LPDDR3-1866. Are you saying that if you want to use LPDDR3-1866 with that CPU, you're limited to only 16GB? I can't find anything about that through some quick googling, but if it's true, I retract my snarky comment.
      - rsynnott 9y ago
        Note "(dependent on memory type)". It can do LPDDR3, and it can do 32GB, but not both at once. You'll note that any laptops which do 32GB will list DDR4 RAM.
        mort96 9y ago
        How about this beefier mobile CPU, which supports up to 64GB RAM? Maybe they'd have needed to make some of their pro laptops a bit less thin, but they are _Pro_ laptops after all. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i7-processors/i7-7920hq.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/... Also, I wish Intel would just list the maximum supported memory configuration for each memory type, instead of just having a worthless "(depending on memory type)".
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    With the old chipset generation you had the choice between a low power chipset that could sport 16GB tops, or a desktop chipset that could do more - but also draw lots more power. Windows laptops often chose the latter, but Apple on the path to a 1mm thin MBP chose to sacrifice RAM for thinness and battery life.
- lemoncucumber 9y ago
  Yeah, the current Intel chipsets support DDR4 which can go beyond 16GB or LPDDR3 which is capped at 16GB (LP = low power). So Apple had the choice between a higher RAM ceiling or longer battery life, and they choses longer battery life. The forthcoming Cannon Lake chips will support LPDDR4, enabling MacBook Pros with a higher RAM ceiling without sacrificing power utilization.
- kogepathic 9y ago
  Lack of a 32GB option in the MacBook Pros is because Intel's memory controller cannot handle LPDDR4 (except in U SKUs, which Apple does not use for MacBook Pro), and Apple decided using regular DDR4 to reach 32GB would consume too much power. [1] Apparently Intel will fix this in their 2018 mobile SKUs, but until then Apple has chosen not to kneecap battery life or build a different logic board for the people who want 32GB. This situation has a lot of parallels for me to the situation they faced with IBM and the G5. Everyone at the time wanted the G5 in a laptop to replace the G4, but IBM couldn't get the power consumption down. Now over a decade later, Apple is taking shit for Intel's delays in supporting LPDDR4. I bet this is going to accelerate their plans to migrate Mac to their own ARM designs. [1] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/10/31/macbook-pros-lack-of-32gb-ram-option-could-also-be-blamed-on-intels-skylake-chips http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/10/31/macbook-pros-lack-of...
  - yock 9y ago
    > This situation has a lot of parallels for me to the situation they faced with IBM and the G5. That's a great observation, and having witnessed the PowerPC -> Intel migration I'm disappointed I didn't make it myself. Both Motorola and IBM, who were supplying Power CPUs to Apple, sold off their microprocessor divisions after a litany of manufacturing difficulties. IIRC, that was what drove Apple to abandon PowerPC in the first place. It would be ironic if Intel, having benefitted so greatly from the manufacturing shortfalls of past competitors, would find itself in a similar situation.
    - kogepathic 9y ago
      > It would be ironic if Intel, having benefitted so greatly from the manufacturing shortfalls of past competitors, would find itself in a similar situation. Intel is already in this position, though not because they sold off their fabs. All the money these days is going into mobile SoC manufacturing by the likes of TSMC and Samsung. Intel simply lost because Samsung and TSMC are able to outspend Intel on fab R&D and it's showing in Intel's numerous node shrink delays. People will argue that TSMC/Samsung 7/10nm is not the same as Intel, and probably they're right, but only at present. TSMC/Samsung are eventually going to surpass Intel's fab technology because they're killing it in volume manufacturing chips for Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, and others. Meanwhile Intel is fabbing for... Intel. Plus some Altera FPGA IP they don't seem to be integrating very well into their product stack. If Intel wants to survive the next 20 years the only option I see is that they start fabbing for other people too. ARM is moving into servers, and once the perf/watt surpasses Intel, it won't be long for the hyperscale cloud companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to migrate away from Intel. For those guys, a 10% TCO reduction is a big deal, and while some of the perf/watt is due to the design, a lot of it comes from having the better process. If Intel loses their process lead, which is happening right now, then they're going to be second tier. People will look back in 15 years at Intel snubbing Apple for the original iPhone SoC and mark that decision as the beginning of the end for Intel. From Paul Otellini, Intel CEO at the time: > At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/20/intel-smartphone-iphone-paul-otellini https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/20/intel-sma...
Swinx43 9y ago
I find it very hard to understand why they have not done this yet. I am even willing to sacrifice on the upgradability, since this is a sacrifice we have been making by default in recent years. But not being able to select a 32GB RAM option is just terrible. At the price of a Macbook Pro one can hardly argue that it is a office productivity tool since it is clearly aimed at the "Pro" market. If the situation does not change then it is going to force pro users to look at alternatives.
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Apple will not sell a laptop with lpddr4 . Everyone is putting laptops out there with ddr 4 instead which takes more power. (Note this was true when the Current refresh came out).
- abakker 9y ago
  Just give me an extra pound of RAM and Battery. I don't care about the "thinnest lightest MacBook pro ever". Making the pro laptop light and port-free is omphaloskeptic.
  - roryisok 9y ago
    That's a hell of a good word
hugi 9y ago
Hallelujah. And a good keyboard.
SomeHacker44 9y ago
I also need the option to get rid of that horrific Touch Bar. My IDEs are nigh unusable with that thing, as using the stepping-debugger becomes a tactile-less nightmare.
danieldk 9y ago
Or a Mac Mini with upgradable memory and a relatively easily replacable hard disk or SSD (like the 2012 Mac Mini). The Mac Mini is what got me hooked to Macs, they were relatively easily upgradable, and you could bring your own keyboard, screen, etc. Now the line-up for developers is just 'meh'. 1500-2000 Euro buys you a baseline configuration that is weak (my ~5 year old Dell workstation that I bought second hand for ~400 Euro still has three times as much memory, and is twice as fast for multi core loads as my MacBook Pro). To get a reasonable developer machine, you have to drop 3000-4000 Euro and you get something that is unexpandable and still does not have modern CUDA-supporting GPU except for a still somewhat experimental eGPU setup. Apple is now a large consumer hardware company. Love letters to developers are a thing of a distant past. (This year is my 10 year Mac anniversary, but there is not much to be happy about, except for the still excellent software from the Mac ISV ecosystem.)

by chb 9y ago

Sheepsteak 9y ago

I remember hearing the lack of a 32GB option was due to the chipset or something.

acdha 9y ago
It was: 32GB required LPDDR4 memory but Skylake didn't support that. It sounds like that's dependent on shipping Cannon Lake which was originally slated for 2017 but has been pushed back to 2018.
mort96 9y ago
Even then, who chose the chipset?
- rsynnott 9y ago
  Intel. Currently, if you want to use low power RAM with an Intel mobile chip, you have to use LP-DDR3 in a config that maxes out at 16GB. You can also use non-LP DDR4 up to 32GB (Dell makes a laptop that does, for instance), but at that point you have a somewhat increased power draw when the system is running, and a _dramatically_ increased power draw on standby (IIRC about five times the power). Apple laptops have traditionally had excellent standby battery life; they're presumably not willing to sacrifice this. Upcoming Intel mobile chips will resolve this, allowing use of LP-DDR4.
  - mort96 9y ago
    I'm looking at this Intel CPU: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i7-processors/i7-7660u.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/... That claims to support up to 32GB memory, and it claims to support, among other things, LPDDR3-1866. Are you saying that if you want to use LPDDR3-1866 with that CPU, you're limited to only 16GB? I can't find anything about that through some quick googling, but if it's true, I retract my snarky comment.
    - rsynnott 9y ago
      Note "(dependent on memory type)". It can do LPDDR3, and it can do 32GB, but not both at once. You'll note that any laptops which do 32GB will list DDR4 RAM.
      - mort96 9y ago
        How about this beefier mobile CPU, which supports up to 64GB RAM? Maybe they'd have needed to make some of their pro laptops a bit less thin, but they are _Pro_ laptops after all. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i7-processors/i7-7920hq.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/... Also, I wish Intel would just list the maximum supported memory configuration for each memory type, instead of just having a worthless "(depending on memory type)".
- mschuster91 9y ago
  With the old chipset generation you had the choice between a low power chipset that could sport 16GB tops, or a desktop chipset that could do more - but also draw lots more power. Windows laptops often chose the latter, but Apple on the path to a 1mm thin MBP chose to sacrifice RAM for thinness and battery life.
lemoncucumber 9y ago
Yeah, the current Intel chipsets support DDR4 which can go beyond 16GB or LPDDR3 which is capped at 16GB (LP = low power). So Apple had the choice between a higher RAM ceiling or longer battery life, and they choses longer battery life. The forthcoming Cannon Lake chips will support LPDDR4, enabling MacBook Pros with a higher RAM ceiling without sacrificing power utilization.
kogepathic 9y ago
Lack of a 32GB option in the MacBook Pros is because Intel's memory controller cannot handle LPDDR4 (except in U SKUs, which Apple does not use for MacBook Pro), and Apple decided using regular DDR4 to reach 32GB would consume too much power. [1] Apparently Intel will fix this in their 2018 mobile SKUs, but until then Apple has chosen not to kneecap battery life or build a different logic board for the people who want 32GB. This situation has a lot of parallels for me to the situation they faced with IBM and the G5. Everyone at the time wanted the G5 in a laptop to replace the G4, but IBM couldn't get the power consumption down. Now over a decade later, Apple is taking shit for Intel's delays in supporting LPDDR4. I bet this is going to accelerate their plans to migrate Mac to their own ARM designs. [1] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/10/31/macbook-pros-lack-of-32gb-ram-option-could-also-be-blamed-on-intels-skylake-chips http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/10/31/macbook-pros-lack-of...
- yock 9y ago
  > This situation has a lot of parallels for me to the situation they faced with IBM and the G5. That's a great observation, and having witnessed the PowerPC -> Intel migration I'm disappointed I didn't make it myself. Both Motorola and IBM, who were supplying Power CPUs to Apple, sold off their microprocessor divisions after a litany of manufacturing difficulties. IIRC, that was what drove Apple to abandon PowerPC in the first place. It would be ironic if Intel, having benefitted so greatly from the manufacturing shortfalls of past competitors, would find itself in a similar situation.
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > It would be ironic if Intel, having benefitted so greatly from the manufacturing shortfalls of past competitors, would find itself in a similar situation. Intel is already in this position, though not because they sold off their fabs. All the money these days is going into mobile SoC manufacturing by the likes of TSMC and Samsung. Intel simply lost because Samsung and TSMC are able to outspend Intel on fab R&D and it's showing in Intel's numerous node shrink delays. People will argue that TSMC/Samsung 7/10nm is not the same as Intel, and probably they're right, but only at present. TSMC/Samsung are eventually going to surpass Intel's fab technology because they're killing it in volume manufacturing chips for Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, and others. Meanwhile Intel is fabbing for... Intel. Plus some Altera FPGA IP they don't seem to be integrating very well into their product stack. If Intel wants to survive the next 20 years the only option I see is that they start fabbing for other people too. ARM is moving into servers, and once the perf/watt surpasses Intel, it won't be long for the hyperscale cloud companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to migrate away from Intel. For those guys, a 10% TCO reduction is a big deal, and while some of the perf/watt is due to the design, a lot of it comes from having the better process. If Intel loses their process lead, which is happening right now, then they're going to be second tier. People will look back in 15 years at Intel snubbing Apple for the original iPhone SoC and mark that decision as the beginning of the end for Intel. From Paul Otellini, Intel CEO at the time: > At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/20/intel-smartphone-iphone-paul-otellini https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/20/intel-sma...

Swinx43 9y ago

I find it very hard to understand why they have not done this yet. I am even willing to sacrifice on the upgradability, since this is a sacrifice we have been making by default in recent years. But not being able to select a 32GB RAM option is just terrible. At the price of a Macbook Pro one can hardly argue that it is a office productivity tool since it is clearly aimed at the "Pro" market. If the situation does not change then it is going to force pro users to look at alternatives.

zitterbewegung 9y ago
Apple will not sell a laptop with lpddr4 . Everyone is putting laptops out there with ddr 4 instead which takes more power. (Note this was true when the Current refresh came out).
abakker 9y ago
Just give me an extra pound of RAM and Battery. I don't care about the "thinnest lightest MacBook pro ever". Making the pro laptop light and port-free is omphaloskeptic.
- roryisok 9y ago
  That's a hell of a good word

hugi 9y ago

Hallelujah. And a good keyboard.

SomeHacker44 9y ago

I also need the option to get rid of that horrific Touch Bar. My IDEs are nigh unusable with that thing, as using the stepping-debugger becomes a tactile-less nightmare.

danieldk 9y ago

Or a Mac Mini with upgradable memory and a relatively easily replacable hard disk or SSD (like the 2012 Mac Mini). The Mac Mini is what got me hooked to Macs, they were relatively easily upgradable, and you could bring your own keyboard, screen, etc. Now the line-up for developers is just 'meh'. 1500-2000 Euro buys you a baseline configuration that is weak (my ~5 year old Dell workstation that I bought second hand for ~400 Euro still has three times as much memory, and is twice as fast for multi core loads as my MacBook Pro). To get a reasonable developer machine, you have to drop 3000-4000 Euro and you get something that is unexpandable and still does not have modern CUDA-supporting GPU except for a still somewhat experimental eGPU setup. Apple is now a large consumer hardware company. Love letters to developers are a thing of a distant past. (This year is my 10 year Mac anniversary, but there is not much to be happy about, except for the still excellent software from the Mac ISV ecosystem.)