3 ms·

Honestly I buy this argument way more than any complaints about the touch bar. With my work my swap usage is 10-20GB at a time, between my IDE, app, tests, and

Honestly I buy this argument way more than any complaints about the touch bar. With my work my swap usage is 10-20GB at a time, between my IDE, app, tests, and browser tabs. 16GB is utterly painful but it’s the most you can buy.

kevingadd 9y ago
The CPU also isn't really up to par for pro use cases. I understand not putting a burly CPU and pile of RAM into the mid-high-tier laptop but developers and media people need something. Running parallel make on my brand new touch bar macbook is like 2-4x slower than doing it in a linux VM on my ~$1500 windows desktop from a year ago, to the point where I'd work more efficiently running remote desktop on a $200 chromebook.
- danieldk 9y ago
  Running parallel make on my brand new touch bar macbook is like 2-4x slower than doing it in a linux VM on my ~$1500 windows desktop from a year ago It's also more than two times slower on my 2013 Dell Precision Xeon workstation. But that comparison is not really fair, a MacBook Pro has to use a mobile CPU or it won't be able to dissipate the heat. Also, depending on ambient temperature, possible airflow, the MacBook's CPU probably throttles fairly early to prevent overheating. A desktop CPU can larger power envelopes, typically throttles less and most virtualization has gotten so good that for CPU-bound workloads the difference between running on bare hardware or on a VM is barely noticeable. to the point where I'd work more efficiently running remote desktop on a $200 chromebook. Maybe it depends on the field I am working in, but I can't really run stuff on any laptop or desktop unless it is a > 5000 Euro workstation with plenty of RAM, storage, and a beefy GPU. The value that the Mac platform provides for me are the many applications that Chromebooks/Linux don't have good substitutes for, such as OmniGraffle, Deckset, Things, Microsoft Office, Little Snitch, Pixelmator, Acorn, Lightroom, and Affinity Designer. So, it's not just an expensive terminal ;).
prepend 9y ago
I have one because of iOS development. The touch bar is stupid but ignored. The touchid is actually pretty awesome and using it for sudo is pretty convenient, especially when in a group setting where I’m nervous about people noticing keystrokes (eg, Corp hackathons and stuff). But the memory is noticeable. For general performance, but also for running lots of vms and stuff in different configurations. Still situations where its convenient to spin stuff up locally rather than cloud.

kevingadd 9y ago

The CPU also isn't really up to par for pro use cases. I understand not putting a burly CPU and pile of RAM into the mid-high-tier laptop but developers and media people need something. Running parallel make on my brand new touch bar macbook is like 2-4x slower than doing it in a linux VM on my ~$1500 windows desktop from a year ago, to the point where I'd work more efficiently running remote desktop on a $200 chromebook.

danieldk 9y ago
Running parallel make on my brand new touch bar macbook is like 2-4x slower than doing it in a linux VM on my ~$1500 windows desktop from a year ago It's also more than two times slower on my 2013 Dell Precision Xeon workstation. But that comparison is not really fair, a MacBook Pro has to use a mobile CPU or it won't be able to dissipate the heat. Also, depending on ambient temperature, possible airflow, the MacBook's CPU probably throttles fairly early to prevent overheating. A desktop CPU can larger power envelopes, typically throttles less and most virtualization has gotten so good that for CPU-bound workloads the difference between running on bare hardware or on a VM is barely noticeable. to the point where I'd work more efficiently running remote desktop on a $200 chromebook. Maybe it depends on the field I am working in, but I can't really run stuff on any laptop or desktop unless it is a > 5000 Euro workstation with plenty of RAM, storage, and a beefy GPU. The value that the Mac platform provides for me are the many applications that Chromebooks/Linux don't have good substitutes for, such as OmniGraffle, Deckset, Things, Microsoft Office, Little Snitch, Pixelmator, Acorn, Lightroom, and Affinity Designer. So, it's not just an expensive terminal ;).

prepend 9y ago

I have one because of iOS development. The touch bar is stupid but ignored. The touchid is actually pretty awesome and using it for sudo is pretty convenient, especially when in a group setting where I’m nervous about people noticing keystrokes (eg, Corp hackathons and stuff). But the memory is noticeable. For general performance, but also for running lots of vms and stuff in different configurations. Still situations where its convenient to spin stuff up locally rather than cloud.