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By comparison with high-end mobile workstations, it's a toy. A maxed out Macbook Pro has 16GB of non-upgradeable, non-ECC RAM and a GPU with 4GB of vRAM and a

By comparison with high-end mobile workstations, it's a toy. A maxed out Macbook Pro has 16GB of non-upgradeable, non-ECC RAM and a GPU with 4GB of vRAM and a Passmark score of 3,553. Lenovo will sell me a machine with 64GB of socketed ECC RAM and a Quadro P5000 with 16GB of vRAM and a Passmark score of 10,281. The Macbook Pro doesn't have built-in LTE. It has a non-removable battery. It throttles badly under sustained loads. It has chronic issues with display calibration. If you want a useful selection of ports, you'll need a bag full of fragile and easy to lose dongles. They've only just rolled out eGPU support and there's still no official support for Nvidia GPUs. There's no 17" option. It has that damnable butterfly keyboard. Yes, the Macbook Pro is very thin and lightweight, but Apple have made a lot of performance and usability tradeoffs to get there. That doesn't sound very "pro" to me.

BoorishBears 9y ago
I don’t get it. Apple doesn’t make a mobile workstation. They make a Pro version of the MacBook. Take a MacBook, give it some more power, and you mostly have a MacBook Pro. If the complaint is why doesn’t Apple make a high-end mobile workstation I'm guessing because the market isn’t there for it? At least not at the scale for Apple to touch it? A lot of professionals end up being serviced just fine by a “Pro MacBook”. I don’t get this obsession with acting like Apple is doing something wrong by making the MacBook Pro a pro version of the MacBook instead of something like a Dell Precision, they’re two very different things with two very different markets.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  OSX is a closed platform. If you're an FCPX or Logic Pro user, you're totally reliant on Apple's hardware offerings. If Apple don't sell the hardware that you need to do your job, then you have the choice between switching over completely to Windows (not a straightforward task) or tolerating the least-worst option from Apple's lineup. If Apple honestly say "we couldn't care less about professional users, we're making money hand over fist anyway", then at least we all know where we stand. Apple haven't taken that approach - they keep making grand overtures about how much they care about professional users. They keep making grand promises about how the perfect professional machine is just around the corner, how they're not updating the current machine because the next big thing is so incredible, amazing, awesome. There are a lot of very loyal Mac users who have kept Apple in business through thick and thin, but their patience has been tested to breaking point. Those users have been a key part of Apple's marketing; Apple make computers for dreamers, visionaries, artists, the cultural elite. I don't know anyone who is genuinely happy about being a Mac user, but I know a lot of people who grimly tolerate giving Apple their money. They know what to expect from next year's Macs - they'll be thinner, lighter and subtly worse in a lot of important ways. What happens to the Mac brand if those users leave? What happens if the resentment felt towards Apple by photographers, video editors, 3D artists and recording engineers turns into a full-scale revolt? What happens if owning a Mac marks you out not as a sophisticated member of the cultural elite, but a nerd who wants a slick *nix experience or a sucker who paid $2000 for a Facebook machine? Apple are playing a dangerous game. Apple don't need to care at the moment because the iPhone is so gratuitously profitable, but they should know better than anyone that the market is incredibly fickle. They're burning decades of goodwill for no obvious reason. It wouldn't be particularly expensive to make the majority of pro users happy. Bring back the old cheesegrater Mac Pro and stuff it with the latest commodity components. Bring back a previous-generation MBP chassis and fill the extra space with an i9 or a Xeon E3, four SODIMM slots and a GTX 1070 Max Q or a Quadro P5000. They don't have to promote these machines, they don't have to display them in Apple stores if they're ashamed of making a functional computer, they just need to make them and promise to keep making them to secure the continued loyalty of their most loyal customers. Apple won't do it, for reasons known only to them. In the long term, that could prove to be a very expensive oversight.
  - JimmyAustin 9y ago
    Honestly they should consider bringing back the clone program. HP/Dell can sell me a workstation that runs OSX, that they update on their schedule, and I'll be happy. I don't want it pretty, I just want it functional.
- ethagknight 9y ago
  While I agree with you, I spec'd out the Lenovo that the above commenter was referencing costs $5500 with all the "discounts" tossed in. MacBook Pro tops out at $3000 (without going crazy on SSD). I understand that the market for people wanting to spend over $3k on a laptop may be thin, it seems quite easy to just give someone the option to spend $5k on a Macbook Pro if they just have to have it. Why exclude the option?
  - BoorishBears 9y ago
    Form factor? Could a MBP in its current form factor actually fit all that?
    - IOT_Apprentice 9y ago
      The form factor is one of the issues with the current design. Or simply add a third product line: MacBook Workstation. Thicker for a larger battery, cooling and higher end CPU/GPU and moar RAM. Xeon class processors as an option.
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  There used to be a 17" MacBook Pro. Last one came out in 2009. It was a bit of a beast to carry around, but not prohibitively so. It was .98 inches thick and weighed 6.6 pounds. The current 15" MacBook Pro is .61 inches and weighs 4.02 pounds. So not a huge difference. I commuted on the bus and subway with a 17" pro with only minor discomfort. It had gigabit ethernet, FW800, three USB ports, 1 thunderbolt port, ExpressCard/34 slot, audio in, audio out. With the exact same form factor and updated ports, Apple could offer a hell of a Pro Macbook Pro. Just give it a 4k screen and an option for a second SSD in the space formerly used by a DVD drive.

BoorishBears 9y ago

I don’t get it. Apple doesn’t make a mobile workstation. They make a Pro version of the MacBook. Take a MacBook, give it some more power, and you mostly have a MacBook Pro. If the complaint is why doesn’t Apple make a high-end mobile workstation I'm guessing because the market isn’t there for it? At least not at the scale for Apple to touch it? A lot of professionals end up being serviced just fine by a “Pro MacBook”. I don’t get this obsession with acting like Apple is doing something wrong by making the MacBook Pro a pro version of the MacBook instead of something like a Dell Precision, they’re two very different things with two very different markets.

jdietrich 9y ago
OSX is a closed platform. If you're an FCPX or Logic Pro user, you're totally reliant on Apple's hardware offerings. If Apple don't sell the hardware that you need to do your job, then you have the choice between switching over completely to Windows (not a straightforward task) or tolerating the least-worst option from Apple's lineup. If Apple honestly say "we couldn't care less about professional users, we're making money hand over fist anyway", then at least we all know where we stand. Apple haven't taken that approach - they keep making grand overtures about how much they care about professional users. They keep making grand promises about how the perfect professional machine is just around the corner, how they're not updating the current machine because the next big thing is so incredible, amazing, awesome. There are a lot of very loyal Mac users who have kept Apple in business through thick and thin, but their patience has been tested to breaking point. Those users have been a key part of Apple's marketing; Apple make computers for dreamers, visionaries, artists, the cultural elite. I don't know anyone who is genuinely happy about being a Mac user, but I know a lot of people who grimly tolerate giving Apple their money. They know what to expect from next year's Macs - they'll be thinner, lighter and subtly worse in a lot of important ways. What happens to the Mac brand if those users leave? What happens if the resentment felt towards Apple by photographers, video editors, 3D artists and recording engineers turns into a full-scale revolt? What happens if owning a Mac marks you out not as a sophisticated member of the cultural elite, but a nerd who wants a slick *nix experience or a sucker who paid $2000 for a Facebook machine? Apple are playing a dangerous game. Apple don't need to care at the moment because the iPhone is so gratuitously profitable, but they should know better than anyone that the market is incredibly fickle. They're burning decades of goodwill for no obvious reason. It wouldn't be particularly expensive to make the majority of pro users happy. Bring back the old cheesegrater Mac Pro and stuff it with the latest commodity components. Bring back a previous-generation MBP chassis and fill the extra space with an i9 or a Xeon E3, four SODIMM slots and a GTX 1070 Max Q or a Quadro P5000. They don't have to promote these machines, they don't have to display them in Apple stores if they're ashamed of making a functional computer, they just need to make them and promise to keep making them to secure the continued loyalty of their most loyal customers. Apple won't do it, for reasons known only to them. In the long term, that could prove to be a very expensive oversight.
- JimmyAustin 9y ago
  Honestly they should consider bringing back the clone program. HP/Dell can sell me a workstation that runs OSX, that they update on their schedule, and I'll be happy. I don't want it pretty, I just want it functional.
ethagknight 9y ago
While I agree with you, I spec'd out the Lenovo that the above commenter was referencing costs $5500 with all the "discounts" tossed in. MacBook Pro tops out at $3000 (without going crazy on SSD). I understand that the market for people wanting to spend over $3k on a laptop may be thin, it seems quite easy to just give someone the option to spend $5k on a Macbook Pro if they just have to have it. Why exclude the option?
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  Form factor? Could a MBP in its current form factor actually fit all that?
  - IOT_Apprentice 9y ago
    The form factor is one of the issues with the current design. Or simply add a third product line: MacBook Workstation. Thicker for a larger battery, cooling and higher end CPU/GPU and moar RAM. Xeon class processors as an option.
jonhendry18 9y ago
There used to be a 17" MacBook Pro. Last one came out in 2009. It was a bit of a beast to carry around, but not prohibitively so. It was .98 inches thick and weighed 6.6 pounds. The current 15" MacBook Pro is .61 inches and weighs 4.02 pounds. So not a huge difference. I commuted on the bus and subway with a 17" pro with only minor discomfort. It had gigabit ethernet, FW800, three USB ports, 1 thunderbolt port, ExpressCard/34 slot, audio in, audio out. With the exact same form factor and updated ports, Apple could offer a hell of a Pro Macbook Pro. Just give it a 4k screen and an option for a second SSD in the space formerly used by a DVD drive.