3 ms·

But what about battery life?

by caiob 8y ago

slantyyz 8y ago
If you're the type of user who actually needs 128GB of RAM in a laptop, you're generally willing to make the trade-off on battery life.
cimmanom 8y ago
Sarcasm? I'd take a MacBook Pro a pound heavier and several mm thicker in order to have more RAM. I'd also gladly accept 5 hours of battery instead of 10 (or 2 instead of 4) when 95% of the reason I want a laptop instead of a desktop is not to unplug entirely but to shuttle it between home, work, the coffee shop, my desk, the couch, etc. It used to be that enough of Apple's customers were using their computers for workstation-class workloads (photo and video editing, software compilation, data processing) that there was good reason to provide us a workstation-class portable, not just a notebook-class ultra-light (which even the MBP counts as by my standards). You'd think that now that Apple is making such inroads in enterprise and needs developers on their platform to support the iOS App Store that they'd see the value in continuing to make such a machine available.
- slantyyz 8y ago
  > I'd take a MacBook Pro a pound heavier and several mm thicker in order to have more RAM. So basically, an old unibody Macbook Pro could achieve that. Even though I left Mac, that unibody design is probably my favorite laptop form factor ever. It balanced size and functionality (and end user expandability) perfectly. The only time you needed a dongle was if you were going to hook it up to an HDMI/DVI/VGA monitor. Otherwise everything was self contained.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Yup. Too bad a 2012 MBP won't support 32GB. Also, the latest generation of MBPs is thinner and lighter than the original retina display versions. You might be able to get passable battery life with the higher-energy-consumption chipset that apparently is necessary for >16GB if they just went back up to the old retina form factor.
- caiob 8y ago
  No sarcasm. I'm genuinely curious about it. You gotta admit that most customers would take the former over the latter though. Less than 1% of their user-base needs a laptop with 128+GB of RAM.
  - slantyyz 8y ago
    The problem is the product lines are muddy now. "Pro" on the laptop line no longer has the same meaning as "Pro" on the desktop line. It used to mean "workstation class" on both lines. "Workstation class" meant that you had more upgradeability and performance options. "Pro" as it relates to Macbooks simply means "premium". There's nothing wrong with premium, the Macbook Pros are still very performant, but you're going to lose the people who put high value on what "Pro" used to mean for Apple laptops. If you look at Dell, Lenovo and others, they offer "workstation" class laptops for their "pro" markets. They're not the highest volume sellers, but they don't alienate any of those users by forcing them to switch to their "premium" business laptops.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Very few of us need 128, but a whole bunch of us either need 32 now or expect anything less than 32 to be completely insufficient well within the expected lifetime of a laptop purchased in 2018.

But what about battery life?

by caiob 8y ago

But what about battery life?

If you're the type of user who actually needs 128GB of RAM in a laptop, you're generally willing to make the trade-off on battery life.

cimmanom 8y ago

Sarcasm? I'd take a MacBook Pro a pound heavier and several mm thicker in order to have more RAM. I'd also gladly accept 5 hours of battery instead of 10 (or 2 instead of 4) when 95% of the reason I want a laptop instead of a desktop is not to unplug entirely but to shuttle it between home, work, the coffee shop, my desk, the couch, etc. It used to be that enough of Apple's customers were using their computers for workstation-class workloads (photo and video editing, software compilation, data processing) that there was good reason to provide us a workstation-class portable, not just a notebook-class ultra-light (which even the MBP counts as by my standards). You'd think that now that Apple is making such inroads in enterprise and needs developers on their platform to support the iOS App Store that they'd see the value in continuing to make such a machine available.

slantyyz 8y ago
> I'd take a MacBook Pro a pound heavier and several mm thicker in order to have more RAM. So basically, an old unibody Macbook Pro could achieve that. Even though I left Mac, that unibody design is probably my favorite laptop form factor ever. It balanced size and functionality (and end user expandability) perfectly. The only time you needed a dongle was if you were going to hook it up to an HDMI/DVI/VGA monitor. Otherwise everything was self contained.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Yup. Too bad a 2012 MBP won't support 32GB. Also, the latest generation of MBPs is thinner and lighter than the original retina display versions. You might be able to get passable battery life with the higher-energy-consumption chipset that apparently is necessary for >16GB if they just went back up to the old retina form factor.
caiob 8y ago
No sarcasm. I'm genuinely curious about it. You gotta admit that most customers would take the former over the latter though. Less than 1% of their user-base needs a laptop with 128+GB of RAM.
- slantyyz 8y ago
  The problem is the product lines are muddy now. "Pro" on the laptop line no longer has the same meaning as "Pro" on the desktop line. It used to mean "workstation class" on both lines. "Workstation class" meant that you had more upgradeability and performance options. "Pro" as it relates to Macbooks simply means "premium". There's nothing wrong with premium, the Macbook Pros are still very performant, but you're going to lose the people who put high value on what "Pro" used to mean for Apple laptops. If you look at Dell, Lenovo and others, they offer "workstation" class laptops for their "pro" markets. They're not the highest volume sellers, but they don't alienate any of those users by forcing them to switch to their "premium" business laptops.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Very few of us need 128, but a whole bunch of us either need 32 now or expect anything less than 32 to be completely insufficient well within the expected lifetime of a laptop purchased in 2018.