Apple Said to Plan First Pro Laptop Overhaul in Years
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Better graphics may be nice, if it's enough to allow me to drive a pair of high-resolution displays in addition to the laptop's screen itself. I'm not hopeful, though, due to the power and heat requirements.
As for thinner, at what cost? Battery life? Active cooling? A nasty keyboard like those in the new macbook? Losing even more ports?
Here's what I want in a MBP refresh: More power. Enough battery life to allow me on a hangout all day long; or at least enough battery life that I can have Chrome running and still be able to code all day long. A strong enough graphics card to smoothly drive a pair of 4k monitors in addition to the internal monitor. No loss of existing ports. More CPU power for compiling code. A touch screen.
That seems like an odd addition to the list.
Also: Please don't ever, ever touch my laptop's screen.
You could easily see my swipe or pin pattern from prints and smudges, even from one use, which never happened with actual keys.
Same kind of people leave the plastic wrap around their remote controls (or worse, car seats).
The Surface is plugged into a dock for all my heavy work, so I'm not using the screen anyway. If I am using it as a laptop for more internet-browsing related work, the touchscreen is so useful that I don't need a mouse.
I'm pretty sure they're still in the modern MacBooks, though Google seems to be mixed on the matter.
It's a minor wish, but a worthwhile addition, IMO.
No indication that the main display is going to be touch-enabled, at least not that I can see.
We had a post about "we want a modern macbook" and your post was my post.
As you I want a PRO version as in quad core, better graphics gazzillion of ports and cooling solution to keep everything running smoothly.
But I think the PRO update will be inclined toward flashiness.
I strongly believe we only have incremental updates to the pc as we know it.
I have an ASUS ROG and it has a pair of HUGE fan vents on the back, that's the only way of keeping power running.
Let's see what happens.
All I want is a modern IBM T42 or T61 with a 14" screen. I don't care if it is ugly, big or weighs a ton. The only thing I care about is a good keyboard, a robust chassis and the fact that I can rebuild the whole thing with just a screwdriver.
I'm in love with the magnesium industrial construction and as you mention the keyboard.
In fact the keyboard is the thing that would prevent me from upgrading to a newer thinkpad.
As for opening and maintaining the elitebook 2560 with it tool-less chassis is an option as well as possessing the eraser head option and good keyboard.
I also much prefer Apple's trackpad, thinness, screen, and battery life compared to my old IBM's.
Ditto.
It isn't very mobile but holy heck is it an incredible developer machine. You really hear the huge cooling fans kick in when you hit compile on a large project.
So you want one of these PC "desktop replacement" laptops, which weight in the tons, and have desktop-class hardware.
That's not what the MBP's are about though.
"So you want one of these PC "desktop replacement" laptops, which weight in the tons, and have desktop-class hardware."
All Mac laptops are supposed to be thin, weight little and generally make the right compromises for portability.
The "Pro" line is also expected to have the most powerful graphics and cpu of the whole line, but still under the above restrictions. And they're supposed to only stay the same or go down (in weight/thinness) not have regressions to fit some desktop-class CPU.
So it's not like Apple says "we have the Air and Macbook to cover thin and lightweight, so now we can pig it out with the Pro's".
That has been their philosophy and design thinking from the start, and that's how they've sold all those million units.
Shouldn't that be an action for Google rather than Apple? Of late, I've found Google's applications to be big battery hogs - Chrome and Google Drive for example (on OS X)
As developers, we use CPU for work, and we use it hard. A battery in a "pro" laptop should support that need.
Also, programs like IntelliJ do have low power mode, which does help significantly in my experience.
I don't want reason to look at the keyboard. I type faster when I keep eyes on screen. Responsive OLED display might be useful if on the bezel either side of the Macbook Pro logo, but it's really just more screen acreage there.
Pro should be more of a powerhouse, with a decent keyboard I can actually type on for hours rather than minimalist chiclet keys with no travel. Enough that I can be encoding a movie, or compiling a big code base without it threatening to catch fire. Let me have a decent all day workload, not just email, editing and browsing.
More power, more ports, 1/8" thicker if it gives me an all day workstation with better graphics and CPU horsepower. definitely no touchscreen for me though. Something more like a Thinkpad W series without the 2" thick brick effect.
What I don't want is a bigger Macbook Air with pointless keyboard gimmick.
That would also need a shopping cart to carry it around, and oven mittens to touch it.
For several reasons which are obvious to me.
1) You can of course leave the soft keys as the current function keys are -- and retain the "muscle memory", with losing nothing at all.
2) You can tune them to a specific app (e.g. Logic, Cubase, Premiere, Photoshop) and get a second (or third, etc) app-specific set of muscle memory for its shortcuts. People pay $50 or even $200 for custom app-related controllers for such apps, with buttons mapped to "transport controls" etc.
I guess you don't suddenly lose your muscle memory when you press "SHIFT" and the number row becomes a different row (e.g. 3=>#, 4=>$ etc). So you shouldn't lose it with 2 or even 3 or more sets of soft keys to change depending on context.
3) You can even get behaviours that aren't possible with actual keys -- e.g. have the soft panel display a volume bar you drag on.
4) You can show information that's not related to keys -- e.g. the current cpu temp, new emails, notifications, "batch jobs completed" etc. Which could far more useful that "change brightness" that one does how often? Twice a day at most?
>Here's what I want in a MBP refresh: More power. Enough battery life to allow me on a hangout all day long; or at least enough battery life that I can have Chrome running and still be able to code all day long. A strong enough graphics card to smoothly drive a pair of 4k monitors in addition to the internal monitor. No loss of existing ports. More CPU power for compiling code. A touch screen.
Except the loss of ports, the others are not doable without ending up with a hotter and bigger machine, and some work against each other (better cpu + graphics VS better battery life). If they used a more powerful Intel CPU it would eat into the battery life, and same for graphics card -- especially when it would be driving "a pair of 4K + the internal monitor".
In other words you want a desktop class workstation -- which would translate to something like a 4kg "laptop" -- and then you (or others) will complain that it's weighty, it gets too hot, etc (and nobody will buy it, except the kind of people who want the latest nvidia power card + pair of 4K monitors, that is, outliers).
Lastly, even the touch screen doesn't make much sense without a detachable screen for ergonomic reasons. 5 minutes with your hand raised and it's off to the doctor for some painkillers. If they'd ever do it, they'd need something like the Surface Book's turnaround scheme, which would probably sacrifice sturdiness.
The position of the key moves, the haptic feedback changes (even with fine-tuned vibrations, the lack of a physical edge to a key makes a noticeable difference), and requires that the functionality of the keys be completely configurable - something I personally find unlikely given the current trend of Apple products.
> People pay $50 or even $200 for custom app-related controllers for such apps, with buttons mapped to "transport controls" etc.
And they frequently have very specific form factors to match their controls. Very few are flat slates with graphics on them (excepting graphic tablets, which are emulating paper).
> You can even get behaviours that aren't possible with actual keys
Which assumes that we want functionality which is not possible with physical keys.
> Which could far more useful that "change brightness" that one does how often? Twice a day at most?
I have the function keys mapped to shortcuts in my text editor, so those keys get used rather frequently, actually.
> the others are not doable without ending up with a hotter and bigger machine
Bigger, up to a point, is fine by me. I'm not asking for an alienware gaming laptop, just a laptop fit for a developer.
> which would translate to something like a 4kg "laptop"
Aside from being condescending, this comment is also inaccurate. I'm not looking to do 4k gaming, I'm not looking to mine bitcoins; all I want to do is develop software while using collaboration tools and not have to worry about my battery when I'm off power, or a 10hz refresh rate on external monitors when I'm on power. Doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation for a laptop aimed at professionals.
> Lastly, even the touch screen doesn't make much sense without a detachable screen for ergonomic reasons
I'm not asking for the removal of a touchpad, just the addition of a touch screen.
This has been true for function keys over several generations of Mac laptops/keyboards. Rarely they were kept in the same exact position for more than 2 years or so. So nothing new about the strip in this regard (if anything, it might give people the ability to have them where they are used to).
>and requires that the functionality of the keys be completely configurable - something I personally find unlikely given the current trend of Apple products.
That's kind of the whole point of having soft keys though. And I don't see this trend of Apple removing Mac OS configurability really, except if we talk about things like adding security sandboxes and checks (which is done for a reason: security).
>And they frequently have very specific form factors to match their controls. Very few are flat slates with graphics on them
Some though are basically just that. The lemur was just a touch screen for example and there are other strip like models of the same thing. Others are just sets of unmarked keys, for you to decide what each does, etc, but all identical otherwise (for which an OLED strip would be an improvement). Those things are popular in the electronic music production world (which I participate in). As are mere overlay stickers for the keyboard.
>I'm not asking for an alienware gaming laptop, just a laptop fit for a developer.
Developers usually have meagre CPU needs -- especially the majority which are people like web developers (and most C developers I know too). Heck, Linus Torvalds made do with the old MB Air (with Linux) and now a Chromebook, again hardly the most capable box.
The only exception would be for running multiple VMs, but while there might be legitimate reasons for running > 1 VM or needing more CPU power in general than what a quad i7 (as in in the MBPr 15") offers -- but I doubt those reasons are there for a large market.
>all I want to do is develop software while using collaboration tools and not have to worry about my battery when I'm off power
While larger battery life is always good, is there a large enough market of people who develop all day unplugged and need more than 5-6 hours of battery (which MBPs can do)? Enough to justify making a bulkier case for a bigger battery?
>I'm not asking for the removal of a touchpad, just the addition of a touch screen.
My argument wasn't addressing the removal of the touchpad, but the utility of having a touch-screen in the first place. If it's of marginal utility (without, as I wrote, a detachable screen), why have it?
I'm guessing it's a lost cause, their ideas aligned with mine for a short window and then they decided to turn it into a gadget rather than a user serviceable computer.
Intel laptop line of CPUs only accept 16gb [1], so there's no reason to no max it out from the start if you need it, really. The battery, unless you are confortable with buying chinese parts, you should only be buying a replacement for Apple, so I don't see the problem with having them replace it for you. Granted, this is easier having Apple stores close by.
And SSD hardly ever fail, compared to old HDDs at least, so unless you want to increase capacity, there in't much need to compared with before, and Apple gives you the option to buy the biggest SSD you can put in there from the beginning.
Edit: [1] I believe since Skylake, they support more than 16gb! I thought that was only with the new Xeons for laptops.
I agree about the "if you need it really" part. But otherwise, I can think of a couple of reasons to get a smaller SSD initially and upgrade later. Firstly, storage needs usually grow with time, and hence a smaller SSD may be enough to start with (though in 2016 the majority of people cannot afford to store all their stuff on SSDs). Secondly, and this is related to the first one, the cost of a larger SSD (as with most hardware) would drop over time, allowing one to not spend a lot upfront and instead use a lot less of 'future money' to upgrade to one's needs.
Of course, Apple's SSD prices have always been quite high compared to third party replacements, and that makes this "upgrade as you go" scheme more worthwhile monetarily.
For those who use these machines as "it pays for itself" kind of work, it may be worth it. For most others though, the flexibility of being able to upgrade the SSD or RAM make a big difference on the expense, the experience and lastly, the amount of e-waste generated.
It's a pity, but I can't justify spending that sort of money on a professional tool that feels more like it was designed for the consumer market.
I wish they would make the Pro user serviceable like the comparable T/X/P series Thinkpads.
I bought a 2012 MBP last year because I wanted the ability to swap out its guts at will. I doubt this new version will have that capability.
(E.g. ThinkPads used to have a fame of great programmers' laptops and now they became quite less of that... the very same could easily happen to MBPs as well.)
The SSD is swappable (buying one can be a challenge, plus they're more expensive than other SSD's)
Before you mention laptops from Lenovo and the like, running Linux, please consider that I have been using Linux since 1994 (that's pre-1.0), and that I switched to mostly Mac sometime around 2006. And I've just installed a fresh Ubuntu on a PC right next to me. So I do know what that option is like. And it isn't even close.
I wish there was a strong competitor to Apple.
Add being the only manufacturer (and software company—actually that part's probably more important) that gives even half a damn about battery life, and getting something unixy without the pain of Linux (also a long-time Linux user, so yeah, I know how it is), and my not caring about more than Intel graphics (discrete graphics in a laptop: always a mistake in my experience) and anything remotely close costs just as much anyway, so I'll just go with Apple. Competition would be great, but there's just... none.
The thin strip vent below the LCD simply isn't large enough and the fans not powerful enough to cool a Radeon R9 M370X and the i7.
And, sure, they can direct some of that excess heat to the aluminium body, but that hasn't been effective up until now so I struggle to see why it would start being effective in the future.
I already carry it in a backpack with other things; I'm not interested in shaving ounces at the expense of power.
A friend of mine has a Yoga 900 and that thing is just perfect for a light workload at home or on the road.
But for a more intense workload I'd personally rather have a beefy and bulletproof IBM-style laptop which I can rebuild on my own with a screwdriver and cheap parts from ebay.
People like your friend have the Air and the new MacBook. Let us workers have a powerful machine!
And yes, it's a matter of what you're using it for, but to me this noise was similar to an ugly sticker saying "Not for regular and prolonged use under high load"
Huge disappointment. MacBook Pro used to have NVIDIA GPUs and was an excellent CUDA development environment. They switched to AMD around 2012. I suspect the change was more business related than technical.
The RX480 (Polaris) trades blows with the GTX1060 (Pascal) performance-wise, but the 1060 uses about 30% less power at load:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1060/...
According to Guru3D the two cards perform almost identically in Ashes of the Singularity and Total War: Warhammer, both AMD-sponsored DX12 games.
And whether Doom 4 is an outlier or just an example of the difference between Vulkan and DX12 is yet to be determined.
My conjecture is that the big difference between Vulkan and DX12 is that nVidia has put more of it's driver engineering magic into DX12 than it has into Vulkan.
Metal won't have that nVidia driver engineering magic, so I believe that DOOM4 is the best benchmark we have of performance and power consumption for Metal. But one benchmark can be misleading for a wide variety of reasons.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-nvidia...
And conversely, the developers of Doom said their async path is currently only tuned for GCN and will be enabled on Pascal in a future patch.
We've seen from 3DMark Time Spy that Pascal does benefit from async compute, so there's performance being left on the table there.
I recognize that a lot of people want CUDA instead, but OpenCL support is superior on AMD cards.
AFAIK their OpenCL debugging/profiling tools are still terrible compared to CUDA or AMDs OpenCL though.
NVidia supports 1.2. AMD supports 2.0. Same concept, but I got the numbers all jumbled up. I'll edit the above post for the correct numbers.
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/OpenCL2-Drive...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29219307/opencl-2-0-on-nv...
(Hard to "prove a not", so I'll just leave the Stackoverflow page here)
But this time around Apple is writing their own software (Metal). So this time around it's not surprising that Apple doesn't want to pay more for superior software if it's not going to use the software. It sucks for CUDA users, but Apple doesn't care about you.
I'd like to see a complete and modern revamp of the entire Mac lineup, but it looks like Apple, with a lot of money (even considering the U.S. alone), is not capable of focusing on Macs anymore. Or more likely, Apple decided that the sales of Macs wasn't worth spending more on them, while all along requiring app developers for all its platforms (macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS) to necessarily build their apps on Macs.
It would be nice to get all the Macs being actively improved, but the Buyer's Guide on Macrumors doesn't give much hope. :(
I am not the typical user since I do much of my development and long calculations on beefed up remote servers.
I am almost to the point of being able to use a tablet when I only need one SSH shell and a Chromebook when I need many shells open and visible reference material on the screen. My 1080p Chromebook and my iPad Pro are so useful for getting stuff done that I may never buy a conventional laptop again (I have 3 very functional Linux laptops, which should be sufficient for years).
Sure, it's not as fast, but I can run and use Photoshop, Pixelmator, Acorn, GarageBand, Logic, Xcode, Final Cut, and many other apps just fine, along with League of Legends and most other games that the GPU can handle (though it can't handle many and often warns about heating up), while multitasking and plugged into a secondary 1920x1080 screen. It's actually amazing for an entire PC that doesn't even have any fans (as in active cooling.)
I honestly can't see how anyone fails to understand that this is an ultraportable whose use-case is clearly people that travel a lot and prefer to carry around as little as possible.
If you need a beefy CPU/GPU this is not for you. If you need a gajillion ports this is not for you. Why insist on getting something that isn't for you and then complaining about it?
The MacBook Air is "superior" in two objective specs: speed & price. That's honestly it, and it's not even that much faster. It also has more ports & a more traditional keyboard/trackpad, but those are subjective differences.
The two people I know with them can barely tell the difference between the Air keyboard and their MacBook keyboard, didn't realize the Force Touch trackpad wasn't a physical click, and only ever plug their computer into a charger or a projector which required an adapter on the Air anyways.
The MacBook blows the Air out of the water in every other way. Design, weight, thickness it's not even a contest. The screen is orders of magnitude better. Battery life is better, sleep/wake response is better, power draw is lower, charging is faster.
The plus for the MacBook is that it doesn't occur all that often.
However, while Safari always runs a lot better even with a lot more tabs, Firefox on my 1st-gen MacBook definitely doesn't take a whole 5 seconds to start. Could there be some resident third-party crap running in the background on yours?
On top of my wishlist are:
- 32 GB (or more) memory
- Better battery life / supported external battery packs
- Multitude of ports (add USB-C but keep some "legacy" around as well)Agreed…Apple don't provide a simple toggle, thankfully there's a free third-party widget for this (called "FunctionFlip").
Ctrl-F!
I also still use the old "Dashboard" overlay (using the FunctionFlip widget to remap the F4 key to how it used to behave prior to Yosemite), and Exposé.
Part of me doesn't want to see these keys taken away, made context-sensitive, or made 'flat' and losing the haptic feedback.
Another part of me wonders if this is just the standard resistance-to-change behaviour, and I might discover all sorts of good uses for the feature.
Loss of haptic feedback would be a big negative, but two years ago Apple patented a virtual keyboard with haptic feedback on individual keys: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/03/19/apple-patent-mac-key...
Perhaps its time has come?
Beyond not removing the ESC key, I want 32-64 GB RAM, a 2TB drive option (or more), and no more weight.
Luckily, usb-c has usb2 pins right in the middle of it, so I don't see it taking longer than a decade.
I realize this entirely personal, but as long as Apple keeps ignoring heat in hand areas, I'll keep doing my programming on something else.
I've been waiting for Apple to make this change for years. It's seems only logically as it is their processor, in their ecosystem.
(Not to mention Apple's departure from any sort of replaceable hardware components)
- 4x USB-C - Minijack
So I would assume apple goes hard for 4 multi-purpose USB-C instead.
http://phandroid.com/2016/02/02/usb-type-c-incident/
Apple's prices are a lot to pay for a passive component. But chances are that they'll do it right.
I personally will look at cheap and reliable testers (http://phandroid.com/2015/11/04/best-usb-type-c-cables/) and buy those.
I'm hoping they also use the secure element to implement SecureBoot of only signed software. Ideally this could be disabled like in a Chromebook
I hope this is a hoax.
/s
I don't understand why people fail to understand that thinner, lighter and better looking are things that millions of people want. If that's not you, you seriously couldn't have more options available.
But yeah, my next machine purchase will not be an Apple. If I need OSX support, I'll look at the current Hackintosh install lists and go VM.
It is a business decision, not a design decision to not allow you to open up your laptop. Indeed they think your are sad when using a 5 y/o laptop, but my 5 y/o mbp has a fast 1TB ssd and 16 GB's of ram even though those were not available at the time (the corei7 CPU it came with is still very fast as well).
And those "more" options do not include osX powered machines anymore.
A decade ago, you wanted to upgrade RAM because standard RAM sizes were growing and RAM was rapidly getting cheaper. Nowadays, if a device needs e.g. 16gb ram, then that same device category needed 16gb ram a few years ago and could have been bought back then with that RAM.
TouchID isn't just a reimplementation, it's a massive technological improvement that elevates consumer fingerprint readers from gimmicky afterthoughts to a core part of UX.
"PC laptops had it and it never took off" is a horrible metric to judge anything. If the technology and implementation is trash, then of course it's not going to take off. That's why being first to do anything is a meaningless milestone. Be first to do it well, and you might as well have invented it.
Literally all I want for my pro work is CUDA calculation....
Consumers use wireless. A dongle is a good choice for them since they won't likely use ethernet. Here Dongle Driven Development™ is the proper methodology.