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Comment by vegabook | Hacker News Reader

No 32gb? Is this true? Someone please tell me that's not true.

I was (against all odds), hoping for 64! If this is true, consider me disgusted. I had 16GB in my (long lost, loved) 17-inch Macbook Pro, in 2009! I really cannot fathom what this company is thinking. I'm bewildered, disappointed, angry, in equal measure. I've been waiting for a killer Macbook Pro for literally 18 months! Sorry. I'm going Lenovo/Dell or why not, Surface Studio. For the first time in 20 years. I'm going Windows. I will not support a company which insults me with this. If this is Jony Ive's work, if they are so self-confident in their "design" that they cannot put a decent hardware spec together, then these people need to be retired.

Or maybe I just haven't cottoned on? They just don't care about high end users? Or are they completely out of touch? I don't understand.

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You're god damn right it's insulting. Same boat as you. It's really annoying. I'm trying to work here. It's not like software's getting any less bloated.

And a big price rise too.

Now that ssds in macbooks are not user replaceable -- you have to buy as much disk as you want for 3 years all up front -- it's nearly $3k for the cheapest 15 inch macbook not even including applecare for 3 years. Ouch.

The SSDs are replaceable.

My instinct is that they are going to flood the early adopters market with low RAM laptops. Then silently introduce upgrade options something like a few months down the line. This serves the dual benefit of being able to pump them out faster and giving people a reason to buy more of them.

It just seems like something Apple would do.

No, it doesn't, and there is no precedent for Apple doing this.

http://betanews.com/2011/10/24/sssh-apple-silently-upgrades-...

The first example I came across, they did it after 8 months in 2011. Maybe you're right, maybe the Macbook Pro is just a beefier Macbook now. They didn't even splurge on the most up to date Intel chips, but the price went up?

This is so disappointing, after a long wait too.

I don't think there very small bumps to CPU clock speed in your example are in anyway comparable to the suggestion that they will introduce 32GB as an option or the default in a few months. So I don't think this is an example of what is being discussed.

This is another great reason for serious power users to never buy the first generation of Apple equipment. Historically a quick refresh comes out, and it sometimes takes two gens to get it right.

Glad right now I timed my last Macbook pro purchase to have a year of applecare left on it, and it could easily last me another 2 years thanks to being maxed out when I bought it.

Apple is a company looking to maximize it profit as well as build good products. A lot of laptop manufacturers are starting to catch up on the hardware side (the new Zenbook).. it's just the MacOS experience that someone has left to create an equivalent to.

"Starting"? Competitors have caught up. The current Dell XPS 15'' blows the just announced MBP out of the water: same cpu, 32gb ram, equivalent GPU, more ports (including TB3), similar weight and dimensions -- at 50% of the price! The Razer Blade is "only" 20% cheaper, but has a smoking GPU. The HP ZBook Ultrabook is again 20% cheaper, 32gb, etc etc etc.

Apple dropped the ball, big time. I'll ride out my 2012 MBPr (which still works great), but at these conditions, my next laptop will not be from Cupertino.

Have used windows primary for 15 years, and mac for the last 10.. I've seen the new windows laptops walk right past apple past few months, my rMBP is about 2 years old so I'm not feeling the pinch so much in buying outdated equipment...

Even the new Lenovo T460p's are sliding by. Asus Zenbook is slick too.

I am more of a 13" guy, although i've used the 15" MBP and windows laptop at one time.

I'm hoping by the time my applecare is up they will throw a massive parade for doing the obvious hardware upgrades.

One possible reason they haven't is getting performance and heat managed in the new slim form factor.

Had a few macbooks that ran hot in the past, so I hope it's just that and not much else. It sucked having 15" macbook pros that had faulty video cards due to poor heat management and died prematurely.

You'll go Lenovo/Dell until you have to use their trackpads for any amount of time. I know; my wife has one. My 5-year old son can tell there's no comparison between a Lenovo trackpad and the Apple version.

Amongst all the terrible touch bar nonsense, I was at least relieved that the trackpad size was doubled. It really is the killer feature of MacBooks.

Yep that's the one thing that pisses me off to no end.

I just don't understand. The chips have been available for 12 months. It's almost like they're doing it on purpose.

Hence why I mention that they are still using LPDDR3, which they even left out of the keynote. The major alternative would be using DDR4 I think.

It's basically an insult.

Given that 99% of users don't require more than 8GB in a MacLaptop, it's hard to justify increasing the maximum ram beyond 16 GB for that fraction of 1% of users who do. Not impossible, mind you - because there is always value in chasing after the 1%, but to some degree, Apple's efficiency at running their operating system and applications on small memory footprints makes it less valuable to increase their maximum ram footprint.

Where does 99% come from?

My girlfriend is a nursing student, not a programmer and has 8 gigs of ram on her laptop. She's constantly asking me to look at her laptop when it beachballs and slows to a crawl when she's doing homework and her memory is maxed. She only has chrome, Word, Excel and some online courses open.

I don't buy that figure one bit.

I'm a power user. I currently have 43 applications open simultaneously on my i5 MBAir with 8 GB Ram. I have VMware fusion running Windows 7 (With Visio running inside that), and virtualBox running 4 OpenBSD images, Google Earth, the entire Office Suite (PPT/Excel/Word), Safari with 12-15 Tabs, etc, etc..

Of the approximately 100 million or so Macintosh Laptop users, it's entirely possible that a million of them are High End video editing or Developers/3D modeling and require more than 8GB, but I"m pretty confident that the vast majority of Macintosh Laptop Users will require less out of their system than I do - and, for better or worse, a lot of the high end scientific workstation/CAD-CAM/Servers/etc... have departed from the Macintosh Laptop Platform, and are now running on the MacPro, or, or, more likely, Linux/Windows.

And yes, I realize I've just argued myself into a corner, that those people have had to leave the Macintosh Laptop world because they need the horsepower/memory that they can only get on other platforms - but that's who is left on the MacLaptop community, and that's who Apple is targeting.

Replace Chrome with Safari.

Unfortunately Chrome is absolutely terrible not just for power usage but also for RAM usage. For some reason Chrome loves memory, it gobbles it up. Safari is much better about it.

I switched from Chrome back to Safari recently and while it took some time adjusting, I have been seeing almost 2 - 3 hours longer battery life, and I have had way less issues with "beachballing".

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"

"Don't do it then."

I can't believe I have to repeat this, in 2016: software workload naturally expands to use all available resources. Period. Nobody likes doing "memory optimization" work when developing.

I regularly have 50 tabs open on Chrome. Switched to Safari a month ago hoping it would leave me more memory. Turns out my machine suddenly started beachballing, swapping like mad (battery usage up) and crashing. Switching back to Chrome completely fixed that problem.

You must be joking.

Safari is leaking memory. Unless you reboot your machine daily, Safari is terrible option.

I use both constantly. Chrome crashes are non-existant, where Safari crashes at least weekly.

Try using Safari instead of Chrome? (I am actually being serious here, not trying to be facetious)

But! What if I fucking loathe safari?

There are more than two to choices available.

Except that the 1% that develop the things that the other 99% use is the lifeblood of their ecosystem.

This seems very shortsighted. It is not like they are strapped for cash, and the prices still went up a few hundred dollars.

That is PC thinking.

Macbook PROs are for PROfessionals. Multiple VMs. Big fast SSDs. Many cores. Better displays.

> Macbook PROs are for PROfessionals

Haha, not anymore. For some time now, the PRO in Apple products is for PROsumers, or its possibly just a meaningless vestigial acronym now. See also: Final Cut X "Pro" which was obviously not targeted at professionals.

That 1%, though, are

1. probably more likely to be in Apple's target demographic, 2. buy the machines with the highest margins.

are we talking about "Pro" or just Macbook?

I'm including all the people who are currently using Macintosh Laptops - not including people on MacPros. Lots of Macbook Air users out there.

MacBook Pros have stopped being for Professionals, and started being for Wealthy Consumers. Perhaps they should be called MacBook WCs?

Or for people who work for tech companies. I myself have never purchased a MBP. Every single one I've had was a company expense.

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