15'' MacBook Pro with Kaby Lake and 32GB of Desktop-Class RAM, Later This Year | Hacker News Reader

15'' MacBook Pro with Kaby Lake and 32GB of Desktop-Class RAM, Later This Year

macrumors.com

35 pointsantouank55 comments

I'm really hoping this happens. I would consider upgrading my 2014 MBP if they did this. This year/model (2.8 GHz Intel Core i7) is still one of the top 10 performing models on Geekbench! [0] The bump to 32GB and leapfrogging 2015 desktop iMacs would seal it for me, assuming there's an option for no touchbar.

If the desktop-class RAM rumour is correct, that probably means they'll be beefing up the batteries to account for the higher power drain.

EDIT: I suppose this isn't necessarily correct - assuming that Intel can support LPDDR4 in new chips OR Apple can use LPDDR3 rather than having to take the approach that Dell did with the 32GB XPS-15 [1][2].

[0] https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

[1] http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-la...

[2] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/10/31/macbook-pros-lack-of...

At what price?

I've had my 15" MacBook Pro for 3 years now, it was top spec at the time (MBP15.4/2.3GHz/16GB RAM/512GB SSD from invoice) and cost me £2,199.

The new model, picking the highest spec (Touch Bar/2.7GHz/16GB RAM/512GB SSD) is £2,699. Totally not worth it.

Interesting. If Kaby Lake will bring support for >16GB across the board, perhaps that'll be an option for all models, with this new wrinkle of "desktop class" RAM for the upper end? What sort of speed difference might that entail?

That said, I'm fine with 16GB - personally, I'd be much more enthused about any rumored return of the 17" models. Weight wouldn't have to necessarily go down, even - the final 17" MBPs weren't exactly behemoths. Even now, having had to abandon my mid-2009 17" for a late-2013 15", I find myself wishing for that little extra display space, especially now it's the iPad that comes around with me on the go most of the time. Heck, shrink the bezel and make it 18"!

AIUI, 16GiB was the largest RAM configuration for the new MacBook Pros because the CPUs did not support larger amounts of low-power memory. So, a higher-RAM configuration would require using power-hungry desktop memory, and thus mean significantly lower battery life.

Is that a trade-off people are willing to make? I guess Apple assumed it wasn't worth it with the most recent refresh, but maybe changed their mind after people spoke out.

New cpus will support LPDDR4 which is available in larger capacities. No trade off

Source? There are no announced Kaby Lake mobile processors that support LPDDR4 [0]. The highest end ones support DDR4-2400, LPDDR3-2133, and DDR3L-1600.

http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/82879/Kaby-Lake#@Mobi...

Are you sure about that? The Lenovo P50s with Skylake i7 can be ordered with 32GB RAM: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50s/...

If they have more RAM, they're either using a different CPU, or using higher-power RAM chips.

Great. Can I have my escape key back?

It'll be interesting to see if they decide to go back to it. Knowing Apple, they will most likely keep the touch bar, but it might be the case that they decide to add it back after the backlash the touch bar has received.

I can't remember where, but I read an interesting piece pleading with apple to bring the 17" macbook pro back. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. The extra headroom for the keyboard means they can easily cozy the touch bar in above the normal function keys. The extra chassis means they can put a bigger battery in there. The extra screen size would be... well it would be awesome.

But that's all a bunch of dreamy tech fluff. Apple has it's sights set squarely on a customer that most certainly isn't using the product for professional purposes.

There's enough room to have the function keys and touch bar now... the way they should have done it to begin with.

My bet is that they were worried that no one would find a use for the touch bar if it didn't replace an existing function

Yeah, 17" is pretty much a prerequisite for me as far as laptops go. I was in the market for a laptop a few years back and considered the MBP but I ended up going with the 17" Asus Zenbook and have been very pleased with it. I'll admit that the MBP has a bit better build quality, but I'd say the Zenbook is 90% there but much cheaper, much better specs, and of course I got my 17" display.

It was only later I discovered that the newer MBPs don't play nicely with Linux, so I dodged a bullet there.

The problem that I have with most 17" laptops is the stupid number pad. It forces me to type with my hands off-center from the screen, and it drives me insane. The old 17" macbook pro was basically the only one to do it right.

Yeah, I'm not a numpad user myself, but I never really noticed the hands off-center issue, my brain seems to adapt without much distraction.

It's not my brain that's the problem. It's my shoulders. I tend to want to view the screen dead-on, so I'm typing with my hands shifted a few inches to the left. For a few minutes that's no big deal. Get into a 3-hour coding bender and my shoulders are killing me once I unfold.

Which model is the 17" ZenBook? A quick search came back empty.

Apple could shrink the touchbar enough to have space for the esc key. They could have also included a single classic USB type A receptacle and kept the magsafe power connector... so who knows.

How many people complaining about the missing escape key have actually used a touch bar computer, though? I've seen precious few examples of someone saying "I bought that MacBook, and have used it for some time, and I still want a physical escape key". I'm not saying these people don't exist, I'm just saying that I think nearly all of the naysayers are people who haven't actually bought the computer.

I have. Fired up the terminal and started Vim. 5 minutes later I was convinced that my next computer will probably come with Windows. Really sad, too. I don't have to blow away the OS to get a decent experience on a Mac.

I am no longer a Mac user, but might I suggest remapping the escape key to another, it really saves a ton of time. Personally I use "hh", which makes some vim users cringe, but let me tell you, it's so much faster than escape.

Oh no. We're not going there. My hands are not so small, and I've got the rattlesnake-like "hit esc" action down. Thinking about the command keys again sounds like a great way to discard all of my productivity for about three weeks.

Fair enough, but I've heard similar reasoning espoused from other vim users who were reluctant to transition away from arrow keys. Perhaps you might find the productivity dip worth it in the long run, but I am not unsympathetic to the cost of shaking the routine up.

I can vouch for this. It's much faster for me to hit "jk" (my preferred mapping for escape) than it is to hit the Escape key. And given how frequently you need Escape in Vim, the time adds up really fast. It's also just a lot more comfortable, because my hands can remain on the home row.

In .vimrc:

    no <Right> $
    no <Left> ^
    no <Up> <C-U>
    no <Down> <C-D>

That should be enough to help newbies to stop using the arrow keys and put their right hands on hjkl as the Gods intended.

Caps lock seems like an obvious one, no? It's on the home row and I've never used it in my entire typing life (apart from to turn it off if I turn it on by accident).

I always map Caps Lock to Control. It's pretty darn useful that way. In Vim I remap "jk" to escape.

I've had problems remapping basic functionality keys in the past. I switched ':' and ';' for instance, it works great in vim when my profile is loaded but leads to a lot of mistakes in other environments, either machines or one of the million emulators.

In your .vimrc file:

    ino kj <Esc>

Then type kj each time you need to exit insert mode instead of escape. You'll love it. It's much better for your hands.

I know at least two people. Me and a friend of mine. Both of us bought the 15" touch bar MBP and later returned it.

- there were some issue with the keyboard on both of our MBP

I exchanged it for a non touch bar MBP instead. He exchanged it for an old 2016 MBP.

The touch screen should be where the trackpad is, and modal. Your hand is already there, you have multiple degrees of freedom (not just left-right) and apple would finally have a logical place to put the mobile experience it so desperately wishes to bring to the desktop.

Put your iphone on your touchpad for a demo.

The touch id should be down there too.

You will be able to buy an escape key dongle.

It will be $39.99 and if you buy a 3rd party one it will pull up a modal dialog box that says "This peripheral is not supported and may not work properly."

1. DDR4L Not finished yet.

2. Intel wont support LPDDR4 until 2018.

Unless the Intel or the memory industry works with Apple in tandam, I dont see how 32GB can be achieved without,

A. Apple making their own SoC or switching to AMD.

B. Simply switch to same clockspeed model of Kabylake while using Desktop memory. The increase in Desktop emory power usage will be offset by Kabylake's power saving.

or C. The return of 17" Macbook Pro.

This model they're referring to won't be using DDRL4.

Bring back the 17" MacBook Pro! Having a retina 17" would be great for those of us that need more screen real estate. For example, when debugging in an IDE.

If they ARE bring back 17" Macbook Pro, I assume that is a sign of Mac Pro's death. The iMac will likely get a redesign and powerful enough fit in most Mac Pro's usage.

> The increase in Desktop emory power usage will be offset by Kabylake's power saving.

While doing anything real, it will offset, but you will lose at the very low end (staring at an unmoving webpage or picture) and the sleep times will be very different.

I can't use a laptop with a screen smaller than 17 inches for at least half my work. On a 13 to 15 inch screen everything is a pain in the behind.

CAD (SolidWorks) is punishing, CAM (MasterCAM, CAMWorks) is just as horrid. Even other applications not at that level become a chore to use. And this is particularly true if you have a situation where you might be referencing website data or PDF's and need to use additional tools.

For me the small laptops are tolerable in the context of a trip where you want to check email, do some stuff on the web and maybe some single screen coding. It's very hard to beat the productivity and convenience of a multi-monitor high resolution desktop setup.

We don't have any less than two screens on our desktops, with most having three. For all new machines the minimum is three screens.

I don't understand why Apple won't make a decent large (17 inch) laptop other than we (technical, engineering, graphic arts users) ceased to be their primary market years ago. What a shame.

I don't understand why Apple won't make a decent large (17 inch) laptop other than we

Does Apple ever release sales figures for the breakdown of models? I don't believe they do. If the 17" MacBooks made economic sense to continue to produce them, I'm sure they would have. Since Jobs' return, Apple has tried to keep the product line as simple as possible as well.

Another idea is that there may not be suitable 17" laptop displays. From 2012:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-apple-dumped-the-17-inch-ma...

I don't know enough about the state of display technology, and I'm sure that things have progressed since 2012.

I would think in the scope of market, CAD-CAM laptop users is likely a small percentage. It's understandable that you would like to have one, but it may not make sense for Apple to produce them. Personally I'm surprised how much work I can get done with a 13" MacBook.

We probably have a dozen laptops, maybe more. All are PC's. A handful are for travel, which means they have smaller screens. All others have 17 inch screens.

A large number of PC laptop manufacturers don't seem to have any trouble selling the larger models. I'm sure it comes down to who and what they are being used for. My guess is that at least three of the categories are gaming, CAD and graphic arts.

Not sure why Apple can't justify making them. It is likely true that it is a smaller chunk of the overall market. Apple stopped making products for those pushing the limits a long time ago. They are a consumer electronics company looking for massive markets. It makes far more sense that they'd prefer to sell smaller sizes that might appeal to the vast majority of the users they want to capture.

so "October", I'm guessing, fully 2 years after Dell's latitude 15s did 32 gig in a perfectly thin and impressive design, and by which time, most likely, Dell and Lenovo will be showing 64 gig options. Only one solution here: Jony Ive's design-first dictatorship needs to end. At least for anything labelled "pro".

Now we see if it REALLY has that big of an impact on battery life.

If true, this is a big fuck you to everyone who spent ~$3K+ just a couple months ago (not to mention it will totally stall any informed purchases of MBP's for the rest of the year). They better also be considering a generous trade-in program. I expect the hardware I buy from Apple to at least outlive the Apple Care warranty it comes with + the extension I add.

Apple has been on a yearly refresh cycle for how many decades?

Are you seriously complaining about Apple continuing to update Macs? They should be updating them every year!

No, I'm not complaining that they are updating yearly. Like I said above, I'm bitter that a mid-generation update like this would be so big as to make my 2016 model obsolete. These things don't exactly sell for pocket change.

I didn't buy the emoji MBP because it wasn't good enough for me. But if you bought it and it is good for you today, it won't become any slower when a revised MBP comes out.

Such drama. When this releases your MBP isn't going to have any less RAM or run any slower than it does today.

"we won't sell anybody else something newer"-guarantee is a whole new business model... probably not applicable outside of massive enterprise or government sales though...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Apple receives criticism if they don't rev fast enough, and if they rev too fast. IIRC, there were rumors that 32GB updates would be coming four days after the most recent release on Oct 27.

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/31/macbooks-2017-price-cuts...

An article, in which the author spends a good amount of space explaining why the title itself is not true. You're right, you can't win. Maybe I'm just bitter that I spent a good chunk of change on a new system that isn't any more impressive than the 2012 model I was replacing. Doubling down on RAM mid-generation really makes people like me pause when considering a purchase of what was supposed to be the newest and best.

If you actually look at the data of how often the MacBook Pro gets updated, this is perfectly normal and expected: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Retina_MacBook_Pro

Anyone who spent $3k just a couple months ago is either tech savvy enough to know the Apple's potential revision cycle or too rich to care. Either way I'm not shedding any tears. You have 30 days to return the machine.

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