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Introducing the next generation of Mac

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Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#841

Post by submeta »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #794

How are companies still releasing hardware with 8GB RAM? My MacBook Air from ~2016 has 8GB of RAM. My first PC which had 8GB of RAM was built in ~2010 if I remember correctly. My current machine has 32GB. In all honesty, 32GB is not even much, considering my motherboard can take 128GB (in the old days, if your motherboard could take max 8GB RAM, people would fill all the slots to capacity). Also, I have a Lenovo mach…

Absolutely agree. - First they took away the ability to upgrade RAM, then to change HD/SSD. What‘s next: Can‘t boot any other OS. - Taking away freedom step by step.

I am a die hard Apple products aficionado, I don‘t use any other computing device, but why are many HN commentors stubbornly defending every Apple decision that limits its users is way beyond me.

Edit: Re taking away freedom: Let‘s not forget the many app store dramas on iOS. This is Apple‘s vision for macOS as well: Install only approved apps, show a warning for all other apps (and finally disallow them?)

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#842

Post by nafey »

rusticpenn wrote: post #835
gideon_b wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery life is easier to market than an acronym that sounds like it's either related to trucks or sheep. RAM eats battery. Apple has made a strategic decision to pretend RAM doesn't exist, ship underpowered hardware, then brag about the battery life. This is also the reason RAM is not listed on iPhone specs. If I remember correctly the iPhone Pro 12 Max has twice as much RAM as the other 12 models and it's nowhere i…

The performance of the phones seem to be smooth compared to Android phones with similar ( or more) RAM. The difference comes from vertical optimization, so the raw numbers on RAM would not give us a full picture.

The whole Android ecosystem is mostly written in Java which could also be another reason why it needs relatively more RAM for comparable performance.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#843

Post by skrause »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #794

How are companies still releasing hardware with 8GB RAM? My MacBook Air from ~2016 has 8GB of RAM. My first PC which had 8GB of RAM was built in ~2010 if I remember correctly. My current machine has 32GB. In all honesty, 32GB is not even much, considering my motherboard can take 128GB (in the old days, if your motherboard could take max 8GB RAM, people would fill all the slots to capacity). Also, I have a Lenovo mach…

Even worse is that the RAM upgrade pricing hasn't changed in almost a decade.

When I bought my 2012 MacBook Air more than eight years ago it cost me 100 euros to upgrade from 4 to 8 GB of RAM.

Currently it costs 225 euros in the German Apple Store to upgrade form 8 to 16 GB, which is a higher per GB price than in 2012!

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#844

Post by coldtea »

pampa wrote: post #831
coldtea wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% percent of laptop users wont run VMs or Xcode, so there's that...

MacBooks and PowerBooks before them where about that 5% of power users who fell in love with their tools and preached to all their friends and family to get one too. Now that apple has the remaining 95%, it is letting their power users down. But that is only natural, establishing a beachhead with the powerusers was "just" a genious marketing move that worked pretty well.

>MacBooks and PowerBooks before them where about that 5% of power users who fell in love with their tools and preached to all their friends and family to get one too.

And they still are. Just not in their base configuration, like they have never been. I've been using their stuff since the Motorola era.

Was there any time Apple gave "ample" RAM/DISK in their base configuration? No.

If anything, now it's better than ever...

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#845

Post by yoz-y »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #798
coldtea wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you somehow could argue that 8 is all you need now, what about in few years? What about it? It's not like someone who mostly browses the web, checks email, works with office documents, and so on, will change what he does in a few years...

The large consumer market that uses mac for common computing activities will not need more soon, perhaps, but many of Apple's bulwark clients - graphic designers, musicians, and even developers - probably will.

Despite the software they demoed, the machines they show (with exception of the mini) were all for the non-demanding users.

I would like to see Photos on those benchmarks, that is one program that would benefit from lots of ram, and would be used by many of the Air’s customers.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#846

Post by voxgen »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #794

How are companies still releasing hardware with 8GB RAM? My MacBook Air from ~2016 has 8GB of RAM. My first PC which had 8GB of RAM was built in ~2010 if I remember correctly. My current machine has 32GB. In all honesty, 32GB is not even much, considering my motherboard can take 128GB (in the old days, if your motherboard could take max 8GB RAM, people would fill all the slots to capacity). Also, I have a Lenovo mach…

This was an expected step of the evolution of the Memory Hierarchy. RAM is just bigger-but-slower CPU cache. Swapfile is just bigger-but-slower RAM. There's always a trade-off between size and speed.

Incorporating RAM into the CPU package gives a big performance boost at the expense of maximum capacity. To compensate for the reduced performance in tasks that require more memory, you can either add another layer into the Memory Hierarchy (i.e. CPU Cache -> Fast RAM -> Slow RAM -> Swapfile), or you can improve Swapfile speed. It appears Apple have done the latter - they claim their SSD is up to 2x faster.

Video game consoles have done something similar with the latest generation. Only a 2x increase in RAM from the last generation (compared to an 8x/16x increase from the generation before), but a focus on storage performance.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#847

Post by coldtea »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #798
coldtea wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you somehow could argue that 8 is all you need now, what about in few years? What about it? It's not like someone who mostly browses the web, checks email, works with office documents, and so on, will change what he does in a few years...

The large consumer market that uses mac for common computing activities will not need more soon, perhaps, but many of Apple's bulwark clients - graphic designers, musicians, and even developers - probably will.

Those don't buy the base configuration, and never had.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#848

Post by yoz-y »

devxpy wrote: post #777
tiffanyh wrote: post #445

I don't understand the pricing of the MacBook Air vs the 13" Pro. The Air ($1249) vs 13" Pro ($1299), you get: - same CPU - same GPU - same Neural chip - same RAM (8gb) - More storage for the Air (512gb vs 256gb with 13" Pro) - You get Touch Bar with 13" Pro So if you don't care about the Touch Bar, you actually get with the Air: - better specs - smaller device footprint - and $50 cheaper. Am I missing something?

I'd also be very interested to see if that $250 difference between the 7-core & 8-core GPU is really just a software toggle. It sounds like they've built 1 SOC, not two, so I don't know how they came up with that.

Binning, most probably.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#849

Post by timc3 »

crazygringo wrote: post #371
api wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone ever seen anyone use the Touch Bar? Like really use it?

It was designed for, and is widely used by, the graphics and audio professionals crowd. The ability to use touch sliders, filmstrips, etc. is a huge boon. It just gets a ton of hate here on HN because obviously there's very little overlap between the populations. A lot of people forget that "Pro" has never referred to software professionals, it's always referred to multimedia professionals.

I do graphics, video and development and my hobby is audio. I have used the Touch Bar about once for all those things. The novelty wears off.

Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac

#850

Post by knoke »

kfarr wrote: post #789
perfect_wave wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree here. I really don't understand some of the bashing that happens every single time the Macbook Pros come up in HN comments. I was a longtime happy owner of a 2015 15" MBP until earlier this year when I decided it was time to upgrade to a refurbished 2019 16" MBP. I was a bit nervous at first but I have to say that I have no major complaints, other than the fact that I wish I had F keys instead of the touchbar…

Thanks for the tip about pock.dev. I've been rocking GC-BTT. A bit cumbersome to setup but love the functionality: https://community.folivora.ai/t/goldenchaos-btt-the-complete...

With BTT and GoldenChaos you can swipe anywhere on the Touchbar with two fingers to change the volume, and with three fingers to change the brightness of the display.
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