Apple Event 2016-10-27 -- New Macs finally

[HiroThreading]

Was going to sell my laptop but decided against it when there was no option for 32GB of RAM and Nvidia graphics. Next time hopefully.

Apple isn't going to switch to Nvidia. Apple supports OpenCL and prefers GCN's compute focus.

The lack of support for RAM above 16GB is a bit baffling. While Skylake doesn't support DDR4L, DDR4's low operating voltage should still be as low as DDR3L.

 

[Eug]

The classic Mac chime is gone now.

The reason for this is related to the fact that these laptops automatically boot up when the lid is lifted, probably because these things boot up so fast these days.

 

[Commodus]

The classic Mac chime is gone now.

The reason for this is related to the fact that these laptops automatically boot up when the lid is lifted, probably because these things boot up so fast these days.

A bit sad, but at the same time a step forward... and not just because of the faster booting time. The chime has been a pet peeve for some Mac owners -- you can't turn on your computer early in the morning (or in the middle of a meeting) without disturbing someone. The new MBP (and presumably, future Macs) is much more discreet that way. You could always put earlier models to sleep instead of turning them off, of course, but that's not always an option.

 

[TheStu]

A bit sad, but at the same time a step forward... and not just because of the faster booting time. The chime has been a pet peeve for some Mac owners -- you can't turn on your computer early in the morning (or in the middle of a meeting) without disturbing someone. The new MBP (and presumably, future Macs) is much more discreet that way. You could always put earlier models to sleep instead of turning them off, of course, but that's not always an option.

For at least 10yrs, if your Mac was muted, the chime would not sound.

 

[Eug]

For at least 10yrs, if your Mac was muted, the chime would not sound.

Also, IIRC, the chime would depend upon the volume setting.

---

9to5mac polled those who are not buying the new MacBook Pros. The overwhelming reason (over 75% out of almost 8000 votes) was because of the price.

 

[Midwayman]

T

I don't like touchscreen laptops much either, and the Touch Bar is a good compromise, with a location that actually makes sense - with easy reach. I often felt the function bar was underused, but what I envisioned were third party desktop keyboards with programmable keys. Instead what Apple did was to have virtual keys. In retrospect that makes a lot of sense, since again those are not primary typing keys. That said, I agree with the comment that the lack of haptic feedback is a downer.

However, I don't think the main criticism about these laptops was that they introduced the Touch Bar and don't have a touch screen. The main complaints about these machines seem to be a lack of ports and the high price. And on those counts I agree.

I think the real smart way to do it would have been oled tops for physical keys. IIRC there was a PC keyboard that did that for the whole keyboard. Dynamic tops is a smart idea. Loss of tactile sensation and associated muscle memory is not. If you use your f keys blindly the touch strip is going to suck big time. If you're a hunt and peck sorta typer its great.

 

[asendra]

Also, IIRC, the chime would depend upon the volume setting.

---

9to5mac polled those who are not buying the new MacBook Pros. The overwhelming reason (over 75% out of almost 8000 votes) was because of the price.

That could be worrying for Apple, but they should worry even more with those who are willing to spend the money, and still won't update because of all the tradeoffs introduced in the new models.
I can tell you that would be my case if I hadn't updated last year. Hell, I know a couple friends/coworkers who are looking for offers of new last years models instead.

I'm okay with them offering more expensive options to differentiate more with iPads, letting them introduce more Pro features. I do 100% of my work in these machines, 2000/2500$ every 3-4years or so seems fair to me, if they are worth the money. They just wen't a little bit too far in the tradeoffs/price this time, imho. Had they put 16gb ram (w/ 32gb option) base in the ones with touchbars, or 512gb SSD, or a quad core option for the 13", while maintaining prices, it would have been a little bit more reasonable.

I just hope they will regress to a more sane pricing (200-300$ less) with the next update like they did after the introduction of rMBPs. The dongle apocalypse I hope will be a moot point by 2018/19 or so when I need to upgrade again.

 

[Oyeve]

I'm still rocking a mid-2009 MBP. Its fast enough for most things and includes all relevant connections and a DVDR to boot! Popped in a 1TB ssd last year and its very capable.

 

[quikah]

I think the real smart way to do it would have been old tops for physical keys. IIRC there was a PC keyboard that did that for the whole keyboard. Dynamic tops is a smart idea. Loss of tactile sensation and associated muscle memory is not. If you use your f keys blindly the touch strip is going to suck big time. If you're a hunt and peck sorta typer its great.

I think this is the biggest downside. It was really obvious in the demos they did, people keep looking down at the keyboard to find the correct position of the softkey they need. I have an idea, make the keys "3d touch" so when you just lay your finer over the panel an overlay will popup on the bottom of the screen, then you can push down when you see you are over the key you want.

No hardware escape key is just crazy though, how do you use vi?

 

[Eug]

I'm still rocking a mid-2009 MBP. Its fast enough for most things and includes all relevant connections and a DVDR to boot! Popped in a 1TB ssd last year and its very capable.

This is what I'm using. 13" with 256 GB SSD. The main problem is it is 4.5 lbs. Irritating to carry, and I have to carry the charger too because the battery never lasted that long in the first place, and it's worse now because the battery is almost 8 years old. It also only has 4 GB. I could upgrade both, but I'm not sure it's worth it if I'm going to buy a machine in the spring. Furthermore, most of the batteries out there for a decent price are knockoffs.

 

[sxr7171]

Yeah, the X1 is probably the top competitor we're looking at. Fully-loaded with OLED, i7, 16gb RAM, and 1TB NVMe, it rings up for $2,484...dang, that's more than my first car, lol. Note that the WiGig dock is not available with the OLED screen for some reason (nor is WWAN). Kind of lame, but I don't imagine you'd really want to use a regular monitor when your onboard WQHD screen is OLED, haha. Not being chained to a desktop for reasonable power & storage anymore is nice, and not having to have a separate tablet is nice. Getting a Wacom pen, OLED screen, and terabyte SSD for around the same price as the new base 15" MBP is pretty attractive.

Mine was only $1584 with 2 years accidental damage protection. You don't have to load it up. I just have OLED and 128GB i7 6500u.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

I think the real smart way to do it would have been oled tops for physical keys. IIRC there was a PC keyboard that did that for the whole keyboard. Dynamic tops is a smart idea. Loss of tactile sensation and associated muscle memory is not. If you use your f keys blindly the touch strip is going to suck big time. If you're a hunt and peck sorta typer its great.

Yeah that's the art.lebedev Optimus keyboard. It's only $1500. But I agree it would have been better to have some kind of tactile feedback, at least at the left end for the Escape key.

 

[Spicedaddy]

Got a Kaby Lake XPS 13 in my office (i7-7500U) and testing 4K HEVC Main10 @ 140Mbps video. Plays smooth with 2-3% CPU usage.

My desktop i5-6500 (Quad-core Skylake) can't play it back smoothly, CPU usage through the roof...

 

[Eug]

Got a Kaby Lake XPS 13 in my office (i7-7500U) and testing 4K HEVC Main10 @ 140Mbps video. Plays smooth with 2-3% CPU usage.

My desktop i5-6500 (Quad-core Skylake) can't play it back smoothly, CPU usage through the roof...

Nice. But 140 Mbps?!! Why?

 

[TheStu]

Had they put 16gb ram (w/ 32gb option) base in the ones with touchbars, or 512gb SSD, or a quad core option for the 13", while maintaining prices, it would have been a little bit more reasonable.

16GB - Maybe. Making it the base on the 13" (it is the 'base' [and max] RAM on the 15") makes more sense if they could have gone to 32GB, which they couldn't because of the limits of the chipset (basically, Kaby Lake [which doesn't have quad core parts out yet!] supports DDR4, but DDR4LP [low power] isn't out, or something to that effect. As I understand it, they could have done 32GB, but that would have eaten into the battery. This is apparently evident on the XPS15).

512GB SSD - Since they now go up to 2TB, and as cheap as 512GB SSDs are, I can get behind that idea.

Quad Core... Short answer is that there are none available. Apple puts 28w CPUs into the 13" and 45w CPUs into the 15" models. Intel does not make a 28w quad core mobile CPU, and there are no quad core Kaby Lake CPUs. Best as I can tell, no other manufacturer is making laptops similar in size to the rMBP13 that have quad core CPUs. There's the Razer Blade 14, but that's is closer in size to the rMBP15 than the 13 (and thicker). The XPS 13, against which the MacBooks Pro are oft compared, doesn't have quad core either, no matter how much money you throw at the problem. I'm trying to check Lenovo's site as well, but it's terrible to use.

 

[Eug]

The 13" MacBook Pro is 2.0 GHz up to 3.1 GHz, i5. Isn't that 15 Watts?

http://ark.intel.com/products/91156/Intel-Core-i5-6360U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz

 

[JAG87]

16GB - Maybe. Making it the base on the 13" (it is the 'base' [and max] RAM on the 15") makes more sense if they could have gone to 32GB, which they couldn't because of the limits of the chipset (basically, Kaby Lake [which doesn't have quad core parts out yet!] supports DDR4, but DDR4LP [low power] isn't out, or something to that effect. As I understand it, they could have done 32GB, but that would have eaten into the battery. This is apparently evident on the XPS15).

512GB SSD - Since they now go up to 2TB, and as cheap as 512GB SSDs are, I can get behind that idea.

Quad Core... Short answer is that there are none available. Apple puts 28w CPUs into the 13" and 45w CPUs into the 15" models. Intel does not make a 28w quad core mobile CPU, and there are no quad core Kaby Lake CPUs. Best as I can tell, no other manufacturer is making laptops similar in size to the rMBP13 that have quad core CPUs. There's the Razer Blade 14, but that's is closer in size to the rMBP15 than the 13 (and thicker). The XPS 13, against which the MacBooks Pro are oft compared, doesn't have quad core either, no matter how much money you throw at the problem. I'm trying to check Lenovo's site as well, but it's terrible to use.

Are people really still beating the "there is no KabyLake for the MBP" drum? The new 13" MBP is DOA. 7200U and 7500U parts are widely available since all other manufacturers are able to get their hands on them, and they are more than suitable for both the vanilla 13 and the Touch Bar 13. Both parts are 15W and configurable up to 25W. That would give that stupid laptop both HEVC Main 10 and VP9 hardware decoding. Imagine, your brand new very expensive late 2016 MBP struggling to play a youtube 4K VP9 video, or a 4K netflix HDR stream. Wow. I couldn't even deal knowing I spent almost 3K after tax (here in Canada) for a device that can't cope with basic 2016 video standards.

The 15 comes with Polaris even in the baseline, so it's completely unaffected by CPU choice. Besides the sky high price, it's a fine machine.

If Apple had used any brain cells to make the 13", they could have the entire new line up 4K HDR ready.

 

[TheStu]

The 13" MacBook Pro is 2.0 GHz up to 3.1 GHz, i5. Isn't that 15 Watts?

http://ark.intel.com/products/91156/Intel-Core-i5-6360U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz

The other 2 models appear to be 28w CPUs, as evidenced by their 550 GPUs. And referencing back to the XPS13, after looking at Anandtech's blurbs about both the 2015 (Skylake) and 2016 (Kaby Lake) revisions, quad core was never an option there, as they used exclusively 15w CPUs.

 

[Eug]

Are people really still beating the "there is no KabyLake for the MBP" drum? The new 13" MBP is DOA. 7200U and 7500U parts are widely available since all other manufacturers are able to get their hands on them, and they are more than suitable for both the vanilla 13 and the Touch Bar 13. Both parts are 15W and configurable up to 25W. That would give that stupid laptop both HEVC Main 10 and VP9 hardware decoding. Imagine, your brand new very expensive late 2016 MBP struggling to play a youtube 4K VP9 video, or a 4K netflix HDR stream. Wow. I couldn't even deal knowing I spent almost 3K after tax (here in Canada) for a device that can't cope with basic 2016 video standards.

The 15 comes with Polaris even in the baseline, so it's completely unaffected by CPU choice. Besides the sky high price, it's a fine machine.

If Apple had used any brain cells to make the 13", they could have the entire new line up 4K HDR ready.

The problem is the 15", I would imagine. Can't have the 13" outclassing the 15".

Oh and there is a good chance the current models won't get the chance to even try and play 4K Netflix HDR, because Skylake doesn't have the right DRM support built-in.

 

[Spicedaddy]

Nice. But 140 Mbps?!! Why?

http://jell.yfish.us/

They recommend that file to test for BluRay 4K playback. Streaming stuff will be much lower bitrate.

And yes, the non-touchbar 13" MBP is using a 15W Skylake chip. They can't use the "Kaby Lake with Iris aren't available yet" excuse for that one!


Edit- Also tested a 4K VP9 video from YouTube on Kaby Lake. It plays smoothly, but with high CPU usage.

 

[lefenzy]

Are people really still beating the "there is no KabyLake for the MBP" drum? The new 13" MBP is DOA. 7200U and 7500U parts are widely available since all other manufacturers are able to get their hands on them, and they are more than suitable for both the vanilla 13 and the Touch Bar 13. Both parts are 15W and configurable up to 25W. That would give that stupid laptop both HEVC Main 10 and VP9 hardware decoding. Imagine, your brand new very expensive late 2016 MBP struggling to play a youtube 4K VP9 video, or a 4K netflix HDR stream. Wow. I couldn't even deal knowing I spent almost 3K after tax (here in Canada) for a device that can't cope with basic 2016 video standards.

The 15 comes with Polaris even in the baseline, so it's completely unaffected by CPU choice. Besides the sky high price, it's a fine machine.

If Apple had used any brain cells to make the 13", they could have the entire new line up 4K HDR ready.

Question: do vendor use cTDP up? That seems to be a decent solution.

But 7200U and 7500U have weaker Intel HD 620 graphics compared to the HD 540/550 parts on offer for the MBP. So there's a tradeoff. Less battery life for watching video versus weaker GPU overall.

 

[ultimatebob]

A new 15 inch MacBook Pro now Starts at $2,400, and it only comes with 256GB of storage at that price. Sorry, but that's just insane.

 

[sxr7171]

A new 15 inch MacBook Pro now Starts at $2,400, and it only comes with 256GB of storage at that price. Sorry, but that's just insane.

Not if you're a fan boy


Think about this. A lot of people lost respect when they decided to sell a $250 throw away watch at $15,000 because they knew they had people who would pay it. This is how you know they really would prefer to be in the fashion business. That way nobody could scrutinize something as silly as specs or engineering.


This isn't as egregious but it's testing the waters to see which people are blind enough to go for it.

 

[Kazukian]

The resellers will be discounting MBP's, and the MSRP will drop over time.

But yeah, that's some pricey hardware.

 

[Zaap]

A lot of people lost respect when they decided to sell a $250 throw away watch at $15,000 because they knew they had people who would pay it. ...


...This isn't as egregious but it's testing the waters to see which people are blind enough to go for it.

I don't really get this reasoning against any company, Apple or otherwise.

"Because they knew they had people who would pay it..."

Why wouldn't any business make a product, at whatever price point, if they know there are customers who will buy that product? If there's demand, and you fill it, then you've done your job as a business.

In the case of a $15,000 watch, Apple probably saw 3rd parties were set up to that business anyway, profiting handsomely on up-marketing their products, so why not just do it directly and profit themselves? Seems a bit no-brainer to me.

I don't agree with everything Apple does, and I do agree they do quite a bit of gouging (like ridiculous markups on upgrades to their products) and while I may not like it personally, I can't fault them for it from a business standpoint if they're meeting a demand that's there.


This stuff is funny to me with Apple- I've sure seen enough cycles of it now. Apple comes out with something new and there's a HUGE chorus of "I'll NEVER buy that! They've finally gone too far!" (Heck, just saw it with the iPhone 7/headphone jack debacle.

Flash forward a month or two:
"Hey, I just got my new ____!" "Me too!!" "Me three...!" "Oops! I don't wanna be left out, better order mine...!"

Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but from the sea of silver MacBooks I see (the Retinas having always cost around this same price range) I don't see them having any trouble finding the demand, and nothing egregious for meeting it.

Meanwhile, I get my work done on a mid 2015 15" retina MBP (2012 retina before that) and it was worth very gouged penny since there was nothing else as good to get my work done with on the go. I'd have one of the new ones were it not for my current getting things done.