Macbook Pro Retina Mid 2014 refresh?

[manly]

Broadwell chips are already shipping. However, not the ones likely to be used in a 12" Broadwell MacBook Retina.

So, Broadwell Macs may show up sooner rather than later, but many believe a Broadwell MacBook Retina wouldn't show up until early 2015 as you say.

depends on one's definition of "shipping":
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2454...ell-but-next-gen-skylake-chip-could-slip.html

I've waited long enough, I guess I can hold out until February even though Tim Cook's Apple no longer releases new products in the post-holiday quarter. :\

 

[StinkyPinky]

Looking at the 13" MBPr. It's obviously a better deal than before with the slight bump in CPU and 8GB now for the base model, but it really makes the $200 upcharge harder swallow going from 128GB to 256GB SSD considering it's probably a $20-25 difference in BOM and non-upgradeable. I'm sure Apple is quick to point out their cloud solution for "more storage" (at additional cost).

Edit: $1190 for a refurb pre-refresh 8GB/256GB 13" MBPr looks to be the best deal. IIRC, it was $1270 or so previously.

How much storage does the base OSX install use anyway?

Not much. I have a 256gb SSD and it's easily ample for me, and that's with a couple of virtual machines. Of course, if you're going to be storing lots of videos etc then it may not be sufficient.

 

[vbuggy]

Not worth updating this time, I'd like to see more changes to the pathetic cooling - they showed with the rMBP that they are capable of some degree of improvement, so yeah, more of that.

 

[mmntech]

Not worth updating this time, I'd like to see more changes to the pathetic cooling - they showed with the rMBP that they are capable of some degree of improvement, so yeah, more of that.

They've always ran pretty warm, for as long as I can remember. The thing that upsets me the most is they no longer allow you to upgrade the RAM. At least not without substantial soldering skills. I need to find a PC laptop that will readily accept the Hackintosh treatment.

 

[manly]

They've always ran pretty warm, for as long as I can remember. The thing that upsets me the most is they no longer allow you to upgrade the RAM. At least not without substantial soldering skills. I need to find a PC laptop that will readily accept the Hackintosh treatment.

Are there any with decent build quality?* It just seems weird that the 13" rMBP config I'd be most interested in today is around $1800, so adjusted for inflation that's even more than the classic 15" MBP that I splurged for last go around.

I know there was an 11.6" PC that was a dead-ringer for the 2011 MBA but I haven't heard of any other near clones. I'll probably end up paying the Apple MacBook tax, but it's not a certainty as it was in the Steve Jobs era.

* Or high Hackintosh compatibility with so-so build quality is okay as long as it's cheap enough.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I've never owned a mac before. I was surprised at how warm the laptop got. I can't even hear the fan, its either not even on or its running at a super low rpm or something. The warmth weird, but I guess its normal.

 

[vbuggy]

Are there any with decent build quality?*

This gets asked often but there's not going to be a good answer IMO.

a) If you want something with the same materials, it's not going to cost a whole lot less, especially given Apple's wholesale commitment to the form-over-function aluminium construction - which given their massive commitment, they've actually worked out many of the kinks that would plague a manufacturer which would only do it on part of their models and therefore not be committed to make the investment of forcing a material unsuited to making actually durable notebooks halfway acceptable - simply because it feels like metal. Magnesium can, as we see on many superior-built notebooks, make for a stronger structure. However many people can't tell it from plastic by feel because it's warm. This is the reason why Apple will not use magnesium in an external notebook casing, because they know your average dumb joe on the street inside out.

b) In most cases, your average dumb joe on the street doesn't understand the actual concept of build quality so the statement of 'build quality' becomes 'is machined aluminium' or if you consider yourself a Geek then 'is pretty inside as well' and in that case, it circles back to point a). If you are going to gauge build quality by Apple's yardstick, then you're best off buying an Apple.

 

[Koing]

This gets asked often but there's not going to be a good answer IMO.

a) If you want something with the same materials, it's not going to cost a whole lot less, especially given Apple's wholesale commitment to the form-over-function aluminium construction - which given their massive commitment, they've actually worked out many of the kinks that would plague a manufacturer which would only do it on part of their models and therefore not be committed to make the investment of forcing a material unsuited to making actually durable notebooks halfway acceptable - simply because it feels like metal. Magnesium can, as we see on many superior-built notebooks, make for a stronger structure. However many people can't tell it from plastic by feel because it's warm. This is the reason why Apple will not use magnesium in an external notebook casing, because they know your average dumb joe on the street inside out.

b) In most cases, your average dumb joe on the street doesn't understand the actual concept of build quality so the statement of 'build quality' becomes 'is machined aluminium' or if you consider yourself a Geek then 'is pretty inside as well' and in that case, it circles back to point a). If you are going to gauge build quality by Apple's yardstick, then you're best off buying an Apple.

Wouldn't it be more expensive to have the laptop be machined out of magnesium though?

Koing

 

[vbuggy]

Wouldn't it be more expensive to have the laptop be machined out of magnesium though?

Koing

No, magnesium is usually moulded in terms of these industrial processes. More efficient structure, but again not as good looking when you're looking at a moulded piece of magnesium compared to an equivalent piece of machined aluminium. Again - it's about looks, machine aluminium has that kind of more industrial look about it while a piece of moulded magnesium plate looks... well, looks like a piece of moulded plastic. Thing is though, a wafer-thin bathtub structure of magnesium with the above process will withstand a beating far better than the equivalent structure done by Apple.

Having said that, Microsoft has done a really good job of making moulded magnesium look like machined aluminium in terms of how people react to this sort of thing.

Actually a cheaper process as well in reasonable numbers - though I'm not sure about (as I again referred to Apple's hell bent concentration on this process and their focusing on a very small number of different structures across their model ranges) Apple's volumes now.

Magnesium also has some interesting work going on it in the durability stakes, something which Microsoft pioneered in the consumer space as well with the Surface. Nitriding is a process where you basically vaporise a target and blast it at a base metal, to create a hard crust (beyond anodisation). Nitriding as a process has been around for a while in the form of e.g. suspension stanchion coatings and other high-wear surface treatments, but nitriding low melting point metals like magnesium is pretty new. Unfortunately MS has been working the kinks out of the process basically as a public beta over the last two years. The reports of Surface flaking you can undoubtedly find are instances of the TiCN (titanium carbon nitride) coatings delaminating from the base metal.

On the flipside, as usual Apple actually brought near-zero innovations to the table with the Air onwards, but applied marketing and re-spun existing proven processes to appeal to the abovementioned joe. They do it hellishly well though with a huge eye for detail, even the biggest non-Applezombie has to give them that. And with all the companies they've taken over / licensed stuff from recently, maybe there's a chance they'll actually start doing something genuinely innovative as well, who knows... but even if the next process has no innovation, they'll surely spin it so that the Applezombies will claim it's some major leap, Pavlovian-style, again. Watching what pathetically passes for the tech press swooning over the Air's top shell back in '08 was the most amusing, and also the most damning, thing I saw.

 

[Koing]

Moulding something isn't the same as machining it out of a solid block though.

And I swear machining magnesium wheels for cars is pretty dam expensive.

I'm not too fussed what my rMBP is made out of, just that it is solid to touch and built well. But more to the fact is that I prefer to use OSX. I finally upgraded after 6yrs of usage from my unibody white MacBook. It got upgraded to 4GB of ram and a 256GB SSD drive during that time.

Koing

 

[postmortemIA]

hmmm my rMBP does not get hot unless I use Windows or Netflix on OSX (Silverlight).

The SSD is actually upgradeable, it is 'standard' PCIe card.
This refresh only advantage is that base version is viable due to more RAM.

 

[manly]

hmmm my rMBP does not get hot unless I use Windows or Netflix on OSX (Silverlight).

The SSD is actually upgradeable, it is 'standard' PCIe card.
This refresh only advantage is that base version is viable due to more RAM.

This is actually quite important because most consumers buy stock models. Everything else is officially "CTO" and retailers outside of Apple rarely even carry that in inventory.

My personal opinion is that it's a shame when Apple short-changes a customer in the base config although I can see how 4 GB is probably good enough for a "typical" end user for now. A more egregious example would be the limiting 1 GB RAM on the iPad Air, which led to widespread app crashing in iOS 7.0. This low ceiling on the first mainstream 64-bit ARM SoC will no doubt limit its longevity.

Finally someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I wouldn't call Apple's flash storage a 'standard' part. You can buy an upgrade from OWC but if the form factor isn't being sold by Intel, Samsung and Crucial, I don't consider that standard. I believe the standard is called M.2 and Apple isn't using that (in fairness, Apple was first to market so predated the standard).

 

[TheStu]

This is actually quite important because most consumers buy stock models. Everything else is officially "CTO" and retailers outside of Apple rarely even carry that in inventory.

Finally someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I wouldn't call Apple's flash storage a 'standard' part. You can buy an upgrade from OWC but if the form factor isn't being sold by Intel, Samsung and Crucial, I don't consider that standard. I believe the standard is called M.2 and Apple isn't using that (in fairness, Apple was first to market so predated the standard).

No you're right. That's Apple's own standard. Whether they'll transition over to M2 now that is actually finalized remains to be seen, but when they were developing the rMBP and the Mac Pro there wasn't a standard for a blade PCIe SSD (that I'm aware of). There was mSATA, which is the same shape as miniPCIe, but wasn't actually PCIe.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

hmmm my rMBP does not get hot unless I use Windows or Netflix on OSX (Silverlight).

The SSD is actually upgradeable, it is 'standard' PCIe card.
This refresh only advantage is that base version is viable due to more RAM.

the bottom of my rmbp gets kinda warm. im not too worried

 

[Eug]

The bottom of my non-Retina MBP also gets very warm with Netflix on OS X, with Silverlight. No problems though, and the fan doesn't get loud.

BTW, Yosemite introduces HTML5 Netflix so no more Silverlight needed, and supposedly lower power usage. Unfortunately, it's still not available, so I had to install Silverlight on my Yosemite machine (for the time being).

 

[vbuggy]

Yeah - once again I get that a lot among people who apparently don't understand what cooling is.

The bottom of a Mac no longer gets hot for a very good reason: The aluminium shell is *not* being used to dissipate heat (at least no more than a plastic shell on other notebooks for example), despite the fact that your average ignoramus / Apple user equates aluminium to heat transfer. You know why? Pretty obvious actually - if Apple used the case as a heatsink, instant lawsuits.

It is, as I mentioned, ultimately purely as a tactile salve for the type of guy/girl who typically opts for Apple, which is seen as an engineering aspect by English lit majors and unsuccessful musicians who're writing about tech. And part of the cooling issue I have with Mombooks is not just the fan profile, the way the fans work, or the way the air is directed within the system - part of the issue is due to the effort they make to keep heat away from the casing.

Moulding something isn't the same as machining it out of a solid block though.

I don't think anyone said it was. However again, just because Apple says machining something out of a solid block is the nuts, doesn't mean it actually means much IRL.

And I swear machining magnesium wheels for cars is pretty dam expensive.

If we want to get into machining magnesium, relatively speaking yes - but only in terms of time - which obviously translates to money. But again, it doesn't make any sense to machine (beyond some degree of finishing) magnesium in this usage scenario (laptops) when a specific, more efficient process exists for it.

But more to the fact is that I prefer to use OSX.

Whatever's usually said, the goalposts are usually shifted eventually to 'this is what I like, and what I like is what's most important' - so sounds right.

 

[TheStu]

Yeah - once again I get that a lot among people who apparently don't understand what cooling is.

The bottom of a Mac no longer gets hot for a very good reason: The aluminium shell is *not* being used to dissipate heat (at least no more than a plastic shell on other notebooks for example), despite the fact that your average ignoramus / Apple user equates aluminium to heat transfer. You know why? Pretty obvious actually - if Apple used the case as a heatsink, instant lawsuits.

It is, as I mentioned, ultimately purely as a tactile salve for the type of guy/girl who typically opts for Apple, which is seen as an engineering aspect by English lit majors and unsuccessful musicians who're writing about tech. And part of the cooling issue I have with Mombooks is not just the fan profile, the way the fans work, or the way the air is directed within the system - part of the issue is due to the effort they make to keep heat away from the casing.


I don't think anyone said it was. However again, just because Apple says machining something out of a solid block is the nuts, doesn't mean it actually means much IRL.

If we want to get into machining magnesium, relatively speaking yes - but only in terms of time - which obviously translates to money. But again, it doesn't make any sense to machine (beyond some degree of finishing) magnesium in this usage scenario (laptops) when a specific, more efficient process exists for it.

Whatever's usually said, the goalposts are usually shifted eventually to 'this is what I like, and what I like is what's most important' - so sounds right.

After comparing the rMBP 13 to the Surface Pro 3, and the Yoga 2 13 on notebookcheck (since they include the temperature readings of the case), it looks like they are all pretty similar. The Yoga comes out in last, with a reading of 47.8C on the bottom. They said that internally, the CPU was at 85C-93C at load in the rMBP, and although that is hot, it's within spec for that mobile chip. Also, it ran at load for hours without throttling. Something that the Yoga wasn't able to do. The Surface never throttled, but it never went into TurboBoost either.

So you're right, they aren't funneling heat to the case. But if it's within spec at load, isn't throttling, and isn't getting uncomfortably hot for the user... I'm confused about where the problem is.

But since they don't hate the MacBook Pro, notebookcheck must be unqualified and biased. Because anyone that likes OS X or MacBooks MUST be a shill, and an idiot. But you, and those that agree with you, have their heads on straight, right?

 

[vbuggy]

But since they don't hate the MacBook Pro, notebookcheck must be unqualified and biased. Because anyone that likes OS X or MacBooks MUST be a shill, and an idiot.

If the person in question is dangling as 'proof! proof! proof!' (so often demanded / cherry-picked by Applezombies) a comparison between a 1.6Kg machine and an 800g one, absolutely.

 

[TheStu]

If the person in question is dangling as 'proof! proof! proof!' (so often demanded / cherry-picked by Applezombies) a comparison between a 1.6Kg machine and an 800g one, absolutely.

I included the Surface Pro 3 since you keep touting magnesium as the solution. It's interesting that you're willing to forgive the Surface of its faults due to its size and weight.

I included the Yoga 2 13 since it's in the same basic class as the rMBP13.

So again, what exactly is the problem? The rMBP13 doesn't throttle, it's within spec, and the user isn't uncomfortable.

 

[vbuggy]

I included the Yoga 2 13 since it's in the same basic class as the rMBP13.

Nope. Picking cherries again, I see.

 

[TheStu]

Nope. Picking cherries again, I see.

Fine, you tell me what system you'd compared it to.

The Samsung Ativ Book 9 something something? The CPU throttles down to 1.2GHz at load, and it gets hotter on the surface than the rMBP.

The Sony Vaio Pro 13? CPU throttles down to 900 MHz at load, and it hits up to 66C on the bottom!

How is the Yoga not in the same class as the rMBP13? Is it the touch screen?

But in the meantime, you still have answered my question to you:

Why is there a problem if the rMBP13 doesn't throttle, it's within spec, and the user isn't uncomfortable?

 

[vbuggy]

I have no other responses except for: Why are you still comparing machines in the Macbook Air's class? It appears to highlight the fact that a) you know nothing about hardware outside of Apple or b) you are that much of an Applezombie you're driven to cherry-pick these figures where you find them.

If you want comparison parity with the SP3 for example, look at your supposed (sure - unlike Anand reviewing an Apple product, they seem to at least attempt some degree of objective control, though my experiences suggest they're not done in the same environment from reviewer to reviewer to a sufficient degree to affect the comparability of the figures) bible's review of the 11" Air - which incidentally puts the hoo-ha of the SP3's supposedly unique throttling woes into sharp contrast.

Now stop being an Applezombie idiot - maybe you'll give me an infraction or maybe even a ban for that, I don't mind either way. It's not interesting to even argue with.

While you are welcome to your opinions - even passionate ones - moderator callouts will not be tolerated. If you have a problem with the moderation here please take it to Moderator Discussions.

Also, this "applezombie" nonsense will be ending. We don't allow you guys to fling around fanboy in this manner and we won't allow synonyms either.

-ViRGE

 

[TheStu]

I have no other responses except for: Why are you still comparing machines in the Macbook Air's class? It appears to highlight the fact that a) you know nothing about hardware outside of Apple or b) you are that much of an Applezombie you're driven to cherry-pick these figures where you find them.

If you want comparison parity with the SP3 for example, look at your supposed (sure - unlike Anand reviewing an Apple product, they seem to at least attempt some degree of objective control, though my experiences suggest they're not done in the same environment from reviewer to reviewer to a sufficient degree to affect the comparability of the figures) bible's review of the 11" Air - which incidentally puts the hoo-ha of the SP3's supposedly unique throttling woes into sharp contrast.

Now stop being an Applezombie idiot - maybe you'll give me an infraction or maybe even a ban for that, I don't mind either way. It's not interesting to even argue with.

Well, I'll certainly report you for the personal attack. But it's up to someone else to decide what happens with you.