Jony Ive’s vision was killed today

[Queen6]

Point taken, I stand corrected. The point I am making is that Apple was hardly some customer that would take Intel's CPUs with the product sheet in hand and just look up the TDP to design its products around. Apple would have intimate knowledge of each CPU (type) that ever ended up in one of its laptops.

Intel's TDP guidelines have been nonsense for years. Either Apple's engineers were clueless or were simply instructed to cripple performance for the sake of the aesthetic.

Shoehorning the likes of the octa core i9 was simply a sales and marketing strategy as the chassis & cooling solution was incapable of adequately cooling the CPU in isolation let alone combined with the dGPU. Even the basic task of running an external monitor resulted in the fans roaring. While the MBP may have just held base frequency much of the performance was left on the table...

Said many times "never seen so many drop the Mac". This was solely due to the poor 2016 redesign; inadequate cooling, awful keyboard, nonsensical port solution. For many when the truth of the Butterfly Keyboard's reliability came to light it was the final straw. Worse Apple kept producing the Butterfly Keyboard year on year as was likely cheaper to mitigate than retool the entire notebook line up.

Thankfully someone at Apple woke up and applied some common sense...

Q-6

 

[t2jd1967]

MacBook Pro as a versatile thin and light laptop was first and foremost Jobs vision. The current 14” and 16” models still follow that vision. High-performance PC laptops have 50-60% higher body volume…

Again, the 16” MBP is just 10% larger (volume-wise) than the 2016 model. And most of that comes from the display assembly. The difference in thickness is merely a single millimeter- less than 4%.

I see that we are in total agreement here. The M1/M2 MacBook Pros are hands down the best prosumer laptops Apple made to date. An excellent design all around.

 

[Gudi]

Not sure why you are comparing the 2016 to the AS Macs, as I was talking about the changes from the 2015 MBP to the 2016 MBP, ...

Because the one thing that was truly flawed about the 2016 MBP was the Intel processor. You see, it's similar to when a doctor tells an obese patient, you've got to lower your food consumption. You can't ever out-exercise your sugar intake! The solution to weight problems is not to buy bigger trousers. You've got to tackle the root cause of the problem and not just treat the symptom.

So the solution to heat dissipation problems within a laptop is not to build a thicker body, but to reduce heat generation in the first place. After all binary numbers are just ones and zeros. They have no physical dimension, no size, no weight, no heat by themselves. Moore's Law only works, because information can be represented by ever smaller structures.

We wouldn't have computers in our pockets, if early engineers sentiment was: "You want a faster computer? Build a bigger house!" Miniaturization and integration are the bread and butter of computer design. The whole package, the innards and the form factors are on a constant race to thinner and lighter. Foldable smartphone displays only start to make sense, when the rest of the phone is the size of a thumbnail. And of course the keyboard also shrunk to a touch layer over the display.

If the objective is to make a Prosumer laptop reasonably thin and light, but without compromising on functionality, and reliability, all while keeping prices competitive, and the designer doesn't do that, I would think that the designer, at least in part, should share some of the responsibility of that.

Every kind of innovation goes with an elevated risk of compromising on functionality and reliability. You can't try anything new without a risk of failure. On the plus side, you become a company with experience on what works and what doesn't. So that when you transition your entire OS to its third chip architecture, it all works without hiccups. Whereas the copycat companies, who only ever stole proven concepts of others, don't know how to advance from Intel.

I don't know how much of this was true, but I remember reading that the new butterfly design was a product of making the overall laptop size thinner.

And trying to make things thinner is not a crime, even if it can go wrong.

Again, I don't mind making a laptop thinner, as long as the impact on the price, reliability, and functionality of it is minimal.

The impact is not minimal. It's amazingly positive and the reason why we're not living in caves anymore.

 

[t2jd1967]

Because the one thing that was truly flawed about the 2016 MBP was the Intel processor. You see, it's similar to when a doctor tells an obese patient, you've got to lower your food consumption. You can't ever out-exercise your sugar intake! The solution to weight problems is not to buy bigger trousers. You've got to tackle the root cause of the problem and not just treat the symptom.

So the solution to heat dissipation problems within a laptop is not to build a thicker body, but to reduce heat generation in the first place. After all binary numbers are just ones and zeros. They have no physical dimension, no size, no weight, no heat by themselves. Moore's Law only works, because information can be represented by ever smaller structures.

We wouldn't have computers in our pockets, if early engineers sentiment was: "You want a faster computer? Build a bigger house!" Miniaturization and integration are the bread and butter of computer design. The whole package, the innards and the form factors are on a constant race to thinner and lighter. Foldable smartphone displays only start to make sense, when the rest of the phone is the size of a thumbnail. And of course the keyboard also shrunk to a touch layer over the display.

Every kind of innovation goes with an elevated risk of compromising on functionality and reliability. You can't try anything new without a risk of failure. On the plus side, you become a company with experience on what works and what doesn't. So that when you transition your entire OS to its third chip architecture, it all works without hiccups. Whereas the copycat companies, who only ever stole proven concepts of others, don't know how to advance from Intel.

And trying to make things thinner is not a crime, even if it can go wrong.

The impact is not minimal. It's amazingly positive and the reason why we're not living in caves anymore.

There are so many things wrong with your post, it is hard to know where to start. I'll go with an easy one.

"Miniaturization and integration are the bread and butter of computer design."

Wrong. Miniaturization and integration are the result of market forces that lead to major improvements. When Intel faced little competition due to AMD getting it all wrong with the Bulldozer design, suddenly improvements became very incremental. Coincidence? I think not.

 

[leman]

I see that we are in total agreement here. The M1/M2 MacBook Pros are hands down the best prosumer laptops Apple made to date. An excellent design all around.

And apparently all thanks to that magical millimeter that transforms a device from “overly thin and sacrificing function for form” to “best design ever”. Sometimes I wonder

 

[t2jd1967]

And apparently all thanks to that magical millimeter that transforms a device from “overly thin and sacrificing function for form” to “best design ever”. Sometimes I wonder

Yep, small adjustments tied with major improvements in chip design and getting rid of all sorts of design flaws can make a world of difference. It just goes to show.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I'm surprised this thread is still going two years later. Two years later and these Macbook Pros are the best laptops I've ever used. I can't go back to Windows laptops anymore with the 14 inch.

 

[dmccloud]

And apparently all thanks to that magical millimeter that transforms a device from “overly thin and sacrificing function for form” to “best design ever”. Sometimes I wonder

When you're working with electronics whose circuits are measured in nanometers, even one millimeter can make a big difference overall.

 

[dmccloud]

Nope. That’s just a design mistake they copied from Microsoft, which only proves that a tablet should never try to mimic a laptop.

That's your opinion and most definitely NOT fact. If you're seriously trying to compare the Surface keyboard to the Magic Keyboard, you're literally comparing apples to oranges. But you're known for your bad takes based on opinion you try to pass off as fact.

Setting aside the facts that the Surface Keyboard attaches to the edge of the Surface just like the smart cover for the iPad, has no USB-C port, and only covers the screen, you might be able to draw a comparison between the Surface keyboard and Magic Keyboard - but only if you're grasping at straws, living in an alternate reality, or just making stuff up to fit your narrative.

 

[dmccloud]

Intel's TDP guidelines have been nonsense for years. Either Apple's engineers were clueless or were simply instructed to cripple performance for the sake of the aesthetic.

Shoehorning the likes of the octa core i9 was simply a sales and marketing strategy as the chassis & cooling solution was incapable of adequately cooling the CPU in isolation let alone combined with the dGPU. Even the basic task of running an external monitor resulted in the fans roaring. While the MBP may have just held base frequency much of the performance was left on the table...

Said many times "never seen so many drop the Mac". This was solely due to the poor 2016 redesign; inadequate cooling, awful keyboard, nonsensical port solution. For many when the truth of the Butterfly Keyboard's reliability came to light it was the final straw. Worse Apple kept producing the Butterfly Keyboard year on year as was likely cheaper to mitigate than retool the entire notebook line up.

Thankfully someone at Apple woke up and applied some common sense...

Q-6

The biggest issue was that Intel never designed any CPUs specifically for Apple - they basically binned out the best CPUs for their Wintel partners and shunted what was left to Apple. That's why Apple often had lower end or even older generation Intel CPUs than HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc.

Apple does shoulder some responsibility for chasing after the "thinner and lighter" mantra under Ive's watch. However, Intel was doing Apple no favors either.

 

[t2jd1967]

The biggest issue was that Intel never designed any CPUs specifically for Apple - they basically binned out the best CPUs for their Wintel partners and shunted what was left to Apple. That's why Apple often had lower end or even older generation Intel CPUs than HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc.

Apple does shoulder some responsibility for chasing after the "thinner and lighter" mantra under Ive's watch. However, Intel was doing Apple no favors either.

Do you have a source for that?

 

[leman]

The biggest issue was that Intel never designed any CPUs specifically for Apple - they basically binned out the best CPUs for their Wintel partners and shunted what was left to Apple. That's why Apple often had lower end or even older generation Intel CPUs than HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc.

They did design a custom product for the original Air (which would later become a tremendously successful family of low-power Intel SoCs).

I’m also not quite sure what you base this statement on? Apples problem was that they were ordering some specially configured SKUs and Intels capability to produce them was not always adequate.

 

[dmccloud]

They did design a custom product for the original Air (which would later become a tremendously successful family of low-power Intel SoCs).

I’m also not quite sure what you base this statement on? Apples problem was that they were ordering some specially configured SKUs and Intels capability to produce them was not always adequate.

Do you have a source for that?

The 2019 13" Pro ran an 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5-8257U, which was among the bottom-rung performers at the time. U skus are traditionally targeted at power efficiency over performance.

OTOH, the 17" 2019 MBP ran an i7-9750H, which is the same CPU my old MSI gaming laptop ran. Given the design and thermal profiles of the MacBooks at the time, the 17" was probably the only MBP in which that i7 wouldn't face throttling issues. The 17" models sold far less units than the 13" and 15" models, and carried a nice price bump to accomodate those more powerful CPUs.

 

[leman]

The 2019 13" Pro ran an 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5-8257U, which was among the bottom-rung performers at the time. U skus are traditionally targeted at power efficiency over performance.

That’s because Apple originally positioned this model as a successor to MacBook Air and used the same hardware as they did in MBA.

OTOH, the 17" 2019 MBP ran an i7-9750H, which is the same CPU my old MSI gaming laptop ran. Given the design and thermal profiles of the MacBooks at the time, the 17" was probably the only MBP in which that i7 wouldn't face throttling issues. The 17" models sold far less units than the 13" and 15" models, and carried a nice price bump to accomodate those more powerful CPUs.

The 17” was discontinued long before, and at its best it had worse thermals than the much criticized 2016 15” model. Even when it was alive it never featured faster hardware than the 15” model, just larger screen and more ports if I remember correctly.

Besides, there were no throttling issues. Both i7 and i9 performed according to the nominal spec in the touchbar chassis. The problem was that the performance was indistinguishable from cheaper older generation CPUs. To get higher performance you had to run these CPUs above the spec, which the MBP couldn’t do. This was a common problem when these CPUs first came out, with many gaming laptops suffering from the same issue.

 

[t2jd1967]

The 2019 13" Pro ran an 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5-8257U, which was among the bottom-rung performers at the time. U skus are traditionally targeted at power efficiency over performance.

OTOH, the 17" 2019 MBP ran an i7-9750H, which is the same CPU my old MSI gaming laptop ran. Given the design and thermal profiles of the MacBooks at the time, the 17" was probably the only MBP in which that i7 wouldn't face throttling issues. The 17" models sold far less units than the 13" and 15" models, and carried a nice price bump to accomodate those more powerful CPUs.

Sorry to be blunt here, but that is not a source. You mentioned Apple being as it where on the receiving end compared to other Intel customers, and I don’t see this validated yet. Since Intel made a big thing of gaining Apple as a customer when the PowerPC architecture was abandoned, I would question your claim that it was ever treated as a second rate customer.

 

[Gudi]

That's your opinion and most definitely NOT fact. If you're seriously trying to compare the Surface keyboard to the Magic Keyboard, you're literally comparing apples to oranges. But you're known for your bad takes based on opinion you try to pass off as fact.

I don't care how the keyboard is attached to the tablet. The mere circumstance that you need a kickstand or you need to make the keyboard section unnecessarily heavy, because otherwise there would be an inherent instability between the heavier vertical part and the lighter horizontal part is a design flaw.

Everybody recognized that right away and made fun of Microsoft when they first unveiled their idea to operate a tablet in laptop mode. This 2-in-1 nonsense only exists, because Microsoft was unable to enter the tablet market on its own and needed to exploit their desktop OS monopoly for leverage.

It's most curious that Apple got inspired by this stupid idea and created a physical keyboard for the iPad, which wasn't needed and doesn't add much value to the device. If you do that much word processing that you can't forgo the tactile feeling of real keys, it's almost always better to buy a laptop. Fortunately you don't need to buy this accessory and it doesn't take away from the benefits of the tablet form factor itself.

Neither does the Magic Keyboard turn the iPad into a good laptop, nor does the Surface become a good tablet when you detach the Type Cover. Both fail at being two devices in one. They're just mimicking as Transformers, because the idea sounds cool. But it never works well enough.

 

[Gudi]

There are so many things wrong with your post, it is hard to know where to start. I'll go with an easy one.

"Miniaturization and integration are the bread and butter of computer design."

Wrong. Miniaturization and integration are the result of market forces that lead to major improvements. When Intel faced little competition due to AMD getting it all wrong with the Bulldozer design, suddenly improvements became very incremental. Coincidence? I think not.

You know that Intel stands for "integrated electronics"? You know that IBM mainframes used to occupy an entire floor of a building when Apple was founded as a "personal computer" company? Maybe you should take a physics or biology class once in a while, before you try to explain everything with "market forces". Because then you could probably understand that everything is actually driven by hormones. Market forces and competition are just the result of hormones that lead to major improvements.

 

[t2jd1967]

You know that Intel stands for "integrated electronics"? You know that IBM mainframes used to occupy an entire floor of a building when Apple was founded as a "personal computer" company? Maybe you should take a physics or biology class once in a while, before you try to explain everything with "market forces". Because then you could probably understand that everything is actually driven by hormones. Market forces and competition are just the result of hormones that lead to major improvements.

Maybe you should follow Economics 101 before spouting more nonsense. I'll give you a famous music album to consider.

The Mothers of Invention - We're Only in It for the Money

 

[mr_roboto]

The 2019 13" Pro ran an 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5-8257U, which was among the bottom-rung performers at the time. U skus are traditionally targeted at power efficiency over performance.

That was the cheapest base model. Why are you ignoring all the others? Apple sold 4 major variants of the 13" Pro in 2019:

2 TB3 ports, i5-8257U (15W TDP)
2 TB3 ports, i7-8557U (15W TDP)
4 TB3 ports, i5-8279U (28W TDP)
4 TB3 ports, i7-8569U (28W TDP)

The 15W TDP CPUs there were not Intel's "bottom rung" in 2019 by a long shot. The actual bottom rung for Coffee Lake U was some i3 models with only 2 cores; all the models Apple used are 4 cores (the most Intel offered in these TDP segments in Coffee Lake) with premium graphics.

Products formerly Coffee Lake

Products formerly Coffee Lake product listing with links to detailed product features and specifications.

ark.intel.com

Your entire thesis is just out of touch with reality. I mentioned premium graphics; Intel created Crystalwell aka Iris Pro / Iris Plus essentially just for Apple. Thanks to that, there were tons of 'Apple special' Intel SKUs rarely used by Dell or HP or other PC OEMs. As far as I know there was never an exclusivity deal, you did sometimes see some crossover, it was just that Apple was willing to pay a premium for a feature that wasn't too attractive to the wider PC market.

I'm sure there was some strain in the Apple-Intel relationship towards the end, because it couldn't possibly have been a secret in 2019 that Apple had cut orders to near zero in certain market segments, but it was pretty much business as usual until the end. Intel likes money, Apple moved enough units to keep them happy in that sense, and for that matter there were probably contractual obligations.

OTOH, the 17" 2019 MBP ran an i7-9750H, which is the same CPU my old MSI gaming laptop ran. Given the design and thermal profiles of the MacBooks at the time, the 17" was probably the only MBP in which that i7 wouldn't face throttling issues. The 17" models sold far less units than the 13" and 15" models, and carried a nice price bump to accomodate those more powerful CPUs.

There was no 17" 2019, I think you mean 16".

 

[dante_mr]

I loved the WhiteBooks. Apple should really revive the MB lineup with a polycarbonate device with a stylish but plastic body and a basic M1 setup for like 699. I would buy one.

This actually would be a neat idea, especially if Apple targets the K12 education sector.

Sure, the MacBook Air M1 has good value but you still need to find it on sale for it to be cheap enough for the average K12 student/school.

But it seems Apple is more interested in targeting that market segment with iPads rather than MacBooks.

Still, a polycarbonate MacBook would be great. Maybe using 100% recycled plastic for Apple to achieve its environmental targets. But idk how much cheaper that would be than just using aluminum.

 

[leman]

I'm sure there was some strain in the Apple-Intel relationship towards the end, because it couldn't possibly have been a secret in 2019 that Apple had cut orders to near zero in certain market segments, but it was pretty much business as usual until the end. Intel likes money, Apple moved enough units to keep them happy in that sense, and for that matter there were probably contractual obligations.

I think the dissatisfaction ran both ways. It was reported for example that Skylake was notoriously buggy and that Apple in particular was very unhappy with Intel’s quality of support there. Later Apple had to delay hardware releases because Intel was unable/unwilling to produce enough of SKUs for their needs. And of course the fact that Intel pretty much stopped improving performance after 2017, just tweaking power curves and increasing energy consumption. I have little doubt that all this was instrumental for Apple‘s decision to move forward with Apple Silicon.

 

[Gudi]

Maybe you should follow Economics 101 before spouting more nonsense. I'll give you a famous music album to consider.

The Mothers of Invention - We're Only in It for the Money

You're really giving me fruit for thought. Do I take the title of a 60s rock album as evidence or the circumstance that Intel deemed "integration" important enough to put it right in their company name? 🤔

They could've called themselves "money electronics" and we would compare the Apple M1 vs. the Monel i7. 😂

 

[t2jd1967]

You're really giving me fruit for thought. Do I take the title of a 60s rock album as evidence or the circumstance that Intel deemed "integration" important enough to put it right in their company name? 🤔

They could've called themselves "money electronics" and we would compare the Apple M1 vs. the Monel i7. 😂

See now how simple things really can be? Of course IBM started making personal computers because they just wanted to, right?

 

[Gudi]

See now how simple things really can be? Of course IBM started making personal computers because they just wanted to, right?

Wrong! Mining companies want to make money too, but since they ship boulders and not ones and zeros, they go for maximization and not miniaturization. So the triviality that all companies want to make money tells us freaking nothing about the nature of computer science. Your degree in economics is literally useless with regard to this topic. Again, everything humans do is ultimtely controlled by hormones not money. That's why instant gratification time and again lets us make decisions, which are completely against our economic interests. IBM management probably acted more out of pride, arrogance and jealousy than some well thought out economic analysis. Otherwise they wouldn't have lost the market they once dominated, would they?

Komatsu 980E

 

[t2jd1967]

Wrong! Mining companies want to make money too, but since they ship boulders and not ones and zeros, they go for maximization and not miniaturization. So the triviality that all companies want to make money tells us freaking nothing about the nature of computer science. Your degree in economics is literally useless with regard to this topic. Again, everything humans do is ultimtely controlled by hormones not money. That's why instant gratification time and again lets us make decisions, which are completely against our economic interests. IBM management probably acted more out of pride, arrogance and jealousy than some well thought out economic analysis. Otherwise they wouldn't have lost the market they once dominated, would they?

View attachment 2241159
Komatsu 980E

I am happy for your to continue with your beliefs, as misguided as these may be. Let's call it a day, shall we?