Phil Schiller Says 32GB RAM on New MacBook Pro Would Have Required Battery Compromising Design

[3Dadvocate]

Long time; first time.

I could not agree more.

This is an extremely expensive every day use computer period, unless your profession is spread sheets and word processing.

I do not want to trade off thinness for the guts I *need*. I need memory, as much as I can get. I need to plug into a network. I need the best GPU with the most memory.

Professional users do not worry about 10 hours of battery use at a coffee shop. I don't want a small army of extremely expensive dongles to carry around and lose either. Put the connections on the dang box.

When your CEO thinks a tablet is a professional computer, that pretty much says it all. It's okay though. From a business model we represent too few buyers. So wishing for something good in this lineup is over. The next iMac might be good...

 

[ladycsr]

There are many youtube videos proving that he is a liar & his pants are on fire. It would hardly make any difference especially if they used 16 gig sticks.

 

[Col4bin]

....Like you already compromise with the iPhone's battery? Eh, Phil?

 

[iCloudStrife]

'The new MacBook Pro:Uncompromisingly full of compromises."

 

[Smeaton1724]

I'm pretty sure Apple already know the majority of their customers or potential customers. Their first and foremost concern is to answer to their shareholders. So if they satisfy the majority of their customers, their shareholders would be happy. We ought to remember how big Apple really is, what sort of company it has become compared to what it was a decade ago, and who uses an Apple product these days compared to those using an Apple product a decade ago.

The majority of customers using an Apple computer nowadays are not photographers, video editors, nor designers. Of course if one is not happy with the product, they could always switch. If the unhappy customers are a part of the minority, then so be it.

That minority build the apps that the majority of the cash cow iPhone users need. Apple are great but to ignore and gimp products that are the basis of your major product line, is well completely stupid. Create a good environment for developers, good hardware and a large user base and your going to do well, lose a part of that and stagnation occurs.

The 2016 performance won't kill them but decline starts somewhere. In my mind it started with them gimping the 2014 Mac Mini, so many developers I know still have the 2012 Quad Core and won't let it go, if the hardware isn't what people want they'll stop developing for the platform or the platform doesn't get better. It was a cheap way in to developing, but come on who spends that kind of money on such pitiful hardware - it's £100 netbooks specs on a £450 device. iOS is stagnating. Look at iPads, the Pro has been out over a year and how many apps take advantage of the power?! The stagnation of software development started in 2014. Look at the iPad Air 2, it's been out so long, no apps really push that device either.

This Mac hardware refresh won't push or encourage developers and generally apps won't be any feature rich in future than they are now, so in turn why bother with the iPad Pro?!

Compound this with the MacBook Air, decent screens can be found in all manner of laptops, they've let the Air 13 rot and that was the most popular Mac with students, what student can afford a MacBook Pro without touchbar?! They are killing their future, in what seems an obsession to get devices 1-5mm thick.

 

[cicalinarrot]

Well, they compromised pretty much everything about this device already.

Who leaves their laptop on standby for 30 days?!

300% more standby consumption. 30 days to 7 days. 30 hours to 7 hours. He talked about the highest capacity but it's also valid in proportion for lower times. If you leave your Mac with 50% battery in stand by for four days in case A, it will have more than 30% charge. If you do it in case B, it will have no charge.
I can't believe you (and many people who upvoted you) have to get things this easy explained. Seriously, you attended a very poor school probably.

 

[Dead0k]

so will they leave LPDDR3 forever ? epic

 

[kyykesko]

I don't want a thicker rMBP. I would prefer that it get even thinner and lighter, so that traveling with it is easier. I think there is a group, possibly a large group, of people who use rMBP's that rarely, if ever, use them on battery power.

Maybe Apple should produce a version with significantly less battery in it, maybe enough for 4 hours of use, then take the space and add in desktop class CPU / GPU? Since so many people use laptops as desktops nowadays, with just the occasional off-plug use, Apple could offer Mac-Pro-like power in a laptop.

And given the move to the USB-C ports, those that need more battery power can easily use an external battery, making less need for huge on-board batteries.

Let's make it simple: You don't need a MBP. Period. Go buy the 12" toy and be happy with it. It's all you need. It's light and thin and can fit in your man purse easily enough. It's piss poor to use, but then again - so is the new rMBP.

 

[manhattanboy]

No, but you get the same performance as the 2016 for $700-800 less money.

Here we are back down to money. Apple is not marketing value-for-money. Buy a Dell with 32gb and be happy.
If you would have used the new laptop you might actually find the speed improvements to be quite noticeable. And what exactly do you need 32gb for?
let's say Apple came out with a 32gb laptop that weighed 5 pounds, had every port imaginable, and cost $5 grand, would you be happy? Just asking because it seems a lot of hate against these new laptops is based on price, so if Apple custom made a laptop for the "real pros" that cost $5 grand, how many of those folks would actually buy it?

 

[Gudi]

Well, they compromised pretty much everything about this device already.
Who leaves their laptop on standby for 30 days?!

Like, everyone.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

Seems to me that Apple has an really large disconnect with what their consumers want. If they want to have an laptop with these characteristics? just keep the AIR line going. the MBP needs to have power and memory capacity, period. This interview is more evidence of an dire need for new Blood in the Mac product line operation.

Death by 1000% compromises, greed for more accessories sales? Aside from an nice touch bar? this laptop is making many upset.

Just ignoring the complaints will not help apple make more sales, it will push people to leave for Windows.

 

[tubeexperience]

Some needs to ask Phil why he won't put in a bigger battery.

 

[manhattanboy]

so will they leave LPDDR3 forever ? epic

If you read through the entire article you would have seen that the current Intel notebook chips do not support low power DDR4, which would be needed to get to 32gb. When Intel releases the proper chips (likely in 2017), then you will see an update to 32gb.

 

[xgman]

just lame... sheesh..

 

[Ghost31]

goal is money, why the low end has 2 USB-C ports and the next model has 4 USB-C ports?
[doublepost=1479741984][/doublepost]
Pro users need that feature, they do not use their machine that often

I love that the "low end" is a $1500 model with a core i5 and 8gigs of ram

 

[kyykesko]

Very true, but how many people are really unwilling to take a charger for a weekender?

Forget kids who want to use facebook on a weekender. Think about people who work out there day after day. People who need to use their computers regardless of whether there's a power outlet next to you or not. Think about photographers, journalists and whatever else. I spend less than a full day each week at the office, I'm always on the move and sadly the 99,5Wh battery in the 2015 rMBP can't handle even light work during the day. You think I want to give the 2016 with it's tiny 76Wh battery a go? No, didn't think so.

I do plug in my rMBP every chance I get just to survive through the day but that means daily compromises, being stuck in a location I shouldn't be in just so I can work because the damned battery is empty. It means deciding to give up early afternoon just so I can head to the office or home to plug the damned computer in so I can get the work done.

More and more lately it has meant I just stuff the rMBP in the bag and keep working on the Surface Pro 4 I drag around, too.

Would I want a slightly thicker mac that could do the work of two computers so I wouldn't have to drag two of them around? HELL YES.

(and before some brainiac suggests it: YOU try balancing an external battery on your knee while the computer is on the other one long enough to get any work done.)

 

[ladycsr]

If you read through the entire article you would have seen that the current Intel notebook chips do not support low power DDR4, which would be needed to get to 32gb. When Intel releases the proper chips (likely in 2017), then you will see an update to 32gb.

Apple chose to use an old CPU. The new ones do support 32gigs. Dell XPS15 has 32 gigs.

 

[usarioclave]

Apple has never tried to be all things to all people. It's a pisser when your desires don't align to their product line.

If you don't like it, buy another brand of laptop that fits your needs.

 

[Investor27]

This doesn't make sense. Apple could have just make the Pros 10% larger to accommodate for the extra battery support for 32 GB of RAM. And with everyone willing to pay anything, up to $4,300, for these new Pros, Apple could have charged $1,000 for the 32 GB of RAM upgrade, and pro-users will still pay for that upgrade.

 

[kyykesko]

I think you are likely talking about professional or the term Pro, with one or two specific professions in mind. I agree that the term may have once meant something, back when Apple's market in general, or more specifically the MacBook Pro market, was that of the design / graphics / video / audio creation realm.

Things have changed though, especially as more and more companies have adopted or allowed their employees to use Apple product. So now there are lots of people using MacBook Pro's to do jobs that have little to do with graphic design, etc., but clearly using them as professional devices - even if the work they're doing revolves around typing emails, writing documents and crunching numbers on a spreadsheet.

I'm one of those people, except the company is mine and I choose to use a 15" rMBP, not because I need the processing power, but because I frequently travel between office and manufacturing plant (thereby needing the portability), and my aging eyes make the bigger screen easier to work with.

I love the design of the new rMB and although they are clearly less powerful, would easily do what I need a computer to do, but just can't see going to that small of a screen.

Another person justifying a bad decision by claiming the device is what it should be. You along with everyone else who works that way needed a 15" Macbook Air. Not a Pro. It would be wonderful if one day you would realize why there was Air and Pro models and that both had PLENTY of people who actually needed what the device provided. And I'm not talking about the screen size now. I wish they would've released two new macbook airs and left the Pro series alone. Well, they did, they just decided to scrap the Pro line and rename Air to Pro.

 

[maratus]

Apple chose to use an old CPU. The new ones do support 32gigs. Dell XPS15 has 32 gigs.

Please, re-read the article. And no, XPS uses 32GB DDR4, not LPDDR3. And no, it uses the same Skylake 4-core processors as rMBP 2016.......

This doesn't make sense. Apple could have just make the Pros 10% larger to accommodate for the extra battery support for 32 GB of RAM. And with everyone willing to pay anything, up to $4,300, for these new Pros, Apple could have charged $1,000 for the 32 GB of RAM upgrade, and pro-users will still pay for that upgrade.

It makes sense. No standby battery drain complaints (14% of drain a day), simplify logic board design, no need to accommodate DDR4 instead of LPDDR3 on certain configuration. It's all about tradeoffs, nothing is perfect.

I'll probably get a Kaby Lake machine with 32GB of LPDDR4, but I wouldn't buy a current DDR4-equipped 15" rMBP because it'd be a compromise I don't want.

Some people want it though, but Apple decided not to complicate things because of them.

 

[Jose Fuertes]

There is nothing "Pro" about the "Pro" simple as that!

 

[kyykesko]

To the people complaining about the empty spaces between the battries. The empty spaces are for the ventilation for god sake.

Yes, they are. I think people mostly mean that tiny battery rather than the actual empty spaces, though.

 

[sdowd]

Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller has allegedly responded to an email from software developer Ben Slaney to further clarify why the new MacBook Pro maxes out at 16GB of RAM, noting that supporting 32GB of RAM would require a different logic board design which might reduce space for batteries.Slaney himself wrote an article explaining how the new MacBook Pro uses a low power, enhanced version of DDR3 RAM called LPDDR3E, which maxes out at 16GB. To achieve up to 32GB RAM would have required using DDR4 RAM, but its low-power variant LPDDR4 is not supported by the Intel processors powering the late 2016 models.

Using the iStat Menus tool, Slaney determined that, under normal conditions, the LPDDR3E RAM uses 1.5 watts of power. In comparison, he said the notebooks would use about 3-5 watts if they were using DDR4 memory, although this estimate is rather loosely based on tests of DDR4 RAM on Windows-based notebooks.

Slaney said the 2-5 watts saved translates to 10% of overall power usage being dedicated to RAM versus 20-30% that would be required for DDR4 RAM, which, if accurate, helps justify Apple's power versus performance tradeoff.

Schiller previously addressed these power concerns in an earlier comment:Apple's decision is even more justified when considering background power draw, or the energy a notebook uses to go back into sleep mode after regular usage. Slaney said this figure is estimated to be about 50% of overall power draw on an average system when using DDR4 RAM, but only 20% when using LPDDR3 RAM.

Moreover, the new MacBook Pro would get less than 7 days of standby time if it used DDR4 RAM, compared to 30 days with LPDDR3E RAM, he said.The rest of the article reflects upon poor battery life in several Windows-based notebooks with 32GB RAM, part of which can be blamed on the FAA's 100-watt-hour limit on notebook batteries brought on airplanes.

Full Article: "Why the MacBook Pro is limited to 16GB of RAM" on MacDaddy

Article Link: Phil Schiller Says 32GB RAM on New MacBook Pro Would Have Required Battery Compromising Design

 

[maratus]

By the way, it'd be possible to fit a 12% larger battery if you fill all the empty space (85Wh vs. 76Wh). It won't be enough to compensate extra DDR4 power consumption (because you need to factor in 32GB of RAM, not 16GB), so battery life would take a slight hit regardless. I mean it's enough to power 3 hours of 16GB DDR4 vs. 16GB LPDDR3 difference, but 32GB DDR4 is another story. And it still wouldn't solve standby battery drain and logic board design compromises.