Apple launches new MacBook Pros, alleges it fixed the keyboard

signal · May 25, 2019

Is there a workflow that can make use of the power of these machines without being restricted by thermals? Ignoring macOS only software, is it ever better to have a situation like this where you would be spiking momentarily then throttled down rather than simply something with better cooling that can sustain the load?

Deleted member 39374 · May 25, 2019

Seems like the thermal performance was improved over the 2018 model at least.

signal · May 25, 2019

Polymerization said:
Seems like the thermal performance was improved over the 2018 model at least.

Yeah not going below base is obviously an improvement but aren't these processors kind of overkill lol

Deleted member 39374 · May 25, 2019

signal said:
Yeah not going below base is obviously an improvement but aren't these processors kind of overkill lol

There's definitely an imbalance between the chassis design (typical skinny sexy macbook) and the beefy Intel CPU's they're cramming in there. Doesn't feel right, it's like the chassis was designed for 10nm Intel and they definitely fucked up on that

I can definitely make use of 8-cores for speeding up renders in FCP X and DaVinci Resolve. I'm honestly kinda amazed this product exists, I remember in 2010 everybody was hyped because Sandy Bridge made the MBP quad core and doubled the performance.

Juice · May 25, 2019

Any benchmark comparisons for the 13" shown yet? I was absolutely floored that Intel hasn't released a 9th generation 28W chip so it's still riding the old ones.

signal · May 25, 2019

Polymerization said:
There's definitely an imbalance between the chassis design (typical skinny sexy macbook) and the beefy Intel CPU's they're cramming in there. Doesn't feel right, it's like the chassis was designed for 10nm Intel and they definitely fucked up on that

I can definitely make use of 8-cores for speeding up renders in FCP X and DaVinci Resolve. I'm honestly kinda amazed this product exists, I remember in 2010 everybody was hyped because Sandy Bridge made the MBP quad core and doubled the performance.

Are you just hitting the limits then throttling then repeating constantly or is it a constant decent clock within thermal limits? Or in other words is the final render time better than you would be getting with something that could perform within its limits better in that chasis?

Shogmaster · May 25, 2019

That Dave 2D video though...

Deleted member 2226 · May 25, 2019

lunarworks said:
Apple's dumped a bunch of money into MicroLED, including purchasing an R&D company. They know it's likely the future.

Definitely, but it seems like it's still several years from showing up, especially in a mature implementation (I know I don't want a first mLED product.)

Shogmaster · May 25, 2019

Polymerization said:
It's hard for many of us to do creative work on it, due to a mixture of UI/UX inconsistencies and lots of OS-level things that are handled way better on macOS (hiDPI scaling, ProRes support, systemwide 10bit+ color support, coreaudio, etc)

Guess what? I'm also a designer and I can't stand doing work on MacOS. Made my new job switch out the the Mac for a PC.

Stop trying to make it like it's something intrinsic to the OSes. IT'S JUST THAT WHAT WE ARE USE TO IS WHAT WE PREFER.

entremet · May 25, 2019

Shogmaster said:
That Dave 2D video though...

Nothing we didn't know as long as they were keeping the same chassis.

Shogmaster · May 25, 2019

entremet said:
Nothing we didn't know as long as they were keeping the same chassis.

Not that. The fact that he is getting so bold against Apple in his videos. This one is way over pessimistic than the others. lol

entremet · May 25, 2019

Shogmaster said:
Not that. The fact that he is getting so bold against Apple in his videos. This one is way over pessimistic than the others. lol

He's not an Apple hater. He's just very critical of the thin design. He explains some of his frustration here.

Shogmaster · May 25, 2019

entremet said:
He's not an Apple hater. He's just very critical of the thin design. He explains some of his frustration here.

I know that he is not an Apple hater. An Apple hater hating on Apple is not WOW worthy at all.

If anything, I remember him being way more aligned with Apple products only few years back. He said many times he prefers the OS.

But ever since the 2016 MBP Chassis, he's been gradually more critical of Apple. At this point, I'd call it borderline hostile. lol

Shogmaster · May 25, 2019

In any case, I'm almost willing to bet real money that this will be the last time Intel is used in Macbooks/Macbook Pros.

2020 MBP will have A series ARM and even thinner chassis (but better KB).

VHS · May 25, 2019

Shogmaster said:
(but better KB)

I hope so, I want to upgrade to a macbook pro but... these keyboards are worth upgrading to. So many of my friends have had issues with the butterfly keys.

Shogmaster said:
Not that. The fact that he is getting so bold against Apple in his videos. This one is way over pessimistic than the others. lol

Seemed pretty normal to me, he's a fair reviewer who highlights the good bad and things that worry him.

Shogmaster · May 25, 2019

VHS said:
I hope so, I want to upgrade to a macbook pro but... these keyboards are worth upgrading to. So many of my friends have had issues with the butterfly keys.

If they go to A series ARM, they can do a proper KB mechanism and still have room to make the chassis thinner.

Only thing that can fix MBP KB is more space for the mechanism...

Seemed pretty normal to me, he's a fair reviewer who highlights the good bad and things that worry him.

Come on dude. He never did a skit like that before... LOL Macqueda kidnapping...

VHS · May 25, 2019

Shogmaster said:
If they go to A series ARM, they can do a proper KB mechanism and still have room to make the chassis thinner.

Only thing that can fix MBP KB is more space for the mechanism...

Come on dude. He never did a skit like that before... LOL Macqueda kidnapping...

I think the skit was just a joke, didn't seem that serious

Mammoth Jones · May 25, 2019

Polymerization said:
Surface hardware tends to be like this too. They have serious power management issues, hinge problems, etc. Every time I see somebody smugly claim that they're "switching" over to one of these devices (Surface, XPS, Razer, et al.) I know from experience they'll likely get burned and come back because the build quality and support on the other side is just so subpar. Grass is greener as grmlin says. And it's crazy because Surface stuff, higher end XPS' and Razers cost just as much as an MBP so what's the point. I guess there's always Huawei if you're cool with the China thing

Well, it was the fact that I could get double the ram and storage for 800$ less.

That's how the math worked out last summer. So I read reviews and they were all glowing. Some minor nitpicking here and there but NOTHING close to what I experienced in terms of the quality drop off. And I mean my macbook wasn't perfect. I had to get it serviced. I had to get the battery replaced. But it was replaced after 6 years, not 4 months.

Dell waited until the reviews were out then pushed a bios update that lowered the gpu thermal throttle temp. Made all those benchmarks I watched irrelevant. And they didn't include anything about doing that in the bios update notes.

Shit had dpc latency issues that took nearly a year to fix which made any professional audio work useless.

And they removed s3 sleep so that quick 2 second wake up without having to boot from splash is gone. My shit either stays on and endures massive battery drain or hibernates and takes 40 seconds to load.

I'll deal with it until 2023. I refuse to spend nearly 3k and not get 5 years out of my laptop.

But after that? I'm never fucking with shitty windows laptops again. Lesson learned. I'll get my 5k macbook with a god damned smile on my face. Cause at least when apple fucks up it makes news and they offer a repair program. If I didn't spend the extra cash on the premier warranty I'd have a paperweight.

Shogmaster · May 25, 2019

VHS said:
I think the skit was just a joke, didn't seem that serious

It was a joke for sure, but the resentment was positively dripping off the screen lolz

Lord Error · May 27, 2019

I've dropped off my MBP 2017 for a keyboard replacement two days ago. They've determined that the up/down arrow keys are sometimes not registering (a problem that really annoys me as a software developer), and the service guy said that he honestly doesn't know if the replacement will be a newest design. Not very reassuring, as I assumed they'd be informed about this stuff by now, but we'll see. Maybe I should have waited a bit more before bringing it in :\ What makes me think that they've been using these new replacement keyboards for some time now is that a poster here about a month ago said that they new keyboard he got in was a completely different feel, and was told it's a new design.

signal said:
Is there a workflow that can make use of the power of these machines without being restricted by thermals? Ignoring macOS only software, is it ever better to have a situation like this where you would be spiking momentarily then throttled down rather than simply something with better cooling that can sustain the load?

Other than using eGPU, there's not much you can do if you do intensive tasks for long periods of time. With eGPU, the fan doesn't ramp up nearly as much, no matter what I do - I guess because in that case, only CPU needs to be cooled inside the MBP.

Deleted member 2226 · May 27, 2019

Shogmaster said:
It was a joke for sure, but the resentment was positively dripping off the screen lolz

If he wants a laptop like the ASUS he compares it to in the benchmarks, I'm not sure why he's ever been a fan of Apple, honestly. Apple hasn't made that massive a laptop in literally two decades now. They've never made one that heavy since the Macintosh Portable.

Red · May 27, 2019

I'm thinking of selling my 2018 MacBook Pro and getting one of these, seems like a nice spec boost. Mine was top of the line last year save for the SSD, which is 1TB. Wonder how much I could get for it. Probably better to wait for the rumored 16".

milkyway · May 27, 2019

I recently picked up a barely used 2015 MBP because I figured they'd never really fix the situation for awhile and it was the last of its kind before the butterfly disaster. Kinda wish I had other choices for macOS since I really like the operating system for casual use but it's working quite well for me. Seems like these issues just won't end until they totally revise the keyboards but we'll see with this new iteration.

Thunder11 · May 27, 2019

Shogmaster said:
Not that. The fact that he is getting so bold against Apple in his videos. This one is way over pessimistic than the others. lol

Yeah it's getting to the point where it comes off as very salty lol

depward · May 27, 2019

Puggles said:
Work just gave me a 2018 15" MBP and i really don't like the touch bar. It actually makes things more difficult and the keyboard feels and sounds terrible. I'm actually just using my 2015 15" while the 2018 collects dust. It's just so much better.

Yeah I'm using my mid-2015 15" as long as possible. Every time I think I may seek an upgrade I'm always like... but the keyboard. I work 99% on the MacBook and do not use a second screen.

Shogmaster · May 27, 2019

fuchsdh said:
If he wants a laptop like the ASUS he compares it to in the benchmarks, I'm not sure why he's ever been a fan of Apple, honestly. Apple hasn't made that massive a laptop in literally two decades now. They've never made one that heavy since the Macintosh Portable.

So 17" MBP didn't exist in the last couple decades? 17" chassis would do better with the i9 for sure.

Deleted member 2226 · May 27, 2019

Shogmaster said:
So 17" MBP didn't exist in the last couple decades? 17" chassis would do better with the i9 for sure.

The 17" MBP was never as thick as the ASUS. It's literally 10 flipping pounds. It's barely a portable.

Shogmaster · May 27, 2019

fuchsdh said:
The 17" MBP was never as thick as the ASUS. It's literally 10 flipping pounds. It's barely a portable.

17" MBP was almost 7 lbs. You wanna bet me there are no Windows laptops about 7 lbs that has far less thermal throttling than the new 15" MBP with the i9?

Deleted member 2226 · May 27, 2019

Shogmaster said:
17" MBP was almost 7 lbs. You wanna bet me there are no Windows laptops about 7 lbs that has far less thermal throttling than the new 15" MBP with the i9?

Then again, compare them to those models. Instead of a model that is worthless for most use cases.

The reason Apple doesn't make 1.7" thick laptops is because the vast majority of people don't want 1.7" thick laptops. You want to argue Apple should make a machine that has more thermal headroom, that's another argument entirely than the one he's making with his charts.

ArnoldJRimmer · May 27, 2019

Holy crap my dell xps matches the specs for a grand less. Who buys these things?

Shogmaster · May 27, 2019

fuchsdh said:
Then again, compare them to those models. Instead of a model that is worthless for most use cases.

The reason Apple doesn't make 1.7" thick laptops is because the vast majority of people don't want 1.7" thick laptops. You want to argue Apple should make a machine that has more thermal headroom, that's another argument entirely than the one he's making with his charts.

I think you are too hung on up that chart.

The point is, Apple's been making MBP chassis thinner and thinner to entice casual consumers more than professional. Now they have gotten down to the point where Intel's top end mobile SoC are no longer thermally viable for the chassis. They need to switch to that new a series ARM SoC ASAP...

krazen · May 27, 2019

Shogmaster said:
I think you are too hung on up that chart.

The point is, Apple's been making MBP chassis thinner and thinner to entice casual consumers more than professional. Now they have gotten down to the point where Intel's top end mobile SoC are no longer thermally viable for the chassis. They need to switch to that new a series ARM SoC ASAP...

Quick one; for the change to ARM woudn't that take years as far as legacy 'intel' apps are concerned, similar to their jump to Intel?

Also, what got me on the mac side was MacOS which is a lean fighting machine. IOS has gotten the benefit of the doubt because it's such a locked ecosystem that you really can't do anything on it so I question the stability once you're really pushing the multitasking, rendering, etc if the goal is that IOS will be their one operating system across all their products.

Their moves are bizarre to me because they created the Macbook Air line to be that gateway for pleased iphone users to get enticed into other aspects of the Apple ecosystem. But now you've got their pro line giving up features to be 'thin', along with a zillion different versions of the air, pro, and regular lines...it's just utter confusion where I don't think even they have a real roadmap to Arm.

Deleted member 2226 · May 27, 2019

krazen said:
Quick one; for the change to ARM woudn't that take years as far as legacy 'intel' apps are concerned, similar to their jump to Intel?

Also, what got me on the mac side was MacOS which is a lean fighting machine. IOS has gotten the benefit of the doubt because it's such a locked ecosystem that you really can't do anything on it so I question the stability once you're really pushing the multitasking, rendering, etc if the goal is that IOS will be their one operating system across all their products.

Their moves are bizarre to me because they created the Macbook Air line to be that gateway for pleased iphone users to get enticed into other aspects of the Apple ecosystem. But now you've got their pro line giving up features to be 'thin', along with a zillion different versions of the air, pro, and regular lines...it's just utter confusion where I don't think even they have a real roadmap to Arm.

I'm going to guess the multi-billion dollar company has a roadmap, especially when they've been building their own iOS chips and Intel has been disappointing them for the better part of four years.

Shogmaster · May 27, 2019

krazen said:
Quick one; for the change to ARM woudn't that take years as far as legacy 'intel' apps are concerned, similar to their jump to Intel?

Also, what got me on the mac side was MacOS which is a lean fighting machine. IOS has gotten the benefit of the doubt because it's such a locked ecosystem that you really can't do anything on it so I question the stability once you're really pushing the multitasking, rendering, etc if the goal is that IOS will be their one operating system across all their products.

Their moves are bizarre to me because they created the Macbook Air line to be that gateway for pleased iphone users to get enticed into other aspects of the Apple ecosystem. But now you've got their pro line giving up features to be 'thin', along with a zillion different versions of the air, pro, and regular lines...it's just utter confusion where I don't think even they have a real roadmap to Arm.

Listen, as soon as Apple started making the A series chips into monsters around A9 (after they poached that guy from idon'trememberlol), I knew that they were gonna ditch Intel. And they've been working towards that goal since back then, so I know they are very close to pulling the trigger for that transition.

Let's just say that Apple is hella closer to ARM transition than Microsoft is even though MS already has ARM based laptops out in the ecosystem.

krazen · May 27, 2019

fuchsdh said:
I'm going to guess the multi-billion dollar company has a roadmap, especially when they've been building their own iOS chips and Intel has been disappointing them for the better part of four years.

Normally yes.

But this ain't old Apple. An Apple that can't get a keyboard right after y-e-a-r-s.

I just imagine them being like, "Marzipan boots up on these new ARM Macbooks? Cool! What? Nah, don't bother testing, we are just gonna cancel the intel chips and release these badboys next week." LOL

Mammoth Jones · May 28, 2019

ArnoldJRimmer said:
Holy crap my dell xps matches the specs for a grand less. Who buys these things?

People who would rather not go through three screen replacements, a battery replacement, and a motherboard replacement in less than a year on the xps. Specs are awesome on paper. Thermal throttling is not.

I'm at the point I wish I spent the extra grand. Fantastic machine on paper but the devil is in the details.

Apple launches new MacBook Pros, alleges it fixed the keyboard

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