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A comment on Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard. Parent comment

Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by eecc on Thursday June 28, 2018 @05:40AM (#17415402)
Technically no, not exactly. It’s intel’s fault. Their damn architectures won’t support DDR4LP - that’s the low power variant - because they’ve become complacent. Also the lack of PCIe lanes forced Apples’s hand on USBc only design, although it’s such a daft choice they should’ve just gone with 2 TB ports and keep the other “legacy” available. But no, they had to brag about dual 4K external monitors to it had to be 4 USBc ports and nothing else.

I’m seriously worried that the platform I’ve been so comfortable with the past 10 years will fall in disrepair because of some ill-advised management that chose to chase some other innovation...

It’s another problem I don’t need

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by mamon on Thursday June 28, 2018 @06:00AM (#17415495)
There's a simple solution for the lack of DDR4LP: end the "thinner and lighter" insanity and provide normal DDR4 with a decent battery capacity by making the laptop 2mm thicker and 0.5 pound heavier.
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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by acdha on Thursday June 28, 2018 @06:28AM (#17415624)
I’d cut Apple some slack on the RAM front because Intel was supposed to ship DDR4LP a couple years ago, after years of being fairly good about hitting targets.

The larger point about recognizing that we’ve plateaued on size & weight benefits is important, though. As long as we need keyboards there’s not much point in taking on all of the other compromises.

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by mamon on Thursday June 28, 2018 @07:36AM (#17415986)
Ironically, it was Steve Jobs' pep talk to new executives that went something like: "The difference between a janitor and executive is that VPs are not allowed to have excuses". So trying to share the blame with Intel is just silly.

Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by acdha on Thursday June 28, 2018 @09:14AM (#17416565)
> Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.

This is only partially correct: those are separate models which are bigger and have worse power and heat characteristics. Every laptop which is similar to Apple's shares the 16GB limit for the same reason; the difference is that Apple has decided not to offer that second tier.

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by markmark on Thursday June 28, 2018 @09:55PM (#17421842)
Dell's XPS is comparable in size and performance to the MBP and has 32Gb of RAM available. Does the standard DDR4 they use effect battery life? Possibly, but that's a trade off I and others would take for our $4000 laptops not to grind to a halt when we spin up a few docker containers.
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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by coryfklein on Thursday June 28, 2018 @11:16AM (#17417550)
> Apple has decided not to offer that second tier

MacBook Pro, a first-tier plaything. If they do finally release a "second tier", what the hell are they going to call it? MacBook Super Pro?

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by andromeduck on Thursday June 28, 2018 @12:54PM (#17418561)
I'd imagine they'd call it Macbook Pro 17"
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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by masklinn on Thursday June 28, 2018 @08:06AM (#17416155)
> Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Book_2

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by kristofferR on Thursday June 28, 2018 @09:30AM (#17416666)
It's impossible to provide decent battery life in a laptop with normal DDR4, it uses 80% more battery in standby:

https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by markmark on Thursday June 28, 2018 @09:57PM (#17421848)
"DDR4 would drastically decrease it from the 30 days of standby time that they get now to less than one week"

Fine, I'll take 32Gb of RAM and a less than a week of standby time thanks.

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by Joeri on Thursday June 28, 2018 @02:40PM (#17419383)
It’s possible by hibernating faster, which is the strategy lenovo used in my t460p with 32 gb ddr4. The downside is that leaving it with a closed lid for ten minutes makes waking it up a 5 to 10 second affair instead of instant.
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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by eecc on Thursday June 28, 2018 @06:50AM (#17415745)
Mah, there’s a mobile standard optimized for that use case... not using it because intel can’t get their act together would be asinine. I’d be shocked if there weren’t any Ryzen prototypes running in Cupertino, with daily performance test results CC’d to intel account managers. I’d to just that...
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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by peatmoss on Thursday June 28, 2018 @10:44AM (#17417235)
Part of the reason for Apple betting big on Intel was power efficiency. But with Ryzen going to 7nm before Intel makes it to 11nm(?) reliably, I have to think that Ryzen with integrated GPU starts looking damned attractive.
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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by bogomipz on Thursday June 28, 2018 @09:40AM (#17416736)
>"Also the lack of PCIe lanes forced Apples’s hand on USBc only design,"

Can you elaborate on this? Is this related to DDR4LP? Is there a connection?

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Re:Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Key... by pixl97 on Thursday June 28, 2018 @10:19AM (#17417033)
>Also the lack of PCIe lanes

https://ark.intel.com/products/97462/Intel-Core-i7-7920HQ-Pr...

I don't think PCIe lanes and low power ram are directly related, but it is just another sign of Intel attempting to control the market via feature segregation.

The CPU only has 16 PCIe lanes. Which is flat out retarded when 4 of them will be used by NVMe, and 8 (and really 16 should be) can be used by video. This only leaves 4 additional PCIe lanes for any other devices, including USB-C and thunderbolt.

Simply put, if there were any competition in the market, that CPU look much different. Low power ram and 8 more PCIe lanes at least.

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