Why 16GB Memory in MacBook (PRO)

[iraytje]

Also, MacBooks are really good IMHO (not the Pros, the fan-less ones). If the next update brings a 16GB RAM option, it's going to be a must purchase as the successor for my MacBook Air.

Just curious, why would you need 16GB in the Macbook? Because i love my Macbook, but it ain't the memory that's holding back anything, it's the "slow" cpu mostly

 

[bassguy]

Just curious, why would you need 16GB in the Macbook? Because i love my Macbook, but it ain't the memory that's holding back anything, it's the "slow" cpu mostly

I use Logic and music composition apps that require a ton of memory to load my sound libraries. When I'm on the road, I'd like to have the capabilities of loading medium sized projects, which I can't currently with only 8GB of RAM—sometimes not even with the 16GB in the MBP.

 

[izo1]

I feel most hacky users will either switch to ubuntu or windows if and when our current systems no longer function with macOS. I highly doubt all of a sudden we'll decide to fork out some stupid amount of money for the latest glorified iPad with a keyboard that apple releases under the MacBook Pro banner. It's Apple's loss at the end of the day, all the creatives are fleeing the sinking ship, I remember seeing them sign up in the first place, now I'm seeing the same with the surface studio pro.
We'll see what the next event brings, but I'm sick of them being boring and safe.

I don't know, MacBook Pro's are still legit hardware.

A lot of Hackintoshes such as myself own real Macs (in my case I have a 2014 MBP for mobile work) and a Hackintosh for desktop usage (still for work, not for fun).

Before I built a Hackintosh for myself, I was a full on Mac guy and I had a fully loaded 12 core 2010 Mac Pro and I sold it to a friend and built a Hackintosh because I wanted better single core performance and the ability to boot into Windows and do VR/gaming sometimes (for fun). Before the 2010 Mac Pro I had a 2008 Mac Pro. Before that a 2007. I always had a MacBook Pro on the side for mobile stuff. I really can't get into an iMac, I just don't like it.

I really don't see myself switching to Windows full time or any other OS besides macOS unless Apple kills the Mac line, which won't happen.

Even the Trash Pros are very capable machines. It's just ridiculously priced and almost 4 years old in terms of hardware, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still a beast of a machine for real work.

I'm just so used to macOS for the last 10 years...I have specific tools I use which are not available under Windows.....and of course Adobe apps (which are available of course).

I feel like the 980Ti is the last of the Mohicans kind of deal where CUDA on macOS is on it's last legs. I'm crossing my fingers next version of macOS is still supported by nVidia. I HOPE. If not I will stick to Sierra for a long time until Apple gets their ish together so I can have the incentive to actually buy a Trash Pro (and a good 4k monitor, which Apple doesn't make anymore).

 

[izo1]

Just curious, why would you need 16GB in the Macbook? Because i love my Macbook, but it ain't the memory that's holding back anything, it's the "slow" cpu mostly

16GB is a must for me for laptops. I wish it had 32GB tbh. Photoshop and AE eats all the RAM (i usually use my laptop to get started on stuff and finish on desktop which has 64GB of RAM).

Also the MBP CPUs are not "slow". 2016 MBP uses a Skylake CPU, just like every other laptop out there. Kaby Lake is definitely coming in the 2017 MBP, but KL is not a huge leap from Skylake. 5-10% at most.

 

[iraytje]

I use Logic and music composition apps that require a ton of memory to load my sound libraries. When I'm on the road, I'd like to have the capabilities of loading medium sized projects, which I can't currently with only 8GB of RAM—sometimes not even with the 16GB in the MBP.

Ah that explains, didn't know that was so heavy on memory and not on cpu.

16GB is a must for me for laptops. I wish it had 32GB tbh. Photoshop and AE eats all the RAM (i usually use my laptop to get started on stuff and finish on desktop which has 64GB of RAM).

Also the MBP CPUs are not "slow". 2016 MBP uses a Skylake CPU, just like every other laptop out there. Kaby Lake is definitely coming in the 2017 MBP, but KL is not a huge leap from Skylake. 5-10% at most.

We are talking about the MacBook here not the MacBook Pro, the MacBook has a 1.2ghz m5 cpu dual core as fastest option

 

[asiga]

Just curious, why would you need 16GB in the Macbook? Because i love my Macbook, but it ain't the memory that's holding back anything, it's the "slow" cpu mostly

That question could be perhaps answered by the fact that I upgraded my Hackintosh from 32GB to 64GB last Christmas I use applications that eat a lot of RAM, such as virtual machines and radiosity rendering (yes, the matrix radiosity from the good old days, that needed a lot of space for caching form factors between patches), together with symbolic math analysis with Mathematica, which will eat all RAM you have, no matter how much.

I'm not sure if the substitute for my MacBook Air will be a MacBook or a MacBook Pro. My MBA is a late 2010 model, which I managed to keep at optimal CPU speed all these years, by not upgrading OS X (it's still at 10.6.8, it's a Core 2 Duo, and it boots OS X in a few seconds because it's at 10.6.8, it would take a lot longer to boot if I had updated OS X).

The Core 2 Duo is of course slower than the 4GHz i7 6700K I've in the Hackintosh from which I'm typing this, but however, it's still "fast enough" for a lot stuff I do in my MBA (yes, even Mathematica stuff, and VirtualBox machines). The most limiting factor in my MBA isn't the CPU, but its 4GB RAM (and its 256GB SSD, which is now at only 40GB free).

In a laptop I value lightness, because I tend to bring it with me in trips... I work with it in trains, buses, hotels... and the current MacBook (not the Pro) is even lighter than my MBA while providing more than 2x CPU performance compared to the Core 2 Duo.

If the MacBook gets updated to Kaby Lake and with a 16GB RAM option, it would very likely be my natural update path. It would mean scaling my MBA CPU speed by more than x2, as well as the RAM amount by x4, and the SSD by x2 or more.

Of course, the MacBook Pro would provide more performance, but whenever I try to configure a MacBook Pro at the Apple Store, I get a result which weighs more than the 1.30 kg of my MBA.

The only thing I don't like in the (non-Pro) MacBook is the graphics: integrated Intel graphics are getting more and more efficient, but my MBA had the integrated NVIDIA 320M, and I prefer to have an NVIDIA on board rather than Intel, but anyway, I guess I'll have to give up in that point.

 

[izo1]

We are talking about the MacBook here not the MacBook Pro, the MacBook has a 1.2ghz m5 cpu dual core as fastest option

Seems useless to me, kind of like a MacBook Air. It's good for email and browsing, but that's about it.

 

[asiga]

Seems useless to me, kind of like a MacBook Air. It's good for email and browsing, but that's about it.

It depends. For stuff like LaTeX documents, the MacBook Air is perfectly suited, as it's the SSD speed the factor that has a highest impact in LaTeX processing (of course the CPU is also important, but LaTeX accesses the disk quite heavily). Also, for AutoCAD, the MacBook Air isn't slow for most drawings and models I've used in it.

For GIMP, if the image fits in RAM, it also behaves very efficiently.

For compiling code, the number of cores is the drawback, because compiling code is linear relative to the number of cores. So, yes, expect it to be noticeably slower than a 4 core Mac. But, again, I use to build a lot (and I mean a lot) of code in my late 2010 MBA, and I wouldn't label it as slow.

Of course it depends on how you value CPU performance against machine weight. There was a time when I thought of my laptop as my desktop replacement. Then, of course, your laptop cannot be light.

But nowadays, I realized I need both worlds: A powerful desktop for intense number crunching, building huge source code trees, long Mathematica problems, complex radiosity renderings, etc... currently that's my Hackintosh duty. And also a light MacBook Air, which of course won't be able to finish huge problems at the same speed as my Hackintosh, but it's very light and solves moderate problems quite fast... who cares if a LaTeX document requires 4 seconds in my Hackintosh and 15 seconds in the MBA? it's still fast enough, the only real limitation would come when tasks take more than a few minutes, but then we have to make this choice:

Do you prefer to carry a 2kg MBP that will solve huge problems fast, or do you prefer a 1kg MB that will solve small and moderate (though not huge) problems fast, while using your top-configured desktop for solving huge problems? That's the choice you have to make. And, sincerely, after over 6 years using a MBA, I've it quite clear that I want lightness for my MacBook, and heaviness for my desktop Mac.