WWDC 2019 Live discussion - Was: Sooo umm Apple just released new MacBookPros (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Mainly looking for a response from Sam, but please, all, chime in...

I have asked this before but since today or tomorrow COULD be release day of the new MBP, I want to make certain I know what upgrades I am picking as soon as preorders start.

I am the average to moderate user. Mostly email, web browsing, Photoshop and SOME iMovie and Final Cut.


1. If the new MBP is using current chips, I should skip the i9 and go with i7 to save money, correct?

2. Is base graphics usually good for my usage? Should I go one up on graphics? I know that I am asking about the unknown, but perhaps advice on the graphics card would help. I have always gone with base configuration on the PRO and rarely run into any problems except when using iMovie or Final Cut.

My goal is to get at least 32GB or ran with hope for 64GB. 2TB Hard Drive.

 

[Carlo_M]

Ron, the top of the line CPU and GPU are really for those running Pro level apps doing pro level tasks. So high def 4K movie rendering with post-production effects. Or music production (Logic Pro or Pro Tools, not Garage Band) with a large number of tracks and effects (think 100 or more tracks each with multiple effects on them).

I actually do Logic Pro level music production, 2K video creation, and DSLR level photography manipulation just fine on my top of the line...2015 Macbook Pro. Which should be several orders of magnitude less powerful than even the entry level 2019/20 version.

The only reason I see for you to go with a maxed out Macbook Pro would be if you're doing what I'm doing...going many years between upgrades. If I had bought the entry level 2015 MBP I'd probably be tied into buying a new MBP this year. But I'll likely get one to two more years out of this before it begins to show its age. So that will be 6-7 years of very high performing functionality.

But you buy MBPs annually, or maybe every other year, so really there's no need to go top of the line. You're literally throwing money at performance improvements that, given your daily usage, you're not likely to reap the benefits of.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Ron, the top of the line CPU and GPU are really for those running Pro level apps doing pro level tasks. So high def 4K movie rendering with post-production effects. Or music production (Logic Pro or Pro Tools, not Garage Band) with a large number of tracks and effects (think 100 or more tracks each with multiple effects on them).

I actually do Logic Pro level music production, 2K video creation, and DSLR level photography manipulation just fine on my top of the line...2015 Macbook Pro. Which should be several orders of magnitude less powerful than even the entry level 2019/20 version.

The only reason I see for you to go with a maxed out Macbook Pro would be if you're doing what I'm doing...going many years between upgrades. If I had bought the entry level 2015 MBP I'd probably be tied into buying a new MBP this year. But I'll likely get one to two more years out of this before it begins to show its age. So that will be 6-7 years of very high performing functionality.

But you buy MBPs annually, or maybe every other year, so really there's no need to go top of the line. You're literally throwing money at performance improvements that, given your daily usage, you're not likely to reap the benefits of.

Carlo,

That makes perfect sense for a constant upgrader like me.

So, stick with i7 over i9.

You don't even recommend going with a one-step up on the graphics? It sounds like you are doing fine with 3-year-old tech.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Sam Posten]

It's all speculation but my advice is i7 is fine for you. You aren't gaming on it so go with baseline graphics. You aren't likely to get the option of more than 32gb of RAM on your machine and you wouldn't take advantage of it if you do. Your insistence on leaving apps running in memory notwithstanding.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

It's all speculation but my advice is i7 is fine for you. You aren't gaming on it so go with baseline graphics. You aren't likely to get the option of more than 32gb of RAM on your machine and you wouldn't take advantage of it if you do. Your insistence on leaving apps running in memory notwithstanding.

Thanks, Sam!

Believe it or not, I do push 32GB of ram on my laptop. I have 2 dozen apps running at once, at least.

I am glad you said to go with basic config all the way. It allows me to spend more on SSD.

And I can hope for 64GB of memory, but I think that would be a lost cause to expect.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

WEDNESDAY!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-inch-macbook-pro-announcement-expected-by-tomorrow.2210853/

 

[Carlo_M]

Ron - yeah unless you're doing something super graphics intensive (like gaming, but then you should be on a Windows machine whose top end models use more powerful GPUs than Macs) or 4K rendering with effects, the stock GPU is going to be more than good enough.

This is, of course, based on my assumption that the 16" MBP will follow the 15" MBP trend of fairly solid discrete GPU options, versus the 13" MBP which tended to use Intel's built-in chipset GPU.

 

[Carlo_M]

Also this may be the "old school techie" in me talking, but I rarely want that many open apps at once. 1) I can't think of a use case for it unless those apps are all interacting with each other and/or your currently open app. 2) with SSD speeds (and Apple tends to have some of the the faster transfer rates even among SSDs) there's really no need to leave them open because launching them is ridiculously fast. 3) open programs that languish in the background can get corrupted or bloated and take up way more RAM and CPU power than they should, while giving you little-to-nothing in return if they're not affecting your current task at hand.

Take this from a guy who, back in the spinning HDD days, would max out his RAM to keep as many programs going because spinning HDDs took forever to open programs. Now I only have things open that I need instantaneous switching to (like a browser for my work email, so I don't have to log in each time) with Word open while I'm working on a doc, or my proprietary work software. Everything else is shut down unless I need it.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Also this may be the "old school techie" in me talking, but I rarely want that many open apps at once. 1) I can't think of a use case for it unless those apps are all interacting with each other and/or your currently open app. 2) with SSD speeds (and Apple tends to have some of the the faster transfer rates even among SSDs) there's really no need to leave them open because launching them is ridiculously fast. 3) open programs that languish in the background can get corrupted or bloated and take up way more RAM and CPU power than they should, while giving you little-to-nothing in return if they're not affecting your current task at hand.

Take this from a guy who, back in the spinning HDD days, would max out his RAM to keep as many programs going because spinning HDDs took forever to open programs. Now I only have things open that I need instantaneous switching to (like a browser for my work email, so I don't have to log in each time) with Word open while I'm working on a doc, or my proprietary work software. Everything else is shut down unless I need it.

They more or less interact with each other -or- they are generally programs that I use or reference on a daily basis.

If you want to laugh, here is a list of what I have running...


iStats Menu
Fantastical 2
Battery
1 Password
Forecast Bar
MailButler
Little Snitch
Haptic Feedback
Mosaic
SwitchResX
Carrot Weather
Stay
Thermo Watch (Nest Thermostat)
Nest Cam
Bongiovani
Bartender
Tablauncher
iDeskCal
Alfred
Visor
AdGuard
Text Expander
Paste
PopClip
ExpanDrive
Xnip
Default X
Capster

 

[Carlo_M]

I will trust you know your use-case. I personally use exactly zero of those programs so I don't know what they do or how they interact with each other.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Of course, these are rumors...

People on other sites are saying there will be no i7 option in the 16" MBP and that this will be purely high-end components.

Doesn't make sense, but what do I know?

We have heard the starting price is $3k

 

[Carlo_M]

If the starting price is 3K I will have to assume it's going to come stock with some pretty nice components, so likely no need to upgrade from that build.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

If the starting price is 3K I will have to assume it's going to come stock with some pretty nice components, so likely no need to upgrade from that build.

Yeah, it sounds like the base configuration will be the way to go and upgrading RAM and SSD

 

[Sam Posten]

Macrumors posters have been wrong like 3 months in a row now so YMMV...

 

[DaveF]

I actually do Logic Pro level music production, 2K video creation, and DSLR level photography manipulation just fine on my top of the line...2015 Macbook Pro. Which should be several orders of magnitude less powerful than even the entry level 2019/20 version.

Just to be pedantic, and remind everyone of post-Moore’s Law computing reality: there’s no “orders of magnitude” speed improvements. A 2019 MBP will be about twice as fast as a 2015 MBP. Maybe 3x is this is a top tier Mac Pro version of a laptop geared for multithreaded applications. The simplest view is comparing i7 2015 MBP to i9 2019 MBP synthetic benchmarks: 33% faster single core and 116% just over 2x) faster multithreaded.
https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/384
[URL]https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/447[/URL]

The only way you’ll see a literal 10x improvement is if there’s a T2 dedicated chip to speed up video or audio processing and it supports your apps and workflows. But that won’t do anything for web and email and so forth.

Not to be downer, but we’re in the era of 15% annual Intel upgrades, the doubling every 18 months we cut our teeth on in the glorious ‘80s and ‘90s is long dead. Even Apples vaunted ARM A-series speed increases appear to be slowing down as all the easy stuff is accomplished.

Also this may be the "old school techie" in me talking, but I rarely want that many open apps at once.....

I think that’s “old school techie” Modern OS does all the stuff for you. Open apps get pushed to RAM and then hibernated to SSD automatically. When you need it, it’s restored in whole, documents already for you where you left off.

I think manually closing apps is becoming the equivalent of turning off your computer when you’re done using it. It’s becoming counterproductive.

(I leave everything open always. If there’s a problem, only then do I relaunch.)

 

[Carlo_M]

Not to belabor the point, but the computer is more than the CPU/GPU benchmarks. It's the sum of its parts. I recall reading that less than a year after my model came out, the next model had some ridiculously faster SSD data transfer speed. I'm sure there were likely many other improvements in RAM speed, SSD and SSD data transfer speed, CPU, GPU, chipset throughput speeds, etc that could add up to the machine being more than just the CPU % improvement. But also if you took my "several order of magnitude" to mean I thought a 2019 MBP was somehow 10X faster than mine, that was not the intention. I should have chosen my words more carefully. 2X or 3X faster (when combining all of the improvements in every part of the system) is what I had in my mind when I wrote that line.

Re: closing apps. I don't go around religiously closing apps. But truth be told, I only use a handful of apps, and there is zero need for me to keep them running in the background if I don't need them. CTRL Q is second nature to me (or ALT F4 in windows) and it's just old habit. Plus, when one is working with Logic Pro (or Pro Tools) with many tracks and effects enabled, you want as clean a system as possible. You don't want to be in the middle of a project and encounter some kind of error. Those programs are finicky enough as they are on a system where they're the only program running so it's more a minimizing the possibility of things going wrong, or your session corrupting.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Thanks for the above, Dave.

I spend most of my days on the computer yet I don't fully understand processors and memory allocation methods.

So, naturally, I always thought going for the best processor was the way to do things.

I appreciate the advice as it ultimately saves me money. When the MBP goes on preorder today I am going to opt for the fastest i7 but skip the i9 configuration altogether. Also, I will go with basic graphics as I am certain they won't be integrated like the lower end MBP models.

 

[DaveF]

@Carlo Medina I was being pedantic asi admitted. But I deal with “orders of magnitudes” literally professionally. But more literally : 1985-1990, 1990-1995, etc we’d expect and assume a true order of magnitude (10x) CPU speed increase. Today, that’s mostly dead.

We’ve had UX step functions that dramatically improved apparent and real speed from SSD, GPU, and system niceties like Touch ID. But really going from no SSD to SSD is the only one in the past decade that really made everything feel a lot faster for everyone. But SSD to faster SSD I’m not sure was that big of a deal for anyone subsequently. GPU helps video pros and enthusiasts and gamers, but not the SOHO person.

Circa 2019, someone expecting to be gobsmacked by performance improvements in a even a five year update is likely setting themselves up for disappointment, particularly if their main use is email and web. I don’t even know if my wife, a pro Photoshop and Illustrator use, would notice much upgrading five year old iMac, except for getting Retina display. And even then maybe not (reading glasses and all )

But if a 2019 MBP appears that breaks all expectations, that will be great!

 

[Clinton McClure]

@Ronald Epstein - Go order your 16" MacBook Pro. They are currently one week out on delivery. 64GB RAM and up to 8TB SSD optional.

 

[Clinton McClure]

https://daringfireball.net/2019/11/16-inch_macbook_pro_first_impressions

John Gruber's review from Daring Fireball.