Even *I* Can’t Hate It – 16” Macbook Pro 2019

[Emily Young]

Apple’s new 16” MacBook Pro is a refreshing change of pace with its revised keyboard and standard 16GB of memory. Has Apple finally listened to the criticism they’ve taken for many years now?

 

 

Buy a 16” MacBook Pro 2019:
From Apple: https://lmg.gg/8KVTd
On Amazon: https://geni.us/QD8udM

 

Buy a Dell XPS 15:
On Amazon: https://geni.us/g3Vt
On Newegg: https://lmg.gg/8KVTv

[Sauron]

Still a big no for me for the price and lack of user expandability but it's definitely a huge step forward.

[Hunter259]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Still a big no for me for the price and lack of user expandability but it's definitely a huge step forward.

Virtually all thin and lights have 0 user hardware that can be replaced. See the XPS. And the price is way WAY better than it's been in the past. It's actually competitive.

[Sauron]

9 minutes ago, Hunter259 said:

Virtually all thin and lights have 0 user hardware that can be replaced. See the XPS.

Up until recently the XPS line had upgradeable ram and ssd, lenovo still definitely offers both on equally thin laptops.

[Hunter259]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Up until recently the XPS line had upgradeable ram and ssd, lenovo still definitely offers both on equally thin laptops.

It something that CAN be done but isn't. I've never really had THAT big of a problem with it as failure of RAM and SSD is so low compared to the battery and VRM components.

[Sauron]

12 hours ago, Hunter259 said:

It something that CAN be done but isn't. I've never really had THAT big of a problem with it as failure of RAM and SSD is so low compared to the battery and VRM components.

It's not about failure, it's about 1) not paying twice the market value for ram by buying it directly from Apple and 2) being able to buy what you need right now and only get more when you need it. If I only need 16gb of ram right now I don't want to be forced to buy 32gb or spend another 4000$ 2 years from now if I end up needing more. Same goes for the ssd, a few years down the line there may be cheaper models with more storage and I may want to get one, rather than spend 1000$ for a 4tb ssd right now.

[Hunter259]

Just now, Sauron said:

It's not about failure, it's about 1) not paying twice the market value for ram by buying it directly from Apple and 2) being able to buy what you need right now and only get more when you need it. If I only need 16gb of ram right now I don't want to be forced to buy 32gb right now or spend another 4000$ 2 years from now if I end up needing more. Same goes for the ssd, a few years down the line there may be cheaper models with more storage and I may want to get one, rather than spend 1000$ for a 4tb ssd right now.

For ~90-95% of consumers that simply isn't a thing. Failure is the much more likely reason that anything is going to be touched in a laptop. Not to mention by the time you may want to upgrade specs it likely would just be better to sell the machine and get something newer. I will agree that the cost of RAM on Apple machines is just outrageous, which is why I didn't get the 32GB. $400 for that is silly. The storage costs aren't awful but perhaps a touch excessive. Manufacturers don't build for the 5 or so percent that want to upgrade their machine. Would I like it? Sure. But it's not a deal breaker for me.

[captain_to_fire]

The MBP is way too much for my simple workflow. I’ll wait for the 2020 MacBook Air refresh. 

• It has the Touch ID button 
• It has function keys instead of a touch bar 

[pApA^LeGBa]

This obessesion with the basels. Is it just me that doesn´t give a single F if they are slim or not?

[amdorintel]

it is still an apple product    

[Retro_R]

This is def something I would get if I needed a new laptop. Big steps forward, especially the keyboard. Glad to see this. Apple, please please keep this up. Also, if you could add some swappable and expandable ssds.

 

P.S to you stupid fanboys who are disliking this just because it is an apple product please reconsider your life

[amdorintel]

fans are people who like

 

[kirashi]

8 hours ago, GabenJr said:

Apple’s new 16” MacBook Pro is a refreshing change of pace with its revised keyboard and standard 16GB of memory. Has Apple finally listened to the criticism they’ve taken for many years now?

 

Linus: "C'mon guys, we've moved on; I mean, given the plethora of portable media formats that exist now, you can't support them all, and Thunderbolt 3 has matured to the point where you can use the 4 included ports to connect basically anything you'd want."

Umm... speak for yourself, LTT - not all of us have moved on from requiring an SD Card reader for their workflow, nor do we want to carry around dongles. It's not even about the cost - it's about the inconvenience caused by failing to design a functional product in favor of a products' industrial design.

 

While carrying around more adapters than is necessary might be OK for some, I'm not going to accept that a manufacturer has decided for me that I apparently don't need an SD card reader built into my laptop when it's absolutely physically feasible for them to include it during the design of the product.

 

For this reason alone, I cannot buy a 13" MacBook Pro or XPS 13, no matter how much I'd love to have either machine for on-location photo shoots. (That being said, there's going to come a time where I crawl back under a rock, because no laptop or phone will have the ports I need on a daily basis.)

[caincha]

Someone please hit Linus again! He obviously ain't himself in this video!!! 

[Sauron]

11 hours ago, Hunter259 said:

For ~90-95% of consumers that simply isn't a thing.

I don't care. It's a thing for me and I don't see why I would want to compromise on a >$3000 laptop. As I said, it's a big no for me.

11 hours ago, Hunter259 said:

Not to mention by the time you may want to upgrade specs it likely would just be better to sell the machine and get something newer.

You can't know that and especially with storage it's not necessarily a matter of the machine being too slow. Plus, Apple hasn't been very consistent with their products' quality - the next model may very well be trash for all we know and if this one is good I don't see why I would want to get rid of it just because I need a bit more ram or storage.

11 hours ago, Hunter259 said:

Manufacturers don't build for the 5 or so percent that want to upgrade their machine.

This is already a niche machine, not many people spend that much on a laptop. And again, I'm talking for myself - if you don't care, good for you.

3 hours ago, kirashi said:

Umm... speak for yourself, LTT - not all of us have moved on from requiring an SD Card reader for their workflow, nor do we want to carry around dongles. It's not even about the cost - it's about the inconvenience caused by failing to design a functional product in favor of a products' industrial design.

Also this ^ I don't use sd cards for work but if I did I'd find this pretty damn inconvenient. I do use ethernet ports but at this point that's probably a lost cause outside of portable workstations.

 

@kirashi I know it's not ideal but a lot of cameras have a usb connector or wifi so they can work as an sd card adapter. It could spare you the hassle of carrying a dongle around when the time comes.

[kirashi]

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I know it's not ideal but a lot of cameras have a usb connector or wifi so they can work as an sd card adapter. It could spare you the hassle of carrying a dongle around when the time comes.

I have yet to use a single camera with reliable WiFi connectivity that doesn't make me tear my hair out, and carrying a USB cable around is just as bad a dongle. Thank you for the suggestion though - I just want an SD card on my laptop because it's what I need for my workflow.

[DoctorNick]

How!? Hope the blowjob was good Linus, because this is... The thing is completely soldered, glued and you name it.. unrepairable

[Guest]

You hardly even mentioned the 100 watt-hour battery

[NinJake]

All of these improvements and they haven't removed the ports!.... Yet....

[BuckGup]

17 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

This obessesion with the basels. Is it just me that doesn´t give a single F if they are slim or not?

Just you. Bezels are wasted space. I would much rather have a laptop with a 14inch screen in the footprint of laptop that has a 11-12inch screen. Or a 17in screen on the footprint of a normal 15in laptop. 

[amdorintel]

9 hours ago, DoctorNick said:

How!? Hope the blowjob was good Linus, because this is... The thing is completely soldered, glued and you name it.. unrepairable

so do you think the video was a disguised promo video?

[bimmerman]

I'll be honest, I'm definitely intrigued by this machine as I'm due for a new laptop at work in a few months. Currently on a Precision 5520 (XPS 15 with a Xeon/Quadro, essentially), and while it's pretty great, if the Macbook can run Solidworks via Parallels/Bootcamp either with an eGPU or with Firepro driver support on the Radeon card, I'd be super interested. Thermals in Bootcamp'd windows is a bit of a bummer, that might be the dealbreaker in favor of a replacement Precision.

 

No SD reader is a bummer, but I need that functionality maybe once a month when I'm already at my desk. Dongle or a reader plugged into my dock would be totally fine there. I also can't remember needing to upgrade a laptop, so....not particularly concerned with the soldered storage/ram.

[caincha]

11 hours ago, bimmerman said:

not particularly concerned with the soldered storage/ram.

You definitely should!

Not just for the fact that if something bad happens - liquid damage, drops and so on - you're out of luck if you need a very important project you had no backup off and there's no way to get it back as you can't take the storage to another laptop but also that because you can't fix it (for the same reasons) so there's no way to recover that data either!

Those - and the total lack of vision since Steve Jobs died so no innovations since 2011 - are my main gripes with Apple for the past 5~7 years.

[pApA^LeGBa]

On 12/9/2019 at 6:07 PM, BuckGup said:

Just you. Bezels are wasted space. I would much rather have a laptop with a 14inch screen in the footprint of laptop that has a 11-12inch screen. Or a 17in screen on the footprint of a normal 15in laptop. 

Last time i checked a 15" with thick basels had the same screensize like one with thin basels.

[DoctorNick]

2 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Last time i checked a 15" with thick basels had the same screensize like one with thin basels.

Lol yes the screen size 15" vs 15" is the same but with thin bezels you can get 16" with the same footprint as 15" - you get it?