Macbook Pro 16GB RAM Limit Exploration

[kirashi]

5 hours ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

First

 

Cheers Nick!

Why does being first on the internet matter? Seriously asking.

4 hours ago, colejohnson66 said:

--SNIP--

When Apple claims it's limited for battery life, they're not lying; putting even 20 GB of RAM would force them to use DDR4.

--SNIP--

While you're absolutely correct, I can't help but laugh at the fact that the new MBP's only get 10 hours compared to the 12 hours of the previous generation. I'm not a fanboy of any specific product; they all suck equally, since manufacturers make obsolescence a part of their design, but this just doesn't make sense. Shouldn't we be working toward maintaining or improving battery life?

3 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

Am I the only one who thinks Louis Rossmann is kind of a jerk? I don't know if anyone from LTT can review the MacBook Pro objectively aside from the criticisms I concur like the lack of type A USB, SD card reader, and MagSafe.

3 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

He is a stubborn. --SNIP-- He is also deadly honest and he is a reliable person. I am pretty sure that he can fight for what he believe, at all cost. And that is good, but sometimes pretty dangerous.

--SNIP--

3 hours ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

He is a total prick IMO. I get this from the videos where he talks badly about his rude customers and does half-assed or rushed repairs on them.

--SNIP--

After watching a few of his videos since he posted that video about LTT re-flowing video card solder incorrectly, I've had a conflicted opinion on Louis.

Upfront, he definitely comes across as a stubborn jerk with an extremely opinionated point of view regarding the world around him.

However, when you think about it, Louis probably considers himself a realist. But in philosophical terms he's what's called a pessimist.

 

Now, I'm not defending the intonation of his voice or body languages or posture here; those can all be interpreted in different ways.

And no one should ever tarnish their customers, suppliers, or partners in any line of business - that's just poor character.

 

What I'm targeting is the ideas that drive his arguments - the very fact that manufacturers design products poorly cannot be argued.

Things like constantly making devices thinner and thinner at the cost of stagnating battery life is one example of many ass-backwards design flaws.

Consumers want longer battery life and more durable products, yet for some reason, owning the thinnest device is the name of the game.

Same goes for building anything in such a way that it cannot easily be taken apart for repair - that's planned obsolescence in its' finest form.

These are things we consumers should be concerned about, no matter what product we're talking about.

Otherwise the next car you buy might have its' hood welded shut, and have an internal computer that prevents you from starting it after 100km.

[mrchow19910319]

44 minutes ago, kirashi said:

However, when you think about it, Louis probably considers himself a realist. But in philosophical terms he's what's called a pessimist.

 

100% agree. His anger can be really dangerous. Not to others but himself. 

[907rider]

I am a Late 2013 model MacBook Pro owner, I use it with FCP (Final Cut Pro) to render out short (>5min) videos. And I can say right now that with a few tabs open in chrome and and FCP running, there are some serious bottle necks. I'm assuming it has to do with RAM usage, as the CPU is the upgraded, i7 4960HQ, it also has the 16gig memory option... I honestly really like my MacBook Pro, even after 3 years of heavy daily usage, it still runs "well"... BUUT that being said, I would not buy the new MacBook. 16 gigs is simply not enough for the future. I think it is a shame on Apple that you cannot get a MacBook Pro with more ram or storage space than mine which is 3 years old....

[RedRound2]

It irritates me how @LinusTech isn't replying to this thread despite being on the forum. The only reason I commented here is to bring this to their notice, but if you guys are going to completely ignore all of the facts put up here by others, including mine then LMG is as ignorant as the sad typical android haters. But I'd like to think otherwise, at least in Linus's case as Luke is lost hope (remember how he actually liked iPhone as a temporary phone, but never appreciated them rather the apps). 

 

Btw, saw your @LinusTech saw your pathetic comment where you compared Gigabyte Aero 14 to the MBP. First, the Aero 14 has significantly worse battery life (which is pretty much the entire point here) and second you don't seem to have the same issue with Razer blade nor Dell XPS 13 which both have soldered RAM with worse battery life

 

Edit: I checked up the dimensions of Aero 14 and boy it's bigger across all dimensions (maybe not noticeable to eye, but definitely significant enough to make a huger difference in electronics) 

Aero 14: 335 x 250 x 19.9 mm

MacBook Pro : 304.1 x 212.4 x 14.9 mm

 

@nicklmg@Slick

[iPolymer]

I have a iPad and iPhone, and it seems that apple likes to tell their customers what to buy and how to use it. He is right and they do not want people to use more RAM the same way they don't need more than 16GB in their phones until they come out with 32GB min. 

[steffen_anywhere]

I have to agree with many people here that LTT like to go on Apple hate trips. I would say that Linus' reviews of the iPhone and the 5K iMac are mostly objective, he gives credit where credit is due, and obviously goes after flaws pretty hard. But what I don't understand, this video aside, is why Apple receives this unnecessary hate from them every time. Hating on/making fun of the iPhone for no headphone jack is ok, it makes sense to do that. But on WAN show they went on this completely baseless hate spree against the 13 inch MacBook Pro's dual core... Have you seen the thing??? It's even thinner and even smaller than the last gen, you're not going to cool a quad core with 45W TDP adequately. Same goes for the dedicated graphics rant. Any dedicated GPU that you could realistically use in a laptop of this form factor will be slower than the Iris iGPUs. The price of these machines is high, to complain about that is fine of course. But to just say "oh, it's expensive, it should be faster for that bla bla bla it has Pro in the name" is a little bit dense or just subjectively influenced. HP has ultrabooks with dual cores and 'Elite' in the name... no hate for that whatsoever. The LG Gram is a 15' with a dual core... To be fair, Linus criticized it for that, but also said in the same sentence that it was fine, given what LG were trying to achieve. I wish they were as objective when it comes to Apple making such decisions.

 

If you review it as 'an expensive premium machine that's not really for heavy professional/creative work' that's fair, but don't try to tell Apple how to make their products better by giving unrealistic suggestions.

 

I value your reviews very much, including the ones of Apple gear, I'd just love to see a bit less prejudice towards them... Linus should just do Apple reviews, he's not so prone to PCMR Apple Hate as Luke is

Edited November 18, 2016 by steffen_anywhere

[gonvres]

This video strikes me as pandering to the "PC MASTER RACE LOL APPLE" demographic.

 

 

[gonvres]

1 hour ago, steffen_anywhere said:

I have to agree with many people here that LTT like to go on Apple hate trips. I would say that Linus' reviews of the iPhone and the 5K iMac are mostly objective, he gives credit where credit is due, and obviously goes after flaws pretty hard. But what I don't understand, this video aside, is why Apple receives this unnecessary hate from them every time. Hating on/making fun of the iPhone for no headphone jack is ok, it makes sense to do that. But on WAN show they went on this completely baseless hate spree against the 13 inch MacBook Pro's dual core... Have you seen the thing??? It's even thinner and even smaller than the last gen, you're not going to cool a quad core with 45W TDP adequately. Same goes for the dedicated graphics rant. Any dedicated GPU that you could realistically use in a laptop of this form factor will be slower than the Iris iGPUs. The price of these machines is high, to complain about that is fine of course. But to just say "oh, it's expensive, it should be faster for that bla bla bla it has Pro in the name" is a little bit dense or just subjectively influenced. HP has ultrabooks with dual cores and 'Elite' in the name... no hate for that whatsoever. The LG Gram is a 15' with a dual core... To be fair, Linus criticized it for that, but also said in the same sentence that it was fine, given what LG were trying to achieve. I wish they were as objective when it comes to Apple making such decisions.

 

If you review it as 'an expensive premium machine that's not really for heavy professional/creative work' that's fair, but don't try to tell Apple how to make their products better by giving unrealistic suggestions.

 

I value your reviews very much, including the ones of Apple gear, I'd just love to see a bit less prejudice towards them... Linus should just do Apple reviews, he's not so prone to PCMR Apple Hate as Luke is

 

The thing is its unclear what "Pro" means. I'm a professional and use my Macbook Pro every day. I'm not in IT or Graphic Design, does that mean I'm not deemed a professional? 

Regardless of what the current anti-hype about thinness and lightness says, a thinner/lighter machine is nicer to carry around on a daily basis and I would really welcome this upgrade compared to my 2014 MBP, which I never use the SD port on. 

 

Its got a well powered CPU in what I consider an excellent compromise for thinness vs structural rigidity and strength. Not to mention the quality of the keyboard, trackpad, speakers etc. 

 

I'd much rather pay a couple hundred more for Apple build quality than buy cheap plastic from many of the Windows OEMs. And yes I'm a professional who is perfectly fine with 8gb of memory.

[Squirrelthroat]

1 hour ago, gonvres said:

 I'm not in IT or Graphic Design, does that mean I'm not deemed a professional?

No. That's not the story here.

You're a professional in your field. But there is a category of apple devices especially tailored for users like you. It's the "air" series.

The 'pro' series was - and should always be - for the "power" users that need every bit of power they can get.
This is what was destroyed by this power saving thing, that's closer to an air or usual MacBook than to what has been the Macbook Pro.


and when i'm already giving my two cents, i completely agree with the opinions stated from all the people above.
The ram chipset that is used is limited to 16GB.
Testing the power usage of other RAM technologies is a interesting story, but has close to nothing to do with what's the problem in the Macbook.
I really hope, the videos like this stay a rarity on the LTT channel.

[steffen_anywhere]

@Squirrelthroat well, that used to be true. The MacBook Pro was the go-to for design professionals. And while nobody ever did super intensive stuff on MacBook Pro's, they were always (relatively) powerful machines. The main reason for their professional use, however, was/is 'it just works' and software support.

 

I'd make the argument that for most design and IT professionals, the MacBook Pro is still good. HOWEVER, I wholeheartedly agree with you that it's unfortunate that Apple doesn't actually build a mobile powerhouse, although there are limited options (they already have top of the line CPUs on the 15", so really only a GPU upgrade and more battery/io).

[Biecher]

First of all, this is clearly one of the worst LMG videos I have ever seen. Especially the shout out to Louis and statements like planned obsolescence  is very unprofessional and make me kinda sad.

The facts why apple could not go with 32GB of RAM have been listed here, so I will not add anything to this.

 

 

But I wonder, is it really necessary to have 32GB RAM in a PRO notebook with a SSD that fast?

[corrado33]

The part that really bugs me is that they labeled the video "The Truth" when in reality, it's far from that. 

[Mr.Meerkat]

19 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Just because you are driving a honda civic does it mean Mercades and Lambo, and even an audi r8 need to be destroyed??? Those product does not have a purpose??? 

I think a better example would be something like a dodge viper versus a ferrari or lambo  

The dodge viper has as much power (or more) as the ferrari or lambo and being as fast if not faster while costing cheaper but why do people still buy ferraris or lambos over the Viper? Just because it has a 8.4 liter V10 producing 640HP does not make it any better than a ferarri with a 4.5 liter V8 engine. They buy it because they're refined much better.

 

Although you can buy a gaming PC with much more power than a Mac for the same price, Mac OS is a much better OS compared to windows so it's like the same situation here. It's down to what's more important to the buyer, refinement or pure power to price. 

[Mr.Meerkat]

4 hours ago, steffen_anywhere said:

GPU upgrade

And the Polaris 11 chip in the MBP 15 is much more powerful than the 960m in the XPS 15 so...ermmmm...(although a fully fledged P11 should have been used in the most expensive MBP 15)

[79wjd]

38 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

I think a better example would be something like a dodge viper versus a ferrari or lambo  

The dodge viper has as much power (or more) as the ferrari or lambo and being as fast if not faster while costing cheaper but why do people still buy ferraris or lambos over the Viper? Just because it has a 8.4 liter V10 producing 640HP does not make it any better than a ferarri with a 4.5 liter V8 engine. They buy it because they're refined much better.

Exactly this. I've driven a Mustang GT and a Porsche Cayman S. The Mustang has much more raw power and technically has the same 0-60 time. Yet the Cayman feels significantly faster and more agile. The Mustang handles like a fucking tank and feels very sluggish (not even just compared to the Cayman, but even compared to an older A4, which had a 0-60 time of 6~ seconds rather than the low 4's).

 

34 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

And the Polaris 11 chip in the MBP 15 is much more powerful than the 960m in the XPS 15 so...ermmmm...(although a fully fledged P11 should have been used in the most expensive MBP 15)

Do you have any proof of that? The 460 is about 80% as fast as the desktop RX 460, which unless I did the math wrong, should put it around the 960m (at least in terms of gaming performance -- which isn't really how a Mac GPU should be measured since they're not designed for gaming, but I don't like just comparing raw tflops either). 

[LinusTech]

Phil Schiller's response is a "half-explanation"

 

"We couldn't because the Skylake CPU memory controller we're using doesn't support more than 16GB of LPDDR3..." - he left off the part after that that goes "... and while we could have easily added a a slightly bigger battery to counter the effects of using DDR4, we thought it was more important for our professional line of notebooks to be super super thin than for them to have the hardware specs that power users demand"

 

Apple could have easily offered a "professional" laptop with support for 32GB of RAM. They just didn't think it was as important to their users as size and weight.

 

Edit: And if the sales numbers are anything to go by, they were evidently 100% correct. But I don't have to agree with it.

 

So, bottom line - could we have done a better job of this video? Yes. We outright missed the detail that Skylake's memory controller is limited to 16GB if you're using LPDDR3, and Phil Schiller's statement hadn't come out yet at the time we wrote/shot this video.

 

Furthermore, I'm not aware of any swappable LPDDR3 modules, so YES we were stuck with a non-ideal apples to oranges comparison.

 

But it DOESN'T change the reason we were upset, or the fundamental disagreement we have with Apple's obsession with thin at the cost of better usability and performance. Our conclusion - they did it for space savings - is still correct even if we arrived there without a key piece of the puzzle.

[sacratoy]

But the video is misleading, and pushing 400k views with nearly no downvotes. You can sustain your fundamental argument, but a single line of plain text with a link in the description doesn't make it look like any less like Apple hate for the sake of Apple hate, considering the factual oversight.

 

Do what you do. I'm sure this video is driving driving revenue for y'all.

[LinusTech]

1 minute ago, sacratoy said:

But the video is misleading, and pushing 400k views with nearly no downvotes. You can sustain your fundamental argument, but a single line of plain text with a link in the description doesn't make it look like any less like Apple hate for the sake of Apple hate, considering the factual oversight.

 

Do what you do. I'm sure this video is driving driving revenue for y'all.

And this is a super solid argument for YouTube giving some creators the ability to make edits to videos instead of taking away the tools we have at our disposal to make corrections after the fact (annotations don't appear on mobile, which is a HUGE chunk of viewers now).

 

Unfortunately for us, the repercussions of pulling/re-posting a video are usually MUCH greater than leaving it and putting in (which understandably feels half-assed, but is all we really have to work with) a correction link.

[PeterBocan]

Guys, Apple Macbook user here.

I do have 8GB memory in 13" Macbook Pro Retina, and I have to say, it's not a lot, if you OS takes up 2GB of memory, your Firefox/Chrome/Safari 4+ GB and then I have no physical memory left to boot up VMWare to work on Windows. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE?! "The Pro"... no, not pro, not cool.
 

[peter.nadelstein]

What do you mean with repercussions??

You guys fucked up making a halfed assed video steered by your hatred against apple.

The video is shit it's as simple as that,it is an uninformed piece of garbage catered towards idiots who no nothing about computing.

If Linus Tech Tips wants to be taken seriously in tech journalism they have to take responsibility for there wrong doings.

Just take the video down,make a new one explaining what happened and say you were wrong.

[Hunter259]

I want to see if you can back up phils claim actually. Because we know that you have the new Pro (Talked about on WAN show) that maybe you should test the differences in different applications between a laptop with similar specs but 32gb of Ram. That way we know have actual information about Ram usage in certain tasks and whether or not that SSD can help to alleviate the bottleneck. Other wise, yes this video has its flaws but I feel it is still a correct conclusion. That being said you will definitely need to have some kind of video discussing RAM sizes in "Professional" applications on laptops.

[Mr.C]

So I watch some FREE content on YouTube and I can stop at any time and not watch it and then complain that their opinion is a crusade against a brand,  smart shit.

If I put the time to create something stupid/smart/crap it's my creation and my opinion, you guy's are like a house that it's beeing built, empty inside and pissed on the outside.

Linus don't apologize for shit!

[Hunter259]

2 minutes ago, Mr.C said:

So I watch some FREE content on YouTube and I can stop at any time and not watch it and then complain that their opinion is a crusade against a brand,  smart shit.

If I put the time to create something stupid/smart/crap it's my creation and my opinion, you guy's are like a house that it's beeing built, empty inside and pissed on the outside.

Linus don't apologize for shit!

That is a god awful excuse. If something is blatantly wrong then it needs and should be called out for it. 

[peter.nadelstein]

It's not about disagreeing with their opinion.If Luke said I would rather have a bigger laptop with more ram and a bigger battery everything would be fine doing irrelevant tests without researching and then presenting those findings as facts is the problem.

[AxelRantila]

Soo, as soon as someone criticizes Apple for what they are doing, they are on a full-out hate crusade on them?