This week on The CultCast: Get out your pitchforks — we’ll tell you why a lot of folks are very unhappy with the new MacBook Pros. Plus, we compare the MacBook Pro’s performance to older models and similarly priced machines; Apple calls it quits on external displays; and the end of an era — one of Mac’s most iconic features gets retired.
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Episode info
CultCast #256 – Why we’re canceling our MacBook Pro order Subscribe on iTunes
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@bst3r / @erfon / @lkahney
What do you think of Apple’s new MacBook Pro? Let us know at TheCultCast.reddit.com.
Show notes
About those new MacBook Pros …
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- Hiked prices really make you think about what you’re getting, especially compared to how much better it is than what you already have (or what’s available on the market).
- Raw power differences/speed increases in new MacBook Pro (compared to 2012 model).
- Specs aren’t everything as Appleoptimizes everything.
- Felix Schwarz on Twitter
- CPU
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- Only about 30 percent increase in Geekbench Single and MultiCore if buying the same speed processor you have now.
- Skylake processors are already a year old, but Kaby Lake processors weren’t ready (they’re due out in January). Cannonlake processors are due in 2017 as well.
- GPU
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- You get 100 percent to 180 percent increase in GPU performance over 2012 dedicated GPUs.
- AMD Pro 400 series is used for low power consumption. It’s a 4-year-old architecture.
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- It’s a mobile version of a budget graphics card.
- AMD claims”the thinnest graphics processor possible.”
- It’s ideal for artists, designers, photographers, filmmakers, visualizers.
- Not on par with Nvidia GPUs
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- Nvidia’s budget card, GTX 1060, performs at 4.2 teraflops a second versus AMD Pro 460’s 1.8 teraflops. AMD Pro 455’s 1.2 teraflops and AMD Pro 450’s 1 teraflop.
- Nickel and dimed
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- You’ll need new cables or dongles for all your USB devices, your iPhone, your peripherals and Thunderbolt 2 devices, maybe your existing monitor.
- No power brick extension cable.
- Funny enough, Phil Schiller noted the new MacBook Pro still has a 3.5mm headphone jack because it is a “pro machine,” but lacks an SD card reader because it’s a “cumbersome” slot best left to adapters or wireless transfers.
- Taking into account the $400 to $500 price increases, it’s hard to get on board.
- Next year’s upgrade will address a number of our concerns
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- Much newer Intel CPUs.
- More availability of USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 tech.
- Lower prices.
- Touch Bar bugs worked out (if any).
- Cheaper SSD upgrades.
- Again, specs aren’t everything. Apple says the new MacBook Pro has:
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- 130 percent better 3-D graphics performance.
- 60 percent better gaming performance.
- 57 percent better video editing performance.
Links
Performance comparison of the 2012 and 2016 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro
MacBook Pro’s two biggest problems may get fixed in 2017
- KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told investors in a recent note that he expects Apple will bring big price cuts to the MacBook Pro along with some internal upgrades. Kuo also claims the 2017 update will finally give the MacBook Pro up to 32GB of RAM.
- Kaby Lake CPUs will be used if Intel’s Cannonlake chips aren’t ready. That will keep max RAM support at 16GB for another year.
- Price cuts on the next MacBook Pro won’t arrive until the second half of 2017 though.
Apple is officially done making displays
- The days of Apple making its own stand-alone displays for the Mac mini and Mac Pro are past.
- Apple revealed a new 5K 27-inch Thunderbolt 3 display during its “Hello Again” last week, only instead of being made by Apple, the company partnered with LG to create the monitor.
- The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel tweeted that, after asking about it at the Hello Again event, he was informed by Apple that “it’s out of the stand-alone display biz.”
- Apple did add some tech to LG’s display so that it integrates better with Macs. You can adjust the brightness settings on theLG 5K UltraFine display from your Mac, rather than pushing buttons on the display itself.
- It costs $1,300, or $700 for a 4K model.
2016 MacBook Pro loses the iconic startup chime
- The new MacBook Pro jettisons the iconic F-sharp sound Apple uses to show a Mac is booting up.
- The use of an arpeggiated chord when you started your Mac dates back to the Macintosh II, when software engineer Mark Lentczner incorporated it into the system.
- The sound was later revised by Jim Reekes, Apple’s senior software engineer in charge of the audio and system sounds, during the 1990s. Over the years, its tone has changed further and the instrumentation has also varied,
- The reason for getting rid of the sound has to do with the fact that the new laptops now turn on from a fully switched-off mode if they’re opened – meaning you can save all that energy you would otherwise have expended pressing the power button.
- There’s hope! You can reactivate the sound via a terminal command: How to restore Mac startup chimes on 2016 MacBook Pro
Nvidia GTX 1060 laptop versus desktop benchmarks — Is Pascal really a game changer?
Apple has received more online orders for new MacBook Pro than any previous generation
Erfon Elijah is the producer and host of The CultCast. When not editing podcasts or watching Mrs. Doubtfire, you’ll find him on Xbox Live hunting CoD Ghosts foes like the Predator. Here are his tweets…
12 responses to “Why the masses are mad about MacBook Pro, this week on The CultCast”
Love my 2013 MacBookPro. I won´t buy the new one since it lacks magsafe (WHY ???), got a ridiculous price increase and forces me to buy a ton of adapters. I am seriously thinking about moving to windows now and the XPS15 from DELL caught my eye. Because, in the end, it´s all about value for money.
You can buy a usb-c magsafe adapter fixes this problem. (Not from Apple)
It’s been one yr since I decided to resign from my office job and I never felt better in my life… I started doing work from my house, over a website I found over internet, for a few hours daily, and I make much more than i did on my last work… Payment i got for last month was for $9000… The best thing about it is the more time i got for my kids… SECURE47.COM
Will this magsafe clone have the same quality as the built in one that I currently have ?
I bet not.
In the end I will switch not because of magsafe but because I think apple doesn´t give a s*** about its existing customer base. It´s just too much at once that annoys me.
We all know that once you have everything USB-C ready and replaced your mouse, your monitor and bought some adapters for your iphone and ipad apple will switch to wireless only in 5 years and you can buy everything all over again.
It´s cool to switch to apple-land, it´s not cool to stay there.
1 year ago I decided to leave my office work and i couldn’t be happier now… I started freelancing from home, over a website I found online, several hours /a day, and I earn much more than i did on my office work… My check for last month was for Nine thousand bucks… Amazing thing about it is that i have more free time to spend with my family… SECURE54.COM
I don’t want to disparage any of you on the podcast, you guys are great but you seem to dismiss the criticism of a lot of “pros” a bit too easily. I just wanted to provide a view of a “pro” who has worked in video production (of a bit of photography) for over 25 years. Unlike Pro’s who may work in the tech industry, our ecosystems are not just a few items on a desk and maybe a camera that can be relatively easy to replace. We have dozens and dozens of devices to interface with and none of them are the new mac ports.
For instance when the headphone jack being dropped from the phone was announced (and that survey went out) I was siting on location with over 8 different devices that use that jack, none of which will be passed out for the next 10 years or more. Sorry, but we are not getting new soundboards because Apple says so. Hell, I have a video camera right here that uses fire 400 as the port, and I’m not spending $4,000-$5,000 for the new version of it just because Apple thinks these ports are dead. If I can bill for it, it’s not “dead” or in “transition”. Even with drives my corporate clients are on widows, they will hand me a USB drive for years to come. (One sent me a DVD two weeks ago with footage that just “had to go in the show” lucky I still have a 2011 MacPro too)
My DSLR that uses SD cards has at least 6 years left of billable life in it. The USB and mini-headphone jacked audio box the same. We also use those cards to transfer projects between editors on set and as footage capture drives. These little things just end up adding up to a big frustration.
Now I know it’s funny to laugh at the thought of “pro’s” changing over to windows. But I know a lot in my field that have done it already. The only thing personally keeping me on Mac is the OS (which has been getting too ios for me). Hardly any of my software is Apple anymore. We switched to Premiere after the FCX debacle (I regularly work in Atlanta, LA and DC with dozens of videographers and shops and I know of only one person who still uses FCP). The rest of my software is also all Adobe thanks to Apple dropping the last Pro app of their I occasionally used, Aperture. So what’s holding me here? Not much anymore. I do want the highest end GPU’s you can shove in the things since we use that power for GPU rendering now.
And this isn’t even taking my co-workers frustrations over the Mac Pro into account (A different rant). Am I changing right now though? No I don’t need to, I have two years to decide. But Apple is increasingly making less business sense to stay with each release, both in value for price of the hardware and ease of use on set (just too many damn dongles, not enough ports).
Ever since Apple started to mess up their pro apps (for me starting with killing SHAKE) I’ve been saying that Apple used to give me the freedom, and new and creative ways to solve my clients problems, now they are kinda an obstacle I need to overcome to make my client happy. Apple has now moved that phrase into the hardware realm too I’m afraid.
Just wanted to give that perspective. Keep up the good work guys, love the podcast.
Yeah same here, I’m an audio guy who struggles against Apple’s wish for us to constantly upgrade our OS and hardware. My ProTools HD system cost over $10,000 initially, and won’t run as is past “Mountain Lion” – so I keep running the old OS on my 2009 MacPro to earn a living. Apple would rather leave me behind if I don’t stay up to date.
What won’t run past Mountain Lion? The computer? What do you expect with a 7 year old computer? They don’t last forever. 7 years is typically the cut off point where most companies stop supporting it on all levels. Most people use a computer for up to 3 to 5 years on average. But you are relying on this computer as a major part of your business? Jeez. I would budget for replacing that thing every 3 to 5 years. Pro Tools HD 12.6 (I believe) is supposed to run on Sierra. I think your computer is just simply too old.
PCs are the same way. to use Kaby Lake, you can’t run earlier versions of OS.
ALL PC companies want people to upgrade because all of it starts from the Processor, then the OS, and all of the other aspects of a computer. They are constantly updating, improving, etc. etc. what do you expect? You only have to buy one computer and that should last your forever? That’s a laugh. Every progresses at a rate that’s almost a log scale, so every 3 years there is a major performance increase over what you had. So if you bought a 2009 Mac Pro, I would have bought a Mac Pro when they released the current MacPros or a high end iMac or MBRP, and just put the Pro Tools cards in a PCI Thunderbolt Chassis and then you could use those with any Mac that has Thunderbolt. Since Pro Tools with the PCI cards really leverages those PCI cards, you don’t necessarily need a MacPro unless you were using Pro Tools Native. There are plenty of people using Pro Tools cards with top end iMacs and top end MacBookPros and they are just sticking the Pro Tools PCI cards in a Thunderbolt chassis ( some PCI chassis also have RAID storage) and calling it a day. It’s a lot more portable and easily upgradeable that way.
You guys need to talk about Mac Pro.
Lately you guys been talking lot of bullshit. You need to talk about Mac Pro.
Apple and how the refreshed the Macbook Pro and how all other computers are left behind has made me decide to switch to windows. I will still listen to your podcast, because its entertaining, but apple is no more for me. For me its not the connections per se, but the lowering in performance and increase in prices that simply dont make sense any more. Apple stay on the stage bragging about terraflops and Ghz of components that arent impressive at all. I needed a new workstation, I dont use laptops, and Apple has NOTHING to offer me any more. Nobody in their right mind would buy the current Mac Pro, you can get a much higher performance PC for 1/3 of the price and in addition being able to upgrade it yourself or choose what i/o’s to connect yourself. If apple ever update the Mac Pro, and how they seem to not understand what professionals need, the next Mac Pro will still be the trashcan, with only mediocre Dual GPU cards and 12 TB3 connections and no other way to connect your devices. The machine will be a weird device for a VERY limited userbase, Im sure….like the Mac Book Pro is today. Personally if I would buy a laptop, the last machine I would consider now is the new Mac Book Pro. THats like sacrificing performance, connections and convenience, only to get that strange touch strip bar and an apple logo on the machine….without gaining anything useful and you would pay insane amounts of money for it. I been a professional using apple for the last 15 years, but now I had it, built my own machine with windows 10 and Im never going back to apple again. Their “courage” has reached its limit of my patience.
If their Phones keep going in the direction they are now, removing what is useful and just releasing the same phone over and over again, I will buy something else there as well. I replaced the iPhone 6S plus with a iphone 7plus – and I hardly feel I gained anything except loosing the headphone jack. Camera and performance improvements are hardly noticeable.
While I agree with everything you wrote about the macs (I am about to switch back to windows, too) I have to admit: There is no reason to upgrad from one iphone generation to the next. This might have been the case 6 years ago but nowadays it´s totally ok to wait 3 years.
Why ? Because money doesn´t grow on trees …