Apple is getting a lot of stick for failing to give users a 32GB RAM option onthe latest MacBook Pro — but there’s a good reason why 16GB is the most you can get.
It’s also the reason Apple needs to start designing its own processors for the MacBook family.
For proof, you need look no further than iOS.
Apple chips for iOS
Apple has been designing its own chips for iOS since 2010, and it does an excellent job. The company’s A series processors outpace the competition almost every year — despite typically slower clock speeds and fewer cores — making the iPhone and iPad incredibly snappy.
In Geekbench tests, the latest A10 Fusion chip achieves a single-core score of 3,307 — almost double that of the fastest Android, the Galaxy S7 edge, which achieves 1,786. It also beats the S7 edge in multicore tests with a score of 5,346.
iPhone 7 even outpaces the early 2016 MacBook powered by a 1.3GHz Intel Core m7 chip, which achieves a single-core score of 3,162.
We know Apple can design great chips, then, and by doing so it can tailor those chips to its products. The problem with relying on chip makers like Intel for the Mac is that third-party processors don’t always fit Apple’s own vision.
The new MacBook Pro is a perfect example of that.
Intel chips means less RAM for MacBook Pro
The reason you can’t get it in a 32GB configuration, according to a thread on Reddit, is because Intel’s Skylake processors don’t support 32GB LPDDR4 memory (the LP stands for “low power”). If Apple added 32GB, it would need to sacrifice MacBook Pro battery life — something the company wouldn’t do.
“To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook design at this time would require a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn’t be efficient enough for a notebook,” explained Phil Schiller in an email to a customer.
It’s thought Intel’s chips won’t support 32GB of LPDDR4 RAM until 2018, which means next year’s MacBook Pro will likely max out at 16GB of RAM, too.
“Apple simply places a higher priority on thinness and lightness than performance-hungry pro users do,” notes Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. “Apple is more willing to compromise on performance than on thinness and lightness and battery life.”
Apple didn’t have time to make its own MacBook chips
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This intense focus on ultraportable laptops with long-lasting batteries put Apple in a bad position. Cupertino was basically forced to settle on Intel chips.
There’s just one problem, according to Gruber.
“Intel just doesn’t make the chips that Apple needs,” he wrote. “Intel is designing its chips for an industry that does not share Apple’s obsession with thinness and lightness.”
Apple couldn’t wait for Intel’s chips to catch up because the MacBook Pro was already outdated. Fans were calling out for new models with Intel’s Skylake chips. Delivering new MacBook Pros limited to 16GB of RAM was really the only option Apple had for 2016.
The case for Apple MacBook chips
If Apple wants to deliver the best of both worlds — sleek and slim designs with beefy specifications that offer pro performance — it needs to design its own processors that perfectly fit that vision.
The company probably is already working on solving this problem.
Apple has reportedly been planning to design its own Mac chips for years, and it’s likely just a matter of time before they come to fruition. Until then, it’s either slightly compromised MacBooks or ugly Windows-powered alternatives.
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
22 responses to “Why Apple needs to design its own MacBook chips”
Apple making their own chip would be bad news for custom hackintosh builds.
Not necessarily. I think the chip would have to be compatible with software designed for Intel chips, otherwise Apple would be shooting itself in the foot massively. So long as macOS is compatible with Intel (and it will be for a long time now), it should work on a hackintosh.
So can Apple go the way of AMD and make their on x86 chips? Is it something that can be licensed or is it something that is open source?
Well… the compilers used to build iOS/macOS apps have an option (for some time now) to spit out byte-code instead of direct binary. This byte-code is uploaded on Appstore and the Appstore servers take care of the compilation. So Appstore now gives you optimized binaries for your own device specs. If a new architecture will be needed, the servers can take care of that – without developers needing to rebuild the apps.
Of course, this way of distributing apps is optional. But as many apple features, optional features will become mandatory in the future. Migrating the appstore apps should have been the biggest pain, not their OS. But that seems to be fixed without us even noticing :)
It’s more involved than that. It’s called being able to run Windows which is CISC based. Apple already switched from RISC to CISC when they switched from PowerPC to Intel. Intel is where they need to be for the desktop so they can still run Windows, and not have to disrupt the industry forcing them to re-write apps all over again. That whole process takes at least 3 or more years to get the hardware switched along with all of the software apps switched. Hackintosh is not their main concern. If Apple wanted to completely kill Hackintosh PURPOSELY, they would figure out a way to do that. In the mean time, Apple simply doesn’t support Hackintosh, and Hackintosh users have to PAY for the apps that are given to Mac users for FREE. That’s how they F’d the Hackintosh users. They might get the OS for free, but they can’t get the free apps for free and they still don’t get any support.
I wish Apple could do something to totally kill the Hackintosh installs, but unfortunately, it’s hard to do.
What I said is no way relevant to Apple, it was more like a sarcasm. You sound more enraged by hackintosh installs than Apple itself. Hackintosh installs are good for Apple. Trust me I’ve tried to hackintosh so much that made me buy an apple device in the end, so no “harm” done to their part.
Bla bla – offer the 32gb with lower battery life and have the customer decide.
They are becoming more boring and more desperate – too bad, I like mac os.
They already have blown it, IMHO. Windows 10 is inferior to OSX if you care about control. I had to enable Group Policy on Windows 10 to prevent my PC from rebooting on its own any time there’s an update. Still, it gives me a popup that requires I click to acknowledge and sends me to the Settings/Update screen before giving me back control of the PC. Terrible.
Microsoft is already blowing it, that’s why companies like IBM are adopting Macs and IOS devices. Go read up on what IBM Is doing. They installed over 100,000 MacBook (various models) in the last year because their users are requesting Macs, and they conducted an internal survey and 73% said they want a Mac as their next computer when it’s time to get replaced. IBM has 400,000 full time employees and they help other businesses manage their IT, so other companies are adopting Apple products, both Macs and IOS devices. IBM is also calculating the cost of ownership and they are saving HUGE amounts of money on IT because no IT staff member touches the Mac and it automatically installs everything, and they don’t need as many IT staff to support the Mac and only 3% to 5% of the Mac users need IT support whereas 35% to 40% of the PC users need IT support and they have to install the software from a master for the PCs. It’s a very interesting examination of Macs vs PC in a large Enterprise. Remember, CISCO, SAP, and IBM are working WITH Apple on getting more Apple products in the Enterprise, and those three companies by themselves are adopting Macs and IOS devices on a large scale. Heck, even the company that make LEGO toys is adopting Macs at a fast rate. Mac are getting more and more attention in the Enterprise because they can manage them better, easier and with less costs, which lowers their TCO. They also don’t really pay anymore to buy a Mac since leasing companies give favorable terms because Macs retain a higher resale value at the end of the lease term, so out of pocket expense is $0 between a comparably configured Lenovo laptop to a MacBook model that they want to use.
Source please!
It would be really awesome if apple made its own chips. really hope for that.. If there A10 chip could beat intel core m then i am sure they can easily beat the i7 by a large margin
I’m sure Apple is working on their own chip designs and lots of other cool things in their Skunk Works.
The ARM chips they design are for iPhones, iPads, iPods, AppleTV, Apple Watches and any other future device that uses IOS or a derivative of IOS. They new TouchBar keyboard uses IOS and runs on an ARM chip inside the new MBPR, but they aren’t switching to ARM for running macOS. macOS is CISC using Intel X86 and for them to change, they will just wait for next generation processors from Intel that don’t use Silicon, that’s the hurdle Intel is working on.
This discussion is otherwise an exercise in Mental Masturbation and it’s just a silly discussion that goes no where because Apple isn’t going to adopt ARM for their Mac product line anytime in the distant future. ARM is a mobility chip, Intel is for desktops and laptops. PERIOD, END OF DISCUSSION.
While the amount of memory the system can support is important, I’m more worried they are going to far here in their obsession on Thin & Light system.
Making a thinner and lighter system is all well and good for a low and mid level system (Air & MacBook), but where talking about the ‘Pro’ series which is for the power user & people who use the system in their day to day job.
We need both the power and the usability of the system. I can’t afford to deal with dongles for everything and if my system breaks I need to get the SSD drive out as it likely has the stuff I was working on.
STOP THIS STUPID, SILLY DISCUSSION. macOS is CISC based because it has to be X86 compatible so they can also run Windows and Windows app, which is CISC based. ARM is RISC based and Apple’s using it for iOS and mobile apps that are all RISC based.
Apple for the foreseeable future isn’t going to change macOS to RISC. They already did that when they switched from PowerPC chips to Intel and that took over 2 years to complete their end and then another couple of years to switch the apps. At this point, it’s completely STUPID for Apple to consider switching from X86 to ARM. Just completely ridiculous. they would disrupt the industry too much and it would probably kill the entire platform as many people simply would NOT want to go that route.
I think the best possible play is for Intel to come up with a faster processor using something other than Silicon. That’s what companies like Intel, IBM and possibly others are working on. Something to replace Silicon technology so they can push the speed throughput. ARM for Apple is at a stage where they are just trying to catch up to X86 processing performance and they still have a ways to go to compete against the high end X86 chips that have 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc. cores. It’ll be a LONG time before Apple can spit out an ARM processor that will compete with the high X86 processors.
All these discussions right now are just an exercise in mental masturbation.
Sorry but Apple could lose half the current Mac market and nearly all their business market without it costing them all that much. The Mac is less than 25% of their entire business and they have roughly 300 billion in cash. Even if they lost money for 5+ years which they wouldn’t do, they would be in no danger of going out of business. Yes the stock would take a serious hit, but based on past performance and if presented correctly, many investors would jump at grabbing less expensive Apple stock.
Microsoft is already on board with Office on ARM for both iOS and Android and could create a more fully featured product for ARM and that would be a no brainer with their subscription-based service. Adobe might not, but Apple has been shedding pro Adobe users for years while their overall sales for Macs has risen (though not in the last year). People running Windows on Macs is less of a draw than it was back in 2005-6.
ARM can go multi-core as well without losing much in speed based on the differences between CISC and RISC tech. Apple gave up on it to go Intel because neither IBM or Motorola (the two biggest and partnered with Apple for PPC) were willing to spend the kind of cash required to make faster PPC processors as most of their business for them wasn’t Apple, but embedded single purpose devices that didn’t need the speed that Apple did.
Heck with Apple’s cash, they could create a new desktop standard using ARM processors and let the Mac slowly wither on the vine. Apple typically plays the long game and it wouldn’t surprise me to see in the labs several prototypes with ARM ready to go. They had Intel Macs as early as 2001.
I wish Intel licensed its technology like ARM does so Apple could build its own compatible x86 chips for its Desktop/Laptop computers.
This is a bad idea. Some people still use Parallels and VMware to run other OSes on their device without using emulation which would result in poor performance. I see a lot of people jumping ship when this happens.
Apple may be heading in the direction of having an IOS chip running in “low power” mode and an intel chip for power uses.
isn’t there an iwatch chip running the touchbar and id processes right now?
imagine a trackpad being replaced by a retina touch screen.
there was a time that Apple SoCs were only slow, much slower than Intel’s counterpart. But now, Intel’s latest i7 4.5 watts is not faster than A10 (Let alone A10x). It is for laptop, but a10 inside a small smart phone. That’s small, but more powerful than it….
I am pro Apple’s migration from Intel Since 2011. I love fight in technology and innovation rise. I think Apple can do What it needs to do rather than What is not risky. Recent Macbooks show it is not even non-risky that they thought, because Intel has its own schedule, for Intel, Apple is only one of many customers. Apple is not even in top Customers. Intel let Apple down, in spite of it, Apple still goes with Intel….. That’s sad, the managers of Apple should know it is WRONG to do it anymore….
Thanks!
You are an idiot. What you are saying is that Apple’s obsession with thin computers is more important than the performance of those computers. Apple throws away the possibility of 32gb MacBook Pros because they are unwilling to put up with a form factor change that is not also a shrink.
They could have kept a similar form factor as the Retina MBP, with adequate battery to supply 16 or 32gb Macs. But then they wouldn’t be able to fat shame their Mac Air.
As far as A10x chips in a Mac. Sure the single threaded performance is great, I’d like to see a toe to toe based on multi-threaded performance.
How about this, all you cafe laptop jocks that want the skinniest computer, but don’t do anything more strenuous than really browsing hard with Firefox, you stick to the MacBook models.
Leave the MacBook Pro for people who edit video, make music and develop apps.