Serious professionals hoping for tons of RAM on the new MacBook Pro are out of luck.
Apple decided to limit RAM options on its beautiful new machine to just 8GB or 16GB. That’s the same amount as the last MacBook Pro, which is more than enough for most consumers, but Apple claims adding more would be also be bad for pros.
[contextly_auto_sidebar] In an email response to a MacRumors reader that asked why Apple didn’t add a 32GB option, Apple VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, explains that all the extra RAM would be a huge battery hog.
David’s question: “The lack of a 32GB BTO option for the new MBPs raised some eyebrows and caused some concerns (me included). Does ~3GBps bandwidth to the SSD make this a moot issue? I.e. memory paging on a 16GB system is so fast that 32GB is not a significant improvement?”
Schiller’s reply: “Thank you for the email. It is a good question. 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. I hope you check out this new generation MacBook Pro, it really is an incredible system.”
Along with criticizing Apple’s decision to only offer 16GB of RAM, other developers have also questioned the new MacBook Pro’s CPU and GPU performance. First shipments of the new machine are expected to arrive in 2 – 3 weeks, so we’ll have to wait until then to see how the MacBook Pro performs in the real world.