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New 16" Macbook Pro goes up to 64GB RAM!

Could be my replacement for both MacPro slaves and my mobile solution.
In combination with the iMac I would have 192 GB Ram and two i9 8 core processors at my disposal. This is enough power and memory for pretty much all cases.
Also mobile, and saves space, and power compared to the old MacPros.
However, only if the ventilation works properly. This is the biggest weakness of the new MacBooks.

4K is a good price if I consider the alternatives.
 
However, only if the ventilation works properly. This is the biggest weakness of the new MacBooks.

Indeed. The 2018 8 core model is plagued by throttling issues...

See this guy (it's a video from a couple of days ago):

 
Will be interesting to see benchmarks and performance reviews but could be a good upgrade from my 2015 iMac given I sort of want a more mobile setup going forward.
 
Will be interesting to see benchmarks and performance reviews but could be a good upgrade from my 2015 iMac given I sort of want a more mobile setup going forward.

I've just recently been testing the 2019 8-core 2.4ghz, against my 2014 4-core 2.5ghz. Seems to handle audio loads ~2x better than my 2014 when testing heavy voice-loading with many Kontakt instruments in Ableton Live. Although, the GUI becomes sluggish quicker with the 2019. The new 16" use same processor as the 2019 15", so I expect similar perormance.
 
As far as I understand Apple re-designed the thermal management for the new 16'' model .
This hopefully solves the issues recent 15'' models had .
 
Possibly a silly question here but I'm running a 2009 Mac tower with 96gb 1333 ddr3 ram however does 64gb 2666 ddr4 ram mean it would be roughly equivalent to 128gb ddr3 1333? So in essence faster RAM.
 
Possibly a silly question here but I'm running a 2009 Mac tower with 96gb 1333 ddr3 ram however does 64gb 2666 ddr4 ram mean it would be roughly equivalent to 128gb ddr3 1333? So in essence faster RAM.

the ddr4 is definitely faster. But 64gb is still less then 128 no matter how you slice it. anything over about 8gb does not make your machine any faster except for the fact you can cache more samples in memory with a bit less ssd streaming.
 
what did they do?

If you scroll down, this link has a sales diagram. Some of the Mac sites are written by obsequious fanboys who have sex with apples, but still:

 
From what I understand the answer is "no". Macs are only able to support the operating system at time of release and onwards. So in the case of these new 16", that'd be Catalina and onwards. Really stupid tbh...

For the mid-2019s, you could go down to Mojave, since that was the current release. I just picked up a refurb last week. Will probably return it as a) I'm not seeing THAT much of a massive performance leap from my well-speced 2014 to be worth the hassle of all the additional dongles I have to purchase (at least not for the way I work), b) I just don't know if I can live with potential butterfly keyboard failures, c) the touchpad is RIDICULOUSLY huge and obstructive, and d) well, the 16" is out at pretty much same price for top line machine, with better keyboard, larger display, etc.

ps. and why oh why, won't they bring back the magsafe adapter! It may sound trivial, but that's seriously one of the contributing factors for why I'm leaning towards returning the 2019 - clothesline that cable, and there goes your $5000 investment.


im starting to notice a trend on this info. maybe its me that I've been out of the loop but with mac it was always possible to boot up in target disk mode, wipe the current OS And install a previous generation or two of OSX. sure apple doesnt like it and many poeple just stay with the current one but the option to do so was always there.
 
the view 1st impressions show a fix on the thermal throddleling and keyboards. or at least , those have better 1st impressions and specs.
 
im starting to notice a trend on this info. maybe its me that I've been out of the loop but with mac it was always possible to boot up in target disk mode, wipe the current OS And install a previous generation or two of OSX. sure apple doesnt like it and many poeple just stay with the current one but the option to do so was always there.

I’m going to try regardless. So far, I’ve assessed at least $300 I’ll have to pay just to keep Sibelius and Finale functioning. Avid and MakeMusic will only offer support for Catalina with the very latest version and charge $149 each to upgrade. It’s highway robbery. And that’s just what I’ve accounted for so far.
 
ps. and why oh why, won't they bring back the magsafe adapter! It may sound trivial, but that's seriously one of the contributing factors for why I'm leaning towards returning the 2019 - clothesline that cable, and there goes your $5000 investment.

I agree, that's puzzling. But there's tons of aftermarket versions for USB-C for around $40 or less, from established makers like Griffin and startups like Volta:

 
This looks like the future of computers I - forward-looking visionary, thought leader, clairvoyant - have been predicting.

Nah, the future of computing will be going back to dumb terminals and having everything in the cloud (storage and processing). We will be able to scale from 16 to 1024GB of RAM or from 4 to 128 CPU cores with a single click. We are already watching movies and TV shows from Netflix and Plex servers. In a couple of days Google is launching Stadia which is a gaming service in the cloud.

It will take 10-20 years but it will happen.


There's not really any reason to have desktop machines anymore.

Except for the portability factor, desktops are always going to be better than laptops.
 
specs wise this looks like a nice laptop.

I don't have a good opinion of Apple laptops right now. I spent bucks for a loaded up MBP in 2010, loaded it up with the fastest CPU I could get, the most ram it could have, the biggest SSD eventually, etc.. Even splurged and custom ordered with a matte finish screen, which you can't get anymore. It was my primary computer for a long time. It served its purpose. But 3 years after owning it suddenly it started getting kernel panics all the time and when I went online I found a whole following of people having the same problem. Apple never helped any of us at all with this problem. Turned out in the end to be a cheap capacitor on the logic board, which you can get replaced, but not by Apple, for around $300. Then it works fine again, but a lot of people never got that far, they just dealt the kernel panics and no help from apple, due to faulty hardware design. There still are people suffering with these kinds of problem, I know because I helped code a little hack around utility that is still on GitHub and still has people asking about it in order to keep their flakey Apple hardware running.

Then it turned out 2011 and 2012 and 2015 also had similar kinds of issues (use google), and maybe other models. Maybe some models were fine. I'm sure someone is going to have an emotional reaction to my post and let us all know that their Apple laptop has been the best computer they ever owned. Maybe this new one will be like that too. Or maybe not. I don't trust Apple to make a reliable all-in-one computer solution that is sleek and elegant and beautiful...and also doesn't have thermal problems, or kernel panics after some OS updates happen that push the video or whatever...

The specs on this machine are very good, I'm happy to see it can support 64gb ram. I personally would wait a year to see how it works before plunking down that kind of cash and making it the center of your studio.

And I do not think for one second that high powered laptops are the future of computing. Most people simply do not need that much power in a mobile device. That's why the iPad has taken off so well, because it turns out most people just want to watch movies on the plane, answer some emails, maybe edit a spreadsheet.

I would much rather have a power desktop computer then a laptop any day, unless my profession depended on me being able to bring my studio with me on site for various reasons, then ok, the case would be made there. But there are definite pros and cons to owning a laptop
 
Nah, the future of computing will be going back to dumb terminals and having everything in the cloud (storage and processing). We will be able to scale from 16 to 1024GB of RAM or from 4 to 128 CPU cores with a single click. We are already watching movies and TV shows from Netflix and Plex servers. In a couple of days Google is launching Stadia which is a gaming service in the cloud.

It will take 10-20 years but it will happen.

So which is it - desktops are always going to be better than laptops, or everything is going to the cloud?

I say you're partly right and wrong on both accounts, to answer my rhetorical question.

Many things have moved to the cloud, no question, and that trend is accelerating. But the terminals required for what we do in music studios - real-time applications - will still have to be pretty powerful, and the Internet will have to be as fast as SSDs are today for us to stream instruments. In other words, the cloud isn't quite a hard drive yet.

As to desktops always being better than laptops, well, maybe, but we're pretty close to the point where laptops are more than enough to do what we've been using desktops for since Gigasampler revolutionized sampling. There's a plateau where every computer, including a smartphone, will have plenty of power to do what you and I use it for.
 
I don't think it will all move to the cloud in our lifetime.

Dumb terminals are so 1975

A lot of stuff will move to the cloud, but the thing is the people that control what gets invented and produced, you know people like Apple and Microsoft; they have in incentive to get us all to give them our money. That means they keep coming up with compelling reasons that we need to upgrade our hardware. They have been doing that for 40 years and I see no end in sight. They will just find little feature that you can't live without but you need a state of the art CPU and video chip in order to have it, so.... new iPhone and new computer next year or you'll be left behind.

That is not going to change any time soon....
 
And that's where we're headed - smartphones (or watches? shoes? anal implants?) have all the power, and they connect wirelessly to your screen, keyboard, whatever when you walk into the room.

That's a few weeks away, though.
 
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