So with half an hour spare in central London yesterday, I popped into the Apple store to speak to someone who supposedly knows what they’re talking about about a potential new MacBookPro. I asked a few tech questions to be treated with a pretty blank look, and then he just re-read the spec sheet back to me! Anyway…

I have a 2014 15” MacBookPro that has done me proud, but I’m thinking it’s about time I replaced it, and as a brand new model has just come out, now would be a good time.

My biggest question is regarding the amount of RAM. I’ve always come from a “if in doubt just Chuck a load more RAM in” approach to computing, but you can’t do that with modern machines, it’s all hard wired and has to be specced from the factory. My current machine has 16GB which has always been plenty, but the new machine comes with 16GB as a factory build, or for an extortionate amount of money (about £400!!!) I can double that up to 32GB and wait another 10 days for the machine for the privilege (not ideal, wanted this as a Christmas present to myself).

The model I’m looking at is the £2799 Core i9 16” MBP, the middle of 3 factory builds. I’ve written off the £2399 core i7 as for the extra £400 the i9 professor benchmarks about 30% faster, it has twice the hard drive capacity, and a much better GFX card. But crucially no more RAM… Nobody seems to be that bothered about RAM any more though, are my fears unfounded?

I realise that 16GB will continue to be fine for the immediate future, I just don’t want to get 3 years down the line (I view this as a 5/6 year purchase) and find its not enough.

For reference, will be doing some music editing, maybe the odd video (but nothing high end), a few other applications that use a bit bit of RAM but nothing too taxing.

Thoughts?

For reference, will be doing some music editing, maybe the odd video (but nothing high end), a few other applications that use a bit bit of RAM but nothing too taxing.

Standard build specifications are more than enough for most domestic users, I think you only need the extra RAM if you are really stretching the machine. What you describe above will be easily covered by standard build. Save your money and spend it on bike parts

16gb is still plenty.
Is an i9 strictly nessesary though? They run hot! Not ideal for a laptop with limited cooling.

Does it have to be a mac, and a laptop, do you really need the portability?

You could build an equivalent pc for literally half the price and buy a seperate mid range laptop and still have change.

If you want more processing grunt the new portables support exterior graphics cards and enclosures when at home. MOAR power.

There’s a 6 page thread here for inspiration

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/1000-video-editor-parts-list-complete-please-review.18870780/

I have a 2014 15” MacBookPro that has done me proud, but I’m thinking it’s about time I replaced it, and as a brand new model has just come out, now would be a good time.

I’m running a mid-2012 MBP with 16GB of RAM and an SSD and it still works fine, I don’t edit massive video files or owt, but plenty of Photoshop use. If you’re not running an SSD already, I’d be tempted to stick one in and see if you can’t save a massive amount of dosh. I’m sure a 2018 machine would be slicker and faster, but the latest MBPs seem insanely overpriced.

Can’t get my head around apple pricing… It’s insane.

What are you going to be using it for? Arguably if you are just using it for email and internet then what you have now is more than enough.

Have you tried the new models keyboard? My company 2019 MacBook Pro has a terrible keyboard feel compared to the ones used in 2014, thankfully I have external keyboards to do the majority of my work with.

16gb is a good amount of memory, with the addition of solid state disks when a computer does start swapping or paging to disk the impact is far less pronounced compared with rotational disks.

Whatever the answers either spec is strong money for a laptop and Apple’s reputation of ‘just works’ is not what it once was.

As far as I’m aware Macs don’t use memory like Windows machine does and so 16GB will be plenty.

Can’t get my head around apple pricing… It’s insane.

Have a look at the upper end of the Dell or HP list for comparisons. Some of the cost is premium components (sometimes at the bleeding edge of developement, FW800 anyone), some is Apple tax for convenience of letting the phone, smart speaker, video streamer and desktop all interact reasonably seamlessly. I suspect @mboy values the convenience and not needing 20 years IT experience to make basic interconnectedness work at home. Not everyone wants to be elbows deep in the command line or homebrewing a system when bike riding time is a wasting. (I’m told that some on here ride bikes, I’m not convinced). 🙂

People do sound and video editing via command line? Can’t imagine that’s very efficient 😉

A lot of online retailers will build you a custom machine for a nominal build fee and deliver it fully working… Not sure I see your point.

Have a look at the upper end of the Dell or HP list for comparisons.

Agreed, equally silly, you could spec and have built a completely ludicrously overpowered PC for £2800… But I’m guessing the OP isn’t working on the latest pixar film 🙂

I broke our 2012 MacBook Pro so bought a 2019 replacement, it’s not as nice as the 2012 and seems almost glitchy, keyboard is horrible and tbh due to price I think it will be our last apple laptop

The 2012 was flawless though until I broke it which is a shame

Have you tried the new models keyboard? My company 2019 MacBook Pro has a terrible keyboard feel compared to the ones used in 2014, thankfully I have external keyboards to do the majority of my work with.

This isn’t something to just pass by. If you plan on using the laptop keyboard then really try one out first. I hate the new keyboards, fortunately I almost always use an external keyboard too.

I’m not sure why you’d fork out to upgrade to an i9 and not 16gb ram either. I was using a 2013 macbook pro for my work machine (software dev) until this year when I upgraded due to wanting 32 gigs ram and more oomph in general. For your use case I’d expect the 2014 to work just as well really.

Also FW800? Just another cable, you could have a NAS box on Gigabit ethernet acting as a file server /media center if you want fast transfer speeds.

I’m going to spec a £2800 system up later just for the lols. Currently on mobile so it’s too much faf.

Have a look what Jigsaw24 have on offer – they seem to have some good deals and have certain models 32GB MacBook Pros in stock…

https://www.jigsaw24.com/apple/mac/macbook-pro

I use them and KRCS for all my Mac stuff.

The 2012 was flawless though until I broke it which is a shame

Yeah, as per my previous post, my Mid 2012 MBP with 16GB and SSD is still going strong and, if I broke it, I’d be tempted to simply buy another one used rather than ‘upgrade’ to the current model. The missus has two MacBook Airs – one’s a work machine, one personal – and the thing locks up regularly and freezes, seems like a nightmare to work on and, afaik, can’t be upgraded.

If the OP hasn’t fitted an SSD already, do that. It makes a colossal difference.

If the OP hasn’t fitted an SSD already, do that. It makes a colossal difference.

All rMBP models have had SSDs from standard since 2013.

Also, the late 2019 model the OP will be referring to (new 16″) has reverted to a similar keyboard design to the pre-2016 models with proper travel/feel.

Nobody seems to be that bothered about RAM any more though, are my fears unfounded?

I Am! i’ll take as much a is can get. i’m pushing my 2015 mbp to its limits with 16 and really need to upgrade to a new one with 64gb. i regularly work on files in photoshop of 10gb and more and ram stops you using scratch disk and even using super fast M2 ssd’s connected via thunderbolt3 for scratch it’s still better to use ram not disk.
i’m also hitting the buffers with graphics as all the adjustment layers mean you can get brush lag.
part of the problem is photoshop itself as it’s poorly written and not multi core apart from a few tasks compare it to Final cut which is optimised for the mac and it flies, i dont even use proxies now and can apply lut’s and masks to 4k and scrub through without any dropped frames.

so yes people do need maxed out MacBooks. do you?
or just get a 2015 model from the refurb store, they will not even be refurbs just old inventory.

Can’t get my head around apple pricing… It’s insane.

not if you use it for work every day and pay for it in it’s first week of use.
i think they would still offer good value to a business if they were twice the price.
not a sensible buy for just looking at STW in cafes though..

I think they’ve just changed the keyboard that everybody hates?

As I alluded, if you’re a professional video editor /animator who absolutely needs huge processing power on the go, and you can’t VPN into a dedicated VM, then possibly.. But that’s such a niche market it’s almost irrelevant.

But it’s apple so people buy them. For… reasons.

But that’s such a niche market it’s almost irrelevant.

except that’s apples core market for it’s professional products (MBP, iMac Pro, MacPro) if it was irrelevant they wouldn’t bother making them. yes it’s small fry financially compared to i-devices but it’s a halo product for the brand much like a ford f-40 (GT or whatever it’s called)

We have a similar issue at work, lots of devs have really powerful machines because they need loads of CPU cores and loads of ram.

When in reality it would be far cheaper if they had cheap machines and connected to a locally hosted (in the same building) stupidly powerful server(s) to serve all.

If you need the compute power of a 3 grand laptop, it might even be cheaper to rent VM’s in a data center.

not if you use it for work every day and pay for it in it’s first week of use.
i think they would still offer good value to a business if they were twice the price

I’m still not convinced.
I’ve a 4 year old HP copy of a MBP. Alu case and chiclet keyboard included.
i5 8gb and SSD all under £600 new.
It’s been upgraded to W10.
It’s fine.
I’m struggling to see where the extra £2k goes.

SSD are really cheap now also.

I’m still not convinced.

I’m convinced you don’t need a maxed out MBP, it’s obvious your current machine is ideal for your needs.

I wouldn’t be able to work with it though which is why high spec machines are available.

What’s ‘MBP’? it’s not an application I’m familiar with.

I’ve a 4 year old HP copy of a MBP. Alu case

Imma stop you right there.

Swish

Macs are the same as PC’s, other than they cost 3x as much.

The only notable difference is the OS.

It’s the same hardware.

I realise that 16GB will continue to be fine for the immediate future, I just don’t want to get 3 years down the line (I view this as a 5/6 year purchase) and find its not enough.

For reference, will be doing some music editing, maybe the odd video (but nothing high end), a few other applications that use a bit bit of RAM but nothing too taxing.

With that workload you’ll be fine with 16Gb for 2/3 years, very likely a good while longer. However, should your needs change will you start demanding more? Probably not unless you start doing some heavy image editing or 4k video prod.

TBH take a look at the 2019 models. You’ll not see much difference in performance as you’re not stretching its capabilities. Secondhand they’re going for £1600-£2000 for 16Gb, or cough up a little more for 32Gb. They’ll have AC too.

FTR my 16″ i9 32Gb arrived last week and is an absolute screamer. Yes it’s overpriced and it runs hot under load but it handles everything thrown at it with ease (Davinci, FCP, graphic design, Parallels Win 10, 4k external display and lots more). I have another 3 weeks to decide whether to keep it.

BTW, lead times on custom builds were recently quoted (by Apple and resellers) as early-mid Jan due to Christmas. Mine took 8 days instead of 14, so there may be some conservatism in there.

With that workload you’ll be fine with 16Gb for 2/3 years, very likely a good while longer. However, should your needs change will you start demanding more? Probably not unless you start doing some heavy image editing or 4k video prod.

Thankfully there’s a few on here that read the brief, rather than trying to turn this into a PC vs Mac debate!

Does it have to be a mac, and a laptop, do you really need the portability?

You could build an equivalent pc for literally half the price and buy a seperate mid range laptop and still have change.

I’m going to spec a £2800 system up later just for the lols. Currently on mobile so it’s too much faf.

If you’ve got the time to sit speccing a custom PC then you probably wouldn’t understand my criteria!

Yes it has to be a Mac, yes it has to be a Laptop, yes it has to be portable… I also have a 27″ iMac I no longer use (that will also be for sale very soon) as well as my 15″ MacBookPro, also a Mac Mini that I need to put back together and sell… It NEEDS to be portable.

I am more than aware that I can build an incredibly powerful tower PC for less than half the price. So what…? I have built several high powered PC’s over the years, even hacked some of them to run Apple OSX with a good degree of success. Will one fit in my backpack easily whilst I’m on the road for work? Will it still be worth more than half its initial purchase price after 3 years of ownership?

I couldn’t give a flying **** about a PC… I need to run OSX, I need as much power as I can get my hands on still in a highly portable machine that fits in my Backpack, and I’m ready (I won’t say happy) to spend £3k on what I see to be an investment for the next 5yrs or so… For reference, I ride an Evil Offering with Fox suspension F&R that is about to be upgraded with Eagle AXS, just building up a Ti Hardtail, and also ride a Colnago road bike. I don’t **** about! Life’s too short to ride shit bikes, and it’s certainly too short to mess about with sub standard computers when you use them so much of the time. Once you realise it’s only money and you can’t take it with you, you cease to insist upon burdening yourself with buying your bikes from PlanetX and your laptops from Gateway… 😉

I’m running a mid-2012 MBP with 16GB of RAM and an SSD and it still works fine, I don’t edit massive video files or owt, but plenty of Photoshop use. If you’re not running an SSD already, I’d be tempted to stick one in and see if you can’t save a massive amount of dosh.

Had a 2012 same as yours, that I upgraded with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. I sold it 2 years ago as it was already causing me some serious headaches, and I found this 2014 Quad Core i7 machine with 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD from a seller on facebook at a fantastic price so upgraded. The processor on this 2014 machine benchmarks 2.5x as fast as the processor on your 2012 machine, and the 8 core i9 on the 2019 machine I’m looking at benchmarks 2.5x as fast as my current machine again!

Can’t get my head around apple pricing… It’s insane.

not if you use it for work every day and pay for it in it’s first week of use.

I remember bumping into one of my Dad’s friends in an Apple shop about 12yrs ago, and he had just dropped over £4k then on a “backup machine” (highest spec 15″ MacBookPro available at the time) in case his main one failed when out on a job, and he was at pains to tell me how fantastic the performance of it was for the money. He also had a brace of MacPro’s at home, and dozens of terrabytes of networked storage (back when a 1TB HD was as big as you could get) for work purposes… But then he used to charge upwards of £100k a week for his photography services (he had just dropped over £50k on a new Hasselblad camera body the day before he said)… Everything is relevant!

I’m convinced you don’t need a maxed out MBP, it’s obvious your current machine is ideal for your needs.

It’s almost 6yrs old, was 2nd hand to me, and is a bit glitchy at times. And I have the money sat in my bank account to buy a new one if I want, so…

If you need the compute power of a 3 grand laptop, it might even be cheaper to rent VM’s in a data center.

Precisely how is that convenient?!?!

Anyway, cheers for the useful responses… Seems it may just be worth ponying up the extra £400 or so on doubling the RAM, given I want the machine to last 5 or 6 years…

What’s ‘MBP’?

Sorry, a Mac Book Pro.

Wow a PC v MAC argument. That rarely happens 😉

@mboy for what it’s worth, I moved to a 2019 MBP. It’s the base i7/16 gig. It replaced a 2017 MBP with the horrible keyboard. I use mine every day and it goes with me everywhere. I don’t need the power of the new one as I do very little of the media editing being talked about. but…

.. the 2019 keyboard is honestly enough when you’re typing on it every day. I really really disliked the non scissor one. After that the screen is bigger, it’s definitely faster even for the standard apps I use, it’s a bit heavier but overall I’m really happy to have upgraded

I sold my old one on eBay. Couldn’t wait to get that keyboard out of the house!

apples core market

Very good.

Seems a no brainier to me, it’s a work tool that you’ll use for years making it future proof for £400 is sensible.

I assume as it’s a work tool it’s tax deductible too?

My suspicion with the RAM is that most people who recommend ’32Gb minimum’ have no idea. For boring reasons, my 2018 13″ MacBook Pro could only have 8Gb RAM, and at the time (and now) most online opinions state you’d be stupid to buy a base model without upgrading the RAM. Indeed coming from my 2012 MBP which had 16Gb RAM, I felt uneasy about ‘downgrading’ the RAM.

A year on, I’m happy to say I feel fine about the 8Gb I’ve got. I do moderately heavy lifting on my laptop – I usually have 10+ things running and loads of Safari / Firefox tabs. I use Matlab most of the day and I’ve had perhaps 2-3 occasions in the past year where I’ve seen minor slowdowns when opening very large/numerous VTK files. I’m not doing lots of video / image editing where the RAM is probably very useful so YMMV.

TLDR; I am of the fringe opinion that 32Gb is by no means mandatory (especially for your requirements).

On the RAM – I think 16Gb is generally fine unless you know why you need more. If you have almost any specific reason at all to think you might need more ram, go for it.

On the mac vs pc – I could make the same argument the opposite way round. My argument would be macs are no good because they only make cheap low end ones*… depends what you’re doing with a computer!

*before someone comes back with “mac pro” that’s mid range in the scheme of desktop workstations. Only 1 socket, limited PCIE expansion, only up to 1.5Tb…

Oh and if 16gb isn’t enough for work down the line, well it’s work – sell it on buy a new one. Do you think you’ll be worse off than if you’d spend the +400 now and kept it a bit longer before doing the same. Probably about evens… (i.e. compare depreciation cost against up front).

I need to run OSX

macOS Shirley?

before someone comes back with “mac pro” that’s mid range in the scheme of desktop workstations. Only 1 socket, limited PCIE expansion, only up to 1.5Tb…

I wouldn’t mind 1.5TB of ram! And 128gb of video memory just to cover any apps that leverage the GPU.