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from the renewed-interest-in-Compaq-Portable-computers dept.
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The pursuit of thinner, lighter laptops, a trend driven by Apple, means we have screwed ourselves out of performance.
Over the last few days we’ve seen outcry about Apple’s new MacBook Pro, which offers an optional top-end i9 processor, and how its performance is throttled to the point of parody as the laptop heats up over time.
Sparked by a video from YouTuber Dave Lee, who demonstrates that the only way to get Apple’s quoted performance from the MacBook Pro is by keeping it in a refrigerator, the outcry has been brutal.
Thousands of comments on the video say things like “Wow if it cant even maintain stock speeds that's pretty sad” and “Apple should offer a fridge that goes with the Macbook i9,” but the sobering reality is that this practice is normal across laptops—we’re just starting to see it more often.
[...] If Pro users really were Apple’s target market, the company could redesign these laptops to use the older, thicker MacBook Pro form factor from 2015. With that available space, and improvements in processor design, it would be able to better cool the same hardware and squeeze out more performance—but it’ll never happen. Thicker laptops would mean admitting failure.
Thinner and lighter is great, and if we’re honest, we’re all sucked in by the allure. The unfortunate reality for those of us that need these machines for work is that it’s just not good enough, and we’d welcome thicker machines in exchange for hardware that isn’t constrained by heat. Apple insists these new MacBooks are for ‘pro users,’ and while it has some of the best-in-class hardware design out there today, it simply doesn’t hold up if you push them hard enough.
The MacBook Pro isn’t designed for pro users at all, it’s a slick marketing machine designed to sell to the wealthy ‘prosumer’ that wouldn’t notice anyway. That much has been clear since the introduction of the Touch Bar and death of the SD slot—and it’s making a ton of money anyway.
Source: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmkve/thinner-and-lighter-laptops-have-screwed-us-all
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday July 25 2018, @03:00PM (3 children)
I'm not sure it was a founding wish. Their first hit, the Apple II, had half a dozen expansion slots under the lid.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @03:21PM (2 children)
Steve Jobs wanted 2 things: Your money, and your submission to his way.
The Apple IIs were historical achievements, but that's not representative of Steve Jobs's Apple, but rather of Steve Wozniak's Apple. When people think of Apple, they think of the Macintosh and of iPods/iPhones/iPads, and Apple's heroic efforts to do its own, non-compatible thing.
Whereas the PC industry famously erupted from the off-the-shelf IBM PC free-market frankenstein, Apple famously crushed the Macintosh clones [wikipedia.org]. According to Apple, there can be Only One.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:21PM
The current Apple walled garden approach to computing is fully the fault of Job's desire to control every aspect of his users.
Now that Jobs is gone, the corporate types won't let it go because they've discovered how much money there is by jailing users into their walled garden.
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:34AM
Apple has never wanted a dominant position in the PC (or consumer gadget, now) market. They want to control a small part of the larger market, with higher value/cost products.