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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, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:30PM (7 children)
Not true. Apple was founded on the Apple II, a computer that was all about openness. It came with useful technical documentation. It encouraged third-parties to develop expansion cards to allow the computer to do all kinds of things that weren't possible out of the box. That was Woz's contribution. Jobs put it in a pretty (enough for the time) box and marketed it.
You're thinking of the Macintosh. That was Jobs's baby. From day one, that thing was a closed box. Things relaxed a little when Jobs was ousted, but that quickly changed after his return. Once he died, marketing and design decided to screw us further, soldering in the RAM and storage and gluing things down, making it virtually impossible to even replace our own batteries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:35PM (2 children)
Already discussed above, nearly notion-for-notion. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @05:10PM (1 child)
He posted about the Apple II, as in "2", which means it's supposed to be mentioned twice. He's just doing his part ... why aren't you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:06PM
Are you Jay Wilson?
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:55PM
The battery was replaced by opening a door on the back, AA battery inside.
The floppy could be upgraded to double sided.
There were ways to upgrade the processor, we went from 68000 to 68030. And you could revert to using the 68000 by holding the interrupt key at boot. This upgrade also let us install more RAM.
We added a SCSI interface and booted from it.
We added a second (still B&W) full page screen.
Later on the battery was internalized.
Mac II series brought back regular expansion slots
iMac got the ball rolling on USB.
Mac Pro became a trash can
Yada yada, the Apple coaster is still a mess though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:08PM (1 child)
Well, yes, not a bad idea considering the 20kV in the high tension circuits of the display, that hung around even when turned off and disconnected. Still, all you needed was a Torx bit welded to a long shaft... none of this modern heat pack, guitar pick, pizza-cutter and replacement set of double-sided sticky tape malarkey.
Since then, during Jobs' later tenure, Apple released both sealed-shut "appliances" and pro machines like the G4 tower and the G5/Intel "Cheesegrater" that went the extra mile to hinge apart at a flip of a catch and were the easiest machines ever to work on... Looks to me that, in those days, someone understood "horses for courses".
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:43AM
All you really needed to open a dinkyscreen Mac was a long handled flat blade screwdriver of the right blade width. You could wedge it into the Torx hole, and pull the Torx screws to discard. They were replaced with phillips head screws of the same size which are commonly available. I still have four dinkyscreen Macs, three SE/30's and a plain SE. I, of course, retain the original torx screws for collector's value, but I never screw them back into place.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:38PM
When my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro died, I managed to dig up a very small PCIe To USB3 enclosure so I could recover the data.
Other World Computing sells compatible storage cards so you can get even faster storage then that which comes with the box.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]