16" MBP

[Marzzz]

New wrinkle to the decision (it's always something!).

Without getting "political", new tariffs announced for September 1 will make the 16" even more expensive than is already expected.

There is speculation that Apple will absorb the tariffs in order to maintain current pricing. As always, see how it plays out...

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2019/08/05/kuo-apple-to-absorb-potential-us-tariff-costs/

[Dr Mike Metlay]

I add my voice to the chorus of folks pointing out that older MacBook Pros are often killer music machines. I run Omnisphere and Keyscape on my machine, but I admit that I usually use only one at a time and rarely with massive polyphony...

 

My current music laptop is a 2012-era MacBook Pro, the 15" quad i7 with the dedicated GPU. I have it loaded with 16 GB RAM, its maximum, and two 1 TB SSDs, one replacing the original spinny drive and the other replacing the optical drive. It runs Mojave like a champ, as well as Ableton Live 10.1 and Reaper and Studio One 4, and has all the ports one needs for proper connectivity: real Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, one Thunderbolt port (plenty good enough for most music work!), and even FireWire 800.

 

I can replace the RAM, SSDs, and battery easily, with normal tools. It happily runs an external monitor from the Thunderbolt port, with a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter. I don't care that it's heavy and bulky, it lives in my studio and never leaves (I have a 2014-vintage 11" MacBook Air to take on the road, that does remarkably well if you don't use Spectrasonics plug-ins). And if it ever dies, I can get a new one, refurbed from MacOfAllTrades, for way less than the cost of a new MacBook Pro that will make me miserable due to its many design flaws.

 

I am in a minority here, but I believe that Jony Ive leaving Apple was the best thing that's happened to the brand in years. If I have to hear that cloying voice of his say "amazingly thin and light" one more time, I'll hurl. In the name of "amazingly thin and light", Apple has spent five years and more putting out MBPs that barely qualify as "pro": overpriced, underpowered, flimsy, and full of new "features" that nobody wanted. It's bad enough to have no upgradable RAM or storage, and wimpy fans that lead to thermal throttling in pretty much every music application... but as someone who types for a living, I found the butterfly keyboard the kiss of death.

 

I'm strictly trailing-edge when it comes to this stuff; I'm not editing video or VR, and I prefer reliability, serviceability, and stable hardware standards to the latest whiz bang whatever. I know that some things will never go back to the way I want them... the T2 chip means that it is now impossible to pull data from an internal SSD if the computer dies, so backups become vital, and that's just the way of the world. But I hope that Apple will someday return to a slightly heavier but properly cooled Pro machine with real interconnectivity and maybe, just maybe, swappable components, because that's what the Pros actually want in a machine called Pro.

 

[slowtraveler]

Without getting "political", new tariffs announced for September 1 will make the 16" even more expensive than is already expected.

There is speculation that Apple will absorb the tariffs in order to maintain current pricing.

I personally would not give too much weight to the tariff question when making a purchase decision. For one thing, Apple is sitting on about $225 billion in cash at the moment, giving it plenty of room to absorb the cost of tariffs without imposing significant short-term price increases, and also allowing it to alter its manufacturing strategy in response to geopolitical changes, as Kuo mentions in his investor note. In fact, depending how Apple sees elasticity of demand w/r/t price, it might actually make more money selling a bunch of machines at a lower profit margin than it would selling a smaller number of machines with the full cost of tariffs baked into the price.

 

Also, the OP mentioned in an earlier post that he hopes to use his next machine for most of the coming decade. With this kind of time horizon, I would worry less about price and more about longevity. For this reason I would also avoid buying a previous-generation MBP (even though I myself own and cherish a 2015 15" Retina MBP).

 

 

[Marzzz]

I personally would not give too much weight to the tariff question when making a purchase decision. For one thing, Apple is sitting on about $225 billion in cash at the moment, giving it plenty of room to absorb the cost of tariffs without imposing significant short-term price increases, and also allowing it to alter its manufacturing strategy in response to geopolitical changes

And again without getting too political, this might be a good thing in the long run.

[Stephen Fortner]

My virtual instrument host and mobile recording machine is a mid-2012 15" MPB Retina upgraded with a 512MB SSD from OtherWorld. Two USB3 ports, two Thunderbolt 2, HDMI out, and SD card reader. Only puny thing is the 8GB of RAM, which IIRC cannot be upgraded on this iteration. Where I'm feeling a pinch is that I'm increasingly needing to produce high-quality videos on the go, and though HD (1920) is fine, 4K in Premiere brings the machine to its knees. I too am looking at the 16" rumors and considering selling plasma, prostitution, etc. I'm right with Dr. Mike: Jony Ive without Steve Jobs as a balance was turning Apple into the Bang & Olufsen of computers: Form before function, super slick designs, but neither the most powerful, flexible, or upgradeable components compared to some less glamorous products.

 

But for any music-making needs that don't have a visual component, the old MPB is trucking along just fine.

[EscapeRocks]

My virtual instrument host and mobile recording machine is a mid-2012 15" MPB Retina upgraded with a 512MB SSD from OtherWorld. Two USB3 ports, two Thunderbolt 2, HDMI out, and SD card reader. Only puny thing is the 8GB of RAM, which IIRC cannot be upgraded on this iteration.

 

Stephen, while the official spec says 8GB, your mid 2012 15" MBP will in fact support 16gb. Same as my mid 2012 13" MBP. A very easy procedure once you have the proper tiny Torx drivers to remove the back case. OWC currently sells 16GBkit (two 8gb sticks) for around $75

 

[MoodyBluesKeys]

Definitely - my 2011 15" MBP has 16GB with no problem. The 2011 Mini also upgraded with no problem. SSD & 16GB = rather fast machine.

[Dr Mike Metlay]

My virtual instrument host and mobile recording machine is a mid-2012 15" MPB Retina upgraded with a 512MB SSD from OtherWorld. Two USB3 ports, two Thunderbolt 2, HDMI out, and SD card reader. Only puny thing is the 8GB of RAM, which IIRC cannot be upgraded on this iteration. Where I'm feeling a pinch is that I'm increasingly needing to produce high-quality videos on the go, and though HD (1920) is fine, 4K in Premiere brings the machine to its knees. I too am looking at the 16" rumors and considering selling plasma, prostitution, etc. I'm right with Dr. Mike: Jony Ive without Steve Jobs as a balance was turning Apple into the Bang & Olufsen of computers: Form before function, super slick designs, but neither the most powerful, flexible, or upgradeable components compared to some less glamorous products.

 

But for any music-making needs that don't have a visual component, the old MPB is trucking along just fine.

 

Stephen, I don't know much about the first-gen Retinas that coexisted with the non-Retina MBPs like mine. Does yours have on-chip graphics or does it have a separate GPU? If you're trying to do 4K on a 2012-era on-chip graphics platform, I can believe that your machine is struggling.

 

This wasn't an issue with me, simply because I do nothing (yet) with video... my main GPU-crushing app is Second Life, which is relatively inefficiently coded because so much content is user-generated, and which can overheat and throttle most computers that aren't designed for video and gaming in a matter of minutes. A separate GPU isn't vital, but if you're doing on-chip graphics then MacsFanControl is vital when using SL; set fan speed to max before even launching the app and you'll be fine, but you'll literally cook your CPU if you wait for the fans to ramp up on their own.

 

If I were to get a Retina, it would probably be the generation after yours, ca. 2014. These are reportedly excellent machines, despite the beginning of the end (RAM is soldered to the mobo). The real problem is replacing an SSD. A lot of folks report that the Other World custom SSDs for those machines have terrible reliability problems. My local Mac repair shop makes use of a lot of OWC parts, but won't ever use their SSDs if they can help it.

 

[Stephen Fortner]

Dr. Mike,

Mine has an Nvidia GPU but with only 1MB of VRAM. I'll do some research on the 2014 machines.