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MacBook gets a Skylake speed boost, 8GB of memory, longer battery life

165 points| zhuxuefeng1994 | 10 years ago |techcrunch.com

268 comments

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[+] cmiller1|10 years ago|reply
I found this statement interesting.

>The new guts are getting you better performance but also better battery life with what Apple says is 10 hours of web browsing or 11 hours of iTunes movie playback.

Movie playback used to be considered the de facto test of the most rigorous power use a computer would go through. Spinning DVDs and hard drives have been replaced with SSD, hardware accelerated decoding of video has replaced maxing out your CPU.

On the other hand, web browsing used to be considered a light use of power. Pull some network content into memory, parse some basic html, etc. Now with javascript EVERYWHERE and the rising complexity of web pages, web browsing has become one of the most taxing things you can do as far as power use is concerned. In fact, on my MacBook Pro now that OS X tells you which processes are using the most power, web browsers like Safari and Chrome are the only thing I ever see show up in "Apps using significant energy"

[+] massysett|10 years ago|reply
Indeed, I use Safari because it seems neither Firefox nor Chrome are optimized at all for battery usage. Chrome is a huge power hog.

I wonder if it's the same on the Windows side; has Microsoft optimized IE (or the new browser, whatever it's called) for power usage?

[+] compactmani|10 years ago|reply
You've highlighted one of the many advantages to browsing with javascript off by default. I think at this point it should really only be used for must-have cases.
[+] blumentopf|10 years ago|reply
I assume the videos available on iTunes are encoded in an H.264 profile that can be decoded entirely on the GPU, so the CPU would indeed be mostly idling during playback.
[+] jkmcf|10 years ago|reply
I tried Safari for a while, but there were many annoying quirks, some which may be fixed now (every n new tabs open slowly, safari sync slowing things down, some important-to-me sites not rendering properly, ...)

With Chrome, The Great Suspender[1] seems to work well at reducing background tab CPU.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...

[+] Intermernet|10 years ago|reply
Interestingly, the thing that drains my battery most is running a VM in virtualbox, even when it's doing nothing.

I'm not really surprised by this, but it would be interesting to see how much Virtualbox hooks into the power-saving functionality on the host machine, and if this can be optimized. I'd have thought that a VM that's pretty much idle would be able to somehow utilize the host computer's power saving methods. Maybe it can, but I haven't enabled it in the VM settings... Any tips?

[+] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
Movie decoding is substantially offloaded to dedicated hardware circuits in the GPU that can do the job with minimum power. HTML rendering runs on the CPU.
[+] lazyjones|10 years ago|reply
> On the other hand, web browsing used to be considered a light use of power

It would make a better test if they reported battery life when web browsing both with and without ad blocking. It'll certainly make a noticeable difference.

[+] mrmondo|10 years ago|reply
I have a rMB from 2015, I easily get 10-13 hours out of it unless using flash of Java. It's a great portable laptop but BADLY needs 16GB of RAM, it would / could just be so much better if you weren't limited to 8GB especially with browsers / websites the way they are these days you chew that up in no time.
[+] tedmiston|10 years ago|reply
I'd be curious to hear how the 10 hour benchmark with Safari compares to using Chrome.
[+] stcredzero|10 years ago|reply
Now with javascript EVERYWHERE and the rising complexity of web pages, web browsing has become one of the most taxing things you can do as far as power use is concerned.

Javascript has become the new Flash!

[+] make3|10 years ago|reply
I feel it also tells a lot on the progress of "mobile" gpus
[+] ghshephard|10 years ago|reply
It is starting to look like the MacBook Air may not get processor/PCIe Flash refresh, and if that's the case, I'm going to be very upset - that laptop is perfect in almost every conceivable way for me. I am very much not interested in the MacBook, despite wanting to like it. The weird keyboard, smaller screen, Mobile/slower Processor, 2 hours less battery life, Just a single port; other than being lighter, zero value and they are charging an extra $300 for it. Note - The Retina screen, despite a lot of A/B testing by me, is not anything I really care about.

I get, and respect, the desire to move everything to USB-C, and I'm willing to take the hit with dongles to help move things forward - but couldn't we do that on the MacBook Air?

I know, everyone will say, "MacBook Pro" - but, once again, I don't care about the Retina, and the MacBook air is a monster of a system, awesome processing power - I'm running 31 Apps right now on my MBair, including two Virtual Machines (one of them Windows), full office suite, Aperture - and it's not even spinning up the fans.

The MacBook released today is a less useful system for me in almost every way than the MacBook Air released three years ago.

[+] microtonal|10 years ago|reply
I am very much not interested in the MacBook, despite wanting to like it. The weird keyboard, smaller screen, Mobile/slower Processor, 2 hours less battery life, Just a single port; other than being lighter, zero value and they are charging an extra $300 for it.

I moved from a 13" MacBook Air (Core i7, 8GB RAM) to a MacBook 12". I absolutely love it, it's much lighter, the keyboard is great once you get used to this, I prefer retina, and not having fans is great as well. Force touch is a nice gimmick, but I haven't used it much. The Core M CPU is not a problem for me in practice. Since buying the Air I have been doing more and more deep learning and anything without a CUDA GPU won't be practical anyway. So I work on a server with an nVidia Tesla card. For all may daily work and most development, the Core M holds up absolutely fine.

[+] IkmoIkmo|10 years ago|reply
I definitely could get used to the Macbook, but they need to bring out a 14 inch version in 2017, with the same thin bezels that makes its footprint as large as the a 13 inch MBA. The battery life will go up, space for a bigger keyboard, and there'll be space for a second USB port or even a third. All of that, at the current price (with the current price dropping for the 12 inch by $200), 720p cam and a new and improved 2017 processor, is a really decent package I'd be happy to buy, and good value if you can live with the depth of the keyboard. But right now, no way I'd buy the MB. That should be possible, 2 years after the MB 12', in 2017. Who knows.

I'm mostly reminded of the MBA when it first came out. It was $1800 back then, and that was with some pretty shitty options. e.g. you had a regular HD, if you wanted an SSD it was $1k extra, or $2.8k in total, and you'd only have a 64gb SSD. And if you wanted a CPU upgrade (because the MBA was slower than the regular Macbook), you'd $300 extra, or $3.1k total, and it was still slower btw. And look how far the MBA has come!

I think I'm really going to like the MB, but usually first gen just isn't good value. Today? Well we've got a MBA and MBP at home, no way I'm getting the MB or trading with it. Give it 1-2 generations though and I'm sure that'll change for me.

[+] crb|10 years ago|reply
My money is on the retina MacBook Pro getting smaller, and maybe cheaper, such that it will fill the needs currently filled by the Air.
[+] TazeTSchnitzel|10 years ago|reply
> they are charging an extra $300 for it.

The MacBook comes with a base configuration of 256GB SSD and 8GiB of RAM. The MacBook Air comes with a 128GB SSD and 4GiB of RAM (Edit: came with. Apparently this year they finally upped them to 8GiB RAM, so the price difference may have widened.). For the MacBook Air 13" and MacBook Pro 13" upgraded to 256GB SSD and 8GiB of RAM, the price is closer IIRC.

(I'd check, but Apple's website is amusingly broken right now.)

[+] seba_dos1|10 years ago|reply
8GB RAM? When I was buying my Yoga 2 Pro with 8GB RAM I already hesitated, it is a bare minimum these days. Browsers alone can eat it all with ease. Today I wouldn't buy a new laptop without more RAM or at least upgrade options.
[+] cletus|10 years ago|reply
Apple is annoying the crap out of me with their Macbook line.

I bought a 13" Macbook Air in 2011 that I still use. It was and is an amazing laptop. It's really in a sweet spot for size and power.

For years buyers including me have wanted a retina display and (ideally) the option for 16GB of RAM.

The Macbook is just too much of a compromise. Crappy keyboard. Only one port that's also used for power. Really low power CPU.

Why can't I just get the Macbook's display on a Macbook Air?

[+] jxy|10 years ago|reply
I feel for you. I'm typing on my 13" Macbook Air from 2011. Apple wants to banish 5-year-old PCs, so I'm all in to banish my trusted Air. But what's my next option? Pro is too hefty for me and '' is underwhelming, while Air is left behind.
[+] illumin8|10 years ago|reply
The problem is that your use case (retina + 16GB) is easily satisfied by the 13" rMBP, and the vast majority of Apple's consumer customers will not need more than 8GB of RAM for the next few years. Apple made the design decision to focus on consumer for the Macbook, making 8GB RAM standard across the board. This probably works well as they can optimize the size to fit the exact memory modules required, but leaves a few high-end people like yourself out in the cold.

I guess Apple assumes (probably correctly) that if you really need 16GB of RAM, you can afford an rMBP.

[+] rconti|10 years ago|reply
Yup, I use the same machine as my main home system. I have a 15" MBPr (late 2012) as a work machine, but the Air gets all the use. Sadly, with El Cap and modern browsers, it's starting to feel a big long in the tooth. Too many beachballs the past few months....
[+] HNcow|10 years ago|reply
This really is a neat machine for consumers. I would never buy one, but I'm always really impressed at the size / build quality whenever I see one. The price tag is definitely up there for what it is hardware wise, but I think it's one of a kind build makes it justified. Just not my cup of tea :)
[+] crb|10 years ago|reply
We said the same of the MacBook Air when it first came out of its gimmicky manila envelope on stage. Or, for that matter, when the iMac came out with no floppy drive, and only USB ports!
[+] nicolas_t|10 years ago|reply
I love it as a backup machine when I'm traveling but still need to be able to respond to emergencies. It's light and perfect for this.
[+] TazeTSchnitzel|10 years ago|reply
It seems like the ultimate lightweight on-the-go machine.
[+] cloverich|10 years ago|reply
I think its a great fit for traveling too; other than price, I can't see a reason to bring an iPad over something like this.
[+] venomsnake|10 years ago|reply
PSA: If you intend to use it for Linux - don't buy it yet. I have the old generation. There is problem with recognition of the SPI keyboard and trackpad. There are lots of kernel org bugs open for the 8,1 and no solutions as of yesterday.
[+] xd1936|10 years ago|reply
Good to know, thanks. If there was full hardware support, this would be a really awesome Linux laptop.
[+] bitsoda|10 years ago|reply
This is shaping up to be a nice machine. Now if only the keyboard travel weren't so shallow...
[+] DonHopkins|10 years ago|reply
They're hard to find, but I've finally tracked down a place in Australia (mechkb.com) that will internationally ship me one of these convertible Cherry MX key babies, that supports both Mac and Windows, both bluetooth (pairing with four devices) and USB (for low latency gaming and charging):

Filco Majestouch Convertible 2 review: the quest for a Mac-compatible, wireless, mechanical keyboard: http://johnscullen.com/filco-review/

[+] tdsamardzhiev|10 years ago|reply
Well, I guess we can wait a little longer for the retina MacBook Air :)
[+] TazeTSchnitzel|10 years ago|reply
I'm wondering if, at some point, they'll ditch the headphone jack for a second USB-C port. But that would require having USB-C headphones, which Apple might not be willing to make.
[+] jmuguy|10 years ago|reply
We have a few executives that would love one of these systems. But you cannot connect them to any of Apple's displays. Which is sort of insane to me.
[+] yeureka|10 years ago|reply
I wonder how this performs under XCode.

Currently I lug around a 15" MPBr and I would like something lighter to do development on the train but I wonder about performance.

Has anyone tried to do C++ builds on XCode using one of these machines?

[+] eugeneionesco|10 years ago|reply
It seems even with Skylake it still can't power a 4k monitor at 60Hz, oh well, next year maybe :)
[+] post_break|10 years ago|reply
I wish Apple would transition all computers to USB C to allow for easier charging. Being able to buy an Anker battery for cents on the dollar vs the three batteries on the market that support magsafe would be a godsend. I love magnets, saved my ass quite a few times, but I want to be able to charge my laptop on the go cheaply.
[+] spiffistan|10 years ago|reply
Now, if they only could bump the MBP to skylake as well...
[+] meerita|10 years ago|reply
I am waiting for the Macbook Pro. Yes. I believe it will kick ass upgrade compared with 2015 models.
[+] fredsted|10 years ago|reply
This is the perfect home computer for me. I wouldn't do much work on it – I don't think it supports 2 4K monitors – but it would be great for casual use while not at the office where I don't need a lot of power.
[+] 6d65|10 years ago|reply
I am really looking forward for an VR headset as a replacement to a laptop for on the go working.

Something like a GalaxyVR with an VR first DesktopEnvironment. That will have a huge 3d floating code editor.

This and a lightweight/wireless keyboard. Could be perfect, and mean less slouching.

Unfortunately smartphones aren't probably high resolution enough, yet.

[+] BooneJS|10 years ago|reply
I'm torn. I don't know if I want a MB or a 12.9" iPad Pro. Most of my "fun" development is done in a cheap GCE instance on the command-line.
[+] technofiend|10 years ago|reply
Not that I number myself among them, but I'm sure the hackintosh people will be happy if this refresh adds support for things found in skylake NUCs like bluetooth and networking.