This appears to be a software bug in macOS or AMD's drivers. Plugging in an external monitor at certain resolutions (1440p@60Hz in my case) will cause the AMD GPU to draw 18-20W constantly, no matter what it's doing. This causes the total system draw to increase from ~10W to ~30W. All that heat has to go somewhere. If I change the resolution of my external monitor to 1080p the AMD GPU drops to ~4W and the fans are quiet again. A lot more information available in this long MacRumors thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an...
This is a bug on Macbooks in general, as I understand it. I have a 2019 MBP with a 4k monitor, and if I change the resolution to anything except the default, there is massive system-wide lag. God forbid I use PyCharm on 4k scaled resolution – a full second between typing and seeing the text.
I have medium-to-high fan noise/RPM consistently when connected to an Apple TB display (2560x1440@60Hz), but it's much quieter when connected to a 2560x1600@60Hz monitor. So if it is very specific resolutions, but not necessarily higher resolutions in general, that matches my experience.
So I first thought that using gfxCardStatus to force the use of integrated graphics could help.
However:
> gfxCardStatus v2.3 and above actively prevents you from switching to Integrated Only mode when any apps are in the Dependencies list (or if you have an external display plugged in). This is because if you were to do this, your discrete GPU would actually stay powered on, even though you've switched to the integrated GPU.
fwiw NVIDIA GPUs have had a similar behavior under normal conditions on Windows forever. After following up with tech support about it, the explanation provided can basically be summarized as 'the higher the resolution + refresh rate of your attached monitors, the more demand placed on the memory controller and scan-out, which means a higher minimum GPU and/or memory clock to drive it'.
My current RTX 20xx card can drive two 4k monitors at low clocks, but the 9xx series really struggled and the 10 series still needed to clock up some. I suspect something similar is probably happening here with the AMD GPU if you're running the laptop's integrated retina display along with a 1440p60 external display, it's probably forced to clock up to drive that many pixels. I'm not really sure how AMD could get around basic hardware limitations here unless they have a really clever way of driving displays at a low memory clock.
That's interesting. I was watching a movie on my 1440p@60hz monitor last night on my 16" MBP in clamshell mode and the fans were on the whole time. That sounds like a connection.
Can you share how you're measuring GPU power draw? I have just migrated to a 16" MBP with the AMD chip, and also use an external display some of the time. Have noticed the fan noise and heat but it hasn't been a problem yet.
I’m curious if this is affected by the resolution on the laptop display. I believe the 16” and more recent 15” all default to a slightly scaled resolution, versus the pre-Touch Bar 15” which defaults to the panel’s native 2x resolution.
This would explain why when an external monitor is plugged in, my battery drains despite being on a charger. When it reaches 5% battery, the CPU load goes to 800%.
I’ve noticed this too using an HP Thunderbolt Dock G2 with a 16” and 2x 4K60 monitors. I just assumed it was because it’s summer here and the laptop tends to sit in the sun a bit, but it’d be nice if it got fixed.
What can I say as a person somewhat close to electronics engineering:
Look at that single skinny heat pipe, it will get saturated very fast. Second to that, look at those tiny radiators, they are clearly not capable to discharge the full heat flux.
I simply don't see any signs of proper thermal engineering there.
Apple says "we are listening now, and here is a new cooling design," then it comes out to be even less adequate that the old one. I can't think of anybody else capable of trolling up their customers like that.
If anybody wants to dish out something on an order of $1.5m to do a contract manufacturing run for a properly designed full sized laptop, give me a note. I do have some tricks in mind how to make 40W+ CPUs work in a relatively compact case.
If I had to guess they know what they're doing engineering wise, but they're taking a calculated (and poorly thought out, in my opinion) risk that a small percent of people will regularly peg the cpu at 100% usage, and they're further relying upon clock rate throttling and the cpu die thermal sensor to keep things from melting down. Or the management/product design group has overridden the input of the people who actually know how to design thermal solutions, because the laptop CANNOT be 2mm thicker.
Whenever I see a laptop with a >15W TDP CPU in a super slim package with a tiny heatsink/fan unit, no matter if it's from Apple or another vendor, I'm very suspicious. At least the 12 inch Macbook from a few years ago which was truly fanless uses an appropriately low powered CPU.
disclaimer: used to do systems engineering for a server manufacturer a long time ago, after you've gone through a dozen iterations of ways to mount skived copper heatsinks on dual socket motherboards in 1U cases, with various fan solutions, you realize that everything that is not acoustically terrible is some sort of compromise. People are trying to put CPU+GPU+RAM packages that are anywhere from 25W to 45W TDP in laptops that are physically too small for them.
> if anybody wants to dish out something on an order of $1.5m to do a contract manufacturing run for a properly designed full sized laptop, give me a note.
Something tells me that Apple spent more than $1.5M designing the recent MacBook Pro.
It is a bit presumptuous to say "well i could do it better" when referencing an entire team of qualified electrical engineers at one of the largest corporations in the world that has near limitless resources.
Especially coming from such a qualified background as "a person somewhat close to electronics engineering".
Erm yea or maybe don’t put high wattage, almost-desktop-class, processors in a laptop. People need to decide if they want a comnputer for easy portability or a desktop or pseudo-desktop.
Modern Intel notebook processors like these are likely running close to 80W and 65 steady state - They've got up to 8 cores to do this. Measurements by Notebookcheck seem to suggest that the MacBook Pro is already doing fairly well compared to PC OEM solutions, especially given the size of the enclosure and the fact that unlike Asus in the Zephyrus, they're not using 12V server level 60dBa fans in a laptop.
Where I think the MacBook Pro could do better is if they adopted more of a vapor chamber strategy for the heatsink, but as you mentioned the radiators are probably going to be the limiting factor, seeing as there's really not a huge temperature delta going on here.
I suppose one strategy could be to perhaps up the fan speed yet again, maybe at the cost of a little bit more noise, and use heat sinks with fins as finely pitched as the MacBook Air. Of course this will make the heat sink more heavy and expensive, but given the robustness of old Thinkpads that did not go easy on the copper, it could work.
> Apple says "we are listening now, and here is a new cooling design,"
They also keep at "oh, look how thin it is" even though the vast majority of people stopped caring 5-7 years ago. Make it thicker, but with better cooling, better storage, better GPUs etc.
Worse still, they do it across the line. "We painted ourselves into a thermal corner with MacPro" says Apple and keeps releasing iMacs (and iMacs Pro) with sealed aluminum enclosures, and making them thinner and thinner.
One of the confusing issues is that people say, "I'm only using 15% of my CPU, the fans should not be coming on."
What they don't realize, is that using 1 core running at turbo speeds is only going to show up as 15% of the CPU, but draw enough power and create enough heat to trigger the fans!
Another thing that some of these posters are not aware of, is that running these temperature/fan speed monitoring applications can use quite a bit of power! They're drawing all these fancy graphs, the applications are usually poorly optimized. Even the Mac OS Activity Monitor is a hog in Catalina for some reason and can take 15-20% of a CPU all by itself.
And that doesn't even take into consideration all the other apps people have running. You can see in their screenshots or menu bar they have Dropbox, 3rd party wireless keyboard/mouse programs, they might have 10 things running in just their menubars! They need to look in the Activity Monitor's Power section to see what the real culprit is.
Plugging an external monitor into your MacBook will enable the dGPU and that will create more power draw, this is nothing new:
It's the workload, not the monitors you have plugged in.
I posted a picture in the MacRumors thread with 4 externals (4K, 2x1440, 1x1080) plugged into my base model 16" and it idled in the 50 degree range with no audible fan noise. Once I started streaming video and opening apps, the fans then started, as expected.
Been using Mac primarily since 2011 and sad to see everything keep declining with Apple's software and hardware quality. When programming an app and its backend with react native/clojure my 2015 Mac Pro gets way too hot and slow.
Just built a Ryzen 3600 desktop with 32 gigs of RAM for about 1/4th the price as the cheapest 16 inch Macbook. Windows with WSL2 has been extremely good and I'm satisfied with my development environment. Key things were disabling automatic updates via group policy, setup autohotkey to keep all my MacOS keybindings, use X410 to display emacs and using the new windows terminal. Development is super fast, compilation is fast, git is fast, everything just works. Attempted to switch with WSL1 awhile a year ago or so and while it was okay, I wasn't very happy with it.
My mac just sits there now mainly being a coaster until I need to test iOS builds.
I think you are underestimating the cost of your setup. There is no way in my opinion that you can build a decent PC with 1/4 price of a MacBook Pro. European prices might be higher, 2699 official price for base 16" (you can actually get it for 2399 from official resellers). But still 675 Eu for a proper setup is impossible. Just the CPU and RAM will cost you a bit over 300. I know you are just making a point, but it is a false statement that people constantly make when discussing prices of Apple hardware and this thing is getting quite annoying. Yes, they are more expensive, but when you look at the exact components, specs, you will find that Dell or Lenovo could be only around 10 to 20% cheaper in best case scenario.
I second this. For $2000 I built an absolute monster of a desktop PC. Super fast, never an issue and I use it for everything. I only use my MacBook when I wanna sit on the couch and that's it. Thankfully I got my laptop through work almost for free because it wouldn't have been worth the money.
What's disturbing is that Apple seem to be deleting posts:
After attempting to be part of the solution; spending a ton of time testing, providing information in the community, communicating with Apple Engineers and Apple Business Team, our most recent post was deleted as "Speculative".
We have spent over $300,000 on Apple hardware over the years both business and consumer and now our voice has been muted. How can we move forward using Apple? Instead of deleting our posts, how about send it to management?
I was planning to buy MacBook 16-inch as I am still on 2014 edition which in my view were one of the best MacBooks.
I simply hate that unnecessary Touch Bar, was hoping Apple will remove it but didn’t. Thought then of getting 16-inch as they have an esc key.
Waiting for this kind of review, I will put on hold purchasing it until get a clarity on fan noise. My current old MacBook fan do make some noise but only under load of games.
Hope Apple can go back to basics and redo the MacBook Pro to make it similar to 2014 with new hardware.
I have a 16 inch, the keyboard is amazing, the display is beautiful, and I have had no thermal problems running multiple VMs, and heavy web development workflows.
Not sure what people are going crazy about regarding the keyboard, it is one of the most amazing ones on a laptop I have used.
The touch bar gets in the way, but I use external keyboardS 90% of the time, so it isn't that big of problem. I would have gladly payed extra for F-keys.
The larger track-pad also gets in my way often.
Fan noise is significant compared to the old model.
USB-C-only is quite annoying. I never missed a port on the 15", whereas now ... well...
I bought it to get a performance boost (compiling/ML-training/etc.). The performance upgrade isn't really that significant.
I went from late 2013 13 inch to the 2016 16 inch (maxed everything but the graphics). I also hate the touchbar. Things like volume control that used to be a tap away are now hidden in sub screens. You can switch it to only function keys but they are missing the icons for volume etc and you can't touch feel where the buttons are so I have left it in full touchbar mode. Some functions of it are actually quite cool but it should exist as well as the function keys not instead of. I haven't had any of the issues described anywhere. Mine works flawlessly. Very very happy with the machine overall. A huge improvement on the 2013 mbp i came from which i agree was an excellent machine.
I have recently bought the 16" (max GPU, max CPU, 32GB, 2TB disk). It's way better. There's still stuff wrong with it for sure. Some takeaways:
- The keybord is better than recent models, but still not as good as the 2014. I can live with it though.
- The touch bar is still there, but there's an escape key which was my main gripe. I would still prefer an option to not have one though.
- I hate USB-c so so much. The mental overhead of trying to work out what will work with what cable is horrible.
- I had to buy a £250 dock to make everything work as it did before (the TS3 caldigit one on the Apple site). Apple would not recommend a USB-c to mini displayport adapter, and the first one I bought didn't work.
- The screen is lovely.
- The speakers are a massive improvement.
- The trackpad is too big. I hit it accidentally way too much.
- I have it plugged into two external 4k monitors and I keep the lip open, so it's driving three screens. It does this with seemingly no problem or cooling fan use.
I'm definitely keeping it. There's still issues, but it's now simply a much better machine overall (taking speed into account) than my 2014.
I've got a new MBP (from work) and an x1 yoga personally. The X1's running Linux and frankly works beautifully. The mac's "quirks" aren't counterbalanaced anymore by being the only reasonable unix laptop solution. They're just an annoying PITA.
I recently switched from a 2014 edition MBP to a 2017, and the experience has been terrible. I had to make the switch b/c the battery on the 2014 machine was starting to die and my work had an extra 2017 model.
- popping sounds coming from the chassis that drive me crazy
- bunched up arrow keys that are occasionally unresponsive at least in X11 emacs
- it seems like the touchbar has potential but is difficult to customize
- I find it lame you need an adapter for USB or HDMI.
Most reviewers dont even want to touch on the topic as if Apple told them to do so. The so call new Magic Keyboard doesn't felt anywhere close to the Magic Keyboard used on iMac or iMac Pro. In fact they felt more of the same as the old butterfly, and it is awful.
I am on early 2015 ( brought it in 2017 if I remember correctly because I cant stand the MBP 2016+ ), and I pray it wont break down. It is already getting some strange lock up for no apparent reason.
I would even pay for a brand new 2015 MBP for the same price during its time in 2020.
I waited multiple years to upgrade from a MacBook Pro 2014, but was disappointed year after year, because I read about heating issues, the bad butterfly keyboard or the useless touch-bar.
In 2019 I felt like things are not going to get any better, so I bought a MacBook Pro 2019.
Was quite unhappy that I didn’t wait a bit longer after I saw the 16inch version coming out a few months later, because it had an escape key (which I really miss on mine), but now I am kind of happy that I have the 2019 15 inch version where the heating problem does not appear.
The touch-bar really is completely useless, I find myself tapping the wrong "keys" all the time. Changing volume was so easy before, now it became really hard. But most of all I miss the escape key.
If it wasn’t for macOS I had long picked a Windows laptop.
Cook is a complete businessman, best at cutting costs, increasing profits and attracting customers to buy more. Don't forget that memory began to weld on the motherboard because this can only be replaced and not upgraded. He was a businessman, not an engineer or a designer, and that was the beginning of apple's decline.
One thing I miss about Steve Jobs is that he hated fan noise. The fact that Macs only made noise under extreme load was something that I really appreciated.
I'm at a loss for what I'm going to do for my next laptop. Windows 10 still has performance issues that Macs don't have, but Windows laptops clearly have better hardware.
Anyone make the switch back to Windows? (Every time I try Linux it feels like a dumpster fire, even though I want to like it.)
I have an issue with an external monitor, confirmed with multiple users on MacRumors forums [1], that looks like a software bug.
When using opened Macbook with an external screen power usage by discrete GPU is not less 19W almost no matter what (resolution, screen size, etc.).
In my case, with new LG 5K, GPU power usage in clamshell mode is near 5W and with the lid open – 19.5W (and the laptop is too noisy to be usable as an additional screen).
The thermal design of Macbook pros just isn't adequate for >4 core high clock speed CPUs, especially with a discrete GPU thrown in the mix too.
I had one of those i9 2018 MBPros and it was always super hot. Much happier now with a 13" 4 core MBpro, it runs quite cool and without any fan noise most of the time.
Built a separate AMD 3900x PC with an Nvidia GPU for heavy lifting, and can use that remotely with the MBpro if needed.
To be fair, I run 2 4K monitors at 60hz and I don’t hear my fans doing normal work (Excel, Firefox, PyCharm, Jupiter Labs). I use a DisplayLink hub (idk if that matters, but I’ve heard DisplayLink is driven by CPU)
However, when I watch a 1080p movie, no matter what player, on just the laptop display, the mouse cursor feels sluggish and my fans are on 50-75% at all times.
Just to add my two cents, I drive a 4K monitor in a quiet room and don’t notice any significant difference in operation compared to my previous 2016 model.
Perhaps this is a driver bug that hits some configurations or situations?
The thermal design of the 16-inch seems adequate especially when compared to outgoing 15-inch models, so I think it’s something they can fix in software.
Something to note: all recent discrete GPU MacBooks will switch to discrete graphics as soon as you plug in any external monitor. Higher power consumption and heat should be expected to a reasonable extent (everyone’s definition of reasonable is different).
My new i9 15" is a lot cooler and more silent than the i7 2015 it's been replacing. I guess doing a completely clean install with nothing else than using iCloud to sync data from the old machine fixed a lot of software related performance issues that piled up on the old one. I expect the 2015 to be a lot better again after a clean install. I think most of the problems on the 2019 are software related.
Not seeing any of the heat / performance problems mentioned by other people, the only really weird thing I've seen is that the color palette was way too dark getting out of sleep until I minimized and maximized brightness. That helped until the next sleep where it was too bright this time and the brightness trick didn't work anymore. Finally fixed it by switching between another color profile and back.
Otherwise TouchID was pretty good, don't really notice the touchpad in any way good or bad and the touch bar goes largely ignored just like the row of keys it replaced. Keyboard action is nice, it's slightly more clicky than the 2015 but still has about the same travel.
I really doubt anybody still on a 2015 or older will regret getting the 16". Probably the software problems get ironed out over the course of the next months.
I was taking the whole Apple MBP keyboard thing with a pinch of salt, but the keyboard on mine has been degrading significantly over the last few weeks & I'm going to have to take it in for repair. Grr.
I have the same issue with a 2016 15" model. When I plug an external monitor, the place you put your wrists on gets super hot. I had to buy an external keyboard/trackpad long before my keyboard started to fail.
I use Firefox and my machine is silent. Typing on it now. 20+ tabs open and about 20 others apps open. I can't hear my machine without putting my ear against it.
This isn't even the bad part. Apple have a massive batch of faulty macbook pro 2019 16" machines and aren't admitting it.
I'm on my 3rd $7000 replacement 2 months after purchase, this third still faulty so now swapping for an early 2020 model when it comes out. I'm lucky if it lasts longer than an hour without restarting. Terrible during renders.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250905859
Funny thing is, when I do eventually get a machine that isn't faulty, I still have to deal with Catalina, since the new macbooks can't be downgraded and Catalina has a lot of sleep bugs that restart also:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250826263
Every single 2019 16" macbook owner has also experienced the speaker popping issue, which after 2 system updates has simply lowered in volume instead of being loud and noticeable.
PopGate. GPUgate. KernelGate. T2Gate. It is actually far beyond a joke, this was the true cost of apple become the world's first 'trillion dollar company'. They cut so many corners all they can produce are lemons now.
I've got the 16" MBP and definitely echo many of the same frustrations that others have noted here.
Owning Apple products nowadays is a bit of a masochistic endeavor in many ways - a year ago my local Linux group had me write a funny book on "Escaping the Cult of Mac" that talked about this (https://github.com/jasoneckert/CultOfMac).
There are tools that can measure some sensor temp and control the fan speed according to that on Mac. I was using it on my older MacBook Pro and the fan usage was relatively better than when it was set to auto.
[+] [-] gnudad|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zarmin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nileshk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpmx|6 years ago|reply
However:
> gfxCardStatus v2.3 and above actively prevents you from switching to Integrated Only mode when any apps are in the Dependencies list (or if you have an external display plugged in). This is because if you were to do this, your discrete GPU would actually stay powered on, even though you've switched to the integrated GPU.
https://gfx.io/switching.html#integrated-only-mode-limitatio...
[+] [-] kevingadd|6 years ago|reply
My current RTX 20xx card can drive two 4k monitors at low clocks, but the 9xx series really struggled and the 10 series still needed to clock up some. I suspect something similar is probably happening here with the AMD GPU if you're running the laptop's integrated retina display along with a 1440p60 external display, it's probably forced to clock up to drive that many pixels. I'm not really sure how AMD could get around basic hardware limitations here unless they have a really clever way of driving displays at a low memory clock.
[+] [-] 333c|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splatcollision|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mortenjorck|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mvkel|6 years ago|reply
The fix? Unplug the external monitor.
[+] [-] hrrsn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|6 years ago|reply
Look at that single skinny heat pipe, it will get saturated very fast. Second to that, look at those tiny radiators, they are clearly not capable to discharge the full heat flux.
I simply don't see any signs of proper thermal engineering there.
Apple says "we are listening now, and here is a new cooling design," then it comes out to be even less adequate that the old one. I can't think of anybody else capable of trolling up their customers like that.
If anybody wants to dish out something on an order of $1.5m to do a contract manufacturing run for a properly designed full sized laptop, give me a note. I do have some tricks in mind how to make 40W+ CPUs work in a relatively compact case.
[+] [-] walrus01|6 years ago|reply
Whenever I see a laptop with a >15W TDP CPU in a super slim package with a tiny heatsink/fan unit, no matter if it's from Apple or another vendor, I'm very suspicious. At least the 12 inch Macbook from a few years ago which was truly fanless uses an appropriately low powered CPU.
disclaimer: used to do systems engineering for a server manufacturer a long time ago, after you've gone through a dozen iterations of ways to mount skived copper heatsinks on dual socket motherboards in 1U cases, with various fan solutions, you realize that everything that is not acoustically terrible is some sort of compromise. People are trying to put CPU+GPU+RAM packages that are anywhere from 25W to 45W TDP in laptops that are physically too small for them.
[+] [-] jacurtis|6 years ago|reply
Something tells me that Apple spent more than $1.5M designing the recent MacBook Pro.
It is a bit presumptuous to say "well i could do it better" when referencing an entire team of qualified electrical engineers at one of the largest corporations in the world that has near limitless resources.
Especially coming from such a qualified background as "a person somewhat close to electronics engineering".
[+] [-] sebular|6 years ago|reply
> I simply don't see any signs of proper thermal engineering here.
I hope you're joking. If not, you have a nauseating level of conceit.
[+] [-] ulfw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chendragon|6 years ago|reply
Where I think the MacBook Pro could do better is if they adopted more of a vapor chamber strategy for the heatsink, but as you mentioned the radiators are probably going to be the limiting factor, seeing as there's really not a huge temperature delta going on here.
I suppose one strategy could be to perhaps up the fan speed yet again, maybe at the cost of a little bit more noise, and use heat sinks with fins as finely pitched as the MacBook Air. Of course this will make the heat sink more heavy and expensive, but given the robustness of old Thinkpads that did not go easy on the copper, it could work.
[+] [-] pmlnr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmitriid|6 years ago|reply
They also keep at "oh, look how thin it is" even though the vast majority of people stopped caring 5-7 years ago. Make it thicker, but with better cooling, better storage, better GPUs etc.
Worse still, they do it across the line. "We painted ourselves into a thermal corner with MacPro" says Apple and keeps releasing iMacs (and iMacs Pro) with sealed aluminum enclosures, and making them thinner and thinner.
[+] [-] bluedino|6 years ago|reply
One of the confusing issues is that people say, "I'm only using 15% of my CPU, the fans should not be coming on."
What they don't realize, is that using 1 core running at turbo speeds is only going to show up as 15% of the CPU, but draw enough power and create enough heat to trigger the fans!
Another thing that some of these posters are not aware of, is that running these temperature/fan speed monitoring applications can use quite a bit of power! They're drawing all these fancy graphs, the applications are usually poorly optimized. Even the Mac OS Activity Monitor is a hog in Catalina for some reason and can take 15-20% of a CPU all by itself.
And that doesn't even take into consideration all the other apps people have running. You can see in their screenshots or menu bar they have Dropbox, 3rd party wireless keyboard/mouse programs, they might have 10 things running in just their menubars! They need to look in the Activity Monitor's Power section to see what the real culprit is.
Plugging an external monitor into your MacBook will enable the dGPU and that will create more power draw, this is nothing new:
https://i.imgur.com/9KmLPMX.png
It's the workload, not the monitors you have plugged in.
I posted a picture in the MacRumors thread with 4 externals (4K, 2x1440, 1x1080) plugged into my base model 16" and it idled in the 50 degree range with no audible fan noise. Once I started streaming video and opening apps, the fans then started, as expected.
[+] [-] Naomarik|6 years ago|reply
Just built a Ryzen 3600 desktop with 32 gigs of RAM for about 1/4th the price as the cheapest 16 inch Macbook. Windows with WSL2 has been extremely good and I'm satisfied with my development environment. Key things were disabling automatic updates via group policy, setup autohotkey to keep all my MacOS keybindings, use X410 to display emacs and using the new windows terminal. Development is super fast, compilation is fast, git is fast, everything just works. Attempted to switch with WSL1 awhile a year ago or so and while it was okay, I wasn't very happy with it.
My mac just sits there now mainly being a coaster until I need to test iOS builds.
[+] [-] mns|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quantumOctopus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nujabe|6 years ago|reply
After attempting to be part of the solution; spending a ton of time testing, providing information in the community, communicating with Apple Engineers and Apple Business Team, our most recent post was deleted as "Speculative".
We have spent over $300,000 on Apple hardware over the years both business and consumer and now our voice has been muted. How can we move forward using Apple? Instead of deleting our posts, how about send it to management?
[+] [-] dragonsh|6 years ago|reply
I simply hate that unnecessary Touch Bar, was hoping Apple will remove it but didn’t. Thought then of getting 16-inch as they have an esc key.
Waiting for this kind of review, I will put on hold purchasing it until get a clarity on fan noise. My current old MacBook fan do make some noise but only under load of games.
Hope Apple can go back to basics and redo the MacBook Pro to make it similar to 2014 with new hardware.
[+] [-] hastes|6 years ago|reply
Not sure what people are going crazy about regarding the keyboard, it is one of the most amazing ones on a laptop I have used.
[+] [-] joakleaf|6 years ago|reply
It is an upgrade, but not by much...
The touch bar gets in the way, but I use external keyboardS 90% of the time, so it isn't that big of problem. I would have gladly payed extra for F-keys.
The larger track-pad also gets in my way often.
Fan noise is significant compared to the old model.
USB-C-only is quite annoying. I never missed a port on the 15", whereas now ... well...
I bought it to get a performance boost (compiling/ML-training/etc.). The performance upgrade isn't really that significant.
I recommend waiting a little while longer...
[+] [-] rorykoehler|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wlll|6 years ago|reply
I have recently bought the 16" (max GPU, max CPU, 32GB, 2TB disk). It's way better. There's still stuff wrong with it for sure. Some takeaways:
- The keybord is better than recent models, but still not as good as the 2014. I can live with it though.
- The touch bar is still there, but there's an escape key which was my main gripe. I would still prefer an option to not have one though.
- I hate USB-c so so much. The mental overhead of trying to work out what will work with what cable is horrible.
- I had to buy a £250 dock to make everything work as it did before (the TS3 caldigit one on the Apple site). Apple would not recommend a USB-c to mini displayport adapter, and the first one I bought didn't work.
- The screen is lovely.
- The speakers are a massive improvement.
- The trackpad is too big. I hit it accidentally way too much.
- I have it plugged into two external 4k monitors and I keep the lip open, so it's driving three screens. It does this with seemingly no problem or cooling fan use.
I'm definitely keeping it. There's still issues, but it's now simply a much better machine overall (taking speed into account) than my 2014.
[+] [-] tylermac1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lallysingh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julienchastang|6 years ago|reply
- popping sounds coming from the chassis that drive me crazy
- bunched up arrow keys that are occasionally unresponsive at least in X11 emacs
- it seems like the touchbar has potential but is difficult to customize
- I find it lame you need an adapter for USB or HDMI.
I agree, go back to the 2014 style.
[+] [-] ksec|6 years ago|reply
Most reviewers dont even want to touch on the topic as if Apple told them to do so. The so call new Magic Keyboard doesn't felt anywhere close to the Magic Keyboard used on iMac or iMac Pro. In fact they felt more of the same as the old butterfly, and it is awful.
I am on early 2015 ( brought it in 2017 if I remember correctly because I cant stand the MBP 2016+ ), and I pray it wont break down. It is already getting some strange lock up for no apparent reason.
I would even pay for a brand new 2015 MBP for the same price during its time in 2020.
[+] [-] tsp|6 years ago|reply
In 2019 I felt like things are not going to get any better, so I bought a MacBook Pro 2019. Was quite unhappy that I didn’t wait a bit longer after I saw the 16inch version coming out a few months later, because it had an escape key (which I really miss on mine), but now I am kind of happy that I have the 2019 15 inch version where the heating problem does not appear.
The touch-bar really is completely useless, I find myself tapping the wrong "keys" all the time. Changing volume was so easy before, now it became really hard. But most of all I miss the escape key. If it wasn’t for macOS I had long picked a Windows laptop.
[+] [-] zarmin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lqs469|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|6 years ago|reply
I'm at a loss for what I'm going to do for my next laptop. Windows 10 still has performance issues that Macs don't have, but Windows laptops clearly have better hardware.
Anyone make the switch back to Windows? (Every time I try Linux it feels like a dumpster fire, even though I want to like it.)
[+] [-] nvch|6 years ago|reply
When using opened Macbook with an external screen power usage by discrete GPU is not less 19W almost no matter what (resolution, screen size, etc.).
In my case, with new LG 5K, GPU power usage in clamshell mode is near 5W and with the lid open – 19.5W (and the laptop is too noisy to be usable as an additional screen).
[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an...
[+] [-] dharma1|6 years ago|reply
I had one of those i9 2018 MBPros and it was always super hot. Much happier now with a 13" 4 core MBpro, it runs quite cool and without any fan noise most of the time.
Built a separate AMD 3900x PC with an Nvidia GPU for heavy lifting, and can use that remotely with the MBpro if needed.
[+] [-] treyfitty|6 years ago|reply
However, when I watch a 1080p movie, no matter what player, on just the laptop display, the mouse cursor feels sluggish and my fans are on 50-75% at all times.
[+] [-] dangus|6 years ago|reply
Perhaps this is a driver bug that hits some configurations or situations?
The thermal design of the 16-inch seems adequate especially when compared to outgoing 15-inch models, so I think it’s something they can fix in software.
Something to note: all recent discrete GPU MacBooks will switch to discrete graphics as soon as you plug in any external monitor. Higher power consumption and heat should be expected to a reasonable extent (everyone’s definition of reasonable is different).
[+] [-] dep_b|6 years ago|reply
Not seeing any of the heat / performance problems mentioned by other people, the only really weird thing I've seen is that the color palette was way too dark getting out of sleep until I minimized and maximized brightness. That helped until the next sleep where it was too bright this time and the brightness trick didn't work anymore. Finally fixed it by switching between another color profile and back.
Otherwise TouchID was pretty good, don't really notice the touchpad in any way good or bad and the touch bar goes largely ignored just like the row of keys it replaced. Keyboard action is nice, it's slightly more clicky than the 2015 but still has about the same travel.
I really doubt anybody still on a 2015 or older will regret getting the 16". Probably the software problems get ironed out over the course of the next months.
[+] [-] jonplackett|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wodenokoto|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trollied|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antalk|6 years ago|reply
*sold separately
[+] [-] luisrudge|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rorykoehler|6 years ago|reply
I use Firefox and my machine is silent. Typing on it now. 20+ tabs open and about 20 others apps open. I can't hear my machine without putting my ear against it.
[+] [-] insited|6 years ago|reply
Funny thing is, when I do eventually get a machine that isn't faulty, I still have to deal with Catalina, since the new macbooks can't be downgraded and Catalina has a lot of sleep bugs that restart also: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250826263
Every single 2019 16" macbook owner has also experienced the speaker popping issue, which after 2 system updates has simply lowered in volume instead of being loud and noticeable.
PopGate. GPUgate. KernelGate. T2Gate. It is actually far beyond a joke, this was the true cost of apple become the world's first 'trillion dollar company'. They cut so many corners all they can produce are lemons now.
[+] [-] jasoneckert|6 years ago|reply
Owning Apple products nowadays is a bit of a masochistic endeavor in many ways - a year ago my local Linux group had me write a funny book on "Escaping the Cult of Mac" that talked about this (https://github.com/jasoneckert/CultOfMac).
[+] [-] eralps|6 years ago|reply
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207018
There are tools that can measure some sensor temp and control the fan speed according to that on Mac. I was using it on my older MacBook Pro and the fan usage was relatively better than when it was set to auto.