*** The official 2018 MacBook Pro thread (it has six cores and everything!) ***

b0rn2sk8 said:
Call me crazy but everything you have listed to me would point in the direction of a new Macbook Air rather than a Pro. The spec you have listed is complete overkill for doing a few spreadsheets and some light photo editing. You don't need the 32gb RAM (£360 upgrade) and the storage upgrade is silly money. 2TB cloud storage is £84/year vs £360 for 512gb upgrade or an external SSD for about £100.

There is no such thing as 'future proofing' and the Air is half the price. You could buy another one in 3 years when you fancy an upgrade and cost about the same as the Pro.

Sorry to be the cold face of reason.
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Reason is often subjective, not objective ;)

The scaled resolution of the Air's display is still really low, that makes working on spreadsheets a big pain in the backside.

The 15" is soooo much easier to work on with things like that... so buying the Air, even for those tasks, would annoy me every time I went to use it... not necessarily the best use of funds to spend them on something that doesn't handle its main purpose adequately.

Then there's the CPU... the hex-core is so much quicker when fiddling with photos when compared to the dual-core in the Air, it's hard to describe.

Macs have a much longer use-cycle than Windows laptops... so the idea of buying the best spec you can for future proofing is more viable with a Mac & 32GB RAM is beneficial even today for even light photo work... Adobe apps are very good at making use of it.

The Air should be considered more like a slightly more full-featured iPad with a keyboard attached... it's for web browsing, content consumption & writing tool for those who move around so much every gram in the backpack matters.

For spreadsheets & photo work as the primary intended use... as long as it doesn't break the bank, the 15" is the way to go.
 
Sorry I just don't buy the argument for 32gb ram at all for this use. 16gb is plenty for editing family photo's, were not talking serious work here the laptop is for home use. The 7W Y series processors are also very capable. Same same goes for spreadsheets, I use a Surface Pro 4 at work (4GB ram, 5W i5 processor) and regularly manipulate spreadsheets with 60+ columns and thousands of lines of data without issue.

(proper) Office for Mac is available for a reasonable price if numbers isn't sufficient (no 365 sub needed). Switching to Mac is pretty painless but most software isn't transferable including Office. Numbers is alright for home use but not really for serious work.

I get we are all enthusiasts here and don't accept anything other than a full spec sheet but a top of the like 6 core Macbook pro with 32gb ram upgrade is the definition of complete overkill for this. Don't forget ElliotHand also has a desktop.

Perhaps ElliotHand can clarify their usage.
 
I think the ram point is fair, I assumed the 32gb of ram is overkill for my use but was concerned that apple may operate mac os like their ios and up the ram requirements each release and so hamper their older products? It was my attempt at future proofing as I don't mind spending the money for a good laptop but would expect it to last for a long time.

In terms of the 1tb of storage upgrade, my iphone has 512gb whilst my pc has 2x 1tb ssds + 4tb hd and so I'm surprised that the recommendation was to stick to 512gb of storage an acceptable minimum? I assume a significant portion of this is lost to the OS and so I doubt it'd take many programmes to fill the space. I agree getting external storage would be cheaper (but less convenient) whilst paying £84 for 2TB of cloud storage would be more expensive than the upgrade after a few years.

I agree, that buying an apple air now and then another in a couple of years as an upgrade might by more economically viable but wondering if I'd end up with buyers remorse if I get a model that appears to be comprehensively inferior in all aspects other than weight. On the flip side I agree that ~£2700 on a MacBook is a lot of money considering I've never used one other than a few mins when browsing Apple stores.

To clarify my usage: I'd like to do some photography work (although I'm not a professional), my wife is keen to be able to manage her photo library as well (I assume we'll be able to sync both phones to the MacBook?) and I have a variety of budgeting / investment / planning spreadsheets that I operate in excel at present on my pc but would like to switch to the laptop. Nothing excessive and so I assume the functionality in Numbers will suffice as it isn't for a business. Other than that I'm intrigued to see why people like Mac OS and so interested to see what other types of things I'll be able to do on it. Gaming will be primarily covered by console / PC.
 
ElliotHand said:
I think the ram point is fair, I assumed the 32gb of ram is overkill for my use but was concerned that apple may operate mac os like their ios and up the ram requirements each release and so hamper their older products? It was my attempt at future proofing as I don't mind spending the money for a good laptop but would expect it to last for a long time.

In terms of the 1tb of storage upgrade, my iphone has 512gb whilst my pc has 2x 1tb ssds + 4tb hd and so I'm surprised that the recommendation was to stick to 512gb of storage an acceptable minimum? I assume a significant portion of this is lost to the OS and so I doubt it'd take many programmes to fill the space. I agree getting external storage would be cheaper (but less convenient) whilst paying £84 for 2TB of cloud storage would be more expensive than the upgrade after a few years.

I agree, that buying an apple air now and then another in a couple of years as an upgrade might by more economically viable but wondering if I'd end up with buyers remorse if I get a model that appears to be comprehensively inferior in all aspects other than weight. On the flip side I agree that ~£2700 on a MacBook is a lot of money considering I've never used one other than a few mins when browsing Apple stores.

To clarify my usage: I'd like to do some photography work (although I'm not a professional), my wife is keen to be able to manage her photo library as well (I assume we'll be able to sync both phones to the MacBook?) and I have a variety of budgeting / investment / planning spreadsheets that I operate in excel at present on my pc but would like to switch to the laptop. Nothing excessive and so I assume the functionality in Numbers will suffice as it isn't for a business. Other than that I'm intrigued to see why people like Mac OS and so interested to see what other types of things I'll be able to do on it. Gaming will be primarily covered by console / PC.
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Seriously don't worry about the power, its a monster! I have the 2.6GHz 6-core, 512Gb version with 16Gb and I can't slow this thing down, I mostly run it as my desktop powering a 32" 4K monitor. I have currently have 8 desktops open with Safari, Spark, Chrome, Word, Excel, Affinity, Slack, Wunderlist, Spotify, PDF Expert all running and it flies. I left windows a few years ago and never looked back.

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yeah for 95% of mac users 32gb of ram is total overkill, have to have some pretty serious spare cash to even consider it (I think crinkleshoes is a bit disconnected from the modern working man :p )
 
Do you guys keep your macbooks plugged into the mains when working at home/office? wondering if that will affect the battery life (cycles)
 
ak22 said:
Do you guys keep your macbooks plugged into the mains when working at home/office? wondering if that will affect the battery life (cycles)
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If it's plugged in all the time, the cycle count will not go up!

Mine is plugged in when I take it in the office (not every day) and used in bed at night on battery, I'm currently watching an episode of The Wire before I go to sleep.

It's got 108 cycles and it's on 91.4% health. This appears to be normal, the health isn't a linear drop.

Modern batteries are pretty good, the memory effect doesn't really exist any more so you can really do what you like. The only thing to remember is that if you're not going to be using it for a while, store it with the battery neither fully charged or fully empty.
 
Makes sense @ElliotHand, go for the pro then but you need to recheck your pricing expectations as:

15” 2.2ghz 6 core i7 with 16gb ram and 1tb ssd is £2,898 (512gb is £2,538)

15” 2.6ghz 6 core i7 with 16gb ram and 1tb ssd is £3,059 (512gb is £2,699)

The second sku is the sweet spot IMO, it also has a slightly better default GPU but I would wait to see what the Vaga situation is. But I think it will be an extra rather than a default option. Not sure what effect on cooling it will have.

Upping the ram to 32gb is £360 on all sku and not worth the money.

Seeing as the latest OS is running fine on the old Airs with 4gb ram I wouldn’t be too concerned. It’s also still extreme to have 32gb on windows, 8gb is normal outside high end work/gaming machines. 16gb has only just started becoming mainstream in gaming setups.

The os doesn’t take much, can’t imagine it is more than 30gb, I’d need to check my wife’s laptop to confirm. Numbers should be fine for what you are asking of it.

I think on the storage front you may be better off considering a NAS and sharing all your media across the network. You already have the hard drives and could build in some redundancy against drive failures. One thing to consider with the new MBP is if you do have a logic board failiure then all the data is irrecoverable and should be considered lost.
 
ak22 said:
Do you guys keep your macbooks plugged into the mains when working at home/office? wondering if that will affect the battery life (cycles)
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As others have said there is no effect on cycles but leaving a li-ion pinned at 100% all the time does degrade it slightly quicker than if it is only charge to say 80%. But seeing as no consumer electronics let you set a maximum charge % it’s sort of irrelevant because charging it to 80% then using it cycles the battery so your damned either way.
 
Feek said:
If it's plugged in all the time, the cycle count will not go up!

Mine is plugged in when I take it in the office (not every day) and used in bed at night on battery, I'm currently watching an episode of The Wire before I go to sleep.

It's got 108 cycles and it's on 91.4% health. This appears to be normal, the health isn't a linear drop.

Modern batteries are pretty good, the memory effect doesn't really exist any more so you can really do what you like. The only thing to remember is that if you're not going to be using it for a while, store it with the battery neither fully charged or fully empty.
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Ok thanks for the reply as i did the same on my last macbook pro, the battery was failed with only 500 cycles might just be bad luck i guess, great series the Wire i need to go back and finish it.
 
I think I was probably being a bit naive really, but I didn't think the fans would kick in and pump out quite as much hot air and noise as they do, when doing relatively straight-forward things in Lightroom. It seems to absolutely hammer the CPU, and while performance is generally good the noise is really putting me off, and it gets so hot its uncomfortable to actually use on a lap.

This is the 2018 13" MBP i7 by the way.
 
If it's relatively light tasks that don't need all that much CPU grunt you could try disabling turbo boost by installing Turbo Boost Switcher. I leave my turbo off quite a lot of the time on my 15" which helps with noise, heat and battery quite noticeably.
 
Phemo said:
If it's relatively light tasks that don't need all that much CPU grunt you could try disabling turbo boost by installing Turbo Boost Switcher. I leave my turbo off quite a lot of the time on my 15" which helps with noise, heat and battery quite noticeably.
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Literally just came across it and installed it. Makes a difference that's for sure! I was seriously considering returning it as the noise is just unbearable at full pelt.
 
Radeon GPU upgrades are now available on the Apple website, £225 option for Vega 16 or £315 for Vega 20.

Anyone if these have been benchmarked or if they're worth upgrading to? Early speculation seemed to suggest that they're likely to be more efficient and cooler than the standard 560X so wonder if they'd help with the MacBook pro's throttling issues?
 
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