New MacBook Pro 2024 laptops might come with a surprise upgrade other than the M4 chip – faster Thunderbolt ports (or maybe more of them)

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lutel@reddit

Couldn't care less about faster TB. Just get rid of this crappy notch.

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Wise-Sand-3845@reddit

But why? Why is this comment even upvoted lol? Faster I/O is always way more important than something that occupies 2% of the screen imo.

Plus doesn’t the notch give you more real estate on the screen anyway? Like only the task manager occupies that space.

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lutel@reddit

Notch is ugly and distracting. With current TB on m1 I can connect 4k monitor 160hz, there is no use case for faster speed for me.

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I never notice it but everybody is different so I can respect your opinion; if it's distracting to you then there are ways to hide it by making that part of the screen black or disabling it altogether and returning the menu bar to the space it occupied before

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Wise-Sand-3845@reddit

I would agree with your statement on a phone since the notch is a much larger part of the overall screen real estate.

But on a 16 inch 3K laptop screen? I could care less. Give me faster thunderbold speeds anytime.

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lutel@reddit

Maybe they should keep it on 16'' only it is bulky crap anyway for people who doesn't care about ergonomics. And also give them faster TB so they could be happier.

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Strazdas1@reddit

People who care about ergonomics would never buy those tiny 11" laptops. thats ergonomy hell.

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lutel@reddit

I'm talking about 14" they are perfect

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Kagemand@reddit

I never plug anything in but power. I look at the notch every minute.

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FollowingFeisty5321@reddit

Faster TB but no eGPU, one of the only things that can leverage it!

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0xe1e10d68@reddit

Not really though, faster Thunderbolt is a blessing on laptops since it allows you to use a single TB dock for more stuff. On a desktop PC it might not be that important since you only plug in the cables once, but for a MacBook that I take on-the-go with me all the time I want to have no more than a single cable to plug in when working at my desk for my 4K monitors, NVMe TB drive, Ethernet, etc.

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itastesok@reddit

Would this allow for higher refresh rates at 5K?

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HorrorBuff2769@reddit

Mojang said the same thing a while back

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Strazdas1@reddit

And then sold out.

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BandeFromMars@reddit

Or at least put face ID in the thing, it's stupid that it only houses the webcam.

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Rjman86@reddit

wait, they don't have face ID? Then why the hell is the notch so big?

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BandeFromMars@reddit

Nope, only touch ID. It makes 0 sense. Like the other person said, they may add it in the future but I don't see why it's taking them so long.

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OscarCookeAbbott@reddit

Most assume it’s because they do plan to add FaceID at some point

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edmundmk@reddit

I think the notch looks cool lol.

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buff_samurai@reddit

Thank god I’m not the only one. It’s just ridiculous. I imagine Steve going ballistic after seeing it.

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TechySpecky@reddit

Just give us decently priced ram Jesus

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wichwigga@reddit

Apple in 2024: Introducing revolutionary pricing: $150 instead of $200 for an extra 8GB! What a deal!

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cyclinator@reddit

Math for Apple would be like: Here is 4gb more for 150 or 8gb for 200.

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benjiro3000@reddit

And user replaceable storage ... What a crazy concept, will never take off!

/Looks at his pile of 4TB NVME sticks in several machines. Its only 1400 Euro per piece (according to Apple).

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TechySpecky@reddit

If there are performance improvements to soldered stuff I don't mind too much as long as the prices are inline with market prices.

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Ray-chan81194@reddit

no performance improvement on the storage side. There are better and higher capacity SSDs that are cheaper.

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spartan11810@reddit

T2 is built into the SSD

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mrheosuper@reddit

I even dont mind soldered ram if they follow the market price. A 2TB of SSD costs very little compared with $2000 laptop.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Apple now puts 12 GB of memory and disabled 4 GB of it so it can upsell you 16 GB. They put 12 GB in because its cheaper than putting 8 GB in due to chips moving to 3 GB.

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moofunk@reddit

Jesus

Let's not elevate Tim Cook that high.

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anival024@reddit

It would take a miracle to get fairly priced RAM upgrades from Apple.

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whitelynx22@reddit

Indeed! Apart from the questionable performance claims and the strain of switching architecture for some users for the second time (not counting the 64bit disaster) the pricing is and always was out of line.

What's new: Laptops used to be reasonably priced compared to others. Not so much anymore. Now they have their own silicon, which is definitely cheaper than buying it from Intel as well as other cost savings (like soldered ram). And yet the price doesn't go down.

I've tired of this company years ago, I still bought two iPads but they managed to disappoint me there as well. I never was a fan but in the company it was simply the easiest thing and we had bought high end Macs for decades (since the early Power Macs or before that, memory gets fuzzy).

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VoteBNMW_2024@reddit

Sir may I have some ram!?

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conquer69@reddit

Sure thing friend. $300 for an additional 8gb.

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wichwigga@reddit

You can literally buy an entire Chromebook with that ram upgrade.

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Deep90@reddit

Yeah but this is unified ram.

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a_man_of_mold@reddit

I've never understood why "but it's unified!" is supposed to be a rebuttal to complains of 8GB not being enough. The memory serving both the CPU and GPU means there's less available for the system, so this just makes it even more crucial to have that extra memory. I'm sure a little "magic" can be done in allocating it efficiently considering how integrated the whole CPU package itself is, in combination with the OS, but not to the extent of paying premium prices in 2024 for 2010-tier capacity. Just up the base models to 16GB already, Jesus Christ.

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ElectricAndroidSheep@reddit

Because people, who lack education on a matter, will repeat stuff they heard elsewhere without understanding what the heck they are talking about.

That is why you have random people in this sub, who never took a single semester of CE/CS/EE, throwing around word salads about ISAs, semiconductor nodes, memory architectures, operating systems, etc in bizarro Dunning-Kruger battle royales.

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raptor217@reddit

I like Macs, just bought an M3 pro this year (rip me). Unified means less of it, since the GPU needs it too. They should have more as base (might have to for AI features soon).

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Deep90@reddit

It was an argument written by apple marketing not apple engineering.

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Able-Reference754@reddit

Paging is instant on Mac so 8GB is enough!

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RHINO_Mk_II@reddit

Sure but does it say Apple on it?

Sent from my iPhone

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no_salty_no_jealousy@reddit

$300 for more ram on apple computer? That too generous, it will be extra $500

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gumol@reddit

$300 for an additional 8gb.

$200

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Exist50@reddit

Well they raised RAM prices once. Let's not tempt them...

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wichwigga@reddit

Apple: RAM is figment of your imagination.

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cloud_t@reddit

If I was Intel, I'd be flooding my face with shit if Apple is the first to put Thunderbolt 5 on a laptop, now that they don't use their CPUs. And as a consumer, if that happens I'll make sure I'm not buying this year's Intel chips om a grudge for privileging Apple over your own cpu clients. Ffs us eGPU and heavy IO users have been craving for those 80-120Gbps for what, 3 years now?

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Exist50@reddit

And as a consumer, if that happens I'll make sure I'm not buying this year's Intel chips om a grudge for privileging Apple over your own cpu clients

??? Apple no longer uses Intel Thunderbolt IP.

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cloud_t@reddit

If they call it Thunderbolt (which they do, last I checked they call it Thunderbolt 4), it needs to either use Intel chips or be certified by Intel as such.

Granted, I haven't been up to speed on the ICs latest macs have been using for controllers, but I can tell you that on the opposite end of the spectrum, most USB4 controllers on AMD laptops are Intel ICs. They just don't go through certification because of cost (they wouod also likely not pass validation for a multitude of reasons, some related to bad implementations especially on power delivery. Last I heard only HP was making AMD laptops with official Thunderbolt, and only some premium prossumer AMD motherboards from Asus/Gigabyte have it too).

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Exist50@reddit

If they call it Thunderbolt (which they do, last I checked they call it Thunderbolt 4), it needs to either use Intel chips or at very least be certified by Intel as such. Probably both.

Because of their historical involvement, Apple seems to have rights to use the Thunderbolt brand without Intel hardware or certification, at least through TB4. Or they just call it USB4v2 or whatever. They're certainly not going back to using discrete Intel TB controllers.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Apple would never lower themselves to the level of peasants who use such common standards as USB. If its not needlessly complicated its not apple.

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cloud_t@reddit

To be fair, we don't know.

I would say the reasons aren't historical but legal. Apple may have/share patents, rights or a license to either implement their own Thunderbolt controllers OR to have Intel make them but brand them Apple.

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Exist50@reddit

To be fair, we don't know.

The controller would be on-die. At most, they're highlighting a retimer.

I would say the reasons aren't historical but legal. Apple may have/share patents, rights or a license to either implement their own Thunderbolt controllers OR to have Intel make them but brand them Apple.

The USB4 spec is all open now, and with the controller/PHY integrated, there's really no question. It's not Intel IP. The only uncertainty is around how the brand itself is managed.

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anival024@reddit

The USB4 spec is all open now

What? No, it's not. Why do people keep saying this?

You can read it and use it only to decide if you want to build USB4 products.

The Promoters grant a conditional copyright license under the copyrights embodied in this USB Specification to use and reproduce the Specification for the sole purpose of, and solely to the extent necessary for, evaluating whether to implement the Specification in products that would comply with the specification.

If you want to actually implement it in anyway beyond that you've got to pay up for an additional license as a "USB Adopter".

In order to obtain any additional intellectual property licenses or licensing commitments associated with the Specification a party must execute the USB Adopters Agreement. NOTE: By using the Specification, you accept these license terms on your own behalf and, in the case where you are doing this as an employee, on behalf of your employer.

https://www.usb.org/document-library/usb4r-specification-v20

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Exist50@reddit

Open as in part of the USB consortium, and as open as anything else USB. Point is, no dependency on Intel.

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anival024@reddit

??? Apple no longer uses Intel Thunderbolt IP.

Because of their historical involvement, Apple seems to have rights to use the Thunderbolt brand

You can't have it both ways. If they brand it as Thunderbolt, they've got some sort of license agreement with Intel. Either their original agreement (when they both co-developed it) is in play or some continuation or new license is in play.

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Exist50@reddit

If they brand it as Thunderbolt, they've got some sort of license agreement with Intel.

For the brand name. Not any of the actual tech.

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makar1@reddit

Oculink is what you want to be using for eGPUs at this point. Even Thunderbolt 5 won't be good enough for high end modern GPUs.

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Pollyfunbags@reddit

Not really ideal. Not rated for many cycles, limited cable length, no hot plug..

It's fine if the device never moves but that isn't a laptop.

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cloud_t@reddit

agree on the "at this point" (being better) but fact is, you don't still have decent laptops adopting it either. I disagree regarding the claim that TB5 won't be good enough, as we don't have a way to know yet. Theoretically, from their own claims of throughput, I see nothing that prevents TB5 being good enough for 1440p gaming, and to help mitigate the issues with bandwidth (but likely not the latency if using it with internal screen).

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makar1@reddit

Thunderbolt 5 has a theoretical maximum of PCIe 4.0 x4, which doesn't include the usual bandwidth loss from the signal conversion process.

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cloud_t@reddit

PCIe 4.0 x4

...which is double of what we have on Thunderbolt 3 and 4, or scratch that - even more when you factor current TB3 eGPU enclosures are capped at 22Gbps, because of a DisplayPort bandwidth reserve set by the TB3 standard.

(also, is no Thunderbolt 4-compliant eGPU enclosure I know of, but I believe this cap was somewhat lifted there).

What I mean to say is: x4 4.0 (or close to it) is a BIG improvement for eGPU use. And eGPU use isn't that bad today, since you can enhance games up to 3080 Desktop-levels of performance and are just limited at lower resolutions really - at 4k you can minimise the bottlenecks.

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makar1@reddit

Intel already confirmed a theoretical maximum of 64Gbps of PCIe. Subtracting reserved bandwidth and overhead and you’re back at 2x of TB3.

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Pollyfunbags@reddit

Isn't there already a Razer PC laptop out with TB5 though? I'm sure I remember reading about it.

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hanotak@reddit

M4, 8GB shared memory.

$2500.

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filtarukk@reddit

8GB of memory ought to be enough for everyone (c) Tim Kook

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Deep90@reddit

8GB of memory ought to be enough for everyone (c) Tim Kook*

* But if you're not dumb enough to believe that we will sell you more RAM for a bunch of money.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Now thats just Tim Crook

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KingArthas94@reddit

But if you're not dumb enough to believe that, we will sell you more RAM for a massive markup.

Then, that just becomes the True Price of the computer.

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Gullible-Wash-8141@reddit

Yeah the base model is there so they can say "starting at" a low price to draw people in.

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COMPUTER1313@reddit

If the MacBooks were using Optane drives, then 8GB RAM might be tolerable.

But if Apple had adopted the use of Optane, the cost is going to be directly passed onto the consumer, along with a +200% markup.

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shuryoukan@reddit

16GB? Only $3500.

Vrooooooom.

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EnesEffUU@reddit

Hopefully this means we finally get high refresh rate 5K/6K displays from Apple next year.

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isekaicoffee@reddit

i hate hate hate hate the notch. this obsession with thin bezels is fucking up the entire design. nobody is asking for super thin bezels at the cost of having an obtrusive piece of the display missing.

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aprx4@reddit

If they didn't have the notch the screen resolution would be 3024x1890 (for 16:10 ratio) instead of 3024x1964. It looks intrusive but it gained screen estate to push macOS menu bar further up.

The notch does not block anything because any program at fullscreen display only take 3024x1890 of pixels under the notch.

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anival024@reddit

All major tech reviewers now have "screen to body ratio" as a key spec for smart phones.

The war is lost.

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FireAndInk@reddit

Eh, it’s more like you gain screen space by adding the notch. And most of it is hidden in the menubar anyway. There is also tools you can install to push the menu bar down, so it looks like a regular display.

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Rjman86@reddit

what do you need more than 3 type c ports on a laptop for? One type-a port would be more useful than a million more type c ports for anything I'd ever do on a laptop.