I am just flabbergasted.
Apple is ruining the MacBook brand with every update they release. My 2017 MBP keyboard is ready for the mandatory replacement. The power brick has no 'ears' and the cable no clip for safe transport any more. USB C only means I always have a bunch of adapters dangling from my laptop that make it look like a bad attempt at adding some 'cyberpunk' feel to it.
And now they finally upgrade the MBP hardware and then this?!
It's underappreciated how much thermal capacity varies from machine to machine, and over time. It makes benchmarking hard.<p>Clock speeds, because they're crystal-controlled, don't vary by more than several PPM between machines. Thermal capacity varies by ±10% easily.<p>The thermal resistance depends on a bunch of mechanical factors that are hard to control in manufacturing, like how well the thermal grease fills the tiny pores in the metal of the heat sinks, and how well the air flows through the ventilation ducts. And these usually get worse over time as bubbles form in the grease and dust sticks to the fan blades. And of course it depends on room temperature and pressure.<p>It means that benchmarks will have to be done under more tightly controlled conditions. The automotive world has standards for this, where horsepower measurements are adjusted by a correction factor that depends on temperature and pressure.
To be honest, Apple's MBP CPU upgrades have never been worth it. They are advertised with these big turbo frequency increases that are rarely ever achieved. Even the base frequency doesn't matter because they'll clock far lower if needed to save battery life.<p>For both the 13" and 15" MacBook Pro's, the performance differences between the base and upgraded CPUs are negligible (always less than 10% increase from the slowest to the fastest CPU for the same size, according to Geekbench). You'll get a higher frequency for a tiny amount of time before thermal throttling brings everything down to the same level anyway. They are not limited by Intel's software settings but purely by the cooling hardware.<p>For example, the cheapest 13" MBP from 2017 has a 2.3Ghz base / 3.6Ghz turbo and scores 9079. Most expensive one (3.5Ghz / 4.0Ghz) scores 9552. That is an increase under 6% for a price difference that is far, far larger. Madness.<p>If you buy a MacBook, please don't spend money on CPU upgrades. Thanks.
The big issue for me with the new MacBook Pro is that USB C ports and connectors are not fit for professional use.<p>They are too small and delicate and don’t connected solidly and ‘grasp’ firmly enough. Over the last year they have also worn to a shocking degree on a top spec 2017 15” model. There wasn’t enough friction in the first place and now there’s none.<p>I work with a professional touring musician and we’ve reverted to his 2015 model for stage use because wobbly poor connectors that have to be gaffer taped to the chassis are not fun.<p>That said, I have seen a badly tuned Funktion One PA vibrate out a USB A connector from a MBP port in just a few seconds...
My dell xps 15 9570 with an Intel core i7 8750h throttles to 2 GHz after sustained load as well. I think it is a general cpu issue with this series of 8th generation core i7/i9 chips rather than apple specific.<p>I get throttled after about sustained usage of a couple minutes.
This is why my wife wants a beefy, heavy laptop that has cooling systems that wrap around the moon once. We haven't chosen one yet, but we it will probably be one of those inch+ thick ones, not the razor thin laptops. She's going to run circles and then some around my MBP 2014. and I'm really really jealous and ready to go back to the PC now.
I've got my i9 mbpro on order. I've got a couple of ideas for cooling for getting around thermal throttling when doing something super intensive (like compiling or exporting RAW video).<p>1) Freeze board under the bottom <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-Freeze-Board-800" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermos-Reuseable-Freeze-Board-800</a><p>2) Running this in reverse to help with airflow <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7X25NR</a><p>Will measure temps and blog on it
I have the 2016 version of the machine, base model, and it throttles. Not nearly as badly as anything else in it's thinness class, but the CPU can only run at 37w as measured by Power Gadget under p95 with fans forced to 6500rpm. PC manufacturers often throttle the CPU with the BIOS on purpose or set PL1/2 which Apple doesn't do.<p>Similar PC notebooks tend to keep the CPU at 85C and run them at 15-20W. Apple runs the CPU at 102C before throttling them, and there aren't apparent power limits.<p>They're trying pretty hard to solve this problem and to be honest there's not very much more they could be doing short of putting last-mm^3 heatsinks everywhere or making the fans even louder. I'm personally okay with the form factor they've chosen and they've done their best with that.
The cooling problem is Apple's but the heating problem is Intel's. In my mind this is more evidence of the need for Apple to simply produce their own chips.
CPU throttling appears to be a common problem with these new powerful CPUs and the thin, light chassis that most manufacturers believe we want. So while this doesn't affect just Apple, I think Apple needs specific calling out since they price and market their laptops as the most premium of all brands.
I'm getting tired of putting my hand on a 40 degrees hoven all day.<p>My hands hurts, it's painful, tiring, enough for me to buy a new keyboard without much tough, and certainly enough to make me think twice about buying a Mac again.<p>Get your shit together.
I feel like Apple is making similar mistakes that Microsoft made a few decades back, its walled garden has become so ubiquitous that they assume that there isn't any trimming that needs to be done. Specifically,Macs are basically the only FreeBSD-based machine with a consumer-friendly interface (ironically this may no longer be true once Windows gets first-party linux support).<p>However, issues like these make me resentful that my day-to-day is dependent on OSX. I hope that some other competitor really steps into the currently (admittedly slim) hole in the market that is growing between professional users and the average Macbook user.<p>EDIT: corrected my mistake about linux!
Hmm I thought the throttling stuff was just affecting the 15" with an i9, but this article mentioned the i7 had problems, too. Is the i7 in a 13" affected?
Isn't this not so much an issue with the Macbook itself but with this generation of processors? Yeah, when it gets hot (and it runs hotter) it will throttle. The Apple reality distortion field only works on people -- it doesn't do much against thermodynamics.<p>It seems a little misplaced to rail against Apple as if this is a design flaw. That's how this CPU will perform even in a completely different form factor without sufficient cooling. Want to prevent throttling? Here's a big heatsink with a couple fans attached to it. Want even more cooling? Here's a tank of water and a giant radiator.<p>Want a slim form factor and an i9? It's going to throttle because it will get hot when you actually use it for something that makes use of that processor. Unless you live where I live and want to use the computer outside in the winter when it's -20F.