Isn't Apple using the latest & greatest Intel mobile CPUs?
> I want a modern video card so game-playing is cool when I feel like it.
I don't know much about gaming but isn't the Radeon HD in the 15" model based on the latest AMD architecture? I can't even find any benchmarks for it so are you sure it's not good enough?
> I want ludicrously excessive amounts of memory.
Do your memory requirements take disk IO speed into consideration? When you can read from disk at 3GB/sec I'm not sure the old assumptions about memory capacity hold true anymore.
> I want lots of connectors so I can plug in my current USB drives and mouse and keyboard.
USB-C is great for this. You can connect all your accessories to a hub and only need to plugin one cable for power, external display, storage, input devices, etc.
> I want a PS Card reader because I shoot RAW so my photo files are huge and they ingest faster from a card
USB-C card readers cost about $10-$15 so you could probably just buy a few of them if you're concerned about losing them. Most of them are multi-card readers too so you're actually gaining functionality in the process. Also when newer/faster SD standards come out in the future you can simply buy a new USB-C card reader instead of being stuck with the one built into your computer.
Apple is shipping last year's mobile CPUs. Dell is shipping current gen Kaby Lake in the XPS 13 as of a week ago, so they are available in some quantity. Kind of surprising, since Intel works so close with Apple and they were the first to ship a Core M powered device.
The GPU is a new one from AMD, but isn't especially powerful[1][2]. It can kind of do 1080P games, but is more geared towards GPU acceleration for video and photo editing.
> Isn't Apple using the latest & greatest Intel mobile CPUs?
Surely Apple is not using latest Intel mobile CPUs, not the Kaby Lake.
> Do your memory requirements take disk IO speed into consideration? When you can read from disk at 3GB/sec I'm not sure the old assumptions about memory capacity hold true anymore.
Why should I use SSD instead of RAM? I use SDD for the persistent storage. Why in general you should look for a trade-off when other laptops manufacturers do ship a decent laptops.
> USB-C is great for this. You can connect all your accessories to a hub and only need to plugin one cable for power, external display, storage, input devices, etc.
Yeh, a hub ... which you will have to take with you every time.
> USB-C card readers cost about ...
Yeh, a USB-C card reader ... which you will have to take with you every time.
> Surely Apple is not using latest Intel mobile CPUs, not the Kaby Lake.
Ah I must have missed that in all the hysteria over the TouchBar and USB-C. That is valid criticism especially for the 13" model that would benefit from a faster integrated GPU.
> Why should I use SSD instead of RAM?
The benefit of faster disk IO you can shuffle things in and out of memory faster. In the case of a photographer dealing with lots of relatively small files faster disk IO can be more important than raw memory capacity. In other scenarios raw memory capacity is more important. In every scenario raw memory capacity and faster disk IO is great but there are tradeoffs to that also mainly weight, battery life and cost.
> Why in general you should look for a trade-off when other laptops manufacturers do ship a decent laptops.
There are many factors to consider and different people have different priorities.
> Yeh, a hub ... which you will have to take with you every time.
Along with all the accessories you're already lugging around to plug into it? Never really understood this argument.
Isn't Apple using the latest & greatest Intel mobile CPUs?
> I want a modern video card so game-playing is cool when I feel like it.
I don't know much about gaming but isn't the Radeon HD in the 15" model based on the latest AMD architecture? I can't even find any benchmarks for it so are you sure it's not good enough?
> I want ludicrously excessive amounts of memory.
Do your memory requirements take disk IO speed into consideration? When you can read from disk at 3GB/sec I'm not sure the old assumptions about memory capacity hold true anymore.
> I want lots of connectors so I can plug in my current USB drives and mouse and keyboard.
USB-C is great for this. You can connect all your accessories to a hub and only need to plugin one cable for power, external display, storage, input devices, etc.
> I want a PS Card reader because I shoot RAW so my photo files are huge and they ingest faster from a card
USB-C card readers cost about $10-$15 so you could probably just buy a few of them if you're concerned about losing them. Most of them are multi-card readers too so you're actually gaining functionality in the process. Also when newer/faster SD standards come out in the future you can simply buy a new USB-C card reader instead of being stuck with the one built into your computer.