Is laptops innovation dead at the moment

Half the reason to not get a fruity computer is the mickey mouse os on it. The other half is the ancient hardware (except right at launch, sometimes) and the make eggs for breakfast heat output when any work is required from it. Or the way you're limited to a keyboard and touchpad/mouse (if you're lucky).

Oh yeah... no reason to buy a fruity computer, 100%.

 

Sorry, but until the day Apple authorized technicians will be coming to homes & offices to fix Macbooks on-site without interrupting workflow, I will have to disagree.

That, and a Macbook model with pen&touch input, and some sort of convertible design, is desperately needed.

 

You heard about the display cables' incidents on newer models right?

If they continue to manufacture them like that, convertibles will only kill the screen sooner.

 

It is Apple's fault, not some objective technology problem. On many convertible devices, LCD and/or digitizer cables failure occur only after years of use. Even when it happens, that should be an easy repair. If it's not - engineers developing the product - or rather the executives who approved/enforced this design choice on the engineers, because I fail to believe engineers with enough hardware design experience simply overlooked such rampant problem - are responsible.

 

Apple has a convertible MacBook, the Ipad Pro!

 

Due to restrictive nature of iOS, it still requires syncing to a device running proper OS to be productive, otherwise way too much frustration using it.

 

If that is the ONLY issue you had with MacBook - then you are very lucky person ;-)

Personally I've had enough with it after suffering with magnetic power supply connector which became WORSE in A1502, the power supply cable which I had to change after 1 year because of fragile (too soft and too thin) materials Apple used for it (I have never had to do that for any laptop from other brands) and the visual changes to OS which went from elegant to looking something like it was designed by Fisher Price, with flat elements, bright colors and less shadows (OSX Yosemite). Oh and listening to noisy fan when using Windows (yes, Windows is unquestionably less power efficient but it's still something I use most of the time so I used it through BootCamp) was also not pleasant and there was nothing I could do, even repasting with LM won't help if you have a single tiny heatsink with exhaust partially restricted by display hinge which also reflects fan noise right at you when the display is open (one of the most idiotic designs, too bad Razer and Gigabyte has copied it).

But hey, plenty of people still like MacOS and other proprietary software so Apple will continue doing this kind of stuff for as long as those people will keep using it. I personally stopped using any of Apple's products and I don't see myself returning to them any time soon but if other people are still satisfied (for any reason, most are too lazy to learn anything other than, say, Final Cut Pro and some like to go to local Apple store and just say "hey you, do stuff to fix it" to store Geniuses regardless of how much it will cost outside of warranty coverage) - that's ok with me ;-)

 

The people that will actually repair or upgrade their notebook themselves are in the vast minority. There's a lot of things OS X is good at. If it wasn't for the atrocious keyboard I'd like my MacBook, as it stands now it's a necessary annoyance. I rarely use it outside of doing work though.

 

If you need to sync, you are using the device wrong. Stop blaming Apple for your mistakes

 

Apple bashing aside, I have always liked the 2012 Macbook Pro 13 and I still plan to pick up one and restore it.

Pending the battery life, I may even bring it around as a daily on the go machine. For when the battery dies on the AW13 R3

 

Okay, I'll bite. What would be the use case?

 

As impractical as it is, I find carrying or owning 2 devices is actually a really good idea. I dual carry an HTC one and iPhone 6s. Gets around the battery life problems and gets dual sims. For laptops, I like having a super thin and light laptop and a powerful one for when you need more grunt than a core m

 

I do much the same. But I don't have any 7-year-old devices on me though.

 

Its the only machine from Apple that I would consider since I can still configure it. At this point it would just be a browser / typewriter / OSX awareness and is still being updated to the latest version.

 

32 cores TR3 7nm lets GO!

 

8 core 5GHz laptop CPUs in a thin and light ultrabook? Might happen with 7nm

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-third-gen-threadripper-roadmap,39254.html

 

TR3 2020 7nm+ here i come

must go desktop this time, 32 cores minimum

 

Imagine getting that in a Clevo chassis...

 

that would be good but we know it aint gonna happen, at most we'll see is maybe 16 cores.

with 7nm even at 32 cores it'll be quite a power hog, equiv if not uses more power than then previous 16 core TR2 ~450 to 500w.

 

That will fit right in here. Just make it 4" thick, weigh 13kg by itself and run off three power bricks.

 

Apple will put it into their Macbook 11 inch laptop that is passively cooled and will throttle it to 5W just to have the marketing hype of "The worlds thinnest 32 core mobile workstation"

 

Only real advantage I can see of the 13 inch aside from how easy it is to disassemble vs the 2013-2014-2015, the SATA bays, and the SODIMM's. The 2013-2014-2015 have NVME drives afaik, which would be the superior option IMO.

 

Unlikely we will see an AMD chassis from Clevo at all, the D900K was the last one to my memory and that was about 13/14 years ago. Would be nice to have a choice between AMD and Intel though for those who prefer the extra cores.

 

AMD don’t really have a competative high end CPU in terms of efficiency.

In a desktop nobody gives a damn about efficiency, in a laptop it really makes a big difference

 

Might still be nice to see a DTR with something, I bet a big workstation with Threadripper would sell pretty well. There's always been a market for powerful outlet-hopping systems, where it's fine being tethered to a wall as long as it's easy to relocate the system between walls.

 

I mean sure, but that market is so incredibly niche that I doubt any company will target it. That would be such an incredibly small audience...

 

yea i guess the cost of having to prepare 2nd motherboard for the same chassis just wouldnt work considering DTR is already a niche product.

tsmc 7nm will be very efficient versus intel's 14nm

 

7nm will have to fight intels 10nm. Considering intels market share and track record of good efficiency, it’s a tough climb for AMD

 

Can't rule out bandwagon AMD fans either (whether because they love AMD or dislike Intel or both). At least initially a high end TR system would sell very well to that crowd.

 

I have no use for an nvme drive, if this is to be a browser typewriter / osx awareness machine then nvme is several orders of magnitude more than I need. Especially when for the most part hdd takes care of storage needs just fine and ssd's (sata) take care of my faster inquiries while not having to initialize the pcie to boot.

Not to mention, the 2012 MacBook pro 13 is relatively cheap. Can be had for a couple hundred bucks.

 

AMD will probably need the 16 cores to beat Intel’s coming 10 cores.

 

In a laptop form factor? Might as well not include a battery and use the extra space for the tons of cooling that you need.

Also it needs dual power bricks and tons of heatpipes...

Such a laptop would be like a slim desktop with a screen and built in peripherals

 

A true desktop replacement.

 

Call me when its ready, been making my ranger a DTR for a while now. Would be nice to retire it from the main machine when the time comes.

 

the current intel 10nm is garbage, worse efficiency than their own 14nm. it'll be tough when intel hitting 10nm+ with a new arch or possibly 10nm++ with the new arch. core is already so optimized theres nothing left to squeeze from the old core arch.

most likely not. intel's first gen 10nm will be junk frequency, similar to broadwell 1st gen 14nm.

finally, wow 4 way smt? time to prolong de wait, stacked memory io possibly treated as l4 cache? any boost i take it. @ajc9988

 

They have already done something like that before with the P570WM, X7200, D900F, D900C/T/K etc. All of those used 90-130W TDP CPUs and could cool them adequately at least at stock speeds. It wouldn't be beyond possiblity to create a desktop replacement similar to those which could cool CPUs with a TDP of 180-200W. The fans on the older Clevos were pretty garbage compared to the 12V fans on the P870, 2 of those cooling a large CPU heatsink similar to the older models (except with more heatpipes or a vapour chamber) would probably be fine for cooling Threadripper (probably not well enough for a significant overclock though). The main challenge would be the VRM, but that is also not beyond possibility. Its probably also possible for the Intel HEDT CPUs, though overclocking would be pretty limited since some of those will draw over 1000W when pushed hard. They won't do this though, because the market for such a machine is tiny. And to be honest, consumer level CPUs are more than good enough to suffice for a 'mobile workstation' especially with the 9900K. The only thing it would be lacking is ECC memory.

Also, AMD are not much different to Intel in power consumption, at least at similar clock speeds and core counts. There is only so far Intel can take 14nm, without getting much higher power draw. If Intel finally get their 10nm process working well, it should be competitive with AMDs 7nm, possibly better, since it will be more transistor dense than the competition at the same node (same way Intel 14nm is). I hope they are holding out on releasing it due to them optimising it for higher clock speeds, but only time will tell. Interesting times ahead though.

 

I almost forgot about this thread, it was just one of those thoughts that come to your head before you go to sleep. I see it turn out to be windows vs mac, intel vs amd comparisons. (I always been one of those people to throw a grenade in a room and close the door, and walk away).

I say the biggest thing we need is larger batteries, cooler cpu's. I feel like the 10 series cards should be relevant for atleast the next 3 yrs, And I wouldn't mind see a 17in 2 in 1 laptop/tablet mobile workstation with a bunch of unnecessary ports (like the old dells/hp/lenovos)

 

I want 18.4" laptops back. I had one back in the day, and it wasn't more unwieldy that my 17.1" inch ones. I would carry it daily in the same backpack that I still use for my 17" inch ones.

Why was that form factor discontinued?

 

Too niche. 17 inch laptops are already pushing it for many. Maybe once we cut bezel sizes, we can cram 18 inch laptops into a smaller form factor

 

While larger systems were way more popular than I think some give them credit for, the end number of sales meant that parts couldn't be manufactured in enough bulk to be cost effective. I'm guessing that's why the GT83 was sitting there in its last iteration with a 1920x1080 60Hz panel when all the smaller, more common models had 4K 60Hz or 1920x1080 120Hz-144Hz, and why there wasn't a GT85. That size also had major competition from the not too much smaller 17" models that brought most of the same hardware to the table.

 

The problem is that you just won’t ship all too many laptops if you target a niche. Which means you probably won’t make too much money from it.

 

I wouldn't mind a ~17 inch form factor with a 18.4in screen with ultra-small bezels

 

3 inches thick is perfect, 20" dipslay in a 18'4 form factor with thin bazel. thanks

 

They did something similar with the 16.1" screens in former 15.6" chassis, but I'm not holding my breath for that one. Would be awesome, but unlikely, and I'd only care about it if they could do it with a 144Hz or better panel.

 

[BEEP] those "many".

 

The real bottleneck/ insurmountable hurdle is in the thin and light gaming category. These laptops can only dissipate a certain amount of heat, and the performance is completely dominated by that one factor. Putting in more/bigger fans will increase size, weight and power consumption, which then demands a larger, heavier battery. IMHO the only innovation there is going to come from the chip manufacturers. Hopefully later generations of chips will allow better performance for the same power budget.

An offshoot/ workaround solution has been offered where the power-hungry and heat generating GPU is offboarded into an external dock. Naysayers will point out that this approach is a compromise at best - if you want to play games while travelling, you have to carry everything, including the dock, and that's the end of the thin and light attribute. It is bad enough that the adapter for my P975HR weighs 700 grams. A decent GPU dock is not going to weigh any less, and probably much more.

The Max Q concept has been a failure largely because the concept is too complicated for most people to wrap their heads around. The concept itself is sound, but needs painstaking optimisation by the manufacturer, and that has proven to be just too much to ask. Perhaps someone will create a utility that will power cycle the laptop under test for several hours and develop a set of profiles for performance/power dissipation/fan speed/temperature, which could then be used to create a proper Max Q power profile. Frankly, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

 

Max Q branding makes no sense to me. With such varied TDPs and thermal contractions, I would much rather have a TDP rating.


So a 1080MQ would just be called a 1080 (70W) for example. Easier to understand performance from the name alone.

Cause laptops with MQ can outperform non MQ GPUs. The 1050ti MQ can outperform the 1050ti. Stuff like that makes no sense to me. An average consumer will have no idea what any of that means.

Does MQ mean more efficient? As in same FPS less power used? Does MQ mean lower power? Like does 1050ti MQ mean 1050? Does MQ mean more agressive power throttling on the same chips?

What does it mean? What does it do? What is the point?

Scummy move from nvidia. Even worse than selling gimped GPUs under the same name.

 

Until the 980, every laptop GPU was gimped, even the 980m. I'm glad we have options.

 

How was 980m versions gimped?