“When reviewing hardware, it’s important to integrate it into your life as much as possible,” Brian Heater writes for TechCrunch. “As a MacBook Pro owner, however, this one was a fair bit easier. In fact, there’s very little changed here from an aesthetic standpoint, and beyond the quieter keyboard and Siri integration, there’s not a lot that’s immediately apparent in the 2018 MacBook Pro refresh for me. That’s because I’m not the target demographic for the update. I write words for a living. There are large portions of my job that I could tackle pretty easily on an Apple IIe (please, no one tell the IT department).”
“This upgrade is for a different class of user entirely: the creative professional,” Heater writes. “The form factor remains the same, and the changes are largely under the hood. But these are in fact extremely powerful machines built around the premise that, in 2018, one shouldn’t have to compromise power in order to go portable. Well, maybe a little — but in those cases where you need some intense graphical processing, there’s always an external GPU, which makes the machine capable of VR and other process-intensive tasks.”
“As for performance, Apple’s not messing around here. Running Geekbench 4 (a popular PC benchmark), I got an impressive 5540 on the single core and 23345 with the multi-core test. Geekbench got similar — if slightly lower — results in its own tests on the high end. Here’s [Geekbench] founder John Poole on the findings: ‘For the 15-inch models, single-core performance is up 12-15%, and multi-core performance is up 39-46%. Since the underlying processor architecture hasn’t significantly changed between the 2017 and 2018 models, the increases in performance are due to higher Turbo Boost frequencies, more cores, and DDR4 memory,'” Heater writes. “The 2018 MacBook Pro is the most substantial upgrade (at least regarding performance) since the introduction of quad-core processors in the 2011 MacBook Pro.”
Much more in the full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: Strong review for the world’s best notebook.
SEE ALSO:
Craig A. Hunter reviews Apple’s 2018 MacBook Pro: Improvements emphasize the ‘Pro’ in MacBook Pro – July 13, 2018
But what about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx8J125s4cg
HOW DARE YOU POST EVIDENCE OF SOMETHING THAT CONTRADICTS OUR UNFOUNDED ADORATION OF THIS BEAUTIFUL LAPTOP. /s
But seriously, this is 100% an issue.
I love Apple.
I am a former Apple Employee (great company, retail life even at the higher levels was not for me)
I love macOS and iOS. My iPad Pro, iPhone and 2015 MacBook Pro are amazing.
However, when it came to purchasing a laptop to replace my hackintosh I made years ago, I ended up opting for a mid-range PC with 8th gen i7. It’s less than half the price I would have paid if I went with the MacBook Pro.
I think the MBP is a beautifully designed computer. But the bump up from $1999 base-cost 15″ to $2399 now is absurd. I opted against even getting the of the MBPr 2015 15″ model and have the 13″ model because I couldn’t rationalize paying over $2000 for a “pro” laptop without a dedicated gpu/chip.
I have to use Windows for work, so I am more than comfortable in both ecosystems. I love my mac so much more, but I simply can’t afford a computer that expensive for my own little freelance work. Adobe products are god awful, but using my PC and having $1200 extra in my pocket is worth the struggle.
It is pretty amusing watching anything that isn’t glowingly positive about Apple anything is given less stars by default. I guess fanyboy-ism is a live and well.
The thermal throttling problem appears to be real. The MacBook Pro 15″ cannot even maintain the base rated speed. The older MacBook Pro i7 is actually completing Final Cut Pro renders faster, as well as PowerPoint renders faster.
It seems any heavy work and the i9 version gets so hot that it gets throttled down to where all performance gains are lost.
Looks like we might have THROTTLE GATE!
“PowerPoint” heh. I meant Premiere. We’re gonna try the freezer thing now.
This is great news, however it be even greater news if the key board problem dont surface again, as in Apple nipped it in the bud. I checked the prices in UK, the 4TB maxed out Macbook Pro is £6K+. OUCH
A completely maxed out one is >$10k here in Oz.
What will really be impressive for this laptop is when Intel can finally ship a 10nm process a.k.a. Cannon Lake (cough, cough) and that chip/system will run cooler and faster using less power on an improved architecture with native (“low power”) LPDDR4 support.
This mess reminds me of the Intel switch. One of the reasons for that, as Steve himself said, was an unfulfilled promise of a G5 PowerBook. The IBM design was too power hungry, so Apple did not use it. That seemed like a reasonable design decision, based in reality. I don’t mind Apple “dragging me into the future”, I’ve always loved it. But the current (and, in part, 2017’s and 2016’s too) MBP’s thermal throttling and a battery life issues are a signs of a bad design decisions.
why not just make the damn thing big enough that it can run the processor without throttling?
and make the emoji bar optional
this machine is a bad joke
The i9 hexa core throttling is entirely predictable as Tim Cook’s Apple puts profits and anorexic designs above professional workflow needs.
Does anyone really believe Apple engineers didn’t know about this thermal throttling of the i9 version? Of course the knew but they know suckers buy these computers now and not professionals so it doesn’t matter.
The world’s best note book, my ass.