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What are your thoughts about the 2016 MacBook Pro?
WinMacSims3
Posts: 1,610 Member
The MacBook Pro is one of the most used Macs to play The Sims games as most players of The Sims 4 usually tend to use the MacBook Pro, iMac, and even the MacBook Air. Despite PC users saying that Intel Graphics is bad for The Sims, they're actually good if you have a low resolution (such as 1366x768) plus considering that TS4's requirements are lower than most games (PC games these days require an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870). However, this thread concerns a MacBook Pro which recently came out but has mixed reception especially due to the negatives that the 2016 model has.
The first issue is that the 2016 model is more expensive than the 2015 model. The 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro has prices of $1299, $1499, and $1799 whereas the 2016 model costs $1499, $1799, and $1999. The 2015 15-inch model costs $1999 and $2499 whereas the 2016 model costs $2399 and $2799
13-inch models
$1299 > $1499: $200
$1499 > $1799: $300
$1799 > $1999: $200
15-inch models
$1999 > $2399: $400
$2499 > $2799: $300
We see about a $200 to $300 price increase for the 13-inch models and a $300 to $400 price increase for the 15-inch models.
Prices are also worse in Europe as the prices are more expensive there than in the United States, this is especially going to affect @BluebellFlora since she lives in the U.K. (the United Kingdom also saw price increases as well).
There are also other negatives:
While spec wise, the Mac is an improvement but the removal of ports and the increase of price will make some people refuse to buy the Mac. What are your thoughts about the 2016 MacBook Pro?
The first issue is that the 2016 model is more expensive than the 2015 model. The 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro has prices of $1299, $1499, and $1799 whereas the 2016 model costs $1499, $1799, and $1999. The 2015 15-inch model costs $1999 and $2499 whereas the 2016 model costs $2399 and $2799
13-inch models
$1299 > $1499: $200
$1499 > $1799: $300
$1799 > $1999: $200
15-inch models
$1999 > $2399: $400
$2499 > $2799: $300
We see about a $200 to $300 price increase for the 13-inch models and a $300 to $400 price increase for the 15-inch models.
Prices are also worse in Europe as the prices are more expensive there than in the United States, this is especially going to affect @BluebellFlora since she lives in the U.K. (the United Kingdom also saw price increases as well).
There are also other negatives:
- The Mac does not include MagSafe which can lead to safety concerns of the new MacBook Pro happened to tripped over. Non-Apple PCs and PowerPC Macs could be damaged if someone trips over the cable but with a MacBook Pro with MagSafe, the Mac won't be damaged if someone trips over the cable.
- The Mac does not have an SD Card slot. Annoying if you want to increase your Mac's space or use tend to use cameras with SD cards.
- The Mac does not have USB Type-A ports, only USB-C so you need to get a dongle.
- The Mac does not have HDMI or Thunderbolt 2 ports so you can't use your old Mini DisplayPort adapters anymore. Fortunately 4K 60Hz could be more easier with USB-C than with DisplayPort since most USB-C adapters support 4K 60Hz through HDMI whereas most DisplayPort/Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapters only support 4K at 30Hz. However, I don't know which models can do 4K at 60 Hz.
While spec wise, the Mac is an improvement but the removal of ports and the increase of price will make some people refuse to buy the Mac. What are your thoughts about the 2016 MacBook Pro?
Origin ID: GothicSimmer, YouTube: GothicSimmer
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Comments
My biggest gripe are the specs - I would never pay full retail for an Apple product to receive so little. The specs match what you can get in a PC for less than half of the price, and I'd rather put my money into a machine that will actually keep up with me, rather than spending $1000+ in excess just for the brand and OS.
I commend Apple for being brave enough to remove every port. I'm all for wireless - but I'm skeptical. I like my cooling pad, and I would have to get one with a pass-through style USB port, which I've never had particular luck with. The amount of dongles needed otherwise would be outrageous to support dying technology.
As far as other accessories: mouse, headphones, memory card, etc, they all have wifi/bluetooth counterparts, so that wouldn't be a problem. If I'm spending ~$3k on a new computer (I would only ever consider the top model; if I wanted the mediocre specs of the lower models, I'd grab something off the shelf at Walmart) then buying a new memory card/etc wouldn't be a problem.
I'm unphased by the Magsafe charger being killed off - the old charger design seemed rather flawed. My MIL and sister have gone through countless chargers that always ended up broken internally somehow. I hope the new chargers are more reliable, provided everyone doesn't trip over them.
Lastly, with the move towards everything becoming Retina and 5k, I wouldn't trust an Intel HD anything to drive a 3D application of any kind at that resolution, nevermind part of The Sims series, with how bloated and power hungry the games get as time goes on and updates are added. I'd hate to have such a beautiful display and then not be able to fully use it
Alienware R4 17: i7 6700HQ, 16GB RAM, 8GB NVidia GTX 1070
I don't know why people compare Macs and Windows PCs when they are just so different. I would rather spend my hard earned money on a better built, more stable computer that seamlessly integrates with my wireless/media setup at home than a Windows machine which needs constant maintenance and background tasks running to keep it functioning at an acceptable level. And if I want to run a Windows app then I'll just install it in Boot Camp or a VM.
That's just my opinion and I know 90% of people will disagree
The Iris 550 they are currently using, spec wise, is on par with specs of nVidia/AMD cards from 5-6 years ago. While macOS will make use of such meager power much more efficiently than Windows ever would, even if it miraculously operated at 100% efficiency, the amount of raw computing power is laughable. I find Apple's choice in hardware borderline offensive for the prices they charge.
Alienware R4 17: i7 6700HQ, 16GB RAM, 8GB NVidia GTX 1070
Macs do have advantages such as not needing to make recovery discs and not having to deal with additional software although people building a PC do not have to deal with this. I know the two systems are different but many people will often compare the processor, storage, and graphics.
The Graphics is often the most compared as Macs often use the Intel Graphics and Intel Graphics is often disliked by gamers (including PC Simmers) as their performance are inferior to the AMD and NVIDIA cards. This is made worse with most PC games requiring an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or an AMD Radeon HD 7850/7870 while many non-gaming Windows computers tend to include Intel HD Graphics which is below the minimum requirements of most games.
The Intel Core i5 on Macs are decently good compared to most cheaper Windows PCs including Celeron and Pentium but the dual core processors included on cheaper Macs will raise a red flag to gamers. Some Windows PCs (and Macs) on sale tend to include a dual core processor which isn't going to help for some games such as Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4 that require a quad core processor meaning those PCs, even with a card upgrade, will not be able to play said games.
The storage also gets this as the MacBook Pro uses an SSD which start at a low capacity. Sure SSDs are an improvement over hard rives but they're expensive especially at higher capacities (512GB and 1TB) and have a low amount of storage (128GB and 256 GB) making them useless for modern games as Battlefield 1 requires 50GB, GTA V requires 65GB, and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Call of Duty: Black Ops III require 55GB and 60GB respectively. SSDs are pretty much useless on PS4 and Xbox One as most games require a lot of storage similar to the Windows versions. Many PC users and manufacturers often install both an SSD and hard drive although this is more expensive while PS3/PS4, laptop, and Mac users often use the Solid State Hybrid Drive. However, most Macs such as the iMac do not officially support having the hard drive replaced and the newer Retina MacBook Pros do not have SATA ports.
I recently got myself the 13" touch bar model and I love it!! From the short experience I have had on macOS, I must say how great it is! Having come from a windows 10 PC it is a nice change to have a system that isn't always lagging or breaking like on my desktop (which I loathe)
It also has an excellent build quality with a brilliant butterfly keyboard which is actually an improvement (in my eyes) over the previous generation. Lets not forget that massive trackpad! Bit ott but I find it useful especially when using gestures. The lack of ports has not really been an issue as the only ports I would have used in the last gen mac would be the USB A slots. I could understand your frustration if you use HDMI, SD card etc...
I have to say so far I have little to complain about!
Its not a dislike. Intel cards are not designed for gaming at all. We have explained this to you quite a few times in the PC section. They are designed for general use. Nvidia and AMD make gaming cards that are designed for 3d gaming. AMD and Nvidia also make lower end cards for general use. Gaming laptops do come with dual cards. Intel for general use and Nvidia for gaming. Nvidia cards in general are more powerful than AMD. AMD also heats up more. This becomes an issue in a laptop or even a Mac. You need good cooling on any computer while gaming a more powerful game like the sims. They use the same video cards in Mac and PC. Laptop cards will have "M" after the card number
Aren't the iMacs only using AMD not Nvidia? Last I had checked which was a while ago they only had AMD and intel. I hope they added Nvidia because you will have less heating issues. Its also a thin design like a PC all in one. The all in ones have worse cooling than a laptop on PC. I cant speak for iMac and cooling since I don't own one. I have just seen others post about the heating issues they experienced with iMac and AMD while gaming. AMD is better in a big tower computer with extra fans and cooling. The even made a song about AMD and how you can cook eggs on it. You can game while cooking breakfast
PS I just checked and don't see an option for Nvidia. It is using an AMD laptop card. That is what the X means after the card number. Desktop cards are different and more powerful than laptop cards. The AMD laptop cards are still known to heat up.
You can see the difference here with the Amd card they are using in the new iMac as opposed to the Nvidia GTX 960m we advise using on laptop for this game http://gpuboss.com/graphics-card/Radeon-R9-M395X
Having now used Macs for 28 years I can honestly say that all the Macs I've had with AMD GPUs perform better and last longer than ones with NVIDIA, my current 15" MacBook Pros included (2011 with AMD, 2012 with NVIDIA). Laptops or desktops, doesn't matter. Thanks for the advice but I'll stick with my own experience and that of the hundreds of other Mac users who I have had dealings with over the last 15 years, whether professionally or personally
I just figured I would mention it since I have seen others posting they had heat issues while playing this specific game with iMac and AMD. It could be the game more so than the computer. There are people on PC having heat issues due to the game. It's not their PC. The game is extremely cpu heavy. We have run several tests. I don't know if it's the same way for the Mac version of this game. Its not normal for this this game to be CPU heavy and EA should have looked into the issue by now.
Edited for typo.
What I'm trying to refer to by PC Simmers disliking Intel Graphics is often when someone mentions a PC (especially a laptop) from a manufacturer such as HP, Dell, and Acer, many tend to frown upon such computers because they don't have a "gaming" card while they don't frown upon PCs from ASUS ROG, MSI, and GIGABYTE or other gaming PCs. This is similar to people who claim that cheap record players such as a Crosley will destroy your vinyl records due to the higher tracking force which VWestlife has debunked in Will a cheap record player DESTROY your vinyl?
So let's say I got an HP laptop and I decided to post on the The Sims 4 Tech Discussions: "Hey look at this PC from HP, can I play The Sims 4 on it?" and then PC Simmers such as yourself will respond with "Don't play the game on this HP!" or "Playing the game on this laptop will fry it!". Granted, most Macs do have better processors then most PCs especially those using Celeron and Pentium processors. Even I understand that Intel isn't good for gaming especially when most games require NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or an AMD Radeon HD 7870 but despite by that you say about it, Intel Graphics are good enough for some games such as The Sims 4 since it has reasonably low requirements but not most games such as Battlefield 1 (heck some of my games such as Witcher 3, Fallout 4, and Dead Rising 3 will likely not work with Intel graphics due to their high graphics requirements).
Most people will lower the resolution and/or graphics to try to make the game faster which is what I would do if the game doesn't run well especially if using integrated graphics and other low end cards or have a Quad HD (2560x1440), Ultra HD (3840x2160) monitor, a Retina MacBook Pro, or iMac as their resolutions require a lot of graphics power.
When they were first introduced, they were near useless for gaming but the newer Intel Graphics have gotten better in performance with the newer Intel CPUs but this is often rendered moot when most games have high graphics requirements (Battlefield 1 requires an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB or AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB along with an Intel Core i5-6600K versus The Sims 4 requiring NVIDIA GeForce 6600, ATI Radeon X1300, or Intel GMA X4500 along with a 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo). The problem with Intel and AMD integrated graphics is that most people have 1080p monitors (or TVs) whereas laptops had 1366x768 or 1280x800 screens. 1920x1080 is 2,073,600 pixels whereas 1366x768 and have 1,049,088 and 1,024,000 pixels respectively. However, some laptops are starting to include 1080p screens and the 13" Retina MacBook Pro has a resolution of 2560x1600 which is 4,096,000 which is going to make the Intel Graphics situation worse. The NVIDIA GPUs used in the gaming laptops are powerful enough to run games in 1080p but many Intel graphics usually aren't powerful enough to play games in 1080p even for games that do work on Intel graphics (Civilization V will run slow when played in 1080p) so a MacBook Pro would work fine at 1280x800 but an iMac or Mac mini running at 1920x1080 will have a hard time running it although I've never encountered Simmers who play TS4 on the entry level iMac with Intel HD Graphics or a Mac mini.
Not all laptops are equal.(just like Mac) HP and Dell put very cheap hardware in their laptops (and desktops). They also don't have proper cooling. The ones they claim are for gaming they charge an arm and a leg for and the specs don't compare to some other known gaming laptop manufactures. Alienware use to be good until dell bought the name. Now its just an over priced dell with cheap hardware.
Manufactures like Asus, MSI, CLevo , fangbook and some others design and make proper gaming laptops. They are thicker , have proper cooling. Their laptops will not overheat and you don't need a laptop cooler for them. Many of them will also do custom certified hardware.
Even BlubellFlora mentions above how important cooling is. On Mac or PC does not matter. Heat can do damage to both.
No you cant game on an integrated card in higher resolution. That would make a big problem worse. Why intel along with lower end AMD and Nvidia are designed for light tasks and steaming movies in 1080p but not gaming. There is no higher end laptop card on the market that can handle gaming in 4k effectively. It will struggle and have serious fps drops. There is not a single card on desktop that can handle gaming 4k efficiently. Again the person would get serous fps drops. The highest card they make at the moment is a GTX 1080 and it can handle gaming 2k just fine. We are not ready for 4k gaming. Streaming in 4k is fine
Don't know. I'm not in the Market for a new Desktop computer. Mine has an Nvidia card, but it's a late 2012 model.
I've noticed a very clear distinction on our forums here between Mac and PC: PC people always post about a new computer, "I want to be able to run everything on high with no lag!" versus Mac users who are like, "I put it in a window and everything down to medium and it's fine" - most Mac users are okay with whatever performance they have, as long as the game is playable. If a PC user's FPS drops to 59, they often start to loose it.
Alienware R4 17: i7 6700HQ, 16GB RAM, 8GB NVidia GTX 1070
This is true but there is nothing better than gaming on a PC tower. Yes windows and their updates are plum but we don't care as long as the computer runs the games we want and the way we want them to run. Leaving out that some games are programed plum and won't run properly no matter how beefy your pc is. FPS drops are no fun if your computer is struggling. Dropping to 59 is a bit extreme for throwing a temper tantrum on fps drops though I have seen it happen
Probably because they aren't using their Macs primarily as gaming machines so it's not as important.
But there's also a masssive amount of Mac users who buy them because they think that just because they're expensive, and pretty, they can launch nuclear missiles, do the washing up, and play games on the highest settings possible. Like the ridiculously over priced and underpowered 12" MacBook. Brilliant for what it's designed for - emailing, web surfing, Word etc but not for playing games.
I'm also convinced that a lot of people get poor performance because they're just not looking after their Macs properly - ventilating, having Gbs of data on the desktop, never closing apps properly, having loads of background tasks running, and using the dangerous 'clean up' apps which actually delete things they shouldn't so destabilise the OS.
We get the same on PC . Some only want to play the sims and they buy computers for general use. They don't intend on gaming so they don't feel the need to buy a gaming computer to play the sims even though the game requires one.
Like your underpowerd 12" MacBook We get people who think its cool to buy the expensive microsoft pro tablet and then want to play the sims on it. A lot of people come in the forum wanting to play on a tablet.
Taking care of your computer is just as important as having good cooling and having hardware that meets requirements to do what you want that computer to do. Applies to both Mac and PC
I had a PC computer for 8 years and it would have run longer but we had a lightning strike. I have another computer from 2006 that still runs. It all depends how efficient the hardware is and how someone takes care of their computer. It all factors in. Back then you did not have as many options for hardware as they do now. A lot of computers were made better back then. Now there are a lot of really cheap PC's on the market with the cheapest hardware. People need to do their research before buying. Being that Mac has fewer options than PC and Mac charges a lot more I would expect them to make them efficient for what they charge.
Happy New Year to you too ! Have a great day