| > Apple machines not being developer-oriented. Considering they're less and less art-professional-oriented (losing SD ports and HDMI, losing jacks, losing dedicated software...), what would these "Pro" machines actually be oriented to? Consumers buy tablets and phones (the laptop market is shrinking); companies buy plasticware with support contracts. Who else is left? Apple machines are developer-oriented - in fact, I'd argue developers are now their most consistent target market for MBPs. But it's web and app developers we are talking about, so they have no need for special ports and software; they just want basic stuff (cpu/ram/keyboard/screen/usb/wifi) done extremely well so they can show off a bit. And this suits Apple absolutely fine, since they can sell relatively basic machines as "premium" and get nice margins out of it. As it happens, several sub-segments of the developer category do, in fact, need more ram for VM and suchlike. The necessary chips have been around for some time now, so they're small enough to fit. And there's history: when the current MBPr debuted, in 2012, no other "pro" machine had 16gb in such a slim body; 16gb configurations were all as bulky as 32gb laptops are today. The 16gb market has caught up now (see Dell XPS et al), so it makes perfect sense to jump ahead again. After all, they had 4 years to prepare. > may in fact preclude "upgrade" revenues later The 16gb option has been there since the very first MBPr in 2012. It didn't preclude anything - in fact, it was almost necessary to drive such a huge screen, animations were terrible otherwise. The 15'' was unusable with 4gb (do they even sell that option anymore? nope), and just ok with 8gb. I remember the long line of reddit posts from people who bought the 4gb only to exchange it for the 8gb shortly after (or endlessly moan they had bought a lemon). > Because 32 GB is overkill in 2016 for majority of their customers. That's like, your opinion, man. I'm sure that driving a large OLED strip will need a bit of extra memory, for example. And touting the capabilities of Thunderbolt 3 will require very large external screens in cascaded configurations. That stuff ain't gonna work without some serious kick. Personally, I think the Pro line should (and likely will) have 8/16/32 options. Anything below that is really just for consumers and students, in this day and age - not for people ready to drop $3k on a laptop. |