Macbook Pro 13" - 2014 vs 2015

[Viva]

Hi guys

I'm up for a notebook upgrade at work, and would like to hear your thoughts on how these two models of the 13" MacBook Pro compare:

- 2014 MBP 13" with 256GB storage - MGX82 (R17999)
- 2015 MBP 13" with 128GB storage - MF839 (R18999)

It looks like some advantages of the newer MBP include:

- Newer generation Intel CPU (2.7 GHz (i5-5257U) Broadwell vs 2.6 GHz (i5-4278U) Haswell)
- Longer battery life (10h vs 9h)
- Faster flash storage (although I doubt this makes a difference in practice)
- Force Touch trackpad vs traditional trackpad.

Of course, the I'll have to settle for 128GB storage when choosing the newer model. I'm not sure if this might be too limiting in the long run. I do think it makes sense to have more storage, for in case it is needed down the line.

I'd also prefer to make the purchase sooner than later, but it seems it is not yet known when this will be available in SA. Any thoughts?

 

[genetic]

The 2015 MBP is twice as fast as last year's iteration.

When Apple launched the new MacBook Pro earlier this month, the company claimed its performance would be double that of the previous model.

As it turns out, that wasn't an exaggeration.

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...e-new-macbook-literally-is-twice-as-fast.html

/Thread.

 

[genetic]

I'd also prefer to make the purchase sooner than later, but it seems it is not yet known when this will be available in SA. Any thoughts?

Release dates in SA are a few weeks behind the US, so waiting shouldn't be a major concern.

 

[Viva]

The 2015 MBP is twice as fast as last year's iteration.

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...e-new-macbook-literally-is-twice-as-fast.html

/Thread.

Thanks for the interesting read. I doubt the new MBP will be "twice as fast" as last year's iteration. The performance of the storage might be, but that does not simply translate to twice the performance across the board, I would guess. I'd love to know what the day-to-day impact of this upgraded PCIe 3.0 x4 will be.

 

[Maverick Jester]

If you're able to get the newer one, get it I say. How important is the larger storage capacity in the long run?

Though, considering that this is for work purposes, perhaps the 2014 model is good enough? I don't think that in raw performance terms you'll actually see the difference.

 

[genetic]

Thanks for the interesting read. I doubt the new MBP will be "twice as fast" as last year's iteration. The performance of the storage might be, but that does not simply translate to twice the performance across the board, I would guess. I'd love to know what the day-to-day impact of this upgraded PCIe 3.0 x4 will be.

Processing performance won't be twice as fast as the 2014 MBP, but you must remember that read/write speeds generally equate to real world performance. So unless you're doing specific intensive processor or GPU rendering, the performance increase will definitely be noticeable.

 

[Viva]

If you're able to get the newer one, get it I say. How important is the larger storage capacity in the long run?

Though, considering that this is for work purposes, perhaps the 2014 model is good enough? I don't think that in raw performance terms you'll actually see the difference.

Thanks. I've had the 2015 MBP for a few days now, and I'm very satisfied with it.

Just a question to the Apple guru's lurking here. How do I know for sure that the machine enters standby (i.e. hibernation) after the period specified by standbydelay? I'm referring to the values you get with pmset -g. The default is 3 hours, but I changed mine to 1 hour so as to save some battery.

When standby mode has been entered, the contents of the ram is written to the SSD, and so waking the machine from standby should take slightly longer than waking from sleep. The problem is, it doesn't really take any longer, at least to the extent that I can perceive. Waking from standby (or what I assume to be standby, as the standbydelay has passed since closing the lid), takes no longer than a second. It pretty instantaneous to be honest. Is this a result of the super fast SSD, or an indication that the machine never entered standby?

 

[PostmanPot]

Just being concerned that 128GB might not be enough, is enough reason to go with the 2014 256GB from the get go.

 

[bwana]

Thanks. I've had the 2015 MBP for a few days now, and I'm very satisfied with it.

Just a question to the Apple guru's lurking here. How do I know for sure that the machine enters standby (i.e. hibernation) after the period specified by standbydelay? I'm referring to the values you get with pmset -g. The default is 3 hours, but I changed mine to 1 hour so as to save some battery.

When standby mode has been entered, the contents of the ram is written to the SSD, and so waking the machine from standby should take slightly longer than waking from sleep. The problem is, it doesn't really take any longer, at least to the extent that I can perceive. Waking from standby (or what I assume to be standby, as the standbydelay has passed since closing the lid), takes no longer than a second. It pretty instantaneous to be honest. Is this a result of the super fast SSD, or an indication that the machine never entered standby?

Hibernate mode 3 - the default for portables - means that unless there's been a complete power failure it will use whats in the RAM and not the SSD - IOW it will be just as fast.

Personally I don't use it - that 16gb (for the 16gb of RAM I have) of SSD space is far more useful to me.

 

[Viva]

Just being concerned that 128GB might not be enough, is enough reason to go with the 2014 256GB from the get go.

I hear you. But honestly, It seems I'll be just fine with the 128GB. I have about 100GB to work with. I don't generally work with large files, but when I have to, I'll just use external disks.

 

[Viva]

Hibernate mode 3 - the default for portables - means that unless there's been a complete power failure it will use whats in the RAM and not the SSD - IOW it will be just as fast.

Personally I don't use it - that 16gb (for the 16gb of RAM I have) of SSD space is far more useful to me.

I'm not sure I understand. I thought the point of hibernate mode 3 is to preserve battery life by cutting power to the RAM after the specified delay has been reached when running on battery. Is this correct? If this is the case, why does the machine appear to wake up instantly when the RAM is supposed to be restored from the SSD?

Also, to which hibernate mode did you switch to preserve the space on your SSD? I'd like to explore this option. It comes at the cost of battery life while sleeping, of course.

 

[bwana]

What is you hibernate mode set to when you do a pmset -g?

EDIt - fwiw

hibernatemode = 3 (binary 0011) by default on supported portables. The system will store a copy memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will power memory during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless a power loss forces it to restore from disk image.

 

[Viva]

What is you hibernate mode set to when you do a pmset -g?

EDIt - fwiw

Its set to 3.

Looking at this page, I'm still not sure why its not working the way I expect.

There are two main standby arguments and they are critical for hibernation to work at the specified time interval:

- standby causes kernel power management to automatically hibernate a machine after it has slept for a specified time period. This saves power while asleep. This setting defaults to ON for supported hardware. The setting standby will be visible in pmset -g if the feature is supported on the machine. Standby only works if hibernation is turned on to hibernatemode 3 or 25.

- standbydelay specifies the delay, in seconds, before writing the hibernation image to disk and powering off memory for Standby.

For example—with hibernatemode in 3, the computer will sleep and not hibernate, as the default when the lid is closed, but because standby is set to ON, the computer will wait standbydelay seconds, before switching from sleep to hibernate.

This is great, as you can now close the lid of the laptop and have n seconds to go back to it, and still have a fast resume time. If you stay from computer more than the specified time period then it will go into hibernate mode.

 

[bwana]

Its set to 3.

Looking at this page, I'm still not sure why its not working the way I expect.

You should read further down…

hibernatemode=3 by default is supported on portables or laptops. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will power memory during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless a power loss forces it to restore from disk image.

It's working exactly the way it should be.

Lets be realistic - as long as you have power nap disabled any savings you think you should be getting are minimal. Batteries have a finite number of cycles so keeping it on the charger whenever possible is what's important.

As I said earlier - I've only got a 500GB SSD at my disposal - I'm not about to squander 16 of them.

 

[Viva]

You should read further down…

It's working exactly the way it should be.

Lets be realistic - as long as you have power nap disabled any savings you think you should be getting are minimal. Batteries have a finite number of cycles so keeping it on the charger whenever possible is what's important.

As I said earlier - I've only got a 500GB SSD at my disposal - I'm not about to squander 16 of them.

So what behaviour should I expect if I change hibernatemode to 25? According to the tutorial:

hibernatemode=25 is only settable via pmset. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If you want hibernation—slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery life you should use this setting.

Is my understanding correct that a period = standbydelay will still be wait before hibernatemode=25 is entered?

 

[Viva]

I found someone else asking the same question I'm asking:

I have bought a 13 Retina Macbook Pro -my first Mac, just a couple of days ago and I found something odd.

Apple claims that after an hour or so of sleep, the Mac should go to deep sleep -AKA hibernation. Well, yesterday night I closed the lid and the Mac entered sleep mode. The expected behaviour according to Apple is that when I wake up in the morning, the Mac would turn on and load the RAM image from disk back to the main memory, taking many seconds to wake up. Instead, it woke up immediately -like if it never entered hibernation.

1) Why doesn't my MBP do what Apple claim it should do when "sleeping"?

2) I'd like to have the hibernation mode active. I love that my computer turns on sooo quickly but if I'm not going to use it for many hours, I'd prefer to save battery with a (slightly slower) boot.

I already tried to change the standbydelay and the autopoweroffdelay to little numbers like 1 minute, 2 minutes, 0 minutes, 120 seconds, 60 seconds (standbydelay uses seconds, autopoweroffdelay minutes according to pmset man).

I don't have any USB connected, I turned off iCloud and Google sync.

I saw the pmset -g assertions to see if there's some daemon or app or service preventing the deep sleep. I changed the hibernatemode from 3 to 25, and back to 3.

And yes, I read the pmset man and tried virtually everything I read on the web.

The Mac keeps entering sleep but never deep sleep/hibernation.

I tested everything. I'd like to have more control (or SOME control) over when and how MY computer goes to sleep/hibernate.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/170968/retina-macbook-pro-doesnt-hibernate

 

[bwana]

So what behaviour should I expect if I change hibernatemode to 25? According to the tutorial:

No idea - since deciding to switch it to 0 I havent really looked into it that much.

Last night I lost 171mAh (out of a design capacity of 8440mAh) over six hours - not really significant as far as I'm concerned seeing as most of the time my laptop is connected to external power.

 

[FiestaST]

This just in...pricey hey...

 

[bwana]

This just in...pricey hey...

View attachment 213456

Similar to UK pricing.

 

[thewusman]

Similar to UK pricing.

Yup. Almost the same as US pricing when you add local state tax and city tax and ZAR USD exchange rate. Not that far off with our piss poor currency, all things considered.