MacDaddy

It was Intel's fault that there was no low power memory controller that would work with 32gb for a laptop.

There were definitely PC laptops available with 32gb of ram, but the wired powered consumption doubles from ~6 to ~11/12 watts [1] [2]

Reviews of pc laptops at the time (eg: Skylake) with 32/64gb of ram showed some detrimental battery life and it appears in Apple's case it wasn't a tradeoff they were willing to make.

To me it seems as though Apple gave up and just put DDR4 into their laptop anyway and also increased the battery W-h from 76Wh in the 2016 model [3] to 83.6Wh in the 2018 [4] thus offsetting some of the battery life issues but there may have been other hardware improvements that reclaimed some battery life.

As for the 13 inch MBP, the 2020 model was the first to include LPDDR4X and could allow the bump to go to 32gb but is much more battery constrained at 58Wh. [5]

[1] https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/
[2] https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-memory/how-much-power-does-memory-use
[3] https://support.apple.com/kb/SP749?locale=en_US
[4] https://support.apple.com/kb/SP776?locale=en_US
[5] https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/specs/

I would love to go to WWDC. However isn't having the honor of paying the 2k or so a bit like winning lotto? I mean - since you have to enroll to be (hopefully) selected as one of the lucky few who can attend, and if you're selected you're allowed to pay them to attend?

I have been a solo mac developer for the past 15 years or so (you can see my stuff at http://macdaddy.io), and I have never been able to attend a WWDC. It does strike me as unfair when I see other companies having the opportunity to attend, getting advice and recognition, and then getting featured by Apple and so forth. I have seen other companies allowed to have their apps on the mac app store which require root access, while I write a competing app data recovery app and it's never allowed on the mac app store - only to see that they blogged about attending WWDC and rubbing shoulders with the right people at Apple. Sometimes I feel that I write good software, but I lack the political connections to make real progress.

Of course, but it's a tradeoff. These low power low profile Intel CPUs can support more memory, but only DDR4 which is desktop class RAM with more than double the power requirements in use, and four to ten times the power usage in sleep mode.

The logic board would also have the redesigned and bigger for the new chipset, putting pressure on battery space. You see Microsoft making the same choice as Apple with the new Surface laptop.

Fortunately Intel are launching new mobile chips with support for fast, low power LPDDR3E memory over 16GB this year.

https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/

> They could've decided to not sacrifice weight or size for battery power.

Using DDR4 would have been a major regression even if they stuck to the old form factor. It uses a lot more power, especially on standby: https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram.

There is a reason that all the PC laptops that have great battery life either have big external batteries (T460), or also use LPDDR and have a 16GB limit (Surface Pro, XPS13). Comparably-sized machines that use regular DDR (e.g. XPS15), either downgrade to a much less power-hungry 1080p display, or have only 5-6 hours of battery life.