Intel's Skylake Processor Lineup for Retina MacBook Revealed

[subsonix]

No, Intel can't compete with ARM. Their legacy x86 arch won't allow it. You probably don't get the technical aspect of it, thus your view. To maintain compatibility and performance x86 processors are very complicated. Because of this they use more power. It doesn't matter what Intel do they can't get around this basic fact.

ARM is absolutely beating the pants off of Intel in the low power stakes. When are they going to start competing? Do you think they're holding off for some reason? Intel gives away processors to tablet and phone builders because they can't compete in tablets and phones, so it doesn't look good, even if your vague tablet and "next big thing" progostinations come to pass (they won't).

Also, do you think Apple is broke? What exactly is "expensive" for Apple?

Also, Intel tried with Itanium. It seems x86 is both a cash cow and a burden. What has kept Intel on top in the middle class CPUs is a monopoly, it's not like competing architectures are inferior per se. The Wintel alliance has given them guaranteed software and OS support, plus massive volume. To compete you would need massive volume or you're going to price yourself out of the market, but again x86 is proprietary, which meant competing architectures couldn't get the volume needed to hit the price sweet spot.

With mobile, the scale is shifting, you can now do 14nm with third party fabs (Samsung, Global Foundries). Add to this a plateuing of Moore's law, it may soon be a competitive performance edge with special purpose designs. It used to be that it was not worth it, because competitors could just wait 2 years and do nothing and a generic x86 would beat a special purpose design. It's not only ARM either, there's also new and novel ISAs like Risc-V approaching.

 

[sdwill]

I'm out to learn about everything. Not just what's limited to a cs degree. What's the fun in limiting yourself?

Specialization.

 

[sdwill]

this should give a nice boost the an underpowered machine. too bad it doesnt add ports haha.

Are people expecting more than 16GB of RAM anytime soon in a Mac laptop? From reading the forum, since seems like an obvious feature professional users (audio/video editors, developers using VMs, etc) would be more than willing to pony up to have their primary machine also be mobile.

Or would cut into the Mac Pro desktop too much?

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

That's awesome advice until they actually try to get a job and automatically need to rule out all the ones which advertise "degree required".

You're applying for jobs wrong if you're submitting resumes or contacting HR. Go directly to the engineers and managers. Have a friend or other connection get you in touch with them. Or just find the managers in LinkedIn and connect with them, then shoot them mail via that expressing your interest.

Having a portfolio of projects you've worked on, even if they're just personal projects you did that were never profitable, is far more impressive than any other pieces of paper.

Those requirement pages are written by HR. Sell yourself to the manager and team and they'll tell HR to make an exception for you.

 

[V.K.]

The workload that the 9 hours of battery life for the Macbook is quoted at is exactly the same as the workload that the 12 hours for the 13" Air is quoted at. If to you that means the Macbook is only good for 6 hours 'real world' then the 13" Air is only good for 8 hours 'real world' under the same scenario. The reality is that either one is good enough for most people to consider it to be 'all day', yet the Macbook weighs a full pound less and can charge to 80% in an hour if you need to top off.

It means that to me because that's the number I hear from people who actually use it. 5.5-6 hours max under heavy usage. OTOH, 13'' MBA can easily last 9+ actual hours considering that nobody (well, almost nobody) works 9 hours straight (but people do work 5 hours straight). This is a BIG difference. This is especially true given that Apple is clearly telling us with the port design on rMB that it's not really meant to be plugged in during the day and it should be good enough to last on a battery charge. It's not now which is why MBA is still around. In a couple of years rMB should get better in terms of battery life and processing power and MBA will be gone but it won't happen this year or in 2016.

 

[Edgar Spayce]

No, I'm neither. Just a college student who uses a laptop for work. Look man, I don't insult people, so I don't like being insulted. Paid "hidden community manager" for who, Intel? If you mean Apple, no, it's really Intel boosting the battery life, and I complain too much about Apple here to be a shill (enough that I've been called a shill for some crap like Samsung). Are you one of those guys who wants Apple to use AMD CPUs or make ARM CPUs for their Macs? Because sorry, but the benchmarks would show that that's a bad idea. I think you'll reply with some empty sarcastic remark or call me an idiot again, so please surprise me.

Ad-hominem attacks aside, the points still out there for consideration:
- People need battery life, not 1337 gaming graphics, on MacBook Airs.
- Intel has greatly improved iGPU performance recently, not just battery life.
- Apple still has the rMBP with a dGPU option.
- I'm still wondering why you're so against me bringing up CS:GO.

1. People always need more battery, but given the current autonomy of Macbooks this is useless compared to the urgent lack of performance
2. Intel GPUs are craps of craps period. You can't DO anything as soon as it's related to video, science, graphics, business...and if you don't do any of these, good for you then you probably don't even need to pay extra for a Macbook "Pro" in the first place
3. No there's no such option, there overpriced 15" with a dGPU, no 13" with that, in fact I the Macbook Pro have nothing of a "pro" computer anymore
4. Because CS is a 15 years old game with crap graphic that could work on any device including smartphone, it hardly qualifies as a benchmark for graphics.

 

[dampfnudel]

So, you're admitting and acknowledging that Tim purposely crippled and dumbed down the rMB, and is using a strategy to get us to continually upgrade from baby, to walking, to running? Or, you're saying that Tim is incapable of producing a fully mature machine, right now!

This is over the top bean-counting, screw the customer, planned obsolescence. Apple, with Tim Cook as CEO, is no longer interested in producing superior products, it's all about increasing profit margins.

Well, you have to admit the rMB looks good and for some, it's functional enough for them. Of course for the price you pay, it should be a little more mature than it is. Maybe Apple should've released it in 2016 when they could've made it more appealing and it wouldn't require too much to do that.

 

[Steve121178]

Yes it is needed. It is needed by many, obviously not by you though. Glad to see you've bought completely into what Apple tells you.

Remind me why the non Retina Macbook is one of their best selling laptops, despite being over priced and outdated?

Thus going back to my point. A lineup that catered to a wide range of people would be great.

It sells well because it's cheap. No one's buying it because they love out-dated tech.

If Apple thought what you wanted was relevant it would be in today's models.

 

[Simoleon547]

If we went by all of the "up to X more hours of battery life" claims from Intel, we would be at 40 or 50 hours of battery life. Hence the importance of the "X performance increase OR X hours more battery life."

 

[oldmacs]

It sells well because it's cheap. No one's buying it because they love out-dated tech.

If Apple thought what you wanted was relevant it would be in today's models.

Again, its not cheap. The Air is cheaper, and the Retina Macbook pro is not that much more expensive.

The majority of people I know who bought on recently paid more for it because they wanted something. One wanted it so he could put his own SDD in, two frequently watched DVDs, one wanted a large hard-drive etc.

I purchased one two months ago, as Apple gave me a Retina Pro as a warranty replacement for my original 2012 cMBP, but it didn't work for me. For the same price I was able to get an i7 which exceeds the base i5 in the retina pro, a 1TB SSD and the ability to go to 16GB of ram in the future.

What Apple thinks is or isn't relevant doesn't really matter. Apple has been wrong before. We're not talking the majority here of course, but the Non Retina pro fills a niche.

If they simply gave it a Broadwell or Haswell processor it would no longer be outdated tech.

 

[chucker23n1]

Are people expecting more than 16GB of RAM anytime soon in a Mac laptop?

Probably a revision or two out. If I'm not mistaken, the chipset doesn't support it for the type of memory Apple uses.

 

[MacsRgr8]

The day Apple ditch Intel is the day I walk away from Apple. Intel are vastly under-appreciated in the industry. No one comes close to their tech.

Don't get emotionally tied wth Apple's suppliers. Time has taught us that:

Before the "Intel-switch" many Mac-fans were PPC addicted, and hated Intel. Most were G5-additcts: IBM made those.
Before that (G3 and G4 - time) almost all Apple-enthusiasts were Motorola-fans. They made these CPU's.
And, long before that, Apple used 68x architecture. All Mac-fans adored 68x. At the time Apple-enthusiasts hated IBM ("Big Brother")

Tech-suppliers are time-limited. Especially for Apple.

Intel has been the favourite CPU manufacturer for about 10 years now. Apple / OS X / Intel are doing well.
But, time moves one.. so does tech... and the Ax is catching up to the mobile Intel-CPU line-up.

I wonder how the A9 will stack up to the CPU used in the 12' MacBook retina.

Apple will always choose which is best. ATM it is Intel for the CPU's.
Before that it was IBM, before that Motorola.
I think next will be the Ax.

 

[ipadpro]

so how many times fater than current macbook ??? i will grab it if it 50 % more faster performance

 

[sudo1996]

The day Apple ditch Intel is the day I walk away from Apple. Intel are vastly under-appreciated in the industry. No one comes close to their tech.

Or Intel may fall behind some day. I say Apple should use whatever is the mainstream processor that the Windows and Linux PC world uses because that's what'll win out and pull ahead. Plus compatibility is nice.

 

[sudo1996]

so how many times fater than current macbook ??? i will grab it if it 50 % more faster performance

Depends what aspect of performance you're measuring.

 

[sudo1996]

You do realize you would probably be able to run every single iOS app right off the bat. So you'd have your MS office, also you'd have it online.

It'd be more of a "hey, you already have an iOS app, just scale it up".

As for your iCloud argument, you'll find no differing opinion of it from me. I wouldn't go as far to say it "sucks" because I've never had an iCloud issue personally, but many on the forums would say otherwise.

That's like scaling up an iPhone app for an iPad, only worse because it's a keyboard/mouse instead of touch. You can't do that and expect an acceptable user experience.

Re iCloud: I like iCloud for the most part, but there are definitely sucky things about it. Storage prices are one. Mainly, iCloud backup has been horrendously unreliable for me. I couldn't download the backup to extract this one photo I needed, so I had to wipe/restore my sacrificial iPod touch to retrieve it, and the restore process randomly failed three times before working. Never again. STILL, I think people complain excessively about iCloud. I've experienced the same level of frustration even with some of Google's services.

 

[ipadpro]

how faster skylake than current ???

i need something 30-50 % faster

 

[chucker23n1]

how faster skylake than current ???

i need something 30-50 % faster

Has the possibility of reading the article occurred to you?

 

[SchneiderMan]

Nice, now we just need somebody to come up with a higher resolution front camera sensor and we will have... well, a better MacBook.

I think we can all agree that more horsepower should be the number one priority. Having purchased a RMB myself, I kinda feel cheated now that months after Intel released new chips. Apple could have waited a bit longer.

 

[KrisLord]

so how many times fater than current macbook ??? i will grab it if it 50 % more faster performance

17% CPU increase from synthetic benchmarks.

 

[sudo1996]

But of course, the real mistake you're making is that you think a degree is worth it at all. With a few exceptions, almost everything useful that I ever learned, I taught myself outside of school. I learned mostly by searching on the internet, asking questions on forums, and tinkering with my own equipment (an Adruino, an old Mac Mini, a Motorola surfboard, etc). The most valuable part of school wasn't the actual lectures or the assignments, but the access to office hours to sit down and discuss things with your professors - the good ones know a lot more than what they cover in class.

That's OK if you want to be an app developer, website guy, or GUI guy. Self-teaching works well for things like learning programming languages and environments, but CS class is about learning theory that you'll need for things like backend. And it's also about advancing our technology or building new theories upon old ones (which go together). I also find it a lot more interesting than dealing with the nuances of whatever environment you're using, so I assume others do too.

 

[chucker23n1]

That's OK if you want to be an app developer, website guy, or GUI guy. Self-teaching works well for things like learning programming languages and environments, but CS class is about learning theory that you'll need for things like backend.

Oh please. Almost anyone who studies CS actually wants to develop software.

 

[sudo1996]

Oh please. Almost anyone who studies CS actually wants to develop software.

Yep, and some of them want to develop software that requires theory or actually advance technology rather than making things that have been already done from a technical standpoint. CS education helps with that. Not that there's anything wrong with making yet-another-app as long as it's something you enjoy and can make money off of.

 

[manu chao]

The Macbook Pro Retina is missing a lot of the attractive features of the Non retina Pro:

Ports

Yeah, Ethernet and FW. The rMBP has a second TB and an HDMI port instead. Two ports lost and two ports gained, I call that a draw (with a TB port offering more options than an Ethernet or FW port).

expandability

The only valid point if you need large amounts of storage. But you are limited to SATA3 speeds, peaking at about 550 MB/s unless you striped two SSDs. The current rMBP offers about 4x that speed.

battery life indicator

Really? If that is a major concern for you, I don't know what to say.

IR sensor

They haven't shipped an IR remote with Macs for a long time (my 2009 MBP didn't come with one nor any of my later Macs). Nobody except with 7+year old Macs actually still has such a remote. Frontrow, which was what the IR sensor and the remote were added for, was removed from OS X with Lion.

 

[chucker23n1]

They haven't shipped an IR remote with Macs for a long time (my 2009 MBP didn't come with one nor any of my later Macs). Nobody except with 7+year old Macs actually still has such a remote. Frontrow, which was what the IR sensor and the remote were added for, was removed from OS X with Lion.

I do miss controlling Keynote with it.