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1- Price (remove the touchbar and lower it $400).
Why would you believe the price reduction would be even near that? The 2-TB-port 13” MBP just gained a Touchbar (incl. fingerprint reader) and it did not change one iota in price. On top of that, any new MBP would still keep TouchID which along the T2 still costs something.
 
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The 13.3” presumably would become a 14”.
...Or... the 13" stays the same but gets an even smaller footprint through form factor and screen bezel reduction. I know people that love their 13-inch and wish it were even smaller through reducing the footprint around the screen and bezels. Although a 14-inch MBP would be sweet!
 
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If they get rid of that underutilized half-baked touch bar they can lower the price by $300.

I miss the days when you could buy a new 15.4 MBP for $1999.

Imagine if they used that extra room for more ports, or extra battery space for battery life, or both!!
 
... but will Apple get rid of that useless touchbar and give us our ports back and make it modular and fixable by third party repair shops?

Long live Louis Rossmann.
 
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No, those are not important issues. The main issues are, in order of importance:

1 - fix keyboard
2 - remove touchbar (or make it haptic so merely brushing it doesn’t cause it to trigger, and add real escape key)
3 - improve thermals
4 - price

Two and three are VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES That many Apple Users currently have.(thats what they fixed with newly announced Mac Pro).

2- All soldered components
3- Non-upgradable RAM and SSD
 
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Two and three are VERY IMPORTANT(thats what they fixed with newly announced Mac Pro).

2- All soldered components
3- Non-upgradable RAM and SSD

The only real reason for this is to get lower priced 3rd party upgrades.

I haven't wanted or needed to open up my computer since 2012 and yes I am a 'pro' who used to build their own computers.
If Apple went down this route and changed their designs in such a way that it

1. allowed ram and ssd upgrades
2. fully utilised CPU via better cooling

then I will be buying a PC workstation with an Nvidia GPU in it. All other benefits would have gone out the window - ie a super portable near workstation laptop, which the MBP currently is.

You buy desktops for power and laptops for portability. Trying to have both in a laptop either means overheating / lack of portability or some other compromise.
 
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...Or... the 13" stays the same but gets an even smaller footprint through form factor and screen bezel reduction. I know people that love their 13-inch and wish it were even smaller through reducing the footprint around the screen and bezels. Although a 14-inch MBP would be sweet!
Yeah, smaller footprint 13.3” could be in the cards. I’m probably just channeling my own wants.

Personally, I’d have liked a 14” MB, so I’m a little disappointed that the 12” was EOL’d. 12/14 MB, 13” MBA and 14/16 MBP would be a pretty sweet lineup imho.
 
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The key point besides price is functionality. Will it have the necessary ports, i.e., SD card, USB-A, or continue this stupid thinness craze. We want FUNCTIONALITY and not having to look for adapters. A couple of millimeters isn't a deal breaker. LACK OF FUNCTIONALITY IS!

It’s 2019. Update your peripherals, man. USB-A is dead. DVD drives aren’t coming back either.
 
I suspect that this is true and it would not be of Apple's doing but instead lie at Intel's doorstep. It seems the yield and process maturity of the 10 nm fabrication process does not yet lend itself to the higher core count and higher frequency of these chips.

I’m not sure Apple is first in line at Intel - they’re not touted with the Ice Lake ‘Project Athena’ specs - Maybe they’re in the back of the line for any Ice Lake chips... I’d find it disappointing if other laptop makers are shipping ice lake goodness for a lot less than apple charges for 8th/9th gen MBPs.
 
The price is so key here. I can remember buying the top of the line MacBook Pro for a little over $2K. Now the top model is approaching $4K and over. So expensive for a laptop.
 
This is going to be jaw dropping expensive even by Apple standards. This is for the professional market and a companion to the Mac Pro, not the iPhone. Expect $8K starting price with i9/32/1024 and next year's OLED will be $9K start. And they will sell out because inventory will be kept intentionally low to create the perception of demand.
 
Because it's a waste of power and you wouldn't be able to see it. You already can't see individual pixels, that's the point of retina.

If they were going to do anything making it 120hz would be far more beneficial.

I think what he means is true 2x retina vs scaled. So the "native" res would be 4k but the "default" setting would be 2k. As for "4k" being 16:9 vs 16:10... whatever works.
 
The only real reason for this is to get lower priced 3rd party upgrades.

I haven't wanted or needed to open up my computer since 2012 and yes I am a 'pro' who used to build their own computers.
If Apple went down this route and changed their designs in such a way that it

1. allowed ram and ssd upgrades
2. fully utilised CPU via better cooling

then I will be buying a PC workstation with an Nvidia GPU in it. All other benefits would have gone out the window - ie a super portable near workstation laptop, which the MBP currently is.

You buy desktops for power and laptops for portability. Trying to have both in a laptop either means overheating / lack of portability or some other compromise.

Apple gains nothing by opening up RAM and SSDs to third parties. They aren't a clone vendor. People can either buy with their maxed out options or accept that it won't ever be that way. BTO doesn't mean BTO with options later on.
 
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NAVI isn't going to shrink the GDDR6 or HBM2 chips and if pair NAVI with just basic LPDDIR4 then probably not going to 'smoke' much.

65W TDP ( yes Intel will blow far past their nominal TDP for the 8-10 core models ) .
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14523/amd-ryzen-3000-apus-up-to-vega-11-more-mhz-under-150

Where Intel Gen11 graphics have basically doubled.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14664/testing-intel-ice-lake-10nm/8

Intel is throwing about as equally as big of a transistor budget at the GPU in latest generation and there isn't a huge gap when limited by regular RAM caps.





ARM isn't static nor is it just one implementation. There are ARM implementations that are tweaked toward data center servers. ARM itself is in the process of rolling one out.

106739.png

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13959/arm-announces-neoverse-n1-platform/4

AMD has some catching up to do there ( presuming ARM's simulations are accurate. )

Now, is this what Apple has in their current implementations? No. Not even close in terms of generally useful I/O bandwidth or data throughput.

NOTE: The figures here represent single-threaded performance in SPEC.

Spare me this test. More importantly throw ROME at that Single Threaded custom designed SoC and then show me the Multithreaded also. What's that? It sucks ass? Already know ARM sucks at the real work--database processing, AI, Machine Learning, Tensor calculations, etc. There's a reason the new Supercomputer is AMD post ROME based CPU and Post Navi GPGPUs.

Nothing will touch that combo and Cray already knows it, so does the Department of Energy.
 
Headphone jack = no buy. Seriously - any wired headphones worth their salt demand an external amp, and otherwise wireless is more convenient.

Look, as a software developer I want the best CPU, memory, and SSD available for building. I want good graphics for fun time. I want a display I enjoy looking at. And I want a stable/reliable system. Other than that - get rid of everything and give me a slim, convenient, sexy machine to carry around day to day.
 
There are no Ice Lake 45w chips - unless you want to go backwards to a 28w quad-core with relatively low clock speeds (a lot of the 28w is GPU), you're stuck with 14nm++++ in the MBP 15" or 16" (as is every user of high-end 15"+ notebooks from any vendor). Not only that, but the next generation at 45w (mid-2020) is Comet Lake (14nm+++++), and it's even possible that the mid-2021 generation will be Rocket Lake (14nm++++++). Desktop chips aren't expected to see 10nm until late 2021 or early 2022, since they have to go through both Comet Lake and Rocket Lake first, and Comet Lake is clearly on the roadmap for the 45w notebook chips with Rocket Lake possible.

As for the price (it's not going to start anywhere near $8k by the way - under $3500 for a nicely configured model (something like i9/16/1TB/Vega 20) - extra $200 for 32 GB RAM), all the 15" slim workstation notebooks can get very expensive with lots of RAM and storage.

Many of the others do start under $2000, because they're available with quad-core i5s, or with 1920x1080 screens, or with 8 GB of RAM. Getting the latest HP zBook Studio up to the specs the upper-end MBP can reach is around $6000 with 4 TB of storage and 32 GB of RAM (same i9-9980HK as the Mac, NVidia Quadro P2000 that is substantially slower than the Vega 20). It can have 64 GB of RAM, and that's $6600. The Lenovo P1 is about $500-$1000 more expensive in the same configuration (also goes to 64 GB of RAM). Both HP and Lenovo offer dual SSD slots, but the only way to 4 TB is 2x2TB, so both slots are full.

The best deal is the Dell Precision 5540, which reaches about $4300, but with only 2 TB of fast SSD - the only further expansion option is SATA, and Dell only offers spinning drives for that slot, although a user could put in a SATA SSD themselves. It's almost exactly the same price as the 15" MacBook Pro, but without the expensive option to go to 4 TB.

No matter what configuration you choose, if they can reach a comparable configuration, the Mac will be cheaper than a Lenovo P1, a little cheaper than a ZBook Studio, and within $100-$200 of a Dell 5540. You can get the others cheaper, but only by omitting things that are standard on the Mac.

Don't compare the MacBook Pro to 6-8 lb gaming machines with cheap displays - they can have the same CPU and comparable or better GPUs for less money - but they aren't anywhere near as usable outside of games. The Razer Blade is a different story, but that's well into the MBP 15" price range, and has lousy storage options - 512GB is the top option - you can have a GeForce RTX 2080 and a 4K OLED (!!!) screen, but you get a 512GB SSD with that... Their new Studio models will probably fix that, but expect to pay...

Where Apple can be criticized on price isn't that their high-end configurations are too expensive - they're close to parity with Dell (with one extra odd option), slightly cheaper than HP and substantially cheaper than Lenovo. They offer different tradeoffs than Razer, but comparable pricing. It's that they offer no entry to a notebook with a screen larger than 13" under $2299. Anyone else will sell you an upper-midrange 15" notebook with either a 6-core CPU but integrated graphics or a quad-core with a low-end discrete GPU (and a decent screen) in the $1500-$2000 range.

I suspect Apple's response to this problem (if they're not simply blind to it) will be to release a 15" MacBook Air (or maybe they'll call it a 15" MacBook). Even thinner and lighter than the Pro (3-3.5 lbs), 28W Ice Lake quad-core with decent integrated GPU, starts at $1999 (maybe they'll give up some integrated GPU performance and use a 15-25 W Ice Lake CPU in a $1699-$1799 model). Base configuration is something like 16/256 if it's $1999, maybe 8/256 at $1699.

When that comes out, the 15" Pro goes away, and the base 16" Pro is something like $2499 or $2599. The 16" Pro this fall is not going to be that base model - it's going to be a generously configured ~$3299 and up model, with the 15" Pro remaining as the option below that until next Spring/Summer. The 16" will probably top out around $6000 (9980HK/64GB/4TB/Vega 20 (or better)) - unless they offer an 8TB storage option, which could create the mythical $8K notebook - but it would be something like a $5200 notebook maxed out in every way except storage (9980HK/64GB/2TB/Vega 20) with a $2800 SSD!
 
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If the new scissor mechanism proves to be great for majority of people, I wonder how it's gonna impact current line sales. I'd wait for 2020 refresh.
 
If the new scissor mechanism proves to be great for majority of people, I wonder how it's gonna impact current line sales. I'd wait for 2020 refresh.
People who are truly bothered by the keyboard are likely waiting anyway.
 
... but will Apple get rid of that useless touchbar and fix the keyboard and give us a headphone jack and give us our ports back and make it modular and fixable by third party repair shops?

Long live Louis Rossmann.
 
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ummmm... I'm going to go with no. Clearly you are right on the iMac Pro, Mac Pro and reference monitor, but you won't get the need for the price of Xeons or a reference monitor, unless you actually need one. But MBP are inline with comparable Dell's and HP's (an no don't compare a craptop version with the MBP, compare a comparably specced one)

Now RAM and SSD prices - yah you got them there.

I’m going to predict that pricing will start at $2999 with ~$3500 being the configuration ‘sweet spot’ (depending on your needs).

True, probably not expensive for pros for what you’ll get - in the same way as the Mac Pro will be, too.

I guess when I say ‘expensive’, the pricing is going to be high enough that many prosumers will feel disappointed. Again, this machine will simply not be for them.
 
I don't care if it has 800 cores, after the last MBP I bought and seeing how hot it turns up on soft-loads I am done with Apple laptops as working machines. I am not sure how it is on the PC side of things, but 90C for playing 20 year old game is not acceptable. I mean. the boiling tempreture of water is 100C.
 
Recent roadmaps show that there are no high-TDP mobile processor for Ice Lake. Intel can't be knocked on not delivering what they never put on the roadmap. That is in the same boat as wailing on Apple for the missing xMac and the missing 5+ lbs desktop replacement laptop they don't make.

There may have been a Cannon Lake one on a 3-4 year old roadmap but Apple has known that wasn't coming for a very long time at this point.

The road mapped solution in the "H" ( high TDP mobile) space in 2019-2020 has been roadmapped at a 14nm solution (Comet Lake).

The high TDP that Intel is planning to do on Ice Lake 10nm is only in the Xeon SP space (way out of 'mobile' land ).
The follow on Tiger Lake/Willow Cove may do better on the 10nm+ (or ++) process. [ AMD has high end mobile processors last in their roll out process for newest generation so Intel may have Tiger Lake ready by +/- 3 months of AMD getting to Zen 3 on high end mobile. They have time. ]
I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't knocking Intel, I was just stating the facts -- that the limiting factor in Apple not having 10th-gen Intel CPU's in their upcoming (speculated) 16" MBP isn't that (contrary to MBP's wording) Apple isn't ready to use such CPU's, it's that Intel doesn't have them available (in the TDP category appropriate for this machine). Again, I wasn't criticizing Intel for not having them ready, I'm just stating the fact that the reason they're not going to be the new MBP isn't that Apple isn't ready to use them, it's that Intel isn't ready to deliver them.

As to whether Intel should or should not be criticized for the state of their roadmap, that's an entirely different subject that I did not touch upon.
 
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