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What to expect from the next MBPr itteration?

touchspark

touchspark

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 12, 2014
4
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And when do you think it will be out? I am guessing they'll release an ugpraded version alongside the new retina Air scheduled for March/April 2015. That's about 90 days away. And if you add that to the number of days between release cycles for the Air and Pro they are just about a year apart, so I'm guessing that's when they'll release a upgraded version of the Pro, which is what I'm in the market for.
 
Between April and June

touchspark said:
And when do you think it will be out? I am guessing they'll release an ugpraded version alongside the new retina Air scheduled for March/April 2015. That's about 90 days away. And if you add that to the number of days between release cycles for the Air and Pro they are just about a year apart, so I'm guessing that's when they'll release a upgraded version of the Pro, which is what I'm in the market for.
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They are waiting for the release of Intel's broadwell chips. I would imagine other than that they will be exactly the same. DDR4 is some way away from making any real difference so I can't see that being included until skylake everything else is already as good as it gets. The high end 15 inch will get an NVIDIA 8XXM of some description other than that I don't see any real changes...
 
I expect no changes to the enclosure of the laptop, other then apple's attempting to make it thinner. I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped the dGPU altogether. Other then that, I'm not sure what else to expect (other then the Broadwell chipset of course).
 
maflynn said:
I expect no changes to the enclosure of the laptop, other then apple's attempting to make it thinner. I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped the dGPU altogether. Other then that, I'm not sure what else to expect (other then the Broadwell chipset of course).
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I'd expect Thunderbolt 3.

Wouldn't be surprised if the dGPU disappeared, but it's likely that Apple will bring in a GM204 NVIDIA dGPU, considering how power-efficient the GM chips are.
 
Apple will try to remove the bulge from the bottom and make it thinner. Other than that, the current rMBP is as good as it gets without being too thin to have a USB port.
 
touchspark said:
And when do you think it will be out? I am guessing they'll release an ugpraded version alongside the new retina Air scheduled for March/April 2015. That's about 90 days away. And if you add that to the number of days between release cycles for the Air and Pro they are just about a year apart, so I'm guessing that's when they'll release a upgraded version of the Pro, which is what I'm in the market for.
Click to expand...

There is no realistic possibility for Apple to update the MBP line until Intel are shipping the 37W and 47W Broadwell CPUs in large quantities. That will not happen before summer. The 15W (and possibly 28W) Broadwell CPUs will probably be announced at CES and ship in quantity in February. So we could possibly see a new MacBook Air as early as February or March, but not an updated MacBook Pro.

Thunderbolt 3 (and Displayport 1.3) are a possibility, but would require a discrete Thunderbolt controller (such as Apple incorporated into the first generation rMBP) because the chipset for Broadwell will have an integrated Thunderbolt 2 controller.

Broadwell does not support DDR4. DDR4 will have to wait for Skylake.

The high-end 15" MBP will probably either get an 850M or similar or be finally free of the discrete GPU and rely only on the integrated Iris Pro 6200. 50/50 chance is my guess.
 
According to what I've heard from people who have gotten their hands on pre-release hardware we're not really looking at a major bump in CPU performance. Broadwell is basically just a die shrink of Haswell with improved integrated graphics.

Thus my guess is that we're going to see:
- 20-50% faster integrated graphics
- 1-2.5 hours longer battery life
- Devices running less hot
- 15" dGPU machine is ether discontinued or replaces the 750M with something more recent (860M or R7 200M-series)
 
Last edited:
So it would be safe to assume there won't be a MBPr refresh this april/march and that I should just go ahead and buy the current mid-2014 model?
 
- new reversible USB ports
- top model will have 4k
- 20% better battery life
- new chipset
- maybe 1080p isight if 4k is added.

Right now I think the Retina MBP line is pretty solid, it's a laptop not much more you can do to it. Things like graphics and battery life are what is important to majority Apple MBP users. People like web devs, editors, musicians, graphic artist, students, programmers, photographers etc... battery life would probably be #1 followed by 4k for photographers and graphic/video people.

The i5 and i7 meet most user needs with speed. I don't see a big change too much with that. Apple has built a solid system in my opinion.
 
Based on what people are guessing in this thread, would now be a good time to pick up a new RMBP? I have an Early 2011, it just had its first motherboard replacement. I do a lot of photography work and editing and there are numerous upgrades I would enjoy with this laptop:
-Retina Screen (even though I also edit on an external monitor)
-USB 3.0 (I don't have any thunderbolt hard drives as I refuse to pay the ridiculous prices for them....I just picked up 4 USB 3.0 external 2TB hard drives for $300!!)
-Solid State Drives (My current has a 512GB 7200 RPM hard drive).

Unless there is a real strong reason for me to wait until the next refresh, I'm thinking the upgrades above alone are enough to justify doing this now?

Thanks,
 
GuitarDTO said:
Based on what people are guessing in this thread, would now be a good time to pick up a new RMBP? I have an Early 2011, it just had its first motherboard replacement. I do a lot of photography work and editing and there are numerous upgrades I would enjoy with this laptop:
-Retina Screen (even though I also edit on an external monitor)
-USB 3.0 (I don't have any thunderbolt hard drives as I refuse to pay the ridiculous prices for them....I just picked up 4 USB 3.0 external 2TB hard drives for $300!!)
-Solid State Drives (My current has a 512GB 7200 RPM hard drive).

Unless there is a real strong reason for me to wait until the next refresh, I'm thinking the upgrades above alone are enough to justify doing this now?

Thanks,
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Go for it. the leap from HDD to PCIe SSD is a significant one. i will be placing my order today on macmall.com for the 15-inch MBPr. is there any place that would be cheaper or do you know of any additional discounts i may apply?
 
touchspark said:
Go for it. the leap from HDD to PCIe SSD is a significant one. i will be placing my order today on macmall.com for the 15-inch MBPr. is there any place that would be cheaper or do you know of any additional discounts i may apply?
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I get a 5% discount through work, but Best Buy currently has the 15" on sale for the same 5%...so I'll probably just finance it using my BB Credit card to get an additional 5% back in rewards : ) Planning to go to the store tomorrow!
 
I hope to get broad well, reversible usb and space grey options! Probably unrealistic but I'm holding on as long as I can to make the purchase. I expect to buy one by September of next year
 
Does anyone have reason to suspect we may see some other features that aren't dependent on either Broadwell or Skylake, such as TouchID, screen improvements, etc?
 
Nope

jsagurton said:
Does anyone have reason to suspect we may see some other features that aren't dependent on either Broadwell or Skylake, such as TouchID, screen improvements, etc?
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There are no current rumours of screen change or Touch ID, it'll be closer to the time when we start to find out what suppliers are doing. It is possible they move to an IGZO screen but I think this may be used only in the rumoured new macbook air retina.
 
jsagurton said:
Does anyone have reason to suspect we may see some other features that aren't dependent on either Broadwell or Skylake, such as TouchID, screen improvements, etc?
Click to expand...

touchid would be a nice addition but I've not heard anything regarding the MBP. I really don't think apple is investing too much time and energy in their MBP line, well not as much as their iDevices.
 
I think in the top end 15" model we will see the Broadwell cpu, the Nvidia 850m GPU with 2 or maybe 3 GB Ram, the same design case, maybe a screen resolution bump but not sure, memory up to 32GB DDR4, storage options the same, a faster internal pci bus.

Maybe the next wireless standard but I don't even know if any routers with it yet? User replaceable battery's would be nice but I doubt it.
 
apolloa said:
I think in the top end 15" model we will see the Broadwell cpu, the Nvidia 850m GPU with 2 or maybe 3 GB Ram, the same design case, maybe a screen resolution bump but not sure, memory up to 32GB DDR4, storage options the same, a faster internal pci bus.

Maybe the next wireless standard but I don't even know if any routers with it yet? User replaceable battery's would be nice but I doubt it.
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sounds extremely unrealistic
 
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