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2012 Macbook Pro Redesign

pgiguere1 said:
Keep in mind that Apple only makes a redesign once every 4 years. The PowerBook G3 was released in 1997, the PowerBook G4 in 2001, the MacBook Pro in 2004 and the unibody MacBook Pro in 2008. Apple never considerably changed the internals within a design generation, offering only incremental updates to the CPU, GPU and storage capacity but keeping the same screen and storage type.

....

tl;dr;tl;dr: The next MacBook Pro is gonna be awesome.
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Great piece of speculation. Most of what you say makes sense. Keeping in line with your philosophy that they are designing 4 years ahead. Do you think they will include room for a discrete GPU, or is the solution of the future to rely exclusively on a SOC like the iPad does. Another possibility is that the people who need the power of a discrete GPU could in the future use an external GPU connected through the thunderbolt port.
 
Rockoar said:
What makes you think they'll pack everything you said in the first release? between 2012 and 2016 there will be several different updates so they could start by using only HDD to then using HDD+SDD for later using just SDD. This is just an example of how things could be, so I don't think the new design/specs (obviously) would be the same comparing the model we'll discover in a few weeks from now to that of a few years from now.
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Agree with this. The only guarantee with the next MacBook Pro is a case redesign that likely puts the size/form more in line with the Air, which suggests that the ODD is probably on the way out. The shift to the App Store generally, and the exclusive distribution for Mountain Lion supports this theory. I think it's maybe a year too early, but Apple typically dives into these things early, and the Super Drive won't be going away.

I think a small SSD to run the OS is possible, but more than that? I doubt the default will be SSD because SSD drives are still very limited in capacity, and I agree with other comments that, these days, the bare minimum should be 256 GB. (I say that as someone with a 2-year old MBP with a 128 GB SSD who has been out of space and relying on external drives virtually since I bought it.)

Retina display this year? I know there are rumors, but I just don't see it. I realize the Macs sell at a much slower clip than iPads and iPhones, but still. Can Apple single handedly revolutionize LCD production across the portable spectrum in a year? Really?

It would be nice, though. The more retina there is out there, the faster they can up-res the Internet. The vast majority of the Internet looks like trash on my new iPad.
 
Why do u think sol ate? Why should they build up so much inventory if they could sell them immediately. And I dont think that Apple needs a special event for their MBPs. Everyone who is waiting for the new ones is checking continuously by himself. And all the other people that want to buy a Apple notebook will just go into the store and by anyways.

So I am still hoping and praying that we are gonna see something in April! :rolleyes:


pgiguere1 said:
My guess is around July.

With the delay of Ivy Bridge, the soonest we could see new mobile CPUs is May or June, depending on the length of the delay (Intel didn't specify a new release date). With WWDC scheduled at the beginning of June, I feel like Apple wouldn't announce new MacBook Pro's at the same time. Apple usually tries to distribute new announcements evenly throughout the year to keep people interested. WWDC is now software-focused and showing off both iOS 6 and Mountain Lion is enough content for this event already.

I think Apple would hold a media event specifically for the new MacBook Pro design, and could also announce a MacBook Air spec bump, just like they did in 2008 when the unibody design was announced:


Waiting until July would allow to have a simultaneous MBP/MBA release since Intel said that ULV Ivy Bridge CPUs would have a longer delay than regular mobile (LV) CPUs. It would also make sense to have their release coincide with Mountain Lion's release, so they don't force new Mac buyers to upgrade their OS only a month or so after they bought their new hardware. That's what they did with the release of Lion and the 2011 MacBook Air and Mac mini.

I don't think they would wait until the end of the year since there would be no new technologies useful the their laptop line available by then (Haswell will only be available in early 2013), and there are a lot of other stuff to announce around that time (iPhone 5, iOS 6, iMac, iPods).

That's just my guess though, nobody knows for sure besides Apple.
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throAU said:
CDs? DVDs? You're still using them, and haven't ripped them already? You like carting a box of discs around everywhere? Instead of whining about an external drive, why aren't you whining as much about carrying your optical media around?
Click to expand...

Excuse my lack of knowledge on this subject, but how does one install newly purchased software which comes on a disc if you have no drive? For example, if I bought Photoshop tomorrow would it be a disc in the box for an install or something else!? :confused:

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pgiguere1 said:
Keep in mind that Apple only makes a redesign once every 4 years. The PowerBook G3 was released in 1997, the PowerBook G4 in 2001, the MacBook Pro in 2004 and the unibody MacBook Pro in 2008. Apple never considerably changed the internals within a design generation, offering only incremental updates to the CPU, GPU and storage capacity but keeping the same screen and storage type.

I think the next MacBook Pro will be no exception, and I expect it to last from 2012 to 2016 without needing to update its screen or storage type. While some people aren't ready yet for the loss of the optical drive, and even more people aren't ready to sacrifice the large capacity of hard drives to get an all-SSD laptop, I think it's inevitable at this point.

While SSDs are a bit expensive for their capacity right now, you have to consider how much smaller they are compared to a HDD, whether in 1.8" form or blade type like in the MBA. While I'm sure some people would like a HDD+SSD combo right now because of the high price of SSD, I think this will soon be a non-issue and HDDs will definitely be a thing of the past later in the design cycle, which I remind you should end around 2016. Saving the space of a 2.5" HDD inside a laptop is enormous, and I'm sure people will care more about battery life than about having an outdated secondary HDD, especially in 2015-2016.

I'm sure SSD prices will be much lower in the next MBP than in the current one. For one, they will be mass producing them. Mass production of millions of units of anything allow much lower prices. Just look at the new Retina display in the iPad, this thing would have cost way too much to be put in a 500$ tablet if it wasn't produced in millions. Also, Apple recently bought Israel-based flash memory part maker Anobit, so it should be cheaper if they produce those themselves. Apple also generally tend to have a smaller profit margin for their laptops at the beginning of a design cycle than at their end, just for the sake of offering design and price uniformity throughout years.

I expect the SSD options to be 128GB, 256GB and 512GB to start, with maybe a 1TB SSD option later or as an expensive BTO option. While this would represent less storage than current MBPs, you have to consider that Apple thinks long-term. They know SSD is the future and that they won't redesign the MBP for another 4 years. Just look at the first iPhone and iPod touch. The iPhone only had 4/8GB of storage and the iPod had 8/16GB. That wasn't a lot of storage, but they still did it because they knew flash storage-based mobile devices were the future, and Apple wants to show iconic designs that last throughout the years. They constantly want to prove they can predict the future and that they were "right from the beginning" in order to make themselves look like the tech leaders.

Since the design will last for another 4 years, I also expect the screens to be excellent. If they market them as Retina displays or not is only up to Apple, as they can pretty much play with that term by just choosing any "typical viewing distance" they want. You can already say the current 17" MBP has a Retina display if you sit far enough from it. I think the real question is whether or not Apple will attempt to double the resolution on each axis, as they did with the iPhone 4 and the new iPad. While those screens would be definitely pricy to make, they would solve the problem of having tiny UI elements on high-res screens. Just imagine using OS X's UI on a 1920x1200 13" screen, everything would be sharp but way too small. Doubling them at that resolution would however make them too big, like on a 960x600 monitor. To have screens that appear sharp to both our 2012 standards and the 2016 standards and that have reasonably-sized UI elements, I think Apple has to aim high with 2560x1600 and 2880x1800 screens.

As for the guts, the MBP will keep packing the same Intel high-end mobile LV CPUs and discrete graphics, at least in the 15" and 17" models, which could possibly be the only new MBP models anyway. The exact specs will depend more on Intel/Nvidia/AMD than on Apple. The lack of HDD and ODD will free up some space, but there's not much Apple can do to improve performance if they already pack in the best processors Intel has to offer. It's not like they will decide to have a special motherboard with dual CPU or anything crazy of that sort. That means that even with decent cooling and upgraded performance, the new MBP will still have room left to either pack in a larger battery or shrink the case size to allow for a thinner, more portable machine, or realistically a mix of both.

tl;dr: Don't forget the new design will last until 2016, so they have to pack in future-proof parts like SSD and a high-res screen. Hard drives will be obsolete long before the end of this design generation so don't expect a HDD+SSD combo since portability and longer battery life will be more important than carrying an obsolete piece of tech in the coming years. Apple will do everything they can to offer SSD at a reasonable price so they can move forward to a new, future-proof design. The screen could be double the resolution of the current ones or not. It will be more powerful yet probably offer both better battery life and thinner design. Nothing is mutually exclusive here with all the space we save with the removal of HDD and ODD.

tl;dr;tl;dr: The next MacBook Pro is gonna be awesome.
Click to expand...

Best post out of all these 39 pages. :)
 
Burrel said:
Excuse my lack of knowledge on this subject, but how does one install newly purchased software which comes on a disc if you have no drive? For example, if I bought Photoshop tomorrow would it be a disc in the box for an install or something else!? :confused:
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you can download the program online and then enter in the serial number from the box you bought and then you're good to go. Someone can correct me though if I'm wrong :)
 
Installing without optical drives

The recommended route for MB air is to find a computer with an optical drive and mount that wirelessly. This is what we do in my home. An alternative is to buy a USB-based optical drive. These are getting cheap - Amazon has several under $30.

I hope that helps.

BTW: Thunderbolt is inevitable on the new refresh. Maybe there will be some affordable thunderbolt external optical drives.
 
pgiguere1 said:
Keep in mind that Apple only makes a redesign once every 4 years. The PowerBook G3 was released in 1997, the PowerBook G4 in 2001, the MacBook Pro in 2004 and the unibody MacBook Pro in 2008. Apple never considerably changed the internals within a design generation, offering only incremental updates to the CPU, GPU and storage capacity but keeping the same screen and storage type.

I think the next MacBook Pro will be no exception, and I expect it to last from 2012 to 2016 without needing to update its screen or storage type. While some people aren't ready yet for the loss of the optical drive, and even more people aren't ready to sacrifice the large capacity of hard drives to get an all-SSD laptop, I think it's inevitable at this point.

While SSDs are a bit expensive for their capacity right now, you have to consider how much smaller they are compared to a HDD, whether in 1.8" form or blade type like in the MBA. While I'm sure some people would like a HDD+SSD combo right now because of the high price of SSD, I think this will soon be a non-issue and HDDs will definitely be a thing of the past later in the design cycle, which I remind you should end around 2016. Saving the space of a 2.5" HDD inside a laptop is enormous, and I'm sure people will care more about battery life than about having an outdated secondary HDD, especially in 2015-2016.

I'm sure SSD prices will be much lower in the next MBP than in the current one. For one, they will be mass producing them. Mass production of millions of units of anything allow much lower prices. Just look at the new Retina display in the iPad, this thing would have cost way too much to be put in a 500$ tablet if it wasn't produced in millions. Also, Apple recently bought Israel-based flash memory part maker Anobit, so it should be cheaper if they produce those themselves. Apple also generally tend to have a smaller profit margin for their laptops at the beginning of a design cycle than at their end, just for the sake of offering design and price uniformity throughout years.

I expect the SSD options to be 128GB, 256GB and 512GB to start, with maybe a 1TB SSD option later or as an expensive BTO option. While this would represent less storage than current MBPs, you have to consider that Apple thinks long-term. They know SSD is the future and that they won't redesign the MBP for another 4 years. Just look at the first iPhone and iPod touch. The iPhone only had 4/8GB of storage and the iPod had 8/16GB. That wasn't a lot of storage, but they still did it because they knew flash storage-based mobile devices were the future, and Apple wants to show iconic designs that last throughout the years. They constantly want to prove they can predict the future and that they were "right from the beginning" in order to make themselves look like the tech leaders.

Since the design will last for another 4 years, I also expect the screens to be excellent. If they market them as Retina displays or not is only up to Apple, as they can pretty much play with that term by just choosing any "typical viewing distance" they want. You can already say the current 17" MBP has a Retina display if you sit far enough from it. I think the real question is whether or not Apple will attempt to double the resolution on each axis, as they did with the iPhone 4 and the new iPad. While those screens would be definitely pricy to make, they would solve the problem of having tiny UI elements on high-res screens. Just imagine using OS X's UI on a 1920x1200 13" screen, everything would be sharp but way too small. Doubling them at that resolution would however make them too big, like on a 960x600 monitor. To have screens that appear sharp to both our 2012 standards and the 2016 standards and that have reasonably-sized UI elements, I think Apple has to aim high with 2560x1600 and 2880x1800 screens.

As for the guts, the MBP will keep packing the same Intel high-end mobile LV CPUs and discrete graphics, at least in the 15" and 17" models, which could possibly be the only new MBP models anyway. The exact specs will depend more on Intel/Nvidia/AMD than on Apple. The lack of HDD and ODD will free up some space, but there's not much Apple can do to improve performance if they already pack in the best processors Intel has to offer. It's not like they will decide to have a special motherboard with dual CPU or anything crazy of that sort. That means that even with decent cooling and upgraded performance, the new MBP will still have room left to either pack in a larger battery or shrink the case size to allow for a thinner, more portable machine, or realistically a mix of both.

tl;dr: Don't forget the new design will last until 2016, so they have to pack in future-proof parts like SSD and a high-res screen. Hard drives will be obsolete long before the end of this design generation so don't expect a HDD+SSD combo since portability and longer battery life will be more important than carrying an obsolete piece of tech in the coming years. Apple will do everything they can to offer SSD at a reasonable price so they can move forward to a new, future-proof design. The screen could be double the resolution of the current ones or not. It will be more powerful yet probably offer both better battery life and thinner design. Nothing is mutually exclusive here with all the space we save with the removal of HDD and ODD.

tl;dr;tl;dr: The next MacBook Pro is gonna be awesome.
Click to expand...


Great post but what "if":

1. The next-gen MBP casing has room for a 2.5"HDD at the moment BUT can be phased out when SSDs become cheap enough for 500/1tb options without adding 500-1000$? Making room for a bigger and better battery?
2. The same goes for screens, why wouldn't the put in a 1650x1080 screen now as a base and 1920x1200 upgrade for the 15"? But when the next-gen GPUs (integrated ones i talk about now) are up to par with the much higher resolution of "Retina-Displays" at 2880x1800?

This would mean they can make a bit more profit now and still have a great upgrade roadmap ahead too keep ahead of competition.
 
Macbook pr0 2012.. 17''

Hey guys..

is it gonna be a slimmer 17'' or are they gonna keep it a bit bigger for better performance.. ??

they are just talking about the 13'' and 15'' ..!! what happen to the real PRO..17''
 
I just got a mail from our local Apple reseller store that they are giving up to €500 sale on the current macbook pro's because it's reaching the end of it's cycle.
 
sirio said:
Hey guys..

is it gonna be a slimmer 17'' or are they gonna keep it a bit bigger for better performance.. ??

they are just talking about the 13'' and 15'' ..!! what happen to the real PRO..17''
Click to expand...

The 15" has basically the same specs, and exactly the same, minus the screen, on the high end, you know. I think that there will still definitely be a thick(er) 15 and 17 inch for professionals and hardcore power users.
 
Am I the only one who doesn't actually feel I WANT anything thinner than the MBP I have now?

MBAs just look flimsy to me.
 
Tatonnement said:
Can't stop checking MacRumors 15 times a day! Need redesigned MBP!
Click to expand...
I agree here haha. What do you think they're most likely to do with the 17"?

And I guess when Ivy Bridge is out, everyone will talk about how great Haswell is. But that's technology for you I guess.
 
windowstomac said:
Am I the only one who doesn't actually feel I WANT anything thinner than the MBP I have now?

MBAs just look flimsy to me.
Click to expand...

I cant say I have a need for a thinner one, if they slim it up I hope they decide not to try to make them into air's but rather some discrete polishing.
 
Burrel said:
Excuse my lack of knowledge on this subject, but how does one install newly purchased software which comes on a disc if you have no drive? For example, if I bought Photoshop tomorrow would it be a disc in the box for an install or something else!?
Click to expand...


Well, I bought Photoshop/Illustrator CS4 in 2008 as a digital only download. Why are people still confused 4 years later?

Likewise large games and a host of other apps. Been buying BBEdit as a digital download since I don't know what version....

It's just not a problem unless you wanna rip that DVD you borrowed. :)
 
It's funny... I'm looking here daily now too for news on the MBP refresh - for a very different reason. My current MBP is a bit over 2 years old, and I've started looking at buying a new MBP to replace it. With a refresh in the works "soon", it makes sense for me to wait for that to happen and get the new one when it comes out.

But I'm one of those users who many of you seem to be forgetting - the ones who actively use and NEED that optical drive on a daily basis. When the rumor mill started flying about Apple going to a thinner format and eliminating the internal ODD completely, it's gotten me worried. I personally suspect it won't happen -- if they get rid of the internal ODD at all, it'll only be on *some* models of MBP, and it should still be possible to get it either as a build to order option, or perhaps only on the 17" (and maybe 15"). If that happens, I'm fine, and just get the model with the internal ODD and I'm good for the next few years.

If that *doesn't* happen, and Apple actually does as rumor suggests - eliminating the internal ODD completely (a stupid move right now, IMHO -- but I've argued that point in another thread already...) without even an option, then I'll have to go buy the current MBP model before they stop being produced.

Unfortunately, I believe I'm not the only one who will be rushing such plans forward -- and I think the price for current MBPs will therefore actually go *up* during their end of cycle rather than the usual reverse.

And *that* is why I'm anxiously waiting for Apple to release *some* news about the next MBP update - because the sooner I can react to it, the more likely I won't get hammered, price-wise. Or can relax, because the rumor was false -- I'd prefer that.
 
zgwortz said:
...I'm one of those users who many of you seem to be forgetting - the ones who actively use and NEED that optical drive on a daily basis.
Click to expand...

Why do you need the optical disk on a daily basis? Netflix offers streaming service now... :eek:
 
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