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2016 MacBook Pro May Include OLED Display Touch Bar and Touch ID

So another thought in addition to wondering whether MBP will maintain multiple i/o ports (maybe this is mentioned by others here, but I can sift though all 13 pages so h/t to others if brought up):

OLED touch bars and Touch ID screens add to production cost but add minimally to productivity compared to faster SSDs, faster RAM, more RAM, faster bus, etc. So will touch bar and Touch ID be added at the expense of the latter items? Will Apple use touch bars to and Touch ID as an excuse to jack up the MSRP -- money that normally would be used by buyers to upgrade RAM and storage? Haven't even heard any rumors about a 4K screen either.

More than any other WWDC and product intro in the TC era, this year's will truly tell us the direction Apple is going and whether the new use of "Pro" will change from legit Professional use to "Proposterous" marketing gimmick.
 
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robeddie said:
We make those complaints because they're valid. Performance and battery life are incredibly important to some of us and always will be. But you can have your incredibly thin underpowered toy and enjoy yourself, since obviously Apple is catering to people like you, not us.

For us though, it's frustrating and sad, and will be for a while, and we're still in an era of hope (diminishing albiet) that this race for thinness will finally subside and we can enjoy thermally ideal laptops that allow for true pro power.

Don't worry, one day the last of us who remember and loved the old Apple (great power AND great design) will fade away and you and the other 'thin at all costs' fanboys won't have to listen to us.

Chao.
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Yeah ok mate (writing this from the most powerful Macbook Pro thats ever been made).
 
The butterfly keyboard is AWFUL. No way I would ever buy another MBP if they go to that. It would kill me to get rid of my Mac, but the butterfly keyboard is akin to the hockey puck mouse -- except you can't just go buy a different one because it's builtin.
 
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Maybe the strip on the keyboard will be the where the DOCK goes?
That would cool and handy to just tap on apps or folders to open them, but then use the keyboard/trackpad to work in them.
 
I believe that if the "Touch bar" replaces the function keys this will allow users to set their own shortcuts on the keyboard! This is a great feature, also I'm sure they would integrate force touch and haptic feedback on it so that you know it pressed without having to look.
 
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Let's hope they adjust the travel from the butterfly keyboard. I don't want the keyboard from the 12" MB on an 15" MBP.

It would also be nice if someone tells Apple that SSD Storage got a lot cheaper in recent years.
 
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Bleh AMD GPU? The 1080M is so friggin' powerful they should be using Nvidia's Pascal Architecture.
 
goaliefight said:
The butterfly keyboard is AWFUL. No way I would ever buy another MBP if they go to that. It would kill me to get rid of my Mac, but the butterfly keyboard is akin to the hockey puck mouse -- except you can't just go buy a different one because it's builtin.
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So the force touch trackpad is awful, retina display is awful, thinner device is awful, any innovation is awful.

If it were up to you we would still be using floppies on Apple II
 
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maybe they are having this OLED strip because the OLED panel will support touchid through the panel just like the rumoured 2017 iPhone. This will be their guinea pig I guess, because, you know, mac hardware doesn't really matter anymore so if they screw it up who cares...
 
wizard said:
This shouldn't be a huge problem though I expect RAM to be soldered in. That is we will have two RAM options at the time of purchase.

That won't happen! Intel just released a SkyLake suitable for the MBP that is barely in mass production.

Interesting idea. I'm so old I'm not sure I would see the difference, however retina, first on my iPad then on my MBP has made me a believer.

USB C ports, 4 of them, HDMI and that is about it. I'd still would like to see an analog jack and SD card slot though.


This is my problem, I purchased a 13" MBP in 2015 (old MBP died) and it would be hard to justify an upgrade. However if these machines are the big step forward I think they will be I would love to think about an early upgrade.
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I personally don't see a need, just like the next iPhone, the next generation MBP would need to have something very radical in order to get me to leave behind my early 2015 MacBook Pro, which I am still not maximizing fully.

Also, because its a redesign, I honestly would wait for a few revs. The Retina MacBook Pro launched in 2012 had its share of display problems up to 2014.
 
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Chupa Chupa said:
OLED touch bars and Touch ID screens add to production cost but add minimally to productivity compared to faster SSDs, faster RAM, more RAM, faster bus, etc. So will touch bar and Touch ID be added at the expensive of the latter items? Will Apple use touch bars to and Touch ID as an excuse to jack up the MSRP -- money that normally would be used by buyers to upgrade RAM and storage? Haven't even heard any rumors about a 4K screen either.
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Some points here, the PCI-E's are already so fast in rMBP's you're not going see any difference from a performance - they're already topping out at 1800MB/s read and write - thats insane - its 4x the speed of what was considered a super fast SSD 3-4 years ago that saturated (and still does) any Sata bus. You're not going to see any real world difference from 2000, 2500 or 3000 MB/s, other parts are now what slows down the boot speed and unless all you do is duplicate large files all day you're not going to see any difference in file copy time.

Faster and more ram? Again I question what tasks you're doing that could possibly max out even 16gb of ram, nevermind 32. I have 32 in my iMac and use it for actual music composing with multi-gigabye libraries but the SSD is so fast it doesn't even need to load those libraries into ram anymore. You're again, not going to see any real world OS X performance difference with fast ram either - we've plateaued on all these points now. I multi-task like an idiot on my Macbook Pro, I have 45+ tabs open in Safari, plus I have Chrome with 10+ and Firefox open at all times for testing in different browsers, I have Pixelmator, Photoshop, Calcbot, Mail (with 60,000 e-mails in it), Clear, Evernote, Calendar, iTunes, Spotify, Numbers, Tweetbot, Tor, Whatsapp, Skype, Messages, Terminal, Coda 2, Transmit, Deliveries and a hanful of other apps open all the time - and i'm using barely more than a quarter of the 16gb of ram available on my rMBP.

You talk about gimmicks and then mention 4k screens. You realise its barely possible for the eye to tell the difference on a 50" screen from normal viewing distances with 4k, let alone a 15" screen. We're already at imperceivable retina resolution - the resolution does NOT need to go up anymore on a 15" Macbook - we need to deal with colour accuracy, gamut, OLED screens (that need to come a long way yet before they improve on LCD's outright), linear all over performance, power efficiency - resolution is the one thing that doesn't need upgrading and if they did that really would be a pointless gimmick that just saps power from your battery cycles unnecessarily and wastes GPU performance for no added benefit to the end users - hell most of the internet still hasn't even caught up with retina resolutions yet (as I look at my blurry profile picture on MacRumors for instance)

While I can't say i'm too bothered by the two aforementioned features of Touch ID and and a OLED touch strip (although we've not seen how well they might be implemented yet) its things like this that will pull in more users that upping any of the above i've mentioned that have now reached a point that wont make a jot of difference to the end users daily working. If anything its the raw processor power thats lagging behind now - the PCI-E flash loads faster than the CPU can process the OS booting (not that I ever shutdown and cold boot mind)
 
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If I want a super thin touchscreen device in Q416, I'll buy one of the Chromebooks that undoubtedly will come out when Android apps start working on ChromeOS (there are touchscreen Chromebooks now, but the ones later this year will be more powerful to take advantage of the new app ecosystem). In fact, I will buy one of those, and it'll probably cost me $300 or so.

For an actual laptop to do work on, though, I want a Mac... I want a Mac I can carry with me, not a gimmick that's super thin and adds things I don't need while bumping up the price so as to shave 3% off a thickness that's already plenty thin. I want a great screen (God, I miss the 17"). I want battery life. I want a powerful processor. I want a real freaking keyboard. If I can get all those things, I'll be happy.

I have the ASUS Chromebook Flip. It has a touchscreen. It is super thin. It's fun.

But it's not a work computer. I want a work computer, and that's what I look for the MacBook Pro to be. Not a toy that is model thin.
 
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Admiral said:
I'm pretty sure that Apple has a keen appreciation for where Back To School figures in their overall sales. Apple's "Fourth Quarter", by the way, starts July 1 and ends Sept. 30.
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I almost lost my mind when it said Q4 2016 as well but then realized as well that it could mean Apple's fiscal year instead of the actual calendar year.
 
Hmm, seems strange, they'll just make themselves look like fools if they suddenly add touch controls, mainly because i remember my friend having an HP 6-7 years ago that had it so why would apple wait this long and secondly, who needs touch controls?!

Touch ID sounds awesome but i can't imagine a nice looking place to put it tho, under the trackpad maybe?
 
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