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

[Kevin Bohacz]

"The new "thin and light" design will be helped by new metal injection mold-made hinges and the butterfly-mechanism keyboards that debuted in the 12-inch MacBook."

I own the Macbook 12" retina and several Macbook Pros and airs... I use the 12" exclusively for travel and the pros when at home working. I am a novelist and spend my entire day writing. If I had to use the low travel keyboard from the 12" all day long I would go insane. If Apple put that low travel keyboard into a pro then I would not buy it... period... That keyboard is a major compromise in ergonomics that is acceptable in a lightly used computer but not in something used day to day. I can type twice as fast on the wonderful keyboards found on my Macbook Pros than I can on that short travel keyboard on the 12"

The Macbook keyboard is one of the best things about the computer and something used intimately during every second of interaction with the machine. Please don't kill the ergonomics of it by making it like the 12" Macbook... Please... Don't ruin your Macbook Pros for the sake of a fraction of an inch of unnecessary extra thinness.

 

[kazmac]

I wonder if the OLED is a test for a potential OLED keyboard? Sounds interesting. See what happens. Instead of pounds, I'd prefer shedding dollars from the price.

 

[bpeeps]

ERMAGERD...an actual Mac rumor!

Seriously though, Q4 is way to late.

You're taking the site name way too literally.

 

[WhatUp?]

Here's an idea, replace the trackpad with a 3D touch screen.

 

[accentaudio]

Ugh, maybe I am a simplest, but please not thinner. I would be more than happy with the exact same design, Skylake processors, and better GPUs. This is all we need really! Stop overdoing it and breaking things that aren't broken. Please.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

...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)

So summary of your points would go like this?:

1) current MBP is the best we are going to see for some time performance wise; that Apple could incorporate faster components, but it wouldn't make a difference real-life performance wise, and won't ignite sales, so why bother? If people want to delude themselves Apple will continue to offer overpriced upgrades via CTO.

2) OTOH things like an OLED touch strip that might look cool will ignite sales because people buy computers because they are cool looking?

Personally, I'm not "bothered" either by Touch ID or the OLED strip. But again, it's not a substitute for a better laptop.
I do disagree with you about the state of MBPs, especially when talking about a $2K+ computer, something not targeted to consumers -- that is the role of the svelte MB and MBA, maybe even the utilitarian low end 13" MBP. Yes, I want the most powerful mobile GPU available in my next MBP -- won't happen, but the idea excites me more than a strip b/c it's something I'll get use out of every time I edit a video. Same for having a bigger faster SSD. Again won't happen. If Apple shows off more of the same but with a flashy strip on the keyboard, then meh. I do want something more robust, even if, as you suggest, it's all in my head.

 

[147798]

I remember when Lenovo ditched function keys in their popular Carbon laptops for a row of adaptive touch "keys". It was nearly unanimously disliked and they went back to function keys the next year.

Interesting. Just watched the video

If it was Jobs' Apple, I'd expect them to just incredibly innovate this thing. "Me too" Tim Cook -- not so much.

Those keys look OK. Wonder why they were a fail on the Lenovo?

Either way, I'd prefer a touch screen laptop. I've no idea why people hate them, but I've tried Win 10 laptops, and I love the touch screen.
[doublepost=1464108150][/doublepost]

Ugh, maybe I am a simplest, but please not thinner. I would be more than happy with the exact same design, Skylake processors, and better GPUs. This is all we need really! Stop overdoing it and breaking things that aren't broken. Please.

For me --- bigger storage options without price gauging or back to user upgrade able storage (and memory). I don't need thinner either.

 

[shaunp]

Q4!!!! Are you guys for real? That's a year later than the competition for a skylake laptop. I don't care how pretty it is, it's a year late!!! Touch ID, so what? All the PC manufacturers have had this for years as part of the TPM setup. What I want from you Apple is something that competes with the high-end Dell and Lenovo workstation class laptops and I want it 6 months ago!

 

[apolloa]

Not all is blue at Intel.
The bigger question is, if the yields of Cannon is higher than Kaby will Intel ditch the 14nm in favor of the 10nm? Or delay Cannon.
My next MBP purchase will hinge on the ports more so than the processor.
Not really interested in carrying an array of adapters

That's a user by user case, if you need adapters etc, well unless they only fit USB C into it. I use my current MacBook Pro lounging around or at a desk, don't have any peripherals attached to it, but with the new model this will change and it will be mostly desk bound, so I may need a USB hub or adapters.

 

[Pablo.A.Pucci]

All this hoping and needing when you can simply find a Windows 10 laptop with most of those specs.....

Windows sucks since the the very first version to the actual W10... and Non Apple has no comparison with macs... in overall design and in OS....

 

[pat500000]

Q4!!!! Are you guys for real? That's a year later than the competition for a skylake laptop. I don't care how pretty it is, it's a year late!!! Touch ID, so what? All the PC manufacturers have had this for years as part of the TPM setup. What I want from you Apple is something that competes with the high-end Dell and Lenovo workstation class laptops and I want it 6 months ago!

Not going to happen. They are about looking nice.

 

[MarkusL]

The analyst believes that Apple will move forward with all three MacBook lines this year, with the MacBook Pro occupying the high-end slot, the MacBook will replace the Air as the medium-level model and the MacBook Air will serve as an entry-level model with comparatively low prices.​

Oh dear, what are they going to do to the MacBook Air to make it worse than the MacBook?

 

[apolloa]

"The new "thin and light" design will be helped by new metal injection mold-made hinges and the butterfly-mechanism keyboards that debuted in the 12-inch MacBook."

I own the Macbook 12" retina and several Macbook Pros and airs... I use the 12" exclusively for travel and the pros when at home working. I am a novelist and spend my entire day writing. If I had to use the low travel keyboard from the 12" all day long I would go insane. If Apple put that low travel keyboard into a pro then I would not buy it... period... That keyboard is a major compromise in ergonomics that is acceptable in a lightly used computer but not in something used day to day. I can type twice as fast on the wonderful keyboards found on my Macbook Pros than I can on that short travel keyboard on the 12"

The Macbook keyboard is one of the best things about the computer and something used intimately during every second of interaction with the machine. Please don't kill the ergonomics of it by making it like the 12" Macbook... Please... Don't ruin your Macbook Pros for the sake of a fraction of an inch of unnecessary extra thinness.

Thanks for that, a useful insight from a professional typist is good to hear. Hmm will have to wait and see what Apple do with the keyboard but I'm thinking it will copy the MacBook one.

 

[Nautilus007]

This thing will cost 2k starting for the 13 inch and 2500 for the 15

 

[dannys1]

So summary of your points would go like this?:

1) current MBP is the best we are going to see for some time performance wise; that Apple could incorporate faster components, but it wouldn't make a difference real-life performance wise, and won't ignite sales, so why bother? If people want to delude themselves Apple will continue to offer overpriced upgrades via CTO.

2) OTOH things like an OLED touch strip that might look cool will ignite sales because people buy computers because they are cool looking?

Personally, I'm not "bothered" either by Touch ID or the OLED strip. But again, it's not a substitute for a better laptop.
I do disagree with you about the state of MBPs, especially when talking about a $2K+ computer, something not targeted to consumers -- that is the role of the svelte MB and MBA, maybe even the utilitarian low end 13" MBP. Yes, I want the most powerful mobile GPU available in my next MBP -- won't happen, but the idea excites me more than a strip b/c it's something I'll get use out of every time I edit a video. Same for having a bigger faster SSD. Again won't happen. If Apple shows off more of the same but with a flashy strip on the keyboard, then meh. I do want something more robust, even if, as you suggest, it's all in my head.

No, thats not my summary at - by what you're requesting (Faster PCI-E) is not even possibly at the minute, they already max out PCI-E busses now, and even if it was - 2000 MB/S read and write is NOT a bottle neck for anything. Ram is going to change anything either. These are facts, not me saying "not bother" - you'll increase benchmarks but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in use - and then you'd have the same moaning on here "whats the point its just as spec bump there is no innovation..."

You keep referring to a "bigger, faster SSD" for a start off we dropped SSD ages ago as it refers to an actual drive you plugin to a Sata bus, we're on PCI-E cards now and i've just point out 3-4 times you're not going to get any faster than 2000MB/s in any computer nor would you ever need it, its insane speeds.

I agree we could have better mobile graphics, but considering the mobile GPU's are optimised by Apple to use Final Cut Pro for editing you're not going to see any difference there - in gaming you would but no one is going to ever buy a Mac for gaming even if they had the graphics card AND the developer support for them as you'll always be able to build your own gaming rig for less.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

Since the untimely departure of Steve Jobs, Apple has largely shown an utter lack of creativity and ability to innovate. The only exception was the cylindrical Mac Pro, which represents the last time Jony Ive actually logged a full day's work. But Apple always seems to be its own worst enemy. The Mac Pro, arguably the last great design from Apple, hasn't been updated in 3 years while the rest of the computing world has moved on to faster and better.

While Microsoft makes tablets that actually satisfy pro users because they can run real pro apps like Photoshop, Apple tries to make its iToys "pro" by making them bigger and giving us a pencil. Take away the pencil, sell us a bunch of stuff that doesn't need pencils, and - stroke of genius - bring back the pencil and sell us some more.

Apple is looking tired and devoid of passion. Tim Cook is a great manager and he has managed Apple into a rut. Sure it's supply chains are nice and tight, but there is no excitement.

Give me a MacBook Pro where I can remove the screen and turn it into a tablet, but still runs Mac OS. That will be when I actually give Apple any more of my money. Until then, Apple is just throwing darts at the board hoping something is going to stick. Sad that there is nobody at that company anymore who can say no to a bad idea.

 

[JohnnyCanadian]

Wouldn't it be cool if Apple made an old school thick laptop incorporating one or two Xeon E3-1500M v5 chips (portable Xeon) with more than the usual number of ports?

E3-1xxx processors are single-CPU only -- as much as I'd love a multi-processor mobile workstation. The 1500M showing up as a high-end Pro could happen, though ...

 

[dannys1]

Well, speaking for myself, my 2012 13"MBP can use up to 12GB out of 16 just with Chrome alone. If I wanna run a virtual machine it's night time to my browser (and the VM is only using 6GB, so 16GB overall should be more than enough.)

Chrome is notoriously crappy in OS X which is why I avoid it, but 12gb is extremely excessive for a web browser when as you point out an entire OS running as a VM only uses 6gb! With the 40 or tabs i've got open in Safari at the moment its using 46% of my used app memory (which according to istat is sat at 8gb, but of course OS X manages this very well in terms of keeping it full and cached as required).
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I find that hard to believe. You're forgetting to include OS X that also takes up RAM as well. It's the OS on top of everything. I have 10 GB of RAM now ( just recently beefed it up ) and I can open up Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Manga Studio, Sketchbook Pro, Pixelmator ( I have that too ) and what not all in the same time and they usually go close to about 5 to 6 GB combined.

Photoshop is notorious for being RAM hungry, keep in mind, regardless if it's the Creative Cloud or older versions. At this moment of writing on my iMac, I have 3.68 GB of memory left. And that is just with Safari opened. I'm using the Memory Clean app to monitor the usage of RAM and that's exactly what I'm seeing.

I have 3GB of App Memory and nearly 3GB of File Cache going on at this moment. Before I had 6GB of RAM, if this was the case, it would limit the ability to open more apps.

If I have 16 GB of RAM right now, it would probably have about 6 GB of storage left open. So in your case with all these apps open in the same time, it would go dangerously near 8 to 10 GB of RAM, choking your system. I do visual design/art as my profession so I understand how software, files, and the OS combined can take up RAM.

Then I open up Activity Monitor on my iMac and see a similar thing. Physical memory: 10 GB, Memory used: 5.50 GB, Virtual Memory: 10 GB.

App Memory: 2.71 GB, File Cache: 1.91 GB, Wired Memory, 885.9 mb. The results are close.

So what I'm saying is that all these apps you opened up on your rMBP are more likely to go past more than half of your 16 GB of RAM. Not a quarter. If you closed Photoshop, Pixelmator, iTunes, Spotify and other RAM hungry apps, then the number would drop significantly.

You're forgetting that Activity Monitor doesn't show things properly, it shows for me that i'm using 13gb of RAM, but that doesn't mean I NEED 13gb to do all this, OS X tries to use all ram, you need something that breaks it down better than Activity Monitor like iStat which shows you what out of that RAM would actually be required to do what you need to do.

I'll be honest though and say I don't leave lots of documents open in Photoshop (I am guilty for doing this in Pixelmator though).

 

[Asianpork]

Upon sightings of this rumor my 2008 MBP cried out a wheezing shriek of joy. At long last, the weary warrior will go to rest. At long last, the war is over. Sleep, my loyal friend...sleep.

 

[dannys1]

Virtualization. On my Mac Pro I have VMWare Fusion machines for 10.6 (Server), 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, Win7 Pro, Win 8.1 Pro and (ugh) Windows 10. A Lenovo running Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 has VMs for Win Servers 2008R2 (x2) and 2012R2 (x2). Not all are running simultaneously, of course, but depending on the task it's great to be able to test systems & code on multiple versions of each OS without rebooting, and to test the effects of server changes on multiple client versions in real-time without having racks of hardware: a "trash can" Mac Pro, a generic Lenovo tower and a HP zBook 17 G2 is all I need ... it's a really nice working model.

Yeah thats fair enough - but Id question why you'd need to run so many virtual machines at once on a Macbook Pro. But i've had no problems at all RAM wise with 16gb on a Macbook Pro loading Window 10 (also ugh haha) and Linux and Windows Server for testing purposes, though generally I close Windows 10 down ASAP in VMWare as it starts to ramp the fans up.

32gb of ram in a Macbook Pro would be cool and being a spec whore i'd probably order one - but I still stick by my point that it'd likely be total overkill and I wouldn't actually benefit having it over 16gb and thats despite being as mentioned a notoriously messy multi-tasker.
[doublepost=1464109319][/doublepost]

Fellas no need to complain about the new keyboard until you actually try the new magic keyboard which is much better than the one on the retina macbook. Trust me the difference is night and day.

I'm assuming the pro will get the better one of course.

Yeah it is lovely - I've got the retina MacBook, the Magic Keyboard 2 with my iMac and the Macbook Pro keyboard i'm typing on now and I think the Magic Keyboard 2 butterfly keys are my favourite - the Macbook seems a little bit overly "spongey" when you swap back. I don't at all mind the Retina Macbook at all and have done hours of work and writing on it. I've got the iPad Pro keyboard too which i've only used for about 2-3 minutes but I even quite enjoyed that at the time. I find it quite easy to adapt to different keyboards really, as long as it feels like i'm typing on quality which it does on all Apple keyboards no matter the style.

 

[Pablo.A.Pucci]

"The new "thin and light" design will be helped by new metal injection mold-made hinges and the butterfly-mechanism keyboards that debuted in the 12-inch MacBook."

I own the Macbook 12" retina and several Macbook Pros and airs... I use the 12" exclusively for travel and the pros when at home working. I am a novelist and spend my entire day writing. If I had to use the low travel keyboard from the 12" all day long I would go insane. If Apple put that low travel keyboard into a pro then I would not buy it... period... That keyboard is a major compromise in ergonomics that is acceptable in a lightly used computer but not in something used day to day. I can type twice as fast on the wonderful keyboards found on my Macbook Pros than I can on that short travel keyboard on the 12"

The Macbook keyboard is one of the best things about the computer and something used intimately during every second of interaction with the machine. Please don't kill the ergonomics of it by making it like the 12" Macbook... Please... Don't ruin your Macbook Pros for the sake of a fraction of an inch of unnecessary extra thinness.

If you are a novelist. your actual rMBP will be useful for several years ahead, since write does´t need much hardware...

So, start to worry about this in 3 years... or buy an external Apple keyboard.

 

[thingstoponder]

Not happening. Mid-2017 at the earliest.

This year's refresh will just be thinner, lighter, faster + Skylake. Nothing dramatic.

Drama is saved for 2017 to coincide with MacBook Pro's 11-year anniversary.

Pulling stuff out of your ass must be fun.

 

[campyguy]

I wonder what this Oled strip will accomplish, clearly it will do more than replace the function keys

I'll hazard a guess we'll see the OLED strip handle Twitter content, Messages/app (FaceTime, email, iTunes, etc.)/System/Status Notifications - with swipe to reply/delete/ignore, and supplements to what we see in Menu Bar items in addition to the Function Keys.

 

[thingstoponder]

Please, no. There is no reason to do this. Apple already slimmed down the keyboards in the 2015 MBP. Just keep using that.

They're far superior than the old mushy keys.

 

[jujufreeze]

Great, why can't Apple offer decent nvidia GPUs yet?