2017 MacBook Pro News!

[matram]

Kaby Lake contains the same compute cores as Skylake. It seems the only CPU performance improvement we will get is due to higher clock rates. That means you can get the same upgrade today by just upgrading the CPU on the 2016 if you are not already maxed out. Higher clock rates also normal means worse battery life.

There will be no support for 32 GB LPDDR from Intel and I very much doubt Apple will revert to DDR.

Looking at iFixit tear down it appears there is about 15 - 20% empty volume around the battery on the 15" that could be used to increase battery capacity. I assume the "battery problem" Apple had was due to swelling of the battery and tight tolerances, i.e. same problem as with the Samsung Galaxy. I prefer they play it safe but I assume they will be back with a bigger battery for 2017 model.

 

[aevan]

There is one thing I couldn't understand about the 2016 Macbook Pro vs the 2015, is the internal graphics, Ars Technica I believe had reported that the internal Iris Pro was slower compared to the 2015 model, it wasn't by much but I think that's what they stated on their graph. Is that really true, because I had the 2.2 ghz 2015 15" and then I had the 2016 2.6 ghz 15" back to back within several weeks and to be honest I couldn't tell much different in speed with both models, in fact I think the 2016 internal graphics seemed a bit faster. So is the difference really moot or is there really a difference with the internal Iris Pro between the 2015 & 2016 15"?

Internal graphics are slower on the 2016. but whenever something intensive is done, the dGPU kicks in, which is faster, so there's no problem.

And for certain things, like mission control, it may seem that the new internal gpu is actually faster, due to the fact that MC sometimes lags due to pulling data and since the SSD and RAM are faster - it is possible that this lag occures less (seems that way to me). So, people may attribute this to the GPU. The reality is that GPU is rarely, if ever, the reason for UI lag.

 

[an3s]

Hmm it seems the 2025 model will be even faster and better. I think i will wait for that one.

 

[maflynn]

20% Increase in CPU performance

I think the days of double digit improvements are long gone and the Kaby Lake CPU is a SkyLake CPU with some improvements. I don't know how we could see 20% improvements.