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Any upgrades for rMBP in 2018?

augustya said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7qku3d/oc_analysis_predictions_for_2018_macbook_pro/
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Wow, that is some rather random stuff right there.

augustya said:
From a technical- aswell as user-perspective there is no reason for Apple not to catch up in terms of battery life with what many other notebooks offer.
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Well, Apple doesn't design for maximal battery life. Apple designs for a specific battery life. Which for them right now is 10 hours. I'd guess that particular number simply because its close to a duration of a working day. And after a working day you are rather likely to be near a plug to recharge. Going up to 14 hours from 10 hours doesn't give you that much real-world benefit since you'll still need to recharge every evening unless you want your laptop to be out of juice before lunch. Mind, I am not justifying Apple's choices here (of course having larger battery is always nice), just pointing out that there is some rational sense to them. Of course, we are talking about lighter/mixed usage scenarios. Under heavy load, your battery life will be bad no matter how large the battery is (since you are capped at 100Wh anyway).

BTW, other notebooks generally achieve long battery lifetimes by severely limiting the CPU performance. If you put a 15W CPU in a 15" laptop chassis, of course your battery life is going to be great. However, Apple takes sustained performance seriously.
 
leman said:
If you put a 15W CPU in a 15" laptop chassis, of course your battery life is going to be great. However, Apple takes sustained performance seriously.
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By the way how much watts battery does Apple use in its current 2017 15" rMBP ?
 
tkwolf said:
Quite literally the ONLY thing that's holding me back form upgrading right now. MBP for 2018 better have revised keyboards, preferably one that does not fail.
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Not failing is important, but could I also add "quiet"? That's what's holding me back. It always sounds cliche to say this, but IMO there's no way Steve Jobs would have allowed a keyboard that's embarrassingly loud to type on. While Macrumors describes the noise issue as only applying to "some" Macbook Pros, every one I've tried in the store has the noise issue.
 
augustya said:
Sorry I meant to ask how many watts CPU does the current 15" rMBP have ? like you mentioned in your earlier post !
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They currently use 45 W. Don't get me wrong, the Kaby Lake R 15W CPUs are very good actually, but they are optimised for burst. Which means, that for very brief periods of time they can match the performance of their "larger cousins" with 45W configurations. That is also something you see in benchmarks like Geekbench, where these 15W parts seem almost as fast. However, if you need that performance over longer periods of time (as in many pro workflows), the low-power CPUs will hit the limiter quickly and their performance will fall substantially.

The bottom line is that these new CPUs are ideal parts for many business and home users, since they offer great on-demand performance paired with very good battery life (they are basically like agile city scooters which are superb for city with its speed limits and traffic lights). However, for users who need to push their machines more, they are less suitable. Which is why I think its a shame that most manufacturers are completely switching to lower-power parts and I hope that Apple will not follow. Apple always took sustained performance on their laptops very seriously, which is why they are such a good pick for users like me.
 
jdiamond said:
Not failing is important, but could I also add "quiet"? That's what's holding me back. It always sounds cliche to say this, but IMO there's no way Steve Jobs would have allowed a keyboard that's embarrassingly loud to type on. While Macrumors describes the noise issue as only applying to "some" Macbook Pros, every one I've tried in the store has the noise issue.
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Weird though, because to a lot of people the noticeable sound of their keyboards is a sign of prestige and quality. Especially with mechanical switches.

augustya said:
Sorry I meant to ask how many watts CPU does the current 15" rMBP have ? like you mentioned in your earlier post !
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As @leman said, 45W. However, there's more than that to consider as well. There's also the GPU, which I would wager has a TDP of somewhere around 50W as well, though I haven't looked into that. Then there's the choice of RAM and SSD as well as screen all contributing to battery consumption. If indeed Apple puts a T2 chip in the upcoming MBPs like what is in the iMac Pro battery draw will fall a bit as well, though not nearly as much as if you went down to a 15W CPU (or even smaller). With the T2, you'd combine the SSD controller, the SMC and the TouchBar chip (along with the secure enclave) into a single, more effecient chip. – Assuming they redid the logic board (and now we're in the territoy of more major changes), the space savings they'd get from using a T2 chip, and perhaps even combining the Radeon GPU with an on-package Intel die, like the Intel with Radeon Graphics chips, they could substantially reduce the area used up by electronics to make up for a bigger battery as well, and if they also stacked the battery, well, we'd exceed the 100Wh limit for batteries allowed on airplanes easily. I don't think much if any of this will really happen, but in theoretical terms.
 
Would love to see 6 cores in the 15, but a more likely upgrade this year would be things like Face ID + a more modest CPU/GPU bump.
 
casperes1996 said:
What chips should they bump to if not the 6 core models?
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I was thinking Kaby Lake R, but no you’re right. Those would more likely land in the 13s, mailing them quad core for the first time, whereas the full blown 6 core Coffee Lake in the 15. That makes a lot more sense.
 
technole said:
Major is an entirely new design.
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So there's not been a "major" redesign in at least a decade!

This was an entirely new design:

maxresdefault.jpg
 
swerve147 said:
I was thinking Kaby Lake R, but no you’re right. Those would more likely land in the 13s, mailing them quad core for the first time, whereas the full blown 6 core Coffee Lake in the 15. That makes a lot more sense.
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Definitely. With the TDPs and Intel suggested product categories for those respective product lines, we will most definitely get 6 cores 15" and 4 core 13". Only other alternative is the Intel with Vega Graphics, which would keep us at 4 cores
 
casperes1996 said:
Definitely. With the TDPs and Intel suggested product categories for those respective product lines, we will most definitely get 6 cores 15" and 4 core 13". Only other alternative is the Intel with Vega Graphics, which would keep us at 4 cores
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The issue with all this is Itell's schedule. We simply don't know when the Coffee Lake for mobile is going to be released. If its another half a year, then Apple is probably better off using Kaby Lake G for the 15" MBP.

As such, I don't think there is any reason why Intel wouldn't be able to ship a Coffee Lake + Vega GPU package very soon after Coffee Lake lands, all they'd need t do is replace the KL chip with the CL one (which doesn't sound like a major undertaking). All in all, I really hope for one of these new CPU+GPU packages.
 
leman said:
The issue with all this is Itell's schedule. We simply don't know when the Coffee Lake for mobile is going to be released. If its another half a year, then Apple is probably better off using Kaby Lake G for the 15" MBP.

As such, I don't think there is any reason why Intel wouldn't be able to ship a Coffee Lake + Vega GPU package very soon after Coffee Lake lands, all they'd need t do is replace the KL chip with the CL one (which doesn't sound like a major undertaking). All in all, I really hope for one of these new CPU+GPU packages.
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Fair point indeed. But I don't think it'll be that long. I think I've read it's slated for Q1 somewhere. And they already have the desktop sku's out.

And Vega on a 6-core would be great! But I think that for this round they'll be separate chips.
Though to be fair, I don't have much to base that guess on aside from gut feeling
 
swerve147 said:
Would love to see 6 cores in the 15, but a more likely upgrade this year would be things like Face ID + a more modest CPU/GPU bump.
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Updated internals are more likely than FaceID imo.

The manufacturers for the components struggled with making them for one set of iPhones, this year they will be required to build for multiple iPhones + iPads. It won't be easy for them to ramp up to that number while including supply for Macs as well so its likely the iOS devices will be prioritised.

Additionally, FaceID requires A11 bionic chips (or at least, chips that have functionality similar to the A11 bionic) and they would need to ramp up for that as well. This doesn't seem like a thing they would do so close to the investment they made in the T2 chips for the iMac Pro. (Economies of scale and all that...)

Its more likely that this years Macs get the T2 chip and its associated features (better ISP etc), and next year when they can more easily ramp up hardware for A11 / T3 we'll see FaceID in Macs.


That said though, I'd love to be wrong. A hexacore rMBP with a Vega based GPU and FaceID (and 32GB RAM) is exactly what I'm waiting for.
 
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