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Anyone holding out to 2021 MBP refresh?
- Thread starter oceanman
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I believe that the best time to buy something (at least technology related) is when it’s first released.
That way, you get the best value for your money.
I’ve ordered an M1 MBP, and when the new models release next year, I’ll get one of them. Will see what kind of trade in price they offer for my MBP, or I’ll just keep it for use when I stay over with family.
That way, you get the best value for your money.
I’ve ordered an M1 MBP, and when the new models release next year, I’ll get one of them. Will see what kind of trade in price they offer for my MBP, or I’ll just keep it for use when I stay over with family.
Yes to 2021 for me - I never buy the first generation of a product. Even with my iPhones, I've always been an S-year kinda guy.
This year will especially be tied up with getting software adapted to the new processors; and it'll be interesting to see whether we can run Windows x86-64 in a VM or Windows ARM will be required.
I'll await release of the M2 and MacBook Pro with 4 ports; unless my 2011 MBPro suddenly dies.
This year will especially be tied up with getting software adapted to the new processors; and it'll be interesting to see whether we can run Windows x86-64 in a VM or Windows ARM will be required.
I'll await release of the M2 and MacBook Pro with 4 ports; unless my 2011 MBPro suddenly dies.
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The first retina iPad (gen 3?) that didn't have the resources to actually drive the display properly and was super quickly superceded by gen 4. The same thing occurred with the late 2012 13" MacBook Pro, the first with a retina screen. The Intel HD4000 iGPU didn't have the power to drive the screen properly. Then came scissor keyboards, need I say more?
The current M1 MacBook Air I have is just a super mature hardware platform with a well tested chip (via iPhone and iPad) dropped in. This thing is easily thin enough, I suppose the major design goal they might have for the next gen is to get the screen bezels like the Dell XPS or something but I actually don't care about that - and I actually preferred it when iPads had actual bezels.
The main area for improvement is software, both OS (Big Sur) and M1 binary support.
What I read was that the system was detecting them on the PCIE interface, they just weren't working. Sounds more like a driver issue to me.
Remember that lovely 2016 design refresh?
The one with no physical ESC key and the butterfly keyboard that seemed nice but became fraught with failures within months?
That it took three years before those issues were finally fixed?
Yeah, I'm gonna be a bit skeptical on a potential design refresh.
Then you're best served by waiting for the four-port models to transition - be interesting to see if they do that before the rumored refresh or as part of it.
1 & 2) No, I think they are using the current M1 lineup as a test bed to mature Big Sur in the real world on the most "simple" machines (no dGPU) with the greatest thermal constraints, power consumption concerns and actual internal realestate. This allows for optimisation on the lowest common denominator hardware.
I don't Apple will follow the convention of what we have previously called dGPU, I think they will keep the graphics processor internal to the M1 chip and in machines like the iMac, with mains power, less thermal constraints and more mainboard realestate they will just scale up the core count, power consumption and clock speed of the compute and graphics components of the M1* chip to give dGPU-like performance.
I would absolutely wait for the M1* iMac and if you have to wait 6+ months for it it just means when you switch over you'll have more optimised and mature software waiting for you when you do.
3. This is at most a 2 year transition and I doubt second or third gen M chips figure into that short time line. I would guess that at least all their portable and iMac computers will have some variant of M1. I think the last machines to transition will be the Mac Pro as they have the most complexity.
Consumers expect the Mac Pro to have graphical power which is not likely to be attainable on-chip and they also expect amounts of RAM which at current density make it unlikely they will fit this on chip or package and they also expect RAM upgradeability. Given Apple have come this far in their vertical integration, it does not make sense that they would rely on a third party for a add-on graphics card which will likely be in the new Mac Pro. I think they will want to produce these themselves. Why free yourself from the shackles of Intel to still be beholden to AMD or (god forbid) Nvidia?
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Tim Cook is an expert at optimising supply chains and logistics, and if they can get the higher end MBP 13 with four ports out soon without the expense of redesign or retooling for a new chassis, I think they will.
I mean, the M1 is still pretty new. But they're at least not changing the chassis and internal design of non-M1 related things and that's where 90% of rev. A problems come from. But the M1 itself isn't old. The only other devices vaguely using similar technology are the 4th Generation iPad Air and the iPhone 12 series. You're right in that Apple Silicon as a hardware platform is not new. But it IS new to the Mac, and with that, there may still be some growing pains down the road...
As someone who owns a Late 2012 13" Retina MacBook Pro (and is lending it to his stepfather to use as his daily driver until he's ready to buy the Apple Silicon Mac of his choice), the Intel HD 4000 is fine so long as you don't try to game or do high end video editing on it. He doesn't do that stuff at all and that was never the Mac I used to do that kind of stuff on ever anyway. Ultimately, it works fine. It just can't go past Catalina. Good news is that when Catalina's security update support inevitably ends, I will have other still supported OSes to put on there.
Your second sentence here is correct. I will disagree with you on the first sentence though.
You do not want to be the first in line for a new Apple product. For every new Apple major launch, there are Apple engineers standing by and hovering over AppleCare to see if there are any issues that get reported that they can still fix within the same cycle. This is especially true of pretty much every iPhone launch ever. If Apple discovers a big enough problem that is correctable early enough on, they will do so. Plus, it takes a good 3 weeks to 2 months for MacRumors, 9to5Mac, and AppleInsider to all get wind of widespread user complaint with a given Apple product. Sometimes, Apple is able to resolve those with firmware and/or software updates. Other times, they need to change internal components quickly.
In short, I DO still agree that the more time with an Apple product while it is current gen (and therefore not starting down it's inevitable journey towards obsolescence. But it is safer to wait one month at the earliest and two months at the latest before pulling the trigger. That's the best balance.
I'll give you a real-life example of this: I bought the iPhone 6s Plus in late December of 2015, having waited a fair while to pull the trigger (as launch was September). Later, it turns out that iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone 6s models purchased between September of 2015 and November of 2015 both had issues with their batteries. Bullet dodged. That phone was the most reliable mobile phone I have ever owned to date.