Anything exciting coming for 2018 MacBook Pro?

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whitedragon101

macrumors 65816
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro 17” and have upgraded it with an SSD and 16GB ram. So now even 6 years later I can’t see anything even on the horizon that makes for a killer upgrade. Especially considering it would need to be worth losing 2” of screen.

Is there anything awesome coming in 2018 to the MBP or even 2019/2020 ?
 
whitedragon101 said:
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro 17” and have upgraded it with an SSD and 16GB ram. So now even 6 years later I can’t see anything even on the horizon that makes for a killer upgrade. Especially considering it would need to be worth losing 2” of screen.

Is there anything awesome coming in 2018 to the MBP or even 2019/2020 ?
Click to expand...

Only thing I can think of is maybe the same camera that the iPhone X will have. Other than that, I doubt it as I don't think any new intel processors are coming out anytime soon that are MacBook Pro worthy.
 
There's a small amount of speculation of possible e-Ink keys in the future. If Apple did this, I would buy one the day it came out, pretty much regardless of the pricing premium - IMO it would be a game-changer for many in the fields of math, science, and for those who are multilingual (or wish to learn new languages). The 13-inch may eventually get a quad core low-voltage CPU. And USB 3.2 isn't far around the corner, nor is low-power DDR4 to enable 32+ GB of RAM. I also expect to see some pretty big jumps in runtimes on battery power within the next 2-3 years based on some of the emerging technologies and new developments.
 
Hex core 15 inchers

Quadcore 13 inchers

Possible radeon vega graphics in the 15 inch.

Pretty much everything else is already top of the line with little in the way of new hardware to replace it.
 
If I'm not mistaken, one real improvement will be that the new CPU's will have internal hardware-based decoding for the 4k format and DRM that Netflix is now using.

If I'm wrong about that, others will jump in with corrections...
 
Since your 2011 came out there has been retina displays/4k video, touch ID, and the touch bar. Not to mention a 100%+ boost in performance. Exactly how much more innovation are you expecting? :)

On a serious note, it's unlikely any game changers are on the near horizon. I mean what exactly are the current line up missing that you need?
 
eddjedi said:
Since your 2011 came out there has been retina displays/4k video, touch ID, and the touch bar. Not to mention a 100%+ boost in performance. Exactly how much more innovation are you expecting? :)

On a serious note, it's unlikely any game changers are on the near horizon. I mean what exactly are the current line up missing that you need?
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And loss of over 2 pounds.
 
eddjedi said:
Since your 2011 came out there has been retina displays/4k video, touch ID, and the touch bar. Not to mention a 100%+ boost in performance. Exactly how much more innovation are you expecting? :)

On a serious note, it's unlikely any game changers are on the near horizon. I mean what exactly are the current line up missing that you need?
Click to expand...

They have definitely been moving forward it’s just my mac still meets my needs. I look at the new macs and go :


It’s display is retina but 2” smaller. Also the 17” is retina at 66cm (exactly the distance My eyes are from my laptop right now). Although the P3 colour of the new macs does make mine look a bit washed out

On the cpu performance front Xcode, lightroom, photoshop, dream weaver all still work fine

On gpu performance side I play my games and do unity dev on my fire breathing windows system

Touch ID and touch bar are nice toys but don’t really add to core functionality



The final nail in the desire to buy is I bought an iPad Pro. Now I take my iPad Pro on holiday and travelling not my MacBook Pro, which makes the substantial portability gains not that useful to me.

This isn’t a problem for me and not a slight on apple. I still would take a MacBook Pro over any other laptop. It’s just strange that after 6 years not only can I not see a reason to upgrade. I can’t see a reason in the future couple of years to either. In the past you almost had to upgrade every 3 years to keep up.

The eye watering £3059 cost to buy a new MacBook Pro (inc 1TB Drive) also helps keeps me from upgrading for a slightly more colourful screen or the ability to run unity on my laptop.
 
With the way the Apple chips are developing and performing and the news of them doing their own GPUs too...

I think there might be a real legs to them making MacBooks with their own hardware completely at some point here. I think Apple is long past caring about cross platform/boot camp support for Windows, especially if the business type needs could just be met with virtualization.
 
Don’t know whether Apple’s chips are ready for full fledge Pro computers anytime soon but I would love to try that out.
Intel is getting too slow with their development and I can see Microsoft and Apple collaborating to make Bootcamp work at least in a more reasonable time.
 
If your current laptop meets your needs and you're struggling to justify the cost of an upgrade, then the obvious answer is to just keep your current laptop until it no longer suits your needs...

Don't expect any ground breaking improvements until the next design refresh, ~2020. Until then, just expect iterative updates.

Either way once your current machine slows down enough, you'll very easily see the improvements. Right now say you're using 80% of the power of that machine, and a new one would provide you 200% power, but you're still only going to use 80% of that so there's a fair bit of head room. I also wouldn't be concerned with loosing 2 inches, it's really not that much considering it's a laptop - designed to be portable, plug it into a monitor when at home and you'll have 30" when it's stationary, and a laptop you can actually fit in a bag and carry around.
 
I hear what you're saying, I have just upgraded from a 2013 i7 MBA 11" and at face value did I need to upgrade?

Well for a start my 512GB SSD was almost full. It would have cost me well over £500 to buy a 1TB SSD to install in it, and I think there is considerable risk buying used SSD's. Plus the 2016 SSDs are considerably faster than the 2013 I had.

Secondly going from non-retina to retina display is a MASSIVE jump. I also thought I wouldn't notice, trust me you do.

And finally I think it's important to embrace new features like Thunderbolt 3, touch bar and touch ID. Don't worry I'm not one of these morons who thinks Apple were 'brave' for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone. That was a mistake, no question. But these new features are genuinely useful - with TB3 I can charge and connect all peripherals with just one cable, and the TB is incerdibly useful in Logic (it's a bit like having a mixing desk or external controller.) You need to find ways to make use of these new features, because they are there.
 
whitedragon101 said:
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro 17” and have upgraded it with an SSD and 16GB ram. So now even 6 years later I can’t see anything even on the horizon that makes for a killer upgrade. Especially considering it would need to be worth losing 2” of screen.

Is there anything awesome coming in 2018 to the MBP or even 2019/2020 ?
Click to expand...

DONT DO IT! IT'S A TRAP :) .

Switched from a 17"fully loaded macbook pro ( 16gb ram / ssd / bluetooth 4 card / new mainboard ) to the 2016 Touchbar 15" and it simply sucks.

I work as a freelance designer and the "spec bump" is barely noticeable:

- 2.7ghz vs 2.1ghz i7? ..unless you do video editing , no change whatsoever
- 16gb 2133 ram vs 16gb 1333 ram ? nop , nothing .
- Radeon 455 vs 6750M ? Didnt play games , ive got a PC/console for that ...
- Retina 15 inch vs 17 inch full hd ? Personally i prefer the 17 inch size . Couldn't care less of the billions of pixels , bla bla ... marketing ******** of the new screen .
- Brightness of the screen ? again ...who the hell uses the laptop on full brightness anyway ? i was using my 17 on 90% slider , now im using the 15 on 60-70 to achieve the same level .
- battery life ? debatable .. I used to get around 2-2.5h of photoshop with the 17". im geting around 3-4.5h with the 15". However i did get around 8h of safari netflix binge watching with the brightness set to around 60-70% ( i guess thats womething ? )
- Touchbar ? i simply set it do display the old controls all the time ( basically disable it ) as it didnt provide anything useful
- Touch id ? its good , but not a deal breaker
- Weight ? HELL YES . i love how light the new one is compared to the 17 inch one . However i do wonder if apple made a 17inch mbp today ...how heavy would it be compared to the 15" one .. maybe 400g more ?
- Ports ? welcome to the dongle life! for a laptop that was suppose to make life cable free , this ****ing machine needs a ton of cables ! Ive purchased a hub at home and it looks like cable nightmare.
-Trackpad ? Its not that bad , i actually like it, but its a personal preference
- butterfly keyboard ? Compared to the 17"one ? Oh god why !!! its so damn clickyyyyyy and just weird to type on. I was pressing so hard on it i thought i would break it .

The only reason i gave up on my 2011 17" mbp was the fear of having another issue with the graphics card. I changed the mainboard with apples replacement program about a year prior and the screen was starting to make those weird lines again. Knowing it would cost me ~800eur to replace it again .. i was forced to buy a new mbp. I got a super sweet deal on the touchbar one , but if i had to pay full retail price , it's really not worth it .Get a 2015 one instead

Offtopic :
How hard would it be to 3dprint / manufacture a 17" chassis that fits the mainboard / battery / keyboard ( all the internals ) of a 13 / 15 touchbar macbook pro ?
 
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