Hey everyone, I'm new to this forum.... Anyways, I was just wondering your thoughts on the next update for the 15" MacBook Pro? Will they use Skylake, and skip Broadwell updates? I wonder how much better Skylake will be, as an advancement over Broadwell? Also, Broadwell is 14nm and Skylake will also be 14nm, while Cannonlake in 2016/17 will be 10nm, and they would like to get to 7nm eventually.... Don't you think there's going to be a point soon enough where computers can't get any faster, realistically? I mean the 13" MacBook Pro 2015 is stupid fast as it is now, and SSD's are using PCIe, Thunderbolt 3, DDR4 ram.... I just am wondering what you think about this subject, how much faster can computers get? I am talking mostly about here, since Apple is far ahead of anyone else....
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Apple MacBook Pro 15" 2015
- Thread starter LudwigZildjian
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For the past 5-10 years or so computers barely got faster, to be honest. They got faster but NOTHING like 1980-2005. Back then there were huge leaps. The past 10 years or so have seen insane size & efficiency improvements. Allowing us to get Mac Pro like performance from 2005 into a small phone at a fraction of the cost, and $5 in total energy costs per year of daily intense usage.
I don't see the next few years to be any different. Everything will get even smaller and more energy efficient.
The Pro series will always be about performance, sure, so it'll get better. But I wouldn't hold out for massive improvements. The 15' is a bit of an exception as the 13' got some big updates, but the 15' didn't. And so the 15' isn't really good value at the moment, still paying a few grand for integrated graphics on the base 15' lol. Ridiculous. So the 15' will likely see some improvements after the summer and make it much better value. But I can't really say how much better.
The reason we haven't seen gigantic improvements in speed is not because it's impossible, but it's much less necessary. The 2005 Xbox, now 10 years old, had a 3 ghz processor. Today a $1400 new Macbook has a 1.1 Ghz processor. Now obviously you can't compare processor speeds 1:1, there's a lot more to it. But that's a genuine choice. We've been stuck with 1 to 3 ghz processors for 10 years now, we added 2 or 4 cores, usually while lowering the speed. The big improvement is efficiency and space. The Xbox was a desktop sized machine with a 130-150 Watt charger. The new Macbook is as slimmer than your pinky finger and its Core M takes just 5 watt and has no fans.
We prefer that over getting even more processing power, 90/100 people don't need extra processing power. Everything they want to do is fine on normal chips. The other 9/100 will use the Pro series. And then there's 1/100 who actually do massive computing, and they use AWS, Azure etc to do heavy lifting. Look at the recent 13' MBA SSD upgrade, it's twice as fast. Nobody really cares, nobody really notices, as once you get into SSD territory everything is pretty much 'fast enough'.
So I'd expect a refresh for the 15' rMBP lineup for sure, not insignificant either. But overall, about your question on the limits of improvements, I doubt we'll see massive improvements in performance, not because we can't but because we prefer improvements in performance/value, performance/size, performance/energy, so that we can bring the Mac Pro performance to things as tiny as a watch, one day. That's where the revolutions will be, making X amount of performance 10x smaller and lighter and more portable etc. Not making X amount of performance 10x better.
I don't see the next few years to be any different. Everything will get even smaller and more energy efficient.
The Pro series will always be about performance, sure, so it'll get better. But I wouldn't hold out for massive improvements. The 15' is a bit of an exception as the 13' got some big updates, but the 15' didn't. And so the 15' isn't really good value at the moment, still paying a few grand for integrated graphics on the base 15' lol. Ridiculous. So the 15' will likely see some improvements after the summer and make it much better value. But I can't really say how much better.
The reason we haven't seen gigantic improvements in speed is not because it's impossible, but it's much less necessary. The 2005 Xbox, now 10 years old, had a 3 ghz processor. Today a $1400 new Macbook has a 1.1 Ghz processor. Now obviously you can't compare processor speeds 1:1, there's a lot more to it. But that's a genuine choice. We've been stuck with 1 to 3 ghz processors for 10 years now, we added 2 or 4 cores, usually while lowering the speed. The big improvement is efficiency and space. The Xbox was a desktop sized machine with a 130-150 Watt charger. The new Macbook is as slimmer than your pinky finger and its Core M takes just 5 watt and has no fans.
We prefer that over getting even more processing power, 90/100 people don't need extra processing power. Everything they want to do is fine on normal chips. The other 9/100 will use the Pro series. And then there's 1/100 who actually do massive computing, and they use AWS, Azure etc to do heavy lifting. Look at the recent 13' MBA SSD upgrade, it's twice as fast. Nobody really cares, nobody really notices, as once you get into SSD territory everything is pretty much 'fast enough'.
So I'd expect a refresh for the 15' rMBP lineup for sure, not insignificant either. But overall, about your question on the limits of improvements, I doubt we'll see massive improvements in performance, not because we can't but because we prefer improvements in performance/value, performance/size, performance/energy, so that we can bring the Mac Pro performance to things as tiny as a watch, one day. That's where the revolutions will be, making X amount of performance 10x smaller and lighter and more portable etc. Not making X amount of performance 10x better.
I do agree with your take on the subject.... Another topic is size, too. How much smaller can we make things? I think we will get to a point where there's no more room for advancements, but minor improvements, until newer technology is discovered... I would hope for a 2015 Skylake 15" MacBook Pro, so we get performance and efficiency.... I was kind of getting at the point you made about the SSDs being fast enough, when I said stupid fast. I noticed according to GeekBench Benchmarks, it takes less power to get more performance, than it did even a few years ago.... My Late 2011 2.2ghz quad core i7 15.4" 8gb ram, is blown away by the newest technology, and my computer is pretty fast.... I watched a video on the breakdown of the 13" 2015 MacBook Pro, and the guy said its "Stupid Fast" and edited a 4k video in Final Cut Pro X, but exporting took 35 minutes.. I told my friend, I wish I had those numbers.....
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That whole waiting game is un-productive.
Do you need a new computer?
If so, will the current offerings do the job(s) at hand?
If the answer to that is yes, then buy it, use it and enjoy what it does.
If the answer is no, then wait.
Or look for alternatives that will actually do what you need.
To me, the answer to the above question was yes.
So, I bought a new 15" rMBP a week or so back.
Work is getting done!
Do you need a new computer?
If so, will the current offerings do the job(s) at hand?
If the answer to that is yes, then buy it, use it and enjoy what it does.
If the answer is no, then wait.
Or look for alternatives that will actually do what you need.
To me, the answer to the above question was yes.
So, I bought a new 15" rMBP a week or so back.
Work is getting done!
I'd expect the improvements in raw speed to be modest - power consumption, rather than speed, has been the focus for some time now. This could show up as better battery life and/or smaller batteries.
Integrated graphics performance will probably improve - which could actually push up the price of the discrete graphics option, since fewer customers will actually need it.
There will also be features like USB C and Thunderbolt 3 support (and hence the prospect of 5k external displays).
Between the smaller batteries (and the 'layered' battery techniques used in the MacBook) and the switch to almost exclusive use of USB-C ports, the Pros could switch to an even thinner Air-like tapered design.
My guess: the 13" Air and 13" rMBP get replaced by a single design with just 2 USB-C/TB3 ports and 13" rMBP-class performance. (Look at all the "should I buy a MBA or a 13" rMBP" threads - the products are already in contention). The 15" rMBP gets a processor bump and USBC/TB3 ports in place of the TB2 ones but otherwise stays much as it is.
Sorry to hijack this thread, but I wonder if buying a 2014 15" rMBP is a better deal at this moment than the mid 2015 15" rMBP. They're using the same exact processor, correct? I just paid $2000 for the mid 2015 with faster SSD speeds, newer trackpad, 256GB. But I've already run out of space (air pollution modeling work with very big files). I've found the 2014 version with 512 SSD plus GPU for $2000.
Does the faster SSD really make that much of a difference? Or would the speeds not be noticeable day to day? Would the discreet GPU be more future proof in this sense?
Does the faster SSD really make that much of a difference? Or would the speeds not be noticeable day to day? Would the discreet GPU be more future proof in this sense?
The speeds will be most noticable opening huge data sets (which you are doing), however it really won't make that much difference, the 2014 speeds were still pretty damn quick.
That dGPU is pretty old now but it'll certainly give you more graphical compute power so from that point of view it'll be a bit better than the IRIS pro for longevity.