Apple Reportedly Aiming to Upgrade the MacBook Pro Twice This Year

[jdawgnoonan]

I will believe it will have a touch screen when Apple announces that. Unless they are converging iPad OS with MacOS or something, but I doubt that. And, the audience for a touch screen MacBook Pro I doubt are the target audience for the highest end model made.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah but since when is Apple on time with anything anymore? It’ll probably inevitably be pushed to 2027.

 

[JohnC1959]

Yeah but since when is Apple on time with anything anymore? It’ll probably inevitably be pushed to 2027.

Though to be fair virtually every company is late with almost every product. The only difference is whether you become privy to their internal planning schedules or just wait until it's released to know about it.

 

[Astuces iOS]

YIPEEEEE MY MACBOOK PRO M4 is going to get TWICE older this year !!!

 

[grammatica]

Looks like I'm waiting until October to upgrade. I'm skeptical of a touch screen, however.

 

[riverguide]

An M3 iMac shall be good enough for you, my child.

I would happily take a 27” M3 iMac … or bigger.

 

[257Loner]

Besides, won't they all come with Tahoe installed anyway? 😂

A chilling prospect, indeed. 🥶

 

[JohnC1959]

While I tend to be dubious about wanting a touchscreen, one can't dismiss that many companies have been making them and many users seem to like them. I'm not sure if they just didn't have as good a touchpad as Macs have or they just were so darn used to phones and tablets, but one way or another many do like touchscreen laptops and so who knows, maybe I'll find myself liking it too for certain uses. I just don't want to pay a big premium for it.

 

[257Loner]

I have a 2015 MBP as my daily driver that I'm finally ready to upgrade. Am I allowed to get an M5?

I'd like to quote to you my earlier and more considered reply to this sort of concern:

To everyone running Intel-based laptops, I would strongly recommend upgrading to an Apple Silicon-powered laptop. When I did, everything improved, from the battery life, to the cooler chassis you could now literally rest on your lap, to the superior screens and speakers, and to the processor speed improvements that vastly outpace any Intel chip. And if you bought a butterfly keyboard MacBook, the new magic keyboard on current laptops is far better.

However. MacBook Pros are multi-thousand dollar laptops. I still maintain that once you've upgraded to Apple Silicon, you shouldn't upgrade too often lest you burn a hole in your pocket.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Way to entirely piss of a premium customer base is to release a model and then "obsolete" it months later. I really don't believe this is true, they should just shelve the first upgrade.

This is tech, with inherent rapid change. The premium customer base needs to expect - even hope for - ongoing rapid improvements. Folks with personality issues that "entirely piss of a premium customer base" need counseling.

 

[JohnC1959]

This is tech, with inherent rapid change. The premium customer base needs to expect - even hope for - ongoing rapid improvements. Folks with personality issues that "entirely piss of a premium customer base" need counseling.

And besides, when the newer one "obsoletes" the earlier one then you will find some good bargain prices. So something for everyone.

 

[transpo1]

What's the alternative? Skipping the M5? Then those "pissed off" customers would be even worse, having bought an M4 shortly before the M6.

Or intentionally delaying the M6? That would just add a whole new group of people buying the older version shortly before it's updated. They'd be "pissed off", too, if they heard that Apple was intentionally withholding the new version from them.

Early updates always leave more people with actual benefits than with imaginary losses.

There are plenty of people out there who need a new machine and will buy it and get use out of it. The rest of us can wait for OLED.

 

[257Loner]

This is tech, with inherent rapid change. The premium customer base needs to expect - even hope for - ongoing rapid improvements. Folks with personality issues that "entirely piss of a premium customer base" need counseling.

I believe "hope" is too profound a desire, deep within the human soul, to fetter it to premium consumer electronics.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Notches and dynamic islands are an instant no-buy. Esp. on a laptop. iPads don't have them and they are smaller.

Interesting how some folks find that "Notches and dynamic islands are an instant no-buy." Personally I could care less. And as to whatever iPads are up to, I far prefer Mac OS to iPad OS. Obviously YMMV.

 

[capamac]

How come?

To me the point of having a touchscreen is that the screen ...

Problem with touchscreens:

1. Arm fatique, esp in normal laptop orientation. This could be mitigated if for example the screen folded rearward against the bottom of the macbook, creating a sort of tablet.
2. Display not rigid enough withstand touch pressure, will be pushed backward or shake.
3. Using touch means your fingers hands and arm block view of the display.
4. Smudges.
5. UI elements not suited for touch. This means Apple would have to reconfigure macos with a larger targets for touch use, as current targets are intended for use with a small-point high-precision mouse cursor. Creating larger targets reduces effective "real estate" on the display compared to non-touch elements. Also the larger elements look less aesthetic.
6. They already have phones and ipads for those who want to use the lame touch UI.
7. Trackpads are superior to touch.
8. It reflects poor judgement from the designers. They're just throwing touch onto a macbook to see if it sticks. Apple's already on a roll with poor judgement as of late (Liquid Glass, various bugs, Adobe-style subscriptions.)

 

[JohnC1959]

Interesting how some folks find that "Notches and dynamic islands are an instant no-buy." Personally I could care less. And as to whatever iPads are up to, I far prefer Mac OS to iPad OS. Obviously YMMV.

I never even see my Macs notch because I have black menu bar. If you think of it, there's really not a notch on a screen so much as there's a menu bar on the top bezel.

 

[JohnC1959]

Problem with touchscreens:

1. Arm fatique, esp in normal laptop orientation. This could be mitigated if for example the screen folded rearward against the bottom of the macbook, creating a sort of tablet.
2. Display not rigid enough withstand touch pressure, will be pushed backward or shake.
3. Using touch means your fingers hands and arm block view of the display.
4. Smudges.
5. UI elements not suited for touch. This means Apple would have to reconfigure macos with a larger targets for touch use, as current targets are intended for use with a small-point high-precision mouse cursor. Creating larger targets reduces effective "real estate" on the display compared to non-touch elements. Also the larger elements look less aesthetic.
6. They already have phones and ipads for those who want to use the lame touch UI.
7. Trackpads are superior to touch.
8. It reflects poor judgement from the designers. They're just throwing touch onto a macbook to see if it sticks. Apple's already on a roll with poor judgement as of late (Liquid Glass, various bugs, Adobe-style subscriptions.)

You're talking about if you use the touchscreen regularly. I doubt that's the common scenario. I'm not totally sure how the many that have touchscreen laptops use them, but I'm guessing they use if for some select situations where they find it advantageous. And it's my understanding based on some other news reports that they may be redesigning the hinge to make it less likely to push back on touch. Anyway, many use and like them so there must be some advantage and you don't have to actually use it if you prefer not.

As for the UI elements, well the current Macs are already sort of touch screen in the sense of how the touchpad currently works.

 

[darngooddesign]

Yeah, I never really understood the complaints about the notch. Sure having edge to edge screen and no notch would be nicer but up until now the more likely alternative is a smaller screen with the camera in the larger bezel and given that I'll take the notch.

Yeah, you can move the menubar down so all you see is a thicker bezel above it, or you can made the menubar black so you have the same live area but dont see the notch.

I've been using NotchBox to give the notch extra functionality.

 

[JohnC1959]

I finally thought of one use case where I may prefer a touchscreen. Drag and drop. Often when doing this I have to take some extra care with the touchpad to avoid running into the edge of the touchpad before reaching my drop target. Not a problem on the display. Well, at least that's one (albeit minor) case.

 

[darngooddesign]

Problem with touchscreens:

1. Arm fatique, esp in normal laptop orientation. This could be mitigated if for example the screen folded rearward against the bottom of the macbook, creating a sort of tablet.
2. Display not rigid enough withstand touch pressure, will be pushed backward or shake.
3. Using touch means your fingers hands and arm block view of the display.
4. Smudges.
5. UI elements not suited for touch. This means Apple would have to reconfigure macos with a larger targets for touch use, as current targets are intended for use with a small-point high-precision mouse cursor. Creating larger targets reduces effective "real estate" on the display compared to non-touch elements. Also the larger elements look less aesthetic.
6. They already have phones and ipads for those who want to use the lame touch UI.
7. Trackpads are superior to touch.
8. It reflects poor judgement from the designers. They're just throwing touch onto a macbook to see if it sticks. Apple's already on a roll with poor judgement as of late (Liquid Glass, various bugs, Adobe-style subscriptions.)

Counterpoint, you dont have to use the touchscreen exclusively just because it exists. At my previous job I had a work issued laptop (non-touch) and a client issued laptop (touch) and I got really annoyed when using my work laptop because I was used to using the touchscreen for some things.

 

[capamac]

Touch UI and iOS just seems so babyish and unprofessional to me. I've no use for it. I've been leaning toward going back to BSD/Gnu/Linux again and stuff like this is just gonna make it a final decision for me. Apple's gone so noob-level.

 

[JohnC1959]

Touch UI and iOS just seems so babyish and unprofessional to me. I've no use for it. I've been leaning toward going back to BSD/Gnu/Linux again and stuff like this is just gonna make it a final decision for me. Apple's gone so noob-level.

I feel VERY confident in saying that adding a touchscreen will in no way impact how you've used your Mac up until now. All the interactions and visual elements will be the same. It's like adding a touchpad when previously you just had a standard mouse. The mac will not be running iOS or any variant of that. Many Windows laptops have had touchscreens for years now. You can likely use these same touchscreen PCs with Linux just fine.

 

[AlanBeyond]

Apple’s mini-LED is really good with HDR content support, switching to OLED might make it more power efficient and thinner, but the image quality won't make a huge difference. What needs most to switch to OLED is iPad mini!

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Way to entirely piss of a premium customer base is to release a model and then "obsolete" it months later. I really don't believe this is true, they should just shelve the first upgrade.

I don’t believe it either. If this is true then the first release may not sell, as people will wait for the better release.
Remember the Osborne effect?

 

[rwh63]

No one needs M5. M3 was good enough.

No one needed iPhone 5-17, 4s was perfect!