Thing about the Y series is if you provide it a U-series's cooling, it acts like a U series, the silicon is virutally identical but for the TDP setting. Similarly a U series can be TDP-down'ed to 7W, and act every bit the Y series.
So just to throw the possibility out there, an actively cooled Macbook Budget with a Y series would still act as a U series on processor performance, especially as Apple has long removed any TDP caps and just let things run within their thermal constrains.
Just a possibility if the 15W chips with the combination of parts they want isn't out yet. Granted I think it's most often the reverse with the Y being refreshed later.
Unfortunately, once Intel introduced quad-core U-Series CPUs, they instantly turned the Y-Series into an outlier in Intel's existing lineup. I am
NOT saying that it is a useless CPU now - what I am saying, is that it makes the value proposition of a Y-Series 13" MacBook a non-starter for many Mac users and I think for Apple as well.
1) I think Apple wants a quad-core 15w U-Series CPU in the 13" MacBook as the cost difference between the Y-Series and the 15W U-Series is $13.00 USD per unit (Core i7-7Y75 vs Core i7-8650U, Core i5-5Y54 vs Core i5-8350U) and certainly even less in the quantities Apple buys.
I agree with you that the Intel part has not been released and I believe Apple may have asked Intel for a custom part with Iris Plus GPUs, which is waiting in the wings for the Whiskey Lake refresh to be launched. If not, then Apple has decided that the Intel Graphics UHD 620 is going to be good enough and certainly better than the Intel HD Graphics 615 in the 2017 12" MacBook.
2) Apple does not tend to TDP up or down as much as unlock, and I think the challenge they are facing is getting a 15w U-Series to stay cool without fans before they introduce a 13" MacBook, because they still want to have the thinnest 13" on the planet to boast about.
In order to have this, they either have to stay with a 5w TDP or figure out how to passively cool a 15w TDP. Huawei did it with it's MateBook last year and it didn't work out all that well, and so Apple will simply wait until they have it right before they release it.
3) Unfortunately, the current and future (Amber Lake) Y-Series CPUs cannot compete performance-wise with the 7th- or 8th-Gen 15w U-Series no matter how you cool them, TDP up, et al. Their single-core and multi-core performance cannot match even the 6th-Gen 15w U-Series, if we lay all our cards on the table.
That being said, I maintain that the 12" MacBook, 13" MacBook Air AND the nTB 13" MacBook Pro will all be replaced by this computer. The only model I am not 100% sure of is the 12" MacBook, which I think would continued to be called a MacBook and receive the Amber Lake Y-Series once they are released.
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802.11ad is not a WLAN spec, unlike ac and ax.
That said, I don't see the big benefit in ad compared to a USB-C or Thunderbolt dock.
Plausible.
Correct! While 802.11ad is not a WLAN spec, that hasn't stopped TP-Link or Netgear from releasing 802.11ad routers. As a matter of fact, I just bought a Nighthawk X-10 (R9000), but it sure was not for the 802.11ad support.
There is no benefit, given 802.11ac being as pervasive and cheap as it is now, and that for the most part, the
majority of users do not have access to a broadband connection fast enough to surpass the throughput of their wireless router and clients.
I have worked in and out of networking since 1995 and I am just now at the point where I see the real possibility of 10Gbps Ethernet becoming more mainstream, especially in a business environment, but not really in the home environment. My opinion is that 10Gbps makes a few companies a LOT of money selling uplinks between big chassis switches and access switches, and they have tried to keep prices up, while the market is looking to lower the costs.
I think Thunderbolt 3 docks with 10Gbps (like the Akitio) hold some promise. Time will tell.
At least for now, I think wireless standards are going to remain pretty static.
