As someone who has squashed the connector on a USB-C cable (and plenty of USB-A), I appreciate the solidity of the Lightning connector.
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Apple's Rumored MacBook Air Successor Said to Use Intel's Kaby Lake Refresh Processors
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As someone who has squashed the connector on a USB-C cable (and plenty of USB-A), I appreciate the solidity of the Lightning connector.
It looks like HP has leaked the 8th gen of 15W chips ("Whiskey Lake") appropriate for the space currently occupied by the MBA and MBPEsc.
Of course Apple often has Intel make custom chips with slightly different profiles. Here's what the specs appear to be. All of these run UHD 620 graphics:
i7-8565U: Quad 1.8/4.6GHz, 8MB cache
i5-8265U: Quad 1.6/4.1GHZ, 6MB cache
i3-8145U: Dual 2.1/3.9GHz, 4MB cache
Other than the first-generation MacBook Air, I can't think of an example. It certainly isn't that often.
They're probably gonna wait for a CPU with Iris Plus graphics, as this would otherwise be a significant downgrade.
What's odd about these Intel graphics is that according to wikipedia, UHD Graphics 620, 630 and 640 are virtually identical in performance (and 630 is actually worse than 620):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Graphics_Technology#Kaby_Lake_Refresh_/_Coffee_Lake
The clock is higher.
The only source for the 630 having 23 instead of 23 EUs is an archived version of an Ark page; the current page doesn't say this at all. Surely all three have the same units and only differ in their clock speed.
I was going to disagree with you, but then I did some research which states that the Intel UHD Graphics 620 is GT2, while the Intel HD6000 in the 13" MacBook Air (2015-2017) is GT3 and the 13" nTB MacBook Pro (2016-2017) is GT3e. You are correct, I just do not see Apple moving down to a GT2 part.
At this point, Intel has to have an Iris Plus part (8365U and 8665U) lurking around waiting to quietly introduce at the Whiskey Lake U-series rollout and Apple will be the first customer. It would be great to see a MacBook (Air?) get a GT3e iGPU.
The leaked Intel roadmap over at wccftech says Weeks 37-40 are the launch/release window for Whiskey Lake U.
Not getting my hopes up, I don't really need a new laptop, but it would be nice to see Apple return to form regarding the Mac lineup. We shall see...
I'll add a citation from Anandtech here for that.
General release appears to be end of September so just in time for an October launch. As noted there there is no increase in base clock speeds although the turbo speeds are up 500-700MHz. I wonder if that's not very helpful for Apple though in their quest to design ever smaller enclosures?
If they go with the older Kaby Lake Refresh i5-8250U (with a handsome discount) in the next few weeks rather than wait all the way into October for these CPUs that may not turbo to the higher limit for long in a power efficient way. Those people hoping to hammer their computers on a budget may find themselves additionally stymied by throttling in a laptop enclosure.
It's not really a problem for the iMac and Mac Mini in their current cases since they can theoretically dissipate more heat and, crucially, might be able to accept a version with discrete graphics to compensate for the reduced graphics performance over an Iris Graphics part.
Apple have to be looking at acceptable performance for driving a 4k screen for the 2018 iMac 21.5" base SKU and I would imagine they will have concluded that UHD620 to drive 4k is insufficient.
I would infer from this that the Mini might see the usual 3 models based loosely on the 2011 marketing model:
Base: Specced to meet a (low) price point
Middle: The one with built in discrete graphics for convenience - HD as standard but small Fusion/SSD choice.
Top: The best storage options (lots of Fusion Drive and SSD) - add an eGPU of your choice later.
If priced right there might be a LAN gaming audience for the middle model while pro users could take the top model and add their own eGPU.
I can't think of a market *less* interested in Macs than LAN gamers. If they want the lunchbox form-factor they will have bought an official Intel NUC or LED-encrusted equivalent already.
It's got a skull on it! https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc8i7hvk.html
It's got a skull on it! https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc8i7hvk.html
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For devs writing modern MacOS Apps in ObjC or Swift using the current libraries and frameworks, it would mostly be a matter of ticking "ARM" in the xcode build options and re-building. Anyway, its not a change that Apple would pull overnight (unless they've totally lost their marbles) - they'd need to get prototype ARM Macs out to developers well in advance, and include some sort of interim X86 'emulator' system just like they did with the PPC to Intel switch.
The problem would be the big, multi-platform legacy Apps like Adobe CS (and its myriad plug-ins) and MS Office that might be slow to move. However, if the transition started with the low-end laptops, that might not be such a big deal.
Bear in mind that Apple have done this at least twice and arguably 3-4 times in the past (68k to PPC in the 90s, PPC to Intel in 05/06 and then, if you want to stretch a point, 6502 to 68k in the 80s and the recent/ongoing 32 to 64 bit instruction set transition) and such changes are getting easier as more software is written to use abstract, operating-system defined frameworks, scripting languages or virtual-machine runtimes (like Android, and Microsofts common language runtime environment). That and Adobe, Microsoft etc. already have "lite" iOS versions of their product for 'low end' users, not to mention webapps like Google's applications.
The more challenging aspect is the iMac Pro/Mac Pro end of the market - there's no reason that ARM can't compete there (ARM chips are already being used to build supercomputers) but at that level ARM starts to rely on more exotic architectures with lots of CPU cores supplemented by vector processors etc. for which software needs to be optimised. That might not work to its full potential when running software designed for Intel's brute-force space heaters with only a few cores.
I could see these Whiskey Lake parts in a MacBook Air or the rumored low-priced 13” laptop, whichever Apple plans to release, with likely the i3 dual-core in a $999 entry level model.
since they’re not battery-powered, I don’t see any advantage to using 15W parts for the 21.5” iMac, or Mac mini. Even with sufficient cooling you still have the issue of low base clocks. And they especially don’t make sense if they would need to be paired with a dGPU. The 28W Coffee Lake lineup used in the recent 13” quad-core refresh would make a lot more than sense.
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i7-8565U: Quad 1.8/4.6GHz, 8MB cache
i5-8265U: Quad 1.6/4.1GHZ, 6MB cache
i3-8145U: Dual 2.1/3.9GHz, 4MB cache
Even for a low-priced laptop, there has to be a better option than releasing a dual-core computer in 2018. Surely there's something above that i3-8145U that is quad-core. What's the cost difference between the i3-8145U and the i5-8265U anyway?
Or maybe there's only going to be two or even only one model for this laptop, a specific CPU and RAM, the only option being storage capacity such as 128GB/256GB.
i5-8265U: Quad 1.6/4.1GHZ, 6MB cache
i3-8145U: Dual 2.1/3.9GHz, 4MB cache
Even for a low-priced laptop, there has to be a better option than releasing a dual-core computer in 2018. Surely there's something above that i3-8145U that is quad-core. What's the cost difference between the i3-8145U and the i5-8265U anyway?
Or maybe there's only going to be two or even only one model for this laptop, a specific CPU and RAM, the only option being storage capacity such as 128GB/256GB.
Users could upgrade the CPU on their desktop by themselves easily in the PPC Era.
I'm honestly not sure about the debate over integrated intel GPU's is even all that relevant anymore. doesn't matter which integrated GPU, including the higher end ones, None of them are geared for much 3d work, or GPU based compute. Whether you go 620, 640 or iris pro, the overall performance difference is negligible.
for Apple's computers, the important thing is if they can drive the resolutions claimed + external monitors. Almost every single integrated GPU today can do that without hiccup.
holding out for one integrated GPU over the other seems like a cop-out excuse to not update.
anyone who wants GPU performance for graphics or compute should be getting a discreet GPU.
You only have to look back at the base iMac in recent years for examples of 15w CPUs they have used starting in 2014. This was the same year that the 2014 Mini came out - and using the same hardware.
Clearly the base iMac sells in enough numbers for Apple to bother to design and manufacture a motherboard for it. The Mini that came out after that year used the same innards but it was clear to see that the 2014 MacBook Air (based on the same CPU again) was the big seller and Apple probably profited from economies of scale from buying those CPUs which are still going into the Mini today(!).
The only reason I could see for using the a discrete GPU would be in the event that the base iMac gets a 4k display to complete the retina-ification of the iMac range - a nice story for Phil Schiller. Schiller could get 2 for 1 if he can also announce the end of non-retina on laptops at the same time with the demise of the MBA as we know it.
We would all love for Apple to go 28w but the received wisdom says that we sacrifice the low end model to do it (because that would need its own motherboard). So my idea on the alternative would be to have higher end SKUs add a discrete GPU to the motherboard - the current Mini case can accommodate the extra TDP and the base iMac certainly would.