Are Apple waiting for Skylake for 12" rMBA?

[Woochoo]

I went and compared the specifications of the Broadwell vs Skylake cpus, here are my observations:

1. Skylake will not be available...

1. That's it.
2. Well, we haven't seen any benchmarks yet but Intel advised edge-users and gamers not to go Broadwell and wait for Skylake instead because the performance would be one of the greater steps in the decade, so I wouldn't say "just a bit" (not like from Ivy to Haswell or Haswell to Broadwell, which can't be noticed).
3. That's it. But also DDR4 (better for integrated GPU's as it will be faster memory, especially for iGPU's without eRAM). Also Thunderbolt 3.0, up to 50% more Execution Units compared to Broadwell (which has up to 20% more EU compared to Haswell...), and more stuff to see.
4. Yes, Cannonlake, but if they had problems with 14nm just imagine what will come with 10nm... Not to say that it will be like Broadwell is to Haswell: almost the same thing but a bit better energy efficient.
5. Well Apple makes its own calendars. MBA has been up to 499 days without any refresh in 2009, so Apple doesn't care about waiting a bit more months, specially if they do a rMBA with wireless charging thanks to Skylake. A rMBA with Broadwell would be a surprise but less impressive. I bet Apple will refresh MBA's soon but mantaining the actual 11" and 13" with Broadwells and HD6000's.

 

[motrek]

...
Now as far as the wireless charging thing goes; do you have some insider info on what type of case can be used or if Apple is actually considering (or not) such an idea?

Give us some meat about what you think, not just some technical corrections.

Wireless charging is done via electromagnetic fields which can't penetrate conductive materials like aluminum. This is physics 101.

 

[objektør]

Waiting for Skylake? If Apple were the same like some of us and waiting for the next best thing, they would never release anything new...
They release it when they think it is a good machine and then it is up to us to decide whether we think it fits our needs. Or wait for the next best thing. Again.

 

[Woochoo]

Wireless charging is done via electromagnetic fields which can't penetrate conductive materials like aluminum. This is physics 101.

If wireless charging is the "next big thing" with Skylake, trust me that Apple will find a way to sort it out. I highly doubt that if the rest of vendors take it, they do another fail like "small displays are better to use with 1 hand" in the way of "charging with a wire is much safer and classy than wireless"...

@objektør If Apple was to release every year a minor bump instead of waiting a long for a great redesign & refresh, Mac Pro would still be the big tower it was before. Apple also waited almost a year and a half to refresh the Air in 2009, why shouldn't they do it again, at least with MBPros? Just think that if they refresh to Broadwell, they'd be offering almost the same for about 2 years since now. Apple is the first that doesn't have any need to do regular releases every X months to satisfy the users.

 

[SmOgER]

Fan in rMBA wouldn't make sense. The current MBAs already have barely room left for thinner design before they get limited by the fan thickness and I don't see why a less powerful Core-M machine would need one, especially if the current form factor, as we know, remains in production as well. All in all I would say the first rMBA would be a little like the first ever MBA, it won't have the revolutionary performance nor very effective cooling, but with skylake and other upcoming CPU generations, it will evolve just like the standard MBA did till it takes over the entire MBA line altogether with updated design (not gonna happen in the near future, but in 3-4 years time - quite possibly).

 

[motrek]

Fan in rMBA wouldn't make sense. The current MBAs already have barely room left for thinner design before they get limited by the fan thickness and I don't see why a less powerful Core-M machine would need one, especially if the current form factor, as we know, remains in production as well. All in all I would say the first rMBA would be a little like the first ever MBA, it won't have the revolutionary performance nor very effective cooling, but with skylake and other upcoming CPU generations, it will evolve just like the standard MBA did till it takes over the entire MBA line altogether with updated design (not gonna happen in the near future, but in 3-4 years time - quite possibly).

To my knowledge almost all of the Core M computers released so far have fans. That means to me that Intel probably oversold Core M's ability to run fanless and I would expect any Apple laptop to have a fan for the next few years.

There are several laptops that are thinner than the MBAs and have fans. So Apple still has a little room to shrink, if the want.

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If wireless charging is the "next big thing" with Skylake, trust me that Apple will find a way to sort it out. I highly doubt that if the rest of vendors take it, they do another fail like "small displays are better to use with 1 hand" in the way of "charging with a wire is much safer and classy than wireless"...

Yes, they can very easily get around physics by making their laptops plastic or putting a plastic window in the bottom of the laptop.

I don't see the benefits of wireless charging being enough to outweigh Apple's affinity for its unibody aluminum process though.

Actually I don't really understand wireless charging for laptops at all. For phones it makes some sense to me. You can put charging rectangles on your desk or next to your bed and just toss your phone onto them to charge. Pretty convenient. But are you supposed to have a laptop-sized charging pad on your desk to put your laptop on? Are you supposed to carry that around when you travel? Sounds ugly and inconvenient to me.

 

[iMacmatician]

From what we've seen, there really is no room for a fan inside the chassis. It's almost all battery, with a small logic board and a trackpad mechanism.

Looks like WildCowboy was spot on.