Could the lack of a Non-TB MBP upgrade be because Apple is planning to drop them from the Pro lineup

[shyam09]

We know a new laptop is coming soon - probably in September, since a Mac event doesn't look plausible to me anymore, and it's rumored to start at about $999.

I think the non-TB MBPs will be dropped, leaving only the TB models as the Pro models, and paving way for Apple to create a three-tiered configuration for the planned device which replaces the non-TB models.

Why else would Apple not release an 8th gen chips upgrade on the non-TB model?

 

[Glmnet1]

Yep, I believe a 13" or 14" MacBook will probably take its place while the 12" takes the MBA place.

 

[Hadron]

Why else would Apple not release an 8th gen chips upgrade on the non-TB model?

Because the non-TB model has weaker cooling and they didn't want to put a quad core chip in it? Or because they are treating it as a legacy machine, like they kept the non-retina 13" on for about 3 years without updates?

Take your own guess, but I wouldn't necessarily assume that it will be discontinued in the next few months. I suspect they will discontinue it, but on past form it could well be in a year's time or even two.

 

[zhenya]

I think it's simply that the chips that would replace the current ones - 15W, Iris graphics, have not been released yet by Intel.

 

[quarx]

We will have to wait for the two mobile Whiskey Lake 15W chips, which are rumoured to be launched soon:

Core i5-8265U (4C/8T, base clock 1.6GHz, boost clock 3.9GHz)
Core i7-8565U (4C/8T, base clock 1.8GHz, boost clock 4.5GHz)

 

[Nozuka]

And they also want us to buy the more expensive model

 

[dgdosen]

My daily laptop is a 13" pre-butterfly MPB. It's got a replacement battery, is running fine, but it is a bit long in the tooth.

I'd like to bump that to a 13" quad core mac laptop because I like macos and I want more cores in the concurrency-friendly world we live in. It looks like these Whiskey Lake procs can make that happen. I think a fair price with apple tax is to get one with 16GB of ram and a 512GB NVMe drive (and nTB) for under $2k.

If Apple doesn't make that happen, for whatever reason, I'm going to try a loaded Pixelbook and Linux. It looks like Google and Apple are both going to have more hardware updates around September/October. I'm looking forward to it. Here's to hoping containerization becomes a playing-field leveler to the desktop world like it was to the server.

 

[maflynn]

They'll let that model whither on the vine for a bit of time, but yet. They spent a lot of money on developing the Touch Bar, so they'll not be updating the non-tb based MBP anytime soon

 

[littlepud]

12” ultra thin, 5W CPU, 1 USB-C port, rebranded as new MacBook Air

13” nTB, 15W CPU, 2 TB3 ports, rebranded as new MacBook

13”/15” TB, 28/45W CPU, 4 TB3 ports, remains as MacBook Pro

 

[leman]

The lack of non-tb upgrade is simply because there is nothing to upgrade them with. All other 15W intel CPUs are using lower-end graphics.

And yes, I do believe that these laptops will be dropped, replaced by some sort of MBA/MB hybrid.

 

[Fishrrman]

My guess (and it's ONLY "a guess") as to why the touchbar MBP's got a 2018 update and the 2017 didn't...

The non-touchbar keyboard is different, and has more keys (the function keys).
I will guess that the keyboards for the 13" and 15" touchbar models are the same (if I'm wrong, please correct me).

The Apple engineers "put all their marbles" into coming up with a way to improve the touchbar keyboard, but didn't bother with the non-touchbar keyboard (which is different and which would require an independent re-working).

End result:
The 2018 touchbar models got the attention and the improved keyboard.
The non-touchbar models will have to wait for later...

 

[maflynn]

The Apple engineers "put all their marbles" into coming up with a way to improve the touchbar keyboard,

I think its more of a strategic decision, then a tactical one. They're wanting the TouchBar to succeed and they'll everything to promote TB

 

[ascender]

Is it because of a delay on Intel’s part for suitable chips?

Or is it because Apple are finally going to retire the Air and shuffle things around to have a new Air and Macbook? And when I say “new”, I’m guessing the 12” Macbook will hang around and the non-touchbar MBP might lose the “pro” part.

Who knows. Apple seem to finally be focusing on the Mac again, so they need to do something with their laptop lineup which is well overdue.