Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Could We See a 16-inch MacBook Pro Announcement Today?

My feeling is sometime this week -- and it may have happened -- Apple is holding one of their briefings and seeding review units. Next week is when we could see the reviews drop.

Gurman still feels the release is imminent.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ener Ji
Brammy said:
My feeling is sometime this week -- and it may have happened -- Apple is holding one of their briefings and seeding review units. Next week is when we could see the reviews drop.

Gurman still feels the release is imminent.
Click to expand...

I think you're right..

They just wanted to give Rene Ritchie time to touch, feel and "engage" with the latest Rose Gold before he films his unboxing video of it..
 
PickUrPoison said:
You’re on a rumor site, so yes, speculation about a new product of high interest is content, absolutely. There’s a reason this article is approaching 150 posts, right?
Click to expand...

I know a previous rumor said this month...and we are running out of month. But most of us who refuse to buy touchbar/ butterfly keys want something more substantial.
 
theluggage said:
Sigh. This again.

(a) The iMac was pretty much a new line (apart from some formerly-known-as-Performa designs that were failing to sell) - it didn't leave existing customers in the lurch. The G3 tower kept the floppy and old ports (or, at leasts, slots that could take them) for longer.

(b) It was a desktop machine, so having a floppy-on-a-string (if you even needed it) wasn't such a big deal as with a laptop.

(c) Floppies were well and truly obsolete and almost unusably small by then, when people had hard drives that could fit several thousand floppies. Floppies etc. were already being phased out of the laptop line - first as removable modules that could be replaced by extra batteries or Zip drives, then optional removable modules. If it would fit on a floppy it would fit in an email. People were using a mess of Zip drives, Syquests, optically-tracked 'superfloppies' and CD-Rs but with no one clear winner there was no obvious removable storage device to include.

I know when all my colleagues switched to PowerBook Tis I made the mistake of ordering floppy drives with each one - most of those ended up in cupboards, about 1 drive per 4 Macs would have been fine.

(d) The other ports that were lost included ADB (proprietary - with USB suddenly you could use any mouse and keyboard with a USB port and, yes, mice were coming with USB then - remember all those green USB-to-PS/2 dongles?) - localtalk (proprietary, and totally obsoleted by 10BaseT Ethernet) - RS423 (technically standard but annoyingly different from the de-facto standard RS232 and far inferior to USB) and SCSI (Increasingly only supported by expensive server-grade drives, plus: terminators and device IDs anybody?)

So, no, "Steve removed ports from the iMac" is not a justification for removing USB-A or SD-Cards when those formats are still at the height of their popularity, and the alternatives are just the old technologies packaged in a new connector.
Click to expand...

Floppy disks were still at the height of their popularity in 1998. I was very fortunate to have a ZIP, then JAZ, drive on my office desktop computer, but they were not mainstream. CD writers were new and exhorbitantly-priced too. The average consumer - and many of my coworkers at the time - had floppies or nothing.

What Apple saw, though, was the combination of the CD-ROM and networking (LAN and WAN) being vastly superior ways for users to do things they traditionally needed floppies for (installing software and transferring files respectively). They took a gamble - pushing the state of the art, knowing a smaller percentage of their potential userbase still needed the old technology and would have to get by with dongles and adapters. It took Dell till 2003 to follow suit in their Dimension PCs.

SD cards are "at the height of their popularity" right now. Photographers using DSLR cameras are still overwhelmingly using SD cards to store and transfer their photos. Other devices use SD cards, but it's mostly as a way of expanding (or even adding) internal storage - it's not really being used as a transferal medium.

Wireless technologies - cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, UWB - are now ubiquitous, and increasingly fast. The most popular cameras are smartphones, and they have all of those. Our photos and files are automatically stored in the cloud and can be retrieved on any device at any time. Even DSLR cameras are getting in on wireless support (Canon have some superb models with Wi-Fi and NFC).

What percentage of MacBook Pro users do you think need an SD card reader on a daily basis? Weekly? Monthly? It's dwindling. And ADB, SCSI, PS/2, et al were as commonplace back then as USB-A is now. Technology evolves. Apple are just a bit more aggressive about making that happen (and they've mostly been right).
 
Well if Apple thinks that it is going to be a big seller and we are 1 month away until black Friday. They might want to have enough units to ship to Apple stores and the online store so waiting a couple of days could increase inventory and not have people waiting a month and a half for a unit. Right before the Christmas selling season. I think if not today in the next couple of days. So they have some inventory for the next month so they can ramp up production.
 
Well, at least it is getting closer to the start of the holiday return period.

The smart money doesn’t buy this new unit until that window starts so you get a nice lengthy time period to trial it.
 
SpeedyTheSnail said:
There's nothing to stop Apple from implementing a quality built-in reader.

Plus, what is easier to carry around since they are all about a thinner, lighter computer? One computer with 20 dongles or one computer that is 3mm thicker with all the ports one would need?
Click to expand...
Twenty dongles? Really? I have two. We're almost at 2020 and if users have not gotten on the bandwagon with USB-C by now, that is on them. Please stop the silliness of trying to convince people that the 2015 MacBook Pro was any more expandable than the 2016-2019 MacBook Pro.

If Apple wants to make the 16" MacBook Pro 3mm thicker, by golly, they should go for it, but put in more battery capacity, a heftier GPU, DRAM slots for up to 64GB of DRAM, more cooling for the CPU...basically anything other than wasting even one iota of space on an SD Card slot.
 
Do not know how much Macbook Pro 15in units they have left at Apple and places like best buy. If i was Apple I would do a holiday promotion on the old inventory. Like buy a 15in Macbook Pro today and get Applecare for free!!! Some people might not care about the larger screen and if they got Applecare it could cover a keyboard replacement. Along with a sale on the Macbook Pro 15 :)
 
Wouldn't it be weird for Apple to release any new MacBook pros this year given they refreshed the entire line already in 2019?
 
Adelphos33 said:
Wouldn't it be weird for Apple to release any new MacBook pros this year given they refreshed the entire line already in 2019?
Click to expand...
Not if sales has been a issue and changes needed to be made. There production of computers can be updated very quickly now with just in time manufacturing. Remember that the Holiday sales, really boost the bottom line if they can make changes and grow sales in the next two months.
 
skaertus said:
The announcement of a new 16-inch MacBook Pro brings me two concerns (apart from the price, which may be sky-high):

1. Apple may not willing to make the footprint of the large MacBook Pro any smaller. A laptop benefits from being thin and light, and the footprint of the current 15-inch MacBook Pro is perhaps the smallest Apple could do with a 16-inch model. And it could certainly benefit from being a little bit lighter.

2. A larger screen with a higher resolution will probably mean less battery life. Apple may put more battery inside the laptop, but that would mean making it heavier, which is also a concern.

Apart from this, the unannounced laptop seems to be a powerhouse and the best one yet. At least in our minds, given that everything so far is pure speculation.
Click to expand...

It's supposed to be a Pro machine. As an editor and a CGI animator, I want better thermal management and airflow, less processor throttling, more ports, bigger screen, more internal drive space, etc. I don't find the current MacBook Pro to be heavy and would be fine with an even heavier machine with a larger footprint. I loved my old 17" so much. I had 2 drives in that thing and 8 TB of storage. I could edit giant video projects on my couch and never have to plug in a single external drive. I want that back. And honestly, I'd pay whatever the cost to get it. My laptop is a work machine and I work on it 12 hours a day. It pays for itself rather quickly. Apple needs to release a "MacBook Pro Pro".

And btw (and slightly off topic) the USB-C port design is awful. They really need to figure out a better way to make the connection more secure. I hate that I can slightly bump a cable and have the damn thing pop out and watch my drive dismount, unlinking all the assets to my video project. Hey Apple, make all the USB-C ports magnetic!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lone Deranger, DrBrush, navaira and 2 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back