It's base on the data, not a guess. Check the list of special events from Apple and you will see.
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DigiTimes: 16-Inch MacBook Pro to Launch by End of October With Ultra-Slim Bezels and Scissor Keyboard
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It's base on the data, not a guess. Check the list of special events from Apple and you will see.
Idle Speculation on Whether Apple Is Going to Hold Another Keynote Event This Year
I fully expect more Apple hardware before the end of the year, but not another keynote event.
daringfireball.net
Special events are only announced shortly before they’re held, and many times product releases take place without a special event. You’re drawing the wrong conclusion from the data.
And this is not the case because 16 inch MBP is a WHOLE NEW product. Tell me if there is any product with a whole new design and spec announced WITHOUT a special event? NO. Mac Pro 2019 is a good example.
Any other major or minor updates usually announce without special events instead of press releases.
Using caps or bold (or bold caps) doesn’t change anything.
There are no special events scheduled, but as I already stated, they’re only announced shortly before they’re held. Apple can hold a November or December event, as they’ve done in the past, or announce the update via a press release. Which they’ve also done in the past.
It’s not a “whole new product” any more than the 10.5” iPad Air 3 was compared to the 9.7” Air 2. The Air 3 was announced via press release earlier this year, if you recall.
Have you considered that announcing an updated screen size isn’t quite as big a deal as you seem to think it is? To me, that doesn’t seem particularly worthy of a special event.
Was 15”, now 16”. That’s like a two minute event, isn’t it?
I would be surprised if they held an event for this laptop. Events aren't for nerds like us, they're to excite the media, which has worked well in the past, but there's a narrative developing in the media that Apple can't innovate anymore. A media event that makes journo's think they're going to have a great story and please their editor with lots of click throughs but turns out to be for a laptop with a fractionally bigger screen and a keyboard that won't fail easily might well generate quite negative headlines and copy.
I don't think it will affect the price at all. It's not like scissor keyboards are expensive. All they are doing is swapping out the old for the new.
The real question is: will it have FaceID? The first Macbook that comes out with FaceID will have my money.
Here are all the facts:
- soldered SSD -> not upgradeable, not repairable, against environmental responsibility
- soldered RAM -> not upgradeable, not repairable, against environmental responsibility
- no ports
- butterfly keyboard v4 (as terrible as before)
- Touch Bar
- Heat problems
- soldered SSD -> not upgradeable, not repairable, against environmental responsibility
- soldered RAM -> not upgradeable, not repairable, against environmental responsibility
- no ports
- butterfly keyboard v4 (as terrible as before)
- Touch Bar
- Heat problems
There's no established definition of what constitutes "a whole new product" in Apple's eyes. The 6/8-core iMacs, MBPs with Vega graphics, the new low end MBPs (now with touchbars) - were major upgrades all released without an event - probably had more significant improvements than some versions of the 16" rumour. The leaked image shows the exact same "design language" as the current range.
We still don't know if this is a new 16" line that will run alongside the 15" or if it is a replacement - and since Apple might continue to sell the 15" "while stocks last" before discontinuing it we might not know that for a while.
What we KNOW (bold, caps and italics beats your bold caps) is that a lot of analysts have said that there's a 16" in development (enough that its likely to be true - but the least reliable part of that is the possible launch date) and that there's a 16" MBP icon in the beta of MacOS 15.1 - that suggests that either:
(a) Apple deliberately included the icon because they expect to launch the 16" MBP with/shortly after 15.1 - or they wouldn't have risked 'leaking' it until 15.2 or later - and in that case the icon is probably a fairly accurate rendition.
(b) Apple included the icon in 15.1 beta by mistake - in which case all bets are off as the image could just be some prototype design concept that has since changed and/or won't be launched until next year.
It would be slightly odd to suddenly launch a 16" out of the blue without updating the 13" as well - but that doesn't rule it out - what that really says is "this is not a typical launch so don't expect it to follow the usual pattern". I'd speculate that they are rushing forward one model using a new design that was probably scheduled for 2020/21 in response to the keyboard problems with the current model: Even from this site you can tell that a lot of the interest is in the new keyboard (that and extra ports which probably won't happen) - and I don't see Cook standing up on stage saying "The new Mac Book Pro - the keyboard sucks 37.5% less!"
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Really? Is FaceID so important to you? I would like to know why...
Those are facts? Are we talking about the new 16" MBP?
I ask as I am confused. Did you get this information directly from Apple?
Or are you just being arrogant and telling people that these are the facts.
We have already heard that the butterfly keyboard is being replaced by a scissor-keyboard. You know definitely, this is not true?
Heat problems? Do you know that is definitively the case?
If you are getting information directly from Apple and the tone of your post seems you are, please do confirm so.
</sarcasm>
Well, it certainly depends. A consumer laptop may not be exclusively for consumption of content. Consumers are not necessarily people who only browse the Internet and use Netflix.
A student, for instance, may use Microsoft Office for its homework, for drafting a presentation, or for writing a dissertation. Any person may use his laptop at home to work, and the company where he works may not provide him a “pro” laptop to do this.
These people are “consumers”, although they do not use the laptop exclusively for consumption of content. A company will buy a laptop for work. But people are not categorized, they are just people, and they will have a mixed use for the laptop.
I am an example. I work at a firm which does not provide me a decent laptop to work at home. When I travel or when I am at home, I use my personal laptop for doing whatever I want or need. I use my laptop for work, but also for entertainment. It is a mixed use machine.
The laptop is not a work tool for me; it is a personal object. I will not buy a professional laptop, nor a consumer laptop, as I usually despise this kind of classification (which Apple seldom used in the Steve Jobs era). I will buy a laptop which serves my personal needs. And a 16-inch laptop may be a welcome addition to this, but not if it costs north of $3,000, which is something I cannot justify paying.
Yeah, especially for something like this that sits at the high-end of the laptop range and doesn't replace anything below it.
My money is on a briefing in NYC/Cupertino after the TV stuff launches in November.
I always have to laugh, people will spend $4000 for a mobile laptop computer and they won't spend $379 to protect the computer for three years with 2 incidents of damage. less then 1/10 the cost of the computer. And with a mobile computer your are moving it around a lot.
Surely this a joke.
Face ID is meant for the Mac.
It has a camera pointing directly at is user at all times. It has a relatively large bezel area that can house multiple sensors. It is an expensive product that justifies the additional hardware. Authenticating on the Mac has become increasingly obnoxious over time and with each new release of macOS it gets worse.
They've attempted to fix this with Touch ID, but instead took 20 steps back and made a terrible user experience. It is not like Touch ID on iPhone where your thumb was already naturally positioned on the Home Button to wake the phone (and simultaneously authenticating). You have to reach for Touch ID in an awkward spot that means taking your hands off the keyboard. It quickly becomes a tiresome reptition that does not feel natural; it feels like a chore. It has also led to some of the worst UX decisions ever made in macOS, like the current state of Autofill with Touch ID.
Right now the only saving grace is Unlock with Apple Watch, which is good, but not nearly good enough. I'm still required to enter my Mac's password for numerous things and I have no idea why. If it's me, I shouldn't have to. Obviously Apple doesn't feel that Apple Watch authentication is secure enough for a personal Mac in someone's home (which is, frankly, absurd).
Face ID is last hope that Apple can bring some form of actual convenient authentication to the Mac.
I've owned more than 10 bits of expensive consumer electronics in my time, and I can't think of any of them that I've seriously damaged in the first 3 years. Sure, my MBP took a dirt nap - but by then it was over 3 years old and I'd done some internal mods that would have voided any insurance. I've had GPU faults fixed under Apple's repair program - no insurance required. Now I've temped fate, my iPad Pro will probably get trampled by a herd of wildebeest but that still leaves me ahead of the game.
Thats also ignoring the possibility that your home insurance either already covers (or could cheaply be extended to) your devices, or people who get insurance via their credit card.
There's a very simple rule - never pay to insure what you can afford to replace - based on very simple math: insurance is a for-profit business - and it's not profitable to sell a policy for $X if a significant proportion of customers claim more than $X.
Insurance is for things like house fires and third-party liability that would cause you major financial distress.
Extended warranties are also a con: they're basically covering your device for the middle part of its lifetime where it is least likely to fail. See bathtub curve. That goes double if you are outside the USA in a jurisdiction with stronger consumer rights laws.
The difference between a consumer and a professional is the professional is willing to pay $3,000 or more for a 16" MacBook Pro. You want one, you just don't want to buy one. Lots of people want one that don't need one, and therefore are not going to buy one. Just because you would find a use for it if someone gave it to you, does not mean the product is meant for you, built for you, or targeted toward you. Nor does it need to be.
There is an entire class of professional users that will not think twice about buying this machine, because it is for work, and it meets the needs of their work. They are waiting for this machine to come out, not complaining that there won't be a stripped down $1999 model for the prosumer with dispensable cash to drool over.
I would be highly surprised if this is under 3k. The high-end 15" MBP, non BTO, spec is $2800. I'd expect this to have the same specs as that unit, with the different size as the main differentiation.
That said, I wouldn't put it past Apple to put 256gb storage in the starting model.
That said, I wouldn't put it past Apple to put 256gb storage in the starting model.
Well, I prefer not to categorize like this.
I understand that some people will pay $3,000 or more on a laptop because they specifically need it for work. But we are talking about a product that does not even exist.
The way I see it, after Steve Jobs returned to being CEO, Apple's MacBooks were not targeted at a specific audience. We had the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air, the first one being more powerful and the second one being the lightweight. Other manufacturers had different lines of laptops. Lenovo has IdeaPad and ThinkPad, Dell has several of them targeted at different audiences. Tim Cook seems to be more in line with this kind of orientation.
Apple may launch a 16-inch MacBook Pro which is very powerful and targeted at professionals (or it may not). Mostly photographers or video editors perhaps. Business executives who use Microsoft Office on a daily basis are also professionals and have no reason to buy a very powerful computer, even though they would benefit from a 16-inch screen for productivity. Sometimes they need to handle a Word document, a PDF and a PPT presentation at the same time, and this is very hard to do with a 13-inch screen. A 16-inch would be a huge addition, but 32 GB of RAM is totally overkill for their needs. And they are professionals as much as photographers.
A 16-inch screen is not necessarily attached to a very powerful configuration. It does not have to. Some people just want a larger screen, and would benefit from one.
The fact that Apple may launch a 16-inch laptop for photo and video professionals does not mean that other professionals do not need it. Or even consumers. My parents have laptops, and they would benefit from larger screens because their eyes are not as good as they were, and larger characters do make a huge difference. They are consumers and they need large screens. But they will not pay $3,000 for a powerful laptop, because they do not need all this power, despite the fact that the added real screen estate may be more useful to them than to many professionals.
So, there are different markets. I can understand the needs of professionals who need $3,000+ machines for their work. But there are also other people, including professionals, who need larger screens and will not pay that amount of money because it simply does not make sense.