Intel Begins Shipping First Kaby Lake Processors, but Most Macs Won't Get Them Until 2017

[keysofanxiety]

I can assure you that Dell customer service is excellent for professional hardware (workstations and the precision line). Apple is not that good anymore.

Oh boy you've got my agreement there. I insisted my friend put a DELL Business warranty on his XPS. Next day engineer callout to repair mainboard & broken LMB. Less than 5 minutes to authorise on the phone. So, so good.

Consumer warranty is beyond shoddy though.

 

[apolloa]

Dell, Razer, HP, Asus, Lenovo, etc. have all produced laptops with Skylake chips similar to the MBP.

The 15" MBP is still using Haswell processors, never mind Broadwell, Skylake or Kaby Lake.

It's a great shame, as Apple used to be on the forefront of personal computing. It wasn't too long ago they had chips before any other manufacturer.

Quite frankly, I find it insulting that Apple still charge thousands of dollars for technology which is years old, without reducing the price at all, but there you go.

Well Intel launched the chips in January so I guess as its now July you could have a point and there is no clue as to when Apple will update their laptops, I personally can't be bothered to wait so bought an awesome iPad Pro

If you don't like the way Apple does business buy another brand, although that means Windows.

 

[mr.bee]

I'm not worried about moving to Apple CPU architecture, I'm more worried about GPU.

 

[apolloa]

As others posted, there are no CPU's with the GT4e graphics chip available yet.

So what? They can use the new Nvidia or AMD GPUs if they want.

 

[toddzrx]

Maybe add more base storage configurations, or finally get rid of 5400RPM drives.

Bingo. A pure 256GB SSD (or the option of a 128GB SSD/1TB HD Fusion Drive) should be the standard, base config for all Apple computers at this point.

My second Mac computer was the first 17" MBP, released in April of 2006. Apple actually gave me the option, at no cost, of a either 120GB 5400RPM HD, or a 100GB 7200RPM HD. Why they won't do something similar with pure SSD vs. FD is beyond me, but 2016 is not the time to be putting 5400 RPM drives in your machines anymore, not when you tout yourself as giving the buyer the "best" computing experience.

Whenever Apple does start releasing the next round of updated or redesigned machines, it would be nice to see SSD/FD, Retina screens, and USB-C/TB3 standard across the board. Time to move into the future, Apple.

 

[apolloa]

Apple will have received engineering samples from Intel to enable them to design their new MBPs - thus they should have been ready to go as soon as the chips were available en-masse. It's even worse for the rMB - these chips started shipping last year but only ended up in a new (non-redesigned) Mac in March. Pure and simple this is Apple being stretched too thinly and taking its eye of the Mac market and onto Apple Music, TV rights deals and the Watch.

You forgot to mention the car too. Won't care about Apple Music, don't care about another watch strap and certainly don't care about any Apple car! Maybe they'll launch a nice new model this year, I mean if they only upgraded the internals people on here would moan and moan about not getting a new design.
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Well, let's see.... Skylake has been available for over a year.... and Macbook pros haven't been updated in over a year.... so sure, we can blame intel for that.
*shakes head*

MacBook Pro Skylakes have been available since January.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Kaby Lake chips appropriate for the Retina MacBook Pro, the machine everyone is most curious about, may not launch until the very end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017

What's the rush? Why not wait til the generation after that?
Or just never?

 

[macallan23]

Why is everyone always so pissed at Apple for having “old” hardware, when it’s Intel that’s been causing the delays? Besides, my Late 2013 15” rMBP still works darn well for my power user workflow.

Apple still prices their "old" hardware at "new" prices.

 

[oneMadRssn]

I can't quite find the exact model where Apple had the chips before general release, but I'm pretty sure it did happen to a couple of the early Intel Macs.
I disagree with your statement in bold, though. That has only tended to be true over the past few years. Take a look at the release dates for past MBPs and the release quarters for their corresponding Intel CPUs:

The following are from Penryn generation, launched Jan, 2008

Intel chip: T8300 (Q1'08)
Mac release date: Feb 26, 2008

Intel chip: T9400 (Q3'08)
Mac release date: Oct 14, 2008

Intel chip: T9550 (Q4'08)
Mac release date: Jan 6, 2009

Intel chip: P8800 (Q2'09)
Mac release date: Jun 8, 2009

The following is from Nehalem generation, launched Nov. 2008

Intel chip: i7-620M (Q1'10)
Mac release date: Apr 13, 2010

The following are from Sandy Bridge generation, launched Jan. 2011

Intel chip: i7-2720QM (Q1'11)
Mac release date: Feb 11, 2011

Intel chip: i7-2760QM (Q4'11)
Mac release date: Oct 24, 2011

To me, that doesn't look like it always being a generation behind. It's really only very recently the worrying trend of lagging far behind Intel's CPU schedules has appeared.

Those are specific chips, not generation of chips. I added what I mean in red above. Penryn chips in new computers at the time Nehalem was being sold in most PCs, for example. Likewise, when Ivy Bridge was being sold in most PCs, Apple was still on Sandy Bridge. etc.

Going back more, the G3, G4, and G5 chips were, from a technical standpoint, quite a bit behind the x86 counterparts all along the way.

 

[jpn]

masayoyoshi son's net worth just went up another 1 Billion USD.

 

[ls1dreams]

I'm really excited about Kaby Lake. Most see it as just an incremental improvement, but here's why I think it's really nice:

1. Optane (crosspoint) memory - crazy fast SSD's that run at 6-7x current SSD speeds. System responsiveness will be amazing.

2. On-cpu HEVC decoding. Super low cpu utilization for new 4k content playback (and even 1080p/720p stuff encoded with the new more efficient codec). In 5 years when you retire the macbook, it will make a great HTPC.

GPU doesn't matter that much to me right now. I'd build a desktop if I want to game, though I'm sure there are some improvements.

More than anything I wish residential broadband would improve. Let's assume a fairly common 50Mbps home internet connection:

Internet - 50Mbps
PCI SSD write speed - around 500MBps = 80x faster
PCI SSD NVME write speed - around 900MBps = 144x faster
New Optane write speed - around 2GBps = 320x faster

That's right - our internet can only download at 0.3% the speed of new SSD's.
If you're lucky enough to have Google Fiber at 1Gbps, you're at 6%.

SSD's are damn fast, and we need better internet! I suppose you could argue that since these are laptops the next generation with a die shrink would be even better because of improved battery life, but it's a pretty nice update. (I'm on a 5 year old machine right now).

 

[Appleaker]

So what? They can use the new Nvidia or AMD GPUs if they want.

Yes but Apple won't. Chips with the GT4e graphics are the ones used in the 21.5" iMac, which doesn't have dedicated graphics, and the 15" MacBook Pro, which is likely to drop dedicated graphics with this years refresh.

 

[Steve.P.JobsFan]

Hey, an update is an update... I'll take anything at this point. I start college in August 2017... hopefully the rMBP isn't stagnant then.

 

[marcelvelky]

Am I the only one who wants a new mac mini?

nope, count me in.. i want to change my 2012 version for the new one.. i do not want the 2014 effed up version..

 

[Zarniwoop]

So what? They can use the new Nvidia or AMD GPUs if they want.

So what? Intel's Skylake is not fully out yet. Skylake is a processor family, and just one member of the family was released 8 months ago. And guess what, Apple put it immediatelly to 5k 27" iMac. So, there! Then Intel released one of the Skylake CPU's on spring, and - - ta-daa, Apple put it to Macbook one month later.

So, there are Macs with Skylake. Stop putting nonsense here.

MacBook Pro Skylakes have been available since January.

I write this very slowly, I hope you can follow: NO!
T-H-O-S-E "MacBook Pro Skylakes" HAVE BEEN
D-E-L-A-Y-E-D, and you cannot buy them from anywhere. And so can't Apple.

Intel and AMD have both failed in their release schedules. Intel just released Broadwell Xenons last month. AMD just released Polaris series - what was late one year (because the previous TSMC 20nm process was cancelled).

 

[3568378]

r u serious?? Your old 08 machine had a t9400 cpu. CORE 2 DUO. It had a passmark rating of 1761.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+T9400+@+2.53GHz&id=1009

Now look at this:

http://www.iphonebenchmark.net/passmark_chart.html

If you scroll down a little bit you'll find that the Ipad 2 was only a couple hundred points away.

I KNOW my Core 2 Duo was outdated- I'm talking about those who are calling the present offerings (Haswell and Sky Lake) outdated.
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Skylake is more future-proof than Haswell. If I recall correctly, Skylake can drive multiple external 4K monitors while Haswell cannot.

Wrong - the MacBook Pro 2015 15" can drive a 4K monitor and it is Haswell.

 

[Merkie]

And yet, they're selling just fine.

They aren't selling fine. Sales are declining rapidly. Wonder why...

 

[jpn]

This article is worth reading:
http://www.nature.com/news/the-chips-are-down-for-moore-s-law-1.19338

The main problem is the technology itself. We should prepare ourself for a performance stagnation for the next few years to come. A bit off-topic, but I wanted to share this.

rangertuf, thank you very much for this link. it is exactly what i was looking to read next after i began to read this thread.
fascinating. thanks again.

 

[512K Fat Mac]

Why is everyone always so pissed at Apple for having “old” hardware, when it’s Intel that’s been causing the delays? Besides, my Late 2013 15” rMBP still works darn well for my power user workflow.

With respect to the Macbook Pro lineup, it appeared, for a time, that revisions were delayed on account of Intel's delays in shipping Skylake (and, to a degree, Broadwell). Had those CPUs shipped earlier, perhaps the current revision of the Macbook Pro would be carrying a Skylake CPU with substantially the same hardware otherwise.

At this point, however, delays in a revision to the Macbook Pro can hardly be pegged in Intel. Skylake parts suitable for the Macbook Pro have been shipping in volume for some time now. If the holdup was Skylake, Macbook Pros with that CPU would by now have been available for months. That Kaby Lake mobile parts will (apparently) be shipping in volume within a scant few months after the rumored release of Skylake Macbook Pros merely emphasizes the magnitude of Apple's delay for reasons other than the CPU.

Nevertheless, there's little justification for Apple to skip Skylake and delay further solely for Kaby Lake mobile parts. The benefits are modestly incremental and Kaby Lake is a comparatively easy "drop-in" upgrade that could be used for a refresh down the road.

 

[firewood]

Apple's sales analytics probably show that only a small percentage of their current customer base buys the model with the fastest CPU. So why bother cranking out new SKUs for such a small number of customers who buy this faster stuff? Wait till the speed difference is a lot more than Intel's last offering.

Apple also has good analytics on the declining percentage of Mac users who are using bootcamp or virtualizing Windows. Once that percentage gets small enough, the requirement for an X86 processor disappears. A lot of the rest of popular non-Windows software has already been ported to ARM for the Raspberry Pi educational market, for Android ports, and/or for the iPad Pro.

Look at the A9 photos. There's tons of room for more 64-bit CPU cores if you leave off all the stuff that can go in an external GPU. Add more cores, retune the circuit sizing and chip layout for a bigger heat sink, and there are few reasons why it would not be competitive with the latest Core i7.

 

[Exile714]

I'm really excited about Kaby Lake. Most see it as just an incremental improvement, but here's why I think it's really nice:

1. Optane (crosspoint) memory - crazy fast SSD's that run at 6-7x current SSD speeds. System responsiveness will be amazing.

2. On-cpu HEVC decoding. Super low cpu utilization for new 4k content playback (and even 1080p/720p stuff encoded with the new more efficient codec). In 5 years when you retire the macbook, it will make a great HTPC.

GPU doesn't matter that much to me right now. I'd build a desktop if I want to game, though I'm sure there are some improvements.

More than anything I wish residential broadband would improve. Let's assume a fairly common 50Mbps home internet connection:

Internet - 50Mbps
PCI SSD write speed - around 500MBps = 80x faster
PCI SSD NVME write speed - around 900MBps = 144x faster
New Optane write speed - around 2GBps = 320x faster

That's right - our internet can only download at 0.3% the speed of new SSD's.
If you're lucky enough to have Google Fiber at 1Gbps, you're at 6%.

SSD's are damn fast, and we need better internet! I suppose you could argue that since these are laptops the next generation with a die shrink would be even better because of improved battery life, but it's a pretty nice update. (I'm on a 5 year old machine right now).

You do know Optane architecture is based on Skylake architecture, right? And yes, Optane will be compatible with Skylake processors.

 

[apolloa]

Yes but Apple won't. Chips with the GT4e graphics are the ones used in the 21.5" iMac, which doesn't have dedicated graphics, and the 15" MacBook Pro, which is likely to drop dedicated graphics with this years refresh.

I doubt Apple will drop the dgpu, they have little reason to, in fact they have more reason to fit a dgpu into more models because the new ones are so much more efficient and produce less heat.

 

[512K Fat Mac]

Actually yes you CAN. The new Intel CPUs that are suitable for the MacBook Pros have only come out in the last month or two. And it will be the same long wait time for Kaby Lake mobile processors that are suitable.

That's really not the case. To the extent Apple will be using parts that include the parts with lesser integrated graphics, those were shipping in September 2015.

At the outside, there's no reason Apple could not have been shipping a Skylake Macbook Pro by the end of Q1'2016 - more than three months ago - if the CPU were the gating factor.

 

[Apple Corps]

This is typical for most of Intel's CPU line.

The first customers are server OEMs and premium desktop PCs (gaming, graphics, etc.) Then the higher volume customers get upgrades as yields for the fabs improve for the wafers.

Imagine if AMD was a second source for lower end Mac's!

??? I always thought that for the new architecture the consumer level chips came out first followed a year or two later by the server grade Xeons. I am quite open to being educated on this point.

 

[Mr. Dee]

Like I always say, all the better, my Broadwell 13 MacBook Pro can be the latest and greatest a little longer. I can understand the frustration when other brands have jumped on Skylake regardless of its reported bugginess, but Apple of have really updated the Pro's just keep the noise down.