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Plus, I am caught the middle as I really do not want a laptop but the Mac Mini does not have the graphics capabilities I need, the Mac Pro is insanely expensive and the iMac 27" screen has grown too small for me

So, I figured I would get the MBP 16" with a larger external monitor and use it in clamshell mode -- but that leaves the question of, well, why am I paying for a screen on a laptop that I will rarely use as a laptop


If Apple offered the Mac Mini with the same GPU as the MBP 16" I would be set

I totally get that.

In my case I love the ability of using my computer at home and just working on the go with good performance.
 
I totally get that.

In my case I love the ability of using my computer at home and just working on the go with good performance.


I could also use the laptop for work (attorney) as well instead of just for writing music and making videos it' just I am so used to the 27" iMac that going to a 16" screen would not be worth it without getting a larger external monitor

I wish Apple would just let us know if there will be a spec bump next week

I am new to making videos and never heard my iMac's fans until started doing such -- I wonder how often the MBP 16" fans come on using iMovie?
 
What does the die size matter? They still have the beefiest CPUs on the market and these clock speeds are nuts, especially for gaming. If you’re into VR, this is what you’ve been waiting for.

Their 10nm chips are incredibly dense, much more so than any so claimed 7nm.


People don’t really understand this.

Again, don’t get caught up on the marketing, it’s all about performance. Intel’s 10nm are still denser than those claimed to be 7nm.

density != performance though. The nm refers to the poly gate widths (more or less, manufacturers can play a bit fast and loose with how they measure).

Density lets you keep the die small, get more die per wafer, and costs lower, but it also equals more heat at a process size. It can (possibly) aid in performance as it can shorten the path, but this isn't a given.

7nm allows reduction in power required (and heat generated) and usually increases in clock speed. Longer instruction pipelines also allow higher clock speed though at a greater penalty for missed predictions. Intel used to have much longer pipelines than AMD back in the Mhz wars. I haven't kept as close a watch of late.

Intel has dropped the ball, and let it roll down the street and fall into a gutter. They haven't shipped a processor on time since before many of you were born (1994 I think). They let AMD beat them to 1Ghz, various multi-core counts including dual core, 3D instructions, 64 bit, and probably more I can't think of off the top of my head. They stayed ahead with gigantic market share and cash reserves, but now feel the pain of decades weighing them down while competitors like AMD and 32 flavors of ARM chip away at their business model while luring away talented developers.

They need a home run, but elected to bunt.
 
Comet Lake is a massive upgrade over your 2011 regardless.

Even ice-lake in 10 watt form (e.g., i7-1060GN) is an upgrade from an i7-2820 from 2011. At least according to Geekbench 5. I was curious as I still have a 2011 15" machine sitting in the corner, and i looked it up as i have a 2020 air on order.

Not a massive performance improvement, but still an improvement, just.
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Intel has dropped the ball, and let it roll down the street and fall into a gutter. They haven't shipped a processor on time since before many of you were born (1994 I think).

Ahh... 1994, the Pentium 60 era.

That thing actually melted machines as well :D

We've come full circle.

I cant find a web article about it (probably because most PC magazines weren't on the internet in 1993-1994), but back in the days of paper magazines (i was buying/reading them back then) a bunch of OEMs tried to stuff the new P60 into laptops and they uh.... melted. Apparently. According to the articles.
 
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Not sure that's accurate...

>This model is powered by a 14 nm, 64-bit "8th Generation" Intel Mobile Core i7 "Coffee Lake" (I7-8700B) processor


Anyway, I'm sad apple doesn't ship "full" mobile CPUs in the 13" Pro anymore. By offering intel's "-U" spec processors instead of the beefier "-H" CPUs, they position the Macbook pro 13" more as an ultrabook than as a true workstation "pro" notebook... which is weird considering the MacBook Air was the *original* ultrabook and is much more competitive in the thin-and-light space.

Here's hoping the "14" that's being rumored brings the beef when it comes to CPU wattage.

It's mobile but TDP itself is 65W which is far from mobile.
 
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Even ice-lake in 10 watt form (e.g., i7-1060GN) is an upgrade from an i7-2820 from 2011. At least according to Geekbench 5. I was curious as I still have a 2011 15" machine sitting in the corner, and i looked it up as i have a 2020 air on order.

Not a massive performance improvement, but still an improvement, just.

Yes, but you don’t really want to go from a 45W CPU to a 10W, unless you know for a fact that your usage is casual. The 10W just won’t sustain that performance in the same way.

Comet Lake-H is disappointing, and Rocket Lake-H will probably also be disappointing, but coming from a 2011? Still worth it.

But sure — if they don’t max out the CPU that much, they might even come to love the new Air.
 
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Yes, but you don’t really want to go from a 45W CPU to a 10W, unless you know for a fact that your usage is casual. The 10W just won’t sustain that performance in the same way.

Comet Lake-H is disappointing, and Rocket Lake-H will probably also be disappointing, but coming from a 2011? Still worth it.

But sure — if they don’t max out the CPU that much, they might even come to love the new Air.

Yeah, wasn't suggesting anyone actually make that upgrade.

More an illustration that there has been significant CPU progress since 2011, and even a 10w CPU will perform on par or better than a quad core from 2011.

Never mind, as you say - Comet Lake in higher clockspeed/power envelope. The difference there will be SUBSTANTIAL.
 
Yeah, wasn't suggesting anyone actually make that upgrade.

More an illustration that there has been significant CPU progress since 2011, and even a 10w CPU will perform on par or better than a quad core from 2011.

Never mind, as you say - Comet Lake in higher clockspeed/power envelope. The difference there will be SUBSTANTIAL.

Yup. Definitely. We can (and should) be disappointed by Intel's progress in recent years, leaving aside Ice Lake-Y, which is pretty good. But also, if your laptop is from 2011? You'll enjoy the upgrade.

Even leaving aside the CPU. That 2011 didn't even come standard with an SSD. This will have one with 3 GiB/s.
 
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But eGPU will not run at full potential over TB3
However, It works well enough, and certainly many times better than an Intel iGPU...
[ A Ferrari at 60% performance is still a lot faster than a guy on a pedal bike... ]


I've been using eGPU since the beta days on a 2014 Macmini [with a TB2->TB3 adapter], and post-beta with no problems 2018 Macmini. [both w/ Apple's Developer eGPU box and it's included Sapphire Radeon RX 580].
 
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Yup. Definitely. We can (and should) be disappointed by Intel's progress in recent years, leaving aside Ice Lake-Y, which is pretty good. But also, if your laptop is from 2011? You'll enjoy the upgrade.

Even leaving aside the CPU. That 2011 didn't even come standard with an SSD. This will have one with 3 GiB/s.

FWIW, I don't really use the old 2011 much. It was upgraded to an SSD and 8gb of RAM, but I mostly use my work laptop which is a mid-2015 MBP 15". Can hold out for something good which probably means Tiger Lake in late 2020 or possibly the next revision first half of 2021 for golden cove.
 
FWIW, I don't really use the old 2011 much. It was upgraded to an SSD and 8gb of RAM, but I mostly use my work laptop which is a mid-2015 MBP 15". Can hold out for something good which probably means Tiger Lake in late 2020 or possibly the next revision first half of 2021 for golden cove.

Ah, I see.

I'm not convinced the next one will have Tiger Lake. It might instead get Rocket Lake, and it's unclear how much they'll backport from Tiger Lake (10nm) to Rocket Lake.
 
yeah.. and AMD announced theirs which is more energy efficient and seems to beat intels top of the line mobile cpu in single and multi threaded benchmarks...

Agreed, that's no brainer for AMD ZEN 2 to be part some of Apple MB lineup.
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I have a hunch the Ryzen 9 4900HS is a much suitable cpu for the mac currently, although I stopped caring about CPU anymore on these machines.
For laptops they are powerful enough these days, and I am more interested in power consumption, gpu and making these darn machines less hot.

Exactly, Intel CPU never progresses much in performance per watt and can be extremely hot even with a very low wattage model that supposedly does not need an active cooling solution.
 
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Literally the newest Mac product? The MacBook Air. Its multi-core performance just increased 88%, while its wattage increased 43%. I'd say a 32% performance-per-watt increase is substantial.

The 2020 MacBook Air is absolutely terrible in heat dissipation and Intel CPU never managed to keep it on par with ARM architecture in performance per watt.
 
The 2020 MacBook Air is absolutely terrible in heat dissipation and Intel CPU never managed to keep it on par with ARM architecture in performance per watt.
The 2020 MBA is fine, and having Retina and a 256GB SSD at the $999 price point is huge. Apple will sell a ton of these; it will be their most popular Mac, by far. It’s great for customers, but not for Apple’s revenue or profits.

re: performance per Watt, it is only one factor among many when system designers decide which CPU to use. But to say Intel “never progressed much” in that metric is simply false, no need to move the goalposts to compare it now to ARM.
 
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The 2020 MBA is fine, and having Retina and a 256GB SSD at the $999 price point is huge. Apple will sell a ton of these; it will be their most popular Mac, by far. It’s great for customers, but not for Apple’s revenue or profits.

re: performance per Watt, it is only one factor among many when system designers decide which CPU to use. But to say Intel “never progressed much” in that metric is simply false, no need to move the goalposts to compare it now to ARM.

The performance is not any faster and heat dissipation is not any better despite the Intel CPU is a significantly lower watt model. The based model configuration has been the standard for years from other top brand and Apple is just trying to do a catch-up in the 2020 model.
 
I could also use the laptop for work (attorney) as well instead of just for writing music and making videos it' just I am so used to the 27" iMac that going to a 16" screen would not be worth it without getting a larger external monitor

I wish Apple would just let us know if there will be a spec bump next week

I am new to making videos and never heard my iMac's fans until started doing such -- I wonder how often the MBP 16" fans come on using iMovie?

Sorry if i missed it but where does the assumption regarding the spec bump announcement (for MBP 16") being next week come from?

Btw, i am in the same boat as @EpicEsquire, i would buy the 16" mbp but mostly use it with an external monitor since i don't want to buy the imac with those horrendous bezels and the 27" display would be on the edge of being too small for me. Ideally i would want an ultrawide monitor with the macbook, but that would be a lot of money for a setup that could be less expensive if ditching the mobile aspect of it. However i don't like the idea of needing to buy a eGPU to be able to use the mac mini for GPU extensive tasks.
 
Sorry if i missed it but where does the assumption regarding the spec bump announcement (for MBP 16") being next week come from?

I read a rumor of an April 15th announcement of the MBP 13"/14" so I was wondering if they might announce a spec bump for the 16" as well
 
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I read a rumor of an April 15th announcement of the MBP 13"/14" so I was wondering if they might announce a spec bump for the 16" as well

Any spec bump for a 16" if it happens will be incredibly modest. Might get wi-fi 6, but the ipc difference will be negligible. Tiger laker and later chips will get some nice perks like av1 hardware decoding and better intel xe graphics (2x faster if you get the igpu), but don't expect a big cpu performance jump until at least Q1-Q2 2021 (golden cove, etc).

I'm personally trying to hold out for a Tiger Lake or later 16" I think.
 
Any spec bump for a 16" if it happens will be incredibly modest. Might get wi-fi 6, but the ipc difference will be negligible. Tiger laker and later chips will get some nice perks like av1 hardware decoding and better intel xe graphics (2x faster if you get the igpu), but don't expect a big cpu performance jump until at least Q1-Q2 2021 (golden cove, etc).

I'm personally trying to hold out for a Tiger Lake or later 16" I think.


I keep waiting and waiting for the next spec bump -- it is a cycle I get stuck in and end up keeping what I have
 
The 13 and the 16 MBP are out of sync due to the Intel chips and the redesign of the 16. I would guess Apple will move to have them in sync possibly by WWDC. The current 16 had the same internals as the last 15 so this could be an easier fresh with a bigger update in 2021 for micro led.

in terms of what could change I think WiFi 6 is a solid bet as well as hopefully upgrading the webcam. Full HD would be welcome, but 2k would be nice. Not sure they could do 4K in the current lid, but maybe.
 
The 13 and the 16 MBP are out of sync due to the Intel chips and the redesign of the 16. I would guess Apple will move to have them in sync possibly by WWDC. The current 16 had the same internals as the last 15 so this could be an easier fresh with a bigger update in 2021 for micro led.

in terms of what could change I think WiFi 6 is a solid bet as well as hopefully upgrading the webcam. Full HD would be welcome, but 2k would be nice. Not sure they could do 4K in the current lid, but maybe.

The update in 16” MBP is not a huge improvement in screen resolution and that's unacceptable for over a $2000 device.
 
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