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MacBook Pro Reportedly Won't See Any Major Upgrades in 2018
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You don’t need “hundreds of dollars of dongles.” I’ve seen portable hubs for $50-75 with HDMI, multiple USB-A, SD and even Ethernet rolled into one. Even less if you don’t need pass through charging.
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That’s what Intel thinks. Their mobile chipset doesn’t support more. And with faster SSDs they are largely correct.
[doublepost=1516057130][/doublepost]Try LOWERING that GREEDY PRICE
Apple currently has no plans to make any major upgrades to its MacBook Pro lineup in 2018, according to DigiTimes. Of course, if accurate, the report doesn't rule out a MacBook Pro refresh or update of any kind this year.
An excerpt from the report, citing sources within Apple's supply chain:Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn could land a large number of additional MacBook orders this year, the report adds. The increase could come at the expense of Quanta Computer, which has been Apple's major MacBook supplier in recent years.
Taiwan-based Foxconn has reportedly been working to boost its chances of notebook orders from Apple by offering attractive quotes. Apple will therefore switch MacBook orders to Foxconn for models that are already in mass production as a way to save costs and reduce risks, according to the sources cited.Despite the news, Quanta is expected to remain Apple's biggest supplier going into 2018. According to DigiTimes' research, out of 15 million MacBooks shipped to Apple a year, the shipment ratio between Quanta and Foxconn has been at around 8:2 for the past five years. Last year alone, Quanta had a 79.5 percent share and Foxconn took 20.5 percent.
Quanta is said to be looking to other brand vendors to offset the impact of the loss of orders, as it aims for similar growth to the market average in 2018. The Taiwan-based firm shipped 38.7 million notebooks last year, up five percent on year, and is currently the largest notebook supplier for HP, Apple, Acer, and Asus.
Quanta also maintains orders for the Apple Watch, and is said to be teaming up with Israeli-based augmented reality company Lumus to manufacture lenses for smart glasses. It's not clear if Quanta and Lumus are working with Apple on a future AR headset or smart glasses, but it is a possibility as rumors suggest Apple has a wearable augmented reality product in the works.
Article Link: MacBook Pro Reportedly Won't See Any Major Upgrades in 2018
Lol by the time your MBP dies most of the flagship computers probably will only have usb c now that dell decided to go in apples direction.
You are missing the point. Although you might like the touchbar many of us are not buying this MacBook Pro because for us a touchbar doesn't work. I'm not saying they have to stop making those models, just give us a choice.
I have all the function keys setup for various shortcuts in Photoshop etc all of which I access via touch while looking on the screen where my work is, for me the touchbar simply doesn't work.
What's a shame is that while previous MacBook Pro catered for many different people with different needs the new models are very limited, almost like and Air rather then a Pro model. Lack of Magsafe and ports only exasperate this issue.
MacBook Pros are our working machines and our family machines - great hardware, but not this generation. The lack of function keys make the current MacBook Pro a No-Buy item for our business and home. Fine if they want to have the touch bar too, but it needs to be in addition to the function keys because our work flows have decades of development around the function keys that lend speed to what we do.
You can not configure a top of the range MacBook Pro without a Touchbar. For many of us the touchbar is the main, of many, reasons we don't upgrade at the moment.
Everyone has an opinion. Your view of the touchbar being useful to you is every bit as valid as my opinion that it is a gimmick. Why can't someone express an opinion about a feature without someone thinking they have to defend that feature?
The effort would be better spent explaining how one finds the touchbar to be useful.
I'm not sure all of that is true.
You cannot upgrade the xps processor, true. But you can't upgrade the mbp processor either.
The NVIDIA GPU handily out performs the AMD GPU in the MBP in every metric. OpenGL (even though windows' openGL implementation really really sucks), openCL (by a huge margin), and in any benchmark you throw at it.
I'm not aware of the throttling in the Dell vs. the Mac. That could be, though I'd like to see a link demonstrating that. Every benchmark I have seen of the XPS vs. the MBP shows the XPS winning by roughly 5 to 10%. But that may have been the earlier model MBP with the (now) two generation old CPU vs. the Dell which was one generation newer at the time.
Finally, roughly $900 for my machine (with the ram upgrade) vs. over $2000 for the MBP with similar performance, less ram, and zero upgradability is the final and most important metric.
I really like the build quality of the Mac. But the XPS isn't that much worse (and the keyboard is slightly better from what I've read). I also really really really prefer MacOS. But that preference is not worth north of $1200 to me. I'd pay, at most, a $300 premium for MacOS. And with the absolute lack of upgradeability, that number drops to the point where the Mac would have to be cheaper to make me consider it.
Just looking at the comments on this (a Mac fan site) shows that I'm not alone. Apple kind of flubbed it big time with their current lineup. I hope they get their old mojo back. But I doubt it.
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Except that I'm mostly running CentOS 7
DDR4 uses up way more power than LPDDR4. Intel won’t support more than 16GB with LPDDR4 until 2019 the earliest. Apple is using LPDDR3 in the MacBook Pro.Really?
16GB of memory limit just kills faster SSDs because swap is being used.
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Out of curiosity, what is it you are running that requires 32GB of RAM? Adding RAM is no longer the no-brainer it used to be. For most people, 8GB is sufficient.
Of cours you can. You can spec the MBP with faster CPUs to order. The XPS is stuck with a base HQ CPU model.
Sure, but most of the performance difference is coming from the faster clocked VRAM. Workstation-oriented machines usually clock RAM lower since stability is more important then pure performance, while for gaming set ups a corrupted pixel or two doesn't matter. In the end, of course faster is faster
I am not going to argue that the GPU Apple uses is "better" (more expensive though, sure). Simply pointing out the design patterns here.https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-15-9560-i7-7700HQ-UHD-Laptop-Review.200648.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-2017-2-8-GHz-555-Laptop-Review.230096.0.html
Look at CPU performance (sustained Cinebench) for both machines. Its also consistent across other tests.
I guess you didn't spec it with the 4K screen or other goodies? For $999 you only get a HDD model without the dGPU and a lower-end CPU. A model comparable in specs to the MBP is much more closer to Apple's price (within $500 or so). Still cheaper of course and I certainly am not going to argue agains the fact that its a very good computer for money.
Again, its tradeoff here and trade-off there. The MBP has better battery life, is considerably more mobile overall, has faster I/O and WIFI and offers better CPU performance. The Dell XPS is cheaper and offers faster graphics. For many users who consider buying an MBP, especially video editors on the go, XPS is a great choice simply because of the faster GPU. For people like me, who tax the CPU more, and need to be mobile most of the time, the Dell simply doesn't cut it. Already the inability to spec out the fastest CPUs available makes it unsuitable.
USB-A adapters and SD card readers are dirt cheap. Why is it so hard to buy a couple of third-party accessories? Apple shouldn’t downgrade the next Pro by removing Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Its because many people are rather reactionary. With the new models, they are forced to change and embrace the future developments, which costs additional effort and money, and which makes them less comfortable. Many criticisms of the new models are based on rather persistent urban myths though, such as my favourite "Apple sacrifices performance to make their laptop thinner" (while in fact no Mac laptop has been as fast as the 2016/2017 models, in both absolute and relative terms). The fact is that these laptops have been well received and the customers embrace them. Some things should be improved (keyboard design) and maybe some minor tweaks here and there, but the basic foundation is so far the pinnacle of Apple's laptop vision which they have been pursuing for the last 15+ years. After all, its a impossibly thin and light laptop that has fastest CPUs available and symmetrical truly universal ports
Something Steve Jobs always wanted.They don't have to remove anything to add useful ports. Just add 1 USB-A and bring back Magsafe which is a lifesaver, if that means a slightly bigger laptop that's fine this is meant to be a laptop for pros. For weight weenies there is always the MacBook. Apple jumped too soon. Why would I want to carry around lots of cables and adapters that's a massive step backwards.
I've had every top end MacBook since the early 2000s and this the first machine that is a major step back in daily use. Maybe in 5 years time USB-C will be standard, but at the moment it is not and that's a massive issue for working pros in the field.
historically, at least, it shows the next generation will come in 2020..
so far it's gone:
2006
2008
2012
2016
but sure, that's not saying a whole lot about the future and they could definitely put out a redesign in early 2019
Griffin sells a MagSafe-like USB-C power cable, though I agree an Apple option would be nice. For USB-A there are bud-sized adapters that can pretty much bolt on, though I prefer short cables given how close the USB-C ports are.
Apple has never been shy about dropping legacy ports to try to move the industry. Keeping legacy ports just slows the transition. Heck, many Windows notebooks still have VGA ports. That’s why that ancient tech has hung around for so long.
you use keystrokes without ever looking at the keyboard?
that's baloney.
unless, maybe, you only have a couple of shortcuts..
also, why use F-keys as shortcuts on Mac anyway? those are hardware keys.
you mean you actually turn off the hardware controls in favor of F-key shortcuts? or you use fn key without looking?
(now, if Apple figured out a way to make them context aware.. like, they're hardware controls when it makes sense for them to be.. or they're software controls which are available when it makes sense..
then that would be pretty sweet)
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idk, something isn't adding up right in your story.. srry
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Of cours you can. You can spec the MBP with faster CPUs to order. The XPS is stuck with a base HQ CPU model.
Sure, but most of the performance difference is coming from the faster clocked VRAM. Workstation-oriented machines usually clock RAM lower since stability is more important then pure performance, while for gaming set ups a corrupted pixel or two doesn't matter. In the end, of course faster is faster
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-15-9560-i7-7700HQ-UHD-Laptop-Review.200648.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-2017-2-8-GHz-555-Laptop-Review.230096.0.html
Look at CPU performance (sustained Cinebench) for both machines. Its also consistent across other tests.
I guess you didn't spec it with the 4K screen or other goodies? For $999 you only get a HDD model without the dGPU and a lower-end CPU. A model comparable in specs to the MBP is much more closer to Apple's price (within $500 or so). Still cheaper of course and I certainly am not going to argue agains the fact that its a very good computer for money.
Again, its tradeoff here and trade-off there. The MBP has better battery life, is considerably more mobile overall, has faster I/O and WIFI and offers better CPU performance. The Dell XPS is cheaper and offers faster graphics. For many users who consider buying an MBP, especially video editors on the go, XPS is a great choice simply because of the faster GPU. For people like me, who tax the CPU more, and need to be mobile most of the time, the Dell simply doesn't cut it. Already the inability to spec out the fastest CPUs available makes it unsuitable.
From your link it looks like the MBP can indeed outperform the XPS in CPU intensive tasks. Interesting link. Thanks.
Looking at Apple's refurbished store, that spec machine costs $2360. And it is running about 8% faster than the XPS. Looking at the Dell Outlet, an XPS comparable to the one tested (and comparable to the Macbook in most specs but with a lesser screen) costs $1100 (using the discount code a15XPS9560).
My own system isn't nearly as fast because I opted for the i5. But my system does include the gtx1050 with 4GB of vram. Of course, it also has the lower spec HD screen vs. the 4K. But that system, as I mentioned, was about $900 once I account for the 32GB RAM upgrade.
Ultimately everyone needs to buy what works for them. In my case, Apple has blown it repeatedly. (I just purchased a used 12 core Xeon with 72 GB ram for $550 instead of getting a much less powerful used Mac Pro for way way more money). They just aren't meeting my needs anymore. And they don't care because I'm not their target market. I do 3D vfx work for film (a very tiny market), but I'm also value conscious. That's kind of opposite of what Apple is after. They want bigger markets for lower performance machines at a bigger markup. That's good for them, but it means I'm left looking elsewhere for my needs.
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The keyboard is vulnerable to all particles, not just food particles. I don't eat at my computer, but I've still had stuck keys on my 2015 12" MacBook and 2017 MBP. Dust collects on the screen while it's open, and unless you wipe the screen before closing it every time, those dust particles are going to get under the keys at some point. I never bought AppleCare on any Mac until I bought the 2017. There's no way I would buy a 2016/2017 MBP with a butterfly keyboard without AC.