macOS Sierra Code Confirms Thunderbolt 3 and 10Gb/s USB 3.1 Transfer Speeds in Future Macs

[jwdsail]

If Apple is holding off updating the iMac and MBP until Kaby Lake that means there will be no iMac/MBP update in 2016 at all. The only Kaby Lake chips expected to ship this year are Core M chips appropriate for the Macbook. Kaby Lake chips appropriate for the iMac/MBP aren't shipping until 2017.

I believe Intel has accelerated production/delivery of specific chips for Apple in the past? Perhaps Apple could get Intel to get enough appropriate chips for a "Late 2016 rMBP" to announce and ship (in limited quantities at first?), perhaps as part of negotiations to partner for future Ax-chip production?

Unlikely? Yup.

But...

Possible?


apple.com/feedback

 

[Erasmus]

Waiting for Cannonlake for Displayport 1.3

Waiting for Cannonlake for 8-core.

Sick of this quad-core crap.

 

[341328]

A new Thunderbolt Display would go quite nicely with this. But I would also love to see a 32GB RAM BTO option. I'm still amazed that any computer maker can call a machine "pro" when it's maxed out with only 16GB of RAM.

I'd like 64GB in a laptop. I agree.... 16GB will be crap if that's the limit.

 

[AtomicGrog]

A new Thunderbolt Display would go quite nicely with this. But I would also love to see a 32GB RAM BTO option. I'm still amazed that any computer maker can call a machine "pro" when it's maxed out with only 16GB of RAM.

Sadly I doubt there will be a new display any time soon, shame as I'm in the market for 2 for a forthcomming Mac Pro purchase :\

 

[Floris]

Shame that there's no mention of the iMac, I read future macs, but then it's just one. the macbook pro.
There are still people that would like an iMac or Mac Pro though. Kinda wish Macrumors would publish articles with information about the iMac. Then again, it's better than only pokemon go news articles.

 

[deconstruct60]

1) the Skylake-H quad core chipsets with IP580 graphics just recently came out, and the only shipping product I know that has those so far is the Skull Canyon NUC — 2.6 GHz Core i7-6770HQ, a 2.7 GHz Core i7-6870HQ, and a 2.8 GHz Core i7-6970HQ — THESE are the most likely candidates for a 15" MBP, and the lack of other shipping products makes me think that they haven't hit high yields yet, or other issues.

Recently came out? Listed in Ark as Q1 '16 introduction.

http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88392/6th-Generation-Intel-Core-i7-Processors#@Mobile

But yeah... besides the Skull Canyon NUS IrisPro 580 is quite rare. A glitch is about as likely as yields. If the yields were severely screwed up then shouldn't have done an ark intro.

2) AMD Polaris dGPUs are ... now available? about to be available? Either way, those are right out of the oven, about as fresh as can be.

Not announced available yet. The mobile oriented Polaris 11 design is in the entry desktop RX 460 model but now fully enabled Polaris 11's yet.

3) Other factors could include production yields for the OLED bar or new screen technology, but I think the combination of 1 & 2 make the timing of the release perfectly reasonable to any objective observer.

Lock of TB v3 support would be another factor.... which get hung up in macOS Sierra roll out. [ not sure if TB v3 itself. There have been some TB v3 laptops with some 'fixes' for TB issues. ]

 

[sudo1996]

The new Macs are 1000000000000000000000x more exciting than iPhone 7.

I stopped giving a **** about the iPhone in like 2010.

 

[vmistery]

Well there are 2 MBPs needed in my house, one 08 model which is now running hotter than the sun urgently needs replacing. one thing I am hoping is that the RAM is replaceable, not sure I will be able to stretch to the 32/64GB model otherwise...

 

[deconstruct60]

Will they have a funeral procession for MagSafe?

If drop Mag Safe from the larger 15" and 13" laptops then need a funeral procession for competent design sense at Apple; not for MagSafe.

For the one-port-wonder MacBook. Perhaps. Getting close to light enough stage of where the magnet might drag the laptop onto the floor too if the resting surface is somewhat slippery.

But for laptops where there is edge space for a power connector...... what are you really saving? It isn't space.
Yeah can get to the one-cord-to-docking station but at what cost?

 

[carlsson]

Kaby Lake natively supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3

Confirmation all new iMacs and MacBook Pro's to get Kaby Lake and not Sky Lake? Could explain why it's been so long with no new hardware updates.

Bring it!

Why settle with a lake? I want an ocean!!

 

[Neodym]

My guess is it will ship with 4 ports, one doubled as power.

Way to confuse users: With Jony's desire for minimalist design, Joe Average user would not be able to recognize the proper port and complain about charging not working.

I remember the days when Apple updated the core product line annually

Ummm - they still do that. Only that the core product line has been redefined ...
[doublepost=1472107835][/doublepost]

one 08 model which is now running hotter than the sun urgently needs replacing.

Did you try to clean the innards and cooling system of that '08 MBP from accumulated dust? Suitable screwdriver, pressurized air and some time is all it takes ...

 

[fastasleep]

Recently came out? Listed in Ark as Q1 '16 introduction.

http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88392/6th-Generation-Intel-Core-i7-Processors#@Mobile

But yeah... besides the Skull Canyon NUS IrisPro 580 is quite rare. A glitch is about as likely as yields. If the yields were severely screwed up then shouldn't have done an ark intro. ]

Right, they "launched" in January or whatever but all that means is an announcement. If you look around, there are a lot of threads asking where the chips are until the Skull Canyon NUC came out like 3-4 weeks ago (or whatever that was) and since no 3rd party products are shipping. People are posting a lot about "these chips have been available for a while" when it's simply not true.

Not to mention Polaris, etc.

 

[tearzyo]

Isn't this proof for a 5K Thunderbolt 3.0 display? I mean, Thunderbolt 3 can drive 5k external with ease. Especially with GPU built into the display.

 

[fastasleep]

Shame that there's no mention of the iMac, I read future macs, but then it's just one. the macbook pro.
There are still people that would like an iMac or Mac Pro though. Kinda wish Macrumors would publish articles with information about the iMac. Then again, it's better than only pokemon go news articles.

iMac was updated last fall and is totally "current", I would expect that again, why wouldn't you? Mac Pro is another story but I am not familiar with the xeon/workstation gpu line roadmaps...

 

[Ishayu]

Apple's Metal came WAY before Vulkan, and supplants aging OpenGL. I do hope they put new GPUs in the next Macs. Seems likely.

No, it didn't. Vulkan is just a free version of Mantle with a couple of features added plus more general support.

Apple knew of both Mantle and the plans for Vulkan when they introduced Metal.

But all of this would be fine if Metal had feature parity with Vulkan; developers could just map things 1-to-1 and get all the latest features anyway through stuff like MoltenVK. But no, that didn't happen. Instead, Vulkan is hopelessly behind on features and also quit eslow compared to Vulkan, and it's doubly unfortunate as Apple keeps using AMD processors who have supported Vulkan for basically 5 years and whose architecture is super well optimized for using it.

Metal was a bad decision on the Mac. I understand where they came from, but it was still a bad one.

 

[Arthur75]

Come on Apple, release them in September, this wait is truly ridiculous!!

 

[zombierunner]

WHERE IS THE APPLE INVITATION?

 

[Dead0k]

WHERE IS THE APPLE INVITATION?

today will be

 

[zombierunner]

today will be

hope so i need something to obsess about

 

[theluggage]

I can see that. However, skylake would require a special chipset for TB3. I can't see Apple putting in a chip set, then removing it in a Kabylake update six months later.

"Special chipset" is just an Alpine Ridge TB3 controller chip (which includes USB 3.1) same as Dell and everybody else are using. The current Macs all use a discrete TB2 controller anyway.

Kabylake (certainly the mobile versions) will, presumably, only support 2 TB3/USB-C ports anyway, so if they were going to go with 4 ports (as per the rumors) they'd need a discrete controller as well, anyway.

A "compromise" would be to launch a Skylake rMBP with 2 x TB3 (USB-C sockets) and 2 x USB 3 (regular USB sockets) - assuming that Jony hasn't made the things too thin to fit a regular USB socket in - and go to 4xTB3 a year or so down the line (still with only 1 discrete controller). 2xTB3/USB-C with 3.1gen2 and 2x borked USB-C with 3.1gen1 (as per Macbook) would be confusing (and would still need a USB-C socket controller).

What probably will wait for Kaby Lake is any rumored 14" MacBook or 13" rMBP replacement which, I'd guess, will just have 2 ports.

I have an 11" Macbook air, and I use Ethernet and VGA every day at work. We have projectors in every conference room with VGA cables ready for the laptops. I have a direct ethernet connection to the PC under my desk for remote desktop and access to sensitive files that we cannot put on the cloud.

...so, presumably, since the Air has neither ethernet nor VGA, you've learned to stop worrying and love dongles? With USB-C you can reasonably hope for more products like thus: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Adapter-Type-Ethernet-470-ABQN/dp/B012DT6KW2 - at cheaper prices than Thunderbolt docks have been.

USB-C is going to be a pain at first, but long term it should become a benefit if USB-C becomes the standard connection of choice across Mac and PC. If Apple comes out with USB-C only laptops it could help push this (the PC world hasn't even weaned itself off PS/2 keyboard sockets yet).

 

[BvizioN]

The new Macs are 1000000000000000000000x more exciting than iPhone 7.

Probably true, the thing though is that not nearly as many people who care for the iPhone give a rats ass about the Macs. I do, and I will be skiping iPhone 7 and getting the MacBook Pro

 

[Floris]

iMac was updated last fall and is totally "current", I would expect that again, why wouldn't you? Mac Pro is another story but I am not familiar with the xeon/workstation gpu line roadmaps...

Because I am never that lucky in life.. that's why so it's probably just anxiety. The one time I actually made a plan to save up for a big upgrade (money really doesn't come easy to me) and I reach 100% on that goal and see they release every year in the october/november months ... watch them NOT release it this year.. just my luck. That's my only argument. Just anxiety building as i read all this awesome news and rumors, and basically dont see any iMac news.

 

[maflynn]

Shame that there's no mention of the iMac, I read future macs, but then it's just one. the macbook pro.

That's because the iMac (5k) is on the latest chipset, where as the the 15" MBP is still on Haswell, Apple has not improved the MBP for a very long time, where as the iMac is fairly current.

Don't worry the iMac will get TB3 and what not, but the laptop line is much more out of date.

 

[StevieD100]

I don't find myself interfacing much with thumb drives, hard drives, or printers using physical connections any more. I used to, and I admit I have worried about how a new connector would affect me. But seeing it put the way you did made me realize how long it has been since I used a wire to connect to a printer.

Nowadays, nearly everything I do is wireless, even in my professional life.

Some of us have a very different use case to you. That is to be expected.
I was at a customer site a few days ago where everything was put on a USB drive and after being scanned by security, we were allowed to copy the files to the target systems which are air-gapped from the rest of the world. No Wifi, no plugging in your drives, no plugging in your MBP to the air-gapped network. My MBP is also scanned by their security people before I can take it inside the restricted areas.
My 2015 15in MBP has just about the right number of connections (apart from Ethernet) for my job. Many places don't have Wifi that visitors can connect to.
any reduction in connectivity will be a big backwards step IMHO.

 

[crsh1976]

Wake me up when the new Macs are announced and actually shipping, they're 6 months late already and it's not looking like an outstanding fall season thus far (since the emphasis will be put on the iPhone 7).