My 2¢ on 16" Macbook Pro Rumors & Speculation

[SuprUsrStan]

Personally, I think they should kill the Touch Bar and go with focusing on the massive touchpad that they already have.

Imagine this, a touch pad that's the same size as the current 15" MBP but rather than being space gray, it's a LCD under the glass surface. It reacts and changes based on context just like the Touch Bar. It's basically like having a iPhone 10 Max screen in the touchpad area with force touch and taptic.

The current 15" MBP touchpad doesn't actually physically move. It's got a Taptic Engine already installed. It's got a glass surface and is even larger than the largest apple smart phone. It's a perfect opportunity to show pictures, give touch input and haptic feedback all within thumbs reach. The movement from keyboard to touchpad is already natural enough for all of us.

Need to sign your name? the touchpad gives you a line to sign with your finger. Need to choose an emoji? You can tap the correct one by just looking at it on the touchpad.

Something like this but just for the touchpad.

 

[eulslix]

Imagine this, a touch pad that's the same size as the current 15" MBP but rather than being space gray, it's a LCD under the glass surface. It reacts and changes based on context just like the Touch Bar.

Actually I’m intrigued by this idea. The only thing they’d need to be careful with is the transition between using the trackpad as mouse cursor vs this touch mode. I could imagine the touchpad displaying context sensitive choices on hover, whenever supported.
Then they would need to distinguish between the normal click gesture for the cursor and a tap gesture on the touchpad. Click gestures could be characterized by pressing until the first threshold instead of just tapping. That would spell the end to people who prefer tap instead of click though (im personally a click type of person, but that’s just how i always worked with the MBP)

Anyways, I love that idea and I think its doable. Wish Apple would do something among these lines, and sometime in the future they even could go with the keyboard caps with display approach to solve the shortcut dilemma.

 

[xb2003]

What if your phone just snapped into the laptop chassis and was the trackpad? Maybe this is why Apple wants to transition Macs to using ARM chips; you just buy an iPhone and what ever case you want.

 

[Falhófnir]

Personally, I think they should kill the Touch Bar and go with focusing on the massive touchpad that they already have.

Imagine this, a touch pad that's the same size as the current 15" MBP but rather than being space gray, it's a LCD under the glass surface. It reacts and changes based on context just like the Touch Bar. It's basically like having a iPhone 10 Max screen in the touchpad area with force touch and taptic.

The current 15" MBP touchpad doesn't actually physically move. It's got a Taptic Engine already installed. It's got a glass surface and is even larger than the largest apple smart phone. It's a perfect opportunity to show pictures, give touch input and haptic feedback all within thumbs reach. The movement from keyboard to touchpad is already natural enough for all of us.

Need to sign your name? the touchpad gives you a line to sign with your finger. Need to choose an emoji? You can tap the correct one by just looking at it on the touchpad.

Something like this but just for the touchpad.

Personally think this would negatively impact using it as a trackpad though, try swiping your fingers across your phone screen like you do your trackpad, and notice the extra resistance, the trackpads have a matte effect finish that makes them very slippery to use, but at least it looks like it also makes the glass less transparent. If they ditch the touchbar, they should just do it in it's entirety, not try to find a new novelty to replace it. Maybe with larger 14/16 inch models they could add it above the restored function row, there's more than enough space on the current 15" to do that. If they moved the KB down fractionally and reduced the size of the trackpad just marginally they could probably even do it on the 13".

 

[SuprUsrStan]

Maybe with larger 14/16 inch models they could add it above the restored function row, there's more than enough space on the current 15" to do that.

I think my biggest gripe about the Touch Bar is the loss of physical buttons to control brightness and volume. Before, you could feel your way in the dark or not even look at it to mute or turn down the volume. Now you got to look at it, touch and hold and then slide. It's not making it easier to control these functions.

If we got the old control buttons back, I wouldn't mind a Touch Bar.

 

[SuprUsrStan]

Looks like there's a new post on the front page: 16-Inch Macbook Pro will Reportedly Use Intel 9th-Gen Processors with up to 8 Cores.

If accurate, this means the 16-inch MacBook Pro will be configurable with up to an 8-core Core i9 processor with a 2.4GHz base clock speed and a max Turbo Boost frequency of 5.0GHz. The lineup also includes 6-core Core i7 processors. All of the chips are 45W with integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630.

As I previously stated, there's no 10th gen H processor coming out in 2019 so it has to use 9th Gen processor similar to the current 15" notebook. However, the following are ALSO lumped in as 9th gen coffee lake refresh processors:

I SERIOUSLY doubt Apple would release a 16" macbook pro on a platform in October just to reuse the same processor that's been in the 15" for over half a year. Why wouldn't they wait till comet lake H or ice lake H to implement this change? Is Apple that desperate to push this 16" laptop and willing to pick a time in between CPU launches to launch their product?

I still think these laptops will utilize the Xeon mobile processor to differentiate itself from the 15" laptops.

 

[poorcody]

I still think these laptops will utilize the Xeon mobile processor to differentiate itself from the 15" laptops.

But what advantage does the Xeon offer at this point? The i9 that was released after the Xenon appears to have caught up with it performance-wise. ECC-memory seems the only significant difference.

 

[SuprUsrStan]

Support for ECC memory and are binned slightly better than regular i9 processors.

 

[andiwm2003]

I „used“ the touchbar over the course of 2 years. What I didn’t mention is that I actually was a huge fan of the idea from the very beginning. I really tried to make it work for a couple of months, but ultimately I gave up and saw no utility in it other than occasionally making a CTA easier to reach.

The problems with the touchbar are manyfolded: It lacks both feedforward and feedback within the action cycle. Latter can be solved with haptic feedback, but I don’t know whether the former is solvable at all. So far the only solution I see is to make the TouchBar out of physical keys, which loops back to the whole idea of making a keyboard out of OLED screencaps. Other than that we‘re talking about future technology way out of reach for now.
The next problem is the inconsistencies in contextual behavior. Sometimes the touchbar sticks with the same actions over a ridiculously huge scope, making it basically useless since it only exposes actions that people already know well through shortcuts. Other times it would jump on seemingly irrelevant occasions into a new state, making it even harder to memorize the patterns than learn the shortcuts in the first place.

The problems that the touchbar tries to solve are 1) accessibility of features hidden behind shortcuts and 2) bringing touch intuitiveness into controls with value ranges. The touchbar tackles the latter problem acceptably, would profit from a bigger screen area though for stuff like color pickers.
It doesn’t solve the first problem at all though, which is, as I assume, the main value of it. And that’s because of the lack of muscle memory. See, all the issues I mentioned before — feedforward, feedback, predictability — make it basically impossible to memorize the patterns and execute them reliably. For productivity, all what matters is what’s in your brain. Your subconsciousness then communicates your intents through your body to the device. But since that’s impossible, you end up wasting cognitive resources on repetitive ********. Therefore, you’re better of learning the keyboard shortcuts in the first place.
That leaves the touchbar with only two usable areas: 1) Sliders and 2) Actions that you very rarely use and don’t know of. And since the touchbars uselessness makes you ignore it in the first place, you might not even notice the second use case.

On top of all of that, beyond being of not much use, the touchbar triggers at least 10 times a day accidentally, because the force threshold of triggering it is basically 0, contrary to a traditional key. I don’t know how often I pressed escape or Siri on accident, making me swear because it took me out of my flow. It takes like a good 10 seconds to get back into the zone again. Over time, that sums up..

I didn’t even go into the fact, that during my second year I spent 80% of my time working at the office with a big screen, where there was no possibility of having a Touch Bar. Even if Apple would’ve solved all the other issues, the lack of the Touchbar on the Magic Keyboard alone will already keep a lot of people from building a solid muscle memory.

Apple needs to get its **** together if they want to make the Touchbar — which is a great idea all in all — succeed. And the 16“ would be great starting point to make a statement...

This is the best analysis of the touchbar I have read so far. You should just copy paste this into an email to Tim, maybe he listens. If Steve was around they might have offered you a job.

 

[JPack]

I SERIOUSLY doubt Apple would release a 16" macbook pro on a platform in October just to reuse the same processor that's been in the 15" for over half a year. Why wouldn't they wait till comet lake H or ice lake H to implement this change? Is Apple that desperate to push this 16" laptop and willing to pick a time in between CPU launches to launch their product?

I still think these laptops will utilize the Xeon mobile processor to differentiate itself from the 15" laptops.

Apple doesn't want to miss an entire back to school and holiday quarter waiting for Intel.

Apple can always refresh with 10nm once it becomes available. The new 16-inch form factor alone is enough to drive demand.

 

[Detnator]

If you didn't mention this, I even didn't know that the $6000 Mac Pro comes with 256GB. That's totally ridiculous!

Honestly, I don't know what is in the mind of Apple. How come you cannot offer at least 1TB at the price point of $6000. I believe, they are still make a fortune out of every sold unit even with 1TB SSD. Why would they risk losing customers to do this?

This lengthy expose isn't to pick on you specifically, but your comment is one of many expressing similar sentiment, and so this is to you and all of those...

Why don't they start at 1TB? Because most pros (the people in this market) don't need or want 1TB, in a desktop machine, so why force them to pay $400+ more for it? A lot of people using this will put their OS on the internal drive and everything else on external RAIDS and whatnot. Forcing 1TB on people who don't want it is what will risk losing customers. It's not like 1TB isn't going to be an option, which is exactly what it should be.

Especially for a desktop machine. This isn't a laptop that needs to be moved around where you want all the storage internal. Generally speaking it's stationary, so people are going to plug other stuff into it (that's what the myriad of 40Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 ports are for) and have it sit there and do its job. For the kinds of people using this machine, the difference between 256GB and 1TB is meaningless. They're using tens of terabytes of data so an extra 750GB internal is pointless.

I had an iMac Pro until a couple of months ago. The internal drive in that runs at about 3GBytes per second. Nice and fast. I had the base model with 1TB and needed more really fast storage than that. I needed more than 4TB so paying for 4TB internal and still needing more external was pointless anyway. I researched a bunch of options. I found a couple of external NVMe drive options that run about 2.2GBytes per second. Almost as fast as the internal drive but not quite. And I wanted faster if I could. That Mac has four thunderbolt 3 ports, two channels - meaning stripe two drives over the same channel and it doesn't go any faster, but stripe them across the separate channels and it goes almost twice as fast. I took two of those 2.2GBytes per second NVMe external drive options and striped them across the two channels. 6TB of 4+ GBytes per second external storage. More and faster than the internal storage. With that, I didn't need the base 1TB. 256GB for OS would have been enough. I had to pay more (presumably about $400 more, looking at what the same price difference for the MacBook Pro is) for something I didn't need. I didn't have the choice. With the Mac Pro's 256GB option, I'd have the choice. It's the right decision to start there.

I sold the iMac Pro right after the 2019 MBP refresh, and planned to put in an order for that, now that the performance of a maxed out one is just shy of the iMac Pro. Now I'm trying to decide if I should hold out for this 16" or not, but that's another conversation. In the meantime I currently have a maxed out 2017 MBP. Plug the RAID I've described above into the MBP and I get the same results (4+ GBytes per second storage). Out of a laptop.

Now... 6TB of NVMe performance is a bit extreme... perhaps...? Especially if I want a lot more than 6TB and I still want it that fast. The good news is, even that's possible. The PORTS support the kind of performance where external drives can be faster than internal (and Thunderbolt 3 is really the first technology that's given us that, ever, give or take). Even striped RAID arrays of enough normal SSDs (that aren't even expensive NVMe) or even enough HARD drives, can provide hundreds of Terabytes of 4+GBytes per second data at reasonable cost. Never before possible before Thunderbolt 3. And... I got that performance above out of 2 TB3 channels. This new Mac Pro optionally has more channels than that (although I can't figure out exactly how many as different sources seem to be saying different things). Let's say it's up to four channels. Stripe enough drives over four Thunderbolt 3 channels, and we're talking 8+ GBytes per second. For some operations, that's useful enough to be worth paying for.

The target market for this machine are people like Disney, making Marvel movies, etc. Give some thought to how much storage space all the raw footage for Avengers End Game takes up. Do you really think those people care if they have 256GB or 1TB internally? They don't need 1TB internally. So why force them to pay for it.

Now, sure complain about the price of 256GB if you want. But complaining that the base model starts with 256GB (at whatever price) ... Your comment (and so many others like it) really just indicates you (and they) are typical MR readers who just don't understand the market this machine is for. Not trying to insult you and say you're an idiot or anything. Not at all. It's just a misunderstanding. And again I'm not trying to pick on your comment specifically. I'm saying this to everyone making this complaint. We just have to understand the market these machines are for. It's very specialized and niche. The use cases are very different to what us "normal" people use our Macs for.

So again as for the price of 256GB: That's kinda meaningless in this machine. Again everyone complaining that this thing starts at $6K doesn't understand what's in it. Trying to compare the Mac Pro against anything else on the market with similar specs does two things. 1. You find that actually it's not that much more expensive than similar serious pro hardware targeted at the same or similar market, from other companies, but even that aside, 2. It misses the point of all the other stuff that's in it. Those expansion modules, the Afterburner, the cooling, all the interconnection between all those things to make sure there are no bottlenecks (it only takes one bottleneck in the entire chain of everything to kill performance), and all the other tech and engineering in there makes this machine a whole lot more than just the processor, SSD, RAM and GPU specs that are in it. You're not just paying for the "specs", you're paying for everything else in it as well that makes this thing a whole lot more. I suspect, and hope, the 16" MBP will have a similar approach, and be priced accordingly.

Is it overkill? For normal people like us, yes. For Disney making Marvel movies, and other companies that will actually use all that power, and have been crying out for it for years, absolutely not. Will Apple sell these things in numbers anything like they do iMacs? No of course not. They don't expect or intend to. This is for a relatively very small market. The people that need that power and buy it, don't care about the price, and are happy Apple has put all the options and engineering in that they have. Anyone who thinks it's too expensive, doesn't understand the R&D cost that goes into these things, that Apple has to get back, with a reasonable margin on top (they're not a charity).

So now let's complain that Apple's real pro offerings are a bit too pro, perhaps. Why can't they make something at the iMac level, that's an expandable tower, for the rest of us? I'm not sure. Apple's always resisted that for some reason. The "Why won't they make a headless, expandable iMac?" (ie. a tower with iMac specs at iMac prices) question has been bandied around for 15+ years now (long before we lost Steve and Tim took over, so this isn't Tim's doing). It seems that question still remains, and I don't know the answer, except that Apple just has a thing for all-in-ones that they can't let go of or whatever. If there's two things that basically saved Apple from its almost demise in the 90's, it's the all-in-one iMac followed by the iPod. So the Mac market that the iMac is for spoke with their wallets, bought all-in-one iMacs, saved Apple, and they want it that way (ie. the market wants all-in-ones). Nothing's changed, except yes, the Mac Pro now costs $2K more than it used to but that's inflation, plus a change in direction as to who it's for, but don't forget the Power Mac 9500 was $8K+ in its day.

Even when the older Mac Pro was $3.5K and $4K the complaint still existed (that it's too expensive), so maybe Apple just said "What the hell, if they're going to complain anyway, let's just go all out". At least now the Mac Mini is a lot more powerful than it used to be, has expandable RAM, and you can add storage and everything else externally through Thunderbolt 3. That machine, maxed out, with a bunch of external RAID, eGPU, and/or whatever else you want (what else do you want in it?), comes pretty close to what a headless iMac might be, it's just not all in one tower, but why does that matter? I had a series 1 Mac Pro in 2007 because I needed some of what went inside it - primarily the processing power and the 30" cinema display that wasn't an option in the iMac - but I didn't need anything like all of it. I had this enormous heavy tower (that I did actually need to move sometimes) full of empty space. If I had the same need now as what I had that for, the current Mac Mini with possibly some external TB3 attachments would have been perfect. Still, I don't know why they won't just make a headless iMac - a smaller than the Mac Pro but bigger than the Mac Mini, tower - but they have their reasons I suppose.

So let's complain about that perhaps, but the bottom line point of my post here is this: Pretty much every other complaint here about this Mac Pro (and the inevitable similar complaints that will come when this 16" MBP arrives with what I expect will be a similar philosophy behind it) are basically meaningless, because those complaints come entirely from not understanding the market it's for.

For what the Mac Pro is, and for who it's for, and compared to the competition, all things considered, I think it's priced exactly where it should be priced (that $999 stand on the other hand, perhaps not, but at least that's optional and I can buy any old cheap VESA stand if I want, which I could never do with any of Apple's past monitors). And, since this is a MacBook Pro thread, not a Mac Pro thread, the point of all this is that this 16" MacBook Pro Pro (yes I meant to say Pro twice) will likely have a similar philosophy behind it, and that's my point here. If it's being targeted similarly, yes, it will be expensive, and people who don't understand the market it's for will complain about it for all the same reasons. But for the people in the market it's for, who actually want and need it, won't care about the price, and will finally be happy that Apple is finally catering to that market. Not that I'm Disney or anything, but I'm one of those people who want what I hope this will be, at any price. And it'll be about time.

 

[Detnator]

I „used“ the touchbar over the course of 2 years. What I didn’t mention is that I actually was a huge fan of the idea from the very beginning. I really tried to make it work for a couple of months, but ultimately I gave up and saw no utility in it other than occasionally making a CTA easier to reach.

The problems with the touchbar are manyfolded: It lacks both feedforward and feedback within the action cycle. Latter can be solved with haptic feedback, but I don’t know whether the former is solvable at all. So far the only solution I see is to make the TouchBar out of physical keys, which loops back to the whole idea of making a keyboard out of OLED screencaps. Other than that we‘re talking about future technology way out of reach for now.

The next problem is the inconsistencies in contextual behavior. Sometimes the touchbar sticks with the same actions over a ridiculously huge scope, making it basically useless since it only exposes actions that people already know well through shortcuts. Other times it would jump on seemingly irrelevant occasions into a new state, making it even harder to memorize the patterns than learn the shortcuts in the first place.

The problems that the touchbar tries to solve are 1) accessibility of features hidden behind shortcuts and 2) bringing touch intuitiveness into controls with value ranges. The touchbar tackles the latter problem acceptably, would profit from a bigger screen area though for stuff like color pickers.

It doesn’t solve the first problem at all though, which is, as I assume, the main value of it. And that’s because of the lack of muscle memory. See, all the issues I mentioned before — feedforward, feedback, predictability — make it basically impossible to memorize the patterns and execute them reliably. For productivity, all what matters is what’s in your brain. Your subconsciousness then communicates your intents through your body to the device. But since that’s impossible, you end up wasting cognitive resources on repetitive ********. Therefore, you’re better of learning the keyboard shortcuts in the first place.

That leaves the touchbar with only two usable areas: 1) Sliders and 2) Actions that you very rarely use and don’t know of. And since the touchbars uselessness makes you ignore it in the first place, you might not even notice the second use case.

On top of all of that, beyond being of not much use, the touchbar triggers at least 10 times a day accidentally, because the force threshold of triggering it is basically 0, contrary to a traditional key. I don’t know how often I pressed escape or Siri on accident, making me swear because it took me out of my flow. It takes like a good 10 seconds to get back into the zone again. Over time, that sums up..

I didn’t even go into the fact, that during my second year I spent 80% of my time working at the office with a big screen, where there was no possibility of having a Touch Bar. Even if Apple would’ve solved all the other issues, the lack of the Touchbar on the Magic Keyboard alone will already keep a lot of people from building a solid muscle memory.

Apple needs to get its **** together if they want to make the Touchbar — which is a great idea all in all — succeed. And the 16“ would be great starting point to make a statement...

This is an astoundingly good evaluation of the Touch Bar. This is my experience exactly also.

I tried to use it for its modular functionality, but gave up for all the reasons you said above (mostly the muscle memory one). It adds nothing to what I can do with a trackpad or mouse and the existing main display. And taking away haptic function keys is loss of functionality. I've ended up setting it to the "function keys" option and then, similar to what you've described, wind up tearing my hair out every time I inadvertently brush the soft escape key - sometimes even causing me to lose data (because escape is often cancel).

It's a good idea in principle, and for some use cases (as has been reported by some here) it's actually pretty awesome. In practice as it currently is, for at least some use cases, it's an abomination. It should be optional, and/or, on at least the larger laptops where there's room, it should be in addition to the function keys. Developers (like me), among others, need the function keys, and putting those on a feedback-less display breaks everything we need them for.

I really hope this 16" has it either optional or additional to the function keys that are on every other Apple keyboard. I'll buy that at any price.
[doublepost=1566148402][/doublepost]

Personally, I think they should kill the Touch Bar and go with focusing on the massive touchpad that they already have.

Imagine this, a touch pad that's the same size as the current 15" MBP but rather than being space gray, it's a LCD under the glass surface. It reacts and changes based on context just like the Touch Bar. It's basically like having a iPhone 10 Max screen in the touchpad area with force touch and taptic.

The current 15" MBP touchpad doesn't actually physically move. It's got a Taptic Engine already installed. It's got a glass surface and is even larger than the largest apple smart phone. It's a perfect opportunity to show pictures, give touch input and haptic feedback all within thumbs reach. The movement from keyboard to touchpad is already natural enough for all of us.

Need to sign your name? the touchpad gives you a line to sign with your finger. Need to choose an emoji? You can tap the correct one by just looking at it on the touchpad.

Something like this but just for the touchpad.

That's very cool, and a great idea (except please Lord Tim don't make the keyboard like that picture - noted you said "but just for the touchpad" so we're on the same page there).

Frankly, I think that's the perfect solution to this issue. Put the physical function keys back. Move what the Touch Bar is trying to do, to the trackpad. Hell make it the full width and make sure the palm recognition works properly. Add Pencil support (like that picture). That would be innovation. I keep saying it, and I mean it, so I'll say it again: I'll buy that at any price.

 

[Detnator]

What if your phone just snapped into the laptop chassis and was the trackpad? Maybe this is why Apple wants to transition Macs to using ARM chips; you just buy an iPhone and what ever case you want.

Love that idea. Kind of an evolution of the PowerBook Duo from the 90's. Except those didn't sell. But this idea might.

With Project Catalyst, they're sort of, maybe, moving towards a merge of iOS and macOS. If they do go that way, this hardware idea could work very nicely. Make sure the resulting combination can use all the iOS apps, including the phone calls app.

 

[profdraper]

Personally think this would negatively impact using it as a trackpad though, try swiping your fingers across your phone screen like you do your trackpad, and notice the extra resistance, the trackpads have a matte effect finish that makes them very slippery to use, but at least it looks like it also makes the glass less transparent. If they ditch the touchbar, they should just do it in it's entirety, not try to find a new novelty to replace it. Maybe with larger 14/16 inch models they could add it above the restored function row, there's more than enough space on the current 15" to do that. If they moved the KB down fractionally and reduced the size of the trackpad just marginally they could probably even do it on the 13".

[yawn] about time they caught up with the rest of the world ... not going to happen, really. NMPB seems simple enough: catch-up with thin bezels everywhere else (present design is old and awful, that square screen cheaply plonked in far inside highly curved lid); and fix the cheap, unreliable keyboard (again, many other excellent laptop tech elsewhere that has moved on, eg: Dell's magnet keys).

Then of course there's the lack of touch screen, silly touch bar and the rest. And again, many others have moved far beyond, eg:

 

[Macintoshrumors]

I think the new Mac Pro proves that Apple is willing to push price up to deliver “Pro” features. Apple is willing to charge $6,000 for a 8 core 256gb sad and rx580. Now, granted the platform of the Mac Pro is very expensive and the tooling cost and projected sales volumes are pushing the price up, we can probably assume the MacBook Pro “Pro” can be just as expensive if they’re really chasing after the same “Pro” market. Especially if they’re not plannning on killing off the current 15”. Like $4000+ expensive.

the mac pro and mbp are two totally different machines . even non pro users get the 15 for the bigger screen .

imo 16' is replacing the 15'
the rumored 14' is replacing the 13'
same formfactor, thinner bezzels

apple is predictable . they introduce changes that they use in future machings . in this case, bezzle reduction like the ipad pro will be adopted on the mbp

only having 1 machine (air) at 13' is prob why they got rid of the macbook . with the pros, jumping up in various screen sizes

 

[eulslix]

same formfactor, thinner bezzels

apple is predictable . they introduce changes that they use in future machings . in this case, bezzle reduction like the ipad pro will be adopted on the mbp

Sorry for quoting myself again, I just don‘t want to repost the same thing all over the place.

It's not just simply reducing bezels.

The iPad Pros reduction of bezels is nowhere even close to what Apple would have to accomplish to make this happen in the current form factor. I wouldn’t count this as foreshadowing, just a convenient coalignment of strategies, because they happened to have this technology at hand.

 

[FlyingTexan]

Or could be a Quattro card

Spec for spec it will probably be reasonably in line with the existing 15" - it'll just start out with higher specs. For e.g. the base model may be:

i9/16GB/Vega 16/1TB for $3,499 - while the same spec 15" will currently cost you $3,349, so it's a $150 upcharge for the new screen and design, but as Apple make more profit on upgraded items, they will make more profit on the 'base' 16" than they do on the $2,399 base 15" until the design costs have amortised and the design fully supplants the 15" models.

This is unless they do go the 'mobile iMac Pro' route, in which case the price will be more comparable to that machine than existing MBPs.

l

 

[leman]

But what advantage does the Xeon offer at this point? The i9 that was released after the Xenon appears to have caught up with it performance-wise. ECC-memory seems the only significant difference.

None to the laptop user, a reason to ask more $$$ for Apple. If they put Xeons in the 16", it will be an overall loss to us customers.

And, since this is a MacBook Pro thread, not a Mac Pro thread, the point of all this is that this 16" MacBook Pro Pro (yes I meant to say Pro twice) will likely have a similar philosophy behind it, and that's my point here.

... and I really hope that is this not going to be the case. We don't need an additional super-expensive niche MBP on the top of the current line. I sincerely hope that you (and simile voices) are wrong with your prediction and indeed all the 16" will be is a more modern chassis (with design improvements and fixes of course) to replace the 15" model. I will be very disappointed to see anything else.

The iPad Pros reduction of bezels is nowhere even close to what Apple would have to accomplish to make this happen in the current form factor. I wouldn’t count this as foreshadowing, just a convenient coalignment of strategies, because they happened to have this technology at hand.

As I just posted in the other section, halving the horizontal bezels (to around 4mm) is very much doable and will give you space for a 16.1" at 227 PPI (assuming the 3072×1920 resolution). It's the same PPI as used in the new MBA.

Or could be a Quattro card

Why would they put a shaver inside a laptop?

 

[eulslix]

EDIT: nevermind, I've just seen you replied in another thread

 

[psingh01]

I wonder if they'll return to a Titanium body? Apparently a new titanium Apple Watch is coming along with the titanium Apple Card. Perhaps they have sourced enough of the material to use for laptops as well. I'd love to see one assuming their construction is much improved over the old Ti PowerBooks.

 

[D C]

My biggest question is where the camera would be if the rumored leaks that show next to no top bezel are right. I'd also like to see more than 32GB of RAM and a 1080p front camera. But i'm not getting my hopes up. I will need to sell my 2017 iMac 5K and get a MacBook Pro in the next 3-4 months. I'm holding out to see if anything new comes in September or October before making any decisions.

 

[ux4all]

Either Apple is going to follow their other design language from the iPad and start to meld the consumer and pro lines into two clear paths... or they are going to end up with competing lines... (I never understood the ipad air versus the ipad... just offer the ipad as super thin and move the f' on)

Macbook R (11/13/15) -- following the traditional form factor... thin, unibody, elegant (here that Johnny twang in there folks?) If you look at the Air versus the MB... they are close enough to just retire the MB and make the whole line Air like....

Macbook Pro and Macbook Pro Plus (14/16) -- modular... follow the more rigid lines of the iPad PRO...

 

[Velin]

Any solid updates on release date for the 16" Macbook Pro, and whether it gets rid of the butterfly keyboard? If they release it soon, and it has a real keyboard, I'm getting one.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

Any solid updates on release date for the 16" Macbook Pro, and whether it gets rid of the butterfly keyboard? If they release it soon, and it has a real keyboard, I'm getting one.

We have nothing atm... Ware all waiting for the October event announcement supposedly.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

Looks like there's a new post on the front page: 16-Inch Macbook Pro will Reportedly Use Intel 9th-Gen Processors with up to 8 Cores.



As I previously stated, there's no 10th gen H processor coming out in 2019 so it has to use 9th Gen processor similar to the current 15" notebook. However, the following are ALSO lumped in as 9th gen coffee lake refresh processors:

I SERIOUSLY doubt Apple would release a 16" macbook pro on a platform in October just to reuse the same processor that's been in the 15" for over half a year. Why wouldn't they wait till comet lake H or ice lake H to implement this change? Is Apple that desperate to push this 16" laptop and willing to pick a time in between CPU launches to launch their product?

I still think these laptops will utilize the Xeon mobile processor to differentiate itself from the 15" laptops.

Xeon? I was thinking the 16" would replace the 15"... inch line up