You do understand that a 17" "retina" display would be about 5120x2880 resolution right? Good luck with that.
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My opinion about 2012 Pros. (FakeScreen inside)
- Thread starter gpat
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The actual 13" MBP already has a 35W dual-core chip, Ivy could bring a quad with the same TDP, and I think the quad-core 15" have a 45W TDP. Elimination of SuperDrive could bring dedicated GPU to 13" and more powerful dedicated GPU to 15"/17", keeping the same battery life for wireless productivity or even increasing it (using HD4000 on battery).
Good point about the graphic cards (I messed up with the desktop models) and the Retina display, which effectively would have a lot of downsides. Pro resolutions should be bumped to 900p for 13", 1050p for 15", though.
How do you come to these numbers?
The 17" MBP has a resolution of 1920 x 1200, and if we understand RETINA DISPLAY as just quadrupling the resolution as the iPhone 4 did, then we arrive at 3840 x 2400 pixel, which would still be too massive and expensive.
Maybe this can help a bit:
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1440 x 900 for 13" isn't quite off the mark, but I think that would only come if Apple decides to do a redesign. It's not as clear cut as the Macbook Air, which uses a completely different tech to make a thinner screen with higher resolution, but at the expense of contrast and color reproduction.
Also there is no quad Ivy with 35W TDP that I can see in Intel's roadmap. Feel free to correct me on this, but they are only showing 35W dual-core, and 45W quad-core, with higher clock speed than this generation.
Elimination of the optical drive doesn't necessarily mean dGPU for the 13". The problem is heat dissipation. Even on the 15" Pro with a larger surface area, the chassis may still overheat the components inside. The 13" is decidedly smaller, and as such, would likely run into overheating even more often.
Taking the optical drive away may just mean that Apple would put in a second hard drive, or make the battery bigger. Also as it is, there aren't a lot of 10W GPU for them to use on the 13" Pro even if they decide to use a dGPU. A 10W dGPU wouldn't make a significant difference with Intel HD 4000 anyways.
So you took the PPI into account. Most of these threads just took the assumption of just quadrupling the resolution like the iPhone 4 did compared to the iPhone 3GS.
If one takes PPI into account, then the resolutions will be even higher, as you showed us. That is not commercially viable at this time.
I think that's the biggest flaw with the current MBP 13" design. Sure, gamut is great and all, but I can't see the Apple "Pro" machine having a less defined screen than its Air counterpart for one more revision. And a screen with an higher resolution really doesn't need a redesign, look at normres/highres 15".
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5228/in-search-of-the-elusive-35w-ivy-bridge-quadcore
So, what could they do with the extra space? Air-like SSD? Too small. Quad CPU? Doesn't need extra space. Battery? Doesn't make that much sense. Actually keeping SuperDrive? Maybe.
Actually, when I opened my 13" Pro for upgrading the RAM, I was shocked about how big that damn SuperDrive was. It covered 1/5 to 1/4 of the chassis, I find it difficult to believe that it would be impossible to get a decent dedicated GPU in that much space.
I agree, optical drives are just a big waste of space. I don't miss it in the least in my MBA and I can't remember the last time I used my Mac Pro's.
Well, at this point, "retina display" is mostly a marketing word.
The idea behind retina displays is that the human eye is not able to resolve objects that appear less than about 50 arcseconds apart.
For phones, Apple assumes that they are held 12 inch (30 cm) away from the eye, so you need more than 300 ppi to achieve the retina effect.
If we assume that a healthy distance from the display for laptops is about 50 cm (more probably), then 267 ppi are more than sufficient to promote it as retina display - about 200 ppi would be enough.
I don't fully understand the retina technology yet. They double the resolution in each direction, but then scale up all objects such that they retain a readable size. Then applications that support the high-res mode can include textures and fonts and everything with higher ppi, and as a result they will appear sharper.
It should also be possible to get rid of anti-aliasing.
Applications that don't support it are scaled up by the OS, so they don't become tiny suddenly.
I'm not sure how this will affect performance. I would assume that the retina drivers are smart enough to only draw objects with the super high pixel density when necessary.
Anyways, I would be surprised if they are already able to produce a sufficient amount of retina displays in laptop size. If we see the iPad 3 with retina display this year, then maybe in 2013 they are ready for laptops. Will be a piece of cake for Haswell
I meant a redesign of the fab. Apple needs a new assembly line if they want to put a higher res screen into the current 13" Pro. In that case, they might well do a full redesign. The current assembly line, as I don't doubt, is there to make the old screen standard.
It might be that they can just make a screen with the same characteristics as the old screen and slot it in there instead, but I'd think that if they had to go so far, they might well make it a full redesign.
If you'd read it, it's not concrete. It's a list of parts with frequencies, that look likely, but it's not officially confirmed to be 35W quad parts. For all we know, they might just be 45W quads on the lower end of the spectrum.
I'd think they might actually keep the SuperDrive. They have kept it in the iMac after all, and there is enough demand for it to be there.
Or in a different case, they can put in a second hard drive. Dual-500GB or dual-750GB or combo SSD + HDD isn't too much off the mark. If they wanted to put in the Macbook Air's SSD, then they still get that much space for 2 extra HDDs.
It's not the space that's the issue. The dGPU is actually very small and can be had if Apple would just shrink the current 13" Pro's motherboard down to the size of the Air 11", and they'd still be able to keep the Optical Drive.
It's actually heat that is the issue. The 13" has too little surface area, and Apple's fan design doesn't allow more airflow (the vent is blocked by the display hinge) so the dGPU would just add more unneeded heat. It's already overheating on the 15".
I agree that the current resolution offering on the current 13" MacBook Pro is the biggest downfall. The 13" MacBook Air runs at 1440x900, which should be the resolution on the 13" Pro as well. Apple should also offer a matte display option for the 13" MacBook Pro, since they offer it on all of their other size-offerings.
Which ones are these two 35W CPUs? I could only fine one on the Wikipedia article but I would actually be fine if the mid and entry level MBP shared the same CPU. The differences are small enough anyway and I think the reduction in heat output is well worth it. However, the only 35W TDP CPU I could find, at 2.1/3.1ghz base/turbo clock, will be slower than the existing Sandy Bridge CPUs and I don't know how Apple is going to convince customers that a reduction in CPU power is somehow a good thing.
Apple called the the iPhone 4's display the "Retina Display" because they claimed that at > 300ppi, it exceeded the human eye's resolving capability. Not exactly true but that is for a different discussion.
Nowadays everything with a 4x resolution bump is also a "Retina Display". can't tell if people don't know any better or just can't come up with a more concise way of saying it but it gets a bit misleading. I'm not an expert on this, but I think that just swapping one screen for another with more pixels does not need any change at the fab design or MBP chassis. But then again, I'm not an expert.
I think that's the same thing they do with the 15" BTO 1050p, isn't it?
I can't think that 35W CPU as anything else than a 35W quad. The article I linked actually points to another where Intel says it had plans to release 35W quads.
Yes, maybe, but the iMac was refreshed before they started killing the SuperDrive (on the Mini), and it still makes a lot more sense on the iMac rather than on the MBP, at least for 15" and 13".
Makes little sense to me. It's prone to failure, costly (due to Thai flood), and not in line with the Apple strategy. SSD+HDD is OK, but 2xHDD is hard to believe for me.
More space equals to more room for cooling too, but it would need an internal redesign to relocate the fans and the exhausts. But I think Apple could actually make a MBP redesign in 2012, just adding Ivy Bridge would be too small, like the 2009->2010 upgrade.
SB was great, it increased the processing power almost like it happened with the PPC -> Intel transition. Ivy is more like an incremental bump, with addition of technologies like SRT (SSD caching) and configurable TDP (can't even begin to imagine how that could be used by Apple, too many possibilities) that couldn't be used very well with the current design. So I think that the 2012 refresh will either be a redesign (at least an internal one) or a very disappointing one, almost like the 2010 one.
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I actually screwed up with the TDPs. 35W are duals, 45W quads. It also appears that a 35W Quad will be available OEM-only.
Sources:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5192/ivy-bridge-mobile-lineup-overview
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5228/in-search-of-the-elusive-35w-ivy-bridge-quadcore
Depending on the characteristics of the screen and handling, it might still be different.
That might be the case with the glossy, but they do definitely have to change things a bit with the antiglare. For one, handling of material is not the same (glass vs aluminum).
They seemed to have made a typo in there because the 3610 and 3615 parts are identical, which makes no sense.
If my guess is right, those might still be 45W quads, but binned lower, and are meant to replace lower-end quads of this year, much like this:
2630/2635QM (MBP 15" Base Early 2011) 2.0GHz -> 2.9GHz vs 3610QM 2.1GHz -> 3.1GHz
2710QE (Embedded option, not in a MBP) 2.1GHz -> 3.0GHz vs 3612QM 2.2GHz -> 3.2GHz
2670/2720QM (MBP 15" Base Late 2011 and High Early 2011) 2.2GHz -> 3.1GHz/3.3GHz vs 3615QM 2.3GHz -> 3.4GHz
It would make perfect sense if it's like that... but it also effectively means there is no 35W quad parts yet. Intel said they had plans, but that's not confirmation that these are definitely 35W quads, and considering their clock speeds are still in 45W TDP range, it's not off the mark to assume that they are just there to replace the lower end quads of this year. It's not like Intel only has 2 or 3 45W SB quads.
Of course there is still the off chance that I am wrong, and that these are indeed 35W quad parts... but chances are slim, and if Intel had 35W quads to boast about, I don't see why they had to keep them under wraps at CES. Then again, Intel's presentation at CES this year was... underwhelming, so it wouldn't surprise me when it turns out they actually couldn't get enough yield for the 35W quad parts.
The Mini is actually more of an exception than the norm. It got a redesign, and then that redesign was modified one year later to take out the SuperDrive. I'd agree that it seems to be the trend, but that doesn't mean it absolutely must happen to all devices, and considering the iMac and Macbook Pro are still geared more toward being workhorses (rather than a media-centric device like the Mac Mini), I think it may still make more sense for the Optical Drive to be replaced with something of equivalent value (rather than something of drastic value like a GPU), thus the HDD suggestion.
I'd guess you didn't check Apple's desktops lately? Barring the iMac, which is marketed more as a professional/consumer-centric device, the Mac Mini Server and the Mac Pro both offer options to go dual-HDD.
And it's not prone to failure nor costly since they have no problem doing it for the Mac Mini at least. If Apple leaves it as a BTO option, then they can still charge you for it. Note that going from a 500GB HDD to 750GB in Apple's BTO adds an extra $100. Regardless of the flood, they are still making quite a killing with that kind of profit.
The exhaust has always been blowing hot air to the back. It limits the thermal envelope severely compared to more open designs. That's inevitable.
What it does better is it actually makes it so that as long as the Macbook is open and nothing blocks the screen hinge area, which is very unlikely, you can use the Macbook on any surface (like on a bed) without blocking the vent at all.
But I sincerely don't see how they would move away from that design just so they can cram hotter and more power-hungry components in.
That's another issue. The 15" MBP with its 78WHr battery can afford an extra GPU, but the 13" MBP only has 64WHr. You are looking at roughly 20% less battery life there, or a whole hour less. Compared to the current MBP 13", which has an average load of 12W/Hr of usage (translates to 5Hr 15mins of actual usage), adding another 3W or 5W in for the GPU (or 10-15W at high load) means you are cutting down the battery run time either by 30% or 50%.
My guess is that it would be a good enough update for everyone who owns a MBP 2010 and 2009 to jump on, but may not be significant enough for 2011 Pro owners. That has always been the case with Apple.
Personally, I just got the 2011 Pro recently, and I plan to keep it around for at least the next 4 years before jumping, so whatever 2012 brings doesn't really matter to me. It's a work machine, after all, and this year's refresh brings me enough horse power in a cool and quiet package. That's all I ask for.
On the other hand, I do notice that many people wish for a more powerful 13" Pro, and I'd love to see it, too. But given the constraints (cooling, battery tech), I don't think it's realistic to expect a dramatic change. If Intel would just forfeit the idea that they were the only ones to be able to make chipset for their CPUs, we might be able to see AMD or nVidia step in with a better integrated GPU, which should solve the GPU dilemma. Intel's HD 4000 looks be yet another disappointing update, and it's still playing catchup with 2010's GeForce 320M from what I can see.
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Far from being a top GPU, but top of an above average line? Yes.
A dream come true would be a Radeon HD 6990M or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M. Or whatever might come out in 2012.
Yes, OK, I'm basically saying that a 900p fitting the current 13" chassis can be made. I don't think that's an impossible task for Apple.
Of course, but that's a different matter from resolution. Antiglare on 13" could even be introduced on a different revision, or never, for all we know.
That actually makes sense. If it is that way, it would actually be pretty disappointing. But there are a lot of causes for them to not show off the 35W quad. For all we know, it could even be an Apple exclusive chip. But I wouldn't place any bets on it.
The Mini IMHO needed a change because it was awful last year, with the C2D/320M combination, and they needed to reposition it as an entry-level machine ($699 was too much, $599 is OK). But I don't think it could make any sense for a 13" MB to get 2 hard disk drives + 1 SSDs. Just feels wrong to me.
The non-server Mini and the iMac are actually the norm. The server mini is, obviously, a server (not mainstream), and the Pro is a professional workstation. Completely different products compared with a 13" notebook.
A Mac Mini Server is a server on which big files are stored, a Macbook is something you carry around, and Apple is geared towards flash memories on notebooks. And there is really no point on having dual HDs + SSDs on a 13" laptop, since performance is achieved by SSD, and a bigger storage space is better achieved with external solutions.
That could be a problem, and would effectively make a redesign mandatory for features like a discrete GPU.
What it does better is it actually makes it so that as long as the Macbook is open and nothing blocks the screen hinge area, which is very unlikely, you can use the Macbook on any surface (like on a bed) without blocking the vent at all.
But I sincerely don't see how they would move away from that design just so they can cram hotter and more power-hungry components in.
Well, I think nobody plans on having a big battery life while on dedicated graphics on a MBP. We all know that the 15" battery is quartered while gaming.
Same for me. I own a 2011 13" and I won't change this year no matter what, even because I'm a student and I can't afford to spend $1000-1500 every year for a notebook. I could say that I speculate on the upgrades for mere curiosity.
It's not, but they haven't introduced it because the current MBP 13" fits into their manufacturing plans (parts list, etc...) that they have devised from years ago. That's what I mean.
Perhaps it doesn't require a complete redesign of the entire machine, but they would still have to go back and recalculate the costs of a lot of things if they want to change to a higher res display, which would undoubtedly cost more than the current one.
It's the same as resolution. High res on 15" is also a BTO option, not a mandatory mass-production unit that they have straight out of the fab. If it was so easy to include a higher res display, you'd think they would have made it mandatory on the 15" already. And antiglare is only available in higher res on the 15".
I could be very wrong here, but I think Apple makes high res screen (disregarding antiglare) on the 15" Pro a BTO option for a reason.
There has never been a case where Apple gets exclusive dip on an Intel chip that no other OEM can. It's anti-competitive, and it's illegal to do so.
Now, in the case of nVidia, the GeForce 320M was more of a unique case. I wouldn't say that Apple got exclusive dip on it, but that... they specifically custom-ordered it from nVidia. Perhaps what you are suggesting is that Apple could custom-order such a chip from Intel, which is actually not illegal and it is still very possible that it could happen. But I have never heard of Intel taking custom orders before.
No, but it can still get 2 hard drives. Apple doesn't have to bundle in the Macbook Air's SSD. It'll just cost them more overall.
As far as I know, the Mini is not really marketed as a professional workstation. That's what the Mac Pro is for, and the Mac Pro does come installed with many hard drives.
Also since the iMac does have a BTO option to get dual 2.5" drives (HDD + SSD) combo, I wouldn't rule out completely that Apple can make that a mainstream or BTO option on MacBooks.
Apple is not really geared toward flash memories on notebooks. They just do it that way for the Macbook Air because there is no way for them to fit a full 2.5" hard drive into the body of the Air while retaining the same configuration as it is today.
Also while you may not think so, a lot of people do want and use SSD + HD in a 13" Pro. I know my brother does. And I know a lot of MR users do.
And I can assure you that many people who own a 15" Pro here on MR would recommend that you install gfxCardStatus to disable the dGPU while you're in OSX, just to conserve on battery life.
The reason why is because the dGPU is not kicked in only for gaming. It's kicked in for pretty much anything that's semi-intensive. Animations, web browsing, video chat, watching movies,... you name it. Even if you don't play games, having the dGPU will significantly drop the battery on every day usage.
And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I'm merely discussing the viability of some of the mentioned speculations.
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I think if you want any of this, you should start building a hackintosh. apple is great we all know this, but top of the line they are not. the designs they provide are simple, user friendly and for the most part, have very good options as far as internal hardware. but from your picture I can tell you expect them to be the most advanced company offering those items listed at a reasonable price (or at least as reasonable as they are now). yea, not happening. build you a hackintosh if you want all that. flash & a hdd? nope. one or the other. this is the same laptop that only offers 2 usb ports and only puts a sd card slot on the 15" instead of an express card. get to buildin!
). yea, not happening. build you a hackintosh if you want all that. flash & a hdd? nope. one or the other. this is the same laptop that only offers 2 usb ports and only puts a sd card slot on the 15" instead of an express card. get to buildin!I get it now, but they'll have to do a redesign sooner or later. Maybe not in 2012 after all
I actually think there would not be any parts to swap besides the higher-resolution LCD panel, but I could be wrong.
That's upselling, I think. And having only 3 panels in the fab, but I don't see that as a problem, since 90% of MacBooks is probably shipping with the default screen and the minority is BTO'd.
Yes. Profit
and leaving short-sighted users with an option, maybe.I wouldn't say that would be illegal, but the 2008 MacBook Air CPU was supplied to other OEMs only after their request (and I think Apple actually asked Intel to engineer that CPU), and the Core 2 Extreme on the 2007 iMac was available to Apple before the others. Same with Montevina on 2008 iMacs.
SSD + HDD makes sense because Ivy Bridge's SRT allows for SSD caching. 2xHDD is either more disk space (something Apple has never been too generous about), RAID 0 (inferior to SSD for performance, risky) or RAID 1 (pointless on a laptop)
Lol, I just said that mini server = server = not a mainstream product, as is the Mac Pro. Nothing about the regular mini.
I agree about this. An SSD could be implemented even without the SuperDrive space, with the Air form factor (mSATA?)
Yeah, I am planning about that as well, as soon as SSD prices drop a little more. I'm arguing only about 2xHDD, not SSD + HDD.
I know about this as well. Actually, I wish Apple could implement that as a default OSX feature, but I think they have a different idea of system transparency.
Yes, I know. I'm not taking any of your words as offensive either
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I think if you want any of this, you should start building a hackintosh. apple is great we all know this, but top of the line they are not. the designs they provide are simple, user friendly and for the most part, have very good options as far as internal hardware. but from your picture I can tell you expect them to be the most advanced company offering those items listed at a reasonable price (or at least as reasonable as they are now
I think a lot of people would do that if it was more practical (100% working OS X on a PC laptop is a nightmare), and if the MacBooks weren't built so solid, elegant and with unique features such as the trackpad
Imagine running video or gaming at 3840x2400. You'd get like 5 fps lol.
Also, without resolution independence, icons and text would be too small to read.