New 16" MacBook Pro coming Oct? (Catalina not releasing until then)

[leman]

. No True Scots... sorry, no sane "pro" user is going to install Catalina on their production machine on day one

I've been using Catalina two months before it is supposed to be released Sometimes being a pro means living on the edge.

The 16" rumour doesn't sound like it includes any exotic new hardware that would only work with Catalina.

If it does not come with Wi-Fi 6, U1 chip and Navi GPUs, it's going to be the most pointless hardware release Apple ever did. If there is even going to be a 16" model this year. At any rate, I am pretty convinced that if we see new laptops, they will be Catalina+

 

[jerryk]

Typically announced Oct, available Nov

Make sense. That would get it on people's holiday shopping list.

 

[theluggage]

I've been using Catalina two months before it is supposed to be released Sometimes being a pro means living on the edge.

How courageous. I hope you backed up the system disc first...

I still remember spending months of meticulous planning for upgrading a site from VMS 4 to VMS 5 - which had already been out for a year...

If it does not come with Wi-Fi 6, U1 chip and Navi GPUs, it's going to be the most pointless hardware release Apple ever did.

My take - its the 2020/21 case and display wrapped around the 2019 innards, rushed out so that Apple have something to sell to customers who have been scared off the butterfly keyboard.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

I've been using Catalina two months before it is supposed to be released Sometimes being a pro means living on the edge.



If it does not come with Wi-Fi 6, U1 chip and Navi GPUs, it's going to be the most pointless hardware release Apple ever did. If there is even going to be a 16" model this year. At any rate, I am pretty convinced that if we see new laptops, they will be Catalina+

It better bring Navi GPU and Wi-Fi 6......

 

[leman]

How courageous. I hope you backed up the system disc first...

Well, I need the new toys to develop my stuff. And that sidecar thing is really nice as well. Of course, I have multiple redundant backups everywhere. For me its not a big deal anyway, since I can restore my computing environment in about an hour.

My take - its the 2020/21 case and display wrapped around the 2019 innards, rushed out so that Apple have something to sell to customers who have been scared off the butterfly keyboard.

I fear the same. Let's hope we are wrong...

 

[Rockstarmayhm]

I am just curious if anyone else thinks that Apple may be releasing Catalina in October since this could be when the unveil a new MacBook Pro redesign. I know its all conjecture, but this the first time I have really seen them stagger all the OS updates so much, especially with Catalina so far out that it truly makes me think we'll be seeing a reveal of a new design then.

Looking at getting a new MB Pro 15" upgrading from 2012 15". Should i buy one now or wait for the 16" if it comes out this year?

 

[leman]

Looking at getting a new MB Pro 15" upgrading from 2012 15". Should i buy one now or wait for the 16" if it comes out this year?

If it’s not very urgent, I’d say wait. Even if there turns out to be no new model you can get some nice rebates for the holiday season.

 

[alexandero]

I doubt Apple will release a new MBP with an older chipset than Ice Lake, as it will bring Wi-Fi 6, USB 4 / Thunderbolt 3, support 5K@60Hz out of the box, with increased speed and reduced power consumption.

All these aspects make it easier to promote a new notebook, other than "screen size increase by 0.6 inch" and "improved keyboard reliability".

 

[leman]

I doubt Apple will release a new MBP with an older chipset than Ice Lake, as it will bring Wi-Fi 6, USB 4 / Thunderbolt 3, support 5K@60Hz out of the box, with increased speed and reduced power consumption.

All these aspects make it easier to promote a new notebook, other than "screen size increase by 0.6 inch" and "improved keyboard reliability".

Except there is no H-class Ice Lake in sight. The Ice Lake so far are quad-core parts, and most manufacturers ship them as 15W parts. I am sure that Intel could deliver a custom 28W SKU for Apple’s 13”, but right now there is no alternative for the 15” model.

And as far as the rest goes, Apple is perfectly capable of delivering TB3/WiFi-6 without any dedicated CPU support. They have the chips.

 

[Painter2002]

If it’s not very urgent, I’d say wait. Even if there turns out to be no new model you can get some nice rebates for the holiday season.

I’d second this. If not desperate for an upgrade on a needs basis, I’d wait til the holiday season to see if any announcement comes of a redesigned model. Worst case, if there is no redesign launched this year, there will b plenty of holiday sales to pick up a current gen MBP at a good price.

If you need a new model now for work or school then just go ahead and get one. It all depends on what your needs are.

 

[Queen6]

I am expecting a pro event in end October [30th maybe?]

Announce 16" MBP [and hopefully a 14" but no rumours to back this]. As Q6 states.

Update the iPad pros with improved camera and CPU [just a minor refresh]

Release the macpro, ready for shipping.

Time will tell, Apple remains to be very IOS centric and for good reason. I 'd really like to see something different, equally I only expect more of the same...

I'm also wary of Apple and the Mac now. The 2019 MBP isn't a bad notebook by any means, however this is how they should have been day one back in 2016 and Apple seems to be uninterested in delivering the best it can or differentiating it's notebook range.

Q-6

 

[Zerosopher]

I think it will be announced in Oct and available in Nov.

 

[alexandero]

Except there is no H-class Ice Lake in sight. The Ice Lake so far are quad-core parts, and most manufacturers ship them as 15W parts. I am sure that Intel could deliver a custom 28W SKU for Apple’s 13”, but right now there is no alternative for the 15” model.

And as far as the rest goes, Apple is perfectly capable of delivering TB3/WiFi-6 without any dedicated CPU support. They have the chips.

The Intel Core i7-1068G7 is a Ice Lake 28W CPU with 4 cores, it might be available soon? Alternatively we could see a MBP with a 15/25W 6 core 14nm Comet Lake Intel Core i7-10710U.

 

[Blair Paulsen]

If I were Apple, I'd be pushing hard for a high profile "Pro" rollout with the new MacPro flanked by the 16" MBP and latest iPadPro. They can trumpet the new line and, perhaps more importantly, put the "thermal corner" and "keyboard-gate" issues behind them. In order to pull that off in October, they would want to have at least one of the 3 devices ready to ship on announcement, preferably two and all available by Dec 1st.

I'm guessing they'll wait as long as they can before firing up the PR for a "Pro" event. It's conceivable that Apple would do a dog and pony Pro show for products with "late 2019" ship dates, but as D60 might say - that would be a "dog ate my homework" message and a PR disaster if you ask me.

Yes, I know these are products that have been in development for a long time with specific release date goals. That said, the sheer quantity of things that could delay even the best preparations is daunting - starting with component availability.

 

[jerryk]

Well, I need the new toys to develop my stuff. And that sidecar thing is really nice as well. Of course, I have multiple redundant backups everywhere. For me its not a big deal anyway, since I can restore my computing environment in about an hour.

Off subject, but are you saying you have multiple Macbook environments and can save and restore quickly to/from the same Macbook.? If so, can you document how you do this or provide a pointer?

I find I want to checkpoint my environment. And by checkpoint I mean all products, code, etc. The total environment. And I find Time Machine to be semi useless for this since I need a way to Checkpoint the current image (V2) and put is someplace, load with old older image) V1, work with V1 for awhile, and then restore V2. All quickly. I will be making modifying system level files

 

[leman]

The Intel Core i7-1068G7 is a Ice Lake 28W CPU with 4 cores, it might be available soon?

Thats what makes me suspect we might see an upgraded 13" soon... although the timing would be a bit awkward.

Alternatively we could see a MBP with a 15/25W 6 core 14nm Comet Lake Intel Core i7-10710U.

And why would you want that if you already have a 8-core 45W Coffee Lake-R?
[doublepost=1568317112][/doublepost]

Off subject, but are you saying you have multiple Macbook environments and can save and restore quickly to/from the same Macbook.? If so, can you document how you do this or provide a pointer?

I find I want to checkpoint my environment. And by checkpoint I mean all products, code, etc. The total environment. And I find Time Machine to be semi useless for this since I need a way to Checkpoint the current image (V2) and put is someplace, load with old older image) V1, work with V1 for awhile, and then restore V2. All quickly. I will be making modifying system level files

Oh, its nothing that fancy really. Virtually all of my work is either on a virtual machine image or in a repository. This means that I only need to backup a small set of data, and TM does it perfectly. So to restore my stuff I only need to reinstall the OS, fire up a script that installs all the necessary tools, restores the SSH keys, clones the repositories from the server etc. and I am good to go. Basically, I try to organise my environment in a way that avoids complex configurations and dependencies — just a loose bunch of tools and everything is pretty much isolated. In my part-time job as IT admin I've seen some terrible things that people do to their systems (I still shiver when I think of those hard-coded paths to latex packages with custom undocumented patches) and it gave me a good idea of what not to do

What you want to do might be possible with Catalina though since the imaging tools got a massive APFS-driven upgrade with diffs etc. The fact that the system files are write-only helps as well, as it gives you certain invariants. But I haven't played around with these things yet.

 

[alexandero]

And why would you want that if you already have a 8-core 45W Coffee Lake-R?

I've not compared the specs to the current lineup, but if a new 15" CPU had the same performance as currently but with less energy consumption, plus moving all the features that previously needed extra chips (WiFi, Thunderbolt) into the CPU, it would allow a bigger battery and/or slimmer case (or more space for the new keyboard).

 

[leman]

I've not compared the specs to the current lineup, but if a new 15" CPU had the same performance as currently but with less energy consumption, plus moving all the features that previously needed extra chips (WiFi, Thunderbolt) into the CPU, it would allow a bigger battery and/or slimmer case (or more space for the new keyboard).

I don't think that anyone would argue agains such an upgrade, but the fact is that the current 15" ship with the fastest mobile CPUs available to date. Ice Lake seems to have better single-core performance in some scenarios and AVX-512 is a beast if you can use it, but overall, Ice Lake or Comet Lake simply not in the same category.

Its unfortunate that Intel is neglecting higher-performance laptops like that. I understand that money is currently in the 15W segment, but its still stinks for anyone that wants/needs something with more oomph.

 

[Zdigital2015]

How courageous. I hope you backed up the system disc first...

I still remember spending months of meticulous planning for upgrading a site from VMS 4 to VMS 5 - which had already been out for a year...



My take - its the 2020/21 case and display wrapped around the 2019 innards, rushed out so that Apple have something to sell to customers who have been scared off the butterfly keyboard.

Upgrade? More like defusing a bomb, eh?

 

[itsamacthing]

This is probably a good call. I just find the whole update schedule very bizarre compared their previous releases. Usually everything is synchronized pretty well. Almost feels like Apple is unorganized all of a sudden.

Unorganized because Apple realized that their MBP was no longer Pro, no longer edgy and interesting. That this was a lame duck model for many reasons (SD Card, Keyboard, etc). So they are pushing hard to redefine their Pro releases, Heck! They even have a Pro Font now

WIll be interesting to see what this new MBP looks like, hope it's the start of a solid run of portables

 

[Queen6]

Unorganized because Apple realized that their MBP was no longer Pro, no longer edgy and interesting. That this was a lame duck model for many reasons (SD Card, Keyboard, etc). So they are pushing hard to redefine their Pro releases, Heck! They even have a Pro Font now

WIll be interesting to see what this new MBP looks like, hope it's the start of a solid run of portables

With Apple slapping "Pro" on everything & anything I have little hope of anything but more of the same. I do know many professional's have dropped Apple, as to whether Apple cares is an entirely different matter...

Q-6

 

[itsamacthing]

With Apple slapping "Pro" on everything & anything I have little hope of anything but more of the same. I do know many professional's have dropped Apple, as to whether Apple cares is an entirely different matter...

Q-6

They might care...I think they had a wake up call a few years ago. But Jury is still out on whether they will make the right moves or not

 

[theluggage]

With Apple slapping "Pro" on everything & anything I have little hope of anything but more of the same. I do know many professional's have dropped Apple, as to whether Apple cares is an entirely different matter...

"Pro" written on a product has never meant more than "more expensive and (allegedly) better than the one without 'Pro'". Apple have been a bit confused and inconsistent about what tags like "pro" and "air" (which has wobbled between 'premium ultra-portable' and 'economy') mean - but then most of the competition think that "TZ3956-B/Z" is a sexy product name so...

...and in terms of customers, "pro" only reliably means that you're getting paid, although there's a fixation in this group (...and also at Apple when they're not using 'pro' just to mean 'premium') that you're not a "pro" unless you're rendering 3D video in 8k.

But, looking at the products that are aimed at... people with demanding computer needs... we have:

- the classic Mac Pro - basically left to wither on the vine after ~2010 (and discontinued in Europe shorty after) with no hint of an upgrade
- the Mac Pro "cylinder" - radical design simply not suitable for some users' purposes (acknowledged 5 years later by Apple) and basically abandoned with no alternative available for 6 years
- the MacBook Pro - allowed to become thoroughly out-of-date by 2016, then replaced overnight with a radical re-design with no de-facto-standard ports and a keyboard which was, at best, love-it-or-hate-it, at worst may have serious design flaws that cause regular failures in some environments.
- XServe - cancelled overnight - no alternative. Yes, folks, a desktop computer with a rack mounting bracket may be convenient if you're combining it with rackmount video/audio gear but its not the same as a purpose-designed server. May be justified in that "nobody needs a server running MacOS any more - you can do everything with Linux" - but if you're that nobody, you're stuffed.
- iMac Pro - well, we'll see if it gets at least a GPU upgrade this year...

So, basically, if you are a pro, why would you invest time and money on a platform with such a dismal track record of creating and abandoning "pro" products and forcing drastic workflow changes on users? Remember - being a "pro" can mean considerations like - can you quickly buy a new set of up-to-date, but compatible, kit if your computer is damaged/stolen, or a new person joins the team? What will be the choice in 3 years time when the lease is up/you've finished reclaiming the tax etc.? Who gets to decide when you have a major rethink of your workflow - you or Apple?

Also - Apple simply don't/can't/won't produce a basic workhorse 'pickup truck' computer - whenever they try these days they end up with a gull-winged sports SUV, like the Trashcan (...and, to a certain extent, the new Mac Pro although my main gripe with that is the lousy bang/buck ratio of the entry level model).

Go with HP/Dell etc. and you can be reasonably sure that they won't suddenly drop their basic, workhorse computers in favour of a piece of contemporary metal sculpture... and even if they do there are plenty of other PC makers who will build something to your exact specs.

 

[fokmik]

If apple wants to bring a brand new MBP they should go first with the 14" MBP since they have already the cpu also in November. So better wifi,ssd, cpu/igpu,ram, chassis/thermals/keyboard
If they release the 16" first...its clear the new cpu will be the same, maybe also same vega or navi 14

 

[theluggage]

If they release the 16" first...its clear the new cpu will be the same, maybe also same vega or navi 14

If - as rumoured - the 16" appears with the same innards as the 15" - then it is likely all about the keyboard - otherwise, releasing a significant re-design without across-the-range new processors and GPUs seems strange. The 15" probably runs hotter than the 13" (more cores, i9, dGPU...) and heat seems to be a factor in the keyboard problems. You could also speculate various reasons why the lower-volume 15" made the keyboard (including case) replacement program more of a problem.

All speculation of course - but so is the 16" MBP rumour (esp. guessing the launch date) - what would be really surprising is if Apple weren't already prototyping and secretly testing the next MBP design (although that would explain how the butterfly keyboard happened...)