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New Macbook in 2018?
- Thread starter coquemessa
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So, as far as I can gather, here are the existing Y series rumours:
No Kaby Lake Refresh Y, and no Coffee Lake Y.
Cannon Lake Y possibly coming this summer, but if so, they will still be dual core:
Ice Lake Y coming 2019, with quad core:
That's the optimistic take on it, that we'll actually get summer or fall updates for the 2018 12" MacBook. Of course, there is still the wild card of the 13" MacBook, although for me that would be irrelevant, since if I were to get a 13", it'd be a MacBook Pro. In fact, I'd say the perfect machine for me would be a hypothetical 12" MacBook Pro, mainly for the extra port and the better trackpad and camera, even if it meant an extra 1/4 lb in weight.
It's all moot for me though really, since I already bought the 2017 MacBook Core m3 last year, and won't be upgrading that any time soon.
No Kaby Lake Refresh Y, and no Coffee Lake Y.
Cannon Lake Y possibly coming this summer, but if so, they will still be dual core:
If real, this 1.1 GHz Cannon Lake Y chip is probably the entry level and perhaps not the one Apple would use, but nonetheless, it doesn’t seem too impressive, despite being 10 nm (with LPDDR4).
? Core m3-8Y30
https://wccftech.com/intel-10nm-ice-lake-cannonlake-14nm-coffee-lake-cpus-spotted/
That would mean a 1.1 GHz Cannon Lake Y Core m3, probably with Apple implementing TDP up to 1.2 GHz. It would likely also have a higher Turbo Boost, to say 3.3 GHz? That chip would arrive in MacBooks in 2018 Q3.
Ice Lake Y coming 2019, with quad core:
That's the optimistic take on it, that we'll actually get summer or fall updates for the 2018 12" MacBook. Of course, there is still the wild card of the 13" MacBook, although for me that would be irrelevant, since if I were to get a 13", it'd be a MacBook Pro. In fact, I'd say the perfect machine for me would be a hypothetical 12" MacBook Pro, mainly for the extra port and the better trackpad and camera, even if it meant an extra 1/4 lb in weight.
It's all moot for me though really, since I already bought the 2017 MacBook Core m3 last year, and won't be upgrading that any time soon.
Is the trackpad of the Pro better than the 12?
I just switched from a 2015 13 Pro to the 2107 MB, but I still have an option to upgrade if they bring in a worthwhile upgrade, as I can pass this off to my wife who is still using [and loving] her 2011 MBA [with a new battery].
The MacBook trackpad’s firmness for the click is not as firm as the Pro’s even when the MacBook is set to the firmest setting.
IMO, the Pro’s firmest setting (for which the MacBook has no equivalent) is what best replicates the feel of the old mechanical trackpads.
Things are not looking good for Intel 10 nm. This is from an Intel chip analyst:
https://twitter.com/david_schor/status/988107149036478464
"I hope I am wrong but I have good reasons to believe there won't be ANY 10nm volume this year at all."
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While there does seem to some 10 nm in the wild...
https://www.pcper.com/category/tags/cannon-lake-u
...it is in the form of a low volume NUC U series part, and it's a Core i3 - Core i3-8121U...
...which is about as fast as the 14 nm Kaby Lake Y which came out in 2016:
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I read that post after the Google search of 'Intel 10nm'. It's worth noting that he says "I may be wrong, but...."
Now, when I say that it usually means: "I'm taking a wild guess here, but...."
I may wrong, but I'm actually not optimistic, just saying. (Trying to keep track of the rumors, not that my opinion is worth anything, i'm just a single buyer).
It's a bit fun following this though. Intel has made it a mystery. I'm wondering if 95% of the employees don't know what is going on. Strange. The secrecy is nothing new of course, but with something like this, its odd.
Now, when I say that it usually means: "I'm taking a wild guess here, but...."
I may wrong, but I'm actually not optimistic, just saying. (Trying to keep track of the rumors, not that my opinion is worth anything, i'm just a single buyer).
It's a bit fun following this though. Intel has made it a mystery. I'm wondering if 95% of the employees don't know what is going on. Strange. The secrecy is nothing new of course, but with something like this, its odd.
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He's echoing the general sentiment in the industry that Intel 10 nm is still in really bad shape, and is so far almost vapourware for 2018. The only leak so far with any substance for 10 nm is a low volume, low performance U part that Apple wouldn't use, since the 2016 14 nm Kaby Lake U parts are actually significantly faster.I read that post. It's worth noting that he says "I may be wrong, but...."
Now, when I say that it usually means: "I'm taking a wild guess here, but...."
I may wrong, but I'm actually not optimistic, just saying. (Trying to keep track of the rumors, not that my opinion is worth anything, i'm just a single buyer).
Meanwhile, all the predicted MacBook Pro CPUs for 2018 seem also to be 14 nm.
Just a note that everyone else's 10 nm is not the same as Intel's 10 nm. For example, the rough equivalent of Intel's 10 nm for TSMC would be 7 nm.
That said, some believe that Apple's new 2018 A12 chip will be TSMC 7 nm. The difference here though is that Apple is pouring a bazillion dollars to produce a single 7 nm chip, not an entire line of differing chips. Still, the industry pundits now seem to agree that TSMC is either equal to Intel in process technology, or else ahead of Intel. In the past Intel was roughly 2 years ahead of the competition, but Intel's problems have allowed the others to catch up.
My original plan back in something like 2014 was to wait until 2016 to buy a 10 nm Mac laptop, because 2015/2016 was the target time frame for the initial Intel rollout of 10 nm. But then Intel failed to execute, with 10 nm only trickling out in 2018 with low volume and low performance parts, while TSMC continued to progress and is rumoured to have 7 nm in volume with decent performance by fall of 2018.
TSMC may post record profits for 2018 on 7nm volume production
"Qualcomm has grabbed large chip orders from non-Apple smartphone vendors and will have TSMC fabricate them in the second half of the year, and the foundry giant is also about to start fulfilling orders for fabricating A12 processors on 7nm node."
We shall see though come September if TSMC is really able to get 7 nm to the masses.
Trying to read into this - This definitely looks bad for Cannon Lake - but does it necessarily look bad for Ice Lake?
Well, considering that 10 nm Ice Lake is the successor to 10 nm Cannon Lake, I'd say it doesn't look too good for Ice Lake either.
Here we go, hot off the presses: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
TSMC last week announced that it had started high volume production (HVM) of chips using their first-gen 7 nm (CLN7FF) process technology. The contract maker of semiconductors says it has over a dozen of customers with tens of designs eager to use the technology to make their integrated circuits.
The 7 nm node is a big deal for the foundry industry in general and TSMC in particular. When compared to the CLN16FF+ technology (TSMC’s most widely used FinFET process technology) the CLN7FF will enable chip designers to shrink their die sizes by 70% (at the same transistor count), drop power consumption by 60%, or increase frequency by 30% (at the same complexity). So far, TSMC has taped out 18 customer products using the CLN7FF technology, more than 50 CLN7FF products will be taped out by the end of 2018.
One of those 18 products has got to be the Apple A12, so the next iPhone is gonna be killer.
There we have it: TSMC, and thereby Apple, is now ahead of Intel.
It's official! No high volume 10 nm Cannon Lake chips until 2019.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3269449/components-processors/intel-earnings-call.html
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Intel's CCG, though, has had difficulties ramping the yields of its next-generation 10nm Core chips, Intel executives confirmed. Though that rate is improving, Intel made the decision to push out its 10nm PC microprocessor products, in volume, until sometime in 2019, rather than the second half of 2018, as it has said previously. Intel will continue to make “process optimizations and architectural innovations” in its existing 14-nm lines for both datacenter and client products throughout the remainder of 2018, it said.
One of those chips will be Whiskey Lake, for client PCs, Krzanich said. Intel executives provided no further details, but reports have said that Intel may have additional "4+2" and "8+2" mobile chips debuting later this year. A "Cascade Lake" chip will debut for servers later in 2018, he said.
Intel also confirmed that it is currently shipping small volumes of a 10nm product right now, producing—rather than sampling—the Cannon Lake processor that was originally slated for 2017, but slid into 2018.
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The interesting part though is that despite its 10 nm woes, Intel had huge profits last quarter, due to other parts of its business.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3269449/components-processors/intel-earnings-call.html
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Intel's CCG, though, has had difficulties ramping the yields of its next-generation 10nm Core chips, Intel executives confirmed. Though that rate is improving, Intel made the decision to push out its 10nm PC microprocessor products, in volume, until sometime in 2019, rather than the second half of 2018, as it has said previously. Intel will continue to make “process optimizations and architectural innovations” in its existing 14-nm lines for both datacenter and client products throughout the remainder of 2018, it said.
One of those chips will be Whiskey Lake, for client PCs, Krzanich said. Intel executives provided no further details, but reports have said that Intel may have additional "4+2" and "8+2" mobile chips debuting later this year. A "Cascade Lake" chip will debut for servers later in 2018, he said.
Intel also confirmed that it is currently shipping small volumes of a 10nm product right now, producing—rather than sampling—the Cannon Lake processor that was originally slated for 2017, but slid into 2018.
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The interesting part though is that despite its 10 nm woes, Intel had huge profits last quarter, due to other parts of its business.
TBH the current macbooks are like magic, no fans and the i7 performs within 10% of the top tier off the shelf 3.1ghz i5 13" macbook pro. Pretty impressive considering the power draw etc.
TBH The line needs to change the macbook and macbook pro are too close together spending the extra for the 13" doesnt make sense to me at all. For 90% of applications the macbook experience will be identical. The MBP wins out on ports and screen size otherwise its a pretty close race.
This will change. The macbook will stay dual core and the MBP 13 will go quad which will finally make buying decisions easier and give a clear difference for buying the MBP, the 2016 and 17 13" macbook pro is the weakest 13" product since the MBP launch imo. It needs to be better for the money they cost, its not apple tax anymore in comparison to a similar spec XPS for example. They are £3-500 cheaper and have the quads already.
I think all apple really need to do with the macbook for 2018 is add a better facetime camera, change the port from USB-C to TB3 meaning you get more bandwidth and you could use it with twin HDDs or have USB 3 speed while outputting 4k 60HZ.
It would also be nice if they either added face ID or embraced the touchbar and added it across all the lines with a finger print reader.
Adding face ID and a TB3 port would mean no physical changes to the design meaning its more likely to happen. The product is coming up three years old its time for the macbook to become the go to baseline apple product.
It would be nice to see a similar design in bigger screen sizes, a 15" version would be fantastic!
These changes would be a dramatic improvement.
Adding their own chips would be great too but it wont happen before 2020 unless like the intel change they have been doing it in the background for the last few years, possibly why the OS has been a bit flaky of late as its not as much of a primary concern.
TBH The line needs to change the macbook and macbook pro are too close together spending the extra for the 13" doesnt make sense to me at all. For 90% of applications the macbook experience will be identical. The MBP wins out on ports and screen size otherwise its a pretty close race.
This will change. The macbook will stay dual core and the MBP 13 will go quad which will finally make buying decisions easier and give a clear difference for buying the MBP, the 2016 and 17 13" macbook pro is the weakest 13" product since the MBP launch imo. It needs to be better for the money they cost, its not apple tax anymore in comparison to a similar spec XPS for example. They are £3-500 cheaper and have the quads already.
I think all apple really need to do with the macbook for 2018 is add a better facetime camera, change the port from USB-C to TB3 meaning you get more bandwidth and you could use it with twin HDDs or have USB 3 speed while outputting 4k 60HZ.
It would also be nice if they either added face ID or embraced the touchbar and added it across all the lines with a finger print reader.
Adding face ID and a TB3 port would mean no physical changes to the design meaning its more likely to happen. The product is coming up three years old its time for the macbook to become the go to baseline apple product.
It would be nice to see a similar design in bigger screen sizes, a 15" version would be fantastic!
These changes would be a dramatic improvement.
Adding their own chips would be great too but it wont happen before 2020 unless like the intel change they have been doing it in the background for the last few years, possibly why the OS has been a bit flaky of late as its not as much of a primary concern.
Does his mean no Macbook updates this year? Really need a Macbook and if there’s no new one this year, I’ll get the current model very soon.
I’d still wait until after WWDC. This means no next gen 10 nm chips for the MacBook, but doesn’t rule out other updates, including a 13” model.
I wonder if Intel will release another 14 nm Y series but my guess is no, or at least not anytime soon.
I very much hope that Apple would be able to fit TDP downed 15W into a fanless design (like Microsoft did). If that happens, we'd be able to get everything we lack currently.
I'm happy with my early-2016 m3 Macbook, although would like just a little bit more performance. Not worth upgrading to 2017 models for me though.
What I would really like, like a lot of others, is one extra port and with TB3 or USB 3.1 Gen2 support. I really want to be able to comfortably hook up a 4K monitor at 60Hz and still have USB 3 speeds. For native support, is this a CPU or chipset thing or both? If Intel could provide this then I would upgrade even if the peformance remains the same as current 2017 models.
What I would really like, like a lot of others, is one extra port and with TB3 or USB 3.1 Gen2 support. I really want to be able to comfortably hook up a 4K monitor at 60Hz and still have USB 3 speeds. For native support, is this a CPU or chipset thing or both? If Intel could provide this then I would upgrade even if the peformance remains the same as current 2017 models.
CPU does not have enough PCI-E lanes to provide TB3 or USB 3.1 gen 2 as a separate entity. So either CPU must have more PCI-E lanes (likely not happening as per Intel roadmap), or PCI-E must become 4.0 (not happening in the foreseeable future) to allow more bandwidth with same amount of lanes, or TB3 or USB 3.1 gen 2 controller must be an integrated entity (should've happened in Cannon Lake but it got postponed again). It remains to be seen if Intel is able and willing to integrate this controller into 14 nm CPU so that we could see it this year.
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I think if we tied all the rumours together, Intel knew they have a problem with 10nm, and not being ready in time for MacBook Refresh. They tried to hide it from the public, but my guess is that Apple was kept updated, and they were no miracle or surprise.
Which actually make Apple angry, annoyed or not pleased with Intel. 10nm was suppose to be in 2016 product, and even if it was delayed to 2017 Apple could have had a Quad Core MacBook in place. 2017 wasn't the year and they waited for a new chip in 2018. And now they are being told it will have to be 2019.
Hence why we have news about cheaper MacBook, my guess is that Intel will have to find a CPU that is super cheap to compensate.
May be Intel won't budge, And then the rumours came out about Apple using their own CPU in later Mac.
The day Qualcomm decide to settle with Apple on patents dispute and Modem, is the day Intel is dead.
Which actually make Apple angry, annoyed or not pleased with Intel. 10nm was suppose to be in 2016 product, and even if it was delayed to 2017 Apple could have had a Quad Core MacBook in place. 2017 wasn't the year and they waited for a new chip in 2018. And now they are being told it will have to be 2019.
Hence why we have news about cheaper MacBook, my guess is that Intel will have to find a CPU that is super cheap to compensate.
May be Intel won't budge, And then the rumours came out about Apple using their own CPU in later Mac.
The day Qualcomm decide to settle with Apple on patents dispute and Modem, is the day Intel is dead.
Screw the “touchbar”. It’s a stupid gimmick that just needlessly increases cost. It provides zero value. It’s absurd.