Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
If Apple removes the headphone jack from both the iPhone and the Mac and then standardises the iPhone on the Lightning connector while the Mac standardises on USB-C... it's the opposite of their slogans of making things simple/it just works.
I think they should at least wait until the industry catches up to remove useful ports on a "pro" computer.
 
If Apple removes the headphone jack from both the iPhone and the Mac and then standardises the iPhone on the Lightning connector while the Mac standardises on USB-C... it's the opposite of their slogans of making things simple/it just works.

I don't think we'll see the removal of the jack from the MBP or iMac just yet, as it's not just a simple headphone jack, it's a dual use digital/analog output as well. Even if they do it's just going to be the same situation as now, you'll have to use an adapter with one or the other or swap the cable.

The other option of course, and the one that Apple is obviously pushing for, is to use wireless headphones. I know there's plenty of us who will continue to prefer the higher audio quality provided from a wired set of cans, but the vast majority will prefer the simplicity of wireless. Those of of us wishing to remain wired will have to continue to put up with the minor inconvenience of using adapters or interchangeable cables just like we've done for years.
 
Kaby Lake was announced a few months ago. It has been said many times that there are no chips ready for MacBook Pros until Q1 2017. Please do research before posting.

Thank you.
There is a low TDP Kaby Lake SKU that would be perfect for a MacBook. Furthermore, given that the rest of the SKU's will be available relatively soon, it's just irresponsible to release a new laptop now with Skylake.
 
There is a low TDP Kaby Lake SKU that would be perfect for a MacBook. Furthermore, given that the rest of the SKU's will be available relatively soon, it's just irresponsible to release a new laptop now with Skylake.

For a MacBook, yes. It probably won't be too long before they adopt it either. For a MacBook Pro? Lol. They won't ship in volume until February or March for something appropriate for a 13" in rMBP and it'll be this time next year before something is suitable for the 15" (though apparently without the HQ model because Intel won't ship it, requiring a power sucking discrete GPU). Intel's roadmap is all kinds of ****ed at this point
 
  • Like
Reactions: meduzarija
Absolutely not true. Dual-processor x86 systems have existed for decades, at least as early as the first Pentium processors.

Where do you think multi-core CPUs came from? They're parallel processors in a single package.
I was referring to Intel's current lineup. There don't seem to be any dual-socket motherboards for anything besides Xeon. Core M, i3/5/7, Core 2 Quad, and the latest Pentiums only run single-socket. Again, I don't know why, but everyone says you can't do it, Intel doesn't mention anything in their documentation, and I can't find a technical reason for it. I'm guessing it's just the firmware.
[doublepost=1477375371][/doublepost]
I did read it. Several times in fact, to make sure I was reading what I thought I was reading. "Only identical or similar Xeons can be parallel." False.
Why are you saying this is false? I know this is kinda old, but Intel has a data sheet on processor compatibility, and it's pretty restrictive: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon-5500-vol-1-datasheet.html
Edit: Here's a newer one; search "mixing processors": http://www.intel.com/content/dam/ww...asheets/xeon-e5-1600-2600-vol-1-datasheet.pdf
 
Last edited:
That quad-core Skylake you mentioned is the exact family of processors I expect to see in the next-gen 15" MBP & updated 21.5" 4K iMac. The new Razer Blade that was just released uses the Intel Skylake Core i7-6700HQ SKU. So far it's the only PC other than the Intel Skull Canyon that uses it (at least from what I could find).

http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade

Not related. That one has the Iris HD 5300 graphics. The ones I'm talking about are Iris Pro 580.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MareLuce
You must be wearing Rose(gold) colored glasses.

Jobs brought us all the "Cube". That was basically the fore runner to the current MacPro. A compact form factor desktop market failure.

You might not have been around the boards here for the couple of years of "when is the G5 PowerBook coming" threads.

The one last things were cool. But it's hard to have surprises with this amount of interest from pages such as macrumors. if you want surprises best not follow rumor websites!
Tim Cook hasn't exactly wowed us and had a head start with Jobs' last signed off products. The heavy roller of new products taking an instant hit is starting to fade. Apple are afraid of talking confidently about any sales of the Watch. There's no one able to do exciting presentations that Steve was well known for. The "one last thing" was more about his style. And yes, I might be a slight hypocrite to be here when I want Apple to keep secrets; but it wasn't all about new product secrets. Steve might of been lucky, but he got some of his future predictions right by bring out the all the iProducts at the time that he did.

I'm happy for Apple to bring out a failure product as long as it pushes the boundaries of design and tech. The evolution of the iProduct will be the hardest but most rewarding if they get it right again. At the moment, I don't see any sign of that.

I still believe Tim Cook is struggling to steer a ship of conflicting teams producing different products that need to work together more than ever. With Macs taking the back seat? I don't think Apple realise how good they've got with an increased share of Macs in the corporate sector again. Especially with developers in the tech sector starting to leave Windows laptops behind. This is something they can't afford to lose.
 
There is a low TDP Kaby Lake SKU that would be perfect for a MacBook. Furthermore, given that the rest of the SKU's will be available relatively soon, it's just irresponsible to release a new laptop now with Skylake.

There won't be 28w/45w Kaby Lake chips suitable for the MacBook Pro's until Q1 2017. That means Apple will probably refresh the MacBooks around late Q2 2017.

The 15w and low power chips suitable for ultrabooks and very thin & light devices are available right now and it would make no sense whatsoever to use Skylake in those. If Apple do go with Skylake chips in the new 13" MacBook and the 12" MacBook refresh then that's nothing short of a disgrace.
[doublepost=1477386293][/doublepost]
Tim Cook hasn't exactly wowed us

That's not his job. His job is to make sure Apple make money and represent value to investors. That is it.
 
Not if the tablets and phones are faster than the "computers". The 12.9" iPad Pro is the CPU equivalent of a 2013 MB Pro and the GPU equivalent of a 2015 MB Pro. The only real limitation is from software makers. Legacy developers of desktop OS products tend to view tablets/phones as accessories to their legacy software despite their processing power, while non-legacy developers tend to try and push the envelope more. Strategically, I think that's one of the reasons Apple likes having iOS and MacOS. It opens up the software development market to people other than legacy desktop developers.

That is ridiculous! If you read on some popular tech site specific benchmark where it had better performance in specific condition/benchmark than Intel CPU that doesn't mean it will perform like that in every aspect. I have to remind you that running iOS and running macOS is not the same! Comparing ARM to x86-64 doesn't do the justice. No doubt Apple created beast of CPU with A9X, and no doubt it will continue to grow in terms of power and processing speed, but hold on to your hats, we won't see Apple Computers with ARM in it for quite some time. If we did you won't be able to run software that you run right now on your Mac. (Unless Apple is really doing something special and innovative that we haven't seen yet with emulating x86 instructions inside ARM CPU, but that would hit the performance like a lot)
 
Stop for a second to consider one of the biggest differences between a Macbook Pro and Macbook Air and you may see the light. That is, connectivity. Originally I bought my first Pro simply because I needed to be able to hook up multiple devices to my computer in different locations and being limited to one USB (in the original macbook air) caused problems on a daily basis. The new Air with two USBs and one thunderbolt was slightly better, but considering the ethernet dongle took one of those (unless I used the tb->ethernet) it wasn't such a big improvement.

I've come to appreciate the more powerful processor, the excellent Retina display and the 16GB of memory. I'd love more but that's not happening. At work I've got a TB hub because I'm too lazy to carry things around too much. I hate dongles with a passion. They're always in the wrong place, they get lost and they clutter up my bag - and make life difficult when you need different setups. That's one reason why I've got both the USB and TB versions of the ethernet dongle. I run constantly into situations where I need one or the other to keep enough ports available for other systems.

Those who get excited at this point and start whining about using WIFI might want to get a life and then remember some of us work with networks. I'm not going to start dragging an Airport Express around with me just to be able to connect to different networks.

It'd be easier if I worked in a single location - or even two. I don't. I move from one customer to another and I do need to be able to prepare for different situations and carry all the crap with me at all times so dongles - thanks but no thanks. Only 4 USB-C? Thanks, but that's pretty much half of what I'd like to see even if I was willing to accept using a horde of dongles to hook up whatever analyzers etc I need at different times. I already have to live with the ethernet dongles,the usb-to-rs232 dongles and whatever else to be able to configure different devices. And no, I'm not proposing they'd put rs232 back in Macbook Pro even though it would make my life easier. I'm just not ready to quadruple my amount of dongles just to be able to work.

Even less so if it's got the shallow keyboard. I've no use for it. Still, I believe it's there only when I see the announcement. So at least for a while longer I can dream about buying a new Macbook Pro. I'm still pretty sure the current one will be my last Mac. Too bad. :(

I'm still hoping that they won't completely abolish USB-A on the pro machines at least. Even if my sensible head is sniggering and pointing out that it's Apple so of course they will. I'd like them to at least do one last round of Pros with a mix of both, give people a few years to fully transition before dropping the USB-A ports. But they probably won't. Still there's a couple of days to hope yet :rolleyes:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Val-kyrie
I was referring to Intel's current lineup. There don't seem to be any dual-socket motherboards for anything besides Xeon. Core M, i3/5/7, Core 2 Quad, and the latest Pentiums only run single-socket. Again, I don't know why, but everyone says you can't do it, Intel doesn't mention anything in their documentation, and I can't find a technical reason for it. I'm guessing it's just the firmware.

It's just the firmware. Intel's consumer chips are engineered to not support multi-CPU setups. It's not in any way a limitation of the architecture. What you said was "you can't even have two x86 processors in parallel" on the suggestion that Apple may develop a hybrid ARM/x86 computer. And that's completely and utterly false. You said nothing about the model lineup; you cited the architecture.
 
With all this frenzy over Kaby Lake, can someone with chip knowledge put things in perspective?

Understanding that we don't know exactly just yet, but what sort of leap in performance or battery life will a spring 2017 Kaby Lake have over a Skylake processor?

If it's 5-10%, then it's negligible. And those who want it are just posers who need to brag.
If we're talking 20-25%, then it would be worth the wait.
 
With all this frenzy over Kaby Lake, can someone with chip knowledge put things in perspective?

Understanding that we don't know exactly just yet, but what sort of leap in performance or battery life will a spring 2017 Kaby Lake have over a Skylake processor?

If it's 5-10%, then it's negligible. And those who want it are just posers who need to brag.
If we're talking 20-25%, then it would be worth the wait.

At this point, [edit: increases in] CPU performance [are] not relevant for the average consumer [because such increases are largely unnoticeable in daily tasks]. The reason to get excited about any new chipset is not the CPU, but the multimedia features and I/O performance enhancements.

Anandtech has a detailed article on the advantages of Kaby Lake. In short, Kaby Lake-U/Y provides an enhanced high definition multimedia experience while significantly extending battery life (by up to 25% when viewing multimedia IIRC). Kaby Lake can also utilize Intel's high speed Optane storage technology and adds native support for USB 3.1 and TB3.
 
Regarding the Retina MacBook keyboard... I feel like there's something amiss with the complaints about this.

The keyboard on the RMB is 2 main things: New butterfly mechanism, very shallow key travel.

The mechanism is a great improvement over the current MBP mechanism IMO. No matter which part of the key you strike, it tends to take equal force and pressure to depress a key. This is awesome. The shallow key travel is mainly what people dislike when they hate on that keyboard. But, this issue should be alleviated on the new MBP because it would have more space in the casing for a longer key travel.

The new mechanism + improved key travel has me really excited to use it on the new Pro and it doesn't make sense to me to write it off so soon when news of "MBP with new RMB keyboard" doesn't mean it's going to have that same shallow key travel.

You may have a point there. I wouldn't know if the new mechanism is better or worse, all I know is the keyboard in the rMB was utter crap to use. And yes, the issue was the shallow key travel. Then again, the Magic Keyboard they came up with also suffers from very small key travel and there's no reason it should. It's marginally better than rMB keyboard but not enough I'd ever consider using it. It was the reason I didn't buy the 5k iMac. The computer seemed nice but I refuse paying a single cent for something so stupid.
 
I agree the base model is fine for your boy. For the girl, it depends a bit :) if she simply shoots to JPEG then the photos won't be too big and she'll be fine with the base model as well.

However if she shoots to RAW then she'll get big files. It depends on the camera used, of course. If it's around 12 megapixels then it won't be a problem. However some cameras dump 30 MB photos in RAW format. Ask her, she'll know whether she shoots to RAW or not. If so, get the top model if you have the budget. If not, base model is fine.

By the way, have you thought about how you're going to back up all those machines?
Thanks - backing up...hmmm... right now we use a 3tb Time capsule, I bought it last Christmas when I bought my wife the 27" 5KImac and the 13" MBP (16GB I7) for my daughter...Is that what your'e talking about? Will I need to buy another one of those or can the 2 new laptops back up to that as well?
 
Be interesting to see if MS reveal the rumoured Surface desktop on Wednesday. If it stands up to, at least, current iMac specs and will double as a big Cintiq-esque tablet then I could be swayed. Price permitting, of course.
 
Thanks - backing up...hmmm... right now we use a 3tb Time capsule, I bought it last Christmas when I bought my wife the 27" 5KImac and the 13" MBP (16GB I7) for my daughter...Is that what your'e talking about? Will I need to buy another one of those or can the 2 new laptops back up to that as well?
Also my daughter says her Nikon shoots 24.2 Megapixels and she shoots raw...so does this mean I need the 16gb or do I need 256 or 512 storage or both? What about I5 vs I7 does this come into play as well? Thanks so much.
 
The new mechanism + improved key travel has me really excited to use it on the new Pro and it doesn't make sense to me to write it off so soon when news of "MBP with new RMB keyboard" doesn't mean it's going to have that same shallow key travel.
Agreed, I think if the key travel is improved, that would be a nice move by apple, but I do think they'll be going with a thinner MBP and will need the space, so what we see for the MacBook is what we'll get for the MBP.

Be interesting to see if MS reveal the rumoured Surface desktop on Wednesday. If it stands up to, at least, current iMac specs and will double as a big Cintiq-esque tablet then I could be swayed. Price permitting, of course.
I'm curious, to be sure, though I'm not in the market. I suspect the price point will be premium, like the iMac.
 
Be interesting to see if MS reveal the rumoured Surface desktop on Wednesday. If it stands up to, at least, current iMac specs and will double as a big Cintiq-esque tablet then I could be swayed. Price permitting, of course.

The tables will have turned if MS releases an innovative new all-in-one desktop, and Apple follows the next day with simply a speed-bumped iMac.
 
If Apple removes the headphone jack from both the iPhone and the Mac and then standardises the iPhone on the Lightning connector while the Mac standardises on USB-C... it's the opposite of their slogans of making things simple/it just works.

I'm expecting them to add a Lightning port to all Macs. That might explain why we haven't seen any hint of Lightning headphone adapters to anything else.

It's a problem that everyone's seen coming since they released the rMB with just USB-C ports. It's not like it's the end of the world to use an adapter but, yep, for sure it's pretty stupid. They must have known (or at least you would hope they're looking that far out) they were going wireless/lightning only in the 7, even ewhen they release the first rMB so either including a lightning port in that or going USB-C would have resolved a lot unnecessary awkardness. It's an odd move.

They couldn't put Lightning on a Mac before they removed the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 without tipping their hat, and they weren't ready with the W1 chip when they introduced the rMB. If Apple puts Lightning on the Mac, then the rMB will lose the headphone jack replaced by the much more useful Lightning port.

The inexplicable part is that there's been no hint of anyone making a Lightning adapter for the Mac, either 3.5mm, or USBc, or Thunderbolt.

I don't think we'll see the removal of the jack from the MBP or iMac just yet, as it's not just a simple headphone jack, it's a dual use digital/analog output as well. Even if they do it's just going to be the same situation as now, you'll have to use an adapter with one or the other or swap the cable.

The other option of course, and the one that Apple is obviously pushing for, is to use wireless headphones. I know there's plenty of us who will continue to prefer the higher audio quality provided from a wired set of cans, but the vast majority will prefer the simplicity of wireless. Those of of us wishing to remain wired will have to continue to put up with the minor inconvenience of using adapters or interchangeable cables just like we've done for years.

You bring up a good point. For years I used a MacBook that I plugged into a digital optical cable in various locations, so I left the converter plug in the headphone jack permenantly, and then just plugged the cable into it at whatever location I was in. I suspect something similar would happen for those who use Lightning headphones should Apple not include a Lightning port natively. They will be including at least 4 USBc ports, and despite much of complaining in these threads, most will never plug four things into them at once, leaving one as a dedicated Lightning port -- assuming that is Apple allows such a thing to be made. I'm still perplexed that the iPhone 7 launched with Lightning EarPods, and no way to attach them to anything else. Then again, the key to success is the AirPods, yet a month and a half later were still waiting for them.
 
It's not going to be out of date. 45w Skylake was released in June this year. Only Intel and Razer have 6700HQ machines available.

The Mac Pro hasn't been updated since release at the end of 2013. It has ALREADY been out of date for well over a year. Plenty of newer chip options, not to mention they could bump the SSD, Ram, video cards, Thunderbolt 3.

"I don't know what I'm talking about"

Well, I'll agree with you on that one.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.