Supply Chain Expects New 16-Inch MacBook Pro, 13-Inch MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air to Launch in October

[Howard2k]

This is a really confusing time to be in the market for a 13" mac product. Too many choices/updates and hard to figure out if one is really getting value. Part of me wants to just buy a base machine with the assumption it will be replaced soon when the dust settles (e.g. keyboard issues, DDR4, etc.).

I don't understand why it's confusing.

Set your budget and requirements and then go shopping. Compare and contrast the different features of whichever 13" device against your requirements.

Not trying to be a smartarse, I genuinely don't understand why it's confusing.

 

[jonnysods]

I think you still want that machine to get work done. This is all speculation and vaporware on a rumors site.

I want the new 15" I ordered yesterday even more now. Screw Catalina.

I can't wait. I need it! And you're right - could be another year down the line. And if it's an ARM based mac, I'd rather wait a few years.

Also I feel like if they are going to switch processors it will be announced at WWDC.

 

[chucker23n1]

This is a really confusing time to be in the market for a 13" mac product. Too many choices/updates and hard to figure out if one is really getting value. Part of me wants to just buy a base machine with the assumption it will be replaced soon when the dust settles (e.g. keyboard issues, DDR4, etc.).

It's actually a lot better than it was just a few weeks ago (between 2016 and 2019, the line-up was horribly confusing).

Want to save money and/or something really lightweight? MacBook Air.

$200 more buys you a beefier CPU (15W instead of 7W) and GPU, the Touch Bar, and a better display. Slightly worse battery life; slightly thicker and heavier.

Another $500 more buys you a much better CPU (28W) than either of those, offers more ports, and starts at twice the storage (which are $200 of the $500).

So, really, you get three distinct classes of CPU power, two of which unfortunately are both called the "Pro".
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Macs should always have curved top corners on the UI, Jony was the one that removed that. Good riddance

Actually, it used to be that macOS only did curved corners on CRT displays, not LCD displays.

 

[Wowmail]

Indeed. I do want to refresh my 2016 but except for the keyboard, it's working fine. I don't think I want to replace it with the same unreliable keyboard.

I love my 2016 15", but I don't love the fact that I always need to have canned air at home and in the office. That keyboard is so incredibly finnicky. I really think that on a fundamental level, the mechanism cannot cope with normal everyday dust and dirt.




There are 3rd party solutions for this. Have you tried them?



This frankly is my dream. How many days per week do you work? Do you still require this income, or is it more of a nice bonus? Did you luck out with one particular investment, or save hard? Please don't reply if these questions are rude/overly intrusive, I just love stories like this.

No Problem! I am Medically retired, get to spend more time with my kids. My retirement keeps me eating and playing games lol. I have about 100 clients who call me when ever the problem is above their pay grade. I then get to choose my schedule Gaming keeps the relationship with my son super great.!

 

[ZeitGeist]

It’s not hate, and “better” is subjective here. Have you tested the beta? It’s a mess

Suggest you look up the meaning and implication of “beta”.

Plus, I rarely need, but occasionally do access and run a 32-bit applications, and Catalina can’t do that. I deploy and maintain devices as well as work as a project manager in a structural demolition and abatement company. Catalina offers us nothing as we need some legacy support for our customers.

... install VMware. Install whatever macOS version you require in a virtual machine. Done.

 

[Howard2k]

... install VMware. Install whatever macOS version you require in a virtual machine. Done.

No performance penalty at all right?

 

[Zdigital2015]

It will be interesting to see whether the dongle & connector situation improves any time in the next year. It isn't just the cost; it's the overall quality of available docks, port replicators and connectors. USB-C ports that don't support Thunderbolt, USB ports that don't provide enough power, video connectors that don't include VGA (sorry, but I present at venues worldwide and about half still require VGA), DVI connectors that only work with particular adapters in addition, HDMI that doesn't support the 2.2 standard, and on and on. Add $800 to the cost of a USB-C-only device if you want to do serious work on these things.

Uh, $800? Sorry, but I have a 2016 MacBook Pro and I have a Cal-Digit Thunderbolt 3 Mini Dock (Dual DisplayPort version) which works wonderfully, is solidly built and costs $129.00 for a dual HDMI 2.0 version that does 4K60p.

In response to your other issues-

• Not all USB-C ports support Thunderbolt - Yeah, so what's the problem? Many PC OEMs support USB-C, but not Thunderbolt. USB-C is going to be more prevalent, anyways.
• USB-C ports that don't provide enough power - Power for what? To recharge your laptop? Bus-powered devices? A Ninja blender?
• Video connectors that don't include VGA - There are solutions out there for that. I cannot speak to how good they are, but judging Apple by a VGA benchmark means you should be carrying a different laptop. Apple has not directly supported VGA on any MacBook Pro. It has always required an adapter. I understand that VGA is still prevalent, but at some point technology moves forward. I sure as heck do not want to be held back by continuing need for VGA. It needs to die and people need to move on. It would be absurd for anyone to expect Apple to have a VGA or DVI port on a MacBook Pro and also be able to support up to two 5K displays. A choice was made, the correct one, fortunately.
• DVI-I should work fine, but DVI-D (2560x1600) isn't there yet at all. Finding a dual-link adapter that actually works is nigh impossible. I ended up having to use a Thunderbolt 2 dock hooked up via TB3<->TB3 adapter to connect some aging 30" Apple Cinema Displays to some 2018 MacBook Pros. That being said, DVI-D isn't really all that prevalent considering that 2560x1600 Dual Link fell out of vogue a long time ago.
• The CalDigit TB3 Mini Dock supports HDMI 2.0, there is no such thing as HDMI 2.2. Unfortunately, USB-C to HDMI supporting Alt-Mode only supports HDMI 1.4, so you need more than a cable to do that. Apple's older MacBook Pros only supported HDMI 1.4, as Intel didn't support 2.0 via an LSPCON until recently.

The bottom line is that you don't need $800 to do serious work on Apple MacBook Pros. I have my Cal-Digit hooked up to the left side TB3 port with a Focusrite 18i8 plugged into the USB 3.0 port and my BenQ SW271 hooked up via the full-size Display Port connector. I can plug in to a wired 1Gbps ethernet port if I need to do so and a second DP display as well. I still have two TB3 ports free with this setup if I need additional peripherals in the future.

It may take some work to whittle down what you need to have with you, but my load out would be totally different than yours and having 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports means the most versatility in customizing my MacBook Pro to what I need and you customizing my MacBook Pro to what you need.

 

[ZeitGeist]

Hope they bring the SD card slot back. It's such a pain to carry a whole set of dongles.

I am always baffled how the people complaining about “a whole set of dongles” haven’t figured out that small dock adapters exist that incorporate their “whole set of dongles” into a single dongle or device, for comparable or lesser cost.

 

[ZeitGeist]

There...that’s much better, and actually looks like the future, as opposed to 2015.

It’s funny how both of you extremists appear incapable of considering any middle ground.

The magic word is : MagSafe 3 (it’s not a question of “it had its day”, as the concept of MagSafe is insanely intelligent on multiple levels, and not the gimmick you make it out to be)

Thus, a better configuration would be:

- MagSafe 3
- 4 x USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports (buy a slim, external, multi-port dock if you need other ports)

Keep the Touchbar (functionally smart design, albeit charging a $400 premium is what kills this concept)

Return to the scissors keyboard.

Those demanding 5K or better displays, in a laptop, are just being ridiculous. Your eyes can’t distinguish from Retina, and as long as it can drive external higher resolution - that’s all that matters.

Done.

 

[Khedron]

No, that's incorrect. What you're paying for is the base speed when idle. Turbo Boost is a freebie and not even guaranteed, otherwise, the CPU would be rated at the Turbo boost clock speed and not at the base clock speed. If Apple cannot maintain base clock speed of the CPUs in their computers under load, then that is a completely different issue and has to be rectified by Apple through better thermal design. But if you think Apple or any other PC OEM should be designing computers to maintain boost speeds all day, every day 24x7, you really aren't understanding how Intel's SpeedShift, Turbo Boost and Thermal Velocity Boost are designed to work.

True. You wouldn’t want them operating at the boosted speed full time even if thermals weren’t an issue, as reliability is not rated under those assumptions - the increased currents and electric fields would accelerate electromigration, hot carrier degradation, dielectric breakdown, etc.

When we design the chip and simulate to make sure that it will have the required lifetime, we estimate how often each wire will switch, for example. Running the processor at the highest possible speed obviously increases the number of switches. Unidirectional current paths will then have faster electromigration failure than predicted. Same problem for other high field degradation effects. Higher average voltages than assumed, higher fields than assumed, etc.

The base speeds are so low I assumed it was a low power mode for quietness and battery life.

So in a perfect environment and a 100% load, how is turbo boost supposed to behave in term of activating and deactivating?

 

[ZeitGeist]

And the fact that both the new Mac Pro and iMac Pro have a variety of ports and non-soldered RAM and SSDs does give some hope that this Pro Workflow Group will give us a MacBook Pro with similar loveliness. And maybe, just maybe, this mentality will flow through to the non-pro lineup. Fingers crossed!

They already implied it would, so I have a feeling the entire Mac line will be upgraded to non-Ive designs shortly.

In a world where intel’s NUC is a quarter the size of the Mac mini, and delivers better performance in a smaller package for half the price, the current Mac mini with soldered SSD seems like an idiotic design, by someone living in an ivory tower that never looks into the real world.

 

[Zdigital2015]

I am always baffled how the people complaining about “a whole set of dongles” haven’t figured out that small dock adapters exist that incorporate their “whole set of dongles” into a single dongle or device, for comparable or lesser cost.

We're four years in (MacBook 2015) and I cannot tell if it stubbornness, cheapness or willful ignorance that keeps this "$1000 dollars worth of dongles" idiocy alive. I spent ~$60 on cables (some I didn't really need) and another $95 (Amazon Deal) for the dock, but I have had to buy a dock for every Thunderbolt-equipped computer I have ever owned to make travel between two locations as single-cable as possible.

What did people think they were getting when they bought an Apple product? Apple doesn't change things willy-nilly, but when they change, that's the direction, people need to keep up. It has been that way for 30+ years.

 

[Zdigital2015]

It’s funny how both of you extremists appear incapable of considering any middle ground.

The magic word is : MagSafe 3 (it’s not a question of “it had its day”, as the concept of MagSafe is insanely intelligent on multiple levels, and not the gimmick you make it out to be)

Thus, a better configuration would be:

- MagSafe 3
- 4 x USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports (buy a slim, external, multi-port dock if you need other ports)

Keep the Touchbar (functionally smart design, albeit charging a $400 premium is what kills this concept)

Return to the scissors keyboard.

Those demanding 5K or better displays, in a laptop, are just being ridiculous. Your eyes can’t distinguish from Retina, and as long as it can drive external higher resolution - that’s all that matters.

Done.

Extremist? Hardly...forward thinking and tired of the endless parade of nostalgia for what Apple removed has made me very unsympathetic, completely!

USB-C was designed to handle Power Delivery and adding MagSafe back into the equation does nothing to help further making USB-PD ubiquitous and dominant. MagSafe was as much a pain in the ass as it was a lifesaver...I have experienced near heart attacks with both USB-C and Magsafe and I can tell you it boils down to making a better decision about where things get plugged in as much as anything else. If I have to make a complaint to Apple, it would be that they to make the chassis thicker to accommodate a larger battery as my 2016 needs too much tending and attention compared to my base 15" 2015 model. Bottom line: Thicker chassis, bigger battery...no more MagSafe, it's redundant and does not help perpetuate USB PD, which is the goal. One charger for all three devices (iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air/Pro/whatever) is a godsend.

Actually, Apple should, if technically feasible given the constraints of both space and power, add a single USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) port on either side of the 15"/16" to free up the Thunderbolt 3 ports. This creates confusion for consumers, but the CPU cannot support 3 or 4 Thunderbolt 3 controllers and the PCH can handle the two USB-C ports.

The Touch Bar didn't add $400 to the price, that discrete *cough* GPU (555x) added to the cost as well, remember the $1999 model had nothing but an Iris Pro 5200.

I love the TouchBar, but in typical Apple fashion, they introduce it with a flourish and then don't bother to support it, enhance it or make it really useful. Why do I need to type in my password into a dialog box to unlock a System Preference such as Security & Privacy and make a necessary change (Turn on Firewall) or affirm that I want to give CCC Full Disk Access. What idiot on the macOS team decided that we should type in our password instead of Touch ID it for this kind of no-brainer item? Why is there a giant Touch Bar graphic in Safari for Search or enter website name? Tap it and it brings up your Favorites...huh? It looks like a text field to type in, but the URL/Search Bar in Safari is already blinking...the graphic is useless, did anyone A/B test this? Did anyone apply any logic to this.

Yes, I have said constantly and consistently that Apple should use the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keyboard scissors mechanism. I spent about an hour on the butterfly switches at the breakfast table this morning and I just never seem to be able to feel comfortable, grooving even. I still say it is the spacing between the keys which is narrower than the older 15" Retina MacBook Pro that just makes it a PITA for long sessions. The lack of key travel is part of it, but nowhere near all of it.

No, demanding a support for a 5K display are not ridiculous, I am typing on a 4K monitor set at 2560x1440 (so not true @2x) and it beats the heck out of looking at my Late 2013 27" iMac all day long. Apple needs to get AMD on the stick and get some better GPUs in there as standard though. Vega 16/20 should become the standard with something about 50% faster the BTO option. Just my 2¢.

 

[DVD9]

They already implied it would, so I have a feeling the entire Mac line will be upgraded to non-Ive designs shortly.

In a world where intel’s NUC is a quarter the size of the Mac mini, and delivers better performance in a smaller package for half the price, the current Mac mini with soldered SSD seems like an idiotic design, by someone living in an ivory tower that never looks into the real world.

The Mini is overpriced garbage. That entry level with i3 and 128 SSD you can't upgrade is not worth more than $399-

 

[huggyb]

Seems like they'd be able to fit a 16" display just by reducing the bezels and keep the same footprint.

pretty sure that's what they're doing. There's no bezel if you look at the render

 

[applesed]

I’d also like to know if it has the new keyboard, what are the prices, and if we get the Esc key back, *before* the back to school bundle is over. Every article besides this one yesterday quoted 3k as the starting price, how accurate is that?

 

[delegagtor]

Just fixing the keyboard issues will be a big deal. Getting rid of the stupid touch bar would help as well. Adding a few additional ports would be lovely, but I don't know whether Apple has the humility to admit that going USB-C only was a bad idea. OK, I do -- they most certainly don't.

 

[applesed]

Just fixing the keyboard issues will be a big deal. Getting rid of the stupid touch bar would help as well. Adding a few additional ports would be lovely, but I don't know whether Apple has the humility to admit that going USB-C only was a bad idea. OK, I do -- they most certainly don't.

I don’t think the usbc change is in the same class compared to how controversial the keyboard and touchbar have been. That said, if they make it thicker to accommodate the keyboard and/or thermals (though undervoting fixed that), sure, why not throw an hdmi and usba on there.

 

[Gorms]

Should’ve held out another 3 months. Typical.

 

[Khedron]

The anti-MacBook:

 

[toke lahti]

Your numbers are pretty close (I get 332 mm screen width based on both measurement and calculation), but you're forgetting the case and gasket thickness (and since you're calculating to the mm, you need to take these into account): Take a look at the L or R edge of the display. You'll see a thin line of silver, from the metal case, and then a thin black rubber gasket. These take up ~2 mm on each side. So with a 349 mm wide chassis, you have ~345 mm for the screen, i.e., no extra space on the sides at all if you go to a 16.0" diagonal (332 mm + 13 mm = 345 mm). And I don't know if Apple will go right to the edge, so 16.0" is a theoretical upper limit on the display diagonal (assuming they keep 16:10) in the current chassis, not what they could install in practice.

Well enough,
how many millimeters they need to add in the Real World?
Would anybody even notice that?

 

[Apathy Overdose]

They've already fixed the keyboard issues. The 2019 MBPs have been out on the market for more than 2 months and I haven't seen a single report of them not working. Unlike previous years when it didn't take more than few days for such anecdotes to surface.

 

[theorist9]

At this point, Apple's business model seems to be moving in the direction of having both products with broad appeal, as well as more pro-focused models.

So, for the MBP: For the former, I think they'll want to keep the thin form factor. For the latter, I think they'll need to make it a bit thicker for better thermals (and perhaps more upgradeable, and with more ports).

Hence my (purely speculative) prediction is that we'll see a division of the MBP line into two lines (like what they did with the iMac).

As far as screen size goes, reduced bezel/increased diagonal appeals to both markets, so I predict eventually they'll move to 14"/16" in all their MBP models, even if this requires a slight increase in the footprint.

If all this is correct, what we'll ultimately see is:

14" consumer-focused MBP (~same thickness as current 13", but w/ slightly larger footprint)
16" consumer-focused MBP (~same thickness as current 15", but w/ slightly larger footprint)

16" (and possibly also 14") pro-focused MBP (a bit thicker than current MBP, and w/ slightly larger footprint)

 

[ZeitGeist]

They've ready fixed the keyboard issues. The 2019 MBPs have been out on the market for more than 2 months and I haven't seen a single report of them not working. Unlike previous years when it didn't take more than few days for such anecdotes to surface.

Why are they switching back to the scissors style keyboards, then (aside from the butterfly keyboard being more expensive to manufacture)?

 

[chucker23n1]

Those demanding 5K or better displays, in a laptop, are just being ridiculous. Your eyes can’t distinguish from Retina, and as long as it can drive external higher resolution - that’s all that matters.

The problem is that Apple used to sell a 1680x1050 option on the 15-inch, and the 17-inch was 1920x1200. You can still set those resolutions (@2x) on the Retina MacBook Pros, but they're now scaled. A case can be made that 1440x900 @ 2x, while very high-res in 2012, really isn't any more in 2019.

It's particularly ridiculous for the models where Apple defaults to a non-native scaling.