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Waiting for Haswell MBP Mega Thread

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Hey...

So guys I hear you've been waiting a while ;), I was thinking of purchasing the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro next year. However I do know someone who I believe should purchase the rmbp, who is coming over from a cheap Acer, which is about to crap out after only three years. Good luck to all you who have been patiently waiting out for the new rmbps.
 
PDFierro said:
Those are technological progressions.
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Precisely - it's not like the optical drive was replaced with a new type of storage drive that was better in one area, lesser in another.

Same with hard drives - I suppose one could argue that SSD make up in speed what they give up in space vs. HDDs, but there's no single application per se that benefits from massive amounts of storage space - just speed - whereas the Iris Pro is a new compromise for some applications.
 
PDFierro said:
Those are technological progressions. Personally I'm all for the dropping of the dGPU, but there will be a big outcry when it happens. Dropping regular hard drives and DVD drives were actually good things.
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are you saying that dropping the dGPU is not a technological progression? and that is not a good thing?

of course there will be a huge outcry and lots of angry customersand media, but won't it be best in the long run
 
Personally I use my MBP as a desktop replacement that can be portable when I want it, so I care a lot less about battery life than I do power. Removing the dGPU would be quite a downside for me, as even the top of the line Iris Pro barely matches the 650M right now, and the 650M kills it in gaming. I'd rather have a 750M around for when the need arises, and Apple just running everything on the Iris Pro unless GPU usage goes over 90%. I'm totally cool with that.
 
Erphern said:
I think a negligable percentage of people care about the GPU type. Most buyers want a laptop with a glowy apple on it. The end.
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For the 13" maybe. The 15" is the techie-nerd machine and those guys generally want to know what's inside.

No offense to all you techie-nerds out there.
 
I think it's pretty easy to spin this as a performance gain if you're not talking to gamers, which is a fairly small percentage of Mac users. In day to day usage the 5200 is going to feel like a huge leap over the 4000, unless your day to day usage includes a lot of 3D graphics (maybe 3D modeling software, or some types of 3D visualization for various scientific applications).

The BTO dGPU option seems like a long shot to me, but with the cMBP probably on its way out I suppose it's technically possible that a 3rd rMBP type could join the line.

Krazy Bill said:
For the 13" maybe. The 15" is the techie-nerd machine and those guys generally want to know what's inside.

No offense to all you techie-nerds out there.
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This is the one reason a dGPU BTO option might make sense: If Apple feels that their target audience for this machine is tech-oriented enough for these options to not cause confusion. Mainstream users could be fairly uncertain about the option of a 4600 + 750m vs 5200 only.
 
Mattsasa said:
What are you saying ?
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That the new 15" MBP with no more dGPU should be presented at an event and not be introduced silently. That change will require "selling" and some serious PR that should only be done face-to-face. Otherwise it will look like they just slipped it in.
 
Atomic Walrus said:
I think it's pretty easy to spin this as a performance gain if you're not talking to gamers, which is a fairly small percentage of Mac users. In day to day usage the 5200 is going to feel like a huge leap over the 4000, unless your day to day usage includes a lot of 3D graphics (maybe 3D modeling software, or some types of 3D visualization for various scientific applications).

The BTO dGPU option seems like a long shot to me, but with the cMBP probably on its way out I suppose it's technically possible that a 3rd rMBP type could join the line.
Click to expand...

If they lowered the price of the rMBP without the dGPU and left it the same for one with a dGPU, I'd be perfectly happy since that's the price I've been planning for all along.

You know, silent updates to the MBP line are almost kind of funny seeing as they are widely considered by new college students (and their parents...) -- not that either of them would notice or care about removing the dGPU, but Apple seems to care less and less about the MBP line every year...
 
Mattsasa said:
are you saying that dropping the dGPU is not a technological progression? and that is not a good thing?

of course there will be a huge outcry and lots of angry customersand media, but won't it be best in the long run
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No, because dGPUs are still better than iGPUs. Intel's integrated graphics card are improving vastly, but this is still a big deal for people who need that power. Why take a decrease in performance?
 
yokken said:
If they lowered the price of the rMBP without the dGPU and left it the same for one with a dGPU, I'd be perfectly happy since that's the price I've been planning for all along.

You know, silent updates to the MBP line are almost kind of funny seeing as they are widely considered by new college students (and their parents...) -- not that either of them would notice or care about removing the dGPU, but Apple seems to care less and less about the MBP line every year...
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When I was in the Apple store the other day playing with rMBPs and picking up an Air to try out I saw 3 people buy rMBPs (I spent a good amount of time putting the rMBPs through their paces), all of whom appeared to be college age. The guys at the store were happy to talk about Haswell speculation when I brought up the subject (in fact they were all in the same boat, one had even done what I was doing and picked up an Air to evaluate while still considering the rMBP).

They were also happy to sell rMBPs to students without bringing up the incoming refresh. Not saying it in a negative way, obviously that's their job, my point is that Apple's strategy with products has always been that you don't have to know the details if you don't want to. I'm sure they sold plenty of MBPs during this BTS sale.

I will add that if I go back to the "what I'd do" thought process, lowering prices on 15" rMBPs with iGPU only and keeping the 750m-carrying version at current prices is about what I'd do. I really think Apple wants the dGPU gone though.
 
Risking upsetting everyone...can I ask a question about the dGPU?

There have been a lot of posts about people thinking Apple is going to ditch the dGPU on the next macbook.

I'm just wondering where that info came from? Was there an actual report saying it's likely to be removed? Or is this just pure speculation on our part?

I'm just curious...
 
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MovieGuy34 said:
Risking upsetting everyone...can I ask a question about the dGPU?

They has been a lot of posts about people thinking Apple is going to ditch the dGPU on the next macbook.

I'm just wondering where that info came from? Was there an actual report saying it's likely to be removed? Or is this just pure speculation on our part?

I'm just curious...
Click to expand...

There were some "leaked" Geekbench results from what we can assume are MBP 13" and 15" models (due to the TDPs of the parts identified). Geekbench should identify any GPUs in the system, and the one running a quad core Haswell chip showed only an HD 5200 with no other GPU.

There are three other possibilities, though most people are thinking they're less likely:
-We saw a quad core 13" model(!).
-Geekbench failed to ID the dGPU due to some driver/hardware/software compatibility issues. Geekbench devs say this is unlikely, but not impossible.
-The dGPU could be a BTO option not offered on the base 15" rMBP this year.
 
The web is going to be crazy come Tuesday, September 10th!! I wonder if Apple will stream the event live via Apple TV similar to WWDC. nonetheless, I will be amongst the masses :)
 
Atomic Walrus said:
There were some "leaked" Geekbench results from what we can assume are MBP 13" and 15" models (due to the TDPs of the parts identified). Geekbench should identify any GPUs in the system, and the one running a quad core Haswell chip showed only an HD 5200 with no other GPU.

There are three other possibilities, though most people are thinking they're less likely:
-We saw a quad core 13" model(!).
-Geekbench failed to ID the dGPU due to some driver/hardware/software compatibility issues. Geekbench devs say this is unlikely, but not impossible.
-The dGPU could be a BTO option not offered on the base 15" rMBP this year.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. Ok thanks. And so Apple's reasoning to take it out would be.....price? Battery life? Both? Some other reason we don't know about?
 
GSPice said:
It's interesting, though - I'm trying to think of any other strategic shifts or "side-grades" in Apple hardware history.. I can't think of a close analog..
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What about the move from 64bit G5s to 32bit Intel processors? As far as performance was concerned, it was a side-grade. That said, it set the stage for the machines we all love today. I see no reason to think that a move to iGPU isn't the same type of thing: it's setting the stage for the machines of tomorrow. Sure, it'll upset some hardcore users today (and rightfully so) like the move from PPC did, but would anyone argue that we should have stayed with that architecture?

They did get up on stage and address it though, so I hope Tim Cook would do the same.

"The most important reasons are that as we look ahead, though we may have great products right now, and we've got some great PowerPC product still yet to come, as we look ahead we can of envision some amazing products we want to build for you and we don't know how to build them with the future PowerPC road map. And that's why we're going to do this. When we look at Intel, they've got great performance, yes, but they've got something else that's very important to us. Just as important as performance, is power consumption. And the way we look at it is performance per watt. For one watt of power how much performance do you get? And when we look at the future road maps projected out in mid-2006 and beyond, what we see is the PowerPC gives us sort of 15 units of performance per watt, but the Intel road map in the future gives us 70, and so this tells us what we have to do."
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Atomic Walrus said:
There are three other possibilities, though most people are thinking they're less likely:
-We saw a quad core 13" model(!).
-Geekbench failed to ID the dGPU due to some driver/hardware/software compatibility issues. Geekbench devs say this is unlikely, but not impossible.
-The dGPU could be a BTO option not offered on the base 15" rMBP this year.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be nice. Perhaps in Broadwell next year we could see that. I've just noticed though, don't we always think the next version of the 13" will get the quad;)
 
MovieGuy34 said:
Risking upsetting everyone...can I ask a question about the dGPU?

There have been a lot of posts about people thinking Apple is going to ditch the dGPU on the next macbook.

I'm just wondering where that info came from? Was there an actual report saying it's likely to be removed? Or is this just pure speculation on our part?

I'm just curious...
Click to expand...

Personally, and this is based on nuttin' but my own gut feeling, I think the 13" will only have an iGPU and the 15s will have the 5200 as base iGPU with an option on the top of the line 15 for a dGPU.

Yeah, yeah, I know more knowledgeable people than I have stated reasons why this won't happen, but that's my gut feeling and my gut is rarely wrong!

Personally, I won't be getting a dGPU machine as I am pretty much down to very light encoding and video editing. Battery life will be super important to me though.
 
yokken said:
Personally I use my MBP as a desktop replacement that can be portable when I want it, so I care a lot less about battery life than I do power. Removing the dGPU would be quite a downside for me, as even the top of the line Iris Pro barely matches the 650M right now, and the 650M kills it in gaming. I'd rather have a 750M around for when the need arises, and Apple just running everything on the Iris Pro unless GPU usage goes over 90%. I'm totally cool with that.
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And I'm in the opposite boat, I want longer battery life and have little need for a dGPU (it's just another power draining device like an internal DVD that I won't miss one bit).

I guess it boils down to your target audience, gamers, professionals or students (a mix of both). Impossible to please everyone with a single product.
 
smoking monkey said:
Personally, and this is based on nuttin' but my own gut feeling, I think the 13" will only have an iGPU and the 15s will have the 5200 as base iGPU with an option on the top of the line 15 for a dGPU.

Yeah, yeah, I know more knowledgeable people than I have stated reasons why this won't happen, but that's my gut feeling and my gut is rarely wrong!

Personally, I won't be getting a dGPU machine as I am pretty much down to very light encoding and video editing. Battery life will be super important to me though.
Click to expand...

Not to rain on your parade or anything, but I've noticed whenever any one states that their gut feeling is never wrong, it's wrong.
 
MovieGuy34 said:
Gotcha. Ok thanks. And so Apple's reasoning to take it out would be.....price? Battery life? Both? Some other reason we don't know about?
Click to expand...

Battery life is one factor. It's a fairly safe bet that if Apple includes processors with Iris Pro, then there won't be enough of a leap to a dGPU to warrant two GPUs. Also, processors with 5200 are themselves expensive, so it may not be economical to offer a 5200/dGPU combination.
 
mattshort said:
What about the move from 64bit G5s to 32bit Intel processors? As far as performance was concerned, it was a side-grade.
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i see your point.. but didn't a lot of people consider the move to intel a significant upgrade? i mean.. it did catch the interest of windows users like me.. being able to dual boot windows was a huge plus for me back in 2007.. so i consider that as having a machine that "performs" better. the move from dgpu to igpu.. you're trading performance for battery life.. but what was the trade off by moving from powerpc to intel? didn't jobs even say that he was disappointed with the progress ibm was developing powerpc? have dgpu's been in that stale progress development?
 
yokken said:
If they lowered the price of the rMBP without the dGPU and left it the same for one with a dGPU, I'd be perfectly happy since that's the price I've been planning for all along.

You know, silent updates to the MBP line are almost kind of funny seeing as they are widely considered by new college students (and their parents...) -- not that either of them would notice or care about removing the dGPU, but Apple seems to care less and less about the MBP line every year...
Click to expand...

Atomic Walrus said:
I will add that if I go back to the "what I'd do" thought process, lowering prices on 15" rMBPs with iGPU only and keeping the 750m-carrying version at current prices is about what I'd do. I really think Apple wants the dGPU gone though.
Click to expand...

The Iris Pro (iGPU) cost about the same amount as a Intel 4600 + dGPU, so they're not likely to put a dGPU in there as well. If they did a build to order dGPU then that means they would be putting in a weaker iGPU (coupled) with it, which would completely mess up their base vs. upgraded margins of performance (with the "base" iris pro model faster in non-dgpu like activities). So that's just a mess. Plus I don't think they're going to be putting 2 different kinds of integrated graphics in their devices anyway, that's just over-complicated by itself.
 
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