Historically Monday and Tuesdays were popular for media events. But in more recent years it’s been more flexible so I don’t think there is any standard there now.
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Waiting for the 2018 MBP
- Thread starter benface
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Events have tended to be a Tuesday, but press releases can be any day including weekends as far as I can remember.
No, this is not the first time that Apple has gone more than 365 days between updates. As recently as 2015/2016 it was 17 months. It’s gated by Intel releases.
Apple has updated MBP at least once per year since the introduction of the pre-unibody model in 2006. Sometimes March, sometimes October. In three of the last five years, it’s been July (2014) or October (2013, 2016). No need to panic with more than half the year left to go.
July is not entirely out of the question as chips are there ready to be used. But there is nothing that points to any date right now, other than perhaps October because that is when macOS Mojave is likely to be released - but then Apple have rarely timed Mac hardware launches specifically around Mac software updates in recent years.
This weekend though, Apple have essentially announced the 2017 MacBook's on sale today have a known fault. However small the percentage may be. So you'd like to think Apple would put something out to market sooner rather than later to address that. Unless they do have a new keyboard module that they've secretly been including in the 2017s for a few months now - which some unconfirmed user feedback has suggested. But if that was the case, then Apple probably would have acknowledge that in the press release and limited the replacement program to models purchased before a certain date or within a certain serial range to save themselves some flack and some cash.
I think there’s a pretty good chance, CPUs have been available for awhile and you’d think they’d rather catch the back-to-school crowd that miss it with an October release.
But it’s Apple, they release when they’re ready. They’re not driven by quarterly results to ship “ready or not” just to make a date. In the grand scheme of things, there’s just not that much difference between releasing in July vs. releasing in October.
Of course if you’ve been needing a new MBP, you might think even March was too late. But realistically, last year’s model was in June, so neither July nor October would be a surprise.
btw if Intel slips their schedule, 2019 might be the first calendar year MBP doesn’t see an update. I could easily see a release schedule like October 2018 followed by March 2020.
That's my worry about the RAM situation; there had better be a plan B or we really going into 2020 with 16GB maximum?
This is a very painful and unproductive long wait. Why nobody starts a waiting for MBP 2019 yet?
Ice Lake is due in 2019 but would a slip to 2020 surprise anyone? Either way LPDDR4 support will allow >16GB without using DDR4 memory which Apple has thus far not used due to its higher power consumption (esp in standby) as is well known.
If Apple had known in 2014 that 10nm/LPDDR4 would be delayed 4 or 5 years they might well have chosen to have a thicker, heavier MBP and used DDR4 since 2016.
But at this point I don’t really see it happening. Just like with the dual GPU architecture of the cylinder Mac Pro, they went all in on a future technology roadmap and got burned.
If Apple had known in 2014 that 10nm/LPDDR4 would be delayed 4 or 5 years they might well have chosen to have a thicker, heavier MBP and used DDR4 since 2016.
But at this point I don’t really see it happening. Just like with the dual GPU architecture of the cylinder Mac Pro, they went all in on a future technology roadmap and got burned.
Since multiple people have spoken in favor of a July release, I'll be devil's advocate here and claim that October (possibly in the form of a dedicated Mac & iPad event) is more likely at this point. July is so soon after WWDC that you would think if this was the case they could have just announced them at WWDC and just pushed their shipping dates a few weeks back; in fact this might have made the announcement of the keyboard replacement program much more smooth and subtle since this announcement (most likely) wouldn't have included the freshly released models and would have only concerned "outdated" models in that case.
The new chips are also as ready now as they were ~2 months ago – if we were to judge purely by their availability then the 2018 MBPs should have released at WWDC which they didn't. So at this point it's difficult to perceive them as an indication that new models will come in July rather than October when by that logic they should already be out.
The argument about releasing them for the Back-To-School season is equally thin – who's to say that Apple doesn't just make the Back-To-School bonuses a little larger this year around to compensate for the age of the hardware? Make it a free Beats Studio3 instead of a Solo3, add in a 50-100 €/$ iTunes gift card and voila, Back-To-School problem solved (from Apple's perspective). There are plenty of students for who this would seem like (and be) an attractive offer.
Now we don't have much concrete evidence that points to an October release either, but with all of Apple's upcoming hardware releases that we know/have rumors of, it seems more plausible to me that they put new Macs and iPad Pros into one big bundled event and everything iPhone-related into another.
The iPad Pros for example are rumored to be the biggest redesign in iPad history with Face ID and all, so it's difficult to imagine them being released without an event. But they can't be released at the iPhone event either (or at least it would be highly untypical for Apple) since they would probably detract too much attention from Apple's flagship device, the iPhone. Hence there is most likely an October event for them. But seeing as Apple places the iPads closer to the Mac spiritually than to the iPhone, it would make sense that an October event doesn't solely focus on iPads but on the Mac lineup aswell. Hence an October event for iPads and Macs IMO fits better into the big picture than to have these individual releases scattered across the second half of the year.
There's also an argument to be made that Apple might have "so much" to talk about in regards to Mac hardware that this alone (without even factoring the iPad into the equation) warrants a dedicated event. We have new MacBook Pros and iMacs with one of the biggest CPU leaps in the last couple of years (2 -> 4 and 4 -> 6 cores). We have a new (rumored) entry-level MacBook (Air) which is also a big deal. We have the 2019 Mac Pro which the October event could be used to give a preview for several months in advance (like it happened with the 2013 MB or the 2017 iMac Pro). We might get some new input accessories, or at least there were some rumors towards that last year (maybe a Magic Keyboard with Touch Bar, or a more useful Magic Mouse?). And we have possibly a new Mac mini if Tim Cook's words from last year are to be trusted. And to have all of that happen in press releases? I rather doubt it. A fully-fledged Mac + iPad event on the other hand? Yeah, that's something I can see happen.
And of course all of these Macs would come with Mojave which would allow Apple to use the beautiful dark theme and the new Marzipan apps to spice up their marketing pictures of these new Macs, which wouldn't be possible if they come before September/October. Now you might say that's not important since all Macs get Mojave anyway, but how fancy, new and fresh these pics of the new devices look can matter a lot for the first impression that the average consumer gets from them, and hardware-wise there wouldn't be much fancy to show off on product images (from the outside). Apple went through the effort to bring some completely new apps to the Mac and redesign multiple existing ones and add a long-requested dark mode, why not show that off in more than just the Mojave product page?
Make of that what you will. I'd be happy to be proven wrong – I would love a July release, I have the money preserved since months and I'm just waiting for an announcement like many of us here. But after all this wait I'm rather being pessimistic in this matter and the arguments in the previous posts for a July release don't convince me. A big October release bundled with new iPads would just fit better into the bigger picture.
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I think because we’re still waiting for the 2018.
It could yet be that we won’t get an update this year - Apple seem quite content to let a good 18 months or more pass between updates across the other product lines, and it was over a year between the 2015s and 2016s. Granted the 2016s were apparently delayed, but I don’t think it’s too inconceivable the 2018s might be delayed for a solution to the keyboard issue to be found, whatever form that takes
Icelake is near guaranteed not to launch on track at this point, even cannonlake won’t be ready until next year now as the 10nm process has intel tied in knots. I was waiting for 2019/ icelake for the battery life improvement, but that’s now very unlikely so I will keep an eye on other developments. Perhaps a 15” configuration using a G series, or 28W U series with iris plus - even a custom arm chip as we get nearer 2020. It’s possible intel will come out with a chip that supports 32GB low power RAM on whatever they roll out next anyway, I don’t think it’s contingent on 10nm
Yes Intel could certainly choose to update the memory controller independent of the process node, i.e. support LPDDR4 on 14nm++. There’s no intrinsic linkage, except Intel having always done so on their roadmap.
Cannon Lake and Ice Lake are being developed simultaneously; Cannon Lake delivering in 2019 bodes well for Ice Lake in 2019. Cannon Lake for many months has been pegged only for Y-series anyway. (Which is why there’ll be no yearly update for the 12” MacBook this year.)
But again, 10nm volume being delayed until 2019 wouldn’t surprise me, even though Intel claimed in April they’re on schedule for 2019.
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No need to wait for Intel LPDDR4 Support. We can have 32GB RAM very soon with low power and twice the capacity.
https://news.samsung.com/global/sam...-introduction-of-10nm-class-32gb-ddr4-sodimms
https://news.samsung.com/global/sam...-introduction-of-10nm-class-32gb-ddr4-sodimms
That's memory, not the controller. Intel needs to update their integrated memory controller for LPDDR4 to be supported.
EDIT: The other important detail being, the gains here are for active power usage. The reason Apple does not use regular DDR memory is the poor standby power consumption.
Actually the current processors do support DDR4 (in addition to LPDDR3) so the linked RAM is compatible with Intel’s current CPUs.
But as you note, standby power draw would preclude its use by Apple. At the 1.4W power usage at idle Samsung advertises, a 100% full MBP battery would be drained to zero in 2 days.
Actually the current processors do support DDR4 (in addition to LPDDR3) so the linked RAM is compatible with Intel’s current CPUs.
But as you note, standby power draw would preclude its use by Apple. At the 1.4W power usage at idle Samsung advertises, a 100% full MBP battery would be drained to zero in 2 days.
Not a problem considering MBPs have lightning fast SSDs for basically transparent hibernation.
Or, they could just put in a bigger battery. My 17"er has ~95Wh of battery, whereas the newer ones have only 76Wh. Obviously, that is not an improvement.
And to think that my much loved 17" 2011 MBP cost me less than AU$2800 brand new, straight from Apple. (AU$3200 in today's money).
it might be different this time. i think they didnot expect that keyboard class action suit. They have to do redesign of the keyboard to some extent. i have no hopes of seeing and upgrade this year. May be early 2019.
You're wrong. As for the keyboard, they had already worked on the new one, before the class action lawsuits.
Obviously, this is the part where you provide proof...
I’m not sure, icelake will be 10nm+ which is contingent on them sorting 10nm first so they might be fiddling with icelake in the background but I think it will take them a while after finishing cannon lake and shifting their focus to icelake before we will see it launch - I wouldn’t really expect it before early 2020, maybe very late 2019 might see a trickle beginning to appear depending on when (if) cannonlake finally gets signed off
As we have not any new mbp, let's see an updated review of the current mbp's.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...k-pro-reviewing-apples-2017-pro-laptop-models
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...k-pro-reviewing-apples-2017-pro-laptop-models
No, this is the part where you either believe me or not then wait until the October event to see. If you don’t believe me then that’s perfectly fine.