Waiting for the 2018 MBP

[CodeJoy]

Pure speculation on his part. The replacement keyboard could have some improvement to certain components, or some other minor manufacturing change, that he's completely unaware of.

Agreed. I watched that video too, and ... it's a data point for the MacBook, but not really solid evidence even for it, and certainly not for the MBP. They could be putting old keyboards in as replacement while they clean out inventory, and then start putting in a new and improved design. Or they might not have an improved design at all, and could end up doing exactly what people fear. Or like you said. Or several other possibilities. The thing is, we don't really know yet, and speculation (like you said) is not super productive. Would be kinda nice if Apple could communicate a bit more on this issue, but I'm not holding my breath.

There's also (at least implied) testimony from the genius that there was indeed a new design. But the fact that a new design keyboard didn't end up in this guy's laptop doesn't automatically make Apple or the genius liars. There are many other possibilities, and we're only doing ourselves a disservice if we ignore all other possible options and automatically assume people are liars when something odd happens. Some people are, but most people aren't.

YouTube and internet in general is a weird place, where people often completely lack the ability to draw conclusions properly from available data, or avoid doing so when the data doesn't support a conclusion -- and they still end up making "instructional" or "investigation" videos. I'm not always sold on science as being the one and only truth, but the scientific method is a fairly proven method of moving knowledge forward for the whole of humanity. YouTubers and Apple commentators would do well to learn about it.

(In all fairness, there are also many YT videos and creators that are absolutely amazing, and are incredible sources of solid knowledge.)

 

[AdamA9]

Possibly, but my criticism (albeit from a non-user), is that you need to take your eyes off the screen to interact with it, where as other actions w/o the TB can be done with still watching the screen. Its more efficient imo to hit a key-combination as you work, instead of stopping, looking, pressing the TB for the desired affect. YMMV and many people do love the TB and BetterTouchTool I'm sure can help

I have to look at which F key I'm pressing anyway, so will make no difference to me. It's not like the normal characters on a keyboard where I can touch-type. So if there are programmable shortcuts I can create so that I don't have to use the mouse, this is where I see the benefit. Of course, my preference is a combination of key's for a shortcut, e.g., I use cmd+option+up key to maximise the application to full screen. I wouldn't replace this with a button on the touchbar as it wouldn't be quicker. However, launching Sketch and opening up a new iPhone template (if possible), would be a good tb shortcut.

Right, if you want to add yet another $1500 on top of the MBP. For gaming purposes it seems much better to put that money towards a separate mini-ITX gaming box (which would be the size of an eGPU anyway), unless you're for some reason forced to only have a single computer. For me, the eGPU is completely counterproductive since the whole point would be to play the occasional casual game without any wires or boxes.

If gaming is so important that you're considering an eGPU, I would argue that you shouldn't be looking at MBP in the first place.

As said it's occasional gaming. I use my laptop at my desk ~90% of the time, so an eGPU isn't an issue for me as I'll never game away from my desk. I don't want to maintain more than one machine, so I'm limiting myself to just the single computer rather than any forced reason.

 

[CodeJoy]

As said it's occasional gaming. I use my laptop at my desk ~90% of the time, so an eGPU isn't an issue for me as I'll never game away from my desk. I don't want to maintain more than one machine, so I'm limiting myself to just the single computer rather than any forced reason.

Right, then maybe you have a good case for a 13" with an eGPU. I didn't mean to say that there are no good use cases for eGPU. There clearly are. It's just worth thinking about carefully, since you may end up paying a fair bit extra, depending. Maybe it just simply boils down to whether you value the extra screen estate on the 15" or not.

 

[cocoua]

Agreed. I watched that video too, and ... it's a data point for the MacBook, but not really solid evidence even for it, and certainly not for the MBP. They could be putting old keyboards in as replacement while they clean out inventory, and then start putting in a new and improved design. Or they might not have

(In all fairness, there are also many YT videos and creators that are absolutely amazing, and are incredible sources of solid knowledge.)

is very improbable that Apple replaces any part with a new deigned one, is more likely to replace it with same exact design, and maybe, they ix the design in future models.

first scenario would require a complete production cycle for just a part of a model which is going to be replaced soon, which is very expensive.

 

[afir93]

The 15,2 scores look genuine to me. It does indeed use a new device ID, and it's tested using 10.13.6, and the machine is using LPDDR3 at 2133 MHz. All pretty reasonable hints that it could be a genuine prototype or early production sample.

The other scores don't look like an Apple device to me though. It's using an older device ID, an older OS, and some other things that makes it look more like a hackintosh. I wouldn't take this as particularly strong evidence for 32G RAM.

I'm wondering, if we assume for a moment that this is a legitimate new MBP prototype, could the fact that it's being tested on 10.13.6 be a hint that it might come before October after all, or is this completely irrelevant? My thinking is that if we won't see new MBPs until an October event, then Mojave will be officially out by then which means the new machines would officially ship with Mojave. So prototyping/producing them with 10.13.6 when Apple already has perfectly available Mojave betas wouldn't make much sense because wouldn't they much rather prototype and test it with the system it's going to ship with? So maybe this is a hint that we'll get new MBPs this or next month after all?

For comparison, in the (supposed) Geekbench score for the new iPhone that also surfaced a few days ago, the system the score was made with was iOS 12. Which makes sense since iPhones always come in September at which point the new iOS version, in our case iOS 12, will be out; and the new macOS version is usually released around the same time. And this was usually the case in other iPhone geekbench leaks in the recent years aswell if I remember correctly.

So by the same logic, if new MBPs are coming 1-2 months later than that then I would even more expect them to be produced and benchmarked on 10.14 right from the beginning, not on some macOS 10.13 version. But again I'm not really sure about this, it's mostly a random thought. Maybe it means nothing at all.

 

[The Mercurian]

I'm wondering, if we assume for a moment that this is a legitimate new MBP prototype, could the fact that it's being tested on 10.13.6 be a hint that it might come before October after all, or is this completely irrelevant? My thinking is that if we won't see new MBPs until an October event, then Mojave will be officially out by then which means the new machines would officially ship with Mojave. So prototyping/producing them with 10.13.6 when Apple already has perfectly available Mojave betas wouldn't make much sense because they'd much rather prototype and test it with the system it's going to ship with? So maybe this is a hint that we'll get new MBPs this or next month after all?

But again I'm not really sure about this, just a random thought. Maybe it means nothing at all.

This is probably genuine is my guess. But no they would not test on Mojave in nay case because its not finalised yet. They don't want to estimate performance using an OS that may still be laced with bugs.

My guess is we would see them released before October, but perhaps not much before.

Edit: One of the reasons I think this is genuine is that Geekbench commented on it. THey tend no to do that if it is just a Hacktintosh or something. They would most likely know where the test comes from via IP address. I also tend to think these kinds of "leaks" are, if not deliberate, at least allowed by Apple.

 

[Falhófnir]

This is probably genuine is my guess. But no they would not test on Mojave in nay case because its not finalised yet. They don't want to estimate performance using an OS that may still be laced with bugs.

My guess is we would see them released before October, but perhaps not much before.

I believe we’ve had July releases before now - giving time for the machines to bed in and stock to be available for back to school shoppers in August and September? Or is that being too optimistic

 

[The Mercurian]

I believe we’ve had July releases before now - giving time for the machines to bed in and stock to be available for back to school shoppers in August and September? Or is that being too optimistic

Honestly anytime would not surprise me. July maybe a bit optimistic though because this is the first hint we have seen. I would expect more if the thing was imminent. Keep eyes peeled for 15" models in GB

 

[afir93]

This is probably genuine is my guess. But no they would not test on Mojave in nay case because its not finalised yet. They don't want to estimate performance using an OS that may still be laced with bugs.

My guess is we would see them released before October, but perhaps not much before.

Fair enough. But if that's the case, why would the test the new iPhones on iOS 12 then? Wouldn't the same logic apply here aswell? (Assuming that the recent iPhone 2018 geekbench score is also legitimate, which of course we don't 100% know...)

Also, I don't think the geekbench scores ever changed that much between the first few iOS/macOS developer betas and the final release, so would that really be a reason for Apple to invest time and resources into putting together OS-wise "obsolete" prototypes? Personally I would rather expect them that they prototype the new machines with the system it's shipping with so that it can be adapted and optimized for that system right from the start, rather than investing time in testing them with an old system version that it doesn't ship with anyway just for some possibly slightly more un-skewed performance scores. But again, I'm by far no expert on this topic, so if I'm wrong with this logic, feel free to correct me. Like I said, maybe it means nothing at all.

 

[The Mercurian]

Fair enough. But if that's the case, why would the test the new iPhones on iOS 12 then? Wouldn't the same logic apply here aswell? (Assuming that the recent iPhone 2018 geekbench score is also legitimate, which of course we don't 100% know...)

Also, I don't think the geekbench scores ever changed that much between the first few iOS/macOS developer betas and the final release, so would that really be a reason for Apple to invest time and resources into putting together OS-wise "obsolete" prototypes? Personally I would rather expect them that they prototype the new machines with the system it's shipping with so that it can be adapted and optimized for that system right from the start, rather than investing time in testing them with an old system version that it doesn't ship with anyway just for some possibly slightly more un-skewed performance scores. But again, I'm by far no expert on this topic, so if I'm wrong with this logic, feel free to correct me. Like I said, maybe it means nothing at all.

Perhaps iOS12 is more advanced in development. Certainly for MacOS there have been previous versions where the beta releases had major performance issues that got sorted out be release time.

But in summary, it means nothing at all. You might as well read tea leaves.

The reasons I think this GB score are genuine are timing, model number makes sense and also the fact the GB themselves commented on it.

 

[CodeJoy]

I'm wondering, if we assume for a moment that this is a legitimate new MBP prototype, could the fact that it's being tested on 10.13.6 be a hint that it might come before October after all, or is this completely irrelevant? My thinking is that if we won't see new MBPs until an October event, then Mojave will be officially out by then which means the new machines would officially ship with Mojave. So prototyping/producing them with 10.13.6 when Apple already has perfectly available Mojave betas wouldn't make much sense because wouldn't they much rather prototype and test it with the system it's going to ship with? So maybe this is a hint that we'll get new MBPs this or next month after all?

I don't think this means much at all. I'm sure there can be all kinds of reasons for testing with one OS or the other. And if it's simply a CPU upgrade, then we know from hackintoshes that both High Sierra and Mojave work on Coffee Lake without too much trouble. I think you're way overthinking this.

What's more of a hint instead is probably the timing of these benchmarks. They tend to show up fairly close to release, though exactly how close is probably not exactly clear either.

All it really probably means is that Apple fairly finished updated models, and they'll show up sometime between now and October. But we knew that already.
[doublepost=1530700767][/doublepost]

Fair enough. But if that's the case, why would the test the new iPhones on iOS 12 then? Wouldn't the same logic apply here aswell? (Assuming that the recent iPhone 2018 geekbench score is also legitimate, which of course we don't 100% know...)

Also, I don't think the geekbench scores ever changed that much between the first few iOS/macOS developer betas and the final release, so would that really be a reason for Apple to invest time and resources into putting together OS-wise "obsolete" prototypes? Personally I would rather expect them that they prototype the new machines with the system it's shipping with so that it can be adapted and optimized for that system right from the start, rather than investing time in testing them with an old system version that it doesn't ship with anyway just for some possibly slightly more un-skewed performance scores. But again, I'm by far no expert on this topic, so if I'm wrong with this logic, feel free to correct me. Like I said, maybe it means nothing at all.

I think you're forgetting the fact that Apple engineers will know exactly in detail what the differences are between 10.13.6 and 10.14. And they also know exactly in detail what has changed with the hardware and what they want to test. It could well be that nothing meaningful has changed in the hardware layer for what they want to test, and it may not matter at all which OS they test with. You also seem to assume that they are using Geekbench to verify functionality and performance. I can pretty much guarantee you that they don't, and that they have much better and more exact tools to verify hardware and software. Both performance and function. Geekbench doesn't test either with anywhere close to the granularity that a manufacturer would need.

 

[AdamA9]

Right, then maybe you have a good case for a 13" with an eGPU. I didn't mean to say that there are no good use cases for eGPU. There clearly are. It's just worth thinking about carefully, since you may end up paying a fair bit extra, depending. Maybe it just simply boils down to whether you value the extra screen estate on the 15" or not.

Thanks man, that's good to know. Just to add further weight to this I use a 28" 4k monitor at my desk anyway, so have the extra screen estate if needed.

I think my mind is made up then

 

[afir93]

I don't think this means much at all. I'm sure there can be all kinds of reasons for testing with one OS or the other. And if it's simply a CPU upgrade, then we know from hackintoshes that both High Sierra and Mojave work on Coffee Lake without too much trouble. I think you're way overthinking this.

What's more of a hint instead is probably the timing of these benchmarks. They tend to show up fairly close to release, though exactly how close is probably not exactly clear either.

All it really probably means is that Apple fairly finished updated models, and they'll show up sometime between now and October. But we knew that already.
[doublepost=1530700767][/doublepost]
I think you're forgetting the fact that Apple engineers will know exactly in detail what the differences are between 10.13.6 and 10.14. And they also know exactly in detail what has changed with the hardware and what they want to test. It could well be that nothing meaningful has changed in the hardware layer for what they want to test, and it may not matter at all which OS they test with. You also seem to assume that they are using Geekbench to verify functionality and performance. I can pretty much guarantee you that they don't, and that they have much better and more exact tools to verify hardware and software. Both performance and function. Geekbench doesn't test either with anywhere close to the granularity that a manufacturer would need.

Good points, you convinced me. As I said it was just a shower thought – with many people here trying to interpret things into the constantly varying shipping dates almost each day and claiming that because of that, a release must be right around the corner, I didn't think of it to be too far-fetched that there could have been some meaning to this aswell.

You also seem to assume that they are using Geekbench to verify functionality and performance. I can pretty much guarantee you that they don't, and that they have much better and more exact tools to verify hardware and software. Both performance and function. Geekbench doesn't test either with anywhere close to the granularity that a manufacturer would need.

Well I didn't assume that and I most certainly agree with you there, but that in itself doesn't immediately mean that this score isn't legitimate. As someone else said many posts ago – there are many tens of thousands people working for Apple all around the globe, and Apple is known to oftentimes distribute prototype/test models among many of its employees in the months following up to release.

All it takes is one employee to download and install Geekbench and thoughtlessly run a test on one of these machines and the score is out there on the web. I'm pretty sure not every single employee who gets his hands on a prototype is also directly involved with its R&D process, some of them just might want to try out what a "beast" it is and find Geekbench to be one of the first places to do that. As others have said – the accompanying model info for the Geekbench score would make sense for a new machine. Sure we can't be 100% sure about it's legitimacy but there's nothing to immediately discard that possibility

 

[CodeJoy]

Well I didn't assume that and I most certainly agree with you there, but that in itself doesn't immediately mean that this score isn't legitimate. As someone else said many posts ago – there are many tens of thousands people working for Apple all around the globe, and Apple is known to oftentimes distribute prototype/test models among many of its employees in the months following up to release.

Sure, I wrote in another post that the 13" scores looked genuine to me. But then, something I always think about is: how does this new information influence my actual actions or decisions. I use that (among other things) to evaluate the importance of information. In this case, it doesn't influence anything at all. Even if it's a genuine score, you can't buy that model yet. You can't know that the performance is actually what the end model performance will be. You can't know what the models will be. Certainly not the price. And not what (if any) other changes will appear in the refresh. So you can't act on this new information, it's just in the category of "oh, interesting". I'm fully aware that many others get waay hyped up over information that they can't act on or use for any meaningful purpose. But I'd suggest that it's worth considering that it's maybe not all that important or interesting.

;-)

 

[Martius]

Pure speculation on his part. The replacement keyboard could have some improvement to certain components, or some other minor manufacturing change, that he's completely unaware of.

It might be speculation, but what if just technically impossible to make the keyboard that thin without any side effects like key sticking etc. What if is necessary to redesign the whole thing. I'm starting to believe that...

 

[CWallace]

A possible Late 2018 MacBook Pro with a 28W quad-core Coffee Lake i7-8559U has shown up on Geekbench:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...offee-lake-cpu-shows-up-in-geekbench-database

 

[The Mercurian]

A possible Late 2018 MacBook Pro with a 28W quad-core Coffee Lake i7-8559U has shown up on Geekbench:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...offee-lake-cpu-shows-up-in-geekbench-database

Yesterdays news friend...https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/waiting-for-the-2018-mbp.2048940/page-264#post-26210137

The last page or two chat is mostly about this.

 

[Tapiture]

Apple’s running a bunch of ads which is kind of reminding me of what they did with the iPad Pro in spring 2017 before they released the new models at WWDC. They may be trying to empty supply before the new models release.

 

[Feenician]

Apple really need to go AMD at this point. Intel are broken. Their 10nm process is broken. Their server and workstation roadmap is broken. Skip over the “affair” scuttlebutt and read the technical details.

https://semiaccurate.com/2018/06/29...rian-krzanich-is-a-cover-for-deeper-problems/

 

[navaira]

Apple really need to go AMD at this point. Intel are broken. Their 10nm process is broken. Their server and workstation roadmap is broken. Skip over the “affair” scuttlebutt and read the technical details.

https://semiaccurate.com/2018/06/29...rian-krzanich-is-a-cover-for-deeper-problems/

"On the credibility front the problem is simple, Intel has none."

Ouch.

I'm pretty sure that cheap 13" Macbook (Air) which is coming will be ARM-powered, if Mini is ever going to see a refresh Apple will do the same. If that works, the Ax processors will take over the MBP lineup once they can run Windows as well.

 

[Falhófnir]

Apple really need to go AMD at this point. Intel are broken. Their 10nm process is broken. Their server and workstation roadmap is broken. Skip over the “affair” scuttlebutt and read the technical details.

https://semiaccurate.com/2018/06/29...rian-krzanich-is-a-cover-for-deeper-problems/

It does seem strange that intel have seemingly purposely muddied the waters around their chipset generations by splitting the lineup and pumping out more and more xxxlake 14nm variants - and I’m in no doubt that if 10nm isn’t fixed soon (the sounds they are making suggest it will not be) then their strategy of taking the cream off the market Apple style will begin to crumble as the competition catches up in earnest (particularly single core) and they can no longer charge a premium. Having said that, if they can get 10nm working to their expectation within the next 18 months, it does sound like it will catapult them back to the head of the pack. You have to feel a little sorry for intel, their big mistake here was over ambition, not complacency with their market position.

 

[jessydmd]

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/05/apple-registers-new-macbooks-ipads-eec/

That's something, right ?

 

[OzyOly]

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/05/apple-registers-new-macbooks-ipads-eec/

That's something, right ?

I’m still skeptical. It’s probably not going to be in the next two months.

 

[The Mercurian]

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/05/apple-registers-new-macbooks-ipads-eec/

That's something, right ?

That's definitely something
[doublepost=1530789958][/doublepost]

I’m still skeptical. It’s probably not going to be in the next two months.

Probably before two months have passed. My guess now would be weeks.
[doublepost=1530790383][/doublepost]So now I need to start devoting some thought to this:

13" quad core to replace my 15" quad core.....
or 15" hex core to replace my 15" quad core

On one hand I do need CPU power often enough. On the flip side my 2014 15" is a pain in the ass to use in an airplane seat. Thoughts anyone ??

 

[Falhófnir]

I’m still skeptical. It’s probably not going to be in the next two months.

If it wasn’t I really think Apple would have locked in a version of Mojave for this release (with iOS there’s a launch version locked in for iPhone manufacturers months in advance). That evidence suggests they are releasing with HS suggests that they will be available before Mojave releases to the public in September