Thanks for the tips - I'll give a backpack a try I think. Though there's still a little envy when looking at the XPS at half the price for a similar configuration, a bigger battery and a smaller, thinner and lighter enclosure.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Waiting for the 2018 MBP
- Thread starter benface
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Thanks for the tips - I'll give a backpack a try I think. Though there's still a little envy when looking at the XPS at half the price for a similar configuration, a bigger battery and a smaller, thinner and lighter enclosure.
Yep. I definitely feel you on that. Although my friend who had one had multiple issues and ended up retruning for full refund so I have my doubts on build quality. (this was the old one not the new one)
I also still prefer the touchpad, the screen and the speakers of the MacBook Pro over the Dell, but I just can't help but think that there has to be either a way of increasing battery capacity or a way to make the MBP smaller when looking at notebooks like the XPS or the LG Gram. We know that Apple can indeed be at the very cutting edge of engineering, I'm just not sure if they care enough to actually change anything.
We have the Dell XPS 15 and the Precision 5000 series (the "pro" version of the XPS) as well as the 15" TB MBP and the MBP is effectively the same size and weight so I don't see where Apple needs to slim or lighten the MBP any more.
Not sure about the 15“, but the 13“ is much slimmer and smaller than the MacBook Pro. Same for other 13“ Windows notebooks like the LG Gram or the Huawei Matebook X Pro.
If I were a betting man, I would say October for the 13" and 15" refresh. Why? A few things -
- Many rumors suggested that Apple would have the 13" MacBook ready to introduce at WWDC, but they did not and it was not. This is a chance to reboot the MacBook narrative and reverse perception about laptops, which is where Apple makes its money on computers.
- Intel has yet to formally introduce a next Generation 5w Y-Series CPU that would be a suitable replacement for the 2017 12" MacBooks. Whether the 13" MacBook is going to use that CPU is still up in the air, but Intel hasn't said boo about them at this point. My takeaway from that is that the CPU is Cannon Lake or Ice Lake and the yields are still in the toilet for Apple to have enough CPUs on hand to start mass production OR Apple has moved to the 15w U-Series and is having some persistent battery and thermal issues in the new 13" chassis that they are trying to squash before launch.
- 8-Generation 45w H-Series CPUs w/6 cores were announced in April, but when I look on various websites and configure one (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer), I seem to get different dates as to when I might get one of their laptops. Some dates were pushed out over a month, but some were available to ship the next day (Dell XPS 15 9570 w/8750H says "Get it by Wednesday, July 25th), so I think CPU supplies are still somewhat constrained. Apple does tend to be very conservative in this area as they want to make sure they can ship enough pre-configured units to supply all their Stores in the US by the end of the week when they do launch.
- 8-Generation 28w U-Series CPUs w/4 cores were announced in April, but I haven't seen anyone using those currently. I wonder whether they are shipping out in volume yet. Anyone seeing these as a buying choice yet?
- 12nm AMD Radeon RX GPUs are rumored for Q4 announcement and shipping. It's only a 15% increase in speed, but it would give Apple another bullet point for their marketing materials. Final engineering samples should be in Apple's hands now and undergoing last checks before volume production and integration.
- Also, Q4 and holiday sales mean WAY more to Apple than Back-To-School sales do, I believe. My belief is the Apple still wants to show record profit and sales in all categories to make the conference call at the beginning of the next year as good as possible to keep positive perception of Apple. BTS means nothing as students can either buy what is currently on sale, or not...I don't think Apple worries about that anymore at all, as long as they get their money for a new iPhone.
- I'm skeptical that the non-TouchBar 13" MacBook Pro ever goes to 8th-Gen. I think the 13" MacBook will replace it, the 13" MacBook Air and the 12" MacBook. Apple may have figured out that 12" is just too small and costly versus a 13". It will start at $999 (8/128GB) and $1299 (8/256GB) and then go up in price from there. The 13" MacBook Pro TouchBar may get a price cut on the entry model to entice users, around $200 USD, but nothing more. So $1599 (8/256GB) and $1899 (8/512GB) for the 13" MacBook Pro, which gives a nice separation between the MacBook and MacBook Pro in Apple's mind.
- I think they will pull a MacBook Air with the non-TouchBar 13" MBP and keep selling it but not update it beyond what it has now and then it dies.
- Doubt Apple gets rid of the TouchBar in the 15" model, but reduces the price $200USD as well, so $2199 and $2599. Really small possibility of Apple thickening the chassis to accommodate a larger battery (terraced, finally) or thick Magic Keyboard mechanism to replace the butterfly keys. My guess is what others have said, "newer, stronger butterfly mechanisms to enhance reliability". Whatever...my 2016 works fine and I like the keyboard well enough, but of the three mechanisms (2012-2015 MacBook Pro/Air, Magic Keyboard and 2015-2018 Butterfly), I REALLY prefer the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad's mechanism. Less mush than the 2015 (it is a bit mushy, deal with it), but not as harsh and clicky-loud as the Butterfly.
- I sincerely doubt we will see any port configuration changes, unless Apple has decided to use the extra lanes in the QM370 chipset (x20 PCIe 3.0). Maybe Apple gives back the SDXC Card slot (UHS II) then. No way they give HDMI back, especially since HDMI 2.x requires a separate LSPCON on the motherboard as Intel doesn't support it natively in the PCH chipset. Too much space taken up on the motherboard.
- We will see new the Titan Ridge TB3 controller which means 8K is theoretically possible (DisplayPort v1.4), but wouldn't bet on it.
- Really hope that they move the sound jack to the left-hand side. Stupid move for no reason.
- Still stuck at 16GB 2133MHZ LPDDR3 DRAM; Blame Intel, blame DRAM makers...I can't really blame Apple on this one. Let the flame wars begin...again.
- 13" MacBook looks like a 12" MacBook and we get two (2) USB-C 3.1 Gen-2 ports, but no TB3, well, maybe TB3, two ports on left side...no,wait, make it one TB3 port. This is where Apple has to get real on feature parity among classes of computers. The MacBook Air had Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 ports. The MacBook 13" should be a game changer, but Apple needs to show value, not just pretend there is value. The 5Gbps USB-C port in the 12" MacBook just seemed like a cop out for such an expensive model. Of course, it is completely logical that Tim Cook's Apple would make you cough up the cash on a 13" MBP if you want Thunderbolt 3. Let's hope sanity prevails.
Last edited:
I have a kaby lake i5 7200 XPS13 I bought last year. It works flawlessly for my light office duties at home. I don’t use it for entertainment as I have a 10.5 iPad Pro for that. But since the specs are toward the lower end, I’d like to get a 15” fully loaded laptop as my permanent home computer. I’m leaning toward the 15” MacBook Pro, the XPS15 with 4K screen and gen8 Intel processor are looking really good for half the price.
MBPs (real ones, not the nTB version) use 28W TDP CPUs, Dell uses crippled 15W ones.
Yet the „crippled“ i5-8250U is much faster than the 28W i5-7267U.
Their guess is as good as everyones, right? My personal opinion is October event.
Apple should be rolling out updates to the 13" MacBook Pro before the end of the year. To me the size difference and weight difference (160g) heavier is pretty negligible, but YMMV. The delay in moving to 8th-Generation is more an issue with Apple refusing to release 15w U-Series updates before the 28w U-Series or the 45w H-Series were released. Dell and others don't have the same qualms, but I get where Apple is coming from. With such a limited lineup and media scrutiny, there would be howls of being cheated by people who want a 15" MacBook Pro that would have had no CPUs to go into it. Patience wins the day.
I’m starting to look at Windows alternatives
The Verge said the XPS 13 has a smaller battery and only gets 6 hours of battery life. Not great. Also, the webcam is down on the bottom, that doesn’t make much sense. It’s those little weird things that keep me away from the windows laptops.
Try Samsung, Razer, or Asus. Ymmv for warranty policies.
Razers are very gaudy in my opinion. I’ll look at Asus, only one I haven’t researched yet.
Yet the non-crippled chips such as the i5 8259U will blow it out of water.
It's because of the "Infinity Edge" super-thin bezels - no room for the webcam up top.
But does this matter when Apple still doesn't offer 8th gen CPUs almost a year after Dell started to offer them? When Apple starts to ship the notebooks with 8th gen 28W CPUs, Dell might soon start to ship notebooks with 9th gen 15W CPUs, which again might be a lot faster.
The battery is smaller compared to the older XPS 13, but still bigger than the battery in the Touch Bar 13" MBP (52 vs 49 Wh). Keep in mind that the XPS 13 is smaller, lighter and a lot thinner than the MBP. Battery life (at least with the 1080p display) is also better than the MBP in most tests I've seen.
The Asus ZenBook Pro is looking pretty good right now, anyone have one of those?
Doesn't matter. For the past 10 months, Dell's XPS 13 has been much faster than the 13" MBP, in a much smaller and lighter package. I don't consider this to be an advantage for the MacBook Pro, no matter how you spin it. And it certainly looks like this situation might just be the same with the next generation, when Dell is able to offer CPUs with LPDDR4 support, thous allowing 32 GB of RAM, with a CPU performance that's comparable to Apple's then (hopefully) 8th gen 28W CPUs while being more power efficient.
That runs Windows. People don't buy Macs solely because of their design, but because they prefer macOS as their operating system. It's a major influencer, just as iOS is for purchasing iPhones and iPads over Android-based smartphones and tablets even if they may offer features or form factors Apple does not.
Dell uses common DDR4 memory in XPS 15" to be able to offer 32 GB of RAM. No Intel CPU supports LPDDR4.
Sure, that's also the reason why I still buy MacBook Pros instead of the comptetitors. But I'd still prefer to purchase a competitive notebook at twice the price, not some outdated hardware.
I was clearly talking about Intel's 9th gen CPUs which will launch probably shortly before or after Apple introduces their MBPs with 8th gen CPUs. Also, it's not true that no Intel CPU supports LPDDR4 - the Core i3-8121U does based on its Cannon Lake architecture. Not that it's a competitive CPU, but it still is a shipping Intel CPU that supports LPDDR4.