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Waiting for the 2019 MBP [Merged]
- Thread starter travod
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64gb of ddr4 will be sweet. I'm just worried how much marginal impact it will have on the battery life though. Lpddr4 would be a nice complement to that.
Regarding the continued keyboard issues on the 3rd gen, if the recent glass keyboard patent means anything, we should see something leading towards that or at least gen 4 keys or some sort of tweaks to further address the issue. Also the display cable going bad after a couple of years should have their attention by now so hopefully we will see some tweaks to that as well.
If anything, reliability of this year's machine should be at least equal to 2018 counterparts.
So...due to an unfortunate encounter of my 2013 MBP with the sidewalk, I need a replacement. Now I'd go with the 2.6GHz 15" 2018 MBP with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD (both are the same as my 2013 MBP). I can wait a bit, since it's still technically working but the screen has fractures and the illumination is also quite wrong, but not too much. We tend to exclude an update to the 2018 MBPs in a few months, right? Most probably summer if not fall?
Sorry to hear that, it’s really annoying when something like that happens. My guess is they will update the MacBook Pro around June - July time just like last year, I think Apple tend to do spec updates around the 12 month mark.
There will definitely be an event in March, the MBPs probably won't be updated then, but if you can wait it can't hurt.
My gut says that if it is a minor upgrade we will see it rather sooner than later. Maybe April or May.
If it is a minor update what are we likely to see? The 13” already has quad core and the 15” has 6 core processors. I wonder if ther graphics will see the biggest update.
Probably some fix for the T2 chip and some more improvements on the keys. +9th gen Intel CPUs. For example something like the i5 9600k for the 13 inch. I'm not aware of any specific improvements with those chips other than some slightly higher base clocks.
Hopefully, any improvements to fix issues is welcome. Are 9th gen chips even ready yet? Intel has a history just lately for delaying its chip sets.
You can buy the mentioned i5 and other i7 and i9 cores from the 9th gen right now.
edit: right, those aren't laptop CPUs... my bad.
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Intel graphics on the 9th gen are so far exactly the same as those on the previous one. So I wouldn’t hold my breath...
There's a chance for a surprise Spring refresh, but I would expect mid-year (post-WWDC) to be more likely.
As for the 9th gen mobile chips being available in Q2, Intel announced that at CES:
Speaking on stage at CES 2019 today, Intel announced that its 9th Gen Core mobile processors will launch in Q2 2019.
Intel was mum on details other than the impending release timeframe, but the full complement of processors you've come to expect will be available here. That includes 9th Gen Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 chips.
Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/intels-9th-gen-core-processors-headed-laptops-q2-2019Intel was mum on details other than the impending release timeframe, but the full complement of processors you've come to expect will be available here. That includes 9th Gen Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 chips.
Yeah, that’s why I said chips and not laptops. A WWDC launch or a bit later just like 2018 MBPs is all we can expect now so far.
The 2017 model came 221 days after the 2016 one. If we expect a similar upgrade, I think we will see the 2019 one earlier than WWDC. We are now at 215 days since the 2018 did release. (unless they will do the redesign this year but at this point I doubt it as we will already get the macPro and most probably the iMac redesign this year)
Days mean nothing. Apple will release them whenever they are ready. Also we can’t expect an imminent laptop launch when the Intel CPUs they are supposed to carry haven’t launch yet. Besides, what GPUs are the 15” models going to sporting? Right now tere’s nothing newer on the market than the Vega GPUs they were just upgraded with a few months ago...
That makes me expect a MacBook and MacBook Air refresh coming sooner than the 2019 MacBook Pro models as a more reasonable scenario than a supposed earlier than WWDC launch of the MBPs.
I wonder if they will update the lot with a spec bump:
Macbook 12" - latest spec bump
Macbook Air - latest spec bump
Macbook Pro - latest spec bump
Mac Mini - latest spec bump
iMac - redesign including specs
Mac Pro - confirmed by Apple to be happening this year with a new modular
Macbook 12" - latest spec bump
Macbook Air - latest spec bump
Macbook Pro - latest spec bump
Mac Mini - latest spec bump
iMac - redesign including specs
Mac Pro - confirmed by Apple to be happening this year with a new modular
Come on - "days" are the foundation of the Macrumors Buyers Guide. They're super important and stuff. I don't know how you can even suggest otherwise.
The problem with an MBP update is that there's nothing to update them with (other than a redesign). The processors and GPUs are current and the best available from Intel and AMD, the RAM (finally) and SSD options are close to as good as it gets in a thin-and-light workstation (there are a few with very expensive 64 GB options). There's no workstation-class thin-and-light with graphics that are any faster than the Vega 20, especially at non-game tasks.
Most faster laptop GPUs are found in much larger, gaming-focused laptops. There are a very few relatively thin and light gaming laptops that offer NVidia RTX 2070 or 2080 GPUs, but at huge costs in battery life. Razer isn't even quoting battery life on their higher-end Blade models - but the lower-end model with a GTX 1060 is listed as "up to" 6 hours, which will be much less if you run Lightroom or anything else that loads the system. My suspicion is that, when they finally release the figures, the 2070 and 2080 models will be 3-4 hours browsing the web and measured in minutes for anything that really uses the GPU?
CPU rumors vary between Yet Another Skylake Derivative a few hundred MHz faster with the same core counts around the summer on the one hand and Sunny Cove on a 10nm process with substantial architectural improvements at the end of the year on the other. There is also at least one article that seems to imply a final generation of 14nm CPUs (at least for Intel NUC mini-desktops) with a core count bump - although the availability is late enough (early 2020 for the 45w chips) that they might be talking about limited-availability Sunny Cove chips.
Intel occasionally puts chips in NUC boxes that they can't yet make enough of for more mainstream machines. I wouldn't find it at all hard to believe that they might release a Sunny Cove NUC in, say, February 2020 using a chip that wouldn't be available in Apple quantities until summer. The same chip could technically be "shipping" in a Razer Blade or the like in March or so, even though Apple might not see them for quite a while - Apple uses many more 45w chips than small vendors like Razer.
GPUs are probably in the same time frame - but Apple just did a GPU bump without calling the MBP a new model. I'd be very surprised to see them do two successive GPU-only (or even essentially GPU-only) upgrades.
Apple might or might not bother with Yet Another Skylake Derivative (assuming that it doesn't bump available core counts). Right before Skylake, they ignored Broadwell chips perfectly suitable for a minor update to the MBP, keeping Haswell on the market from late 2013 until the emergence of the Touch Bar/Skylake generation. They would be crazy to ignore something with a core count bump, and they won't ignore Sunny Cove when it comes out.
What would they do at a redesign? Screens with higher resolutions and smaller/nonexistent bezels seem logical. Could they go to 5K on the 15", which might become a 16" by killing the bezel? They'll give the keyboard another try - but it'll still be very flat - they use essentially the same keyboard across the line, and it has to fit in the MacBook. It'll either be another generation of butterfly or (if the redesign isn't for a few years) perhaps something more exotic that uses haptics. Sunny Cove makes it easy for them to support 64 GB RAM options if they want to (or 32 GB but going back to low-power RAM). They're already offering up to 4 TB SSDs (at a price), and there's nowhere else to go right now. AMD is working on attractive 7 nm GPUs.
What about alternative chips? AMD makes nothing suitable for a 15" MBP, and has shown little interest in that small market. Their highest-end mobile chips right now are quad core with relatively low base clocks, while Intel offers six cores at a faster clock speed. Of course the AMD chip is much less power hungry (35 watts including graphics, while the Intel chips are 45 plus graphics). A 45 watt plus graphics Ryzen could be very interesting, as could a ~ 85 watt chip that includes the Vega 20 (allowing better balancing of CPU and GPU loads - don't need the GPU for a given task, let the 8-core CPU pull 70 watts). Unfortunately, there is no mobile Ryzen anywhere near that class...
Apple's own CPUs are a long way from the MacBook Pro. There are two problems - one is that the MBP, especially the 15", needs a faster, more power-hungry core than anything in the A-series right now. A big core is a huge commitment, while there are a lot of Macs that could get by with the same cores as the iPad Pro - perhaps more of them. The second is that the MBP market needs really broad software compatibility (including Boot Camp and Parallels). The logical first step with A-Series Macs is restricting them to the Mac App Store, where Apple can make sure to hand out the right binaries.
My speculation is that the A-series will appear first in the MacBook, and will spread to the Mac Mini and the lower end of the iMac line. This is a guess, but what if Apple uses the designation "Pro" to identify Intel Macs? Could this be what we see by 2022?
MacBook = extreme thin and light, A-series (an iPad Pro chip will do), Mac App Store only, might come in two screen sizes. Higher-end models might increase core count above the iPad Pro.
Mac Mini = media consumption oriented (somewhere in between a Mini and an Apple TV), A-series (again, really an iPad Pro chip), Mac App Store only.
iMac = 21" and a larger screen size (could be a living room size larger than 27"), A-series (new chip using more of the iPad Pro's fast cores - think of it as a double iPad Pro chip). No chin or bezels, since the A-series chip is easier to cool. Mac App Store only
And the Intel lineup:
MacBook Pro = thin and light Intel workstation in 13" and 15" variants (maybe 14" and 16" if Apple goes bezel-free). 15" uses the fastest mobile chips available and discrete AMD graphics. Software from anywhere (including Boot Camp and Parallels).
iMac Pro = (note that the 27" iMac becomes an iMac Pro, while the 27" iMac Pro gets a 32" 8K screen to go with its Xeon). Fast, powerful Intel all-in-one. 27" and 32" versions. 27" uses fast desktop CPUs and midrange GPUs, while 32" uses Xeons and AMD's best GPUs. Needs chins and bezels to cool. Software from anywhere.
Mac Pro = High-end Xeon workstation. Software from anywhere.
Mac Mini Pro???? = Similar to 2018 Mini. Uses top-end laptop chips. Software from anywhere.
All of the "Intel" Macs could be Intel or AMD - the only problem with a Ryzen-Threadripper lineup is the 15" MBP. The 13" MBP would work with AMD's highest-end mobile chips, and the desktops all work (Ryzen for the 27" iMac that gets a "Pro" designation and for the "Mini Pro", Threadripper for the 32" heir to the current iMac Pro, Threadripper or Epyc for the Mac Pro).
The Mac Mini Pro is confusing. Apple needs to offer something Intel (or AMD) on the desktop below the 27" iMac that becomes "Pro". They could either have a 21" "iMac Pro", which seems like a real stretch, offer lower-end configurations of the Mac Pro, or do a Mac Mini Pro. I think the Mini Pro is most likely, because it continues to avoid a gaming-oriented "slotbox" that Apple has been carefully avoiding for many years. They want to keep any expandability very high in the line, where it benefits Hollywood and the high end of the photo and music markets, not gamers looking to stick a GeForce in their Mac - simply because they don't want the support hassles that odd gaming configurations and oddly behaved games bring.
Most faster laptop GPUs are found in much larger, gaming-focused laptops. There are a very few relatively thin and light gaming laptops that offer NVidia RTX 2070 or 2080 GPUs, but at huge costs in battery life. Razer isn't even quoting battery life on their higher-end Blade models - but the lower-end model with a GTX 1060 is listed as "up to" 6 hours, which will be much less if you run Lightroom or anything else that loads the system. My suspicion is that, when they finally release the figures, the 2070 and 2080 models will be 3-4 hours browsing the web and measured in minutes for anything that really uses the GPU?
CPU rumors vary between Yet Another Skylake Derivative a few hundred MHz faster with the same core counts around the summer on the one hand and Sunny Cove on a 10nm process with substantial architectural improvements at the end of the year on the other. There is also at least one article that seems to imply a final generation of 14nm CPUs (at least for Intel NUC mini-desktops) with a core count bump - although the availability is late enough (early 2020 for the 45w chips) that they might be talking about limited-availability Sunny Cove chips.
Intel occasionally puts chips in NUC boxes that they can't yet make enough of for more mainstream machines. I wouldn't find it at all hard to believe that they might release a Sunny Cove NUC in, say, February 2020 using a chip that wouldn't be available in Apple quantities until summer. The same chip could technically be "shipping" in a Razer Blade or the like in March or so, even though Apple might not see them for quite a while - Apple uses many more 45w chips than small vendors like Razer.
GPUs are probably in the same time frame - but Apple just did a GPU bump without calling the MBP a new model. I'd be very surprised to see them do two successive GPU-only (or even essentially GPU-only) upgrades.
Apple might or might not bother with Yet Another Skylake Derivative (assuming that it doesn't bump available core counts). Right before Skylake, they ignored Broadwell chips perfectly suitable for a minor update to the MBP, keeping Haswell on the market from late 2013 until the emergence of the Touch Bar/Skylake generation. They would be crazy to ignore something with a core count bump, and they won't ignore Sunny Cove when it comes out.
What would they do at a redesign? Screens with higher resolutions and smaller/nonexistent bezels seem logical. Could they go to 5K on the 15", which might become a 16" by killing the bezel? They'll give the keyboard another try - but it'll still be very flat - they use essentially the same keyboard across the line, and it has to fit in the MacBook. It'll either be another generation of butterfly or (if the redesign isn't for a few years) perhaps something more exotic that uses haptics. Sunny Cove makes it easy for them to support 64 GB RAM options if they want to (or 32 GB but going back to low-power RAM). They're already offering up to 4 TB SSDs (at a price), and there's nowhere else to go right now. AMD is working on attractive 7 nm GPUs.
What about alternative chips? AMD makes nothing suitable for a 15" MBP, and has shown little interest in that small market. Their highest-end mobile chips right now are quad core with relatively low base clocks, while Intel offers six cores at a faster clock speed. Of course the AMD chip is much less power hungry (35 watts including graphics, while the Intel chips are 45 plus graphics). A 45 watt plus graphics Ryzen could be very interesting, as could a ~ 85 watt chip that includes the Vega 20 (allowing better balancing of CPU and GPU loads - don't need the GPU for a given task, let the 8-core CPU pull 70 watts). Unfortunately, there is no mobile Ryzen anywhere near that class...
Apple's own CPUs are a long way from the MacBook Pro. There are two problems - one is that the MBP, especially the 15", needs a faster, more power-hungry core than anything in the A-series right now. A big core is a huge commitment, while there are a lot of Macs that could get by with the same cores as the iPad Pro - perhaps more of them. The second is that the MBP market needs really broad software compatibility (including Boot Camp and Parallels). The logical first step with A-Series Macs is restricting them to the Mac App Store, where Apple can make sure to hand out the right binaries.
My speculation is that the A-series will appear first in the MacBook, and will spread to the Mac Mini and the lower end of the iMac line. This is a guess, but what if Apple uses the designation "Pro" to identify Intel Macs? Could this be what we see by 2022?
MacBook = extreme thin and light, A-series (an iPad Pro chip will do), Mac App Store only, might come in two screen sizes. Higher-end models might increase core count above the iPad Pro.
Mac Mini = media consumption oriented (somewhere in between a Mini and an Apple TV), A-series (again, really an iPad Pro chip), Mac App Store only.
iMac = 21" and a larger screen size (could be a living room size larger than 27"), A-series (new chip using more of the iPad Pro's fast cores - think of it as a double iPad Pro chip). No chin or bezels, since the A-series chip is easier to cool. Mac App Store only
And the Intel lineup:
MacBook Pro = thin and light Intel workstation in 13" and 15" variants (maybe 14" and 16" if Apple goes bezel-free). 15" uses the fastest mobile chips available and discrete AMD graphics. Software from anywhere (including Boot Camp and Parallels).
iMac Pro = (note that the 27" iMac becomes an iMac Pro, while the 27" iMac Pro gets a 32" 8K screen to go with its Xeon). Fast, powerful Intel all-in-one. 27" and 32" versions. 27" uses fast desktop CPUs and midrange GPUs, while 32" uses Xeons and AMD's best GPUs. Needs chins and bezels to cool. Software from anywhere.
Mac Pro = High-end Xeon workstation. Software from anywhere.
Mac Mini Pro???? = Similar to 2018 Mini. Uses top-end laptop chips. Software from anywhere.
All of the "Intel" Macs could be Intel or AMD - the only problem with a Ryzen-Threadripper lineup is the 15" MBP. The 13" MBP would work with AMD's highest-end mobile chips, and the desktops all work (Ryzen for the 27" iMac that gets a "Pro" designation and for the "Mini Pro", Threadripper for the 32" heir to the current iMac Pro, Threadripper or Epyc for the Mac Pro).
The Mac Mini Pro is confusing. Apple needs to offer something Intel (or AMD) on the desktop below the 27" iMac that becomes "Pro". They could either have a 21" "iMac Pro", which seems like a real stretch, offer lower-end configurations of the Mac Pro, or do a Mac Mini Pro. I think the Mini Pro is most likely, because it continues to avoid a gaming-oriented "slotbox" that Apple has been carefully avoiding for many years. They want to keep any expandability very high in the line, where it benefits Hollywood and the high end of the photo and music markets, not gamers looking to stick a GeForce in their Mac - simply because they don't want the support hassles that odd gaming configurations and oddly behaved games bring.
FaceID, slimmer bezels, bigger screen are all things that would make me refresh.
I agree on the CPU side there is not much to be done for some time.
Updated keyboard as well and I'm willing to drop way too much money on one of those...