Those are significant upgrades - more than I was expecting. Assuming that they can get the power and cooling worked out, these would be tough chips for Apple to ignore! At the least, we should see these chips dropped into the existing design - and one of the 8 core models with a Vega 20 will come pretty close to twice the performance of a 2016 or 2017 MBP (between the CPU and GPU upgrades).
The excitement looks like it applies mainly to the 15", which is what I've always had, and what I'm talking about from here on down... Starting in the Powerbook era, I've had close to half a dozen 15" Apple laptops, so I know the basic idea pretty well...
Apple had better upgrade the iMac before releasing these beasts - the i9 is significantly faster (according to the table in the AnandTech article) than the 7700K that powers the fully upgraded (but non-Pro) iMac. If these were out today, the top MBP would be the second-fastest Mac (second to the iMac Pro) - that's actually true today, due to the i9 version of the 2018 15" - but that machine is almost exactly the speed of the iMac, while this one will be notably faster.
If I had to guess, we'll see one of the two i9s as the upgrade processor... Which one depends on whether the HK is a greater than 45 watt processor. The catch is that the two i7s are so close that we'll see which one will serve as the top standard model, but Apple is unlikely to use both, which leaves a problem for the low model 15" - the i5s are quad-core and there's no 9th generation 6-core chip! Do we see the low model 15" keep an 8th generation CPU, or do we see it drop back from 6 cores to 4, or is there some CPU we aren't seeing?
Will we see the current Vega 16 and 20 in the 2019s, or will AMD come up with a 7 nm version in time? I don't think we're due for a big GPU bump performance-wise, but a 7 nm version of what they have might give some extra thermal headroom to let that hungry CPU run a bit hotter. .
My best speculative 2019 15" is as follows:
Essentially the current design (no new ports, still has the butterfly keyboard - perhaps with a minor generational improvement). Same screen, camera, Touch Bar and Touch ID. Same 16 and 32 GB RAM options. Either exactly the same SSD options or each configuration gets a 1 capacity bump (low model gets 512 GB, high model gets 1 TB). Maybe I'm being optimistic, but NAND prices are down substantially from last year - I've given my speculative Macs a bump.
High model: 8-core i7 (i9 upgrade option), Vega 20 (maybe with some 7 nm GPU as an upgrade), 1 TB SSD standard, 2 TB is a "reasonably" priced option (+$500?), 4 TB remains very expensive (+$2000???). 16 GB RAM standard, 32 GB option (+$200-$400), we may even see an expensive 64 GB option (+$1000-$1200?) - once they're using standard power DDR4 to get to 32 GB, there's no barrier to offering 64 GB as well.
Low model: top 4-core i5 (might be an 8th generation 6-core i7, or there might be a slower 8-core i7 we aren't seeing yet in the 9th generation lineup - any of these is reasonable), Vega 16 (maybe no upgrade option), 512 TB SSD, 1 TB inexpensive option (+$200), 2 TB +$700?, 4 TB very expensive (+$2200???). 16 GB with 32 GB option at same upgrade price as higher model.
And here's the Late 2020 (Sunny Cove) MBP - very speculative - mostly just for fun? Since they have to change the motherboard substantially to go to Sunny Cove, that's when the redesign is more likely to hit? Redesigned , with slightly larger screens - 13" becomes 14", 15" becomes either 15.6" or 16.something". They will get 10nm Sunny Cove CPUs, with 7nm Navi GPUs - we're still too far out to have any idea of models or speeds. Sunny Cove allows up to 64GB of low power RAM, if I'm not mistaken?
The screen resolutions increase - maybe as high as 4K in the 14" and 5K in the 15+". Probably still not an OLED screen, barring some breakthrough. Smaller bezels mean the machines don't increase in size to accommodate the larger screens.
Redesigned keyboard, but at least as flat if not flatter. Small chance of an e-ink keyboard and/or a haptic keyboard where the keys don't actually move. The Touch Bar stays (Apple very rarely backs off) unless the whole keyboard is e-ink or some other relabelable technology (or the trackpad picks up that function) Either Touch ID or Face ID, depending on how camera positioning works with whatever they do with the bezels.
Apple won't step back from the "all one port" design, but it may feature Thunderbolt 4? The advantage of TB4 would be that eGPUs are no longer an "it works, but it's right on the edge of being fast enough" proposition - TB4 will be plenty fast enough for any reasonable GPU. Still AMD only, because Apple simply won't write a NVidia driver into the OS. You can plug your GeForce in, and it'll work in Boot Camp, but not in OS X. The headphone jack is likely to be gone, but wireless charging may be mature enough to show up on a high-power device like a Mac.
Top model 15" (or whatever its new screen size is) gets the fastest available CPU, a nice mid-power GPU and a 32GB/1TB base configuration. Upgrade options go as far as 64 GB of RAM and a 4 TB SSD (perhaps more reasonably priced than it has been). Whether there's a very expensive 6 or 8 TB SSD configuration depends on what happens to NAND densities in the next year and a half - if Apple can do it in reasonable power and space, they will.
Lower model 15" gets a midline CPU and a "step down" GPU, as always. Base configuration is probably 16GB/512GB.
It wouldn't surprise me if the 13" uses a hybrid APU with Intel CPU cores and AMD graphics cores. Such things already exist in the 8th Generation lineup, and I'm a bit surprised they haven't shown up in the 13" MBP already - there was a lot of speculation when they came out that they were a special request for a large fruit-flavored phone company in Cupertino that also makes computers! A redesign might be the perfect time to drop them in...
No, I haven't forgotten about A-series Macs. I simply don't believe they're coming to the MBP any time soon. If an A-series Mac comes (which I think is reasonably likely), the first one will almost certainly be a MacBook or MacBook Air successor. Late 2020? 2021? 2022? It will be years more before it comes to the MacBook Pro, where power and compatibility (including Boot Camp/Parallels) are important, and tiny size is less so. If this redesign is in 2020, the next one is due around 2024, and that may well have several technologies that didn't make it into the 2020 model. I wouldn't be surprised either way on whether it was A-series (that might depend on how widespread Windows on ARM is, so whether Boot Camp/Parallels are meaningful on an ARM machine).
I could see Apple maintaining two Mac lines indefinitely, one Intel and one A-series - I've speculated in other threads that the Intel machines might carry the "Pro" label - MacBook Pro, iMac Pro, Mac Pro (and maybe Mac Mini Pro), while the A-series machines are labeled Mac Mini, MacBook, iMac. If that happened, the A-series machines could very easily wind up restricted to the Mac App Store to get their software, while the Pro line continue to get software from anywhere. The A-series machines would be smaller, lighter, sleeker and run iOS as well as MacOS software.
The Pro line would be the most powerful and run MacOS and Windows software at a cost in size, weight and battery life. In the case of an iMac, where size and weight don't matter as much and there's no battery, the ARM model would be a sleek, bezel and chin free machine meant for home use (21" plus a larger size, which could either be 24" or so, or possibly a "living room size" well above 30" that is meant to hang on the wall and double as a TV - maybe both). The Intel based iMac Pro, in 27" and 32" sizes (the 27" is actually the successor of the current 27" iMac, while the Xeon-based iMac Pro becomes a 32", 8K monster) keeps its bezels and chins in its natural habitat of studios, labs and high-end offices (etc.).
That would actually make the 13" MBP make more sense than it does now. There are a lot of Macs gathered around the 12" - 13" screen size right now. If the 13" MBP becomes the Intel option - somewhat bigger and heavier, but with broader compatibility, it becomes more differentiated.
The excitement looks like it applies mainly to the 15", which is what I've always had, and what I'm talking about from here on down... Starting in the Powerbook era, I've had close to half a dozen 15" Apple laptops, so I know the basic idea pretty well...
Apple had better upgrade the iMac before releasing these beasts - the i9 is significantly faster (according to the table in the AnandTech article) than the 7700K that powers the fully upgraded (but non-Pro) iMac. If these were out today, the top MBP would be the second-fastest Mac (second to the iMac Pro) - that's actually true today, due to the i9 version of the 2018 15" - but that machine is almost exactly the speed of the iMac, while this one will be notably faster.
If I had to guess, we'll see one of the two i9s as the upgrade processor... Which one depends on whether the HK is a greater than 45 watt processor. The catch is that the two i7s are so close that we'll see which one will serve as the top standard model, but Apple is unlikely to use both, which leaves a problem for the low model 15" - the i5s are quad-core and there's no 9th generation 6-core chip! Do we see the low model 15" keep an 8th generation CPU, or do we see it drop back from 6 cores to 4, or is there some CPU we aren't seeing?
Will we see the current Vega 16 and 20 in the 2019s, or will AMD come up with a 7 nm version in time? I don't think we're due for a big GPU bump performance-wise, but a 7 nm version of what they have might give some extra thermal headroom to let that hungry CPU run a bit hotter. .
My best speculative 2019 15" is as follows:
Essentially the current design (no new ports, still has the butterfly keyboard - perhaps with a minor generational improvement). Same screen, camera, Touch Bar and Touch ID. Same 16 and 32 GB RAM options. Either exactly the same SSD options or each configuration gets a 1 capacity bump (low model gets 512 GB, high model gets 1 TB). Maybe I'm being optimistic, but NAND prices are down substantially from last year - I've given my speculative Macs a bump.
High model: 8-core i7 (i9 upgrade option), Vega 20 (maybe with some 7 nm GPU as an upgrade), 1 TB SSD standard, 2 TB is a "reasonably" priced option (+$500?), 4 TB remains very expensive (+$2000???). 16 GB RAM standard, 32 GB option (+$200-$400), we may even see an expensive 64 GB option (+$1000-$1200?) - once they're using standard power DDR4 to get to 32 GB, there's no barrier to offering 64 GB as well.
Low model: top 4-core i5 (might be an 8th generation 6-core i7, or there might be a slower 8-core i7 we aren't seeing yet in the 9th generation lineup - any of these is reasonable), Vega 16 (maybe no upgrade option), 512 TB SSD, 1 TB inexpensive option (+$200), 2 TB +$700?, 4 TB very expensive (+$2200???). 16 GB with 32 GB option at same upgrade price as higher model.
And here's the Late 2020 (Sunny Cove) MBP - very speculative - mostly just for fun? Since they have to change the motherboard substantially to go to Sunny Cove, that's when the redesign is more likely to hit? Redesigned , with slightly larger screens - 13" becomes 14", 15" becomes either 15.6" or 16.something". They will get 10nm Sunny Cove CPUs, with 7nm Navi GPUs - we're still too far out to have any idea of models or speeds. Sunny Cove allows up to 64GB of low power RAM, if I'm not mistaken?
The screen resolutions increase - maybe as high as 4K in the 14" and 5K in the 15+". Probably still not an OLED screen, barring some breakthrough. Smaller bezels mean the machines don't increase in size to accommodate the larger screens.
Redesigned keyboard, but at least as flat if not flatter. Small chance of an e-ink keyboard and/or a haptic keyboard where the keys don't actually move. The Touch Bar stays (Apple very rarely backs off) unless the whole keyboard is e-ink or some other relabelable technology (or the trackpad picks up that function) Either Touch ID or Face ID, depending on how camera positioning works with whatever they do with the bezels.
Apple won't step back from the "all one port" design, but it may feature Thunderbolt 4? The advantage of TB4 would be that eGPUs are no longer an "it works, but it's right on the edge of being fast enough" proposition - TB4 will be plenty fast enough for any reasonable GPU. Still AMD only, because Apple simply won't write a NVidia driver into the OS. You can plug your GeForce in, and it'll work in Boot Camp, but not in OS X. The headphone jack is likely to be gone, but wireless charging may be mature enough to show up on a high-power device like a Mac.
Top model 15" (or whatever its new screen size is) gets the fastest available CPU, a nice mid-power GPU and a 32GB/1TB base configuration. Upgrade options go as far as 64 GB of RAM and a 4 TB SSD (perhaps more reasonably priced than it has been). Whether there's a very expensive 6 or 8 TB SSD configuration depends on what happens to NAND densities in the next year and a half - if Apple can do it in reasonable power and space, they will.
Lower model 15" gets a midline CPU and a "step down" GPU, as always. Base configuration is probably 16GB/512GB.
It wouldn't surprise me if the 13" uses a hybrid APU with Intel CPU cores and AMD graphics cores. Such things already exist in the 8th Generation lineup, and I'm a bit surprised they haven't shown up in the 13" MBP already - there was a lot of speculation when they came out that they were a special request for a large fruit-flavored phone company in Cupertino that also makes computers! A redesign might be the perfect time to drop them in...
No, I haven't forgotten about A-series Macs. I simply don't believe they're coming to the MBP any time soon. If an A-series Mac comes (which I think is reasonably likely), the first one will almost certainly be a MacBook or MacBook Air successor. Late 2020? 2021? 2022? It will be years more before it comes to the MacBook Pro, where power and compatibility (including Boot Camp/Parallels) are important, and tiny size is less so. If this redesign is in 2020, the next one is due around 2024, and that may well have several technologies that didn't make it into the 2020 model. I wouldn't be surprised either way on whether it was A-series (that might depend on how widespread Windows on ARM is, so whether Boot Camp/Parallels are meaningful on an ARM machine).
I could see Apple maintaining two Mac lines indefinitely, one Intel and one A-series - I've speculated in other threads that the Intel machines might carry the "Pro" label - MacBook Pro, iMac Pro, Mac Pro (and maybe Mac Mini Pro), while the A-series machines are labeled Mac Mini, MacBook, iMac. If that happened, the A-series machines could very easily wind up restricted to the Mac App Store to get their software, while the Pro line continue to get software from anywhere. The A-series machines would be smaller, lighter, sleeker and run iOS as well as MacOS software.
The Pro line would be the most powerful and run MacOS and Windows software at a cost in size, weight and battery life. In the case of an iMac, where size and weight don't matter as much and there's no battery, the ARM model would be a sleek, bezel and chin free machine meant for home use (21" plus a larger size, which could either be 24" or so, or possibly a "living room size" well above 30" that is meant to hang on the wall and double as a TV - maybe both). The Intel based iMac Pro, in 27" and 32" sizes (the 27" is actually the successor of the current 27" iMac, while the Xeon-based iMac Pro becomes a 32", 8K monster) keeps its bezels and chins in its natural habitat of studios, labs and high-end offices (etc.).
That would actually make the 13" MBP make more sense than it does now. There are a lot of Macs gathered around the 12" - 13" screen size right now. If the 13" MBP becomes the Intel option - somewhat bigger and heavier, but with broader compatibility, it becomes more differentiated.
