(Sorry for digging up a 16 days-old thread.)
CPU:
I never liked Sandy Bridge processors, with their locked multipliers on non-K series, having to choose between overclocking (P67) and IGP + appealing QuickSync Video (H67), plus the SATAII flaw. All that tarnished what is otherwise a great improvement over previous generations, in both instructions per clock-cycle and IGP speed.
To me, Ivy Bridge is going to be SB done right: the fixed, clean, polished version.
Given that Apple was among the first manufacturers to integrate SB, they're very likely to be first with IB too. From
early rumors, the release date of Ivy Bridge processors (late 2011) seems to coincide with the
expected one of MacBook Pros (early 2011 => late 2011). That would be perfect. The late 2011 MBPs would be the ultimate one to get.
Optical Drive:
Obviously, no internal Blu-Ray drive. If they wanted to do it, it would have be done it by now.
Judging by the success of MacBook Airs, which don't have the usual DVD SuperDrive, I think Apple may conclude that optical drives don't matter that much anymore nowadays, media consumption happening primarily over the Internet. For those who want a Blu-Ray / DVD reader / writer, there's the external drive option.
Best case scenario, that will make room for an additional 2.5" drives (SSD + HDD), while still giving some room for additional space for the battery.
GPU:
Just like now, the 13" will be limited to the IGP. 15" and 17" will get a discrete, swichable GPU.
Hopefully they will come back to nVidia.
While Apple may have their say about Mac OS drivers for AMD GPUs (or even write their own from the ground up), on other OSes it's a different story. A good example is the state of their XvBA library. I will let libva developer
G. Beauchesne's quote explain it:
[...] they are still alive, at least on NVIDIA and Intel platforms. I don't see changes in XvBA going in the right direction to care more. As you probably noticed, there was no update to xvba-video for a long time because the driver still contains many bugs. I don't see what I can do more, it's a dead end. xvba-video is a pile of workarounds for driver bugs or mis-designs, thus they can break at any driver update.[...]
Their drivers and libraries are just begging for an overhaul, or a complete rewrite. nVidia have defects of their own but at least they're consistent and careful in their driver updates.
However, as Apple have invested money into AMD graphics processor and drivers, I fear they're going to keep those. Though if they write their own drivers, it's alright.
Audio:
There's only one thing that I can hope for: that they finally ground / shield / isolate the audio processing components / sound circuitry. The infamous audio jack hiss has been
plaguing MacBooks for years now.
The move to Ivy Bridge would be a chance to wipe the slate clean in the audio department and do it right for good.
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Those are my predictions / hopes. I am in the process of saving a big pile of money for this. Unless I change my mind by the time they come out, and if they deliver on the audio part at least, I will finally own a powerful MBP as my main computer. I predict the late 2011 is going to be an excellent one.
