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What do you think guys? 4k Macbook pro coming soon?

O

orl2008

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 19, 2015
2
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Hello there,
Been one of the readers on the forum, now I guess is the time to register.
Anybody thinks something like a 4k screen is on th way to us (as apple likes to release the good stuff before others do, and hit)?

I've got a good offer right now, for the Mid 2014 Macbook Pro, but rumors just don't stop arriving (4k display, skylake, etc..).

Rumors will always be there (except shortly after a new product release from apple), but I think it's already not such a good time to buy it, and wait for the new one.

Plus, I have to say, a big computer store in my country, which has many branches, got no macbook pro retinas in their stock right now, in a weird way, which looks pretty weird.

Apple's gonna release a new model somewhere around h2 2015? What do you think guys?
 
Honestly, I don't see a point in a 4K screen on an rMBP, except on a 17" model. Any increase of PPI on the 15" would potentially compromise performance without noticeable increase in quality. In a few years we could get 3x or 4x resolutions, but we would need stacked RAM first to have enough spare bandwidth for such decadence ;)
 
I wouldn't bet on it. A 4K display in such a small size would likely be harder to produce with a lower yield, plus there would be a performance impact for the GPU to drive such a high resolution display.

The current Retina displays in the 13" and 15" MacBook Pro's are certainly more than good enough, I don't see them changing that for a while.
 
I think they will discontinue the mac book pro and replace it with the macbooktouch. anyone agree? I hope they will make it thinner, faster, and much more appealing to customers such as more buttons, get rid of the bezel edges and make it detachable
 
I wouldn't rule out something like 3360x2100, but 4k seems a bit... extreme.

(For those who don't see why, 3360x2100 is the old Macbook Pro's resolution, but at Retina. Current generation Retina Macbook Pros are running below the effective resolution of the old Macbook Pros.)
 
Natzoo said:
I think they will discontinue the mac book pro and replace it with the macbooktouch. anyone agree? I hope they will make it thinner, faster, and much more appealing to customers such as more buttons, get rid of the bezel edges and make it detachable
Click to expand...
I don't see this happening, as Apple have already stated they have no intention of trying to turn OS X into iOS. Two different form factors, two different methods of input. It just wouldn't make sense, and the user experience honestly wouldn't be that great.
 
goMac said:
I wouldn't rule out something like 3360x2100, but 4k seems a bit... extreme.

(For those who don't see why, 3360x2100 is the old Macbook Pro's resolution, but at Retina. Current generation Retina Macbook Pros are running below the effective resolution of the old Macbook Pros.)
Click to expand...

The old MacBook Pros only ran at 1440x900, which will translate to 2880x1800 (the current 15" rMBP) when retina-fied.

BTO variants had the option of 1680x1050, and there is no pixel-doubled variant of this. But then, it's pointless since your eye can't distinguish pixels already at 2880x1800.
 
I doubt they'll be making any changes to the display until 2016, when they may up the pixel density a bit and maybe switch to OLED. Until then it's likely to remain the same it currently is.
 
Given that Apple already can't properly build their current retina displays (poor white and black point uniformity, poor colour uniformity) to the uniformity standards of their cheap TFT screens, I'd rather have them focus on lowering uniformity tolerances than increase the resolution.
 
Apple has a history of being fairly conservative about screen resolutions across devices, so I really have my doubts.

The original 2006 15" Macbook Pro came standard with a 1440x900 screen and they kept that resolution all the way to the introduction of the first rMBP in 2012. The only computer I can remember getting an upgrade in default resolution is the 17" Pro that went from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200 with the first unibody machines. Other than that, the iPhone doesn't change resolutions unless the size of the device changes and the iPad has only had "retina" and "pre-retina" resolutions for the two sizes in the 5 years since the original came out.
 
I suppose they will upgrade the display somehow at some point. Upping the resolution is hardly pointless for the human eye at its current size; you cant see the pixels now, so you couldn't tell the difference. They could make a more power efficient display though.
 
MayaTlab said:
Given that Apple already can't properly build their current retina displays (poor white and black point uniformity, poor colour uniformity) to the uniformity standards of their cheap TFT screens, I'd rather have them focus on lowering uniformity tolerances than increase the resolution.
Click to expand...

I admit it would be nice to see them pioneer the use of OLED displays in laptops, but something tells me it isn't gong to happen.
 
Xeridionix said:
I wouldn't bet on it. A 4K display in such a small size would likely be harder to produce with a lower yield, plus there would be a performance impact for the GPU to drive such a high resolution display.
Click to expand...

There are more than half a dozen PC notebooks from various manufacturers with 15" 4k displays. Yields aren't an issue. Those notebooks tend to have very beefy GPUs though, but then the dedicated GPU in the MBP should be plenty.
 
redheeler said:
I admit it would be nice to see them pioneer the use of OLED displays in laptops, but something tells me it isn't gong to happen.
Click to expand...

I believe it's only very, very recently that OLED screens have started to become somewhat competitive with IPS displays for graphics editing, and I'm not sure the technology is inherently better to produce uniform displays and lower tolerances. I'd really like Apple to guarantee a minimum performance on their displays in terms of uniformity.
 
I think it will happen eventually. When Iris Pro gets powerful enough for 4K editing it will be nice to have a screen that can fully display 4K.
 
venom600 said:
There are more than half a dozen PC notebooks from various manufacturers with 15" 4k displays. Yields aren't an issue. Those notebooks tend to have very beefy GPUs though, but then the dedicated GPU in the MBP should be plenty.
Click to expand...
What competing manufacturers are doing in this respect doesn't really mean much considering all of Apple's competition has at least two dozen different kinds of models out at the same time and at least half a dozen for every screen size. That means only the people who really want a high res display like that are going for it and limited supply is not going to be an issue.

Apple has two sizes of that Macbook Pro and if they upgrade one of them to 4k that means a LOT of people, most of them not particularly interested in anything about the current resolution are going to be buying the same machines and this WILL cause supply chain issues. If they have it as an optional extra like the 1680x1050 display, then it wouldn't be an issue, but Apple has these days kept their optional extras to different size SSD's and amounts of RAM.
 
I think 3300x2100 will come eventually on the 15" (1650x1050 retina resolution). Probably 2-3 years. The way apple handles retina displays in OSX, 4k would only help people that like 1920x1200 retina resolution, which I expect is a small number of people (though I use that one). I'm already rendering the desktop at that high pixel density, so I might as well get a display to match. I'm pretty happy with 2880x1800 though.

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SarcasticJoe said:
Apple has a history of being fairly conservative about screen resolutions across devices, so I really have my doubts.

The original 2006 15" Macbook Pro came standard with a 1440x900 screen and they kept that resolution all the way to the introduction of the first rMBP in 2012. The only computer I can remember getting an upgrade in default resolution is the 17" Pro that went from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200 with the first unibody machines. Other than that, the iPhone doesn't change resolutions unless the size of the device changes and the iPad has only had "retina" and "pre-retina" resolutions for the two sizes in the 5 years since the original came out.
Click to expand...

The airs have 1400x900 on a 13", so that shows that apple feels OSX works well at that resolution with that screen size. It therefore makes sense eventually that the resolution would increase to 2880x1800 on the 13" rmbp (retina res of 1400x900).
 
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Freyqq said:
The airs have 1400x900 on a 13", so it makes sense eventually that the resolution would increase to 2880x1800 on the 13" rmbp (retina res of 1400x900).
Click to expand...

The 13" Air originally shipped with a 1280x800 display before upgrading to it's current default resolution. If they're going to upgrade again, it'll probably be another small increment considering the Air is supposed be great batterylife on a small battery and a high res display is going to make the machine eat trough it's battery a lot faster.

There's also the fact that if they go "retina" on the Air it'll be stepping on the Pro's toes so to speak and they killed the original Macbook just because of stepping on sibling models' toes.
 
yjchua95 said:
The old MacBook Pros only ran at 1440x900, which will translate to 2880x1800 (the current 15" rMBP) when retina-fied.

BTO variants had the option of 1680x1050, and there is no pixel-doubled variant of this. But then, it's pointless since your eye can't distinguish pixels already at 2880x1800.
Click to expand...

Sure, but you get ugly scaling going on if you change the effective resolution to 1680x1050. Basically any time you step off the 2x resolution (Best in Display Preferences) you kick in the display scaler, which blurs the output and consumes way may resources to run.

Being able to move to pure 2x 1680x1050 without software scaling would be nice, even if it was a BTO option just like before.

Basically, if you're a photographer or an artist and you move off of the Best resolution, you can't trust the display output because the software is making up filler pixels.
 
Double dittos on what spaceball said. You reach a point where the number of pixels becomes redundant and there's very little benefit.
 
goMac said:
I wouldn't rule out something like 3360x2100, but 4k seems a bit... extreme.

(For those who don't see why, 3360x2100 is the old Macbook Pro's resolution, but at Retina. Current generation Retina Macbook Pros are running below the effective resolution of the old Macbook Pros.)
Click to expand...

Swear it was 1440 x 900 all along.
 
Apple's trend so far seems to be shifting from @2x to @3x, as seen from the iPhone 6+ (although they are downsampling there to fit 1080p....)

The base density-independent resolution of the MacBook Pro 15" is currently 1400 x 900.

This would mean if they were to "shift" to a @3x ratio, the expected resolution would be 4200 x 2700 @ 333 PPI. At 11.3 megapixels, this would be in excess of 4k or 3840 x 2160 (8.3 megapixels). It's not unreasonable given the engineering achievement Apple did with the 5k iMac (14.7 megapixels), but they would not do it until a sufficiently powerful and energy efficient GPU were available to power such a display on a laptop @ 60Hz.

Apple never does anything until they feel all the parts are ready and in place. (that is, with the exception of the crummy Siri / Maps... bye bye Forstall...)

N.B. For the 13", it would be 3840 x 2400. This is much closer to 4k resolution, but given Apple's tendency give "flagship" / larger versions priority (iPad Air 2 v iPad Mini 3, retina iMac 27" v iMac 21", retina Macbook Pro 15" v 13") I wouldn't expect them to release a higher resolution 13" before the 15"....
 
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