What else besides Haswell?

[puma1552]

The MBPs were last updated in February of this year, though that was the small speed bump update in Apple's seemingly consistent cycle of big update-->speed bump-->big update-->speed bump-->big update-->speed bump

So since the February update was the speed bump, this is expected to be the big update (which is long, long overdue going back to what, June of last year when the rMBP was released?). We know Haswell and more battery life is coming, and I've heard murmurs of PCI SSDs (significance?) and the losing of the dedicated graphics chip (why?), but what else is rumored? I haven't seen much on the upcoming MBPs, particularly the rMBPs. Even though Apple tends to have pretty disappointing updates, even I'm thinking that there has to be a more significant upgrade than this.

So what else is in the rumor mill?

 

[Atomic Walrus]

The MBPs were last updated in February of this year, though that was the small speed bump update in Apple's seemingly consistent cycle of big update-->speed bump-->big update-->speed bump-->big update-->speed bump

So since the February update was the speed bump, this is expected to be the big update (which is long, long overdue going back to what, June of last year when the rMBP was released?). We know Haswell and more battery life is coming, and I've heard murmurs of PCI SSDs (significance?) and the losing of the dedicated graphics chip (why?), but what else is rumored? I haven't seen much on the upcoming MBPs, particularly the rMBPs. Even though Apple tends to have pretty disappointing updates, even I'm thinking that there has to be a more significant upgrade than this.

So what else is in the rumor mill?

It's worth noting that Haswell's battery improvements are a huge deal to some of us. Obviously the iGPU upgrade is also a big deal for the 13" rMBP. Moving past that, the PCIe SSDs seen in the Air are significantly faster than is possible with SATA III. They've been shown operating in the 700-800 MB/sec range.

I'm not sure anyone other than Apple can really answer why the dGPU is leaving. In fact this is technically speculation; We're simply assuming it is because we've seen a Geekbench report with an HD 5200 iGPU and no sign of a dGPU. It's technically possible that Geekbench failed to recognize a dGPU because of some software/driver changes in the new system, but unfortunately probably more likely that the dGPU is gone.

Why do it? It's unclear to me, but I'm not deeply familiar with the technology involved with dynamic GPU switching. I know that having this tech operating silently in the background frequently results in the dGPU coming on when it probably shouldn't (and thus killing the battery), but with the inclusion of HD 5200 it seems like this could be easily solved: The HD 5200 is fast enough to operate under nearly all non-3D situations, so the software could be far less aggressive about switching to dGPU.

Aside from that there are simply no other rumors out there. The lack of rumors (or leaks) suggests that the systems will otherwise be more or less identical, since any major changes to form factor (unlikely after only 1 year) or the inclusion of, say, a touch display would have likely already appeared in the form of part leaks.

 

[jav6454]

A better dGPU seems like a good choice.

 

[mattshort]

They should also get 802.11ac to match the Air and AEBS. So, there's 3 things that are pretty much confirmed (haswell, PCIe SSDs, 802.11ac).

As for other rumors, there hasn't been anything nearly concrete enough to comment on.