What Next for MacBook Pro? Four Upgrades We're Likely to See

[Fabercon]

Very reasonable arguments. Although I’m not so confident in the short run Apple will significantly differentiate laptop and desktop chips. When Apple took the bold decision of going all in with the SoC architecture it got a significant conceptual advantage, that allows to improve and “redesign” the management of processing power rather than just “scale by stacking” processing cores, something along the lines IBM has been doing in their datacenter processing. In short increase processing efficiency. However I think this will need time to mature before being released. So meanwhile we are getting the benefits of the efforts put in increase power efficiency-the M line.
As for Intel offer, although I share your “wishful” thinking, I think when bootcamp got ditched, it was a clear sign to professional customers and their catering software developers, they had to choose between OS. In my professional area-AEC-MacOS still has very little and poor implementation, specially because of very scarce Metal adoption/optimization. So a lot of folks who really need top performance just went PC. This Metal “handicap” is something Apple needs to address fiercely if it wants to have a relevant role in AR and VR as Tim’s keeps telling, and in that process, also so some of us don’t feel the M1max is already “overpowered”?.

My point with the Mobile VS Desktop chips is that while the M1 Max is a very powerful chip it is not powerful enough as a solo package for a Pro desktop unless they allow it to boost up to 130+ watts (and a CPU cooling system to support it).

With me saying that there will be an updated Intel option, I was not referring to Bootcamp. Just like Apple releasing an updated G5 Tower back in the days of the transition to Intel, there will be business partners who still depend on that release. Chances are it will be a Mac Mini OR the Mac Pro (but not both). Obviously anyone who buys one knows that it is obsolete but their business decisions outweigh those requirements. Likely those individuals will also purchase an M1 Mac.

In fact it is rather exciting with Monterey and the new Universal Control (released later) which hopefully will allow two computers to work nearly seamlessly as one with multiple monitors. I would love having an 27" iMac M1 Max with an Intel Mac Mini with a 4k/5k monitor to do my development and drag files between them... viewing email on one machine and opening attachments on the other... code editor on one, and running built applications on both. Maybe reality will not match up with my expectations, but I really hope that they do.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

But like the A# development for the iOS devices, they don't have to update the architecture every year. For example, during the iPhone 4 through 7, they were on a tick-tock release schedule where the first year they redesigned the body and the second year they updated the internals.

Mac hardware redesigns I am not talking about. Mostly I'm referring to the processor here: M2, M3, M4, M5, M6.

If they were to make any changes to MBP going forward in the next couple of years, I'd like to see things like latest spec Wifi, latest spec Bluetooth, latest spec SD Card, latest spec HDMI and I would love if they begrudgingly added one USB-A port for complete backwards compatibility without the need for a dongle: as an additional port to what we already have. And for the love that all that is holy let them add SD Card to MBA—in spite of the rumours to the contrary. Some of us amateur photographers love our thin and light Macs.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Mac hardware redesigns I am not talking about. Mostly I'm referring to the processor here: M2, M3, M4, M5, M6.

If they were to make any changes to MBP going forward in the next couple of years, I'd like to see things like latest spec Wifi, latest spec Bluetooth, latest spec SD Card, latest spec HDMI and I would love if they begrudgingly added one USB-A port for complete backwards compatibility without dongles. And for the love that all that is holy let them add SD Card to MBA—in spite of rumours to the contrary.

Very Lovely