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No it's not. I have a scenario where I give a course all day on a beamer. I like to both connect the beamer and have power at the same time. So one port in, and one port out.

I like to pack light, that's why I have a MacBook.

Beamer? You mean a projector?

Most projectors take the standard VGA/DVI/HDMI ports so I'd guess you'd have to use an adapter anyway. Why not use one that also provides power and just plug that one thing into the computer? Like the one that Apple sells?

And if in the future you end up having a projector that supports USB-C, then it will provide power as well. You don't need the 2nd port for that.

USB-C is not just "one port in and one port out", it's both.
 
Why not use one that also provides power and just plug that one thing into the computer? Like the one that Apple sells?

Because I've one without.

There are use cases for a 2nd USB-C port. It seems hard for you to accept that it undermines your plea.

And beamer is projector. Sorry, but many in Europe call it a beamer.
 
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No, it seems hard for you to accept that a 2nd port is not necessary for your use case, and that all you have to do is get another adapter.

Yes, I concede that there are use cases for 2nd USB-C port. However, it's just not necessary in your case.

And either way, the limitation stands. Both ports cannot run at maximum capacity on the current processors, so having 2 would be very confusing/almost pointless right now.

The situation may change in the future when Intel produces processors for the Macbook that will support more data lanes, but there is no such thing in their current roadmap (all the way up to the Cannonlake).
 
what are your realistic and your wishful expectations for WWDC release (if the rumor is true)

Mine:

Realistic -
- $100 price drop
- Kaby Lake
- 1 extra hour battery life
- slight processor speed bump
- 2nd gen butterfly keyboard
- brighter screen (that tech on the MBP's forgot the name)

Wishful-
- $200 price drop to place it as the cheap notebook killing the MBA
- Touch bar on higher end model
- No touch bar but touch id replacing the power button
- Aditional USB C port
- 14" model
 
Realistic:
- Kaby Lake
- ~5-10% general performance boost + >4K video contents will play nicer (so FCP may get more than 10% improvement)
- same battery life <- Kaby Lake is not going to improve battery life, it's a very minor bump
- 2nd gen butterfly keyboard
- same 8GB RAM
- same price

Wishful:
- 16GB RAM (LPDDR3 can be 16GB if Apple would "stack" it, but it'll be more prone to failure -> much more expensive)
- i5 model replacing m3 for baseline (highly likely but I'm not sure if Apple wants to let go of their margins)
- brighter screen -> LESS battery life (no free lunch)
- bigger battery -> will offset the extra power draw by the screen, but will increase weight
- 13.5" model with ultra thin bezels (this may cause a price drop, but I'm not sure)

Here's why I don't think the other stuffs you listed will happen:

- Touch bar = sucks battery life. Ask any rMBP w/ touch bar user and they'll tell you (I'm one, by the way). You don't want that with the Macbook.
- Touch ID needs touch bar so same reasoning as above.
- Price drop is wishful because Apple is still selling Macbook Air, and if they drop Macbook Air, they can just keep the old Macbooks around and sell those at a discount instead of discounting the new Macbooks. See what happened to iPads and iPhones for reference.
- 2nd USB-C port will be useful (again, I'm not denying that) but will replace the 3.5mm jack, which I'd argue is even more useful and necessary than you may realize. There is just no room for both. Although... on that note, a 13.5" Macbook may just have enough room for the 2nd port.
 
If they add an extra port, ATP.fm can't call it the "MacBook One" anymore. Apple won't do that to them.
 
Realistic:
- Kaby Lake
- ~5-10% general performance boost + >4K video contents will play nicer (so FCP may get more than 10% improvement)
- same battery life <- Kaby Lake is not going to improve battery life, it's a very minor bump
- 2nd gen butterfly keyboard
- same 8GB RAM
- same price

Wishful:
- 16GB RAM (LPDDR3 can be 16GB if Apple would "stack" it, but it'll be more prone to failure -> much more expensive)
- i5 model replacing m3 for baseline (highly likely but I'm not sure if Apple wants to let go of their margins)
- brighter screen -> LESS battery life (no free lunch)
- bigger battery -> will offset the extra power draw by the screen, but will increase weight
- 13.5" model with ultra thin bezels (this may cause a price drop, but I'm not sure)

Here's why I don't think the other stuffs you listed will happen:

- Touch bar = sucks battery life. Ask any rMBP w/ touch bar user and they'll tell you (I'm one, by the way). You don't want that with the Macbook.
- Touch ID needs touch bar so same reasoning as above.
- Price drop is wishful because Apple is still selling Macbook Air, and if they drop Macbook Air, they can just keep the old Macbooks around and sell those at a discount instead of discounting the new Macbooks. See what happened to iPads and iPhones for reference.
- 2nd USB-C port will be useful (again, I'm not denying that) but will replace the 3.5mm jack, which I'd argue is even more useful and necessary than you may realize. There is just no room for both. Although... on that note, a 13.5" Macbook may just have enough room for the 2nd port.

All very good points. I am certainly not expecting anything in the wishful list to come out... I forgot about the 16gb ram which you pointed out.
 
Realistic:
- Kaby Lake
- ~5-10% general performance boost + >4K video contents will play nicer (so FCP may get more than 10% improvement)
- same battery life <- Kaby Lake is not going to improve battery life, it's a very minor bump
- 2nd gen butterfly keyboard
- same 8GB RAM
- same price

Fairly good call - I also think this will be a quiet refresh. Will just appear in the stores.

Minor CPU speed bump and perhaps the new MBP keyboard (which dislike - I prefer the 12" MB keyboard). I doubt the price will change either because, if anything, worldwide currencies are all over the place right now. USD keeps moving up and down, so does the GBP etc.
 
- Price drop is wishful because Apple is still selling Macbook Air, and if they drop Macbook Air, they can just keep the old Macbooks around and sell those at a discount instead of discounting the new Macbooks. See what happened to iPads and iPhones for reference.


I really hope they don't revamp the macbook air. If they dont than there's a chance that they will do a price drop for the macbook
 
- Touch bar = sucks battery life. Ask any rMBP w/ touch bar user and they'll tell you (I'm one, by the way). You don't want that with the Macbook.

- 2nd USB-C port will be useful (again, I'm not denying that) but will replace the 3.5mm jack, which I'd argue is even more useful and necessary than you may realize. There is just no room for both. Although... on that note, a 13.5" Macbook may just have enough room for the 2nd port.

As for sure the TB needs some power I think the main reason why the MBP with TB has lower battery life is first cos the battery is 10% smaller and second cos the CPU is 28W vs 15W.

Regarding headphone jack. I haven't used mine in years. So for me a 2nd USB-c would be much more useful. For same time charging and iPhone, digital camera or SD card reader, 3D mouse...
 
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As for sure the TB needs some power I think the main reason why the MBP with TB has lower battery life is first cos the battery is 10% smaller and second cos the CPU is 28W vs 15W.
I did not realize the battery was 10% smaller on TB models. Was that reported here or in an ifixit teardown?
 
It's not that they don't support a 2nd port but that it would be confusing.

If you run a 4K display at 60Hz refresh rate on the Macbook on one port, then the other port will have its speed dropped to USB 2.0. This is because there are not enough data lanes.

The situation may not change, either, when processors come out that support a single Thunderbolt 3 because when you use one port as Thunderbolt 3, the other port may drop down to USB 3.0 or even USB 2.0 speed.

In short, only one port can run at maximum capacity at any random time. It's pointless to have two when the other port is botched. You might as well use a hub with the single port because you'll get the same thing anyway.

What do you even need 2 USB-C ports for? In the end, you'll be using 2 hubs instead of 1, so... that seems pointless to me. That's what I'm doing to my 15" rMBP at work. Having 4 ports is really pointless when I need adapters for every single one of them. There aren't a lot of USB-C devices around.

Except Apple is already doing something like that with the 13" MBP now. Two of the four ports don't support full bandwidth. And they aren't marked in any way to alleviate the confusion for the user. So your rationale for not including a second port due to confusion, doesn't really measure up based on Apple's current practices. In the end, convenience and portability is the driving force for many who use the MB, and having an extra port would be more of a convenience than not.

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/macbook-pro-tb3-reduced-pci-express-bandwidth/

Also, should USB-C headphones become an thing, nobody's going to want to carry around a hub just so they can plug their headphones into their MB while they use the port for anything else.
 
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Except Apple is already doing something like that with the 13" MBP now. Two of the four ports don't support full bandwidth. And they aren't marked in any way to alleviate the confusion for the user. So your rationale for not including a second port due to confusion, doesn't really measure up based on Apple's current practices. In the end, convenience and portability is the driving force for many who use the MB, and having an extra port would be more of a convenience than not.

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/macbook-pro-tb3-reduced-pci-express-bandwidth/

Also, should USB-C headphones become an thing, nobody's going to want to carry around a hub just so they can plug their headphones into their MB while they use the port for anything else.

The MacBook Pro 13" is a different situation.

The 4 ports technically do support up to full USB 3.1 specifications at any random time, no matter what is plugged into them. So there is no confusion there. USB-C is technically "at least" USB 3.0/3.1.

On the MacBook, it's different. The 2nd port will drop to USB 2.0 speed as soon as you plug a 4K/60Hz display into the other. Note how other Core M devices on the market (up to Kaby Lake) also do not do things any differently. Some of them do not even sport USB-C, and instead, they sport USB 3.0 along with HDMI, or USB 2.0 along with Mini DisplayPort that may support 4K/60Hz. This is a limitation of the chipset.

Specifically, Core M 5th gen had PCI-E 2.0 data lanes... that was barely enough for 4K/60Hz. Core M 6th gen, on the other hand, has PCI-E 3.0 so it has much more bandwidth at its disposal and could support 4K/60Hz more easily, along with HDMI 2.0. But there still isn't enough bandwidth for more than USB 2.0. If we're going into more technicality, yes, I concede there are devices that sport 2 USB-C ports, one running at full USB 3.1 specs along with delivering DisplayPort, and the other only delivers USB 2.0 speed, and is mostly used for charging, but the problem really is that your layman won't read the manual, so they'll plug their display into the other port and find out it's not capable of outputting to a display. Then a lot of trouble ensues.

This is not the case with the MacBook Pro. All ports can output to an external display, and/or be used with USB 3.0/3.1 devices in any scenario, although only 2 of them can do Thunderbolt 3.

Also USB-C headphones do not exist because there is no standard currently for outputting analog signal with USB-C.

USB-C is controlled by a board of companies rather than just Apple, so Apple cannot just do whatever they want either. This is very unlike the whole Lightning situation since Apple controls Lightning standards.

tl;dr: Kaby Lake is not gonna work magic. See this article for more info:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3113...-chip-is-a-must-have-for-4k-video-fiends.html
 
what about GPU? Will the 620-615 be significantly better than the 515-520?

The GPUs are identical - just the name is changed. (Note, Kaby Lake has additional video decode/encode hardware, but that isn't really part of the GPU.)

From a different site, I downloaded a picture that compares a quad core Skylake die to a dual core Kaby Lake. The CPU cores and main GPU block are identical. There is simply an extra slice in the random logic next to the GPU. The "system agent" is also significantly different, but that might be because of the dual versus quad core.
[doublepost=1495781326][/doublepost]
More pipelines (192 vs 24)

Both have 192 ALUs and 24 Execution Units.
 
The current pickup dates for MacBook 256/512gb m7 are June 9. As the WWDC event taking place on June 5, can we say that it is for a refresh?
 
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The current pickup dates for MacBook 256/512gb m7 are June 9. As the WWDC event taking place on June 5, can we say that it is for a refresh?

I think the M7 always has a delayed pickup date because it's the BTO option and they don't always have it in stores.
 
Realistic:
- Kaby Lake
- ~5-10% general performance boost + >4K video contents will play nicer (so FCP may get more than 10% improvement)
- same battery life <- Kaby Lake is not going to improve battery life, it's a very minor bump
- 2nd gen butterfly keyboard
- same 8GB RAM
- same price

Wishful:
- 16GB RAM (LPDDR3 can be 16GB if Apple would "stack" it, but it'll be more prone to failure -> much more expensive)
- i5 model replacing m3 for baseline (highly likely but I'm not sure if Apple wants to let go of their margins)
- brighter screen -> LESS battery life (no free lunch)
- bigger battery -> will offset the extra power draw by the screen, but will increase weight
- 13.5" model with ultra thin bezels (this may cause a price drop, but I'm not sure)

Here's why I don't think the other stuffs you listed will happen:

- Touch bar = sucks battery life. Ask any rMBP w/ touch bar user and they'll tell you (I'm one, by the way). You don't want that with the Macbook.
- Touch ID needs touch bar so same reasoning as above.
- Price drop is wishful because Apple is still selling Macbook Air, and if they drop Macbook Air, they can just keep the old Macbooks around and sell those at a discount instead of discounting the new Macbooks. See what happened to iPads and iPhones for reference.
- 2nd USB-C port will be useful (again, I'm not denying that) but will replace the 3.5mm jack, which I'd argue is even more useful and necessary than you may realize. There is just no room for both. Although... on that note, a 13.5" Macbook may just have enough room for the 2nd port.

Yeah i've believed since August that I think Apple will opt to start with the i5 rather than m3, purely due to the (at the time, rumored) rebranding. While the poll showed me that the majority disagree (the last time i checked), I stick with my belief that they would drop the m3. The price is actually not that different - according to Intels released prices, they're identical, but this would change with quantity, but Apple do get to charge more for it.

I just think it would be a mess to have the m3 amongst the base i5 and i7 processors in every other Mac. Intel changed the naming to avoid confusion and having the 2 naming schemes coexisting in the same product would be even more confusing than m3, m5, and m7.

The new lineup are set to receive a (in the case of the MacBook, overdue) price drop regardless of the Air. It could be reduced to the same price as the Air but we'll more likely see a drop to $1099 or so.

The Touch Bar doesn't suck that much battery life, it's OLED and it would be powering literally 4% more pixels, so it's nothing to worry about really.

Apple have proved that they can go against symmetry, so the second USB-C port on the same side could happen but I agree that if they added a port, it would replace the headphone jack.
 
Apple have proved that they can go against symmetry, so the second USB-C port on the same side could happen

Can't - there's no room: The keyboard goes to the edge and thus reduces the vertical space for a port that would have to be under it. A hypothetical 14" MacBook could however have two ports on the same side.
 
Can't - there's no room: The keyboard goes to the edge and thus reduces the vertical space for a port that would have to be under it. A hypothetical 14" MacBook could however have two ports on the same side.
No, there's still room if they alter the shape a bit. Technically there's room for a USB-A port, but I understand what you mean. I really hope they do make a larger MacBook rather than having the base 13" Pro as the option, because it's really not the same as a larger MacBook or thinner MacBook Air - people like the shape and having it like that would also cut down on weight. They could use 15W processors in that shape as long as they used the 12" MB speakers (allow the space for more battery).
 
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