when do you think the MBP would have these STOCK specs?

[Sterkenburg]

Yes there was - Apple was ahead in 2010 when the unibody MBP came out.

While I do agree that the first unibody MBPs were greatly ahead of the competition in terms of build quality and usability, they never aimed to compete with the very top end of the market in terms of specs. Configuring a Windows machine to be more powerful than a high-end MBP has always been possible at any given time.

If anything, the MBP has never been as close to the top as with the current model (GPU performance aside, that is). If there's something we gradually lost over the years, that is build quality and long-term reliability, and more in general the "premium" feel that the MBP once carried down to its smallest details, not hardware power.

The MBP has always tried to be the best "jack of all trades" premium laptop in the market, nothing more and nothing less.

 

[leman]

Yes there was - Apple was ahead in 2010 when the unibody MBP came out.

2010 unibody MBP was shipping with dual-core Arrandale (up to 680M), supported up to 16GB RAM and came with an Nvidia GT 330M with 512MG GDDR3 RAM.

A 2010 HP EliteBook 15" 8540w was shipping with a quad-core i7-840QM, supported up to 32GB RAM and came with an Quadro FX 1800M, that is 50% more shader cores vs GT 330M and 1GB of GDDR5 RAM.

So again, I am not really sure what you are talking about when you claim that there was a time that Apple could compete with performance-class workstation laptops from other vendors. The MBP always competed favourably within its weight class (similar size/weight). This is still very much true for the 2018 model, especially when you take the Vega Pro 20 into account.

 

[Fishrrman]

"when do you think the MBP would have these STOCK specs?"

You won't live long enough.
Get something they offer now.

 

[internetrando]

You won't be alive when those days come...assuming that they ever do.

What you're looking for is a $10,000+ professional workstation desktop replacement laptop. Apple has never (and will likely never) make a laptop like that.