Chart Suggests Speed-Bumped 15-Inch Retina MacBook Pros with 16GB of RAM Standard Coming Soon

[Mrdan]

Nice thought but unlikely to happen.

Not so sure how this is possible/warrantable anymore?
Apple MBP 13"/15" + External Dock + Monitor.
MBP and MBAir are meant to be portable. That what their markets want.

What would 17" worth of Retina cost? I guess the plus side is that would make space for another SSD.

17-Inch please....

 

[M87]

The prices will probably be raised to even things out - like apple always does.

If anything the price tends to go down when they bump the specs, actually.

 

[pearvsapple]

Nothing like paying premium prices for not so premium hardwares. But but but dat aluminum casing doe.

 

[Alphabetize]

I wonder if Apple will kill the 13" MacBook Pro, and drop the price of the base 13" rMPB to the price of the last generation MBP.

 

[anthorumor]

What I want from :
13' MacBook Pro retina
Iris Pro graphics (or heck, even an 850m)
i7 quadcore (not dual as current)

/dreaming

 

[Kobayagi]

What if Broadwell GPU from 13 inch will be faster than Iris Pro from rMBP15?

That'd be very welcome.

 

[littyboy]

Screw the ram upgrade. It's the cheapest and lamest piece of hardware they can throw in and call that an upgrade from the precious model. It's adds little to no value to the laptop.

Bump the processor, a larger SSD and new discrete graphics.

750m...what a joke.

This. They could have just gotten rid of that joke of a base model with no discrete graphics at all.

 

[MacBH928]

Still 750M? Sigh.

As long as people continue buying at high prices, Apple is assuming they are doing the right thing but continuing this strategy. Just like iPad 16GB (which is a complete joke for a $400 device. People continue to buy it, to them this is what the customer want.

I find it stupid that current Apple laptops just got on par with ps3 graphics, something released when George Bush was still president

 

[AxoNeuron]

I bought the 15" retina MacBook Pro back in 2012 when it was the coolest laptop out there. I got it with 8GB and it's been great. But then I started doing development work on it and it's just not sufficient. I wish I had picked the 16GB upgrade for it. But back in 2012 I thought 16GB would be excessive, never figured I would get in to development, trying to have the iOS simulator, Xcode, Photoshop, unity, etc. all open at the same time.

Better yet, I REALLY wish Apple would find a way to make the RAM upgradeable, not soldered to the logic board.

Fortunately I built a PC (originally for gaming) and turned it into a Mavericks hackintosh. Samsung 840 Pro SSD for OS X and another for Windows, GTX 760, overclocked Intel i7 4770k 3.5Ghz quad core (at 4Ghz), 16GB of 1600Mhz RAM. I even added in a ThunderboltEX II card with two thunderbolt ports. I have four different 1080p displays hooked up to it so that I can have everything right there. It screams and OS X runs every bit as well as on a Mac Pro. It's an amazing machine for development work, original cost for just the machine was around $1000 but you could build it for around $800 if you got 8GB RAM and an i5-4670k.

 

[pragmatous]

Do you even have a clue what specs are in the macbook pro?

I guarantee if you spec it out part per part it would be on-par with the business class laptops.

By the way I've done that.

Nothing like paying premium prices for not so premium hardwares. But but but dat aluminum casing doe.

 

[ClockworkPirate]

Still 750M? Sigh.

Seriously. They could have had a meaningful refresh if they'd moved to the 800 series.

 

[pragmatous]

That's not true at all. The fact you even trust this article tells me you're a couple cards short of a full deck.

As long as people continue buying at high prices, Apple is assuming they are doing the right thing but continuing this strategy. Just like iPad 16GB (which is a complete joke for a $400 device. People continue to buy it, to them this is what the customer want.

I find it stupid that current Apple laptops just got on par with ps3 graphics, something released when George Bush was still president

----------

They will be moving to the 800 series.

Seriously. They could have had a meaningful refresh if they'd moved to the 800 series.

----------

Because of a chipset limitation. It's a problem with hardware. Once DDR4 is mainstream you'll see 32GB - 128GB of RAM.

How about an option to have 32GB of RAM?

Why 32GB?

- Run multiple VMs concurrently to simulate a cluster
- Run databases and be able to cache lots of data
- Scientific computing
- Run the whole Hadoop stack natively and be able to give the different components a lot of RAM

 

[motulist]

in 1995, the standard amount of RAM was 16 MEGAbytes. Now it's 16 GIGAbytes. Amazing what a difference 19 years makes.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac/specs/powermac_8500_120.html

 

[pragmatous]

So the GPU on the processor itself is not designed to replace dGPU's. It's simply there for those that require some video power. dGPU's are for those that require a more beefier setup.

GPU's are extremely complex and there's no way to fit something as powerful as the 750m on the same package as a CPU. That's why the GPU gets faster with every die shrink. It will never reach the levels of a dGPU due to physics.

The fact that Intel is having major problems and major delays with 14nm Broadwell should tell you how complex the process is. Broadwell should have been out last year. We're working on year 2 for the delay.

What if Broadwell GPU from 13 inch will be faster than Iris Pro from rMBP15?

 

[aohus]

Just purchased my first Macbook Pro (256GB Iris Pro 15 inch i7 2.0 GHz model) and I love it!

2800x1800 resolution 15 inch LG based display

256GB PCIe SSD

8GB RAM (more than sufficient for my needs, as I will not be using advanced applications)

Intel Iris Pro (not available for many computers, except for the i7-4770R CPU which is only bundled on prebuilt computers)

8 hour battery life

Quality speakers for a laptop

Free Operating System upgrades

Comes included with Word Processor as well as other basic office tasks.

The best gesture trackpad on any computing device bar none.

I like it a lot, and I'm coming from mostly Windows based environment.

Total was $1960 after CA 8.75% tax and EDU discount + BB discount

 

[IGregory]

Too small.

Apple should have had a 20" laptop workstation by now.

You're funny

 

[goulibouli]

Personally I don't care and never had, for a 15", even less for a 17".

If I want a laptop, one with HMDI or streaming to another screen capability, one that I can carry around, 13" is all I need.

But the continued lack of decent graphic hardware, and I'm not saying good or even up-to-date, for the premium premium price we pay, is going to force me to switch back to PC after 10 years of using Macs.

It started with that integrated GPU non-sense, it's like putting non-ready and completely behind the competition hardware in so-called premium machines just to make more money, and not reinvest it or impact the price.

 

[SuperCachetes]

Why are you happy about that ? You must not own a modern car or have only a few gigs of crap music.

I own an iPod classic, but don't particularly care whether they continue selling it or not... That said, my "modern car" streams 20,000+ songs of quality music over Bluetooth from my iPhone and iTunes Match. If I were just going to hook up a static device to a USB port in said "modern car," I could do that with a number of things that didn't come with a display or even any moving parts.

 

[Limboistik]

Judging from the picture, looks like the middle model is 512gb SSD standard, and 1TB standard on the top model?

 

[aohus]

Personally I don't care and never had, for a 15", even less for a 17".

If I want a laptop, one with HMDI or streaming to another screen capability, one that I can carry around, 13" is all I need.

But the continued lack of decent graphic hardware, and I'm not saying good or even up-to-date, for the premium premium price we pay, is going to force me to switch back to PC after 10 years of using Macs.

It started with that integrated GPU non-sense, it's like putting non-ready and completely behind the competition hardware in so-called premium machines just to make more money, and not reinvest it or impact the price.

Apple prides itself on battery life. Most likely there is no dGPU on the 13 inch because battery life / heat is a concern on a 13 inch notebook.

And why even go back and forth between the platforms. Use both at the same time bud.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

I wish they release a 17" as well...

 

[goulibouli]

Apple prides itself on battery life. Most likely there is no dGPU on the 13 inch because battery life / heat is a concern on a 13 inch notebook.

And why even go back and forth between the platforms. Use both at the same time bud.

This present topic says otherwise: the 15" refresh looks like it won't have an update from 750M to 850M which does drain less battery and emits less heat.

Then, that's a complete non-sense: the Macbook, the Macbook Air and the Macbook Pro I had with dGPUs never had particular problems with their graphic cards or else they wouldn't exist.

And the battery bump is mainly due to Haswell, otherwise the 15" wouldn't have an extended battery.

 

[Count Blah]

The display and the lack of a HDMI port are why I skipped the Air for the Macbook Pro.

And you just made the bean counters smile. An upsell is a BIG win when it comes to shorting hardware.

 

[AxoNeuron]

The GTX 850M uses DDR3 memory if I am not mistaken, while the 750M in the rMBP uses GDDR5. I haven't done much research in to it, but I assume that might be a reason why they aren't updating to the 850M.

 

[Gfive]

17"

Apple, I want the 17" back....