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

[MH01]

You want a minor refresh to come with a significant upgrade? I don't think that's possible.

Moving to 800 series gpu is not a significant upgrade . Every other manufacturer has managed it. Though if you consider doubling ram as minor, I guess one could argue that GPU is significant

At least a move to 800 series gpu would be considered an "upgrade".

I guess people want to see a reason to upgrade, CPU spec bumps and some memory is not enough, it's just a bump caused by Intel updating thier CPUs

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Would love to see them bring back the 17", though I know they won't. Four years later I still kinda regret getting the 15".

I'm hoping they bring it back. Given the lack of anything new rolling out from apple , they might get desperate and bring back the 17" and claim the greatest product line in 25 years

 

[bchreng]

What is this nonsense about? Most of us aren't buying laptops for gaming, we have desktops for that. My laptop is for work and pleasure.

On a side note, my MacBook Pro does have a 4th Gen i7. It also has 8GB of RAM, which is more than I'll ever need. Full PCI-e SSD hard drive that boots and wakes in seconds. 3k "retina" display, with fantastic color reproduction that I haven't been able to duplicate on my desktop. Excellent battery life, and fantastic form and appearance.

If you're into 10-lb large plastic laptops that run games, then go for it. To each their own. Although you'll get a crappy gaming experience in comparison to desktop performance, and suffer in terms of battery life, weight, size, heat, and appearance.

Ultimately you'll have to decide if you want a device that does a few things extremely well, or one that does everything in a mediocre fashion.

There is a market for gaming laptops. They may not be as powerful as a desktop, but they take up less space, consume less power, generate less heat and make less noise. At least the Asus models do. They're also somewhat portable if you want to lug it around to a friends house or whatever. As for graphics, they don't look as bad as your post would suggest. They shouldn't have any issue running the current crop of games with medium settings at all.

Looking at the materials and size of a MBP, I wouldn't trust it with a high end, discrete GPU at all. They generate more heat than I think the MBP's body can handle. I'd choose integrated Intel graphics over a discrete solution any day. Like you mentioned, they can most tasks perfectly fine.

 

[barkmonster]

Would love to see them bring back the 17", though I know they won't. Four years later I still kinda regret getting the 15".

A 17" 4K Retina would be perfect because it's an exact 2:1 pixel ratio of a 1920x1080 screen and would offer the kind screen realestate (without scaled resolutions) that the previous 17" models offered.

They could use the additional space to fit more RAM and a larger battery so it has a 32Gb option and an even higher battery life than the current models.

 

[steve119]

Time to up the hard drive capacity in its entry level rMbp's too hopefully.....

 

[SarcasticJoe]

All I wanted was an 850M... Not even Broadwell just an 850M.
Never mind, Broadwell must be the slowest chip launch in Intel's history, it's like they are deliberately slowing developing :roll eyes:.

Considering that Intel is rolling out their most precise manufacturing process ever, 14nm compared to the 22nm process they use today, I don't see much reason to complain. Not only is it Intel's most precise manufactuing process ever, it's actually THE most precise manufacturing process ever used in mass production whenever they start doing that.

For comparison:
- GlobalFoundries (AMD's old manufacturing arm that was spun off as it's own company) is currently using a 28nm process (thou they say they might get a 20nm process into mass production this year).
- TSMC (Who manufactures GPU's for Nvidia, various ARM SoC's and has been rumored to start production) only just started volume production with a 20nm process
- Samsung (who makes a boatload of stuff for itself and others) currently manufactures DDR3 memory with a 20nm process and Apple's A7 with a 28nm process

As for the 850M upgrade, that GPU uses a new architecture (Maxwell, compared to the Keppler architecture used in the 750M) with a different pinout and thus Apple would have to re-design large parts of the motherboard and start a completely new production line for it when this upgrade only requires them to stick different chips into the same slots. Because of this Apple likes to make their upgrades in slightly bigger increments where they also swap out the CPU.

In other words: Apart from the RAM upgrade (being a $2000 machine you'd expect 16GB as standard), this is pretty much exactly the underwhelming upgrade I was expecting...

 

[beowulf70]

Time for a UK price drop then. Ideal

 

[xmichaelp]

16 GB RAM standard is brilliant. Please do this Apple. 8 GB standard on all MBAs and MBP 13s would be awesome too. 16 GB of RAM should be on the 27 inch iMac too.

 

[LarxJo]

It would be nice to have a computer with a real graphic card without having to pay 3000$ (2800chf)....

I still am angry at Apple for lowering the price of 100$ and removing the CG of the first model.

I won't buy any mac unless I can have a real CG for the same price as 1 year ago (2300chf or 2400chf). What they did was a hidden price increase.

 

[ValSalva]

Time to up the hard drive capacity in its entry level rMbp's too hopefully.....

Agreed. I think to most buyers storage is more important than RAM. And with Mavericks memory compression and paging being done on SSD's instead of 5400 rpm HDD's one can easily get away with 8GB of RAM as a base for most users.

 

[MattZani]

Has no one noticed that this update makes the dGPU model WORSE VALUE?

You used to be getting an extra .3ghz, 8Gb of RAM, 256Gb Storage and a 750M for £500 more, effectively getting the 750M for free if you were specing the lower model to that spec.

But now the lower model gets a £160 upgrade for free (16Gb RAM), the dGPU model with the horribly outdated 750M has become a worse option!

 

[mdgm]

Time to up the hard drive capacity in its entry level rMbp's too hopefully.....

Would need SSD prices to fall some more. Maybe next year or the year after.

 

[Tech198]

may be US pricing

I can't believe Apple can't make Australian prices cheaper .....

It's too dam expensive.... $2,400 for the base 15' Retina is a rip-off....

If they could bring it this 'speed bump' one down to $2,100, i'll think about it

dam Australian laws.. ..

 

[Ries]

If a specs at any design trade off gaming laptop is your idea of competition for the Macbook Pro, you've lost it.

4 out of 5 items on his list was specs. Funny how it only applies one way.

 

[Serban]

I think the top of the line iGPU from broadwell will surpass the Geforce 650M in OpenGL(because in OpenCL we all know is already in front)
And yes a 17" Macbook it will be for most (for me not for now) the one in all main computer...desktop screen real estate and portability and maybe a dedicated geforce like 770M

 

[Lesser Evets]

Maybe US prices will go down a bit...

 

[Wirbowsky]

may be US pricing

I can't believe Apple can't make Australian prices cheaper .....

It's too dam expensive.... $2,400 for the base 15' Retina is a rip-off....

If they could bring it this 'speed bump' one down to $2,100, i'll think about it

dam Australian laws.. ..

$2.720 when I convert the euro price to $.
$2.885 when I convert the british pound price to $

 

[barkmonster]

4 out of 5 items on his list was specs. Funny how it only applies one way.

It clearly applies both ways. I haven't got a clue where you're coming from.

Maybe a 3 inch thick plastic gaming laptop with a 1920 x 1080p display and loads of niche, battery draining specs is somehow more acceptable to you than a Macbook Pro with specs designed to compliment each other. (Large battery life, removal of DVD to save internal space for said cells used by battery, PCIe SSD to avoid the work around of multiple SATA-based SSDs, Thunderbolt to avoid the use of legacy expansion slots etc...).

 

[Tech198]

A 17" 4K Retina would be perfect because it's an exact 2:1 pixel ratio of a 1920x1080 screen and would offer the kind screen realestate (without scaled resolutions) that the previous 17" models offered.

They could use the additional space to fit more RAM and a larger battery so it has a 32Gb option and an even higher battery life than the current models.

These days at viewing distance 300dpi on a phone is acceptable,,, Over that and since "their so small you can't see the dots". why would that is indicate a difference ? since the eyes can't see higher than that.

today's laptop even the "Retina" have over the top resolutions, and as Apple says "shows of photos" as the main target...

We will get to a point when the resolution will increase, and displays have to be bigger.... because you cannot no longer fir x number of pixels within the same size display, so you have to increase the viewable (either shrink the bezels. or bigger screen is another way)

Then, you'll get to the point of,, "these phones are too big being 8' phone", and then we'll be an uproar as to wanting these much bigger resolutions, but in order to do that we must have a massive phone..

thus,, we're going from a "brick" phone of the old days, to a "big" display

end result. ? Times haven't changed much

 

[PocketSand11]

I was being sarcastic about the rumours of its demise for all these years. I love the classic, best iPod in the range.

Oh, OK. I thought you were just trying to annoy Classic owners

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Would love to see them bring back the 17", though I know they won't. Four years later I still kinda regret getting the 15".

Yeah, I was hoping they'd add bigger MacBook screen options… but they added bigger iPhone screen options instead. I still wouldn't be so certain that they aren't going to bring 17" back.

 

[Tech198]

Oh, OK. I thought you were just trying to annoy Classic owners

You can never annoy Classic owners...

Their classic

 

[827538]

It's a significant drop in lithography/transistor size from 22 to 14 nm. As they push the densities ever higher it's bound to get harder and harder to achieve commercially viable rates of success.

Maybe you can make a 14 nm processor and pitch it to Apple if you think it's so easy.

I study electronics and electrical engineering, don't think of me as some peasant who knows nothing of lithography and semiconductors. But if you knew anything of what's been happening in the world of semiconductor fabrication you would understand Intel hasn't exactly been putting the pedal to the metal to try and push these things out. Why? Because it has zero competition and would only be competing with itself. This is why I made that comment, I realise any shrinking of transistors is difficult, infact its what of the most advanced pieces of technology we humans have, I also know it's governed as much by economics as it is by science.

Intel was meant to have these things cooking years ago, no it looks like a 2015 launch. Just look at what happened when AMD handed them their asses and they accelerated Core 2, was pretty incredible.

 

[SmileyDude]

Has no one noticed that this update makes the dGPU model WORSE VALUE?

You used to be getting an extra .3ghz, 8Gb of RAM, 256Gb Storage and a 750M for £500 more, effectively getting the 750M for free if you were specing the lower model to that spec.

But now the lower model gets a £160 upgrade for free (16Gb RAM), the dGPU model with the horribly outdated 750M has become a worse option!

I noticed this as well -- I'm optimistically hopeful that this means a price drop for the dGPU models, but we'll have to wait and see.

 

[827538]

Considering that Intel is rolling out their most precise manufacturing process ever, 14nm compared to the 22nm process they use today, I don't see much reason to complain. Not only is it Intel's most precise manufactuing process ever, it's actually THE most precise manufacturing process ever used in mass production whenever they start doing that.

For comparison:
- GlobalFoundries (AMD's old manufacturing arm that was spun off as it's own company) is currently using a 28nm process (thou they say they might get a 20nm process into mass production this year).
- TSMC (Who manufactures GPU's for Nvidia, various ARM SoC's and has been rumored to start production) only just started volume production with a 20nm process
- Samsung (who makes a boatload of stuff for itself and others) currently manufactures DDR3 memory with a 20nm process and Apple's A7 with a 28nm process

As for the 850M upgrade, that GPU uses a new architecture (Maxwell, compared to the Keppler architecture used in the 750M) with a different pinout and thus Apple would have to re-design large parts of the motherboard and start a completely new production line for it when this upgrade only requires them to stick different chips into the same slots. Because of this Apple likes to make their upgrades in slightly bigger increments where they also swap out the CPU.

In other words: Apart from the RAM upgrade (being a $2000 machine you'd expect 16GB as standard), this is pretty much exactly the underwhelming upgrade I was expecting...

I understand fully the implications of a 14nm transistor size and how advanced that is. But like in my previous reply to another comment this has more to do with economics and lack of competition than engineering challenges.
14nm second gen FinFET is an engineering marvel, as is the doped silicon it's made from, but if AMD offered a modicum of competition then Broadwell would likely be available right now, not in 2015.

 

[SmileyDude]

There is a market for gaming laptops. They may not be as powerful as a desktop, but they take up less space, consume less power, generate less heat and make less noise.

Yep -- there are people (like myself) who only want a single machine that can be used both for work and for some gaming as well. My own needs are pretty pedestrian at this point (Diablo III, Minecraft, TF2, other Source games), but a dGPU will come in handy for D3 at least.

Yeah, I know I can get better gaming rigs. I could easily build a PC running Windows with a high end GPU, etc, etc. But that means one more piece of hardware that I have to keep up to date, find a place for it to live, and so on. And then if I'm traveling, I won't even have access to it.

I know it might seem crazy, but there are reasons to want to use a MBP as a gaming machine

 

[MH01]

Oh, OK. I thought you were just trying to annoy Classic owners

he he nope, they have been trying/talking about removing the classic and its still rockin

Love my U2 version!