Waiting for the 2020 MBP

[gadgetfreaky]

I think the 4 year design thing is dead for now. We know ARM is coming in likely less than four years, and the MBP will surely get a full tilt redesign then. So I think this 16" gives us enough of an evolutionary freshening to tide us over for a couple years until ARM MBPs and the inherent redesign they will come with.

Unrelated, is it true that ProMotion requires 10nm processors, and both Comet Lake and Ice Lake are still 14nm chips? Meaning ZERO chance of a 16" ProMotion MBP in the next 16" update next summer?

Why would the screen refresh rate have anything to do with the CPU as opposed to GPU
Razer has had 120 and 240 hz refresh on it's laptops and they don't have a speial deal with Intel for 10nm chips.

I must be missing something?

 

[wallysb01]

I think the 4 year design thing is dead for now. We know ARM is coming in likely less than four years, and the MBP will surely get a full tilt redesign then. So I think this 16" gives us enough of an evolutionary freshening to tide us over for a couple years until ARM MBPs and the inherent redesign they will come with.

Unrelated, is it true that ProMotion requires 10nm processors, and both Comet Lake and Ice Lake are still 14nm chips? Meaning ZERO chance of a 16" ProMotion MBP in the next 16" update next summer?

Ice lake is 10nm, but is only for low power laptops. So the future 13/14 MBP will have it. The next 16” will be 14nm Comet lake though.

 

[The Mercurian]

- anyone with the 16”, can you reproduce this supposed issue? A non issue for me and hopefully fixable by software but wanted to see if it affected all of most machines.

Are we sure it isn’t just that he is stabbing the space bar so hard it’s bouncing off the bottom case?? 😳

 

[The Mercurian]

I think the 4 year design thing is dead for now. We know ARM is coming in likely less than four years, and the MBP will surely get a full tilt redesign then. So I think this 16" gives us enough of an evolutionary freshening to tide us over for a couple years until ARM MBPs and the inherent redesign they will come with.

Unrelated, is it true that ProMotion requires 10nm processors, and both Comet Lake and Ice Lake are still 14nm chips? Meaning ZERO chance of a 16" ProMotion MBP in the next 16" update next summer?

Personally I think ARM is very unlikely. It would be madness to break x86 compatibility they would loose half their customers including me

 

[Ma2k5]

Are we sure it isn’t just that he is stabbing the space bar so hard it’s bouncing off the bottom case?? 😳

I can’t be sure of anything😂

 

[Falhófnir]

Yes, it could be possible for Apple to make a 15W 13" MBP with Iris Plus Graphics G7 and a 28W MBP with dedicated AMD graphics. However thought I'd like them to I don't see them right now doing a 14" to replace the 13.3" yet. Kuo predicted 13.3" and 15.6" models for 2020 along the 16" one, but nothing about a 14".

And I think a bigger chassis for the 13" to fit a better thermal design on the theoretical dGPU model would make the difference between the base and the higher end 13" MBP more visible and I don't think Apple would like to divide more the 13" models after having updated the lineup this year to equalise the 15W and 28W models with the same touchbar.

The current similarity between the two models is actually what makes me think they will (ultimately) change the higher end model quite a bit - evening out the storage so they both have 256GB it's $1,499 vs $1,799 so $300... but all you get for that extra 20% onto the cost is 2 more TB3 ports and a bit more thermal headroom. There's some value in those things, certainly, but it seems a big price upcharge for very little gain. Even if they have to increase the price slightly to incorporate a dGPU and say start it at 512GB like the larger model, it works out as a neater set of machines:

13" - 256GB/8GB/Iris - $1,499 ($1,299 for the 128GB)
14" - 512GB/8GB/5300M - $1,999
16" - 512/16GB/5300M - $2,399

Well, we need to discuss about MBP 2020 base on 16-inch MBP because some people believe that 16-inch MBP is fully changed MBP which represent 5th gen MBP. Other people, including me, believe that 16-inch MBP is still a 4th gen MBP with improvements. Tho wiki considered 16-inch MBP as a 5th gen, they were not able to provide specific information to support their claims. At this point, there is NO official report from Apple that 16-inch MBP is either 4th gen or 5th gen. Technically, this terminology is being used for Wiki only since Apple identifies products base on the year. There are two scenarios:

1. If 16-inch MBP IS 5th gen, then 13 inches will have spec bump with a bigger monitor, different keyboard layout, and separated touch ID and ESC key.

2. If 16-inch MBP is not 5th gen instead of 4th gen, then we can expect a full changed MBP on next October.

But seriously, why would Apple release MBP without announcement if it's worth the name of 5th gen MBP?

I don't think this is a new full cycle design that's going to see 4 iterations before they do anything else, maybe 'stopgap' is a little uncharitable towards a great machine, but I do think we will see a full redesign in 2021 with the mini LED HDR display, and probably ProMotion and a new design language. As you point out there were no big new tentpole features that usually define a MBP generation (unibody; retina; Touch Bar) so this just feels like a further member of the TouchBar/ 4th generation family, albeit a significantly improved one.

 

[ascender]

I guess its more about evolution than revolution with the MBP now which is fine. As much as I think it would be great to see Apple do something revolutionary on a laptop, the MBP probably isn't the model to be doing it on.

As they've replaced the 15", I'm assuming this is the new design for the next few years as they're not going to re-tool their factories for a model which is only around for a year or so. I don't know if anybody has done the calculations yet, but I'm assuming they'll have to modify the other laptops in order to take the new keyboard, so I'm assuming some elements of this design will trickle down to other models next year.

 

[Ma2k5]

I guess its more about evolution than revolution with the MBP now which is fine. As much as I think it would be great to see Apple do something revolutionary on a laptop, the MBP probably isn't the model to be doing it on.

As they've replaced the 15", I'm assuming this is the new design for the next few years as they're not going to re-tool their factories for a model which is only around for a year or so. I don't know if anybody has done the calculations yet, but I'm assuming they'll have to modify the other laptops in order to take the new keyboard, so I'm assuming some elements of this design will trickle down to other models next year.

I think until there is some more breakthrough technology in the CPU/GPU/battery/chipset department, we may have peaked what is possible design wise. I think this is going to be the design print for years to come. I don't see them doing anything radically different in the next couple of years as the components just don't allow them to innovate much more. So expect just small improvements in my honest opinion.

People have been asking for an XPS redesign for a while and other than small evolutionary changes, nothing more is likely to materialise even on that front as they have pretty much peaked what is possible.

 

[Falhófnir]

Personally I think ARM is very unlikely. It would be madness to break x86 compatibility they would loose half their customers including me

That's where this machine comes in, perfect platform to keep supporting x86 users until the vast bulk of Apps that aren't complete abandonware have been recompiled and optimised for ARM. They could easily get 5 years out of this chassis just updating with new chips and graphics as and when available, alongside the new ARM MPB from 2021.

 

[Ma2k5]

That's where this machine comes in, perfect platform to keep supporting x86 users until the vast bulk of Apps that aren't complete abandonware have been recompiled and optimised for ARM. They could easily get 5 years out of this chassis just updating with new chips and graphics as and when available, alongside the new ARM MPB from 2021.

The main problem with ARM is, it doesn't make much sense on a Pro machine yet. CISC CPU's are very RISC-like anyway (hybrid) so the benefits of a move to ARM may be very understated. For low powered devices they are great but for pure performance machines, I don't think you'd even get any tangible battery life benefits or otherwise for now. Maybe in a decade or so sure.

The risk for Apple doesn't make sense because I don't think the users will be able to tell the difference in performance/battery life, but will definitely be able to notice issues cropping up due to incompatibility.

 

[Falhófnir]

The main problem with ARM is, it doesn't make much sense on a Pro machine yet. CISC CPU's are very RISC-like anyway (hybrid) so the benefits of a move to ARM may be very understated. For low powered devices they are great but for pure performance machines, I don't think you'd even get any tangible battery life benefits or otherwise for now. Maybe in a decade or so sure.

The risk for Apple doesn't make sense because I don't think the users will be able to tell the difference in performance/battery life, but will definitely be able to notice issues cropping up due to incompatibility.

I just don't think the 'not enough performance' argument holds any water - Anandtech did a detailed analysis of the A13 and said in terms of the individual cores, they can pump out as much performance as anything Intel or AMD have to offer, but at a much lower power consumption. Now I'm not assuming performance/ power will scale linearly, but if they can make a 20W actively cooled chip that's even equal in sustained performance to Intel's i9s, and far better optimised for the demands MacOS places on it, surely it's game over? Yes if if if but we can't say nay either. The evidence is there that Apple is very good at chip design, very good at optimisation and they're pouring money into a new Texas chip plant and have taken on Mike Filippo directly from Arm to work on... something there. Just the next generation of A/AX chips? Possibly, but the existing team already seems to be hitting it out the park every year, why mess with a winning formula for that?

Time and again it's been demonstrated that optimisation trumps pure power when it comes to performance. Giving Apple greater control for better optimisation could easily see important Apps like Final Cut Pro working better on an Apple Arm chip than an equally powerful Intel model - if they can crack the video editing market, that's a big chunk of business for this model right out the gate. Add in Apple's other software, Logic Pro, Xcode, iWork and some native stuff from Adobe and Microsoft and you pretty much have a workable ecosystem on launch, which should grow quickly once developers get the 'this is the future of the platform' message from Apple.

 

[Ma2k5]

I just don't think the 'not enough performance' argument holds any water - Anandtech did a detailed analysis of the A13 and said in terms of the individual cores, they can pump out as much performance as anything Intel or AMD have to offer, but at a much lower power consumption. Now I'm not assuming performance/ power will scale linearly, but if they can make a 20W actively cooled chip that's even equal in sustained performance to Intel's i9s, and far better optimised for the demands MacOS places on it, surely it's game over?

To be honest the A13 isn't a good example of what the complexities faced by ARM if they were to take over all x86 processes in the software/hardware world. There are many complicated issues that arise with the different instruction set architecture and also scaling at high power seems to still favour x86 significantly.

But as I said, theoretically an ARM should be able to be as good as x86 - but at least when I dabbled into this conversation a few months ago on some techie forums (rather than news blogs), a lot of people who actually work in this field had been dismissing ARM coming anytime soon as the technology isn't there yet. I believe ARM will become the norm but not in the next 10 years if I was a betting man.

 

[Nacho98]

Why would the screen refresh rate have anything to do with the CPU as opposed to GPU
Razer has had 120 and 240 hz refresh on it's laptops and they don't have a speial deal with Intel for 10nm chips.

I must be missing something?

No idea, saw someone else say something to that effect a couple pages back.

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Looks like the first half of 2020 for the 13 to get the new keyboard.

13-Inch MacBook Pro With Scissor Keyboard Expected in First Half of 2020

Following the 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple plans to release a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a scissor switch keyboard in the first half of 2020, according to industry sources cited by hit-or-miss Taiwanese publication DigiTimes. A preview of the report was shared with paying subscribers. 16-inch...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[foldpages]

- anyone with the 16”, can you reproduce this supposed issue? A non issue for me and hopefully fixable by software but wanted to see if it affected all of most machines.

I noticed this "issue" with YouTube. When an active video is playing and you close the browser window (Chrome in my case) it will produce the pop. Not really an issue in my opinion and it's most likely just a software fix.

 

[Ma2k5]

I noticed this "issue" with YouTube. When an active video is playing and you close the browser window (Chrome in my case) it will produce the pop. Not really an issue in my opinion and it's most likely just a software fix.

Last time the popping issue on the 15" ended up being a hardware issue if I recall (some ended up failing altogether) - so I guess it is slightly concerning.

 

[Pro7913]

The current similarity between the two models is actually what makes me think they will (ultimately) change the higher end model quite a bit - evening out the storage so they both have 256GB it's $1,499 vs $1,799 so $300... but all you get for that extra 20% onto the cost is 2 more TB3 ports and a bit more thermal headroom. There's some value in those things, certainly, but it seems a big price upcharge for very little gain. Even if they have to increase the price slightly to incorporate a dGPU and say start it at 512GB like the larger model, it works out as a neater set of machines:

13" - 256GB/8GB/Iris - $1,499 ($1,299 for the 128GB)
14" - 512GB/8GB/5300M - $1,999
16" - 512/16GB/5300M - $2,399


I don't think this is a new full cycle design that's going to see 4 iterations before they do anything else, maybe 'stopgap' is a little uncharitable towards a great machine, but I do think we will see a full redesign in 2021 with the mini LED HDR display, and probably ProMotion and a new design language. As you point out there were no big new tentpole features that usually define a MBP generation (unibody; retina; Touch Bar) so this just feels like a further member of the TouchBar/ 4th generation family, albeit a significantly improved one.

2020 not 2021 base on the 4 years of the cycle.

 

[Falhófnir]

To be honest the A13 isn't a good example of what the complexities faced by ARM if they were to take over all x86 processes in the software/hardware world. There are many complicated issues that arise with the different instruction set architecture and also scaling at high power seems to still favour x86 significantly.

But as I said, theoretically an ARM should be able to be as good as x86 - but at least when I dabbled into this conversation a few months ago on some techie forums (rather than news blogs), a lot of people who actually work in this field had been dismissing ARM coming anytime soon as the technology isn't there yet. I believe ARM will become the norm but not in the next 10 years if I was a betting man.

It's not the A13 as is, packaged and optimised for an ultra low power package (phone/ up to 6W) it's the fact the individual cores are judged to be on a level with what Intel can do, so if they are packaged and optimised for a laptop class processor they should be pretty competitive by the sounds of things.

Apple realistically will likely have been tinkering with this since they first started designing Arm chips (with the A6, right back in 2011/2012; certainly since the 64 bit A7) so they've had plenty of time to identify performance bottlenecks, where optimisations are needed what issues might arise and construct solutions.

I guess either way we will know at WWDC next year whether it's happening in the near future, not long to go for that.

2020 not 2021 base on the 4 years of the cycle.

Kuo's latest assessment for the MacBook with mini LED backlit display is between late 2020 and mid 2021, I guess it could come at an October 2020 event (after the Arm transition begins in WWDC in June) but maybe waiting a year for the Pro so the ecosystem fills in a bit could be a sound idea.

 

[Pro7913]

It's not the A13 as is, packaged and optimised for an ultra low power package (phone/ up to 6W) it's the fact the individual cores are judged to be on a level with what Intel can do, so if they are packaged and optimised for a laptop class processor they should be pretty competitive by the sounds of things.

Apple realistically will likely have been tinkering with this since they first started designing Arm chips (with the A6, right back in 2011/2012; certainly since the 64 bit A7) so they've had plenty of time to identify performance bottlenecks, where optimisations are needed what issues might arise and construct solutions.

I guess either way we will know at WWDC next year whether it's happening in the near future, not long to go for that.


Kuo's latest assessment for the MacBook with mini LED backlit display is between late 2020 and mid 2021, I guess it could come at an October 2020 event (after the Arm transition begins in WWDC in June) but maybe waiting a year for the Pro so the ecosystem fills in a bit could be a sound idea.

16-inch MBP was rumored to have OLED display and yet it never happened.

 

[Falhófnir]

16-inch MBP was rumored to have OLED display and yet it never happened.

I'm not familiar with that rumour myself, certainly not from anyone worth listening to...

 

[maflynn]

16-inch MBP was rumored to have OLED display and yet it never happened.

I didn't hear that (or at least I don't remember hearing that). I'm not a fan of the OLED displays. I'd be rather hesitant to jump on that bandwagon any time soon

 

[PastaPrimav]

What I find weird about the 16" launch is that the 13" (4 TB3) now seems way overpriced. If you spec it up to 512GB/16GB/i7, it actually costs more than the base 16" despite a worse CPU, much worse GPU, old keyboard, worse speakers, and a smaller screen (not always a downside but Apple historically prices smaller things as cheaper).

Would have thought it would have had a price cut if it wasn't updated yesterday. Would find it hard to recommend when the 2 TB3 model is a fair bit cheaper and the 16" is a fair bit better.

I'm sure you can figure that one out for yourself.

Apple is more than happy to have the best-value MacBook, and also the only one with a usable keyboard, be the most expensive one...for next several months.
[automerge]1574099726[/automerge]

16-inch MBP was rumored to have OLED display and yet it never happened.

No it wasn't.
[automerge]1574099809[/automerge]

I'm not a fan of the OLED displays

Surely you'll want to qualify that by saying, "...on laptops". OLED is killing it on Apple Watch, and iPhone, and on TV's everywhere.
[automerge]1574100317[/automerge]

To be honest the A13 isn't a good example of what the complexities faced by ARM if they were to take over all x86 processes in the software/hardware world. There are many complicated issues that arise with the different instruction set architecture and also scaling at high power seems to still favour x86 significantly.

But as I said, theoretically an ARM should be able to be as good as x86 - but at least when I dabbled into this conversation a few months ago on some techie forums (rather than news blogs), a lot of people who actually work in this field had been dismissing ARM coming anytime soon as the technology isn't there yet. I believe ARM will become the norm but not in the next 10 years if I was a betting man.

ARM in Macs will start as a co-processor. I think that's a given. Heck the new Mac's already have Apple-designed co-processors in them. Undoubtedly we will see ARM start by powering a few macOS-specific processes. Completely isolated from the rest of the Intel CPU. That could go on for a decade or more. Eventually most Apple processes or apps could be powered by ARM without developers even being exposed to it yet.

There are so many ways for Apple to slowly roll this out that there is hardly any reason to even speculate on the "impact" of "switching to ARM" because there won't be any "switch to ARM" at least not until long after they've started using ARM.

 

[dumastudetto]

I don't see Apple going down the ARM transition route when it's clear to nearly all of us that the future of Mac is iPad Pro. For some use cases, we're not there yet obviously. But we're getting there, and an iPad is the best choice now for more than 95% of all users. Until that 95% figure gets closer to 99%, Apple will continue offering legacy Mac products to keep its whiney pro customers happy. But I don't see Apple investing in a major platform transition for the Mac line, not now the writing is clearly on the wall for its impending death.

 

[pshufd]

There's been speculation that there would be MacBook Arms since 2008. They've all been wrong.

 

[Pro7913]

I didn't hear that (or at least I don't remember hearing that). I'm not a fan of the OLED displays. I'd be rather hesitant to jump on that bandwagon any time soon

Apple Reportedly in Talks With Samsung About OLED Displays for Future iPads and MacBooks

Samsung is the exclusive supplier of OLED displays for the iPhone X and newer, as part of a supply agreement with Apple. Due to fewer iPhone sales...

www.macrumors.com

[automerge]1574110217[/automerge]

I'm sure you can figure that one out for yourself.

Apple is more than happy to have the best-value MacBook, and also the only one with a usable keyboard, be the most expensive one...for next several months.
[automerge]1574099726[/automerge]

No it wasn't.
[automerge]1574099809[/automerge]

Surely you'll want to qualify that by saying, "...on laptops". OLED is killing it on Apple Watch, and iPhone, and on TV's everywhere.
[automerge]1574100317[/automerge]

ARM in Macs will start as a co-processor. I think that's a given. Heck the new Mac's already have Apple-designed co-processors in them. Undoubtedly we will see ARM start by powering a few macOS-specific processes. Completely isolated from the rest of the Intel CPU. That could go on for a decade or more. Eventually most Apple processes or apps could be powered by ARM without developers even being exposed to it yet.

There are so many ways for Apple to slowly roll this out that there is hardly any reason to even speculate on the "impact" of "switching to ARM" because there won't be any "switch to ARM" at least not until long after they've started using ARM.

Apple Reportedly in Talks With Samsung About OLED Displays for Future iPads and MacBooks

Samsung is the exclusive supplier of OLED displays for the iPhone X and newer, as part of a supply agreement with Apple. Due to fewer iPhone sales...

www.macrumors.com

Right here.