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WWDC 2019 Live discussion - Was: Sooo umm Apple just released new MacBookPros (1 Viewer)

Ronald Epstein

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Well, Apple save me a ton of money.

I was going to upgrade to a 16-inch rumored model with a redesign.

What we got instead are the same models with just a speed bump.

Here's to next year's purchase!
 

Carlo_M

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2015 max CPU/GPU MBP still running strong. Hoping it will continue to hold up until the ARM CPUs become a thing for their laptops a few years down the line...
 

Ronald Epstein

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I usually upgrade my MacBook Pro every year, pending on a revolutionary new design or feature.

I was ready to bite the bullet this year, but these specs are not enough.

I think a new redesign is in store for next year with rumors including a radical new keyboard design.

Also kind of strange, for years I was downsizing MacBook Pro screen size. Went from 17" to 13" back up to 15"

So I bought a Macbook for travel and now I am going back up in screen size for my heavy-duty Pro model. So I am waiting for the new 16" to debut next year and I am going to keep saving up money for it.
 

Ronald Epstein

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Wow. Every year. I envy your income. :thumbs-up-smiley:

Not as expensive as you might think.

Apple products retain their value to some extent.

I simply sell my MBP to Gazelle or another similar company and that's a good down payment for a new one.
 

Ronald Epstein

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If there is a 16 incher it will come in 2 weeks at WWDC, not as a silent launch. And it will likely be a wholly different architecture.

You really expect that could happen?!

I don't think this is going to be a hardware event, except for the possibility of unveiling a new Mac Pro.
 

DaveF

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You really expect that could happen?!

I don't think this is going to be a hardware event, except for the possibility of unveiling a new Mac Pro.
Apple’s not announcing re-architected MBP at WWDC. They just did an annual refresh of the MBP. Developers will be upgrading their MBP in the two weeks before the conference. No way Apple pulls the rug out from under them to announce, “Haha! We punk’d all you chumps! Cause look at this sweet new MacBook Uber Pro you coulda got if you’d waited two weeks! Suckas!”

This was messaging that there isn’t a rumored 16” revolutionary model coming in two weeks.

Maybe Apple pre-announces a new MBP for sale next year? Given their recent outcomes with pre-announcing hardware, I don’t think they’d do that either.
 

DaveF

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Or...if there’s a 16” redesign coming this year, it’s a mid- to low-performance Nothing or Air replacement. Maybe with the ARM cpu. But I’d expect that in the Fall as part of the “products for students announced too late for students to buy for school” announcements.

Though, a lot of developers, I read, use mid-grade hardware, so maybe a new mid grade system could be announced at the pro conference. But I’m speculating not. :)
 

Carlo_M

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Pure speculation on my part. /disclaimer

I don't think the ARM CPUs are quite there yet for laptops. Not only that, but MacOS would have to be recompiled for that chipset, so unless they've been super-secretly doing that (which would be a Herculean effort) I think we're still a couple/few years away. My expectation is that they'll do a mass migration to the ARM chipset when the MacOS/iOS integration is much further down the line. And no I don't think they'll merge MacOS and iOS, but once they've compiled both for ARM processors (which iOS already is) then it will be much easier to have increased cross-platform collaboration.

I'm not sure a 16" would be suitable for low performance/Air. Unless it's not a retina screen...which would result an unholy amount of scorn being unleashed on them. A 16" retina would be more pixels than the current 15" so you would want a fairly powerful GPU pushing it. Not saying it's impossible. It would just be weird to put your flagship screen (assuming the 16" is retina) on your lower-powered lineup.
 

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The reporting has been for 2021 ARM Macs, maybe 2020. Getting something this year, as you say, is early against expectations. And I agree too that it seems weird for being a new 16” screen to the mid-range, budget line. All the more reason I believe the think that the rumored 16” model doesn’t come out until next year.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-arm-cpus-2020-intel,38668.html

I don't think the ARM CPUs are quite there yet for laptops. Not only that, but MacOS would have to be recompiled for that chipset, so unless they've been super-secretly doing that (which would be a Herculean effort) I think we're still a couple/few years away. .
Apple most certainly been super-secretly been getting macOS to run on ARM for a few years already. We now know they had OS X running on Intel years before the intel transition occurred. And of course, iOS is derived from macOS, and is ARM native. And now the other way is being demonstrated: iOS code being Marzipan’ed to run on macOS through a recompile.

We may be a year or two away, but it’s already in work and there are likely fully functional ARM macs working in development labs, sorting out all the quirks and bugs and nuances — hardware as much as software.
 

Ronald Epstein

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I never thought a 16-inch model was coming out right after a MBP refresh. I simply misread Sam's post.
 

Carlo_M

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On further contemplation I do agree they've likely had teams working on MacOS on ARM. Apple's an enormous company with many teams working in secrecy on things that, many of which, never even see the light of day.

But the transition from Intel to ARM will need way more public-facing testing than the transition to Intel. Their market share was way smaller in 2005/6 when that happened, and Mac OS was also much less complex back then. Not to mention they didn't have to have any iOS consideration at that time. So while that transition happened "relatively" quickly, they are going to have to be way more cautious and have their developers and public beta testers test the heck out of this thing, unlike what happened in 2005/6.

Plus, as I mentioned in the thread I started about Apple moving to ARM, the most powerful ARM they have right now beats the 13" MBP CPU...but comes nowhere near the 15" MBP CPUs let alone the BTO max options. They'll not want to migrate until they can at least claim some parity, if not superiority, between ARM and Intel. That's why as much as I'd love to see it, I'm skeptical of even the 2020 rumors, and wouldn't be surprised if it was more like 2021 or even 2022.

But whenever it happens, I'm really looking forward to seeing what they can do when they're no longer beholden to Intel's timelines.
 

Dennis Nicholls

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The MAC OS grew out of the Next OS, which was originally hosted on the Intel architecture. They had years of experience with the Intel architecture. Jobs killing the MAC clones destroyed any reason for future PowerPC development. They had few choices other than to adopt the Intel chips, or maybe AMD's chips.
 

Sam Posten

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We didn’t think the chips were ready for iPhone either. I don’t think there will be any surprise hardware. BUT I’m saying if an arm transition is coming a -prototype- dev focused device in small supply makes sense.

Just like they did during intel transition.
 

DaveF

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The MAC OS grew out of the Next OS, which was originally hosted on the Intel architecture. They had years of experience with the Intel architecture. Jobs killing the MAC clones destroyed any reason for future PowerPC development. They had few choices other than to adopt the Intel chips, or maybe AMD's chips.
NeXTSTEP was originally on Motorola 68000 processors. Transitioned to intel several years later.
 

DaveF

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Plus, as I mentioned in the thread I started about Apple moving to ARM, the most powerful ARM they have right now beats the 13" MBP CPU...but comes nowhere near the 15" MBP CPUs let alone the BTO max options.
Totally agree with caveat: A12 Bionic is about on par with intel i5 in a MBP 13”. But that’s for an A12 constrained by power and thermal envelope for an iPhone! Give the A12 (or whatever follows) the power and thermal management of a laptop, and there’s reason to believe it’s hunting bigger game!
https://bgr.com/2018/10/10/iphone-xs-speed-vs-android-a12-bionic-chip-could-power-macbooks/
 

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