New Macbook Refresh:

Don't hang me if this is completely wrong next week, but I find it to be authentic and would be surprised/shocked if it's wrong:



I'm excited actually But I am bummed out on the Polaris AMD Chips, feelsbadman...

 

hoping for a normal implementation of switchable graphics, so we can use intel gpu on windows or switch to dgpu mode only

 

Won't have switchable graphics except in MacOS. MacBooks run MacOS and their drivers are optimized for this OS only. Windows support lesser.

 

Can someone tell me what the Radeon Pro 450 is comparable with? In terms of what Nvidia Card? Thanks.

 

Just ordered mine from apple store education in France ^^.

 

I think that's a huge mistake, and I'm a huge apple fan, but without actually using that keyboard to blindly order 2,500+ dollars sounds reckless IMO

 

No I used the macbook 12" keyboard for 3 months, I had to, but I got used to it, so it can only get better from there because the travel space of the keyboard has been improved and we can say that it's bigger than the macbook 12" keyboard ^^ so no not a mistake I'm used to butterfly keystrokes now.

 

kk, I've read some early reviews of people saying they are not liking the keyboard after 100,000 words typed. But that you get used to it over time.

 

I prefer other keyboard of course but I'm used to it so if I have an improved, bigger version I won't be disappointed.

 

Some guesses for Intel CPU model numbers from Apple's clues:

(Clues)	→	(Guess)
Apple 13-inch MacBook Pro (2016)
Intel Core i5 dual core 2.0-3.1GHz, Iris 540	→	i5-6360U, Iris 540	15W
Intel Core i5 dual core 2.9-3.3GHz, Iris 550	→	i5-6267U, Iris 550	28W
Intel Core i5 dual core 2.7-3.1GHz, Iris 6100	→	i5-5257U, Iris 6100	28W
Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (2016)
Intel Core i7 quad core 2.6-3.5GHz, Iris ? (+ Radeon Pro)	→	i7-6700HQ, Iris 530	45W
Intel Core i7 quad core 2.7-3.6GHz, Iris ? (+ Radeon Pro)	→	i7-6820HQ, Iris 530	45W
Intel Core i7 quad core 2.2-3.4GHz, Iris Pro	→	i7-4770HQ, Iris Pro 5200	47W

(matched clues to data at http://ark.intel.com/#@Processors)


Some specs for Radeon GPU model numbers:

Model	→	Single Precision TFLOPS	Compute Units	Memory Bandwidth
Radeon Pro 460, 4GB	→	1.86 TFLOPS	16 (1024)	80 GB/s
Radeon Pro 455, 2GB	→	1.3 TFLOPS	12 (768)	80 GB/s
Radeon Pro 450, 2GB	→	1 TFLOPS	10 (640)	80 GB/s

(data from http://creators.radeon.com/radeon-pro/ via http://techreport.com/news/30881/radeon-pro-specs-hint-at-a-full-fat-polaris-11-gpu-in-macbook-pros)

 

http://gizmodo.com/i-just-stroked-the-new-macbook-pros-touch-bar-1788303500

I want to note that the fact that they removed the HDMI port actually pisses the hell out of me, but I'll be somewhat satisfied if someone can locate a Male USB-C to HDMI Male. I'm not sure of there is one out there but that would be really helpful.

 

I read a really interesting thread on Macrumors, (NotebookReview is still my favorite forum though because I use alot of products outside of just apple) http://forums.macrumors.com/threads...new-15-inch-macbook-pro-models.2009984/page-3

And it's interesting to see that a large number of Apple Users really know their tech and are upset about the outdated GPU that is going in this system. I'm definitely going to have to wait for a review to come out before I make my decision about getting one or not. I didn't anticipate spending more then $2600 but it looks like I'm in the $3000 range with what I would want, yikes...

 

Man I hate spamming all of these reviews.articles but this one is a great one, if you don't read anything I posted above at least see this one: https://www.cnet.com/special-reports/does-the-mac-still-matter/

 

My takeaway from this is that the Razer Blade is still a better MacBook Pro than the MacBook Pro. While I wouldn't give the high-end models a second thought, the base 13-inch one that ostensibly replaces the MacBook Air is intriguing.

 

I'm on the same page with you, but I'm curious to see the thermals and battery life. The Macs are listed as lasting 10 hours which is nearly double of the razer 1060. I wouldn't expect them to be the same but i was surprised to see it listed as double. I'm personally at point in my life where I'm not gaming as much as I used to so I don't really need the beefy GPU plus with the addition of TB3 I could maybe add a Razer Core if I need that power?

My company will stipend nearly 2 Grand so price isn't a huge factor for me, I just want to be sure I get the system that serves my purposes the best. I've been really happy with my Macbook Pro 750m GT but I'm at the cross roads of going Mac again or Razer. The keyboard is the other question I have, and no not the touchbar, the butterfly

 

This just hit me, and a little late I might add... But.... You can't connect an Iphone 7 or 6 to this new Macbook Pro. On top of the headphone adapter that you have for your iphone you now need another adapter to connect your Iphone to this new Macbook Pro to go from Lightning to Thurnderbolt and I'll probably need another adapter to go from Thunderbolt to HDMI for my Videos. This whole Adapter thing is getting crazy and stupid... Am I the only one that thinks this? I believe this is both crazy and absurd.... especially if you are a loyal apple customer and buy their products you're still stuck with at least 3 adapters to get things to work with one another.

Or is the argument that you just do everything via wireless? And I mean EVERYTHING... But this was probably all done so that the system could be thinner but now I'll be carrying around 3 or more adapters with me wherever I go. I'd personally rather the system be thicker then carrying around 3-4 adapters to go along with it. The sad news is that I'll have to probably wait on getting this system and lol I'm not waiting on Apple or the Review but waiting on USB-C to catch on and become more mainstream. Apple is banking 100% into USB-C and I don't believe any system has 4 ports, let alone ONLY USB-C other then this Macbook.

I believe Apple did great things when the released the Original Macbook Pro Retina as it had a plethora of various connection ports, they've now gone backwards and limited it to just 1. If that's not a gamble I don't know what is. Everyone is lamenting on this touchbar but I think there actually is major oversight with what I've said above.

 

Performance wise the radeon is yes, not the best, but outdated ??

Absolutely not, this is their latest Polaris 14nm Finfet architecture ! So maybe an nvidia pascal would've been better, but man those thing gets hot !

Nvidia does NOT have any low consumption GPU, their lowest the 1060 is a 80-100W class GPU.

So people can criticize (there are many things to criticize) but not about an 'outdated' gpu, this is the best sub 50W gpu they could've put inside the macbook pro as of now.

 

Where I get and understand what you're saying I don't think people are complaining about the GPU by itself I believe they are complaining about the GPU and the Price of Admission to utilize said GPU. Which I actually have to agree with them on. I don't think anyone anticipated a $3000 laptop or $3000+ (The most minimal Spec'ed out system I would get is at least $2800 pre tax and that's with a 512gb SSD and a baseline 2.6 CPU, yikes...)

So I think in conjunction with price increase and spec's there is reason for them to be upset. I really had throught it would be at $2500, $3000 with a 1TB, seeing as how I'm like $400 off that's significant and I've lost all of my peripheral ports :X but gained a touchbar... By the time I've added the Highly Acclaimed Apple Care this system is right there with a Razer Blade Pro 1080 GTX and most of the forum already knows how I feel about that system and it's price tag, lol... And my apple logo doesn't glow anymore!!!

 

I ordered it via Apple On Campus and it saved my 12% on the price. So I was a LITTLE less shocked by the prices but yes I totally agree...those prices are outrageous. I took this macbook because I saved a little for it since 2014 and now I need it for Xcode, it's important, I like taking the latest apple product as they evolve quite a lot, and man it looks absolutely amazing. For what you'll do with a macbook a radeon polaris is more than enough, the price comes from the r&d and the brand as always with apple.

Regarding port I understand but an ethernet + 4 usb 3.0 usb-c adapter cost me 12 Euros...(Aukey) and an HDMI one 10, it's not the end of the world, in 3 years people will be thankful to have usb-c believe me.


Regarding Razer, not only the blade pro 1080 costs 4000+ Euros here but I'm convinced it's going to have a ****ty battery life and will heat A LOOOT, this is not the way I see a professional laptop. It's a gaming laptop with it's pros and cons, but I won't be satisfied by it if I use it as I plan to use my mbPro

 

The price of the ports don't really bother me at all I mean it's a few dollars so what? What bothers me is the fact that I'm carrying or have like 3 or 4 of them and I own the Premier version of the system. List absolutely any current 15 inch system that has as many limited ports as this one, just give me one. And while you seem very optimistic that in 3 years people will be thankful for usb-c, I have to ask you what is that based upon? Because when I look at the macbook standard with USB-C I haven't seen one USB-C flash drive come up in my day to day life currently. Not even one... So again what is that based on? That particular system has been out for over a year now.

When you say something like wait 3 years for USB-C I understand this as wait 3 years to see if the Macbook Pro is worth getting. That's what I'm basically reading from you, lol... And I very well might actually do just that And who could blame me? Razer Blade not only stacks up well here, but it's nearly a grand cheaper...

For me it would be sell my current 2014 Macbook Pro and get a 2016 Macbook Pro or Keep my 2014 Macbook Pro and pick up a Razer Blade in conjunction with it.... Now you tell me what's the better pathway ?

 

assuming identical on the Bus and VRAM as a test MXM card I have seen in action the pro 450 is about the same as the GTX 960m some real world apps are closer to the 965m but not on par to it.

I for one was looking to refresh my 13" and my 15" to top specs, and replace a 2015 iMac but can honestly say I can not be bothered at all. I have been monitoring Macrumors as well and Im with the guys there .... WTF!!!

1: ports suck and no more magsafe which was a saving grace to stop me from dumping it on the floor and denting them. I really do not want more dongles, adaptors and crap in my bag to lose.

2: underwhelming GPU on all but top models ( 460 seems to be about a 965/970m range )

3: I cant live without an easy to access ESC key in many applications.

4: Where the **** is my 32 GB of RAM, I can eat 16 so fast in Pro apps its not even funny.

5: $3K CDN for a base model with a 256GB SSD, are they doing good cocaine?. $5400 for a loaded one??? really now


OK this refresh its going to be a P70 ( xeon E3, 64gb, 2T SSD, 4K , Quadro, etc, etc, 5 yr NBD support) vs a max loaded 15" for the SAME frigging price!!, and I'll wait for the new Surface Studio and skip looking at an iMac for at least another couple years.

 

That Surface Studio looks nice. Just wish it had a Pascal GPU instead of a 980M.

 

I think what happened was that there really is only one team that designs and develops all of the Macbook Systems. And thus we have what we have today. I feel like if there were seperate teams that designed the ultra portables vs the desktop replacement systems they would not have driven down this pathway. That's such a huge assumption I just made by making that statement, but when you look at what we have today, how can you not have that assumption? It's as if they asked the team that designed the Macbook to develop the 15 inch Macbook Pro and this is exactly what they came up with.

 

I carry two laptops, one for gaming and one for everything else. The gaming laptop is more frequently in my home. The razer blade is mainly a gaming laptop, even if it's good at other things and has better than average battery life... if you want to use it just like you use a macbook pro than it's a shame to pay a new laptop for something you already have : a macbook. If you want to buy another computer next to it, it should serve a different purpose no ?

I didn't base my purchase on the 4 usb-c ports only, I based it on a ton of parameters...
Thing is I already owned a XPS 13 after someone nice lent me a macbook 12" and came to the conclusion that windows 10 is not tailored for high dpi screens, is more buggy than a macbook, consumes more power so less battery life...and overall the experience is more 'painful' let's say that.

Why did I purchase a macbook pro whereas I could have bought anything else win10... :
- The OS
- The softwares, the optimization
- The screen quality in conjunction with high DPI support, the OS is TAILORED for retina HD unlike nearly all windows apps...
- Build quality, thinness : who does it better ? Surface book is quite nice but not like that
- The touch bar, touchID, the synergy with my iphone (iMessage)
- The ability to use Xcode and being able to publish apple apps
- 4 thunderbolt 3 ports, that's not all bad when you think about it...ok no retrocompatibility but think about (not in 3 years it will be sooner) being able to plug-in ONE cable to have an external monitor, ethernet and your macbook charging...that is only possible with thunderbolt, docking, centralized stations are the future IMO.

So what you have 2 or 3 tiny adapters in your laptop sleeve ? Am I really basing an important purchase only on that ??

I do data science/IA and lot of programming and reading, I don't think other windows 10 laptop can offer me a better experience for that, believe me I tried both. Once I had an Ipad never looked once at a win10/android tablet ever again, I think that is the case for macOS but for work, for gaming windows 10 is BY FAR the best thing out there.

So here's my opinion ^^.

 

It's like they don't want my money. While the OS is a huge plus I can't justify the premium anymore. I've been waiting for ages for the refresh which makes this all the more disappointing.

Their base model 15 inch is the same price of the Surface Book with the 965M.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I suspect once they ship it probably will. but either way for me working some projects it should be fine, I can mesh up wireframe for 3D on it or do what I can on a 32GB unit with a mobile GPU, and then send files to a bigger unit ( Like I do with my iMac etc ).

Many have complained about the price on it, but a 27" Cintiq will run me well over $3000 and I hear from a couple who had hands on that the puck and pen is better than the Wacom by a large margin.

MS sent some of us over on creative cow emails stating that spec may change by shipping dates. however we do know the RAM and both the M2 and 7mm drive bays are user accessible.

 

so who's actually going to buy the new mbpr now?

 

All very feasible reasons, if you didn't own a previous model from the last 3 years or so.
I have the 13" from March 2015 and most of those still apply.
The USB-C ports are nice but 2 would have been enough, with the other 2 being something less "future-proof".
The touch bar becomes useless when you are connected to an external display and keyboard/mouse.

That new Surface Book with dedicated graphics is looking mighty tempting at the moment.

 

never owned a macbook pro .
The surface book is INSANELY expensive (just like the mbPros), it's an amazing device, but I've had multiple convertible computers and most of the time I never used the tablet mode, only the laptop mode, so for me it was wasted money, because the tablet mode I don't use it anyway . IF microsoft were to release a microsoft book laptop only yes that'd be something I'd think about.

 

It's one of those things you don't think you will use, but when you have it you might find a use case that is useful to you, or not

Some times it's nice to be without the keyboard. And, although the folding back on itself gag is nice, it's weightier than just the screen alone.

Might as well give it a try

 

I have no doubts many will find a use case for the tablet mode but I owned 2 asus transformers including one T300Chi running windows 10 and tbh never used the tablet mode, but that's just me.

 

Those were nice and thin, but I also used those without the keyboard a good percentage of the time.

The MS Surface Book has a heavy bottom - keyboard section, so it might get used even less.

A nice wireless keyboard, and a folding cradle stand for the tablet would be a nice light carry and use case.

 

For all that are praising the new Surface Book keep in mind: The 965m does only have 2 GB of VRAM which makes it as useless as the 450 / 455 Pro (both with 2GB) in modern games and/or high settings.

I will go for the 13 inch MBP as soon as they are available in my region. Currently i am still using a mid 2012 MB Air for my work which is running at its limit. Since 2 years i am waiting for the MB Air display upgrade and now i have to buy the pro anyway

 

I have never owned a convertible, but I loved the iPad for media consumption in bed/on toilet/wherever. Managed to break the iPad screen recently, so another reason to look at Surface Book.

Difficult to break out of the Apple ecosystem though, and OS X is nice.

 

It's good to be multi-os savvy, there's benefit's to Windows, MacOSX, Linux, better to be up to date on all so you can be flexible at work.

There is no "breaking out" required, as long as you don't lock yourself in to any one OS

 

Am I crazy? but I feel as if the removal of the glowing apple symbol on the back of this system is the clear-cut tell tell sign that Steve Jobs is in fact dead and gone. Something in the back of my head tells me that Steve if he were alive and well today would fight tooth and nail to ensure that the system has a glowing apple on the back. Granted, I realize that it's purely visual ascetics, and has no real function but Steve would fight and demand for such things wouldn't he?

Steve was really big into the design and look of a system especially on the visuals. And sometimes he didn't really care what it would cost, how hard it was, he'd just demand it and make it happen. And people would hate him for this or label him as crazy over odd things such as this. But again that is Steve for ya.

 

It's also very possible that none of these systems were designed as being the Pro Replacements and instead they just labeled them as Pro because they were the best versions they had ready to go, and apple is either try to cut down on their line up or something like that. Do you recall talks of a 15 inch Air several months/years back? I believe this system is perhaps what that 15 inch air was suppose to be. From my perspective this system is a great mac book 15" air. If they had marketed the product as such and then release a thicker more fully speed system and labeled it as "Pro" guess what, lol? All of these complaints would stop because this is a great Macbook 15" Air, lol...

 

Apple killed the glowing logo already with the 2015 12" Macbook.

I think the Air line is finished, the same 12" Macbook is replacing it, albeit at a higher price point.
Good for writing documents, web surfing and media consumption, but the processor in it is too weak for serious work.

 

Such BM lol

 

It's the Macbook Air Apple Users deserve, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt Tim Cook because he can take it. Because this isn't our Macbook Pro. It's a Touchbar Macbook Air, a bright emjoi touch bar. A Dark Apple....

 

Notebookcheck has published a preliminary review (no score) for the 13" no-touch-bar-version:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-...without-Touch-Bar-Laptop-Review.182374.0.html

Nothing surprising in there to be honest.