Apple Plans MacBook And MacBook Pro Kaby Lake Refresh For WWDC | Hacker News Reader

Apple Plans MacBook And MacBook Pro Kaby Lake Refresh For WWDC

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45 pointsrbanffy57 comments

It's probably the wrong thread to share my hopes for the next-gen but still. My family owns four 2016 models (maxxed out both 13 inch and 15 inch, a pair used at a day job and a pair is personal) and we all experience similar issues:

a) Touch Bar reacting to fingers that are accidentally touch it while resting. Causes a lot of volume and Esc triggers. Latter is particularly annoying at it usually cleans Slack/Skype/other active text input.

b) Keyboard quality is terrible. My work machine does not respond to Option and Control presses anymore. My wife's machine has similar issues with up/down arrows.

c) I don't get why Apple changed default/native resolution to be non-retina trading extra screen real estate for image quality.

b) Last but certainly not least as mentioned on all previous MacBook threads starting October 2016: running Docker/minikube/Chrome/Slack and et voila: you have 4GB of RAM left. I'm not even talking about ML/Data Science work: AMD GPUs are way behind even 1050 at the moment and I doubt that their new offering that is meant to compete with nVidia P100 will ever make it into a laptop.

Personally I think this news isn't real. Intel "promises" to release Cannonlake this year (thanks, AMD!) and I don't see much sense in either updating MacBooks with Kaby Lake nor releasing them just after 8 months after last refresh. That's the CPU that you get when company stops trying.

If they are going to mention MacBook Pro, I'd probably expect them to do a small price drop but not a refresh.

I totally agree with your statements.

I'd also add that the battery life is pretty woeful compared to a 13"MBA, I can't get more than 2 hours meaningful work done on mine.

The touchbar at time is slow and stutters.

The touch pad is too big and very often gets spurious inputs when typing. It acts like a "good PC touch pad", not the perfection of only a generation ago.

Power management with external monitors is also hit and miss. The device will often not wake in closed lid mode with presses to the keyboard.

The inclusion of Touch ID is great but whatever changes done under ttt hood has turned searching Keychain manager into molasses.

All in all this is the worst Mac laptop I've ever purchased, and I've purchased 1-2 per year since 2000. The only thing keeping me on the hardware is OS X.

I have to say M$'s new hardware looks very tempting.

I'd like to see them go more towards the XPS13. 13" screen in 11" body. Add a tiny edge to the top, run a cable behind the screen to add the iSight above the screen, voila. Also baffles me that Dell didn't go for that option, instead of the chincam they have now..

I have the non touchbar version. The keyboard is the one thing that has surprised me. I've done a complete 180 and love it. I bought this to replace my 2008 Macbook and at first found the travel too shallow but now I can actually type much faster than on the old one and I'm convinced it's better. I hope that any of the issues you mention come up within the 1 year warranty period though.

Your issues about the touch bar are the reason I bought the non touch bar version, I use function keys too much to have the physical ones gone, also I'd rather not have it go to sleep and prefer to have the bigger battery. EDIT: just adding that I did spend time testing the touch bar version in the Apple store as the price difference was not a major factor for this type of one time purchase for me, and I think if it's a good idea to do so if you live near one.

I wasn't unhappy about new keyboard feel but rather quality of keyboard itself. Eventually I'll bring it for repair, I think that should be covered indeed.

I disagree on the last point. I think Apple moving up spec refreshes of the MBP to Q2 makes a lot of sense given that Intel's release cycle on chips tends to be Q4. A small Kaby Lake refresh in the MBP, potentially with a 32gb RAM option on the 15" model, could very well be in the cards.

>c) I don't get why Apple changed default/native resolution to be non-retina trading extra screen real estate for image quality.

You seem confused. The default/native resolution IS Retina.

Retina is exactly about trading "extra screen real estate for image quality".

There's no "change", that was what Retina was about all along.

The other mode doesn't make much sense -- to have larger dpi but tiny screen elements on 15" or 13" screen, and scalable doesn't work as well with legacy apps and most stuff than "pixel doubling" does.

I think he meant that the newest 15" MBP with a 2880x1800 retina display is configured by default to show a scaled 1680x1050 desktop instead of the "native" 1440x900@2x you are thinking about.

Thanks, did they? I missed that! The spec pages still say:

15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2880-by-1800 native resolution at 220 pixels per inch with support for millions of colors

-- and lists a number of supported "scaled" resolutions.

I wonder why they made this move... People asking them for more real estate? Haven't gotten my MBPr yet, is the scaled resolutions workable?

That's exactly what I meant, apologies for confusion.

I was profoundly shaken, but in the end, in the interest of discussion, I decided to accept the apology.

I'm returning my 2016 MacBook Pro (just got it) tomorrow over these exact same issues. Bad performance, TouchBar accidental triggers, 16GB of RAM... etc. same things.

I really hope they open up to the idea of making more non touchbar models.

Agreed. I found it ironic that Apple considers the function area unused space so in their "Pro" line they replace it with something they view to be more usable but it seems most pro software[1] already made use of function keys, it's the consumer MacBook line that would miss the function row the least.

[1] Software dev tools

I don't think I'll ever be convinced that a non-hardware escape button is remotely a thing that I could use.

I love my Late 2011 17" matte MacBook Pro. I dread the day that I will have to settle for a new MBP. I will probably end up getting a refurbished 17" off of eBay or something instead.

I almost bought one of those the other day. Well technically I was looking at the matte 15 in MCP. It is a shame how much Apple has gottan rid of. According to past OS updates wouldn't you run into the issue that it wouldn't run the lasted OS?

I'm still on Mavericks 10.9.5. Works great, I see no reason to update. It's a workhorse at its current state, no need to mess with what works so well.

Given the news about a Core i9 leak (https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/15/intel-could-be-about-to-re...) I would not be surprised if Apple had cut a deal with Intel to make a sku for the macbook pro.

Does Apple ship with "Extreme" mobile chips now? Cause that's all the i9 is after marketing, right?

Those CPUs in the leak have TDP values of over 100W. Not very suitable for slim laptops like MBP. Or was there something for mobile market as well?

There was no discussion of a mobile SKU that I could see, which is what made me wonder when I read the news. If you look at Intel presentations, and over the years I've looked at a lot of them, they tend to present 'complete' families of their lines. So the budget sku, the high power sku, the low power sku, the enthusiast sku, etc. the ones you would put in laptops seemed to be missing.

There are probably more than one possible explanations about that, but one that has happened in the past has been a vendor has asked for (and received) Intel's commitment to give them all of the early production.

And so I thought "I wonder if this is the part in the rumoured Surface Pro 5?" but it wasn't because Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop. And now we here "ooh, big Apple announcement coming up." and I note that the last Macbook pro announcement was underwhelming to say the least, and Microsoft is making annoying[1] noises about how their laptop is faster/thinner/better than anything Apple makes, and that makes me wonder if Apple decided to do something about it and make an update to the Macbook pro that they knew No one else would be able to beat because they bought exclusive early access to the chip that they use.

Entirely speculation at this point of course, and I will not be shocked to be completely wrong here. But I also wouldn't be surprised if this is what they announce.

[1] Annoying to Apple but fun for consumers as they get more choices and the competition keeps everyone on their toes.

Apple mentioned something on a special "extreme" iMac model during their Mac Pro apologizing meeting last month. I'd assume i9 would be the right fit: something like 22-core Xeon would've been too expensive but single i9 would likely be just right.

It beats me why they don't just update their MacBook Air. This is the computer that serve most people's needs.

It's by far the sleekest (the MacBook and MacBook Pro being thicker and heavier), it's not exactly cheap but it's priced just right at around 1,000 euro, it's not fast enough for graphics work or gaming but it really serves the need of 90 percent of college kids and professionals who just need internet, emailing, a text editor and a spreadsheet, and to be able to watch a movie and save pictures. And maybe do some light hacking.

Update the MacBook Air and I would buy it right away.

Didn't see any word as to if this refresh would also be improving any of the other criticisms of the 2016 model like the RAM for example. Does anyone have any inside information or insight on that?

The ram issue was purportedly about battery life. The 2016 mbp uses LPDDR3 ram, which limited the device to 16GB.[0] They couldn't use LPDDR4 ram, even though it was available at the time, because Skylake chipsets didn't support it.

If the rumors are true that this year's model will use Kaby Lake, which will open up for the possibility of LPDDR4 and higher capacities.

[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/new-macbook-pros-no-32g...

Doesn't look like Kaby Lake supports LPDDR4: http://ark.intel.com/products/97462/

Is there any information on how well the latest MBP model has sold? I want to see Apple's bottom line being hit by the poor decision making. I personally went for a dell XPS 13 (and I'm regretting it, but that's another story).

They are their best selling macbooks ever.

Please, could you share why you are regretting this decision to buy an XPS 13? I'm considering buying one for technical investigations (mainly, ensuring that Illumos and Open Indiana runs on this).

Apple doesn't report out MBP numbers separately, it bundles them with all products in the Mac line.

Mac product sales declined 10% YoY from 25.4B in 2015 to 22.8B in 2016. Units shipped were also down 10% YoY from 20.6M to 18.5M. Apple's explanation: Mac net sales and unit sales decreased during 2016 compared to 2015. The year-over-year decline in Mac unit sales during 2016 was at rates similar to the overall market. The effect of weakness in most foreign currencies relative to the U.S. dollar also negatively impacted Mac net sales.

The entire Mac line only makes up ~10% of Apple's revenues, whereas iPhone sales generate ~60% of revenue, so the MBP (guesstimate: 1-2% of overall revenue?) is not hugely important to Apple.

http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1628280-16-...

It looks like the 2016 MBP actually sold quite well in the last quarter, according to http://www.macworld.com/article/3163463/macs/apples-q1-2017-...

Not sure whether that's because of pent-up demand and people resigning to finally buy, or because they're legitimately popular.

I want to see Apple's bottom line being hit by the poor decision making.

In other words, you'd like validation for being mad at them? "If only they had listened to me..."? Poor decisions or not, those decisions don't affect you anymore as you've purchased another brand. Just let it go. Because most of what I'm reading says they're selling quite well.

I'm hoping we'll see some Ryzen in Apple computers before long.

I would like a refresh of the MacBook Pro that would include much-requested features, like one additional row of keys (including the ESC key), ports that you can connect something to (like USB-A) and an SD card slot. I would have no problem with the new laptop being slightly thicker than the current generation, especially if we could get good, reliable keyboards.

I'd upgrade my MacBook Pro in an instant, gladly paying a price premium for those (premium) features.

Yeah, I was expecting to upgrade my personal 2014 when the 2016s were announced, but "slightly faster but worse in every other way, oh and also we raised the price a bunch" was... not a compelling sales pitch.

Arg, kills the resale value of my Dec 2016 pro.

The ever known MacBook problem :D

It seems like Kaby Lake is so last year. When they actually come up with something exciting like they used to?

Kaby Lake laptops started rolling out a week or two after the new Macbooks were available. Apple must have decided it wasn't worth waiting that extra week or two? Or was there something else going on?

It probably takes more than a week or two to update the product.

You're misunderstanding my point: the laptops should have had Kaby Lake to begin with.

And his point is, I think, that waiting for Kaby Lake would have delayed the launch by more than one or two weeks.

Probably a big difference between "available" and available at the quantities needed to satisfy the millions(?) of people waiting for an updated MBP

Yeah, that's very possible. I was just surprised at the time, because I bought a Kaby Lake based laptop from Asus in early November, but they don't move units like Apple does.

Seems like fake news. Apple rarely introduces new hardware in WWDC. And the ammount of references to the Surface Laptop make it read a bit like sarcasm, even though it surely does not seem intended.

"Part of the motivation with these upgrades is to remain competitive with Microsoft and its newly introduced Surface Laptop"

I don't think this is true - 2013's WWDC had new macbook airs, for example: https://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/06/10/everything-announced...

While it may be true that Apple sometimes released hardware at WWDC in the last decade, there's still the elephant in the room; Why have no big name sites like fool.com or wsj put their name on this "leak" if it is real? When there's real hardware coming, those guys usually get the inside scoop (and preview hardware if weeks from release). They'd be furious if Apple let small beans sites scoop them.

https://www.wsj.com/news/technology

Not one mention of Apple anywhere.*

*laptops

If the WSJ etc. does have a version to test they're most likely banned from talking about it (inc. rumours).

I think the OP is referring to the precisely timed leaks by Apple PR.

These are the articles with the words: "unnamed sources within Apple...".

An example of this was leaking the lack of 3.5mm earphone jack a year ahead so when it was launched the lack of the jack was old news, and not th focus of the news.

Bloomberg reported it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-16/apple-sai...

>>big name

>Bloomberg

I stand by my post. Bloomberg spams HN for traffic. They don't get inside scoops from Apple.

The article was written by Mark Gurman who had an excellent rumor track record when he was at 9to5mac.

Bloomberg was the source

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-16/apple-sai...

iPhones were originally announced at WWDC too. It wasn't until the 4s that it got bumped back to the now-traditional September announcement. They've also announced new Macs in many years, displays, the iSight webcam, and some AirPort hardware.

>fake news

There's another word for it: Vaporware. Competitor releases new hardware and you're caught flat footed? No problem! 'Leak' rumors about your hot new hardware just around the corner. Kill their sales as people wait for your product that doesn't exist. Flagged story. When did this become a rumor site?

Apple doesn't do that, it has always been tight lipped, mainly so it doesn't hurt it's own sales.

Pretty sure they have little concern about the Surface Laptop with dirt collecting fabric, and windows jr. operating system.

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