Expectations and hopes for apples notebook line up

Here is what Im thinking:

1) The death of the cmbp

2) rmbp models will get a little bit cheaper to fill the same price points or just a bit above of the cmbp line up

3) mba will continue the same

4) Apple will use mostly the GT3e variant on its notebooks

5) 8870m in the rmbp 15

Hopes

1) Quads on the rmbp 13 and 16gb of ram (though both can be more reasonably expected when broadwell comes)

2) Intel launches the new 40GB/s thunderbolt 2.0 protocol

Pipe Dream

1) Apple making a workstation class notebook, with pro gpus and plenty of cooling, with a higher grade IPS panel that can really try to compete with dell and hp offerings

 

rMBP is non-upgradeable, so I hope not though Apple is known for milking money any way that they can.

 

It would be very interesting to see Apple make an actual workstation-class laptop, though considering what happened to Xserve, I don't think Apple would ever want to be in the business-class market in the foreseeable future.

In addition to (2), I'd like to see their MBA get a bit cheaper as well (maybe $700 for the basic 11" model?).

 

hardly think they will lower price on mba 11

but the workstation would for the creativity professionals

 

Considering the (non) updates on the Mac Pro line, I think the ship has sailed for the creative professionals as well. Apple's biggest business is in iphone and then ipads along with iTunes and smaller air / mbps, so they are content on milking the cash cow. They were forced to bring the ipad mini, which to its credit has eaten into the sales of the ipad, due to the success of kindles but can anyone point to similar success in the creative market? The creative professional market is already so small compared the 7" tablet so what incentive is there for apple to invest money there?

 

because thats one of the few places pc oems make large margins. and given that the mac pro is going to use ivy E... the dire problem here is the software that is either not enough or the quality that is actually dropping

 

I'd like to see dedicated graphics in the 13-inch MBP. I would also like to see a touch-screen at some point, though I really don't think that is going to happen.

 

Actually, it would be pretty neat if Apple came up with a tablet laptop like the X230t or something.

 

That's something that they will never do. Apple has established a clear line between their computers and tablets. They have never shown any interest in combining them as Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, or others have done. Most of the time those results come out rather sub-par in that they either rely on Intel Atom processors that are still way too slow or they slap low voltage Intel chips that still manage to squeeze out just about 2-3 hours of actual battery runtime. Any other solution producing 9+ hours of battery life uses an ARM processor and runs Windows RT (which has been a failure).

Apple could come out with a stylish product but I doubt they could offer something that is 10-11.6", a processor that is on par with whats in the MBA, and 7-10 hours of real world battery life. Apple is content establishing two different product lines and that has been successful for them along with others. Acer, Asus, etc. have all had success coming out with Android tablets that are clearly distinct from their computers. This setup is going to be the way to go until either Intel can release a powerful processor that has low thermal production and doesn't require much power or ARM releases a solution that is able to match x86 chips in terms of performance while getting developers for Windows and OS X to support their architecture.