New MBP coming?

Hi,

Just wanted to ask if there ae any news out there about ne MB Pros coming in the next time?

Thx.

 

Probably just next year, around april, may when Intel releases the Ivy Bridge update.

 

The 2011 MBPs were released back in February of this year (6 months ago). If anything, they might receive some slight spec bumps somewhat soon but other than that, Apple likely won't release an actual new MBP until next year when Intel releases their new processors. Anything between now and Ivy Bridge's release will only be spec bumps for the Sandy Bridge platform.

 

I can see the 15 MBA air thing happening, but I wouldn't hold your breath for any real hardware changes (optical drives notwithstanding).

That would be random. 2820QM is already king of the hill, and 2620M is king of the dual core world. 6750m isn't exactly a dated card (7000 series won't be out until late Q4), and I can't see Apple fitting the 13 inch with a discrete card.

I'd look for a "real" refresh no earlier than late Q1/early Q2 2012 imo.

 

Not anytime soon. CPU with slightly higher clock speed may be available as new options when Intel releases them, but that is it and shouldn't be considered as new version.

There won't be any new MBP until Ivy Bridge launch next year. My hunch tells me that a new design is likely too, given that Apple has been using the current unibody design for a few generations already (since 2008). It's very likely that optical drive will be ditched across the board to make the macbook thinner. But even more likely is that MBP 13" will go away and be replaced by MBA, as ultra low voltage CPU get more powerful and flash storage get cheaper next year...

 

Yeah, there are new "extreme" Sandy Cores, but I don't see Apple's thermal design allowing for that. A 6990m in a Mac? We can dream but probably not...

Thinner is great, but thinner and more powerful is two opposite paths. If they dropped the ODD to make it physically thinner, they'd have to drop quad core (at least until Ivy TDPs are out) and definitely drop a medium/high end graphics card as well.

 

Thinner and more powerful is two opposite paths, in the same generation of chip. Ivy Bridge is the 22nm die shrink of Sandy Bridge, and we are definitely going to see performance improvement and energy reduction/heat saving at the same time. MBP 13 is never at the top in terms of the raw powerful anyway (remember last year when all MBP's were refreshed with Core i5/i7, while MBP 13 was still only equipped with dated Core 2 Duo?). It has never been equippped with quad core CPUs and it has no dedicated graphic chips. With Sandy Bridge Core i5, the performance gap between MBA 13 and MBP 13 have been narrowed down significantly. I can see MBP 13 being phrased out and replaced by MBA 13 next year, with the MBP line up being only the 15" and 17".

Getting rid of optical drive has a lot of advantages, and it is clearly the direction Apple is heading towards (disc-less Lion, new Mac mini w/o optical drive etc). They can easily make the MBP thinner by getting rid of the optical drive, or use the extra space to improve cooling and/or to equip bigger battery. And this suggests a redesign of the MBP chassis is extremely likely.

 

It wouldn't be random. Apple typically comes out with a refreshed/redesigned notebook and then spec bumps it 6-9 months down the line while refreshing it (or coming out with a redesign) in another 3-6 months. Apple didn't do that with the MBA line this time but that is the path they typically follow with the MBP. They did that with the C2D and first generation Core i MBPs. It would be random of Apple to not refresh the MBP line with some type of small spec bump. The spec bump could be using larger base hard drive sizes, adding more RAM for the default configuration, going with a slightly faster processor (this is the most usual but the increase is often small, 2GHz to 2.1 or 2.2GHz), maybe slightly more powerful graphics, etc. Spec bumps aren't limited to just the CPU and IGP/GPU though.

 

It wouldn't make any sense to refresh it now.

It would make the best sense to wait for AMD Southern Islands (7xxx) and Ivy Bridge (both - not just one).

~ May/June of next year

 

NEXT YEAR.

I agree with the speculation, Apple is slowly dropping the disc drive. You can see it on the Air and the Mini. Apple is aiming for thin=cool and promoting their iCloud which is coming soon. I wouldn't be surprised if next year they came out with a 15'' Macbook Air.
They aren't going to phase out the MBP 13. It's their most popular computer, especially among teens/young adults who are on-the-go with school.

 

What 2.1 processor are you referring to?

If you want to reference history, do so. Refreshes have been about a year for the last few major revisions. March/April 2012 isn't a stretch.

Apple was the first large manufacturer to bring Sandy to us consumers because of their agreement with Intel. When has Apple ever been early to the hardware party? Almost never. Heck, the MBP 13s were still running >2 year old Core 2s. MBP 15/17 was also late to Nehalem. We were EARLY to Sandy, which made the 10 month refresh possible (technically closer to 11 months, but who's counting?).

Yes, I can see a HDD capacity bump (not quite a switch to SSD) or a RAM bump, but that's not worth waiting for. And tbh, I don't think the RAM bump would happen, because that would pretty much negate the possibility for CTO RAM upgrades seeing that 8gb modules command huge premiums.

 

The speeds I "referenced" were an example to show how small the processor spec bumps tend to be. You want some history? Here you go: Apple introduced the first Intel MacBook Pro in early 2006 (January). It was the 15" MacBook Pro and then the 17" MacBook Pro followed a few months later. Apple let those sit on the market until October 2006 (9 months after the 15" and 6 months after the 17") before giving them some minor spec bumps. It wasn't a complete redesign/refresh but they went from 2.16GHz Core Duos to 2.33GHz Core 2 Duos (along with 1-2GB of RAM instead of 512MB-1GB, adding in draft-N, opting only for the SuperDrive and getting rid of the standard CD burner/DVD-ROM one, and starting hard drive capacities at 120GB instead of 80GB).

Then Apple updated the MacBook Pro line again in June 2007 (8 months this time) and again, it was more of a minor spec bump as things started off with a 2.2GHz C2D instead of a 2.16GHz C2D processor, they added 2GB of RAM, etc. They updated the MBP line again 5 months later, again 3 months after that, 8 months after that, 3 months, 5 months, 10 months, and then another 10 months. Some of those were spec bumps, others were complete refreshes/re-designs and that generally fits with what I said.

Given that the current MBP line came out in February 2011, it wouldn't be out of character for Apple to spec bump that soon (September-October) before Ivy Bridge's introduction. Apple has also been early to the hardware party more than once. The adoption of draft-N was pretty early, the option of having switchable graphics came before almost anyone else, the use of integrated batteries in notebooks was pretty much started by Apple, and there are a few others in there.

Either way, a spec bump wouldn't be surprising before any major refresh/re-design with Intel's new platform. If Apple waited until March of 2012, it will have been 13 months after the introduction of the 2011 MBP and Apple has never waited that long to update the MBP line (whether it was small or large).

 

That's all fine and dandy, but Apple's selection of hardware is the same ones available to us to speculate. I'm genuinely curious what you would expect the change to come from? Concrete hardware examples I mean.

A processor bump for the MBP 13? Possible, there's the i5-2520m/2540m. Processor bump for the base MBP 15? Not really, or there wouldn't be any differentiation from the high end models. Processor bump for high end MBP 15/17? Unlikely, as 2820QM is the highest non-extreme processor. Not only does Apple's design not allow the TDP output of a 2920XM, but it's also extremely uncharacteristic of Apple to offer an Extreme Intel processor.

What about on the GPU side? The only other "mainstream" GPU higher than the 6750m is the 6770m; everything has thermal outputs greatly exceeding Apple's tastes. Bump from 6750m -> 6770m, extremely unlikely. Base model may see a minor upgrade though, but it won't be big enough to "threaten" high-end MBP 15 status, since that would be counter-intuitive.

RAM bump? I can't see the minimum being bumped to 8GB on a 2 DIMM solution, since that would leave no room for upgrade options where Apple can charge up the for.

Hard drive bump? Possible. Not worth waiting for. Transition to SSDs? Too early.

 

^^he gave you the history of the changes, not meaning that he is expecting them.

I do too believe that there would be a spec bump on the processor front. Intel always release their improvements on the processor manufacturing as slitghly bumped cpus, much like last year change from the i7 720qm to the i7 740qm, this is felt specially on the OEM chips, like the i5 450m, 460m, 470m, 480m, and the last 490m

All the OEMs did that change.

 

From all the articles I've read, Intel will be releasing the Ivy Bridge processors in mass production around late Spring/early Summer 2012 first with the PC processors first, then mobile PC chips a little later. Unless, Intel and Apple have an agreement, the Ivy Bridge refresh could be around the same time as the PC processor release.

Apple is working on very thin 15" MBA/MBP combination notebook without an optical drive. It could be a new 15" MBA but many seem convinced it's the new 15" MBP refresh. The optical drive will be absent and many of the components will be soldered on, like the SSD and RAM making it a little difficult to upgrade yourself. So Apple is moving towards thinner and cooler model. A new redesign of the unibody is expected to happen in 2012. I personally like the design now. There are benefits to have a thin notebook but I personally prefer a thicker and sturdier notebook that can withstand a bit of bumps.

I don't see Apple refreshing the MBP line until next year when Ivy Bridge comes out. I was hoping for something for the Fall, but the more articles I'm reading everything is pointing towards a 2012 Ivy Bridge and a new redesign rather than refreshing 2011 Sandy Bridge line. However, I read one article today and it says Apple may refresh the entire Macbook Pro line without the Ivy Bridge processors. But you never know. . .

 

Well, lets take a look.

Apple won't include an intel extreme processor. A spec bump would be possible if intel released new cpu's. Unsurprisingly, intel does this basically all the time. It might be something little, like a 2830QM with a .1 ghz clock speed increase and the same TDP.

The spec bump probably wouldn't include a gpu change. It hasn't in the past.

The spec bump probably wouldn't include a ram change in this case.

A hard drive capacity increase is possible with a spec bump. No one was suggesting that it was worth waiting for. This was simply speculation as to what will change in the future as far as I can tell. No reason to be defensive.