What to expect when you are expecting - The gathering of rumours regarding the Apple Line up in 2013

Lets start this by stating the obvious!



There can only be one!

Macbook Pro is dead! The King is dead! Rise Macbook Pro with Retina Display! Long Live The King!

Changes made to the rmbp line up are possible:

-IGZO panels
-AC wifi adapters
-the bump in thunderbolt speed
-haswell cpus - discussion on wether apple will put the 4600 or the 5200 models are still in place
-GPU candidates - 750m, 760m (highly unlikely), 8870m
-Minor changes in the body design

MacBook Air

-Redesign? I dont think so its too early and this has become their first adoption line
-AC wifi adapters
-the bump in thunderbolt speed
-haswell cpus - probably aiming for the 5100 equipped ones

Mac Mini

-AC wifi adapters
-the bump in thunderbolt speed
-haswell cpus probably the 5200 models

iMac

-AC wifi adapters
-the bump in thunderbolt speed
-haswell cpus
-GPU Candidates, here lies the problem, the 780m is just a rebranded 680mx, will apple put that or just wait for AMD 9900 series that are due late this year?

 

Macbook Pro is dead? I guess the price for it would go up on ebay, since not everyone wants the higher priced retina MBP while Air is not adequate for everything.

I don't even know why apple pushed for the thunderbolt (trying to be iDifferent ... ) when drives for it are so expensive. No one else has embraced it, so I don't think that prices for these drives would easily go down.

 

I think maybe Apple will keep the standard MacBook Pro around for another generation or two. While it may not seem like it, there still are quite a few people out there who rely on optical drives and the standard MacBook Pro is the only line of Apple computers that still have this (barring the Mac Pro, which is also rumored to have a refresh this year).

 

whats the difference between a thunderbolt and a USB3 external storage connection? the same difference that led to many people to use firewire against usb 2, its faster, stable, reliable, and the list goes on.

but that is only one of the uses, we already have cameras that export via thunderbolt. and other things like pcie expansions, docks, monitors that acts as docks.

I dont know, they will keep selling that pos of superdrive to anyone who wants it. Really the giveaway is that the imac doesnt have it, why would the mbp need it? one doesnt deal with space constrains and was killed throughly

BTW I think they will lower the price on the rmbp to the current lvls

 

When it comes to everyday hard drives and even single external SSD drives, there isn't a single difference between USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. Both are going to work with the average external hard drive at the same ~75Mbps. Thunderbolt pulls ahead by being able to use RAID configurations. However, that doesn't stop the technology from being too new along with too expensive. New technology, especially a new "format," is always going to be more expensive the first few years it is out. It doesn't matter if this is PC technology, gaming consoles, or even media formats (Blu-ray). However, it has been over two years now and thunderbolt drives are still way too expensive. The inclusion of USB 3.0 in Macs has made it even more difficult to justify Thunderbolt to anyone other than professionals that have large RAID setup and/or are using the very expensive $50,000 cameras that are also using it. I have yet to see a single, consumer, affordable camera or camcorder that uses thunderbolt.

The technology had its place before Apple adopted USB 3.0 in that one could use a thunderbolt dock essentially adding a series of USB 2.0/3.0 ports, Firewire, Gigabit ethernet, audio out/in, and video out. However, the market was very late in releasing those and Macs with USB 3.0 ports were released before any thunderbolt dock with USB 3.0. For the common person, thunderbolt has done nothing other than let people say that they have a thunderbolt port on their computers. Any speed bump in thunderbolt, which comes from the update to Haswell, won't benefit common users.

That being said, I expect Apple's updates to fall in line with what everyone else has done. Put the new CPU's and chipsets in, slightly updated GPU (for Macs with dedicated graphics), maybe a pump in baseline capacities for the MBP line, and maybe even a bump in baseline RAM (4GB to 8GB). Also, the standard MBP line is far from dead. The 13" MBP is still one of Apple's best selling computers along with the 13" MBA. The RMBP is NOT their top selling line of notebooks. If you are going by the hard numbers, the RMBP is "dead" and was pretty much "dead on arrival." The 15" model is a fine system (not the 13", it still stutters way too much when browsing the web) but those $2500 notebooks aren't exactly flying off the shelves.

 

You know that apple doesnt deal well with sales number as I do, they killed their best selling notebook, the mb and used the mba as the entry level along with the mbp 13. The rmbp is by far not their best seller, nor was the unibody when introduced, it comes with the premium and the usual Im not going to be a guinea pig idea.

Regarding thunderbolt for a common user it doesnt make sense, nor was it intended to be used by a common user as a storage interface, USB 3 is there for it. Its for professionals that need the bandwidth and stability in the connection. When I made the comparison with firewire I thought that was clear, sorry if it wasnt.

However thunderbolt is coming more and more with products for the average joe, cheaper storage compared to the launch, the emergence of the pcie expansion peripherals (were you can add along other things gpus), docks, hand warmers and fans (the last 2 are a joke off course, no more a joke than the soup heater for USB)

 

Aside from the expected updates (Haswell, GPU), I'm just hoping that Apple stays with their current UI design (maybe with minor design changes). Hopefully Cook is watching Microsoft's Windows 8 and taking a page or two about what not to do with their desktop OS.

 

given that OSX way to launch apps was basically in windows terms to put everything in the taskbar (aka dock in OSX) or to launch directly from the instal folder (though much prettier to do that in OSX than in windows with all those "strange name things"), the launchpad is very similar to metro to me, albeit with less functionality.

metro is basically the combination of launchpad with the widget areas with its own api for apps developed to that area, in a sense its much more than launchpad offers, I never saw the problem that people see it with metro, the navigation is pretty lame with gestures and the need to accomodate those gestures to mouse actions, however everything you want is there. In the end its a problem of reeducation and some clunkiness here and there that can be solved by updates and a new version of windows

 

Apple replaced the MB with a commonly priced MBA model. Granted, it came with a smaller display but the low voltage Core i processors included with the 11" MBA were more powerful than the Core 2 Duo processors in the plastic MB. All-in-all, the 11" MBA is a faster and more powerful system than the plastic MB it replaced. So it made some sense especially since its evident that Apple wants to unify their notebooks and desktops to all use a unibody aluminum design. It doesn't make sense to replace a $1600 MBP with a $2200 RMBP as the entry level 15" option. The sales numbers don't agree and that would be bad practice for Apple. Hence, the MBP is far from dead and the RMBP has yet to take its place as the real "king of the hill." It might be Apple's flagship notebook but it still has a ways to go before it ends up replacing the standard MBP line.

It reminds me a lot of the iPod touch. At first, it was an expensive luxury product and was unable to replace an iPod nano or iPod classic in terms of features, price, and/or capacity. Apple added more features over time while reducing the price and now the iPod touch is no longer the flagship iPod but also their best seller. The RMBP is years away from being that and, until then (much like the iPod classic), the standard MBP line is here to stay.

 

one thing you forget is that every new product in the mbp line up has been met with a price increase when it was launched, not a price decrease, after a year, the price remains at was before.

when the unibody was introduced it wasnt a success either

I dont really see any reason why the mbp should actually continue

 

I think they'd like to drop the disc and get the price down under $2000.

That's my guess. I'm not sure when they'll get around to it.

 

they have already dropped it in the imac, where there are tons of space, I dont see why it would continue

 

But the unibody models were a success, they ended up replacing all other models. You also keep forgetting that the 15" RMBP starts at $2200. When the original unibody models came out (13", 15", and 17"), the starting price of the 15" MBP was not $2200 as it is with the baseline RMBP. So I'm not sure why you keep saying that the MBP is dead when it clearly isn't and there is no way that Apple is going to have their 15" notebook lineup start at over $2000. It's clear that they are focusing on the RMBP lineup and there is a smaller gab between the 13" MBP and 13" RMBP. Apple also removed more configurations of the 15" MBP. That being said, the MBP line isn't going anywhere especially since the 13" MBP is one of their best selling, if not their best selling, notebook. If Apple replaces one product, they aren't going to do it with something much more expensive. It is going to be with a product that has more features for the same price. There is no way they are going to get rid of a $1700 notebook and make the $2200 RMBP the bottom 15" configuration. That doesn't make sense in terms of consumer sales, economics, and product demand.

So far you haven't given any reason why the MBP. There is a difference between Apple moving focus towards one product or another and having them outright end a product line in favor of a different one.

 

when the original unibody models came out, they came only with the 13 called macbook and the 15 called macbook pro, they were more expensive than the models that were available.

after their introduction on the next update (1 year later) they released the 13 now named macbook pro and the 15 with design changes on both, after a while came the 17, and with that new interaction they received a change in price downwards.

much like I think it will be done to the rmbp line

and actually from an economic perspective if they actually go for the price points of the mbp that are now, which I think they will, they will undoubtedly save, giving that making and stocking different mobos, not to mention to get the machines in a single process lowers the price of production

for the mobos here is how we stand

3 for the mbp 15
2 for the mbp 13
2 for the rmbp 13
6 for the rmbp 15

now you multiple by 2 the rmbp models, since they were the only ones that actually got a cpu bump, another indication

and then we have the chassis, the touchpad, the keyboard, the cables, the speakers, the screens (the mbp 15 uses 3)...

stock is dead money, parts stock is an even deadlier money

the fewer the lines, the fewer the R&D costs for the new mobos, the fewer costs on support for firmware, hardware and software, the fewer the costs to get that line validated around the world, the fewer the lines and specially one with interchangeable parts like the apple line the less money spent on parts due to bulk production

aside that we also have new factories going to be built on the US, meaning higher labor costs, as well.

also one interesting design of the rmbp line is that they have fewer parts

 

rMBP

Wireless AC- general

Low end 1800-2000 price point 2.3-2.4ghz haswell with integrated video IRIS pro 5200. 256gb
High end 2400-2800 2.7-2.8ghz haswell with HD4600 video geforce 765M dedicated. 512gb

 

so they are going to redesign the psu for us eh? that 765m consumes a lot moola

 

Get real, the MBP is one of Apple's most successful products. The Unibodies were a huge success from the start and maybe you didn't know this but the Macbook Air was the first Unibody Macbook and the design was such a success that it inspired Apple to create the Macbook and Macbook Pro's this way. I had a Powerbook 17" that I paid over $1000 more for than when I bought my Unibody MBP. I bought the first generation so I didn't see any price hike over the previous MBP. Got any proof to back up your statement?

 

Yes. Windows 8 is paving new ground in terms of aesthetic design, but is actually following OSX in terms of functionality. The removal of a menu-style launcher? OSX removed the program launcher fuctionality from the Apple menu, where it had existed in System 7.0–9.2.2. The Start Screen is indeed a combination of Dashboard, LaunchPad, and Spotlight.

Agreed again. If they're removing the optical drive from a desktop machine, I think it's safe to say that Apple will not retain an optical machine on any newly-redesigned model. The only reason the current MBP has it is because it hasn't been recently redesigned from the ground up. If Apple was planning on keeping the optical drive on any device, they'd certainly keep it on a desktop machine.

 

This year's slight refresh is nothing exciting.
The Macs lineup to get is next year's model that'll come with Thunderbolt 2.0. Double dat bandwidth! More likely for EGPU to take off vs current bandwidth limited Thunderbolt.

 

Im looking forward to better specs and not just the expected spec like a gt750m. Razer blade 14 with gtx 765m is thinner than a macbook air so a gtx 760m or 765m isnt highly unlikely on the newer macbook pro retina 15, they can tweak for better cooling and more battery watt since tweaking is always a part of newer models but maybe apple wouldnt aim for the maximum graphics performance possible on its size. I hope they put a 765m or 760m option. I wouldnt want igzo display if its only gonna be the gt750m.

Macbook pro 15 igzo
Gtx 765m
Haswell cpu
1tb ssd
20gb ram
3000$ +

Battery life is no problem with integrated gpu so gtx 765m is possible just hope apple becomes a little smarter this year ^^

 

Of course they don't. I've continually asked for any real reasoning why they believe the RMBP is going to be the de-facto MBP with the standard one being discontinued. Despite stating facts, they have continually ignored them and continued to spout incorrect information. It's fine to have a "belief" one way or the other but don't make a "matter of fact" statement without having some type of information (while ignoring already established facts).

 

Actually you have 2 arguments one is that the rmbp currently costs more, which sincerely is nothing. prices can be changed, and I showed you what are the increased costs of maintaining 2 lines

and the other is that the 13 mbp is their best seller. of which they killed other best sellers. current thinking of the price reduction in the education store is that they are throwing out their stock

given that the only thing that I would get from this discussion would be another tiresome debate about haswell, I left.

 

We'll I wouldn't mind if they brought back the mbp 17 inch with the addition on Retina Display or (better). Also, no optical drive with thunderbolt and usb 3.0 ports. However, I know there is minus Zero chance of that happening, It would be a nice if they would at least announce that you could order one upon special request (that way they only have to make the ones for customer's who are willing to purchase one. However, I know there is Zero chance of that happening also.

 

I could go for that as long as we had a higher end AMD GPU so I didn't have to suffer with the abysmal OpenCL performance with Nvidia GPU's in CS6 etc.

 

I prefer AMD gpu too and if they plan releasing a 17 inch it should have 8870m and more resolution than 15 retina.

 

Which is not going to happen. The 17-inch model accounted for about 3 percent of MBP sales. Apple is not going to invest time and money into making a new one.

 

Correct there is zero chance of that happening that's why I stated it would be nice if they announced it as an Option for those who are willing to purchase one dispite the cost of a 17 inch retina (or better display). That way apple would only invest time and money into the one's that are being sold to those specific customers be it through their website to configure or who call apple directly.

Those sales would be guaranteed!

 

Seeing as the macbook air has taken over as many people's only laptop, it would be really cool for a MBA with dedicated graphics and higher resolution. I have a retina 15 and love it, but if I could get the same basic power in an 11' model, I'd drool.

 

Great news today, but where is the RMBP refresh? Seemed like a no-brainer!

 

after some chit chat on the past weeks, I wasnt expecting the rmbp today at all, being right on this situation doesnt gained anything for me, so I will be wrong and say that I was but hurt, at least I win some pain

 

I was actually a bit devastated with the " upcoming " Mac Pro refresh.

 

her for you, some flowers to brighten the day


I know you prefer scotch, but I never remember the brand


and I love vodka, specially that one



so we can make some white russians

if that doesnt work, you know I have a very large sweet tooth



brazillian specialty, brigadeiro cake

 

why? 1 'box' for most people... with extra boxes for expansions that can be connected with Thunderbolt... sounds pretty cool to me.

 

thats content for about 15 pms currently or it was more?

I find the concept interesting, but the bandwidth... oh that thing... this video illustrates the point



that for me is the main problem, and the expandability of that trash can or r2d2, blender or food processor, my black cat... the gpu should be proprietary alright, and waiting for apple to deliver things is going to be problematic, whats the best gpu officially supported on the mac pro today?

 

About that

1: a great deal of us need, not want ... NEED pcie slots for Logic Pro boards, AVID interfaces, Fibre channel boards and a multitude of other interfaces. Many of which we have been told will not work on a TB to PCIE unit due to " issues " from Apple. heck Apple is even saying their own fibre boards will need a new adaptor and an entire TB port for it. many specialty interfaces have already said... PCIE 3.0 X16 or higher

2: right from Apples own information ( click Mac Pro @ Apple.com and have a look ) up to 2X faster than previous Mac Pro in FP performance and tops at 12 cores. ... insert slow clap here .... stock parallel chip units from HP, DELL, and home built units are 5 - 8X or more already ..... meaning its half as fast as what we have been running for 18 mos, @ same price point or lower at a guess by the time we outfit the external devices

3: non replacable GPU's meaning most of us will have to flip Mac Pro's on an 18-24 month rotation as we are always switching to better and better Quadro or FirePro cards. or for specific software. Not an easy bite to swallow for amortizing hardware.

3: to top it off no Quadro card option ( eGPU possibly but I will get to that ) ..... LOTS of legacy software in our field use CUDA sadly enough. hello slowdown or buying new software. for me that's a tiny $9300 touch if I transitioned today

4: 4 DIMMS hmmm so I can max out at 64GB theoretically. insert slow clap again. I have 64 in last years model and for many it is enough, for a lot it does not cut it at all I hoped and needed for 128 to get excited, my friends elsewhere needed more yet.

5: 90% of the storage has to be external for large projects. so more dependant on aux power supplies and wall warts and TB cables.

6: once again no more redundant power supplies. they were an option in 08/09 but not since and they can be a life saver when you are doing almost week long renders etc. We have been begging for this since 2002 !!!!

7: what I would call too big of a push on TB ports. are we going to continue to have issues with TB adaptors and high end or even low end monotors? how can we attach 10 bit screens such as the Eizo Coloredge units? current TB to DP don't seem to work regularly with the 10 bit palette and 2 years later Apple has no answers. secondly ... some of us run more than 3 screens some run as many as 6 on existing Mac Pros. ....... there are all your TB ports eaten as you cant chain high end screens.

8: ok back to the whole eGPU thing... this is a rev 1 and sofar eGPU on Macs has been nothing short of a failure, you can somewhat do it with windows some days. but for me to add CUDA support ( assuming it works at all passing the data correctly ) I would need to add a $1000 ExpressBox 3T box ( or similar ) and then my Quadro cards ( or new ones ) loaded and hopefully trouble free. WE are not going to wait to just see if it works or if it takes another year to get the bugs out

then I look at what all I would need external and realize I would be staring at a nice pile of boxes all over my desk and cables and power adaptors all over the place as well. WAY too many points of failure.

now to continue to a larger workplace. they tend to have rack mounts and really nice neat server clusters and rendering clusters etc. after Xserve was dropped Mac Pros became the necessity, well it wasn't too bad for an IT department to pull the guts out of a Mac Pro, drill a few holes, insert a few risers and have a back plate made and Voila a 4U rack mount Mac Pro. we cant do that with this thing at all ..... there is no option but to try and stuff all these units and the necessary TB external devices somewhere. ( insert the Apple support saying we should use Mac Mini's in replacement to the Xserve jokes here from years past )

the Z820 in a single 12 core or dual 12 core configuration may be much uglier but more feasible and we can easily load 2 or 3 GPU's on with sufficient RAM .....

Yes the new refresh is a good enough for most option and much smaller ..... but for many it is a large financial and productivity risk and way too many What if's if your paycheque and business depends on it.

 

Im disappointed, no comment on the beautiful cat video, my heart aches.

the whole problem here revolves around the pathetic attempts that was made by intel to certify and support development of thunderbolt.

the most simplistic idea that was to get multiple interfaces, i.e. dock, from it only bore into fruition this year.

egpus which are a more complex case have been appearing since last year, there is the pathetic attempt made by that chinese egpu company, that lets its users do the troubleshooting of their products in return of a low cash turn around (a basic case of you get what you pay for, and with a crippled interface even)

there is also the problem that those things that can actively use thunderbolt are limited to use only one channel, which is why TB2 exists, however without the children having the TB2 chip it means that it will still use 10gbps for a channel, so the limit not only is still there, we still cant even fill it up to its measly and paltry pcie 2.0 x5, because it wont use all available channels.

than moving out of bandwidth and problematic TB implementations we are still faced with lack of available peripherals to expand upon. you simply dont apply that logic of give me after I launch some products, and then troubleshoot those things, and then release the real versions on the market when you are dealing with professionals that pay tons on a machine to get the job as fast as they can to boost competitiveness.

Its simple, Im not even going to lie that I now about their needs or not, this is what I know from the frustration that TB currently is, half baked attempts with a high price tag. and Im a big TB supporter

btw KCEtech1 I think the bug related to your problematic displays is fixed on this one, it was an internal bug that didnt actually give dp1.2 support in tb

 

The mac pro with a few modifications (gaming gpu, i7 CPU) would make a perfect compact high performance multimedia/gaming pc. For a workstation, the entire concept is a joke.

 

that indeed has me itching, it would look just great at my living room

 

They should just make it the apple gamestation. that would be a much more appropriate use of the design.

 

if all things match and those are indeed w9000, you can put anything you want in terms of gpu in there, it can hold 2x of those monster and both are around 550w tdp

but mac aint about gaming

 

Was expecting a rmbp refresh, already sold mine now I have no clue how long I have to wait until I can get one...might buy the razer 14 incher instead lol.

 

Like it or not, here it is. Totally proprietary, wonder what's this on the last picture - vRAM on a separate board?!

 

there are 2 things really proprietary
1 the gpus
2 the cooling system

the mobo was always apple custom, no news on that

and what last pic?

 

Proprietary PCIE SSD board.

I am hoping so.

and Karam, I did like the cat video.

 

ah well thanks, I love maru, reminds me of my cat, though mine is just smarter, he just goes and destroys the box if its not large enough and then sits

Im still hoping that they aint stupid enough and just use a m.2 aka NGFF connector, its already a sata express protocol over ACHI, just finished the damn job basically

 

Thought so, but then where's the vRAM, I can see only chokes and capacitors on the back. If it's indeed W9000, it is supposed to have 6GB, I wonder where they've put all of the 24 vRAM chips. And PCIe slot in the middle of the GPU? I know that Apple makes awesome proprietary designs, but this takes it to a whole new level. Every time I open-up my iPhone, I can't help but drool, and when compare the board to something like HTC One... SOOO much wasted space But then again the bigger chip could be the SSD controller, while the smaller ones the memory. So if it's PCIe SSD, that makes it #3. iFixit would tell us pretty soon

I guess there's #4 as well - the RAM looks proprietary as well, but I haven't seen desktop RAM for quite some time (2005 ), so I could be wrong.

 

it doesnt make the PCIe SSD automatically proprietary

 

The new Mac Pro is interesting...and I cannot say I'm altogether surprised. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I'm not surprised. The increasing popularity of Apple in medium to large corporations has enabled them to adopt the 3-5 year upgrade cycle. That is basically buy today, do no upgrades, and provide a new computer in 3-5 years. If a user really needs an internal upgrade between cycles, just give them a new computer.

Larger organizations can be quite dumb this way. If I want to upgrade my Laptop's HDD to an SDD, I have to get all sorts of IT approvals to do this since it goes through the IT budget. If I want to get an external hard drive I can use my departmental budget since (based on some accounting technicality) this is part of "office supplies," not an IT request. At my current organization it took me 10 minutes to get approval for a monitor, as opposed to more than a month to get an SSD. Strictly speaking, the SSD was more useful for the work I'm doing.

Seems like the new Mac Pro would fit perfectly in this. The "IT department budget" would cover the initial cost. And if some users need a RAID or GPU solution it'll be "external" and easier to approve and budget for.

This totally works against small business owners, enthusiasts, and some other people, but Apple has always focused on what works for 95% and ignored the rest. Apple knows the iMac and MBPro are probably sufficient for some current Mac Pro users and they'll migrate to those.

What I really don't understand is 4 RAM slots. Really? In 2013? I can only guess that Apple wants to push larger workloads to servers,. But wouldn't those servers be running a non-Apple OS?

 

well regarding budgets, its simple, we have to accomodate, depending on the upgrade cycle, 25-33% of machine changes each year, sometimes even 20%, but that is not that common.

now if you factor that, is exactly the highest cost of that dept without counting personnel, you will understand obviously the change in policy, things that people usually concern themselves in their pcs are:

1) its slow, maybe I need more ram (usually untrue)
2) I need more space on this computer (usually untrue)
3) its slow, I cant work, start the psycho session (usually true)
4) Im a pro, I need another monitor (half true)
5) I need a dock station (usually true)

For 1 and 2 its the simple thing that makes people think that they are actually satisfied with something that will bring not really much benefits, space its a basic commodity, you usually have VPN with NAS and everything that is important is there.

3 is the most annoying case, and the most common one, a simple reformat works wonders

4 and 5 depends on the guy

Do you see SSD in that list? nope. new tech that people doesnt know, IT will know (hopefully), and to approve something that expensive that they dont have in stock is another matter.

off course all those things are in a common white collar company, not in a creative profession, and no matter where you cut it, the mac pro is going to be a though pill to swallow

and I agree it should have 8 dimm slots at least, preferably more, 256gb aint bad at all

 

Well it could use a 90º adapter and share this drive with just released MacBooks.

In year 2000 Apple gave us the Cube, now the Cylinder (R2D2, trash can...), next-up is the Sphere I guess

On a serious note maybe kto is right - Upgradeability?!? What upgradeability!?!!!