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The comment "15-inch Pros have enough thermal headroom to fit in quad-core Skylake processors..." is interesting. While the current offerings don't meet expec

The comment "15-inch Pros have enough thermal headroom to fit in quad-core Skylake processors..." is interesting. While the current offerings don't meet expectations set for the MBP... maybe this is a long play by Apple? How quickly will the disappointment be forgotten when 32 gig / quadcore / nvidia GPU's are released?

ssijak 10y ago
it have quadcores currently. 32gig will come with kaby lake refresh. nvidia, maybe, maybe not, certainly welcome.
- threeseed 10y ago
  According to Macrumors, there is a compatibility issue which means Nvidia might be out of the picture for a while. Nvidia is only capable of driving dual 5K displays with the Polaris GPUs with DisplayPort 1.3 which is not supported with Thunderbolt 3. http://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/14/late-2016-mbp-amd-gpus-support-dual-5k-displays/ http://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/14/late-2016-mbp-amd-gpus-s...
  - registered99 10y ago
    there's the possibility of GPUs in the display, though
    - akvadrako 10y ago
      That makes a lot of sense, but I haven't seen any hints that it's coming soon. Keep in mind, you really need an upgradable GPU for that, since these $1000 5K displays have a long life cycle. And it would probably require rewrites of high-performance apps and games to be something closer to client/server setups to manage communication between the CPU/memory and GPU. There is really no difference for anything but the most demanding applications though.
      - rbanffy 10y ago
        5K displays won't cost $1000 for much longer. Right now they are premium products but soon they'll be the norm. By then, adding a good enough GPU to the screen will make sense (because your laptop doesn't need to carry - and feed - more brains than needed to push pixels to the built-in display) and, if the user wants more, they'll use whatever is installed in their computers.
- smitherfield 10y ago
  He may have meant in the 13-inch model.
headcanon 10y ago
Apple's definitely playing the long game here. When the retinas came out, the absence of an ethernet port was a bit inconvenient for me, but now I don't miss it at all. It's possible that in a few years, when this model matures and goes down in price, the touch bar gets more wide support, and everything uses USB-C, then it will make a lot more sense to get one.
- johansch 10y ago
  They have gone too far this time. This is far beyond the usual expensive inconvenience dongle cost etc that we're used to seeing from them. They just want to game us. It's basically financial domination at this time. How hard could it really be to make a basic Linux desktop environment work sorta close enough to OS X to make enough people switch to finance further development? My quick and dirty estimate is that 50 good people could pull off a great first release in 18 months. (I do have relevant consumer UX software design management experience and feel that I can do reasonable quick estimates based on that.)
  - ianai 10y ago
    I think that could be good as well. If I were to spearhead it I'd have us hone in on one or two laptop models. Then spend the rest of the engineering time on making the install, upgrade, and user experience as smooth as possible.
  - desipenguin 10y ago
    Deepin Desktop Environment
- grzm 10y ago
  And who knows? Maybe USB-C will be the last port ever? The step before everything is radio^H^H^H^H^H^H wireless!
- threeseed 10y ago
  Two predictions from me. (1) They sell out and it is the most popular MBP model to date, (2) They don't reduce the price in the future. Apple is awfully good at knowing just when to extract that little bit more from their customers. And I suspect that similar to the USB-C MacBook the concern over ports will just be from a vocal but tiny minority.
snowwrestler 10y ago
It's a long play because engineering those cases (including thermal) is very difficult. So Apple typically uses the same case through several revisions of the internals, to defray the costs. What this means is that the very first model released with a new case is usually underpowered, because the chips are not quite as powerful and power efficient as the (upcoming) chips the case was optimized for. For this and other reasons I tend to not buy the first version of a new Apple product.
jeromeparadis 10y ago
I don't know what's the fuss about 32GB and OS X/MacOS but I upgraded my iMac to 32GB (from 8) and when booting, it still prefers to swap than to use the memory it has access to. For the next hour, it slowly starts using more memory and will use even more than 16GB. I suspect the OS isn't optimized to efficiently use more than 16GB.
brigade 10y ago
?? The comment is based on the fact that they're equipped with quad core Skylake processors, therefore they probably have enough thermal headroom to handle what they actually have.
MatekCopatek 10y ago
Isn't this the norm? Most 15" top-range models (e.g. Dell XPS 15) are available with quad core CPUs.

ssijak 10y ago

it have quadcores currently. 32gig will come with kaby lake refresh. nvidia, maybe, maybe not, certainly welcome.

threeseed 10y ago
According to Macrumors, there is a compatibility issue which means Nvidia might be out of the picture for a while. Nvidia is only capable of driving dual 5K displays with the Polaris GPUs with DisplayPort 1.3 which is not supported with Thunderbolt 3. http://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/14/late-2016-mbp-amd-gpus-support-dual-5k-displays/ http://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/14/late-2016-mbp-amd-gpus-s...
- registered99 10y ago
  there's the possibility of GPUs in the display, though
  - akvadrako 10y ago
    That makes a lot of sense, but I haven't seen any hints that it's coming soon. Keep in mind, you really need an upgradable GPU for that, since these $1000 5K displays have a long life cycle. And it would probably require rewrites of high-performance apps and games to be something closer to client/server setups to manage communication between the CPU/memory and GPU. There is really no difference for anything but the most demanding applications though.
    - rbanffy 10y ago
      5K displays won't cost $1000 for much longer. Right now they are premium products but soon they'll be the norm. By then, adding a good enough GPU to the screen will make sense (because your laptop doesn't need to carry - and feed - more brains than needed to push pixels to the built-in display) and, if the user wants more, they'll use whatever is installed in their computers.
smitherfield 10y ago
He may have meant in the 13-inch model.

headcanon 10y ago

Apple's definitely playing the long game here. When the retinas came out, the absence of an ethernet port was a bit inconvenient for me, but now I don't miss it at all. It's possible that in a few years, when this model matures and goes down in price, the touch bar gets more wide support, and everything uses USB-C, then it will make a lot more sense to get one.

johansch 10y ago
They have gone too far this time. This is far beyond the usual expensive inconvenience dongle cost etc that we're used to seeing from them. They just want to game us. It's basically financial domination at this time. How hard could it really be to make a basic Linux desktop environment work sorta close enough to OS X to make enough people switch to finance further development? My quick and dirty estimate is that 50 good people could pull off a great first release in 18 months. (I do have relevant consumer UX software design management experience and feel that I can do reasonable quick estimates based on that.)
- ianai 10y ago
  I think that could be good as well. If I were to spearhead it I'd have us hone in on one or two laptop models. Then spend the rest of the engineering time on making the install, upgrade, and user experience as smooth as possible.
- desipenguin 10y ago
  Deepin Desktop Environment
grzm 10y ago
And who knows? Maybe USB-C will be the last port ever? The step before everything is radio^H^H^H^H^H^H wireless!
threeseed 10y ago
Two predictions from me. (1) They sell out and it is the most popular MBP model to date, (2) They don't reduce the price in the future. Apple is awfully good at knowing just when to extract that little bit more from their customers. And I suspect that similar to the USB-C MacBook the concern over ports will just be from a vocal but tiny minority.

snowwrestler 10y ago

It's a long play because engineering those cases (including thermal) is very difficult. So Apple typically uses the same case through several revisions of the internals, to defray the costs. What this means is that the very first model released with a new case is usually underpowered, because the chips are not quite as powerful and power efficient as the (upcoming) chips the case was optimized for. For this and other reasons I tend to not buy the first version of a new Apple product.

jeromeparadis 10y ago

I don't know what's the fuss about 32GB and OS X/MacOS but I upgraded my iMac to 32GB (from 8) and when booting, it still prefers to swap than to use the memory it has access to. For the next hour, it slowly starts using more memory and will use even more than 16GB. I suspect the OS isn't optimized to efficiently use more than 16GB.

brigade 10y ago

?? The comment is based on the fact that they're equipped with quad core Skylake processors, therefore they probably have enough thermal headroom to handle what they actually have.

MatekCopatek 10y ago

Isn't this the norm? Most 15" top-range models (e.g. Dell XPS 15) are available with quad core CPUs.