Whilst I don't need another one. I would love to see a refresh with a better graphics card. Something like a Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080M. Purely for VR and then hoping to see Oculus development with it. I'm probably wishing at this point as well.
Sure a better CPU, more RAM, bigger SSD would be nice. But right now, neither of them can really justify a replacement. Everything works just fine with what I have now!
I'm really sad that those new models are not-upgradable. I was looking for a new laptop ( because my battery is giving up ) and I'm disappointed that Apple is soldering the RAM.
I hope if there are new MacBook Pro's they will also upgrade friendly.
I used to be an Apple skeptic, but the fact that my almost-5-year-old laptop still feels completely adequate for everything I need to do (iOS dev) makes it a lot easier to justify dropping nearly $2k on it.
Desktop and laptop sales are down and performance improvements have ground to a halt and Intel have hit a manufacturing ceiling. It feels like x86 is in the last phase of being massively useful - VR needs big GPUs but those are being decoupled from x86, phones/tablets are overwhelmingly ARM, IOT is overwhelmingly ARM.
SSDs are the same size
16GB RAM is still a luxury
Not many Apple applications perform better with more RAM or faster CPUs, looking at Xcode
Some Adobe products can be marginally sped up with more RAM, if you like compositing
CPUs aren't much better, skylake wasn't so phenomenal after all
GPUs on the mobile variant haven't gotten much better, and integrated graphics are still good enough.
What is your perspective? Especially on the 'desperate' part
Maybe current SSDs are a little faster and maybe current CPUs are a bit better, but logically speaking, you're technically right that there's an argument to be made that most people won't notice a significant difference (if any at all) in performance today with an update if they already have a reasonably new machine.
The counterpoint to that logical point is that this won't necessarily be the case a year or three from now. Requirements eventually go up, things such as VR emerge that require a big performance increase. New OS-level technologies are released that take better advantage of things like more RAM, CPU cores, graphics cards, etc.
But really, you're ignoring the human and emotional aspect to this. People feel like crap when they buy something and the new model is released a couple weeks later. When people are paying that much money for a machine, they're expecting to get the latest and greatest that will last them as long as possible. I don't think it's hard to understand.
Touch ID
Thinner bezel (like the XPS13) where you get more scree nreal estate for less overall size).
Skylake has low end 4 core parts which make a huge benefit for people deving with on-machine vm environment.
* Thunderbolt 3 (from 1)
* USB 3.1 (from 3.0)
* NVMe (from SATA)
* LPDDR4 (from DDR3)
* An integrated GPU with sufficient power so as to eliminate the need for a dedicated GPU for my typical usage (from a 650M)
* More battery life / power efficiency
The specs for the MBPs that came out in late-2012 through mid-2015 weren't significant enough to justify an upgrade. It's not that I'm "desperate," and I can't speak for the GP, but this machine is starting to show its age (battery life, fan noise, etc.) and I really don't want to drop $2-3K for a new unit with mid-2015 specs.
I could upgrade to one with the ability to drive a 4K monitor and 1TB SSD, but that's pretty much the only noticeable improvement. Sure, the CPU and GPU will probably be somewhat more powerful, but RAM and SSD space are actually my limiting factor most of the time right now. In my development, I need to run a lot of VMs, so RAM and SSD capacity are things I really need as much of as possible.
So, offering something with 32 GB of RAM, and probably a larger SSD, would make it more worthwhile for me to upgrade.
Nope nope nope. "Pro"s today use virtual machines. 32GB must be an option.
If we've learnt anything from the "640k should be enough for everybody" times, is that work inevitably expands to use all available memory.
...I'm only slightly kidding.
MUST HAVE THE NEW SHINY.
A Macbook Pro refresh probably wouldn't bring noticeable performance improvements to anyone, but they'd feel better because the CPU was the model released this year even though it performs exactly the same as the one currently used.
Because that would be awesome.
So I wouldn't get my hopes up, but I wouldn't give up on the possibility entirely, I suppose is what I'm saying here.
They've hinted at announcements in titles and themeing before. Am I reading too much into it to hope for something AR/VR related? Obviously the event will include new iPhones, but I'm curious to see if they enter the augmented world.
People focus way too much on what it's called. I'd be very surprised if they don't eventually get away from the 5, 5s, 6, 6s, etc. scheme. Most of their other products have gotten away from it, including the iPad. They've already started with the iPhone SE.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/29/12429510/apple-iphone-7-ev...
