Apple may surprise with late-2011 MacBook Pro refresh - Page 3

I agree completely.


I think we may be talking past each other here. I used to run simulations of CPU designs that would take about 24 hours on a Cray. In that context, system responsiveness was when I would get the simulation results. I didn't care about vector processing, clock speeds, number of execution units, cache size, or any of that. I just wanted the computer's response to my problem.


I agree completely.

Ugh you know how much I'd love to do that when I need a new machine? The problem with the Apple store machines is that I can't necessarily test any software I use on them, and they're always using stock amounts of ram. It's not really their fault. The machines are displayed as they're sold in store, but the point being I run a lot of different stuff and require a lot of ram. I end up having to go off of stuff like specs and sites like barefeats. I ignore anything that's a benchmarking application and just look at tests on real applications along with looking at what kind of sequence they ran.

The Apple stores will let you run whatever software you want -- within reason. If you reboot a machine, run your software, then check the size of the swap file, you can estimate how much RAM you need. Anyway, it sounds like you probably need to max out the RAM.

They let you set up other software on them? That would be awesome. Usually I just kind of toy around with them but there's only so much you can calculate that way. I use a pretty wide range of graphics and image editing software. Photoshop is one and I can tell you when you do have image files loaded regularly that are large enough to where they have to be saved .psb (large file document format) you need considerably more ram and cpu than the minimum program requirement.

Totally agree with you here but I got to the point of doing as much testing as possible long ago. Others with more costly setups end up with machines that are less responsive than my own

Yes. Apple Stores will let you download and install software.

So I went to Best Buy looking at the macbook's and found that all MacBooks were 50-80 dollars off. I asked If they new of an update and they said no but that they would accept returns without a restocking fee for 14 days. So my question is, if it were simply a processor update wouldn't best buy have the updated laptops already? But then why would best buy have the laptop's on sale?

I need to buy a MacBook but am going to wait and see what happens tomorrow.

There are always plenty of deals online. When you say "macbooks" do you mean the ones actually assigned that exact name which were discontinued or the macbook pros or airs? Best Buy isn't the only one that discounts from what is seen on the Apple store anyway. There are others that discount and sometimes bundle stuff like Parallels. I often check B&H but you have to read carefully because they have a lot of custom configurations, but if you spec it out identically to the Apple store they tend to come out cheaper.

This rumor is in alignment with the late-2011 iMac leak in a technical note from Apple. So I think there must be some truth in it and probably both the MBP and the iMac will get some minor updates before the end of this year.

With the chips being available there is little to hold Apple back. I would hope that they bump base RAM also.

I was talking about the MacBook pro's. I realize there are better deals online using the price guide on this site, although I had not seen the MacBook pro on sale at best buy before.

In the MacBook Pro and the iMac??? I think we need to wait for Apple to bump the base RAM up to 4GB in the MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro before we can hope to see Apple bump the base RAM in the MacBook Pro and iMac to above 4GB.

Well all of them except for possibly the AIRs which are a little tight. Ram is exceedingly cheap right now and LION loves RAM. Also; while more than a simple bump why not go with three channel controllers in the iMacs so we can get 6GB of RAM as a sort of compromise. Obviously the Mini is too compact for an economical implementation of three slots but still it could use a bump.

Currently I running a 2GB MBP from 2008 and do run into issues. Bumping RAM simply results in a better long term buy. Considering the price Apple tacks on the MBP this should be an easy move to make.

Speaking of RAM, whatever possessed Apple to put only 256 MB of video RAM on the Mini with the Radeon? Yes the Radeon is very fast compared to the Intel chip but that is a worthless comparison. The lack of video RAM just takes a good idea and crushes it with penny pinching.

I'd buy it tomorrow. Except I don't expect it tomorrow. Maybe at the next rev of the MBA's, which of course is assuming the post below is correct, and the Airs and Pros are not destined to become a single line distinguished only by trim levels as a few have speculated.........


I agree with your specs and list of SKU's entirely.

Meanwhile, I NEED a machine before Q2 '12 tho' I wanted the next real iteration of the MBP15" or at least a 15" Air-class machine.

(Still, Intel have already announced revolutionary efficiency claims for the 2013 chips destined for their ultrabook hopes - and those might be a bigger inflection point than Ivy Bridge. Are there really any BAD times to buy anymore for Apple notebooks?)

So might pounce on the first refurb'd 13" current model Air I can find as a - from all reviews not too shabby at all step up - and into the iCloud....

BTW, tho', if there are any official 2011 Air refurbs, they're gone from the Apple site in no time. Do any of you know of a trustworthy non-Apple supply....??)

In my opinion, 4GB is the sweet spot for most users now. I think Apple would be making a business mistake to make the base configuration higher than 4GB now. Again, I think we can expect to see the base configuration bumped up to 4GB across the entire product line before we can expect to see it bumped to anything more than 4GB on any model. The only exception that seems at all possible is that the next Mac Pro might possibly have a base configuration of 8GB while the Mac Mini or the 11" MacBook Air (or both) still have a base configuration of 2GB, but I doubt it. I think the next Mac Pro will bump the base configuration from 3GB to 4GB.

The 2010 MacBook Air is also very nice. I would suggest avoiding a MacBook Air older than 2010 though, unless you're on an extremely tight budget.

Don't we all! I'm looking for a 15" machine simply because that is the best size for me, but I will hold off for a long while just to hopefully see some of these rumored improvements/revisions before my current machine gives up the ghost.

Intel is running scared and frankly it is driving innovation like we haven't seen in years. ARM is coming up form underneath and AMD is running with much better integrated graphics so Intel has no choice but to bring out exceptionally better products.

I wouldn't even consider a non Apple supplier of refurbs. Apple is out of the ordinary when it comes to refurb quality. The problem as you note is catching the model you want on the refurb store.

As a side note I have to wonder about the AIRs failure rate. It would be very interesting to know just how reliable the machines are. It sure is hard to find people willing to give them up.

I'm gonna take that second to last para as gospel unless someone else has an informed opinion..... ...thanks!

Hummm well I am beginning to think there might not be an update. The back to school sale thing ended yesterday and the story lead me to believe that was a possible date. Now I am beginning to think either:

A) update might come with the announcement of new iPhones; or

B) no update.

Hummm I think I will buy once I am in the 14 day window for being able to return my laptop...Need a calendar to see what 14 days before the October announcement is...

I would not expect any Macs to be announced on the same day as the iOS announcements. I believe Apple have always kept these separate.

So I just found this little gem on Apple's website and made sure "any" does mean any by calling apple directly:

Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 14 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Store Customer Service at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 calendar days of the price change.

Cue the jeopardy music... any new news?

Looks like the firmware updater 'quietly' fixes the SATA 3 issues.

I've just ordered an M4 as well.

Finally, my 17"MBP will be as fast as my 11" MBA...

so is there any news according to this rumor?
I almost have ordered a 15 MBP, but I just saw that rumor and since then I'm waiting for an update...

Nothing is floating to the surface. The MBPs getting small bump is dependent upon the real state of the Ivy Bridge processors. If they don't come until mid 2011 then the chances of a minor update are strong. The chips to do a bump are available so if anything where to happen it would be within a few weeks in my opinion.

So it comes down to which rumors about Ivy Bridge do you believe.

I didn't want to wait. Picked up a 13" MBP and upgraded with an OCW SATA 3 SSD and 8GB of RAM. Who needs a minor spec bump when you can create some bad ass goodness at home?

It sounds like you came out fine. I've been waiting to see what they do (if anything) with the mac pros. I don't even think the Ivy Bridge update is supposed to really be that huge a boost to the processors. Wasn't it more about cutting power + boosting intel graphics? I'm also waiting to see if thunderbolt bandwidth is increased or we get a second port. I'd like to be able to put a display on one and storage on another. Daisy chaining has not currently been proven effective for such a thing, and display bandwidth requirements have been increasing recently anyway.

That SSD should make for a huge difference. Your MBP will last a long time, even my early 2008 MBP is still viable.

Graphics appears to be getting a respectable boost, probably not as good as Intel would like us to believe but noticeable none the less. I haven't tracked CPU improvements in Ivy Bridge but remember lower power can enable much higher clock rates assuming the architecture can handle it. Some day soon we ought to see CPUs with a 4 GHz base clock frequency.

For Pro usage Apple will need to do something. Multiple ports seem to be an easy choice but I'm not sure how Apple/Intel would approach this. Most likely it would require another variant of the TB controller. It is interesting to realize how many of these controllers are already in production or already announced. If nothing else Intel has been busy hardware wise.

So I've been waiting to pick up a mbp bc this article says they were going to bring a slight upgrade by the end of sep. What happened to that? What sources are they using for this stuff and why not at least an update saying they were wrong?

B

Because that's not how it works? If the story is passed and nothing happened, then nothing happened.

Absolutely nothing here is a guarantee. You shouldn't base purchasing off of rumors, only facts (such as chip roadmaps).

thanks for the reply. i get there is obv no guarantee, i'm not claiming a class action suite here. just if the article says 'According to people with proven insight into Apple's future product plans'... and then it doesn't come true, dont you think we may want to re-evaluate the 'proven insight' qualifier?

I guess the question is... is apple insider a true journal / news source? or something different? maybe its different, and i'm just missing that.

Absolutely. Trust in rumor sites and rumor sources is built on a case-by-case basis.

BGR, for example, has absolutely no credibility, nor do MacOSRumors.

But when 9to5Mac says they got something from Mr. X, it's real. He's somewhere in Apple, and he does know things before they're revealed to us.

You just have to know the established reputation of places.


Heavens, no. We're a rumor site. Stuff we get from analysts we post for laughs. Stuff we get from Foxconn workers, we post as potential future parts. Stuff we find on other sites, we post to get the word out.

I was suckered into buying a new MBA without it and then it came along soon after...

Really? That's actually pretty silly. The iphone update is a much bigger one. Not everyone considered it to be huge, but it received a more significant hardware upgrade than what is truly available for the macbook pros pre Ivy Bridge. This would just be a mid generation spec bump to the latest processors available at the appropriate price points. It won't take precedence and if you looked up the processors referenced in the article (which were slightly off) you could see that a spec bump wasn't likely before now. Apple and Intel aren't quite as close now as they were at the start, so I doubt we're going to see Apple get processors ahead of everyone else.


I call a load of crap on "people with proven insight". These rumor sites publish anything including a number of photoshopped images and renders that prove nothing. Didn't this site also publish the one regarding mac pro updates by August ? What was silly about that one was that there were no processors appropriate to it at all. They just made the prediction because it was about a year without any kind of changes, so it made sense.

The macbook pro could definitely see a bump, but once again they failed at fact checking. The 2.7 Ghz quad core is the 2960XM. It is estimated to cost around $1100 and runs a 55W, 10 higher than any others they've ever used.

While we could see a refresh simply because the processors are there and we're on top of the holidays (and it relates to one of their most popular lines), the article is completely incorrect and I doubt they had any credible sources. The three that are actually appropriate as drop in replacements are the 2670QM at 2.2Ghz, the 2760QM at 2.4Ghz, and the 2860QM at 2.5Ghz.

Given that one of those (2670QM) was released just three days ago, it's still early and we could potentially see a release by the holidays. I even linked my sources below . As stated one didn't come out until a couple days ago. If they're going to bump it they may have had a pre-release model for testing, but even then I wouldn't expect anything for at least two to three weeks as they just released the iphone. My best guess would be that they'd want to release it at least a week or two before Black Friday to maximize potential holiday sales. Before a bump you may start to hear rumors of current model stocks running low. We haven't heard anything like this yet.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge

http://ark.intel.com/products/53469/...he-2_20-GHz%29

http://ark.intel.com/products/53474/...he-2_40-GHz%29

http://ark.intel.com/products/53476/...he-2_50-GHz%29

For anybody with half a clue they would see the iPhone 4S as a massive update.

I don't know why this continues to be a problem. Apple can't update before the hardware to update the machines is available. It is like putting on new Snow tires before they are available in the store.

While there is a lot of proven poor journalism in these sites you can't really dismiss the idea that people do spill the beans from time to time. There are several problems with this though, what a person knows is often not the whole story.

I once watch a large company develop a product, build a multi million dollar production line all to scrap it before one item was released to the public. Up until that excutive decision was made there was this belief at the lower levels we where going to market.

Yeah just checking publically available info would clear up much and lead to more credible reporting. However the Mac Pro is on of the few Mac volume wise that Apple could get a prerelease or special purpose version of a chip from Intel.

Apple insider would do well to exercise a little editorial control over the bloggers. It would help greatly with some of these foul ups. It would be one thing to play a rumor about a low power version of the 2960XM for example. It's another thing to say the public version will go into a MBP.

Basically they have a whole month to play with. With the continued expansion of infra structure though I don't think a release close to the IPhone is impossible. This is after all just a bump.

The other way to look at this is that if we don't get a bump soon maybe Ivy Bridge isn't that far off. People have to realize though that this is a bit of a guessing game. If you really need a Mac simply go out and buy one.

I just got around to reading the first post and to expect Ivy Bridge at the holiday season is a bit rushed.

I could definitely use a new one, but speculation on future models and the limitations I've referenced in the current line aren't the only things stopping me at the moment. Regardless when I update hardware, I generally figure I could be using it for a while. Sometimes I update machines frequently but not always. There are different things that influence this stuff for me. On the iphone I get that it's quite a bump, but you saw enough of the comments to know what I meant. I don't think it needs an annual aesthetic refresh anyway, especially with mobile contracts being two year agreements.


Hehe there's a difference between reading and glancing at a couple words. The discussion wasn't about an Ivy Bridge release at all. Mid generation processors were released over the past month or so meaning we could see a bump especially if Ivy Bridge isn't going to be ready soon enough for a first quarter refresh.

While I agree phones don't need to be completely remodeled every year I do wish that Apple had another larger model on offer. Larger at least in the sense of screen size. Frankly a wider screen (in horizontal mode) would be very useful.

I get you on this. No matter how big Apple gets, they seem to be very much about keeping the product line quite lean in nature. I get that it works for them. Since they don't manufacture many designs, it keeps the manufacturing cost low. In theory this make for some real design winners as they can focus on bringing a few great things to market. In all the time I've used them they've been really hit and miss over quite a few years. Here's an example. Remember some of the earlier macbooks? Not the pros but just the normal macbooks had some absolutely abysmal displays. Now this is their budget model, but it was still a $1000+ computer at the time. I'm not sure how they figured this was acceptable. I have no idea why they went to glossy overall for their line. I don't know why they were completely unable to build a reliable machine through the entire G5 generation or why they tried to put it all off on IBM (the internal design was terrible, big box with uneven airflow). So yeah they make me mad sometimes.

On the other stuff from the previous post, I just wanted to mention the recent and upcoming mid generation releases from intel. They announced bumps pretty much across the board, but most of them aren't that big of a deal. They're pretty much the same thing with the clock speed bumped up a notch. My figures were correct though rather than the ones in the article. It was just a matter of what was a dropin kind of replacement. I don't think we'll see any weird variants or special designs here as it would just be a mid generation thing to keep the macbook(s) (pros) feeling fresh until the next generation. Other oems have already begun to use some of these. I think we'll see them from Apple if they calculate Ivy Bridge machines as unfeasible in the first quarter.