No new laptops - possibly waiting for GPUs.
I'm just wondering what the speculation is for the lack of new laptops at WWDC. I'm leaning towards Apple waiting for 14nm GPUs in mobile format. I'm a bit shocked that nothing hardware wise was offered up but yet realize that they had a lot to cover software wise.
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http://www.ecumenicalnews.com/article/amd-polaris-10-release-date-set-for-june-29-when-it-arrives-on-radeon-rx-480-graphics-cards/46047.htm
AMD said they'd launch everything before the back-to-school period, which is July-September.
AMD had a presentation in the last week and there are some benchmarks of the mobile Polaris GPU:
http://videocardz.com/61064/amd-polaris-10-and-polaris-11-specifications
The 480M is listed at 35W with scores around double the M370X in the current MBP. The Iris Pro Skylake chips are available already:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review/4
I'd be surprised if Apple held the updates all the way back to October time. I'd expect a July refresh of the iMac, MBP and Mac Pro, mostly with drop-in upgrades but design changes on the MBP.
No hardware at WWDC always makes me frustrated. Yes I know it is developer focused but it is hardware that drive the business and gives a platform for developers to work upon.
From everything I've seen, the 13" outsells the 15" three or four to one, and ONLY the 15" has the GPU option
Apple could have EASILY upgraded the 13", and maybe even introduced the 15" with delayed availability on GPU models, if that's all they were waiting for. Unfortunately, the "touch strip requires Sierra" theory makes too much sense to me...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102166
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review/4
The following video tests it against the 2015 Iris Pro MBP:
Most GPU increases seem to be about 30-40% with the occasional huge increase that even exceeds a much higher end dedicated GPU. Intel chips are pretty good for computing.
Other manufacturers haven't used them yet though, they decided to use Skylake i7s with the HD 530 graphics and pair the machines with older dedicated GPUs like the 960M so they were able to ship back in March/April. It made more sense for Apple to wait a couple of months for the next-gen GPUs and be able to get the same performance but with half the power usage. They have to get both these i7s from Intel and the mobile chips from AMD, which could push an update into July.
Given that they are milling the parts suggests they are getting ready for an update soon:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/05/31/photos-of-purported-macbook-pro-chassis-surface-with-groove-for-oled-touch-bar-four-usb-ports-no-magsafe
Beyond that, these chips do not show up in a lot of different machine. Just Apple and a few other high end models. Also I expect a major overhaul on Apples part.
I missed out on audio in that clip but the graphs where good. The considerable increase in performance for the GPU is very nice and somewhat expected. I say somewhat due to the performance increase being somewhat more than expected. It goes with out saying that Intel has come a very very long way with their GPU's.