2015 Retina MacBook Pro/21.5" Retina iMac
So now that I got my mini, I will shut up about that. I must move onto the 2015 Retina MacBook Pro. The processors that are most important that I care about are supposed to be out around late Q1 2015 though possibly could go into mid-late Q2 2015. So what are we looking at? I expect the 13" will get Iris 6100 and the 15" will get Iris Pro 6200 though do they stay with nVidia or go to AMD?
How about the iMac? nVidia or AMD?
How about the iMac? nVidia or AMD?
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http://www.techspot.com/news/58029-early-intel-core-m-benchmarks-look-very-impressive.html
The GPU power is lower at around 60-70% of the Air but that's still a huge TDP drop and I expect they can match Iris (non-pro) graphics by boosting the TDP a bit.
What I'm hoping to see in 2015 is for the 13" MBP to be dropped as well as the old Air and have a 12" and 14"/15" Retina Air. These would be fanless with the base almost as thin as an iPad. If they can get inductive charging working at a good enough efficiency level like 70%+, they can get rid of the Magsafe port and just have the L-shape adaptor stick to the side - I'm not sure why they went back to T-shape for magsafe. Smaller USB-C ports will help with the thinness.
If they can't get the entry price at $899, I suppose they can leave the non-Retina 11" model in for a while like they do with the cMBP and iPad mini.
So no performance improvement vs the current Air but much lower power draw, lighter, thinner, Retina display, new design.
The 15" rMBP can get a large boost in performance. I would like to see power draw drop a little too to cut down the fan noise at load and extend battery life. GPU is rumored to boost by 40%. Given that it's a single chip, I expect a 40% boost overall so when the CPU is being used, it ramps up 40% higher; when the GPU is used, it's 40% higher but with both maxed out, the gains would be lower.
The 850M GPU is currently 100% faster than Iris Pro but Apple doesn't use it. I expect a 950M in 2015 will be much the same as the 750M vs 650M - almost no improvement vs 850M. This would mean Iris Pro 6200 moves somewhere between the 750M and 950M and would allow them to drop the dedicated GPU if they wanted to. They are more interested in compute power anyway. 16GB memory in the base model means the IGP can easily use up to 2-4GB of dynamic video memory. If they do stick with dedicated, it looks like it's AMD's turn.
A power boost of 40% along with a power drop of 40% from ~45W to ~30-35W would fit into Intel's 2x performance per watt. This drop of 15W at peak load should let Apple run the fans a bit slower under load and it helps extend battery life under load by say 20% so they can probably advertise 11 hours vs 9 or something.
If they switch the 15" to USB-C too, they might be able to trim a little thickness off but the fans are going to limit that and it's not such a big deal. I doubt they'll go with inductive charging due to the high load but the power savings could balance out the efficiency drop to make it feasible. Even if it's still a port, I'd like to see them go back to the L-shape magsafe.
For the iMac, it can get a similar 40% boost in CPU power and maybe they can bring the 5K display into the rest of the 27" lineup.
All models will be moving to DDR4 memory. The price might prevent soldering in the 27" iMac but it'll happen eventually.
I reckon the Mini will get flattened to a similar height as the cMBP or at least to the height of the vertically oriented USB ports and shrunk down width and length and it could also move to being fanless with Broadwell although it may need a solid-state fan to keep the hard drive cool.
The Mac Pro can move to Broadwell at any point but just a silent update with new chips, new AMD GPUs with double memory and double the GPU compute power.
edit: I've also been thinking about them getting rid of the screws in the MBP base. The screws they use are terrible. I had considered them converting the base pads into screws where they'd have metal insides but they might collect dirt that way and it's best the attachments go at the edges They could put a lip on the front edge of the base cover right across the whole length and have that insert into a groove and at the back have clips on either side that are secured at the back corners. There would just be two slots like the air vents but smaller and shallow:
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/50999/width/600/height/1000[/IMG]
On the inside of the MBP upper casing would be a lip and the base would have clasps that latch onto them like so:
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/51000/width/600/height/1000[/IMG]
To remove the base, instead of having to carefully remove about 10-11 screws, you just insert a flat screwdriver into each slot and pull the clasps back while raising the base cover. Because the top cover has a passive attachment, if anything went wrong with the strength of the hold, you'd just get a new base cover or modify it to hold together more securely. There should be no accidental releases because you have to tilt the clasp to remove the cover. A rubber seal on the base cover would help avoid any rattling and keep it tight. They could have the same design with the mini base vs the circular cover and would give easier access to the HDD but the circular cover works well enough there and is used to help the wifi.
If it were me and the laws of physics allowed, I'd pick a GPU that cranks the TDP back up to the Haswell model's total overall power draw. Apple, of course, doesn't care about performance, so we'll just get a stupidly (good stupid) efficient laptop with, what... 24 hour battery life?
I think the rumors of a fanless one might actually be true. No comment as to the intelligence of the decision, but...
Anyway, we know it would only be the 11" and it would mean that the thing will be severely gimped in terms of processing power.
They'd have to abandon the fanless design with the Air though. I reckon that would be a bigger selling point. Totally silent operation no matter what you do, no more of the following even while gaming:
[VIDEO]
If they match Iris at ~6W, that would be a pretty nice casual, silent gaming machine:
[VIDEO]
The battery ratings are based on a lower average than peak but given the crazy drop possible, they could actually do 24 hours. The 13" Air is rated at 12 hours with a 54Watt-hour battery so that's under the expectation of an average 4.5W power draw (including display and other components). I don't expect them to stick with a 4.5W Broadwell chip as they need better GPU performance but say it's 6W peak, I expect the average overall can come down by 1-2W so it would be possible to exceed 20 hours. However, I would expect them to shrink the battery down and the Retina display would likely use more power so the gains might not be all that high, possibly nothing as 12 hours is already a full working day. It would mean faster charging with a smaller battery. The Retina iPad has a 32.4Watt-hour battery with a 10" screen and lasts 10 hours.
The iPad Air is 1lbs vs 2.96lbs for the 13" and 2.38lbs for the 11". I think 2lbs for a 12" would be a feasible target. They can use the base clips above on the Air too to get rid of the screws.
I don't think the 15" MBP will go fanless, dropping 15W to 30-35W would just let it run quieter but that TDP is still way too high but they can make a 14"/15" Air that would have a similar display to the 15" rMBP and just have the same internals as the 12" model. The Air models would be ~6W fanless and the Pro ~30-35W quieter but still dual fan - a very distinct difference between Pro and Air and the Pro would be about 2.5x faster in both CPU and GPU.
I dunno. You'd think they'd've made a retina MacBook Air by now if they cared enough to do it.
I get that it's the "low cost" model, but honestly.
When are these oft-delayed Broadwell chips now supposed to arrive? Early or Mid-year?
I would guess March or April.
As far as GPU's go it is a little early to project what will be the best choice. Who knows maybe Apple will avoid discreet GPU's. If they do go with a discreet GPU I suspect it will be an AMD chip.
Why AMD? For one the Mac Pro drivers about which you hear very little in the way of complaints. Also AMD seems to be on the same page as Apple when in comes to the future of GPU's and how they interact with hardware.
Honestly I'm more interested in a higher performance Air rather than a lower power unit. In other words I'd rather see Apple stay in the 12 - 15 watt range and deliver the extra performance. A more rational line up would be nice. I still like the idea of 12, 14 & 16" sized machines. Sadly if they go to the low wattage stuff in the Airs that will mean we will likely need a 14" MBP for those of us looking for better performance. That might not be a bad idea as there should be a substantial performance delta between a 5 watt chip and a 35 watt chip. Further I like the idea that we will not need to consider discreet GPU's anymore unless your needs are extreme. I have a huge problem with thin or maybe I should say too thin in a laptop. If it gets to the point durability is impacted then that becomes a problem. Also the idea of a passively cooled laptop with a 5+ watt chip bothers me a bit, as that can be a significant heat problem. Due to the way laptops are used there is little opportunity for convection cooling Broadwell is one of those lets wait and see deals. Intel could up and punt with this offering if they can't get the yields up. By that I mean all promises would be off the table and they industry gets what intel can manufacture. Battery life would be great on a MBA but why would you even consider doing this on a MBP? The Pro should be all about performance. Broadway has great potential here due to the higher performance per watt. The iMac will be needing a GPU boost more than anything. Yes 40% more would be nice for the CPU but I really wonder about how they will drive performance of these massive screens. It depends upon what sort of performance Apple wants to get out of the new RAM. Beyond that soldered in Ram simply isn't the evil that some want to make it out to be. As long as Apples pricing is reasonable i'd rather have the extra reliability. Err NO! The last thing the Mini needs is a shrink of rate sake of shrinking. The best possible thing Apple could do would be to max out CPU and GPU performance. Hopefully this would mean quad cores in the machine again while still maintaining the GPU giants we get this go around. Intel has been up to interesting things with Xeon. I'm not sure which way Apple will go Or they could really create a storm by potting the logic board in epoxy so that the case, logic board and the potting compound become one huge mass. I half mention this idea in jest but it could be a way for Apple to go thinner but retain structural integrity. It wouldn't be potted like those fat power bricks seen from time to time but rather pitted to make one thin but solid assembly.
Forgot to ask but how do you like it? After all of the complaining I'm expecting a full report with all the negatives and positives.
It will be a while before I'm able to purchase one and I'd rather wait for Yosemite to have a few versions behind it before I take the plunge. I am not happy with the soldered RAM but it's not a deal killer because the processors can handle 16 GB of RAM and that's the max that's offered via Apple. Also 16 GB of 1600 MHz at Crucial is almost $200 so Apple's price is not extreme. I wanted a PCIe SSD and they gave me that and 256 GB is fine for me. I'm using a 128 GB Samsung 470 and hardly even using all the space. I wanted Iris graphics at least and they gave me that. Iris Pro would have been better but better luck next time.
I keep having people tell me I should get a mini ATX and Hackintosh it but I'll pass on that.
Edit: Fixed the quoting
It depends on the benefits. Smaller components will heat up faster so they might not be able to clock them as high so you may not be able to get 2x performance at the same wattage. It seems like it should be possible to get double performance at the same wattage instead of the same performance at half but it doesn't work like that. You simply can't overclock a current chip to 6GHz because it can't handle the heat generated from it.
I think there's a benefit to going fanless and having a ~5W TDP so they can do this and then beyond that, they can simply improve performance at the same TDP.
I think there could be a heat problem in a warm environment like if you leave an iPad in the sun, you get a temperature warning but that's a pretty rare occurrence. They can always have a solid-state fan as a backup.
It's still a portable device so it can benefit from lower power draw. Better performance is still good to have but it's not the demand it once was.
The quad-core mini seems like it was an experiment to see if that's actually what the majority of buyers wanted from it. If it had been, they'd have kept doing it.
The aim for the mini is now clear - get the low-end buyers in with an affordable low-end machine.
I have no problem with that idea expect that Apple effectively offers three Minis. One of those could easily be for those needing performance instead of entry level.
I'd rather wait for Skylake and skip Broadwell. Hopefully it appears on time.
Well yeah but they can't even get Broadwell out.
That's what they do with the Air with the exception of the old Core 2 Duo parts, CPU performance hasn't even doubled in 3 years, some CPU performance is almost the same from one year to the next. GPU performance has improved a bit more so that's really the only concern moving to low TDP but the Air is marketed as a thin, light productive machine, not a desktop replacement like the Pro.
The performance could still go up for the 15". Like I say, a 2x improvement in performance per watt could allow both a 40% drop in TDP and a 40% increase in performance.
It's what they use in the iOS devices. They have a massive supply of that RAM so they likely get it at good prices and sharing components helps the supply chain.