Mini LED 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro production begins

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited August 2021
Apple's rumored mini LED-equipped 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models are getting closer to launch, with suppliers said to be starting volume production.




Rumors have put forward the idea that Apple will be bringing out a version of the MacBook Pro with a mini LED-backlit display, incorporating the technology used in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro screen. In a supply chain report, it seems the rumors are coming true.

According to supply chain sources of Digitimes, volume production for the new MacBook Pro has commenced, and in high quantities. Monthly shipments of the notebooks are anticipated to be between 600,000 and 800,000 units per month between August and November.

Mini LED is likely to be beneficial to Mac users as a backlighting system, with a number of benefits. By using thousands of mini LED backlights instead of a smaller number of LEDs, Apple can have more control over the backlight's illumination patterns, enabling contrast ratios of up to 1 million to 1, better HDR support, and improved color representation.

The start of volume production in August certainly coincides with Apple's usual fall product launches, as releases usually arrive a few months after production commences.

While Digitimes has a good track record when it comes to the supply chain and production scheduling, it's weaker on product feature reports. However, the quantity of rumors about mini LED certainly lends weight to mini LED arriving in new MacBook Pro models.

In June, it was believed that there were shortages in mini LED production that could impact MacBook Pro production, but it seems that it has been resolved.

Depending on the rumors, Apple is believed to be bringing out a 14-inch MacBook Pro and a 16-inch MacBook Pro before the end of 2021. Along with mini LED backlighting, the models could include features like an M1 or M1X chip, an improved 1080p webcam, MagSafe, and even a return of previously-removed ports.

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 25
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,152member
    I would laugh if they don’t outclass tiger lake laptops, particularly XPS15 with GTX3050s, but really they should aim at shutting down Razer and Asus with GTX3070s.

    might be hard to do M2 if the next iPhone chip isn’t released yet.  It is interesting that we haven’t heard any rumours about that SOC yet.
    edited August 2021
  • Reply 2 of 25
    It’s impressive that Apple have achieved such a huge step with the M1 and such major updates to so many products during a pandemic and lockdowns. Their staff must be incredibly dedicated. 
    narwhal
  • Reply 3 of 25
    entropys said:
    I would laugh if they don’t outclass tiger lake laptops, particularly XPS15 with GTX3050s, but really they should aim at shutting down Razer and Asus with GTX3070s.

    might be hard to do M2 if the next iPhone chip isn’t released yet.  It is interesting that we haven’t heard any rumours about that SOC yet.
    I thought the M1s already beat them, except when beat down by core counts or big discrete GPUs.

    I'm thinking the M1x units should be pretty kick ass, especially when equipped with up to 32 GPU cores.

    TBH, I could live with even an M1 based unit with 16GB with mini-LED since I'm doing my heavy lifting with a loaded 2020 iMac 5K - but if rumors are true, I'd want a 16" with 32 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, and 2 TB SSD.

    A lot of the RAM of an x86 model is used for buffering between the CPU and GPU, and a unified memory model should be much more efficient in processing graphics with no need to shuttle data between the CPU and GPU where x86 models burn up a lot of their resources.

    A production run of 600-800K units per month with release expected a few months later?

    Just how many of these puppies will they need to have stockpiled before release - and just what do they expect pent up demand to be?
    narwhalfastasleep
  • Reply 4 of 25
    doggonedoggone Posts: 377member
    entropys said:
    I would laugh if they don’t outclass tiger lake laptops, particularly XPS15 with GTX3050s, but really they should aim at shutting down Razer and Asus with GTX3070s.

    might be hard to do M2 if the next iPhone chip isn’t released yet.  It is interesting that we haven’t heard any rumours about that SOC yet.
    Maybe it won't when comparing in raw specs with a dedicated GPU. But really who cares.  It's just a pissing contest that has no bearing to the typical user. The point is that the M1 processor is already way more advanced than a X86 chip with efficiencies across the board.  Having the next generation of Mac that will take advantages will provide years of usage at performance way above the current Intel Macs and with the knowledge that Apple will continue to refine the OS to improve performance over time.

    Apple silicon is already exceeding most of the competition with only their first generation SOC.  They are going to be leaving the others way behind with subsequent generations.  Intel must be panicking.
    MisterKitfastasleepArchStanton
  • Reply 5 of 25
    MplsPMplsP Posts: 3,911member
    Whether it beats Tiger Lake in benchmarks or not, by all reports, Apple Silicon is a winner when you look at speed, power usage, etc. My nephew was bragging about his ‘gaming laptop’ but he couldn’t use it more than an hour without plugging it it. It’s practically a watered down desktop at that point.

    I’m really hoping these rumors are true - there’s a 16” MBP in my future this fall if they are!
  • Reply 6 of 25
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member

    Just how many of these puppies will they need to have stockpiled before release - and just what do they expect pent up demand to be?
    If Apple has been able to source chips that deliver pro performance improvements on the M1, and can be price attractive then there could be a huge opportunity for them given the current state of the computer industry.
    narwhalArchStanton
  • Reply 7 of 25
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,192member
    The first Apple laptops that will only run spyware.
    williamlondondarkvadernadriel
  • Reply 8 of 25
    These could contain Intel Cpus, many not be Mini LED, it may not even be released during the 'big product announcement' time. These are still rumors.
    Current slate of products coming: iPhone 13, new AirPods, Watch S7, Mackbook Pro line, ?new iPad Mini?, big OS updates. That's a lot to deliver within a couple months when they are reporting shortages. 

    But if (a big if) Apple can deliver higher performance MBPs with mini LEDs and M1X/M2 performance? My guess is they'll want to have very substantial build numbers, as well as on Watch and on iPhone 13. The potential for a monster Q1 if spec rumors are true and build numbers can meet demand. 
  • Reply 9 of 25
    XavalonXavalon Posts: 14member
    doggone said:
    entropys said:
    I would laugh if they don’t outclass tiger lake laptops, particularly XPS15 with GTX3050s, but really they should aim at shutting down Razer and Asus with GTX3070s.

    might be hard to do M2 if the next iPhone chip isn’t released yet.  It is interesting that we haven’t heard any rumours about that SOC yet.
    Maybe it won't when comparing in raw specs with a dedicated GPU. But really who cares.  It's just a pissing contest that has no bearing to the typical user. The point is that the M1 processor is already way more advanced than a X86 chip with efficiencies across the board.  Having the next generation of Mac that will take advantages will provide years of usage at performance way above the current Intel Macs and with the knowledge that Apple will continue to refine the OS to improve performance over time.

    Apple silicon is already exceeding most of the competition with only their first generation SOC.  They are going to be leaving the others way behind with subsequent generations.  Intel must be panicking.
    The competition didn't standstill. AMD Ryzen 5000 mobile series, launched after the M1, has some impressive processors. For example, the Ryzen 5800U is also a 15-watt processor) that is on par with the M1 single-core benchmarks, but faster in multicore benchmarks. And even Intel 11th series combined with a dedicated GPU has more performance than the M1. For the price of a Macbook Pro you find easily a 11th gen Intel with a Nvidia's 3050 or 3060 for the same price. You know that is 4-5 times the current GPU performance of the M1 in GPU TFLOPS. Yes, the M1 is much more power-efficient, but why compare this element to a desktop, NUC, all-in-one or even 15/16/17-inch laptop were nobody expects 17 hours of battery life. The forthcoming NUC 12th generation do come with a dedicated Intel GPU (between 3050 and 3060) with up to 16GB RAM and supports up to 64GB RAM and has three M:2 NVME SSDs slots (2 of them supports up to 7GB speeds; about double as fast as the M1 Macs).  Why is such a mini-PC not a better option than the M1 Mac Mini? All remains to be seen of the M1X can beat such configuration, especially the GPU part. The world is not giving up on AMD or Intel yet. Just saying. Still,  I am the Apple fanboy at home with everything Apple. I wanted to replace our "family" PC - primarily in use by wife & children - with Mac Mini but my wife insisted that we buy a new Windows desktop. For now we keep the current NUC longer and wait for the 12th gen NUC.
    williamlondonnadrielfastasleep
  • Reply 10 of 25
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    Xavalon said:
    doggone said:
    entropys said:
    I would laugh if they don’t outclass tiger lake laptops, particularly XPS15 with GTX3050s, but really they should aim at shutting down Razer and Asus with GTX3070s.

    might be hard to do M2 if the next iPhone chip isn’t released yet.  It is interesting that we haven’t heard any rumours about that SOC yet.
    Maybe it won't when comparing in raw specs with a dedicated GPU. But really who cares.  It's just a pissing contest that has no bearing to the typical user. The point is that the M1 processor is already way more advanced than a X86 chip with efficiencies across the board.  Having the next generation of Mac that will take advantages will provide years of usage at performance way above the current Intel Macs and with the knowledge that Apple will continue to refine the OS to improve performance over time.

    Apple silicon is already exceeding most of the competition with only their first generation SOC.  They are going to be leaving the others way behind with subsequent generations.  Intel must be panicking.
    The competition didn't standstill. AMD Ryzen 5000 mobile series, launched after the M1, has some impressive processors. For example, the Ryzen 5800U is also a 15-watt processor) that is on par with the M1 single-core benchmarks, but faster in multicore benchmarks. And even Intel 11th series combined with a dedicated GPU has more performance than the M1. For the price of a Macbook Pro you find easily a 11th gen Intel with a Nvidia's 3050 or 3060 for the same price. You know that is 4-5 times the current GPU performance of the M1 in GPU TFLOPS. Yes, the M1 is much more power-efficient, but why compare this element to a desktop, NUC, all-in-one or even 15/16/17-inch laptop were nobody expects 17 hours of battery life. The forthcoming NUC 12th generation do come with a dedicated Intel GPU (between 3050 and 3060) with up to 16GB RAM and supports up to 64GB RAM and has three M:2 NVME SSDs slots (2 of them supports up to 7GB speeds; about double as fast as the M1 Macs).  Why is such a mini-PC not a better option than the M1 Mac Mini? All remains to be seen of the M1X can beat such configuration, especially the GPU part. The world is not giving up on AMD or Intel yet. Just saying. Still,  I am the Apple fanboy at home with everything Apple. I wanted to replace our "family" PC - primarily in use by wife & children - with Mac Mini but my wife insisted that we buy a new Windows desktop. For now we keep the current NUC longer and wait for the 12th gen NUC.
    The current M1 offerings were meant as a transition product line, with even then the M1 changed the status-quo forever.  That a gen-1 CPU could keep up (and exceed in some cases) to CPU's that have had decades in the making was a serious wake-up call to Intel and AMD.

    In the past, one would have to choose between performance, and battery life in a a laptop.  No more.  ASi has now raised the bar and while you may not expect a laptop to have 17 hours of battery life, especially running at maximum performance, Apple has thrown the gauntlet and now that expectation will be expected from competitors.

    I've been wanting to replace my recently ruined 2017 MBP and have waiting for the 2nd-gen ASi MBP's.  I suspect Apple will come out of the gates with guns blazing when the first true ASi-built MBP's come out in a few months.  
    williamlondon
  • Reply 11 of 25
    darkvaderdarkvader Posts: 1,146member
    No thanks, not going to recommend anybody buy a laptop with built-in spyware.
    williamlondonnadriel
  • Reply 12 of 25
    newvideoaznewvideoaz Posts: 15unconfirmed, member
    darkvader said:
    No thanks, not going to recommend anybody buy a laptop with built-in spyware.
    That you equate targeted hash-matching of known child exploitation material done in conjunction with the Centers for Missing and Exploited Children — with “spyware” is pretty weird. 
    Those deeply damaged souls that form a market for that type crap get scabt sympathy from me — and I applaud Apples approach to using AI to fight it. 
    From all I’ve read, their approach is limited, focused, targeted and subject appropriate. It’s not going to put any general netizens rights in jeopardy and they couldn’t  care less about your “slippery slope” fantasies  - cuz they’re focusing on protecting kids that ACTUALLY need these protections. I for one applaud Apple for understanding that these are  massively serious issues AND that they can use their technology to actually make a difference for these tiny Victims. Good for you Apple. 
    tenthousandthingsfastasleep
  • Reply 13 of 25
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    Some what incidentally Apple asked about the my satisfaction with 3 year old MacBookPro13. Including questions on screen size, brightness and if I'd like a little bit more or a lot more of both. 

    I only seem to get these surveys close to new product releases I think they are trying to tease me. 
    ArchStanton
  • Reply 14 of 25
    seanjseanj Posts: 318member
    darkvader said:
    No thanks, not going to recommend anybody buy a laptop with built-in spyware.
    Yeah I wouldn’t recommend Windows either.
    williamlondonnadriel
  • Reply 15 of 25
    seanjseanj Posts: 318member
    cpsro said:
    The first Apple laptops that will only run spyware.
    Presumably because you have images that are illegal under child protection laws…
    williamlondon
  • Reply 16 of 25
    entropys said:
    I would laugh if they don’t outclass tiger lake laptops, particularly XPS15 with GTX3050s, but really they should aim at shutting down Razer and Asus with GTX3070s.

    might be hard to do M2 if the next iPhone chip isn’t released yet.  It is interesting that we haven’t heard any rumours about that SOC yet.
    I thought increasing DRAM or SSD storage is the easiest way to improve performance. Is this true? Are there any benchmarks that test the difference between DRAM and storage amounts?
  • Reply 17 of 25
    Xavalon said:

    The competition didn't standstill. AMD Ryzen 5000 mobile series, launched after the M1, has some impressive processors. For example, the Ryzen 5800U is also a 15-watt processor) that is on par with the M1 single-core benchmarks, but faster in multicore benchmarks. And even Intel 11th series combined with a dedicated GPU has more performance than the M1. For the price of a Macbook Pro you find easily a 11th gen Intel with a Nvidia's 3050 or 3060 for the same price. You know that is 4-5 times the current GPU performance of the M1 in GPU TFLOPS. Yes, the M1 is much more power-efficient, but why compare this element to a desktop, NUC, all-in-one or even 15/16/17-inch laptop were nobody expects 17 hours of battery life. The forthcoming NUC 12th generation do come with a dedicated Intel GPU (between 3050 and 3060) with up to 16GB RAM and supports up to 64GB RAM and has three M:2 NVME SSDs slots (2 of them supports up to 7GB speeds; about double as fast as the M1 Macs).  Why is such a mini-PC not a better option than the M1 Mac Mini? All remains to be seen of the M1X can beat such configuration, especially the GPU part. The world is not giving up on AMD or Intel yet. Just saying. Still,  I am the Apple fanboy at home with everything Apple. I wanted to replace our "family" PC - primarily in use by wife & children - with Mac Mini but my wife insisted that we buy a new Windows desktop. For now we keep the current NUC longer and wait for the 12th gen NUC.
    You have to realize that M1 is the bottom of the barrel for Apple Silicon - it's the spec bump for Apple's lowest level Macs. That it proved to be so performant you can largely credit to the four Firestorm eight wide CPU cores in the M1 - which according to rumor will expand to eight in the M1x.

    You can quote TFLOPS numbers all day, but the x86 graphics subsystem runs on memory copies between the CPU and a graphics coprocessor memory partitions for integrated graphics - or compressing and transferring data across the PCIe bus for a discrete GPU. Those block transfers really eat away at your graphics subsystem efficiency. If the M1x units run with unified memory, the graphics subsystem can dispatch work units to graphics cores where they can do rendering steps in tile memory, and will not have to pass data back and forth because both CPU and GPU cores share unified memory - that's why the eight measly cores in the M1 can perform so well even against some dedicated GPUs.

    According to rumor, M1x boosts the number of GPU cores from 8 to 16 or 32, which doubles or quadruples the graphics processing power.

    Chances are Apple will stick with PCIe SSD - hopefully on a daughter card so if it goes bad it can be replaced without need for a mother board replacement.

    That's why I got 4 TB SSD on my 2020 iMac 5K - because it was rumored to live on a daughter card.

    It'll be interesting to see what battery life is like - mini-LED will probably eat more power, but the M1x SoC should use a lot less power than an x86 CPU and discrete GPU.

    I wonder if Apple will play with the clocks since the 16" should have more cooling capacity.
  • Reply 18 of 25
    boltsfan17boltsfan17 Posts: 2,294member
    Hopefully Apple does a better job than the iPad Pro at minimizing mini LED blooming with these new MacBook Pro's. 
    williamlondon
  • Reply 19 of 25
    seanj said:
    cpsro said:
    The first Apple laptops that will only run spyware.
    Presumably because you have images that are illegal under child protection laws…
    Or, he values his privacy. It goes through the data you have, even if the cause is benevolent, it’s still spying. I want to have the disgusting individuals caught and prosecuted, but I am not willing to give up my right for privacy. I wouldn’t mind hosting my own “cloud” to keep all my photos and data safe from scrubbing. That doesn’t make me a criminal nor should it make suspicious of any criminal activity, at most eccentric in the eyes of some people.
    muthuk_vanalingamwilliamlondon
  • Reply 20 of 25
    darkvader said:
    No thanks, not going to recommend anybody buy a laptop with built-in spyware.
    That you equate targeted hash-matching of known child exploitation material done in conjunction with the Centers for Missing and Exploited Children — with “spyware” is pretty weird. 
    Those deeply damaged souls that form a market for that type crap get scabt sympathy from me — and I applaud Apples approach to using AI to fight it. 
    From all I’ve read, their approach is limited, focused, targeted and subject appropriate. It’s not going to put any general netizens rights in jeopardy and they couldn’t  care less about your “slippery slope” fantasies  - cuz they’re focusing on protecting kids that ACTUALLY need these protections. I for one applaud Apple for understanding that these are  massively serious issues AND that they can use their technology to actually make a difference for these tiny Victims. Good for you Apple. 
    It’s scrubs through your data, it is spying, even if the cause is benevolent. I value my privacy a lot, I understand that Apple doesn’t want to host any of the despicable crap on their servers. This is hyperbole, but this kind of thing makes Apple hardware less desirable for me, or I’ll stop using their cloud services.

    All in all, I think this kind of individuals and real criminals might already be prepared to go around this kind of steps, so it’s the rest of us who suffer the loss of privacy. Even if it’s an automatic process. There might still be false positives which leads to someone seeing something that is private and trust their discretion.

    I will research more into this and will make a more informed decision, their next MacBook Pros are what I’ve been looking to upgrade to. This was not a thing I wanted to consider when buying, and it sucks. :(

    PS: could you please provide links to places you’ve used to familiarize yourself on this?
    williamlondon
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