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Apple MacBook Pro 13 and 15

Apple has taken some heat over the concluding few months for the relative age of some of its hardware, and the visitor may finally be preparing to respond. The new machines reportedly characteristic some significant new technologies, but at least one product — the xi-inch MacBook Air — is reportedly going away, its niche filled by the 12-inch, single-port MacBook.

The rumors from Japanese site Mac Otakara suggest a pair of new MacBook Pros at 13-inch and 15-inch, and a new, 13-inch MacBook Air. All of these machines will reportedly be based on USB-C and offering Thunderbolt 3 connectivity — if the rumors are accurate, Apple may exist dumping conventional USB altogether, in favor of USB-C for everything. Apple has always had a reputation for getting rid of ports more apace than other companies, but if the company is ditching standard USB ports across all of its products, it's going to be extremely abrasive for Mac users stuck shuffling dongles (and never listen the fact that if the USB-C ports aren't themselves spaced properly, some dongles and converters may not fit next to each other). Hanging one dongle off the MacBook Air is annoying; the idea of shuffling multiple dongles on both sides of a laptop sounds fifty-fifty worse.

MacBook

The current MacBook's features include being really sparse with very little expandability… and that's honestly about it.

A contemptuous person might wonder if Apple tree has made some of these changes purely to boost the revenue it earns off selling accessories. Apple'due south various plugs, dongles, and converters have a reputation for being well-made, simply the company notwithstanding makes a killing on the peripherals it sells. Aircraft a few thousand more dongles and components isn't going to make upward for falling iPhone sales in and of itself, no, but it'south not a bad side business.

Other speculation about this new hardware includes a likely CPU generation bump to Skylake (Kaby Lake is possible, but Apple would be adequately early to that market), OLED screens for the role keys and the ability for applications to map new functions to the key row, and a rumored upgrade to Polaris for at to the lowest degree one of the models. Apple doesn't historically make much attempt to push detached GPUs into its hardware, but a Polaris-based GPU would exist a substantial upgrade for the high-cease MacBook Pro. Currently, the MBP is using a GPU based on AMD's GCN 1.0, and while that solution was reasonably powerful when it debuted information technology's gotten awfully long in the tooth (not to mention the power consumption section).

If Apple does intend to launch in October, it doesn't take much fourth dimension left to exercise it — and there's all the same no word of a Mac Pro refresh, though I've argued before that this is scarcely needed, given the relative lack of advocacy in Intel processors. That'due south non to say at that place'd exist no benefit from newer Macs, but nearly of the improvement would come from faster GPUs, larger storage pools, or ameliorate overall pricing — not raw horsepower. We don't know nonetheless if Apple is ditching the earplug jack on its upcoming hardware or not — presumably non, since this hasn't been mentioned. Just it wouldn't surprise us if the company opened up a total courtroom press on removing that particular component. Subsequently all, now it has a pair of $160 wireless earrings to sell you lot.