
Apple Gives the MacBook and MacBook Pros a Kaby Lake Refresh - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/06/apple-gives-the-macbook-and-macbook-pros-a-kaby-lake-refresh/
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matt2000
Please just make a 15" model with a full keyboard! I can live with the rest of
it but it's going to be miserable trying to program missing all those keys.

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kartickv
Half-height arrow keys should be banned. Especially given how often we use
them. What a poor tradeoff of visual design over usability.

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mbgaxyz
How about just one single discussion thread "Apple WWDC news and
announcements" rather than multiple ones?

A Kaby Lake refresh is hardly news when the rest of the industry is already
preparing for Gemini Lake.

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dogma1138
Gemini Lake is the low power SoC (Intel Core M etc.), Kabby Lake mobile will
be replaced by Coffee Lake and Cannonlake.

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mbgaxyz
Thanks for the clarification.

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boulos
No mention (nor on macrumors) as to whether or not this means that the MBP
would support >16GB of RAM (the previous claim, IIUC, is that Kaby Lake would
handle this for the low-powered DIMMs Apple prefers).

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mbell
You won't see > 16GB till cannon lake, probably some time in 2018. Kaby lake
nor coffee lack support LPDDR4 and LPDDR3 is limited to 16GB.

This is an Intel problem, not an Apple problem really, the only thing Apple
could do about it is use DDR4L which would cut battery like quite a bit and
require a whole new motherboard (and probably battery) design.

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boulos
Ahh, I had missed that only the U variant of Kaby _might_ do LPDDR4.
Cannonlake it is.

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emptythought
Here's to hoping they were actually able to use the battery they intended to
this time around, and that the battery life isn't garbage:
[https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14024322/macbook-pro-
bat...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14024322/macbook-pro-battery-
development-failure)

I've been sitting on my 2012 original retina waiting for them to sort this
out. I've heard of the 15in 2016 model getting as little as 3 hours of
relatively idle use(ie liveblogging), and my 2012 still lasts 5~ with a
bajillion cycles.

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hack4supper
12 inch macbooks now have upto 16 gb memory [https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-
mac/macbook](https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook)

~~~
emptythought
I really wanna see some benchmarks/real world tests of this new version. it's
starting to look like the semi-serious tiny machine i wanted it to be all
along.

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tmaly
I am not so sure I will buy another MacBook no matter what processor they put
in it.

I just got back from the Apple Store. My 2013 MacBook pro is hard crashing, no
logs being written. Most likely a hardware defect. They tried formatting and
re-installing a fresh copy of OSX. It crashed during the re-install. They
tried booting it up in a special diagnostic mode and it crashed in that mode,
which should not have happened.

I bought this in December 2013 so its almost 3.5 years old. The minimum it
would cost me to fix it is $475 which to me is too much to pay given the age
of the machine and the cost of a new machine.

I contrast this with a Dell laptop I bought in 2001 that is still running
today in 2017.

The Apple care insurance they sell can at most get you 3 years total coverage.
This would not have helped me in this case.

I am going to explore other computer brands at this point.

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jarym
Doing the same - Dell 15" kitted out with 32Gb RAM for me.

The 'Pro' moniker is just a marketing gimmick these days.

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tmaly
I wonder why the down vote. my comment was totally on topic about the hardware
and my experience with it.

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ricardobeat
Maybe downvotes are because of your comparison of a 2013 MBP to a 2001 Dell
laptop?

My personal experience is seeing Dell, HP, Fujitsu and other brand laptops
completely disintegrate in a 3-year timespan, with Apple hardware easily
outliving them - hardware issues eventually appear, but overall condition,
specially mechanical, is not even in the same league.

~~~
tmaly
I was simply comparing what hardware experience I have had. I also have a 2005
acer laptop and a 2011 asus netbook that are still running fine today.

There is something to be said about warranties that you learn in engineering
school. The time period they cover is always calculated such that the majority
of faults across the majority of customers will not occur inside of the window
they cover.

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kartickv
As someone looking to buy a 15-inch Macbook Pro with Touch Bar, is it worth
waiting for this?

Does the faster GPU help with VR?

How much more battery life does it get?

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usaphp
They've also updated graphics cards to Radeon pro 500 series. The top model
can have a Radeon pro 560 now

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stcredzero
Count me disappointed until I can get my hands on a Macbook with a GTX 1050 Ti
or equivalent.

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usaphp
Radeon Pro 560 is actually on par with 1050 performance wize

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stcredzero
From what I've read, not quite at GTX 1050 Ti levels for mobile applications.
Please provide links if you have other sources.

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remir
Just saw the prices in CAD. Yikes! $1,729 for both base models.

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33degrees
Blame the exchange rate, the CAD price is actually cheaper than the USD price
converted

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cwisecarver
Store just updated. Still on 16GB of RAM.

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TurboHaskal
Did they raise the prices in Europe? I recall at least the Macbook 12" base
model being cheaper.

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arrty88
Anyone find a benchmark? I need to know if i should upgrade from the Nov 2016
macbook pro.

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jbergstroem
Is there a tell on the purchase page about them being kaby lakes? If so, I'm
missing it.

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british_india
Unfortunately, anyone who wants to fork over $5K for one of these gems has to
consider how brittle Apple products have become. Who wants to spend that kind
of scratch only to have it become a brick in a year.

~~~
djtriptych
Not sure what you mean. Anecdotally I have a 2009 MBP and a 2013, both still
running strong...

The phones are another story, but it seems the macbooks are pretty solid.

Also I'd be hard pressed to find a $5K configuration for a new macbook. Seems
like $3K tends to be top of the line.

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tunesmith
4k for a 15" with 2tb.

