Apple updates the MacBook with new colour and m7

[Belgarathian]

Apple has announced the updated line of MacBooks featuring updated processors and rumoured new pci SSDs. They've also introduced rose gold as a new colour. 

 

Quote

The new Apple MacBook line is based on the dual-core Intel Core M processors based on the newest Skylake microarchitecture as well as the ninth-generation of Intel's integrated graphics (HD 515, Gen9) with improved media playback support. The new processors are the Core m3-6Y30, the Core m5-6Y54 and the Core m7-6Y75, but are upgraded from their listed base frequencies due to Apple using them in a 'configurable 7W TDP up' mode. This adjusts the base frequency up by 100-200 MHz and offers more TDP headroom for longer turbo periods. The latest microarchitecture and increased frequencies should increase the base performance of the new laptops in general-purpose applications whereas hardware-accelerated playback of HEVC and VP9 video streams should improve battery life in video streaming scenarios. Just like predecessors, the new laptops use 8 GB of memory, using LPDDR3  to minimize power consumption of memory sub-system. This time, Apple uses LPDDR3-1866 memory for its MacBook, which is a tad faster than the LPDDR3-1600 DRAM it used last year. This should have a knock-on effect on the integrated graphics performance as well.

Apple MacBook Line
		2015 (Broadwell)			2016 (Skylake)
CPU	SKU	Intel Core M-5Y31	Intel Core M-5Y51	Intel Core M-5Y71	Intel Core m3-6Y30	Intel Core m5-6Y54	Intel Core m7-6Y75
		cTDP Up			7W cTDP Up
	Base	1.1 GHz	1.2 GHz	1.3 GHz	1.1 GHz	1.2 GHz	1.3 GHz
	Turbo	2.4 GHz	2.6 GHz	2.9 GHz	2.2 GHz	2.7 GHz	3.1 GHz
GPU	SKU	Intel HD Graphics 5300 (GT2) 24 EUs, Gen 8			Intel HD Graphics 515 (GT2) 24 EUs, Gen 9
	Base	300 MHz			300 MHz
	Turbo	850 MHz	900 MHz		850 MHz	900 MHz	950 MHz
DRAM		8GB LPDDR3-1600			8GB LPDDR3-1866
PCIe SSD		256 GB	512 GB	256 GB 512 GB	256 GB	512 GB	256 GB 512 GB
		PCIe 2.0 x4			PCIe 3.0 x4?
Display		12-inch 2304x1440 IPS LCD
Ports		1 x USB 3.1 (Gen 1) Type-C 3.5mm combo jack
Network		2x2:2 802.11ac with BT 4.0
Battery		39.7 Wh			41.4 Wh
Dimensions		H: 0.14-0.52-inch W: 11.04-inch D: 7.74-inch
Weight		2.03 lbs (0.92 kg)
Colors		Space Gray Gold Silver			Space Gray Gold Silver Rose Gold
Price		$1299	$1599	$1749	$1299	$1599	$1749 ?

 

 

 

 

As has been discussed before, this lineup could threaten the existence of the MacBook Air, but in reality I don't think so as the new lineup is priced at a very different price point and has completely different hardware paired with the stunning 1440p IPS panel, and personally I would think is targeted at content consumer, to blogger/copyright who needs a little bit of extra horsepower and battery life in a ultra portable device.

 

The fact that this laptop has been given a CPU Update is a huge seller for me, but it remains to be seen if it will increase the problematic throttling that the previous iteration suffered from under load (although I highly suspect that it was never designed for sustained load, and instead for short workloads to decrease boot and load times). Other than that, the majority of whats inside is the same.

 

 

Source: http://anandtech.com/show/10260/apple-macbook-skylake-core-m-rose-gold-color

[handymanshandle]

Darn I was going to this section see if someone had beat me to the punch about this...
Oh well... 

It's still using the Core m, and it still only has two ports (One USB Type C and One Headphone jack) it would've been cool to see one or two more USB Type C ports (I'm fairly sure they could've gotten more in.)

 

If I wanted a laptop that thin, I'd still probably go for the MacBook Air.

I hope Apple doesn't discontinue the MacBook Air...

 

[shdowhunt60]

Great.

 

Now where's the rest of the Mac lineup? :v

[AyeJayKay]

Seems as though they're keeping the 1-USB port philosophy, shame.

 

I'm not too bummed about it though IF they update the Air line with a Retina display and Skylake processors. It would actually make a nice line-up of laptops.

 

MacBook -> MacBook Air -> MacBook Pro.

 

Content consumption, light work -> medium level work, greater connectivity and battery life -> serious work, connectivity warriors.

 

BUT, if if they get rid of the MacBook Air line entirely, I will be very sad.

[handymanshandle]

@Belgarathian Fix the text in your quote for the night theme users...

(It's the underlined A) Just highlight the text (exclude the link if you want) and click automatic under the text color panel.

[bcredeur97]

they can put another USB port on the other side... or another one right next to the existing one... It really wouldn't add much to the design or anything and it would fit...

 

So whats the performance gain? 10%? 20%? Doesn't seem like much to me...

 

 

Linus will probably liquid cool it

[handymanshandle]

3 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Now where's the rest of the Mac lineup? :v

15" MacBook Pro with an i7 6700HQ and a GTX 950M or GTX 960M (2GB) or their pascal equivalent?

(I'm pretty sure AMD won't quite be good enough for mobile GPUs with their upcoming GPU architecture.)

[ThinkWithPortals]

Is this a repost?

 

[shdowhunt60]

1 minute ago, wcreek said:

15" MacBook Pro with an i7 6700HQ and a GTX 950M or GTX 960M (2GB) or their pascal equivalent?

(I'm pretty sure AMD won't quite be good enough for mobile GPUs with their upcoming GPU architecture.)

I actually highly disagree with that. I'm expecting Pascal to have significantly worse performance per watt. It's focus has been on compute oriented features, and so far Nvidia's been quiet as to how it will perform as gaming graphics card.

 

In comparison, AMD has been not just been talking about performance per watt, but also about cost (which is why Apple went AMD in the first place).

[handymanshandle]

1 minute ago, shdowhunt60 said:

I actually highly disagree with that. I'm expecting Pascal to have significantly worse performance per watt. It's focus has been on compute oriented features, and so far Nvidia's been quiet as to how it will perform as gaming graphics card.

 

In comparison, AMD has been not just been talking about performance per watt, but also about cost (which is why Apple went AMD in the first place).

I guess it's possible for Mobile Pascal to suck, It just doesn't seem like AMD could make Mobile Arctic Islands/Polaris actually be good.

 

For desktop I think Arctic Islands/Polaris will be good.

[AyeJayKay]

2 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

I actually highly disagree with that. I'm expecting Pascal to have significantly worse performance per watt. It's focus has been on compute oriented features, and so far Nvidia's been quiet as to how it will perform as gaming graphics card.

 

In comparison, AMD has been not just been talking about performance per watt, but also about cost (which is why Apple went AMD in the first place).

While it is probably true AMD sold chips to Apple for cheap. A lot of Apple's software works better with AMD due to AMD's OpenCL performance. Also, maybe Metal benefits as well but I'm not familiar with Metal.

 

[Energycore]

7W TDP.

 

At least the pink one's a nice shade of pink.

[BrianS]

Can't polish a turd. 

[Mr.Meerkat]

30 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

Is this a repost?

 

I would say almost...he did include the nice table for us to look at however  

[dalekphalm]

36 minutes ago, wcreek said:

15" MacBook Pro with an i7 6700HQ and a GTX 950M or GTX 960M (2GB) or their pascal equivalent?

(I'm pretty sure AMD won't quite be good enough for mobile GPUs with their upcoming GPU architecture.)

 

27 minutes ago, wcreek said:

I guess it's possible for Mobile Pascal to suck, It just doesn't seem like AMD could make Mobile Arctic Islands/Polaris actually be good.

 

For desktop I think Arctic Islands/Polaris will be good.

What are you basing this off? Because it doesn't seem to be on any reported leaks/rumours for Polaris performance. They've demoed a desktop system with total power consumption of what was it... 86w load? And that was from the wall, so that's full system load + the inefficiencies of the PSU itself as well.

 

This was against a GTX 950, which was around 150w-160w full system load.

So an AMD GPU with GTX 950-like performance, was running ~75 watts less power.

 

So far, I'm really not concerned with AMD's Polaris GPU efficiencies. They could easily scale this GPU down to notebook size and power requirements, limit the clock speed, etc. Especially considering Maxwell, on the Laptop side of things, isn't really anything special compared to their desktop GPU's, just scaled down appropriately.

[Belgarathian]

52 minutes ago, wcreek said:

Darn I was going to this section see if someone had beat me to the punch about this...
Oh well... 

It's still using the Core m, and it still only has two ports (One USB Type C and One Headphone jack) it would've been cool to see one or two more USB Type C ports (I'm fairly sure they could've gotten more in.)

 

If I wanted a laptop that thin, I'd still probably go for the MacBook Air.

I hope Apple doesn't discontinue the MacBook Air...

 

I don't think it will compete with the Macbook Air. Yes, due to size but you still have completely different hardware under the hood, and different price brackets. 

 

The Core M isn't a bad thing - you're not going to use this as a photo editor or video enthusiast, it's designed for general household use, travel writers, bloggers etc, and the Core M packs more than enough horsepower for general workloads. 

 

I have to agree with you on the Type C port though. I was hoping we might see a second type C, or at the very least 1 USB 3.1. It's still an amazing laptop, in my opinion, but you would have to be sure of the usage model before you purchased. 

 

49 minutes ago, wcreek said:

@Belgarathian Fix the text in your quote for the night theme users...

(It's the underlined A) Just highlight the text (exclude the link if you want) and click automatic under the text color panel.

Should be fixed now... Sorry for that.

[handymanshandle]

9 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

Should be fixed now... Sorry for that.

The quote, it's still a dark grey. 
 

I'm fairly sure automatic wouldn't make quote text a dark grey for night theme.

[Belgarathian]

6 minutes ago, wcreek said:

The quote, it's still a dark grey. 
 

I'm fairly sure automatic wouldn't make quote text a dark grey for night theme.

I've removed the standard formatting for the offending text, and then re-applied automatic text colour. 

[captain cactus]

Yeah, Posty McRepost: 

 

 

Mods, wanna merge these two?

[handymanshandle]

10 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

Yeah, Posty McRepost: 

 

 

Mods, wanna merge these two?

Perhaps quoting one or two of them might help...

@W-L

 

[W-L]

As mentioned repost, link left in thread below as it expands on more details:

-Locked-