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Apple Launches MacBook 2016 With Intel Skylake Processor, Longer Battery Life
Apple, on Tuesday, announced a refresh for its 12-inch MacBook laptop. The 2016 MacBook comes with an Intel Skylake processor -- sixth-generation dual-core Intel Core M model, offering up to 1.3 GHz clock speed with Turbo Boost speeds of up to 3.1 GHz, faster 1866 MHz memory, and a 'rose gold' color variant. Apple assures 10 hours of wireless Web browsing time, or 11 hours of movie playback on a single charge. The new model will hit retail stores on Wednesday. It starts at $1,299 for the 256GB SSD and 8GB (up from 4GB) version, and goes all the way up to $1,599 for the top-of-the-line model which offers 512GB SSD.
A couple of points: the first-generation MacBook didn't fare well with reviewers and plenty of users alike. Second, today's announcement also hints that the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro lineups won't be getting the Intel Skylake upgrade for at least a few more months -- which is really sad, because, at present, they come equipped with almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips. No wonder, Oculus executive made fun of Apple's computers.
A couple of points: the first-generation MacBook didn't fare well with reviewers and plenty of users alike. Second, today's announcement also hints that the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro lineups won't be getting the Intel Skylake upgrade for at least a few more months -- which is really sad, because, at present, they come equipped with almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips. No wonder, Oculus executive made fun of Apple's computers.
Its a Mac so it must suck!!!!
Manufacturers these days have gotten quite brazen with their lies about battery life, but this one takes the cake.
10 hours of web browsing, or 11 hours of video playback?
What in the f*** allows you to render full motion video at screen resolution more efficiently than you can render a few static lines of text? Are we just testing this on flash-laden malvertisement-hives and not real-world websites? and then tripling the actual battery life we measured?
If Apple cut their outlandish prices for their mediocre products by 50% or more I might consider buying one. I was almost sold on a Mac Mini until I found out that you cannot upgrade the RAM in the newer models.
Apple, you suck.
And only six months after the chip's release! Kudos, Apple - always on the bleeding edge looking out for consumers.
And watch the Apple fanbois try to justify the ridiculously overpriced outdated hardware in Macbooks. It's a shame because OS X really is a solid operating system, but the hardware in every Apple product lags well behind their competitors. All the Apple fanbois will stand in line for hours at the nearest Apple store while those of us who care about getting work done will use something else. Can we please stop worshiping Apple does? They haven't done any real innovation at least ten years. If you want good marketing and hype, go with Apple. If you want to get work done, choose something else.
Another increment in technology, overpriced to get as much out of the less technical as possible...smh
Does it have a physical "Turbo" button I can press? If not, I'm not interested.
it's $1299 for $499 worth of hardware, and you can't upgrade or replace any of it when it breaks, but people worry about that the other models will have a three-year-old CPU for a few more months, as if the computer is somehow totally unusable.
Just a single USB-C port. While I like the magsafe charging connection of older macboks, I can support charging via USB-C - the more devices that can charge via the same standard connector, the better. While I like having the USB-A plugs, I'm willing to bet peripherals will transition with time to USB-C, and I can even deal with needing a dongle until that happens. What I find unacceptable is the fact that there is only a single USB-C port.
This makes me think of the early days of USB -- it was assumed people would chin their devices, as was common with SCSI. But then, peripheral manufacturers stopped including the pass-through connector. At first, this was annoying, but the fact is, it would be annoying to have to disassemble a chain of devices because you want to remove one from the middle.
I jumped over to TonyMacx86.com and as of 4/12/16 they have moved the recomended CPU from Haswell/Broadwell to Skylake.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/buil...
For those that like to tinker and build your own Hackintoshes.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Modern app appers know that ONLY apps can app apps, and MacBook runs LUDDITE software. You should get a Windows Phone instead so you can app apps while apping other apps!
Apps!
the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro lineups won't be getting the Intel Skylake upgrade for at least a few more months
Technical or commercial reasons?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Compute CPU power is not much more than it was 3 years back. Software can be made faster with effort; hardware not any where near as simple to get gains.
Like Msft of old: "Yes, it's slow, but the hardware will catch up." when you know it was just sloppy coding that was the cause, and hardware was the problem like Snowden was the problem.
Make the code better. Make the algorithms better. Don't obfuscate it (they are). Open source it. yada yada.
Yours,
Carl Kolchak
I'm considering upgrading my 2013 model. Should I wait a couple of months?
"Which is really sad, because at present, they are running almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips."
That's one opinion. I still love my MBRP 15" RD after 2.5 years.
Speed is nice, but it isn't everything.
I eventually look forward to non-proprietary power adapters and spare battery packs for USB-C.
since skylake's power management sucks with it. Wonder how macos fares?
But if you follow that link to Apple and click "Buy" it 404's.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
A couple of points: the first-generation MacBook didn't fare well with reviewers and plenty of users alike.
My 2006 Black MacBook was useful for eight years until developers followed Apple's lead and started dropping support for 32-bit programs. Never mind that it runs 32-bit Windows 10 and Mint Linux without problems. I have yet to find a true successor to this great laptop.
I guess their reference movie for testing battery life is this one.
the 15" line needs a refresh badly, and we need the return of the 17" with a 4K display.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I am currently a heavy linux user at home and was wondering if it was worthwhile to switch to OS-X for software development. I am currently using Ubuntu 14.04 and my main gripe is that it is very unpolished on my dell xps 12 - sleep/hibernate/suspend doesn't work correctly, the trackpad isn't very good and it is lacking the horsepower for the work I am trying to do.
I will mainly be using the laptop for java and python development. I am thinking of looking into some javascript frameworks also like node. I need a macbook pro class machine for this, eclipse is already laggy with ~12 open projects in my workspace and the external monitor hooked up to the laptop scrolls in a very jerky manner.
My main concerns with OS-X are:
- will be just as much work making OS X more like my linux machine in terms of a good terminal emulator?
- How about decent package management? How do fink/hombrew/pip etc compare to apt?
- How is the python tooling?
- Will common shortcuts like alt-tab, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X work in OS-X?
- What is the state of vertical splitting of the screen between programs - for eg, vertically splitting eclipse and chrome?
- I have heard that OS updates in OS-X break programs installed in userspace (especially those installed via package management tooks). To what extent is this true?
I have reached a point in my life where my time is worth more than money. If it is going to take me 3-4 weekends to get OS-X to a point where it is usable for development and I feel comfortable in it, I will just stick to linux and live with the lack of polish/hardware integration issues - maybe buy another Dell.
Anyways, hope developers with OS-X and Linux experience can share their experiences.
Microsoft launched their Surface Pro / Surface Book on the freshly-minted Skylake and have had no end to their driver headaches. Their promise of 9 hours of video playback on Skylake, with its snazzy new HEVC decode core, is possible only with local content in a very select number of programs. Fire up Youtube and watch your battery choke to death on all the optimized code out there.
The new version is certainly a good incremental improvement over the previous. I have been using previous model since it was first released and love it because it fits my needs.
- I do wish Apple provided the multi port adapter with the laptop. I rarely use it but have to have one around just in case (USB-A and HDMI)
- Now that they provide a USB-C to lightning cable, I can use the same charger for my phone and laptop. They should have the option to get these with new phones.
The changes in the new version does not justify an upgrade for me. I usually keep my laptops for around 4 years. I do wish they had a batter replacement program.
The Oculus rant started with Marble Madness being the worst game he owned. I stopped reading after that. Maybe it wasn't a 3D VR super HD real life game, but it was still pretty fun.
To unify the Apple Inc. portfolio, Apple will kill OS X and all hardware lines that depend on it.
Apple will replace OS X with iOS.
HFS+ will also be killed off. That is not a bad thingy.
However, in unifying around iOS, Apple will ban shells, sudo, and all command line applications. Timmy Cook and Jony Ives will penalize Apple Inc. employees and developers who use Bash and commands.
Timmy Cook, "Thou shall NOT Bashes, U gona Luz my penis with your jucies."
No wonder, Oculus executive made fun of Apple's computers.
They weren't even focused on the laptop platform (Since the vast majority of PC laptops can't effectively run VR), but on the mac pro, which is actually a quite powerful system - albeit not suitable for VR since it is focused as workstation platform and not a gaming one. If you're going to slight apple, at least make it generally relevant. Granted, I'm still not sold on the 12" models.
" they come equipped with almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips"
That must be a joke, right? Apple computers are expensive, but at least they give you the latest technology, isn't it?
The Oculus Rift comment was lame. Of course a Mac notebook isn't going to have graphics up to snuff for VR. How many PC notebooks are up to the task? 2? 3 maybe? Sure, Mac desktops suck for VR, but this article isn't about those.
are they not using ddr4?
There's a small mistake in the original post.
The 2015 12in Retina Macbooks ALL came with 8GB of ram not 4GB.
The if you read the article, it was the MacBook Air line which got a bump in RAM from 4GB to 8GB.