Apple Refreshes Retina MacBook Pro Lineup
by Brandon Chester on July 29, 2014 6:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Apple
- MacBook Pro
Earlier this month Intel introduced new models in their lineup of Haswell mobile CPUs. With the Haswell manufacturing process having matured since its initial launch, Intel was able to bump clock speeds by 200MHz on a handful of their laptop CPUs and those chips have found their way into a refreshed lineup of Macbook Pro laptops from Apple. This update brings CPU speed boosts, and more RAM in the base 13" and 15" models. The new CPU and memory specifications for Apple's new lineup are shown below.
| MacBook Pro with Retina Display Lineup | ||||||
| Model | 13-inch (base and mid-tier) | 13-inch (flagship) | 15-inch (base) | 15-inch (flagship) | ||
| Old CPU | 2.4GHz Core i5-4258U | 2.6GHz Core i5-4288U | 2.0GHz Core i7-4750HQ | 2.3GHz Core i7-4850HQ | ||
| New CPU | 2.6GHz Core i5-4278U | 2.8GHz Core i5-4308U | 2.2GHz Core i7-4770HQ | 2.5GHz Core i7-4870HQ | ||
| Old Memory | 4GB DDR3L | 8GB DDR3L | 8GB DDR3L | 16GB DDR3L | ||
| New Memory | 8GB DDR3L | 8GB DDR3L | 16GB DDR3L | 16GB DDR3L | ||
The first thing to make note of is that the CPU speed has been increased by 200MHz across the board. The highest end CTO (configure-to-order) 15" model which is not shown now comes with Intel's Core i7-4980HQ with a base clock of 2.8GHz and max turbo clock of 4.0GHz. The other important thing to note is that the amount of RAM in the entry-level models has been doubled from 4GB to 8GB on the 13", and from 8GB to 16GB on the 15". This is a change that is nice to see brought to the 13" Macbook Pro with Retina display. Originally the entire 13" line had 8GB of RAM and the 4GB model was introduced to reach a lower price point during Apple's Haswell refresh. Now the entry level model once again has 8GB of RAM like the higher end versions.
The new models are available to purchase now on Apple's website for the same prices as the previous generation and are all available to ship within 24 hours.
Source: Apple Online Store
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BSMonitor - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
For anyone who has lived through the PC era, it is such a goofy turn of events that the premier Intel partner in 2014 is Apple. On top of that, the premier PC product is also made by Apple. If someone wanted a quality PC solution and had $1000+ to spend, you would not send them HP, Dell, etc etc...Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
If they wanted a quality niche product or a quality windows product, you would send them elsewhere though.isa - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
I wonder what this means with respect to Broadwell macbooks. It could mean Broadwell versions won't be out for a year, or it could mean these latest will only be on the market for 6 months or so and then discontinued with Broadwell models, or or it could mean that they'll briefly be 2 tiers offered at the same time, one with this Haswell and one with Broadwell. Or something else.xaphod - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
I am wondering the exact same thing: I expected the yearly major refresh of macbook pros to be end of october. Am I wrong? Do we think that there's no update now, until 2015? That definitely would change my mind about when I buy.dj_aris - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
Cmon, Maxwell is out for like six months. MBPs have been using the same GPU for almost two years now (650M and 750M are the same I think). That could have been a nice step forward until Broadwell is released.UltraViolet - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
I've seen a lot comments on the extended RAM. Nobody picked up the - to my mind - rather low Flash drive capacity of 128GB in the MBPr '13 entry model. Also, paying 200$ more on an additional 128 GB (=256GB) doesn't seem reasonable to me. Providing the entry model with an 256GB Flash drive would have been a really great deal.jamescox - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Current MBP give up way too much for thinness for my taste. I would prefer, at a minimum, a battery which can be easily removed. It was hard enough to replace the hard drive in older MBP; I will not be buying one again. I have also been wondering if these thin form factors can actually run at full speed for extended periods without throttling and/or being too hot to actually sit on your lap. I wouldn't mind them being 50% thicker for better performance, easier access to components, and better upgrades. It is really hard to find a laptop with enthusiast features without going with a 2 inch thick clevo. I have looked at the Dell workstation laptops which offer easy accessibility, a (presumably) good screen, and 4 memory slots, but these come with expensive quadro or firepro graphics which I do not need. I have some concerns about going with a gaming laptop since most of the laptops I see in the stores have really low quality screens and seem to be of low quality build. The Toshiba with the 4k screen is presumably one of the highest quality screens you can get, but they ship it with a 2GB Radeon R9 M265X. I suppose you could game at 1080p with 4x scaling. Anyway, I have held off from buying a new system for a long time since nothing seems to have the features I want. I am leaning towards a mythlogic/clevo custom build.