If you’ve been thinking of buying a new MacBook, and I mean any MacBook, from the
12” Retina, to the 13” Air, or either of the Macbook Pro models, you should probably
stop and wait just a couple more months.
There are a few reasons why I think we should be expecting some new MacBooks very soon.
Here’s why.
At Apple’s October Event in 2016, Apple released their brand new 2016 MacBook Pro,
and at their 2018 October Event, they revealed the new MacBook Air, the new Mac Mini and
the 2018 iPad Pro.
And there’s something that both of these events had in common.
Many of Apple’s products contain encryption tools, and in order to sell these products
in certain Eurasian countries, Apple is required to file each product number with the Eurasian
Economic Commision before they can legally sell any of them.
So in 2016, just three days before Apple revealed the new MacBook Pro, Apple filed three new
model numbers with the EEC for portable personal computers, which basically means MacBooks.
And in 2018, Apple filed model numbers with the EEC twice, once in July and once just
6 days before their October Event, and sure enough, we saw new Macs and the iPad Pro.
And now in 2019, just two weeks ago, Apple has registered 6 new model numbers with the
EEC, described once again, as portable personal computers.
And when this happens, it usually means we should be expecting those products to be released
within a few months, so for this reason, you probably shouldn’t buy a MacBook right now.
It’s been two years since Apple refreshed their 12” Retina MacBook, and it’s by
far the most underwhelming MacBook out of their lineup.
The 2018 MacBook Air is newer, costs $100 less, and offers so much more value, so we
wouldn’t recommend anyone to buy the 12” MacBook.
For these reasons, we expect Apple to refresh the 12” MacBook, either with a spec bump,
or maybe even a redesign.
There’s also a slight chance that we could see it move from an intel processor to a custom
ARM mobile chip, similar to Apple’s A-line of iPhone and iPad chips.
Back in May, Apple hired Mike Filippo, the lead CPU and System Architect at ARM for 10
years, who also worked at both AMD and Intel.
So this shows that Apple is going full force towards cutting Intel and using their own
chips on the Mac.
However, we most likely won’t see this happen until next year.
Until then, Intel has recently released some awesome new low-end laptop processors, so
there’s a good chance we’ll see a spec bump on the MacBook Air coming this year.
Now here’s where it gets interesting.
Apple hasn’t updated the base $1300 MacBook Pro in over two years, while just a few weeks
ago, they’ve updated the higher-end touch Bar models for 2019.
So this makes us think, is Apple really going to keep the low-end 2017 models for another
year, or do they have something special planned for this year’s October event?
We’re really not sure, but it’d be awesome if they did.
Last year, Apple did something that nobody was expecting.
Just three and a half months after they updated the MacBook Pros for 2018, they announced
new Vega graphics options for the 15” MacBook Pro.
And this year’s 2019 MacBook Pro refresh can now come with a very powerful 8-core processor,
and after a lot of testing, we realized that the bottleneck is now the Vega 20 graphics,
which hasn’t been updated since last year, so what if Apple is planning to bring a new
graphics option to the 15” MacBook Pro at their October Event, just like last year?
Well, developer Steve Moser discovered a list of eight unreleased AMD Radeon GPUs that he
found in the second beta of MacOS Catalina, which will be going live in September.
Most of them are labelled RX Vega 20 graphics, but those could be intentionally misnamed
so as to not give away the actual graphics name.
There’s a chance these could be tied to the new Mac Pro, the 15” MacBook Pro or
maybe even the rumored 16” MacBook Pro that everyone’s been talking about recently.
AMD has recently launched their RX 5700 series Navi 7nanometer GPUs, so there’s a chance
one or more of these recently discovered GPUs could be a 5700 series chip, and if so, Apple
could easily update the 15” MacBook Pro with the new chips later this year.
And for the 16” MacBook Pro, this GPU discovery hints at a chance that it’ll actually be
announced this year, but it might not happen, so we shouldn’t get our hopes up.
So for all of those reasons, we definitely don’t recommend buying a new MacBook right
now, especially if you’re looking at a lower-end 12” MacBook or 13” MacBook Air, which
are most likely to be updated.
So if you can wait another 4 months until Apple’s October Event, I would definitely
recommend doing so.
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