An Apple employee points to the Touch Bar on a new Apple MacBook Pro laptop during a product launch event on October 27, 2016 in Cupertino, California. (Photo : Getty Images/Stephen Lam)
The MacBook Pro 2016 boasting of Touch ID sensor, OLED Touch Bar and Intel Skylake with 16GB of maximum RAM is mostly a disappointment even to long-time Apple fans. But the next-generation build, set for release date in the second half of 2017, will likely more than make up for the letdown with game-changing feature upgrades to be headlined by Intel Cannonlake chip.
MacRumors said that the latest word from credible Apple watcher Ming-chi Kuo indicated that the MacBook Pro next year is in fact the big jump that fans have been waiting for. Kuo reported that for its Mac and MacBook lines, the tech giant intends to skip Intel Kaby Lake in favor of either the chipmaker's Coffee Lake or Cannonlake processing chip.
The difference between the two is that Coffee Lake only supports LPDDR3 with top RAM installation of only 16GB while Cannonlake will feature LPDDR4, which according to the KGI Securities analyst is up to 25 percent more power efficient.
"The new MacBook to be launched in 2H17 may support 32GB DRAM, eventually attracting more core users; this depends on whether or not Intel ships Cannonlake CPU on time in 2017," MacRumors reported Kuo as saying in a new research note.
But in the same report, MacRumors noted that Kuo's forecast seemed to run in counter with Intel' processor roadmap, which indicates that Coffee Lake will not be ready until 2018 while Cannonlake is now known to be designed for use with the MacBook Pro.
Nonetheless, the next-gen MacBook Pro promises to be a more compelling buy if the reports from South Korea will prove accurate that from LCD Apple will switch to OLED. The report from ETNews seems in line with the plan by the tech giant to gradually move away from LCD for OLED, which offers increased brightness, crisper color rendering and faster screen refresh rate.
OLED is also expected to find its way to Apple's next flagship smartphone series, rumored to be called the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.
And included too in the report by Kuo is likely the one chief reason for Apple fans to skip the MacBook Pro 2016 release for now. The analyst predicted that once the MacBook Pro 2017 versions are out, Apple will implement huge price cuts on the previous models.
