Apple MacBook Pro 2016 is Set for Major Design and Feature Revamps (Photo : Apple)
The MacBook Pro 2016 is practically confirmed to unbox with Intel Skylake chip and MacOS on release date but two more add-on features are poised to further boost the laptop's already solid selling points - built-in support for 5K display resolution and artificial reality or AR for mostly gaming functionalities. And the computing device is still expected to arrive boasting of the slimmest build ever.
All these will be made possible by the Apple Thunderbolt Display, which in recent news is said to have been marked for discontinuation. But according to MacRumors, Thunderbolt is not exiting the scene anytime soon and is in fact gaining a significant bump - an integrated GPU that will allow users to enjoy premium display features on their Macs.
MacRumors said that to John Paczkowski of BuzzFeed has tweeted that the Thunderbolt Display is far from dead:
Thunderbolt Display takes dirt nap as expected. Sources telling me next-gen display will indeed have integrated GPU https://t.co/kx6n0vQGMf
— John Paczkowski (@JohnPaczkowski) June 24, 2016
And with the upcoming upgrade, the display is sure to meet all the expectations from fans, specifically those coming from the gaming crowd. "A Thunderbolt Display with a built-in graphics card would be able to work with almost any Mac because it would be driven by an internal graphics card rather than the machine it's connected to," MacRumors said on its report.
The boosted up Thunderbolt is seen to fully support display rendering in 5120 x 2880 screen resolution or 5K display plus USB-C connectivity with full Thunderbolt compatibility. While the report did not mention, the new Thunderbolt will likely support too AR features, which is in keeping with Apple's recent declaration that the AR platform will surely be supported in the company's ecosystem.
As mentioned by MacRumors, the new Thunderbolt is most certain to work on Macs out of the box and that should include the MacBook Pro 2016 refresh. With the set up and when hooked up with the 2016 MBP, the device will surely take full advantage of the fresh Thunderbolt Display features while keeping the ultrathin profile it is rumored to touchdown with.
And the same report indicated that the new Thunderbolt is likely to debut alongside the new batch of MacBook Pro 2016.
On release date, which is rumored to happen as early as August this year, the MacBook Pro is predicted to unbox in 13-inch and 15-inch form factors with the build and design closely resembling that of the 2016 12-inch MacBook. Running the show, as stated above, is the tandem of Skylake and MacOS Sierra, the latter largely responsible for feature upgrades bannered by Siri for Mac, Touch ID unlocking and reconfigurable OLED function keys.
