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 next big event from Apple is the 2017 WWDC in June and there is chance that in the same occasion the tech giant will reveal the upcoming MacBook Pro 2017 refresh. Already, eight models of the notebook line have been leaked, courtesy of the codes seen in the latest macOS Sierra 10.12.4 beta release.
According to MacRumors, blog site Piker Alpha sifted through the latest macOS beta build and concluded that Apple is already working on the follow up to the MacBook Pro 2016. A total of eight MacBook Pros will hit the market this 2017, the blog report claimed.
The Piker Alpha guesswork was based on the macOS' support of three motherboard models that will not support the latest MacBook Pros or any of the Mac desktop models.
The same report indicated that Apple will release a 13-inch MacBook Pro with regular function keys and will be made available in two models. Kaby Lake will be the platform of choice, affording the devices with CPU clock speed of up to 4000MHz.
Apple will also make, based on the same information, three 13-inch MacBook Pros with the LED Touch Bar that was introduced last year. The series will also boast of 4000MHz CPU turbo speed, also in Kaby Lake.
And the flagship of the series, as expected, will be the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, which the Piker Alpha blog report said will be issued in three variants and all powering up with Intel's Kaby Lake Core i7 processors.
As for the 13-inch MacBook Pros, it will be a mix of Core i5 and i7 chips, also in the Kaby Lake architecture
Of note in the strings shared by the blog report is the lack of GPU details, which could mean that Apple is still finalizing the hardware details on the matter. There will be two possible scenarios on this - that the tech giant could pick between NVIDIA's GTX and AMD's Radeon Vega for GPU or settle with Intel's on-board graphics solution.
Prior to the MacOS Sierra code hint, iDownloadBlog.com said that Apple insider Ming-chi Kuo has predicted that mass production of the MacBook Pro 2017 will commence around summertime. A 32GB flavor of the series with 15-inch screen will also see production but release date of which is not expected until the last few months of the year, the report added.
