“Yep, the MacBook Pro is getting old: on that pretty much everyone can agree. The design seems almost frozen in time at this point,” Brooke Crothers writes for Forbes. “Over the last week, I’ve been talking on and off with Daniel Matte, an analyst at market researcher Canalys. It’s been widely reported that the new high-performance MacBook will be thinner, lighter, and have a touch panel that replaces the physical function keys (that run along the top of the keyboard). A Touch ID button is also expected (possibly where the power button is now on the 12-inch MacBook), according to Matte. And combination USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports too. ‘And obviously they can bring some combination of the improvements they brought for the 12-inch MacBook like the new butterfly keyboard switches,’ Matte said.”

“But what about the internals? AMD? More than any other MacBook, the MBP’s silicon is the defining feature. ‘It seems clear that [Apple] was waiting for AMD’s new Polaris 11-based GPU,’ Matte said,” Crothers writes. “And Intel? Which Intel processor would the 2016 MBP use? ‘Kaby Lake seems like a fair possibility for the CPU,’ according to Matte.”

“Why the MacBook Pro redesign delays? One theory is that Apple has been holding back on the MBP overhaul because of the dedicated graphics (traditionally used in the larger 15.4-inch model). Until recently, smartphones have been getting priority on 14 nanometer silicon, forcing the graphics guys to wait,” Crothers writes. “Essentially Apple and Qualcomm were taking up much of the 14 nanometer foundry capacity for smartphones. ‘The iPhone is delaying the Macs in other words,’ Matte said.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: The long wait is almost over, Mac users!