“With Intel’s next-generation Core i-Series mobile platform not expected until the second quarter of 2012, Apple is reportedly preparing a refresh of its professional notebook line ahead of the holiday shopping season to better bridge the gap,” Kasper Jade and Neil Hughes report for AppleInsider.
“According to people with proven insight into Apple’s future product plans, the late-2011 MacBook Pro refresh will deliver marginal speed bumps to the notebooks’ Core i-Series of Sandy Bridge processors but will otherwise introduce no material changes over the existing models,” Jade and Hughes report. “While precise timing for the update may change, those same people say the Mac maker currently anticipates an introduction of the refreshed line before the end of the month, possibly following the close of the company’s Back-to-School promotion, which ends on September 20th.”
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Jade and Hughes report, “Apple last updated its MacBook Pro lineup in February.”
Read more in the full article here.
i don’t think it will happen. MBP was refreshed in march 2011 so i don’t think there will be 2 refreshes in one year.
Personally, to me, the fact that they’re only upgrading the processor chips is good news. I know there’s talk about the virtues of removing the optical drive and eliminating the option for hard drives in favor of solid state drives, but after having to constantly ration storage space on my MacBook’s 80GB hard drive and having to endure the beach ball of doom for _everything_, I cannot tell you how happy I was to get a MacBook Pro with a 750GB hard drive where I didn’t have to do that. So for those of you who extoll the virtues of solid state drives over hard drives, all I have to say is this – give me the choice between 750GB or 128GB, 750 will win every single time.
Would be nice if the added USB3 too.
they already have thunderbolt.
There are still way more USB 3 peripherals out there than Thunderbolt and having used USB 3 on my Mac Pro it is blazing fast and backwards compatible with USB 2 so you lose nothing by changing out that port and gain much. There is room for both, in fact would be an embarrassment of riches. Apple may be afraid if they did that it might hamper or slow the development of Thunderbolt devices with USB 3 being “good enough.”
I understand you can use USB3 in a Thunderbolt port via a dongle, so you have both options: USB3 & Thunderbolt
I’ve not seen such a dongle on the market, I know they should exist in theory but there really is a lack of Thunderbolt equipped peripherals.
Right now I can buy a USB3 external hard drive for £55.
It seems Intel will eventually support USB3 with it’s new chipsets that will accompany Ivy Bridge CPUs in 2012.
Minor tweaks are possible. Don’t expect anything major given the fairly recent update and the fact that the current models are nothing short of awesome as-is.
I just bought two macbook pros last weekend and could not be happier. What a flat out nice machine.
A 17″ MacBook Air Pro…Could that be done technically. I would love one!