“Even though Apple has been shipping 15-inch MacBook Pro systems with Intel processors packing Iris Pro graphics since 2013, the Mac maker has also offered customers the option to buy 15-inch MacBooks with stand-alone graphics processors since then, as wel,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool.
“As long as Apple planned to offer 15-inch MacBook Pros with a stand-alone graphics processor option, then the company would be forced to engineer the chassis of the computer to handle the thermal profile of the stand-alone graphics processor anyway,” Eassa writes. “In other words, unless Apple was willing to transition to integrated graphics only, it couldn’t take advantage of the lower power consumption of the integrated solution to make the device smaller, thinner, and/or lighter. Clearly, Apple didn’t think the performance of Iris Pro was good enough to be able to completely forgo a stand-alone graphics option in the 15-inch MacBook Pro.”
“From a cost-structure perspective, it probably makes sense for Apple to use processors with more modest integrated graphics processors and no on-package memory across the board, and simply include a low-cost stand-alone graphics processor in the system,” Eassa writes. “The performance of that stand-alone graphics processor is likely to be better than what Intel’s integrated Iris Pro could deliver anyway, and if the stand-alone graphics solution winds up being a little more expensive to sell, then Apple could just increase the pricing of the base model of the 15-inch MacBook Pro a bit.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No worries. Apple will keep the “Pro” in MacBook Pro.