AppleInsider Staff
Apple on Friday began discontinuing many models of its professional 15-inch notebook ahead the company's annual developers conference, which is widely expected to give way to updated models with Force Touch trackpads and Intel's latest mobile processors.
In an effort to draw down channel inventory ahead of the conference — which runs June 8 to 12 in San Francisco — Apple began delaying shipments of many non-standard (otherwise referred to as "BTO" or "CTO" configurations) several weeks ago. At the time, AppleInsider reported on the MacBook drawdown, noting that estimated shipping times were rapidly increasing.
Since then, most indirect channel partners and some retail stores have run out of many or all 15-inch MacBook Pro models, as seen in our Mac Price Guides. And on Friday, the Cupertino-based company began officially discontinuing many of those same CTO models while preparing final shipments of the two standard 15-inch MacBook configurations.
For instance, MacMall is completely out of 15-inch MacBook Pro models, including retail configurations, while Amazon and most other resellers only retain stock of the base configuration. Meanwhile, Apple's own online store says standard models are available to ship in three to five business days, but configuring a model with faster processors bumps up the lead time to two to three weeks — around the time of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).
Most telling, however, are two pages (one & two) on the online store of Apple Authorize Reseller B&H's which were updated within the last 12 hours to indicate that both models have been marked end-of-life (EOL), or retail speak for a product that is discontinued. The first being a 2.8GHz version with 512GB SSD and another with 1TB of flash storage. At the same time, B&H also raised the price of the two standard 15" configurations (MGXA2LL/A & MGXC2LL/A) overnight — the latter back to MSRP — indicating that stock of those models is similarly running thin.
Apple is widely expected to launch a refreshed 15-inch MacBook Pro in the near future, with speculation that a new model with Force Touch trackpad and speed upgrades will debut at this year's WWDC in June. The flagship MacBook Pro with Retina display was last updated in July 2014 with Intel Haswell CPUs and more standard memory.
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99 Comments
Here's to hoping they stick with nvidia discrete graphics, though it's more likely they'll move to the amd stuff.
Or Apple's killing the product entirely.
Here's to hoping they stick with nvidia discrete graphics, though it's more likely they'll move to the amd stuff.
People should get ready to lose the discreet option all together. The next MBP refresh will likely take them into Air territory size wise, and I seriously doubt they'll be able to cool a discreet GPU in a chassis that thin.
[quote name="TheWhiteFalcon" url="/t/186286/apple-discontinues-15-macbook-pro-bto-models-ahead-of-force-touch-refresh#post_2723974"]Or Apple's killing the product entirely. People should get ready to lose the discreet option all together. The next MBP refresh will likely take them into Air territory size wise, and I seriously doubt they'll be able to cool a discreet GPU in a chassis that thin. [/quote]The last update isn't that old(compared to the air) so it may be a little while, honestly won't them to go back to high end discreet gpu on all models rather then narrow it to mid end on high models. To note, the 5k iMac is a step forward toward and high end.
I think the big change will be two USB C ports replacing Thunderbolt, SD card slots, and MagSafe. Yes, it will annoy a lot of existing customers, but Apple has a history of rapidly embracing new technology and abandoning old technology. Remember the ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) to USB 1 transition? How about the SCSI to USB 2 transition? Now that we have USB 3, when was the last time you saw a native FW port on a Mac?
I would like to see increased internal storage. The blade SSDs they use in the Macbook Pro are so small and thin, they should be able to lay two of them on their side and fit them in without making the design thicker. Then you could have 2x2TB = 4TB internal storage which would be a very pro feature.