Leaked Intel Skylake info reveals future MacBooks will gain graphics boosts, better battery life

Newly-leaked Intel presentation slides suggest that the company's upcoming Skylake processors could bring important performance and power consumption improvements to future Macs.

The slides, obtained by FanlessTech, state that Skylake's 14-nanometer architecture should improve CPU performance by 10 to 20 percent over Broadwell systems, while simultaneously advancing battery life by as much as 30 percent. In a given example, a laptop with 8.5 hours of battery life could jump to 11.3 hours.

Integrated graphics chip performance should be anywhere between 16 and 41 percent faster, with the biggest boost coming to Y-Series Skylake chips, suitable for ultra-mobile laptops like the 12-inch MacBook. Reviews have often criticized the MacBook's ability to handle graphics-heavy apps.

U-Series chips could conceivably be adopted for future versions of the MacBook Air, while the H-Series is intended for higher-end laptops like the MacBook Pro. The desktop-level S-Series could theoretically make it into the iMac or Mac mini.

Apple has already updated several Mac lines in 2015, which could mean that few if any Skylake Macs will be released this year. The 15-inch MacBook Pro is still on Haswell architecture though, and the iMac lineup has not seen any major changes beyond price reductions. The Mac mini was last updated in October 2014.

Past rumors have hinted that Skylake laptop processors could ship in October, which might be in time for one of Apple's usual fall press events, as well as the launch of OS X El Capitan.