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Apple plans new 16- to 16.5-inch MacBook Pro in 2019 aimed at pro designers

The current 15-inch MacBook Pro.

Last updated

As part of its 2019 product introductions Apple will reportedly revitalize a tier of MacBook Pro larger than its current 15-inch models, positioned at hardcore gamers and pro designers.

TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suspects the products are coming at some point in 2019 Kuo dropped the tidbit in a research note Sunday that sprawled the company's many product lines with specific predictions. No further details on the larger MacBook Pro were offered in the note.

The note also suggests that an upgraded version of the company's 13-inch MacBook Pro may debut with support for 32 gigabytes of RAM in 2019, up from a max of 16GB which is the present limit on that form factor.

In the same research report, the well-connected analyst also dished details on plans for a new "easy-to-upgrade" Mac Pro, a 6K Apple display, three new iPads and three new iPhones.

The next MacBook Pro will boast a screen measuring between 16 and 16.5 inches on the diagonal, Kuo predicts. If true, the MacBook Pro line will see its first significant bump in display size since Apple discontinued the 17-inch model in 2012. Currently, the largest MacBook Pro on offer features a 15-inch Retina display packing a resolution of 2,880-by-1,800 pixels.

No other specifications were provided, though it can be assumed that Apple will continue its yearly tick-tock of internal component upgrades. Potentially on the docket for 2019 are long-promised 10 nanometer chips from Intel and more efficient RAM. The 13-inch MacBook Pro refresh could theoretically upgrade to a more advanced flavor of LPDDR RAM or move to the power-hungry DDR4 specification.



104 Comments

macxpress 5913 comments · 16 Years

Apple developing a laptop aimed at gamers???? LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!

What gamer is going to buy a Mac? Every Mac user already gets laughed at when they say they want to play games on their Mac. 

I can see a larger MacBook Pro being used for other things such as designing. You could put VEGA Graphics inside it and use the extra space for cooling them. I don't know if Apple dares put a Xeon inside it?

Rhythmagic 63 comments · 5 Years

This is what i’ve been waiting for 

macseeker 541 comments · 8 Years

macxpress said:
Apple developing a laptop aimed at gamers???? LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!

What gamer is going to buy a Mac? Every Mac user already gets laughed at when they say they want to play games on their Mac. 

I can see a larger MacBook Pro being used for other things such as designing. You could put VEGA Graphics inside it and use the extra space for cooling them. I don't know if Apple dares put a Xeon inside it?

Strange things do happen.

dig48109 14 comments · 11 Years

Bring back the 17" laptop with either a HIGH end ATI or nVidia card. Needs to have BOTH options, since there are still many shops and vendors that dont' have time to recode in OpenCL and still have most of their codebase in CUDA for the graphics pipeline. 

64GB should also be an option since I can forsee a lot of people would like to use a VR headset. Like using a HTC Vive. 

Currently, this affects a lot of VR development on the Mac platform. they need a more hefty laptop to drive VR 

IMHO most people don't like using heavy laptops. Except for a small group, which might not make financial sense for Apple to have a heavy duty laptop line. 
Which is why the 17" killed off years ago

-Diganta