Mac Pro

What I want for WWDC 2012 is a new iMac and the curious case of the 15″ MacBook Pro

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The past few days had seen a crazy mix of rumors about the exact new Macs that will be announced during the keynote tonight, and much of the rumors are about the big possibility that the new 15-inch Mac notebook will not be a MacBook Pro, but instead a new “MacBook”, and that the MacBook Pro line will live on a bit longer with only updates to the internals.

This mean that the Macs codenamed J30 and J31 in my previous post could instead be updated MacBook Pros as opposed to actually being new and redesigned iMacs.

Having absolutely no rumors/news about redesigned iMacs besides extremely vaguer mentions in the major rumor sites isn’t helping either. In the days leading up to WWDC 2012, we have heard a great deal about the new Mac Pros, the new 15-inch Mac notebook, and lesser about the updated MacBook Airs, but almost absolutely nothing about the iMacs, rather than some unverified news that redesigned iMacs will not make it in time for WWDC 2012.

However, something about the whole MacBook Pro line being retained despite having a new 15-inch Mac notebook stinks though.

Apple is not a company afraid to cut old products when they introduce new ones.

Apple is also not a company to keep complex product lines.

A 11/13 MacBook Air line, with a 13/15/17 MacBook Pro line, with a new 15 MacBook line, all for Apple’s notebook lineup, is absolutely nonsensical and not in Apple’s fashion to do.

What Apple will be in favor of, is a product lineup which they have implemented since day 1 of their big switch to intel more than 6 years ago.

6 years ago, there was a 13-inch MacBook, and a 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro.

Yes, this means that the notebooks are separated into two lines based on the size of the notebooks, which made sense since Apple could really only put in Pro-level graphics cards in the bigger Mac notebooks.

If you recall, Apple was all ready to follow that lineup when they introduced the unibody MacBooks (13-inch) and the unibody MacBook Pros (15-inch and 17-inch) in late 2008. But then they realized they had to have a Mac notebook under 1000USD, and thus the MacBook White was revived, and the 13-inch unibody MacBook became the 13-inch MacBook Pro, which in itself isn’t very “Pro”, being the only MacBook Pro without a dedicated graphics card (yes there was an oddball 15-inch without a dedicated card for a while, but nobody except Elsie Law wanted one).

If the Apple today is still the Apple of Steve Jobs, I believe we will be seeing this new MacBook line-up tonight;

11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air (with Retina Displays)

and

the all-new 15-inch MacBook Pro (redesigned, with Retina Display)

And then I’ll have my redesigned iMacs too. Yay~

Macs to be released at WWDC 2012

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Appleinsider just put out an article with regards to new part numbers (Australian) for what are supposed to be the new Macs to be unveiled next week at WWDC.

While Tim Cook did say during D10 that Apple will be doubling down on secrecy, when the products are actually in the final process of being shipped worldwide to Apple Stores and resellers, it’s pretty hard not to leak any info.

Judging from the part numbers above, the models to be introduced at WWDC next Monday night are as follows (it’s pretty obvious if you look at the models and the Australian prices);

1. J30 – iMac 21.5″
2. J31 – iMac 27″
3. J11 – MacBook Air 11″
4. J13 – MacBook Air 13″
5. K5BPLUS – Mac Pro (We know this from a previous 9to5mac leak)

Which will bring us to the last 2 machine part numbers, D2 and K31.

All these while we have been hearing rumors about a redesigned MacBook Pro, but every single rumor is about a redesigned MacBook Pro 15-inch model, and there is absolutely nothing on a redesigned 13-inch or a redesigned 17-inch.

Which brings us to the very, very obvious fact that next Monday night, there will only be one redesigned MacBook Pro, the MacBook Pro 15″. And from yet another leak reported by 9to5mac, we know that at least one of the MacBook Pro 15″ models will really be professional based, with very high specs listed, as well as the leak that this higher spec-ed model will cost around $3000 (that’s USD, mind you, which is almost on par with Australian Dollar right now). And the D2 BEST model do fit in with this pricing at $3000+. Therefore D2 = redesigned MacBook Pro 15″.

Which brings us to K31. And if the 15″ leak is accurate, so must the 13″ leak be. And therefore K31, the updated MacBook Pro 13″ with no retina display, is the new White MacBook, the cheapest model one can buy from Apple, and is still in the inventory because it was the most popular Mac before the redesign (just like the White MacBook), and some people can’t bear to give up the old.

The rest of the part numbers are likely to be new accessories, although with that large a number of accessory part numbers, whatever is going to be introduced looks really fun, especially B67, with so many versions of it being introduced.

P.S. A few minutes before I clicked published, 9to5mac just posted the entire price list with model names for the very same image Appleinsider put up, making this very post redundant. And K31 isn’t the MacBook Pro 13″ surprisingly (obviously based off the price), but the Airport Express…..A new Airport Express???

9to5mac’s full Apple inventory image below.

New iMacs to have USB 3.0 and Firewire 3200?

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Hardmac.com : Le “Macbidouille” in English – [Rumour] Some little tidbits on the MacPro and the iMac

Hardmac reports that we will see the next iMac and Mac Pro at the “end of summer”, which is around the August/September timeframe.

We should also see USB 3.0 and Firewire 1600/3200 ports in the new iMacs and Mac Pros.

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