Apple has just released the MacBook Pro 2016, the first one in four years, but the company already has its sights on the next one, even though it may not arrive anytime soon.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has established himself as a reliable source with all things Apple, claims that for the 2017 iteration of the laptop, the Cupertino giant will add 32GB RAM support that will "eventually attracting more core users."
Such feature was expected in the MacBook 2016, but Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said they decided against it because it will require a memory system that will use too much power.
Kuo says that they are looking to rectify this with the MacBook Pro 2017. However, the analyst emphasizes that such upgrade will rely greatly on Intel and their release plans for their next-generation processors.
"This depends on whether or not Intel ships Cannonlake CPU on time in 2017, which features 15-25 percent less power consumption of LPDDR 4, versus the existing LPDDR 3," he stated via Macrumors.
"If Cannonlake doesn't enter mass production as expected, the new models launched in 2H17 will adopt Coffee Lake, which continues to adopt LPDDR 3, and maximum DRAM support will also remain unchanged at 16GB," he added.
Andrew Cunningham from Ars Technica points out that Intel has no known plans about churning out Cannonlake processors for the MacBook Pro and that Coffee Lake chips will not be here until 2018.
If this will be the case, it might lead to a MacBook Pro-less 2017 among other possibilities. Either way, it might be too early to think about that yet as Apple appears to still be mostly focused on the recently launched MacBook Pro 2016.
According to Digitimes, the tech giant has alerted its suppliers to anticipate strong shipments of the laptop during the rest of the year, all the way to next year. The shipments are expected to climb up to 15 million units by the end of 2016 and are predicted to stay on the same level in 2017.
