Why Are Apple and Microsoft Using Such Old Processors in Their New Computers?

What kind of bizarre thinking is this? There is surprise that a laptop released at the end of October is not built with a chip released in September?? WTF? Even <i>if</i> the chip is fully 100% slot compatible, neither MS nor Apple would or could take that at face value. The power requirements are different, that alone is cause for a redesign of the board.<p>The author seems to be living in a fantasy land, it takes time to test, purchase the processors, build the laptops, ship the laptops, and I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m missing about 10 other bottlenecks in the process. The Pascal GPU was only released in May, and that is still too soon to have been designed around.<p>Missing are examples of computers that have shipped in high volume using 1-4 months old components. Missing is some realization that if both MS &amp; Apple are doing the same thing, there&#x27;s probably a good reason.

Is this article seriously asking why Apple didn&#x27;t put a processor that was publicly announced in September in laptops that consumers could buy one month later? How about asking the author why they didn&#x27;t write this article on the day of the mac event? I get people&#x27;s disappointment in the new macs, even though I think it&#x27;s mostly unwarranted, but this is taking it to an extreme.

Its a form of clickbait in that I assumed the article would explain why the lead time has increased continuously since 1985 or so.<p>Instead there isn&#x27;t really a story at all.<p>For utter noobs to modern technology: If the pipeline from daydream to press day is X months and a new widget was released Y months ago then if X &gt; Y you don&#x27;t see the widget on press day. Don&#x27;t matter if its a jet plane or a nuclear reactor or a laptop.

When the new skylake hardware came out all the drivers where crap. People with new Surface Pro 4s, Surface Books, Dell XPS 13s, etc... where having all kinds of problems.<p>All these machines work great now, but I wouldn&#x27;t want to go through that pain again just for the sake of getting a little more performance (for average use).

Many have questioned whether or not Apple could have made a MBP with more than 16GB of RAM given Intel&#x27;s current CPUs. Gruber&#x27;s discussion with Apple and subsequent analysis was that Intel don&#x27;t have a part that they can use (e.g. one that supports 32GB of RAM), which get into the power and weight envelope they considered acceptable, and that envelope trumps all else at Apple.<p>Hitting that power and weight envelope is a hell of a lot easier when you make your own CPUs.<p>(<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;daringfireball.net&#x2F;linked&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;31&#x2F;intel-mbp-ram" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;daringfireball.net&#x2F;linked&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;31&#x2F;intel-mbp-ram</a>)

alt. title -- &quot;apple and microsoft choose not to rush products to market&quot; Processors will march forward getting better each year, the tick-tock of intel&#x27;s design process is a staple in the tech industry, so today&#x27;s best is tomorrows garbage. but unless the plan was to dump your computer after 6 months usage, this shouldn&#x27;t bother you much. And instead you get a system that is thoroughly tested and thoughtfully designed. I&#x27;d take a well designed 2 year old laptop over a flimsy garbage box with the freshest processor any day.

tldr; Apple and Microsoft want to use the high-powered variants, which have yet to be released, whilst other manufactures are happy to use the low powered variants.<p>Sticking with the more powerful, but power hungry CPUs is one of the few things that allow the MacBook Pro to keep the &quot;Pro&quot;.

I hear the excuse that the chips are too new, but the Razer Stealth has 7th gen Intel. There once was a time when Apple literally purchased the entire world&#x27;s supply of a part, and everyone else had to wait for more. Apple just doesn&#x27;t care anymore.