15.4-inch MacBook Pro. Inside is a quad-core 'Skylake' processor. (Credit: Apple)
In October of last year, Dell upstaged the MacBook Pro 15 when it announced the redesigned XPS 15. Is it Apple's turn now?
When it debuted, the 15.6-inch XPS 15 was stunning -- it was smaller, lighter, and boasted an almost-borderless Retina-beating 4K display compared to the MacBook Pro 15. Dell also added some nice touches like a keyboard and trackpad wrapped in carbon fiber and a USB Type-C port supporting Thunderbolt 3 (similar to its 13.3-inch XPS cousin). And, maybe most importantly, Dell added Intel's "Skylake" 6th Generation quad-core processors -- two processor generations of ahead of the quad-core Haswell processor that the 15-inch MacBook Pro (still) uses. Dell also updated the Nvidia GeForce graphics to the GTX 960M (2GB GDDR5).
But Apple seems set to upstage Dell when it releases the new 15-inch-class MacBook Pro, likely before the end of the year (and probably a lot sooner). The new MacBook Pro is expected to be thinner, with a smaller footprint, sport USB Type-C ports, and have nice touches like Touch ID fingerprint identity sensors and a "dynamic" set of OLED function keys.
Need for Speed: All the extra goodies aside, performance is key for systems like the Dell XPS 15 and MacBook Pro 15. Currently -- to cite just a few representative yardsticks -- when pitted against the MacBook Pro 15's Haswell/AMD Radeon R9 M370X, Dell's Skylake system can process Adobe Premiere high-bit-rate video faster than the MacBook Pro, according to MobileTechReview. On the other hand, certain Final Cut (not surprising because it's an Apple product) operations are faster on the Haswell MacBook Pro. But if you're a gamer (Battlefield 4,Far Cry 4 etc.), Dell is the hands-down winner. (Also, see this review by an individual who talks about the XPS 15's Photoshop and gaming performance.)
Which Intel? AMD Polaris graphics? I asked Canalys analyst Daniel Matte about the possibility of Apple opting for Intel's quad-core Skylake instead of the newest -- and still largely unavailable -- Kaby Lake processor. "Even launching ridiculously late with Skylake, Apple can at least slightly improve things over launch-Skylake configurations by using higher binned processors (higher clocks from better yields) and [do other tweaks] that could be done with the motherboard design," he said. (Note: Matte's reference to "launching...late" with Skylake means that Apple would be launching at the very end of its product cycle, i.e., just before the release of higher-end Kaby Lake mobile processors.)
And AMD's Polaris? "[If Apple] decides to launch with Polaris...that will indeed be a great upgrade. I don’t know what GPUs competing vendors will go with. Nvidia's new mobile GPUs are a higher performance category [because] Nvidia's new architectures target a higher TDP [thermal design power]. Polaris 11 is [for] lower power and thinner [designs]," he said.
And one more thing: Though MacBook diehards see Windows 10 as practically verboten, it is a galactically big improvement over all previous Windows versions. The point being that shouldn't be the sole deciding factor when choosing between an XPS and a MacBook Pro.
I've been spending time with the 2016 update of the XPS 15 and it's a scary-fast machine (Intel Core i7-6700HQ quad-core processor) with a scary-good 4K Ultra HD (3,840-by-2,160) touch display. That said, I'm as anxious as anyone to see what Apple brings out in the coming weeks.
