Other than the iDevice lineups, nothing says Apple quite like a MacBook. Last year, we saw dramatic refreshes and overhaul for the MacBook Pro lineup. As expected, Apple is keeping this years WWDC a quiet one for the MacBook family. At the same time, Apple is providing a decent update for most of their processors. However, some of the changes are surprising, to say the least. The main update is the introduction of Kaby Lake processors for most of the lineup.
The most important update is for the 12-inch MacBook. Apple has upgraded the processor from the Skylake m3-6Y30 to Kaby Lake m3-7Y32. This gives a mere 100MHz boost to the base clock but the boost clock goes from 2.2GHz all the way to 3.0GHz. For the higher end i5 and i7 models, there is still a sizable 500MHz gain in clock speed. Memory also gets a nice upgrade option to 16GB of DDR3.
For the MacBook Pro, we have a similar update to Kaby Lake. As these laptops were already using full on mobile CPUs, there is less of a gain from Kaby Lake. Kaby Lake bumps up processor and iGPU performance slightly overall. For the 15-inch model, the graphics cards are updated with AMD’s new 500 series. As an added bonus, Apple has bumped up the dGPU option for each price point one model each.
Last of all, we have the MacBook Air which is still somewhat neglected. Instead of a Broadwell to Kaby Lake upgrade, we just have a slightly faster Broadwell processor. It goes from the 1.6/2.7GHz Core i5-5250U to 1.8GHz/2.9GHz Core i5-5350U. It looks like Apple doesn’t want to go to the effort of designing a whole new motherboard with Kaby Lake support. Hopefully, this means the MacBook Air will be next for an update.
