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Apple could finally add Intel Kaby Lake to the MacBook Pro in 2017

Mark Coppock
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Apple MacBook 13-inch Touch Pad
Bill Roberson / Digital Trends
Some recent notebooks releases, such as Microsoft’s Surface Book with Performance Base and Apple’s 2016 MacBook Pro refresh, skipped Intel’s seventh-generation, or Kaby Lake, processors. That was disappointing to some users who would have benefited from the efficiency and performance enhancements provided by the new CPUs.

Apple is expected to perform a minimal refresh of the MacBook Pro line sometime in 2017, to upgrade to just those seventh-generation Intel parts, and people are tearing through MacOS Sierra data looking for any hints of what might be coming. Some industrious folks did just that and found some indications of new MacBook Pro machines, as MacRumors reports.

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As always, this information is highly suspect and open to interpretation. For what it’s worth, though, Pike’s Universum, a blog dedicated to Apple products, located some information in the MacOS Sierra 10.12.4 beta “plist” data that suggests new MacBook Pros could be released after that version of MacOS Sierra becomes official.

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According to the data, the new machines would utilize the latest equivalent seventh-generation parts to replace the older CPUs released with the 2016 MacBook Pro refresh. The updates could look something like this:

13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar

  • Core i5-6360U -> Core i5-7260U
    Core i7-6660U -> Core i7-7660U

13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

  • Core i5-6267U -> Core i5-7267U
    Core i5-6287U -> Core i5-7287U
    Core i7-6567U -> Core i7-7567U

15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

  • Core i7-6700HQ -> Core i7-7700HQ
    Core i7-6820HQ -> Core i7-7820HQ
    Core i7-6920HQ -> Core i7-7920HQ

According to a previous report, these new MacBook Pros could enter production in July 2017, with a 15-inch MacBook Pro version offering 32GB of RAM. The current machine’s 16GB maximum was another sore spot for some power users and so that would be welcome news as well. However, all of this is just speculation, and we won’t know for certain what Apple will release until Apple’s WWDC 2017 event in June.

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