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Apple Plans To Ship 16-Inch MacBook Pro This Year, Says IHS Markit -- Offers More Details

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Credit: Viktor Kadar

The 16-inch MacBook Pro is slated for release this fall, according to IHS Markit.

"We foresee that Apple will release a new product [at the] Sep’19 Apple event if there’s no unexpected development issue," Jeff Lin, Associate Director, Consumer Electronics at IHS Markit, said in an email, referring to the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

IHS Markit describes the future MacBook Pro as having a "new display size (16 inch), new Mac OS (Catalina) & CPU," as cited in its "IHS Markit Q1’19 Mobile PC Market Tracker."

Credit: IHS Markit

If the IHS Markit data is accurate, Apple will opt for a 3,072-by-1,920 resolution* LCD not an OLED display -- at least on the model specified by IHS Markit. Hewlett-Packard and Dell are now moving to OLED displays on large, select 15.6-inch laptops.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said earlier this year that Apple plans a 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Apple is also expected to update the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro and Retina MacBook Air with the new MacOS Catalina and new processors in September, according to Lin. Apple did a processor refresh of the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro in May.

A MacBook Pro with a 16-inch-class display would be the largest screen on a MacBook in Apple's present lineup. The largest MacBook Pro currently has a 15.4-inch display.

A MacBook that size could tap Intel's fastest mobile processors. As of summer 2019, that would be the 9th generation H series mobile Intel processors, such as Core i9-9980HK 8-core processor, which is now available on the May 2019 refresh of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

The more interesting question is, what graphics horsepower it will get. The May refresh of the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro is still using the same graphics configurable up to Radeon Pro Vega 20 graphics with 4GB of HBM2 memory.

It's not clear what future AMD Radeon RDNA (formerly codenamed "Navi") graphics Apple could use in a mega MacBook Pro, as AMD hasn't specified what's coming yet.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

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*The current 15.4-inch MacBook Pro has 2,880-by-1,800 pixel resolution.