OCTOBER 2019 MACWORLD 17performance, future-proof Wi-Fi.
MacBooks built with Ice Lake CPUs
should be all ready for that new Pro
Display XDR monitor (go.macworld.com/
pxdr). The graphics engine has three
display pipes that support DisplayPort 1.
HBR3 and HDMI 2.08, plus HDR10 and
Dolby Vision. You’ll be able to hook up
three simultaneous 4K displays at 120Hz, a
pair of 5K displays at 60Hz, or a single 8K
display at 30Hz.
COMING TO A MACBOOK
NEAR YOU?
The million dollar question is: When will Ice
Lake processors be available in a Mac
laptop? As is typically the case with Apple,
we just don’t really know. Intel expects
PCs with these chips to hit the market in
the last quarter of this year, but Apple is
typically not in the first wave of laptops to
use a new Intel chip.
Often, a MacBook refresh featuring
new Intel processors hits the market
between three and six months after the
first Windows laptops. If that holds true
again, we can expect 10th-generation
processors to arrive in MacBooks in the
spring or summer of 2020.
The rumor mill says Apple is due to
introduce a new 16-inch MacBook Pro
this fall, possibly along with refreshed 13-inch
models. That would probably be too soon to
expect Ice Lake processors; if Apple
releases those products this fall, they will
probably not contain 10th-generation Intel
Core processors, and we’ll have to wait for a
product refresh next year. ■It’s rumored that the first MacBooks to feature Wi-Fi 6 will be released in 2020.