13-inch MacBook Pros with Coffee Lake processors show up on Geekbench

The last time we got new MacBook Pro models from Apple was a year ago, when they were refreshed with Intel's seventh-generation 'Kaby Lake' chips. The company has been widely criticized since then - as has Microsoft - for not refreshing the lineup with Intel's new quad-core chips. After all, quad-core laptops started arriving last fall.

But it wasn't until April that Intel actually announced the U-series CPUs that Apple (and Microsoft) uses. Rather than the 15W Kaby Lake R processors that have UHD Graphics, these are the 28W Coffee Lake chips with Iris Plus graphics.

Last night, a MacBook Pro with a Core i7-8559U processor appeared on Geekbench. The device scored 4,448 on single-core, and 16,607 on multi-core. It also has 16GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory. This is a 13-inch model, as we still haven't seen a 15-inch model with the 45W H-series chips show up, although those should be hexa-core with 12 threads.

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro will be the first to have a quad-core processor, something that was previously exclusive to the 15-inch model. Interestingly, the multi-core score trumps the 15-inch model from last year, even though the Core i7-7920HQ should be a more powerful CPU, and the highest scoring 13-inch model was from mid-2017 with 9,553. The single-core score is actually lower than last year's MacBook Pro.

While it's been a year since we've seen new MacBook Pros, the rest of the MacBook lineup seems to remain stagnant. The 12-inch MacBook - which uses Y-series processors - hasn't been refreshed in over two years, and it probably won't be soon, since Intel still hasn't announced its eighth-gen Y-series processors.

The MacBook Air seems to actually be deprecated, as the one being sold right now still uses a fifth-generation 'Broadwell' processor, and it's the last Apple product that doesn't offer a Retina display. If you're waiting for this one, don't hold your breath.