Rumor: 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro shipping times slip, refreshed units rumored around WWDC

It’s the shipping times that tend to give away when a new product is in the works.

Over the past several weeks, the shipping times for Apple’s 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro have increased, jumping from one to two weeks and then to two to three weeks.

With the Worldwide Developers Conference taking place next month and Apple typically announcing new products at this event, Intel’s current Broadwell chip is rumored to be in short supply. As a result, it’s unknown as to whether Apple will refresh the 15-inch notebook, which was last updated in the summer of 2014.

Even with supply constraints, Intel has started shipping a small handful of desktop Broadwell chips.

The desktop-class Broadwell chips that are currently shipping were also given prospective July/August 2015 release timelines, so their arrival does potentially herald the imminent release of Broadwell chips that would succeed the existing Crystalwell chips in the 2014 Retina MacBook Pro. If these chips are going to ship out earlier than the prospective July/August timeline, it’s possible Apple could make a Retina MacBook Pro update announcement at WWDC.

Given the significant delays with Broadwell chips, their release timelines merge with the release timelines of Intel’s next-generation Skylake chips and an investigation into Intel’s release plans suggests that the company may jump directly to releasing Skylake chips in the third-quarter of 2015, bypassing Broadwell chips for certain machines all together.

The timing is there, the signals are there, and we might see something new and cool emerge at this year’s WWDC.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via MacRumors