Lack of 8th gen intel? That's Coffee Lake, which is in all the 2018 MacBook Pros. Intel's failures at 10nm (Cannon Lake, their previous target for 8th gen) are very well known and have been holding up the entire industry, and that's 100% on Intel. Those chips still aren't shipping.
It's a common misconception the last few years that Apple isn't shipping the latest Intel chips. Aside from the expectations/reality mismatch of Intel's 10nm woes, there's at least two other reasons this misconception persists:
1. Volume - A few PC manufacturers sometimes ship new Intel chips right when they come out, but often that is a paper launch or in super limited quantities. MacBooks are bought by millions and can only use Intel chips when they're available in volume and have shipped with what was available at the time.
2. Features - Intel staggers the release of their new generations so that they ship ones with certain (usually cut down) features first, such as a Y-series part sans GPU, or a K-series for desktops. Apple uses specific intel chips with specific features like beefier GPUs, which sometimes come out a bit later.
Every once in a while a lower volume Mac doesn't get refreshed, like iMacs are right now. Since Intel updates have been pretty incremental in certain SKUs there's not a strong reason to update those until significant new technologies come along.
It's a common misconception the last few years that Apple isn't shipping the latest Intel chips. Aside from the expectations/reality mismatch of Intel's 10nm woes, there's at least two other reasons this misconception persists:
1. Volume - A few PC manufacturers sometimes ship new Intel chips right when they come out, but often that is a paper launch or in super limited quantities. MacBooks are bought by millions and can only use Intel chips when they're available in volume and have shipped with what was available at the time.
2. Features - Intel staggers the release of their new generations so that they ship ones with certain (usually cut down) features first, such as a Y-series part sans GPU, or a K-series for desktops. Apple uses specific intel chips with specific features like beefier GPUs, which sometimes come out a bit later.
Every once in a while a lower volume Mac doesn't get refreshed, like iMacs are right now. Since Intel updates have been pretty incremental in certain SKUs there's not a strong reason to update those until significant new technologies come along.
As usual, devil's in the details.