Apple to disrupt notebook space with radically redesigned MacBook Pros - Page 4

I agree that the optical drive will be gone, but USB 3.0 will be supported by the Ivy Bridge chip set. I also hope there are multiple MacBook Air style SSD's. Two would allow RAID 0, but three would allow for RAID 3 for size and redundancy. Keep the Thunderbolt port, Core i7 processor, and discrete graphics, then add a 802.11ac airport and that would definitely have a "Pro" worthy machine.

I would point out that another marginal technology adopted by Apple, Firewire, was developed by a consortium of companies, yet it never became anywhere near as widely used as USB. And Firewire peripherals have remained more expensive, even after all these years.

You're the ignorant one.

No Apple created Firewire and eventually it became an IEEE format (1394x). Firewire failed because Apple was not powerful enough to get it on the motherboard as a standard item and Intel was flogging their own USB creation which they could put on the motherboard for "free"

Intel likes USB because it relies on the CPU for managing I/O whereas Firewire had its own controller chips outside of the CPU. That makes Firewire more expensive but it also means that performance was more stable across varying computers.

ok Samesung, HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.... warm up your copy machines....

I could be like you and point out a million and one facts in computing which are not relevant to the discussion.

As for being ignorant, I'm not the one who made several false assertions in their previous post about Apple.

It's incredible that there are those who express so much animosity against Thunderbolt.

It took several years for USB to be widely accepted, largely in part to it being incorporated into the first iMac.
It may shock people to know that the iMac wasn't the first computer on sale with USB ports.

Thunderbolt has been available for barely a year, operating at speeds that put USB 3.0 to shame and yet it's coming under such vicious attack.

It's dawned upon me that the trolls are beginning to set the agenda, so back on focussing on the future MacBook Pros..

I'll be radical and suggest that Apple may work in reverse for the Macbook Pros: keep the MacBook Pros cases similar to their current dimensions but fit bigger batteries together with more powerful graphics and processors.

Lots of space can be freed by ditching the optical drive: it's no longer worth the vast space it occupies.
Surely it's much less cumbersome to walk around with ten small 4GB SD cards than a stack of ten blank DVDs?

If you're in the minority that need the DVD drive you can plug in a portable external drive, it doesn't even have to be an Apple Superdrive.

I would prefer having a much more powerful machine with longer battery life than a machine made heavier by a rarely used part.

I hope if they remove the optical drive in the 13' they use a quad core and (or at least or) a dGPU like its older siblings. That would differentiate it more from the Air, if they removed the drive and left the rest as is it would have nothing but the bigger hard drive over the Air, and for many people that would be a downside over the faster flash memory.

And about time, I'd say. I've had my laptop for two years and used the optical drive a whopping two times in that whole time, once for an OS update.

I feel like we're bound to be disappointed by something or other with the new MBP's though, between the new form factor and the retina-ish display. There's always rumors much crazier than what actually pans out, I don't think I need to cite proof of that, but remember the liquid metal macbook pro?



Yeah...I still lament how sexy that would be.

I'm not feeling that design. I think it's tapered all the way, even if it is nearly 1" thick at the very back.

I do expect Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0, HiDPI displays, and the ODD completely removed. I also want other things previously mentioned but those seem less certain.

Hmm, SSD standard like the Airs? I wonder if it would be standard SATA if they have a bit more room to work with, or the proprietary SSD again. Either way, I hope the capacities are higher than the Airs, 64GB or 128 is too small for a main laptop, for me at least. Sure, external hard drives, but that kind of defeats the purpose of such thin and light designs.

The SSDs in the MBAs are not proprietary. I have no idea how people got this idea when the physical interface is clearly a PCI Express Mini Card though electrically incompatible PCIe because it's designed for the mSATA spec.

mSATA had been in use well before the MBAs popularized them and there are plenty of 3rd-party companies creating the SSD cards for MBAs and other machines as noted by this link to Newegg.com:

• http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=1&srchInDesc=

edit: Here's one specifically for the MBAs:

• http://www.anandtech.com/show/4824/o...11-macbook-air

heard this before: "What about my floppy disks?"Time to move on!

I am betting on integrated SSD, possibly with some secret sauce from Anobit, to give the fastest single disk performance of any notebook in history. That would be a good selling point.

I did know that, bad wording on my part, sorry for making you write all that
I just meant a more standard form factor like 2.5" drives. Presumably if they have more processing grunt and thus more battery capacity, they would be bigger and have more room to work with than the Airs, so maybe they could fit a standard SSD in there. You can get mSATA SSD replacements, but those are still more expensive and underperform 2.5" drives. Apple could still customize the firmware from a 2.5 inch drive just the same.

Integrated SSD? I assume you mean the cards because having the SSD integrated into the logic board is not a good idea.

I think it will be either a 2.5" HDD/SSD or the SSD card + 2.5" HDD/SSD. I can't see how it can be just the card unless it's two cards or a really big card, but even then that would be pricey for 500GB.

I think Apple will continue to sell the HDD-based MacBook Pro. After all, they've continued to sell iPod Classics (and they sell pretty damn well).

Somehow I doubt that would happen. Anobit was a recent purchase, for one could they have made the fastest SSD in the world in that time, even if they worked with Apple before the purchase? And two, of course, cost, I think they would go with a middling SSD performance like the Airs anyways.



I'm of the same mind, a Momentus XT like implementation with a SSD for most used data and a hard drive for mass storage comes to mind. The separate drives would be invisible to the user and just appear as one at the hard drives capacity, and the OS or controllers would choose which files need a speedup and put them on the SSD.

Yes, I meant the "Blade" form factor as against the ones that just look like 2.5" HDs. But come to think of it, I wouldn't put it past Apple to put it right on the board.

I'd bet against that. It's one thing to put the RAM on the board for a PC I think we're still a long way off from integrating the NAND flash. If they were going to do that I think the MBAs would have gotten it, not MBPs. I would also bet against the RAM being soldered to the board.

You're probably right, but I don't think it's *totally* out of the question.

Software and hardware-wise the Mac has been moving closer to the iPad, and here is the iPad motherboard with NAND directly on it:
http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/D...UCsnIZZR.large

I want to see Apple add a 19" model. Now is the perfect time for it. I think it is quite possible to bring a 19" model with similar weight to the 15" MacBook Pro, maybe even weigh less.

How many here think an ultra thin 19" MacBook is a more compelling desktop replacement than the 17"?

One thing, if the RAM is going to be soldered on the new MacBooks I don't think I'll be buying one for a while. I love being able to upgrade the RAM, as I did on my Mac mini and MacBook Pro.

I don't think the 17" is that popular. Heck, we've seen 15" drop from the most popular display size to 13" over the years. If we consider that they will be adding double the resolution to each display that's 3840x2400 or 9,216,000 pixels. That seems like a lot to me and sounds like they might need a battery that is large enough that I don't think you're making a lighter machine than the current 17". Really for that to happen Apple will have to see a huge uptick in 17" MBP sales after the redesign to even consider that an even larger MBP could be viable.

too bad they are going to be running the garbage that is os x 10.7 vista.

The only reason not a lot of people buy the 17" is weight, at least that what it was for me and so I got the 15". If the new 17" is significantly lighter you'll see more people opting for them. Well at least I'll be getting the new 17" eventually even if Apple doesn't make a 19" MacBook.

"Sir, Aperture users are saying it runs poorly on the new slim MBPs because of the lack of suitable graphics card."

"They don't need those graphics cards anymore. We have new, smaller ones right on the logic board"

"But sir we made Aperture so GPU intensive that it doesn't run well on a compromised graphics card."

"Bah. Works fine for me. This new smaller graphics card is great. See? I just took a picture and used Aperture to upload it to facebook. Forget about those whiners. Now where's the rest of those pictures, I need to edit them. Oh damn I forgot I had to put them on iCloud because I can't use the internal to work off of. Get them back down. I'm going to lunch."

dang... these new macbooks better not look exactly like the macbook airs. i really don't like that clam-shell design.

You say that yet notebooks have gotten lighter and people have still opted for going smaller. And for the extra money you can invest in an ATD so I can have a 27" display at home and probably still have enough left over for a TB TM drive.

Why not remove your optical drive and install a 120GB (or even smaller) boot drive in that space? Keep your 750GB where it is for storage, and get an external enclosure for the optical drive. You should be able to do all that for $250 or so, and the speed increase will be incredible!

If you go that route it's better to put the HDD where the ODD was and the SSD in the 2.5" bay. You get much better speeds off your SSD this way.

Just a short while ago, I would have said, nahhhhh, never, but actually it's starting to make sense.

If you have the money, you can get a 512GB SSD. While they'll get the prices down by $100 or $200, it won't be like they're cutting prices in half or anything like that. Just like on the MacBook Air. So 512GB SSD/Flash will still cost $800 or so.

If you're strapped for cash, or need 1TB, you can get the thunderbolt external drive, sleek and beautifully designed. $150 f for 1TB.

Personally I am hoping Apple will finally get rid of the need to "eject" a disk - that's ridiculous, and should be replaced by an "OK to unplug now" indicator on the external drive. Red/green light? Something like that. Having to "eject" an external disk before unplugging it or else it will fuck up your data is IMO unacceptable.

I have a 17" but will go back to 15". It's both weight and size, and the fact the they now make high res displays on the 15.

The 17" is too big for some bags, too big for some tables, etc. The sheer size of it is a problem. And that despite the fact it's not bigger than some 15" PC laptops. I am carrying it in a 15" PC laptop bag, actually.

That said there's still a good half inch of bezel on either side of the display so if they could make a border-less screen then a 17" air would be awesome, and small enough.

I *LOVE* 1920x1200 pixels on my laptop. Yeah, baby!

I'd be very surprised if they used standard SSD formats. Apple's been on the "we make it smaller and better and sacrifice flexibility" road ever since the non-removable battery. Apple's been going back and forth on whether a replaceable HDD is a good thing or not - in the MBP and previous iMacs, it can be swapped out easily. In later iMacs, it's near impossible. So who knows.

I think they'll make the Flash board trade-off across the board. Will get way more people to opt for higher price points right from the get go when they choose their machine.

Macsales and so on will still make upgrade parts. If they use the same board format across the entire line of Macs then more and more 3rd party upgrades will come out....

For what I heard, we will see a 20% or more drop for SSD before the end of the year, still not a huge price discount, but about $200+ for 500 GB..

The 15" won't be as thin as its smaller counterparts. It will still be a pro level machine, as an internal redesign with total removal of the optical bay, will yield a similarly functional machine as we have now, but thinner and lighter.
I think they'll still be able to use the upcoming M-series standard voltage Ivy Bridge processors in the 15 and 17" models, with U-series low voltage remaining in the 11 and 13" models. Still a distinction in both size and power among the line, but with a unified design, and the benefits of the smaller form factor for 15 and 17" users. (I just got a 15" the other day and might I say its freaking huge)

However, its entirely questionable if they'll still have discrete GPUs. I think perhaps not.

They'll have a thicker hinge than the 13" MBA, so it will likely be able to retain an extra USB port and SD card slot, but say goodbye to Ethernet and FireWire. Granted, you don't need either port. You can soon buy small Thunderbolt hubs for your desk that your Ethernet and FireWire devices connect to, all going into 1 Thunderbolt port. That's better than the current implementation of multiple ports. So a design and functional victory here.

The real question is storage capacities of the SSDs and RAM, and the prices. Enter Anobit, hopefully.

If the Anobit purchase can leverage costs of the soldered internal SSD, then perhaps a 256 GB will be the low end, with 512 & 1 TB options, at modest price hikes for each. Then there is RAM. Apple currently charges $200 for 8 GB of RAM....a $150 overcharge, and why most people buy aftermarket. Not an option on MacBook Airs. Furthermore, Apple doesn't offer a 16 GB option for these machines, which they of course support.....but this could change.

I guess it could look like this...

15" MacBook (Air/Pro) $1799
2880x1800 Retina Display
2.6GHz Quad-Core i7-3720QM
4 GB DDR3 (8 GB BTO option - $100)
256 GB SSD
Intel HD 4000 Graphics
2x USB 3.0
1x Thunderbolt
1x SD Card Slot
802.11ac Gigabit WiFi
Impossibly Thin
3.9 lb

&

15" MacBook (Air/Pro) $2,199
2880x1800 Retina Display
2.7GHz Quad-Core i7-3820QM
4 GB DDR3 (8 GB BTO option - $100)
512 GB SSD
Intel HD 4000 Graphics
2x USB 3.0
1x Thunderbolt
1x SD Card Slot
802.11ac Gigabit WiFi
Impossibly Thin
3.9 lb

&

17" MacBook (Air/Pro) $2,499
3840x2400 Retina Display
2.9GHz Quad Core i7-3920XM
4 GB DDR3 (8 GB BTO option - $100)
512 GB SSD
Intel HD 4000 Graphics
2x USB 3.0
1x Thunderbolt
1x SD Card Slot
802.11ac Gigabit WiFi
Impossibly Thin
5.1 lb

*Note, the BTO RAM prices and SSDs are considerably cheaper than what Apple offers today, but I believe if a full redesign and shift to MacBook Air speed/simplicity is to occur, Apple would need to make the new NON-upgradable MacBook Pros more attractive at purchase. Especially with the likely abandonment of discrete graphics. Something's gotta give. I'm thinking the Anobit purchase will have a lot to do with offering higher capacity SSDs in these Pros, while maintaing price points.

So, would you buy one? Given those specs?

I'm right there with you. If anything you should be able to pack it with hard drives or SSD's and make a smaller logic board. An external optical drive would work for many. I just need to keep saving for a Mac pro anyway, but if I were looking for another MacBook pro, I'd need to see better content creation capabilities. Novel stuff like thunderbolt video cards, too, so if you're chained to a desk it extends capability beyond storage. 8 cores. These aren't iPads, they're tools.

Given that a thunderbolt cable costs $50 all by itself, your little dream of having a 1TB external drive for $150 has clearly teleported here from 2014.

Having to eject an external disk before letting your Mac go to sleep is just as bad. Excuse me but the drive is still connected; why can't the damned Mac go to sleep in a way that doesn't screw up the USB bus?

i don't think they will kill the pro and keep the 13,15,17" airs with the same speed as they are today, i think they will make it thin with still making it a Pro like...

Those sure are dream specs you posted. As a tech nerd I would like to just see a 17" Retina display, even if I couldn't buy one.

But even though they are dream specs, they may not be far from the truth. The Air has been out for a while now, and my theory is they have been waiting for Ivy Bridge to expand that design. If not now, when? And it would certainly leave the competition on the back foot.