Ultra-portable Apple notebook to splash down at Macworld Expo - Page 5

Nothing new in the article. I put a 130MB SSDD in a Libretto in 1999 or 2000, so I have some experience with SSDDs in laptops.

Prices drop. SSDD prices are dropping fast.

Actually, everything in the article is new.

These prices will drop at about the same speed as HDD prices, not much faster.

Prices of solid-state devices drop much faster than prices of electro-mechanical devices. I can remember when RAM cost $1/byte. It's now close to $0.01 per Mbyte. That's 8 orders of magnitude in about 30 years. By contrast, the earliest winchester drives cost $1/Kbyte. Now they cost about $1/Gbyte. That's only 6 orders of magnitude in about the same time. In other words, RAM now costs 1% of what it used to priced in hard drives. The same has been happening with SSDDs since I first bought one 8 years ago.

In several years the price per GB for SSDDs and HDDs will cross over and that will be the end of spinning hard disks. The idea of putting a 1" hard drive in a camera or phone is already dead. Laptops will be next, then desktops and servers. In 2008, SSDDs in laptops will be just BTO options. In 2009, they will be mainstream. By 2010, it will be difficult to find a new laptop with a HDD as all the new designs will have the SSDD integrated on the motherboard.

Announced yesterday by Sandisk:


Who was calling me crazy?

The 12" PowerBook is dead... mine is too puny (640KB, 867 MHz) to run Leopard.
I have not used its DVD/CD drive except to load software.
It fits into my briefcase.
I can read the screen.
I can use the keyboard.
WiFi, Bluetooth, and my .mac account keep me in sync at all times!
The 40GB (37.26 usable) drive holds what I need to carry.

All I want to do is replace it with another, more modern, more portable Macintosh...!

Give me a thin, light, 13" screen machine with:
60GB disk (I really don't care HDD vs SSD)
4GB of RAM (Leopard flies on my Mac Pro with 3GB)
A great keyboard
A great screen
A power chord instead of a brick! Damned bricks eat up briefcase space!

Maybe Steve has designed one for me like he did four years ago!

when we are going to see 200, 250 & 320 GB (5400 RPM) HDD in apple laptop line?

Nice. Very nice. Now, if we can get a HDD under 7 or 8mm....

Apple patent

The patent describes multitouch on what is apparently a MacBook or MBP, using a touchpad that extends over the entire bottom of the base and a camera that monitors where the hand is (to avoid accidental data entry). Need I mention Apple's camera-in-pixels patent? This patent further specifies that it is not relevant "what sort of QWERTY keyboard is used". It isn't much of a stretch to imagine a touchscreen keyboard.

Who was calling ME crazy?

Ummm, do you want the weight of that brick in your "thin, light, 13" screen machine"? That is th easiest way to get it off the cord. Of course it would add not only weight and volume to the "ultra-portible but also some heat...

I'll go with the brick and just buy a second cord for work so i don't have to tote the cord every day.

I'm with you Bageljoey. The brick is the best engineering solution for the reasons you mention. If the power supply is built into the laptop, cooling becomes a nightmare, adding a lot of weight and increasing noise levels substantially. It would also require an additional DC connector to support DC power supplies such as on airliners and in automobiles, etc.

I doubt that very much. It's going to take some time before that happens. you can't simply compare miniature high value products with the majority of drives out there.

It will be quite some time before we see a 360 GB 2.5" SSD. By the time that happens, there will be 10 terabyte 2.5" HDD's.

Your numbers are a bit (ah pun!) off as well. A one terabyte drive now costs $300. That's about $0.30 a GB.

RAM isn't what's being used in SDD's. It's always a form of Flash. With the newest, most advanced SSD's, such as the new 64 GB Samsung having a consumer price (in a laptop) of about $1,300 (n additional $950 over the HDD in the Dell), that's about $20+ per GB.

At least, get your numbers correct.

And don't say that the Samsung price will drop, because so will the prices of the HDD's you're comparing these SSD's to.

When the first one terabyte drive came out earlier this year, it was $400.

Can't they make a lighter brick? What about a switching mode charger? Also, this thing will likely have a fairly low power requirement anyway (no HD, no optical, smaller LED screen, probably not the highest ranked CPU) so I would imagine 4-5 hours of actual use before requiring a charge. If they add a detachable battery, the user could add as many as he wants.

And carrying 10 extra batteries around surely wouldn't add weight...
Apple already has some of the smallest power bricks in the industry. Have you ever seen a Dell laptop power adapter? These things are HUGE.

Of course I can. SSDD are starting the transition from being an esoteric high-value product to being a mainstream product. In addition to being solid-state, that will drive prices down faster than HDD prices.


256GB SSDDs are planned for H2 2009. 2.5" HDDs will be up to 1TB by then and will, of course, be much slower, less reliable, noisier, and use much more power. By 2010, not many people will want to put the latter in a laptop. It's exactly like the transition from HDDs to SSDDs in iPods, just a few years later.


I provided order-of-magnitude numbers which were correct. Insisting on more precision doesn't make something incorrect.


I never wrote that RAM is used in SSDDs, so please don't try to misrepresent what I wrote. Having worked in technology development at Intel, I have a good grasp of the difference between RAM and flash.

The price decline of RAM is a good model for the rate of price decline for flash because the technology and manufacturing techniques are similar. HDDs are a completely different kettle of fish and your assertion that flash prices fall at the same rate as HDD prices is unsupportable.



So does the price of copper and glass but, like HDD prices, at a slower rate than flash.

Actually, the price of copper is going to increase over time, as demand is rising while supplies are shrinking. The recent earthquake in Chile doesn't help either. Actually, copper is running out at a considerably faster pace than even oil. Expecting copper prices to drop is pretty naive.

You won't get 4-5 hours of actual use, because Apple would go for thin, thin, thin, giving the portable a very low-volume battery. Me, I would rather it was 3" thick if that meant 12 hours of battery life.

Dumb question. What cpu is Apple going to use on this machine? I didn't think the mobile Penryns would be available till later next year. Will it get a low voltage core 2 chip?

that's not a dumb question at all.
If they really are going for a sub notebook with all the usual cutoffs, then they're probably going for a low voltage chip, yes.

What will the temperature concerns for something like this? Assuming, say, a <1" thick architecture, what sort of fan/cooling mechanism will be able to fit? How hot will this notebook get? My MacBook can just about cook eggs when its fan is on and I'm running Halo.

Mobile Penryns are planned for January 2008.

Assuming they go for a Mobile Core2 platform altogether, that SlimBook would likely be quite cool, at least compared to a MacBook Pro.
However, the two hottest parts in an MBP are not the CPUs, but the GPU and the Wireless Module.

You can really use your imagination, can't you?

They won't be "mainstream for two years. A very few extremely expensive upgrades to a very few machines doesn't make a product mainstream.

9quote]
256GB SSDDs are planned for H2 2009. 2.5" HDDs will be up to 1TB by then and will, of course, be much slower, less reliable, noisier, and use much more power. By 2010, not many people will want to put the latter in a laptop. It's exactly like the transition from HDDs to SSDDs in iPods, just a few years later.[/quote]

Yes, by late 2009, we will see 256 GB SSD's, for a couple of thousand.

Meanwhile, HDD's will continue to be almost 100 times less expensive GB to GB.


first of all, you compared the wrong things. Second of all, you were off by an order of magnitude.


We're comparing SSD's to HDD's. You brought RAM into the discussion by incorrectly using those prices, which have nothing to do with SSD's, into it. I didn't. I merely pointed out your error.


Again, the price of RAM has nothing to do with the discussion.

Please stick to products that do.


Bringing something else that has nothing to do with this into the discussion doesn't help the incorrect assertions you are making.

To be fair, while he was wrong to bring RAM prices into the picture, flash RAM has fallen much faster than hard drives in recent years. It wasn't that long ago that 16MB thumb drives would set you back a couple of hundred bucks. Today, 2GB drives cost $15. Not that HDs haven't been falling like a rock. Not much more than a decade ago, they were $1 per megabyte and are about 20 cents per GB today.

The Samsung flash memory is IDENTICAL in the old nano and the same generation SSD. They have the exact same part numbers when you look at the photos of both when opened up. The new flash, which is faster than the old flash, is also cheaper due to the process shrink.

I think the general points - hopefully we can all agree on - are as follows:

1. Electric-mechanical based devices (a HDD) is much, much cheaper today per MB. Those prices will also go down over time.

2. In general, we expect non-mechanical stuff - RAM or Flash - to become cheaper over time at a faster rate than electric-mechanical.

3. That means that SSD will one day over take HDD (both are coming down in price, SSD faster, but HDD from a lower starting point).

4. This crossing over point where SSD is cheaper than HDD is MANY years off.

5. For users that care about weight and energy, an SSD 256 Gig drive that is $500 in 2009 is going to be preferable to a $80 1000 Gig HDD. So laptops will quickly move to SSD given the energy, space, weight savings even though there will be a significant price difference. Speed advantages also matter, but these added factors are more critical for laptop users.

6. Desktops will be slower to move over as users will not care as much about weight and space and only value speed.

7. To the extent that SSD has a faster access time people want, you may see desktops with two drives (HDD and smaller SSD) and you will set up stuff on an SSD that you need quicker access time. I do not know the physics of how many writes you get on an SSD, but you could easily see a small HDD in desktops where constant overwriting were an issue.

8. By say 2020, SSD will cheaper than HDD and there will be few or no HDD anywhere.

9. For a great explanation of how these technological changes mess up business models (where a superior technology starts out much more expensive but slowly overtakes another and the existing technology makers are slow to adapt), read the Innovator's Dilemma. Talks a lot about the early hard drive market. Great book.

http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/christensen.htm

I think the point he was making was that flash, RAM, and any chip based technology will see reductions in price (or improvements in performance) faster. To a certain extent, their profess is likely to follow something like Moore's law. Because HDD has mechanical aspects, it will continue to improve, but can't match the rate of cost recutions. So eventually SSD will overtake HDD, but it will take time.

In that sense, RAM, flash, processor speeds, video card performance - all could potentially hvae similar rates of performance increases/price reductions.

caps lock is a no-go.

Since the GMR head the HDD price decline has been just as steep for HDDs as semis. How long that lasts I dunno.

A few points:

1) Comparison of $/GB using iTB desktop 3.5" drive vs SDD will throw your delta off by a factor of two or more.

2) There appears to be a floor for HDD pricing. As SSD densities improve then all sub-HDD floor SSD become cheaper than their HDD equivalents. For low weight devices flash can be much cheaper than HDDs because the size requirements are smaller.

3) Flash pricing has been dropping much steeper than historical the last two years. Rather than the typical 30-40% drops it has been 60-70%.

Flash hasn't reached the tipping point but at least Toshiba has stated that rather than try to prop up flash pricing they prefer to seek the tipping point for at least notebook use.

I agree with NYCMacFan and vinea. Thank you for the good summaries.

One question I have no idea on - its really a basic electrical engineering question - is whether we can shrink these power adapters at all.

I am much more upset with other makers than Apple. I once had a dell ultraportable with a huge adapter (as if you completely undo the weight savings). I have seen some smaller adapters on other ultraportables, but not as many recently.

Anyone know what are the physical limitations in adapter size?

If this machine is SSD, low voltage processor and LED backscreen that is pretty low power consumption. But you still need to convert the voltage. Any idea what can be done there?

That's true. But, SSD's aren't the same as a flash USB drive. These contain controller chips and other circutry to make them compatable with either PATA, or SATA HDD's. That, and the physical package, bring the price much higher. It's also much higher speed
Flash.

Just compare the prices of the SSD's to the prices of the Flash drives and you will see what I mean. But, compare them also to the hi-speed CD and SD cards. They cost much more than the cheap 4x (unlabeled as to speed) speed flash on the market. My SanDisk 4 GB Extreme IV CF card cost $95. It's a 250+ speed card. So, even from the better manufacturers, it isn't THAT cheap.

And which generation is this? Samsung says that it is the latest generation of their Flash memory.

By the way. This is the very same drive that you were talking about earlier this year when we had our "discussion" about SSD pricing, where you said that the new generation of Flash used in this would bring the price way down.

A quote from the review I posted before:


I'll post the review again.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2216516,00.asp

The key components are a transformer and a rectifier. There are physical limits depending on voltage and power.

If you want to able to use it from 100 to 240 volts, then it will be larger than if you want only 100-120 or 200-240 volts.

If you've got a MBP and want a smaller adaptor than the 85W unit that ships with it, buy the 65W adaptor for the MB. Don't expect it to recharge your battery while gaming.

I'm not saying that it won't happen. But, to say it will happen within the next two or three years, as some are more than hinting to here, is just plain wrong.

These people are just not keeping up with the new technologies that are coming out for HDD's.

Hitachi, and others, expect to have 4 terabyte drives out, possibly as early as 2009.

When that happens, we will have one terabyte 2.5 drives for portable use, and 500 MB drives in the 1.8" factor size.

And, they will cost the same, or less, as the much smaller drives out today.

Drive size, and price, undergoes spurts in its advance. SST memory tends to have a more even advance. Sometimes, this makes HDD;s look as though they are falling behind, when they are not.

When we will have $300 4 terabyte 3.5" drives, and one terabyte $300 2.5" drives, who is going to be buying these vastly smaller, much more expensive SSD's?

The same customers as today. The military, and those industrial customers who need particularly ruggedized shop floor, or construction site, machines.

Very little of the rest of the market will be buying them.

look at how many people complain about how small the entry size drives are on Apple's machines now. And, also about how many complain that Apple's drive upgrades cost too much. Do you think these are candidates for the small, expensive SSD's? I don't think so.

Possibly when these drives have dropped in price by a factor of twenty, or more, and their size has increased by a factor of ten, will we begin to see widespread adoption.

At that point, the drives may be big, and cheap, enough for most people to not consider larger, and cheaper HDD's.

But, that could be closer to 2015 than to 2009.

The people most likely to buy a Mac ultraportable are already Mac users and many like myself don't use the optical drive all that often.
For these people, the occasional use of a Mac they already own is fine.

For those who need a dedicated optical drive, Apple should offer one as a optional accessory.
And since this is Apple we are talking about, I'll be saving at least $199 on an over-priced ComboDrive.

I can agree with that.

The only thing we have to keep in mind about pricing is that sometimes, it has little to do with the technology, and all to do with computer sales as a whole, and the number of factories producing. when computer sales bottom out, as has been happening recently, in the US and European markets, memory prices drop a good deal. But, once matters are back in balance, prices stabilize, or sometimes even move up by a fair amount.

You might remember a few years ago when 512 MB DIMMS reached a bottom of under $50, but then jumped to over $100, where they stayed for quite a time.

Of course, to be fair, this happens to HDD prices as well, which is why it's tough to make a chart showing future pricing for either technology, other than the fact that for the long term, both will drop a good deal.

The cheapest prices I'm seeing for HDD's now is about $45 at major retailers. That's for a 60 GB drive. 80's seem to be going for $55 to 60. But, 300's are going for under $100, if you look around, and 500s for under $125.

personally i do not like to see SSDs in MacBook Mini, it is going to up the Price

when SSDs are available for mass market, Apple can adoapt SSDs

MacBook Mini may not have the same Sales numbers as MacBooks, since it is difficult to bring down the cost of SSDs with less sales volume.

Digital adapters can be made quite small, as they need very small transformers, and some low power models can even do without those. But for heavier power needs, such as when powering the computer from the adapter, rather than just recharging the batteries, larger adapters are needed. There isn't such a thing as watts per ounce, as designs vary (and that's dependent on cost of the adapter as well), but a 6 ounce adapter wouldn't be considered to be heavy for a large portable with a high end GPU.

Consumers who value performance over capacity -- the same consumers who are now buying solid-state iPods rather than HDD-based iPods.

That's not even close to a comparable market.

Both iPods are cheap. The Nano's are even cheaper than the HDD models.

Can you point us to a portable computer using SSD's that are cheaper than the HDD models?

Oh, and Nano's are much smaller as well. So, a 10" screen portable, with a 16 GB SSD might sell to a decent crowd (I might buy one) if it were also cheaper. But otherwise I'm not so sure.

As for reasonable sized SSD's, such as the new 64 GB Samsung, much too expensive no matter how you look at it.

Okay...not quite sure which part of what I said you disagree with.

I can go find the pictures of iPod Nanos and Samsung SSDs that show the internal chips with the same part numbers so I don't think you're disputing that. If you are, then I can go find them if you like.

As far as the new flash being faster and cheaper than the older flash...I think that sentence supports that...the Samsung 64GB SATA is faster and the Super Talent 32GB SATA is more expensive in terms of $/GB. The Samsung is only $1080 (retail from Dell - $1080 + $70 for a 120GB 5400 2.5" HDD from PriceGrabber) for double the storage.

I read that a few times so I'm 99% certain that agrees with my statement...the new flash is both cheaper and faster.

One thing is for sure...that Super Talent drive is not really indiciative of current pricing at $900...wide temp or not. The older Samsung 1.8" 32GB (PATA) are only $599 and the SandDisk 1.8" SSD (UATA) is only $599.

Even in comparison to the previous generation Samsung at $600 the new 64GB Samsung is cheaper.

I guess the point is that even with Vista and Leopard a 64GB SSD is good enough for use as the primary drive. If you're willing to live with iTunes quality a 2hr movie averages only 1.5GB. You can take a few movies with you on you flight and still have plenty of room for the usual array of powerpoint files and email...

Large local storage is nice to have but becoming somewhat less important IF you assume that in addition to SSDs getting larger that WiFi is also more accessible. If I can stash my files on Amazon S3, .mac or my office servers I have as much storage as I want if I have a functioning network connection.

Rental model for iTunes video would also be helpful in this regard. If I could have access to the entire iTunes video library for a $1.99 a viewing I don't need to buy any of it.

For those that need more local storage I find that while annoying on a plane, my tiny LaCie HDD is fine once I get to the hotel. You can have an additional HDD in a form factor not much larger than a bare drive.

I can also use a bunch of ExpressCard SSDs to hold various things like they were 16GB floppies (that cost $190 but I digress). These typically don't stick as much outside the laptop as a USB drive does. USB drives do the same thing although I find them somewhat more annoying because they stick out of the laptop.