Mac laptops have almost always shipped with low performance drives as the standard option. My Pismo was 4200 RPM, my Blackbook was 5400 RPM. The first thing I'd do whenever I got a new Mac is to swap out the drive and put in a larger and faster drive. Even the brand new 2011 Macbook Pro's only come with a 5400 drive as standard.
However, flash drives are a totally different ballgame, and if the machine already comes with a super fast drive built into it, then I can't really complain about that.
Even so, today's fast flash drives aren't going to be as a flash drive two or three years from now. And not all SSDs are created equal, I recall Apple's offering sometimes is at the low end of the scale of that class of drives as well.
And not all SSDs are created equal, I recall Apple's offering sometimes is at the low end of the scale of that class of drives as well.
That's true. When I went shopping for an SSD drive a while ago, I ended up going with a smaller capacity Intel drive instead of some others that were cheaper and larger, due to what I read about their performance.
Don't know how the speeds translate exactly, but I do know that the fast Sandforce SSD controlled drives currently get about 250 MB/s speeds and tap-out the SATA 3 Gbps interface (and need SATA 6 Gbps to function at full capacity). 250 MB/s is obviously much smaller than 3 Gbps but the speeds must be measuring different things. 400 MB/s would be a very big deal and blow away most mainstream (yes, there are already 500 MB/s super-high performance SSD drives) SSD competition if implemented.
I think what ya'll are misunderstanding is that 3.0 Gbps is really 380 MB/s. The Gbps uses a small b, which means it is "bits" not "bytes". You need to divide by 8. Sata II taps out at 380 MB/s and in the real world devices running SATA II tap out about 250 MB/s. The new SATA III standard is out, which is twice that, but there aren't any drives that operate at 6.0 Gbps. The reason for the SATA III is to build new monther boards that can handle higher read speads. However, to get to those speads you have to use multiple drives (i.e., RAID "0"). If someone knows of a single drive that will do 760 MB/s, please provide a link. I' would be surprised if you could find anything more than 400 MB/s and I doubt you'll see it in a mass produced consumer device.
A Macbook Air with 400 MB/s flash soldered to the board will be SCREAMING fast by today's standards.
Even so, today's fast flash drives aren't going to be as a flash drive two or three years from now. And not all SSDs are created equal, I recall Apple's offering sometimes is at the low end of the scale of that class of drives as well.
I haven't replaced a drive right off the bat.
I'm not as concerned over replacing the drive for speed gains as I would be about solving any potential reliability issues. If the Flash storage soldered to the motherboard dies, then the entire motherboard would have to be replaced.
I'm thinking AppleCare would be a necessity if those rumors were true.
It would also almost guarantee that I'd want flip the MBA on fleabay around the two or two-and-a-half year mark. Having an unreliable component on a laptop is nothing new for me, but being unable to replace it would be.
Run this command and it'll show the SMART attributes, you're looking for ID 209, Remaining_Lifetime_Percent, and maybe the couple above that in the list too.
1. mSATA is not a form Factor. That is wrong from the article.
2 Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 and ONFI 3.0 are two different thing with two different Spec. You could create a compatible NAND, but they are not the same thing.
3. They talk about the changes from Toshiba to Samsung NAND as if Toggle Mode NAND is only from Samsung. Given it is 19nm it will be extremely likely to be made from Toshiba.
4. Oh and about SATA 3Gbps speed issues, It is not 380MB/s ( or 375 if you divide by 8. ). You do actually get 300MB/s, since it is using a 8/10b encoding you have to times it by 0.8 which cancels out. So you get 300MB/s, although added some software and protocol overhead you will never reach it.
5. There are SSD that already tops the new SATA 6Gbps. You dont even need RAID to do that. Sandforce 22xx series already near the max speed of it.
1. mSATA is not a form Factor. That is wrong from the article.
2 Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 and ONFI 3.0 are two different thing with two different Spec. You could create a compatible NAND, but they are not the same thing.
3. They talk about the changes from Toshiba to Samsung NAND as if Toggle Mode NAND is only from Samsung. Given it is 19nm it will be extremely likely to be made from Toshiba.
4. Oh and about SATA 3Gbps speed issues, It is not 380MB/s ( or 375 if you divide by 8. ). You do actually get 300MB/s, since it is using a 8/10b encoding you have to times it by 0.8 which cancels out. So you get 300MB/s, although added some software and protocol overhead you will never reach it.
5. There are SSD that already tops the new SATA 6Gbps. You dont even need RAID to do that. Sandforce 22xx series already near the max speed of it.
Thanks for the heads up on max read rates for drives that are SATA II. I don't know what 8/10b encoding is, but I'll take your word for it. I'm a biochemist with some III-V semiconductor manufacturing experience, so data encoding is completely out of my expertise.
The point here is that 400 MB/s read is really fast. The reference to 3.0 Gbps or 6.0 Gbps is obviously someone misunderstanding the difference between read speeds and what it means to be SATA II or SATA III compliant.
If this memory is soldered directly, does this mean that when it fails one either spends a lot of money to repair the unit or throw it out to buy another one?
Not sure what the expected lifespan of this tech would be but if we're talking two or three years, it's unacceptable to have a $1,000 device that would basically have a three-year lifespan. Not sure about others but I can't afford to drop $1,000+ into a new machine every couple of years.
I can see this sort of scenario playing out with a $300 iPod but not a $1,000 MacBook.
Welcome to Apple. The only guarantee you can ever have is to pony up for the 3-year AppleCare and know your system is covered for 3 years. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess.
In all honesty no one should be buying Mac stuff and not have their 2nd and 3rd year covered. Even if one thing goes wrong like the screen, motherboard or storage, you've got back the cost of your AppleCare. This isn't sales spin, I'm sure many will tell you it's experience.
Thanks for the heads up on max read rates for drives that are SATA II. I don't know what 8/10b encoding is, but I'll take your word for it. I'm a biochemist with some III-V semiconductor manufacturing experience, so data encoding is completely out of my expertise.
The point here is that 400 MB/s read is really fast. The reference to 3.0 Gbps or 6.0 Gbps is obviously someone misunderstanding the difference between read speeds and what it means to be SATA II or SATA III compliant.
Think of it as Binary ( 0101010 ) signals Rules for Signal Transmission.
And i was busy pointing other things out i forgot the most important point 6, or point 0.
0. Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 is 400Mbps Not MBps. 400Mbps is per NAND. I just happen to click and read the original Japaneses blog, which actually has a decent English translation below it. And even the source was correct with 400Mbps. This is not the first time AI got Mb and MB totally wrong. And most other new source like TUAW decided to be brain dead and just copy everything AI posted without thinking.
P.S - To all AI, all Apple news site, or even Tech news site, i am happy to provide you technical proof read services for free. Or you could actually make an effort yourself.
Personally I have to agree with the many others here expressing concern about SSD drive wear. The life span of an SSD depends to much upon how it is used. In some applications they will wear out faster than a magnetic drive. So we could have one AIR user get his ten years out of the drive and the guy next to him wearing it out in ten months.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EUiPhoneUser
I see, you are much smarter than all Apple engineers combined. They decided to put the FLASH on the main board to make Steve Jobs happy, and none of them was aware that the FLASH memory can wear off so they did nothing about it. Oh, no! Apple is known to sell products that fell apart after 1 year of usage so you are forced to buy a new one!
Let me remind you, we are commenting on rumor here. It may turn out that Apple was just experimenting with such approach, or the rumor is made up just to get more clicks. Apple does make mistakes, but the engineers there are not stupid. If they decided they can put the FLASH on the motherboard, they know what they are doing. Or know better that most (all?) of the folks who commented above.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
There are real issues with flash based SSDs. Apple engineers putting such tech on the motherboard does not invalidate those issues.
The fundamental problem with flash is that wear is dependent on usage and feature size. No engineer at Apple can make those issues go completely away. So yeah you have the potential of a machine failing within a year depending upon who uses it.
It really has nothing to do with the engineers being stupid but rather it has everything to do with a technology that works in a dramatically different way than a magnetic drive. This difference means that users impact lifetimes in a way that is not seen on magnetic drives. People just need to realize that SSDs work out really well for many users.
Reading through these comments, I have a better understanding of the limitations of SSD technology. But I really don't get all the hand-wringing about lifespan/durability, or of the NAND chips being soldered to the motherboard.
1) This is a rumor, so we don't yet know what is actually happening.
2) This is a rumor about the MacBook Air, not to be confused with the MacBook Pro line. The MacBook Air is targeted towards consumers, not pros, and also, is at the low end of the "spec" spectrum. I don't think that the engineers were expecting MBA users to run FCPX (oh dear.), or Logic or Adobe CSx, and anyone who expects to run their MBA that hard is asking for trouble, IMHO. I believe the MBA was designed for people who don't have heavy computing requirements, who just need something streamlined and lightweight to write papers on, surf the web, keep in touch w/ friends & family, etc.
3) If we remove price from the analogy, I see the MBA as a Ferrari, and the MBP as a Landrover. The Ferrari is sleek, smooth, and super cool, but has severe limitations on where it can go, how many passengers it can carry, how much trunk space it has. If you take the Ferrari off-road, it probably won't last very long. The Landrover, on the other hand is very durable, can travel over most kinds of terrain, has a lot more storage and passenger capacity. All these complaints about the SSD on the MBA seem to me to be complaining that the Ferrari won't last as long in off-road terrain as the Landrover. To which I say, "DUH!!!"
Point being, if your needs require the kind of read/write usage that will wear out a SSD in a year or less, then the MBA is probably not for you. Get a MBP. There. Problem solved.
Now, if Apple announced plans to solder flash memory to the motherboards on the MacBook Pro line as well, then I would join in the uproar, because that would be a dumb move on Apple's part. But, as long as flash memory remains on a removable card on the MBP line, then users will have options.
And as always, time to make 4GB RAM baseline, I say.
I'm guessing that all new Macs introduced in 2011 will have at least 4GB RAM. We may know within a few weeks.
The reason I sold my 1st generation MacBook Air in 2008 was that 2GB was intolerable for me. 4GB is still fine for what I do, but I would pay more for 8GB if available for my next Mac (hopefully a 15" MacBook Air).
I'm guessing that all new Macs introduced in 2011 will have at least 4GB RAM. We may know within a few weeks.
The reason I sold my 1st generation MacBook Air in 2008 was that 2GB was intolerable for me. 4GB is still fine for what I do, but I would pay more for 8GB if available for my next Mac (hopefully a 15" MacBook Air).
I would say at best the 13" MacBook Airs get 4GB and the 11" MacBook Airs remain with 2GB. I think Mac mini would get 4GB but MacBook remains at 2GB RAM to differentiate it.
I would say at best the 13" MacBook Airs get 4GB and the 11" MacBook Airs remain with 2GB. I think Mac mini would get 4GB but MacBook remains at 2GB RAM to differentiate it.
That's a possibility, but the cost difference (for Apple) between 2GB and 4GB is now $10 to $11 (and falling fast). I don't think Apple will want to lose sales to the PeeCee market with respect to buyers who shop on specs.
Turbo boost is a sword that cuts both ways. The boost results in significant thermal loading thus impacting battery life.
Again don't get to excited about turbo boost until hardware is out in the wild. Thermal throttling could be an issue. You need to know that the boost can be maintained for your problem set.
The second point is true, the first isn't necessarily. If the processor finishes a task faster and gets to idle longer, battery life could be positively impacted vs it processing at a lower TDP for a longer time.
For longer term tasks like encoding I can see the second point becoming an issue, but TB should help out with brief bursts of processing, for example web browsing.
Reading through these comments, I have a better understanding of the limitations of SSD technology. But I really don't get all the hand-wringing about lifespan/durability, or of the NAND chips being soldered to the motherboard.
1) This is a rumor, so we don't yet know what is actually happening.
2) This is a rumor about the MacBook Air, not to be confused with the MacBook Pro line. The MacBook Air is targeted towards consumers, not pros, and also, is at the low end of the "spec" spectrum. I don't think that the engineers were expecting MBA users to run FCPX (oh dear.), or Logic or Adobe CSx, and anyone who expects to run their MBA that hard is asking for trouble, IMHO. I believe the MBA was designed for people who don't have heavy computing requirements, who just need something streamlined and lightweight to write papers on, surf the web, keep in touch w/ friends & family, etc.
3) If we remove price from the analogy, I see the MBA as a Ferrari, and the MBP as a Landrover. The Ferrari is sleek, smooth, and super cool, but has severe limitations on where it can go, how many passengers it can carry, how much trunk space it has. If you take the Ferrari off-road, it probably won't last very long. The Landrover, on the other hand is very durable, can travel over most kinds of terrain, has a lot more storage and passenger capacity. All these complaints about the SSD on the MBA seem to me to be complaining that the Ferrari won't last as long in off-road terrain as the Landrover. To which I say, "DUH!!!"
Point being, if your needs require the kind of read/write usage that will wear out a SSD in a year or less, then the MBA is probably not for you. Get a MBP. There. Problem solved.
Now, if Apple announced plans to solder flash memory to the motherboards on the MacBook Pro line as well, then I would join in the uproar, because that would be a dumb move on Apple's part. But, as long as flash memory remains on a removable card on the MBP line, then users will have options.
Now, if Apple announced plans to solder flash memory to the motherboards on the MacBook Pro line as well, then I would join in the uproar, because that would be a dumb move on Apple's part. But, as long as flash memory remains on a removable card on the MBP line, then users will have options.
I'm all for them soldering the NAND to the logic board of the MBP if they can't use a SATA III mini-PCIe board for NAND. I want a thinner, lighter and faster MBP, but I also want capacity which is why I want the HDD to remain.
To me that means ripping out the ODD (Optical Disc Drive), making the chassis thinner to support at max a 9.5mm HDD (it current supports 12.5mm HDDs) or at least a 7mm HDD (these have one less platter and hold less data but still have a good amount of storage).
I want the OS to boot in under 10 seconds and have the same instant-on from sleep with a 30 day (or more) hibernation mode. This is all best served by getting the NAND close to the main board. If they can do it with a mini-PCIe card wonderful, but I'll take 64GB of on-board NAND for the OS and apps with a separate 2.5" SSD/HDD space over the current MBP setup.
Think of it as Binary ( 0101010 ) signals Rules for Signal Transmission.
And i was busy pointing other things out i forgot the most important point 6, or point 0.
0. Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 is 400Mbps Not MBps. 400Mbps is per NAND. I just happen to click and read the original Japaneses blog, which actually has a decent English translation below it. And even the source was correct with 400Mbps. This is not the first time AI got Mb and MB totally wrong. And most other new source like TUAW decided to be brain dead and just copy everything AI posted without thinking.
P.S - To all AI, all Apple news site, or even Tech news site, i am happy to provide you technical proof read services for free. Or you could actually make an effort yourself.
Why would Apple use Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 if it is only 400Mbps? Wouldn't that be slower than the ssd in the current MBA? Maybe it gives a faster seek time????
P.S. There was no need to post the link to wikipedia. I purposely said I would take your word for it. Your contribution to the thread was that read speeds are even slower than one might think after correcting for bits and bytes. That was enough for me.
Comments
Mac laptops have almost always shipped with low performance drives as the standard option. My Pismo was 4200 RPM, my Blackbook was 5400 RPM. The first thing I'd do whenever I got a new Mac is to swap out the drive and put in a larger and faster drive. Even the brand new 2011 Macbook Pro's only come with a 5400 drive as standard.
However, flash drives are a totally different ballgame, and if the machine already comes with a super fast drive built into it, then I can't really complain about that.
Even so, today's fast flash drives aren't going to be as a flash drive two or three years from now. And not all SSDs are created equal, I recall Apple's offering sometimes is at the low end of the scale of that class of drives as well.
I haven't replaced a drive right off the bat.
Any lightweight speed lap top should last 3 yrs or more .
MBA is looking good !!!
9
And not all SSDs are created equal, I recall Apple's offering sometimes is at the low end of the scale of that class of drives as well.
That's true. When I went shopping for an SSD drive a while ago, I ended up going with a smaller capacity Intel drive instead of some others that were cheaper and larger, due to what I read about their performance.
Don't know how the speeds translate exactly, but I do know that the fast Sandforce SSD controlled drives currently get about 250 MB/s speeds and tap-out the SATA 3 Gbps interface (and need SATA 6 Gbps to function at full capacity). 250 MB/s is obviously much smaller than 3 Gbps but the speeds must be measuring different things. 400 MB/s would be a very big deal and blow away most mainstream (yes, there are already 500 MB/s super-high performance SSD drives) SSD competition if implemented.
I think what ya'll are misunderstanding is that 3.0 Gbps is really 380 MB/s. The Gbps uses a small b, which means it is "bits" not "bytes". You need to divide by 8. Sata II taps out at 380 MB/s and in the real world devices running SATA II tap out about 250 MB/s. The new SATA III standard is out, which is twice that, but there aren't any drives that operate at 6.0 Gbps. The reason for the SATA III is to build new monther boards that can handle higher read speads. However, to get to those speads you have to use multiple drives (i.e., RAID "0"). If someone knows of a single drive that will do 760 MB/s, please provide a link. I' would be surprised if you could find anything more than 400 MB/s and I doubt you'll see it in a mass produced consumer device.
A Macbook Air with 400 MB/s flash soldered to the board will be SCREAMING fast by today's standards.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/o...240gb-review/2
sequential reads are under 400MBps so if Apple could deliver a MBA with
this type of storage speed rejoice.
Even so, today's fast flash drives aren't going to be as a flash drive two or three years from now. And not all SSDs are created equal, I recall Apple's offering sometimes is at the low end of the scale of that class of drives as well.
I haven't replaced a drive right off the bat.
I'm not as concerned over replacing the drive for speed gains as I would be about solving any potential reliability issues. If the Flash storage soldered to the motherboard dies, then the entire motherboard would have to be replaced.
I'm thinking AppleCare would be a necessity if those rumors were true.
It would also almost guarantee that I'd want flip the MBA on fleabay around the two or two-and-a-half year mark. Having an unreliable component on a laptop is nothing new for me, but being unable to replace it would be.
Run this command and it'll show the SMART attributes, you're looking for ID 209, Remaining_Lifetime_Percent, and maybe the couple above that in the list too.
...
Thanks. Let's see if I could get the numbers.
It's easy to monday morning quarterback when you have no direct skin in the game
This statement has been flagged as inappropriate to this thread because it really belongs in the FCP X discussions involving professional users.
1. mSATA is not a form Factor. That is wrong from the article.
2 Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 and ONFI 3.0 are two different thing with two different Spec. You could create a compatible NAND, but they are not the same thing.
3. They talk about the changes from Toshiba to Samsung NAND as if Toggle Mode NAND is only from Samsung. Given it is 19nm it will be extremely likely to be made from Toshiba.
4. Oh and about SATA 3Gbps speed issues, It is not 380MB/s ( or 375 if you divide by 8. ). You do actually get 300MB/s, since it is using a 8/10b encoding you have to times it by 0.8 which cancels out. So you get 300MB/s, although added some software and protocol overhead you will never reach it.
5. There are SSD that already tops the new SATA 6Gbps. You dont even need RAID to do that. Sandforce 22xx series already near the max speed of it.
LOL at many things....
1. mSATA is not a form Factor. That is wrong from the article.
2 Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 and ONFI 3.0 are two different thing with two different Spec. You could create a compatible NAND, but they are not the same thing.
3. They talk about the changes from Toshiba to Samsung NAND as if Toggle Mode NAND is only from Samsung. Given it is 19nm it will be extremely likely to be made from Toshiba.
4. Oh and about SATA 3Gbps speed issues, It is not 380MB/s ( or 375 if you divide by 8. ). You do actually get 300MB/s, since it is using a 8/10b encoding you have to times it by 0.8 which cancels out. So you get 300MB/s, although added some software and protocol overhead you will never reach it.
5. There are SSD that already tops the new SATA 6Gbps. You dont even need RAID to do that. Sandforce 22xx series already near the max speed of it.
Thanks for the heads up on max read rates for drives that are SATA II. I don't know what 8/10b encoding is, but I'll take your word for it. I'm a biochemist with some III-V semiconductor manufacturing experience, so data encoding is completely out of my expertise.
The point here is that 400 MB/s read is really fast. The reference to 3.0 Gbps or 6.0 Gbps is obviously someone misunderstanding the difference between read speeds and what it means to be SATA II or SATA III compliant.
If this memory is soldered directly, does this mean that when it fails one either spends a lot of money to repair the unit or throw it out to buy another one?
Not sure what the expected lifespan of this tech would be but if we're talking two or three years, it's unacceptable to have a $1,000 device that would basically have a three-year lifespan. Not sure about others but I can't afford to drop $1,000+ into a new machine every couple of years.
I can see this sort of scenario playing out with a $300 iPod but not a $1,000 MacBook.
Welcome to Apple. The only guarantee you can ever have is to pony up for the 3-year AppleCare and know your system is covered for 3 years. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess.
In all honesty no one should be buying Mac stuff and not have their 2nd and 3rd year covered. Even if one thing goes wrong like the screen, motherboard or storage, you've got back the cost of your AppleCare. This isn't sales spin, I'm sure many will tell you it's experience.
Thanks for the heads up on max read rates for drives that are SATA II. I don't know what 8/10b encoding is, but I'll take your word for it. I'm a biochemist with some III-V semiconductor manufacturing experience, so data encoding is completely out of my expertise.
The point here is that 400 MB/s read is really fast. The reference to 3.0 Gbps or 6.0 Gbps is obviously someone misunderstanding the difference between read speeds and what it means to be SATA II or SATA III compliant.
8 / 10b Encoding - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8b/10b_encoding
Think of it as Binary ( 0101010 ) signals Rules for Signal Transmission.
And i was busy pointing other things out i forgot the most important point 6, or point 0.
0. Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 is 400Mbps Not MBps. 400Mbps is per NAND. I just happen to click and read the original Japaneses blog, which actually has a decent English translation below it. And even the source was correct with 400Mbps. This is not the first time AI got Mb and MB totally wrong. And most other new source like TUAW decided to be brain dead and just copy everything AI posted without thinking.
P.S - To all AI, all Apple news site, or even Tech news site, i am happy to provide you technical proof read services for free. Or you could actually make an effort yourself.
Personally I have to agree with the many others here expressing concern about SSD drive wear. The life span of an SSD depends to much upon how it is used. In some applications they will wear out faster than a magnetic drive. So we could have one AIR user get his ten years out of the drive and the guy next to him wearing it out in ten months.
I see, you are much smarter than all Apple engineers combined. They decided to put the FLASH on the main board to make Steve Jobs happy, and none of them was aware that the FLASH memory can wear off so they did nothing about it. Oh, no! Apple is known to sell products that fell apart after 1 year of usage so you are forced to buy a new one!
Let me remind you, we are commenting on rumor here. It may turn out that Apple was just experimenting with such approach, or the rumor is made up just to get more clicks. Apple does make mistakes, but the engineers there are not stupid. If they decided they can put the FLASH on the motherboard, they know what they are doing. Or know better that most (all?) of the folks who commented above.
There are real issues with flash based SSDs. Apple engineers putting such tech on the motherboard does not invalidate those issues.
The fundamental problem with flash is that wear is dependent on usage and feature size. No engineer at Apple can make those issues go completely away. So yeah you have the potential of a machine failing within a year depending upon who uses it.
It really has nothing to do with the engineers being stupid but rather it has everything to do with a technology that works in a dramatically different way than a magnetic drive. This difference means that users impact lifetimes in a way that is not seen on magnetic drives. People just need to realize that SSDs work out really well for many users.
Reading through these comments, I have a better understanding of the limitations of SSD technology. But I really don't get all the hand-wringing about lifespan/durability, or of the NAND chips being soldered to the motherboard.
1) This is a rumor, so we don't yet know what is actually happening.
2) This is a rumor about the MacBook Air, not to be confused with the MacBook Pro line. The MacBook Air is targeted towards consumers, not pros, and also, is at the low end of the "spec" spectrum. I don't think that the engineers were expecting MBA users to run FCPX (oh dear.), or Logic or Adobe CSx, and anyone who expects to run their MBA that hard is asking for trouble, IMHO. I believe the MBA was designed for people who don't have heavy computing requirements, who just need something streamlined and lightweight to write papers on, surf the web, keep in touch w/ friends & family, etc.
3) If we remove price from the analogy, I see the MBA as a Ferrari, and the MBP as a Landrover. The Ferrari is sleek, smooth, and super cool, but has severe limitations on where it can go, how many passengers it can carry, how much trunk space it has. If you take the Ferrari off-road, it probably won't last very long. The Landrover, on the other hand is very durable, can travel over most kinds of terrain, has a lot more storage and passenger capacity. All these complaints about the SSD on the MBA seem to me to be complaining that the Ferrari won't last as long in off-road terrain as the Landrover. To which I say, "DUH!!!"
Point being, if your needs require the kind of read/write usage that will wear out a SSD in a year or less, then the MBA is probably not for you. Get a MBP. There. Problem solved.
Now, if Apple announced plans to solder flash memory to the motherboards on the MacBook Pro line as well, then I would join in the uproar, because that would be a dumb move on Apple's part. But, as long as flash memory remains on a removable card on the MBP line, then users will have options.
And as always, time to make 4GB RAM baseline, I say.
I'm guessing that all new Macs introduced in 2011 will have at least 4GB RAM. We may know within a few weeks.
The reason I sold my 1st generation MacBook Air in 2008 was that 2GB was intolerable for me. 4GB is still fine for what I do, but I would pay more for 8GB if available for my next Mac (hopefully a 15" MacBook Air).
I'm guessing that all new Macs introduced in 2011 will have at least 4GB RAM. We may know within a few weeks.
The reason I sold my 1st generation MacBook Air in 2008 was that 2GB was intolerable for me. 4GB is still fine for what I do, but I would pay more for 8GB if available for my next Mac (hopefully a 15" MacBook Air).
I would say at best the 13" MacBook Airs get 4GB and the 11" MacBook Airs remain with 2GB. I think Mac mini would get 4GB but MacBook remains at 2GB RAM to differentiate it.
I would say at best the 13" MacBook Airs get 4GB and the 11" MacBook Airs remain with 2GB. I think Mac mini would get 4GB but MacBook remains at 2GB RAM to differentiate it.
That's a possibility, but the cost difference (for Apple) between 2GB and 4GB is now $10 to $11 (and falling fast). I don't think Apple will want to lose sales to the PeeCee market with respect to buyers who shop on specs.
Turbo boost is a sword that cuts both ways. The boost results in significant thermal loading thus impacting battery life.
Again don't get to excited about turbo boost until hardware is out in the wild. Thermal throttling could be an issue. You need to know that the boost can be maintained for your problem set.
The second point is true, the first isn't necessarily. If the processor finishes a task faster and gets to idle longer, battery life could be positively impacted vs it processing at a lower TDP for a longer time.
For longer term tasks like encoding I can see the second point becoming an issue, but TB should help out with brief bursts of processing, for example web browsing.
Reading through these comments, I have a better understanding of the limitations of SSD technology. But I really don't get all the hand-wringing about lifespan/durability, or of the NAND chips being soldered to the motherboard.
1) This is a rumor, so we don't yet know what is actually happening.
2) This is a rumor about the MacBook Air, not to be confused with the MacBook Pro line. The MacBook Air is targeted towards consumers, not pros, and also, is at the low end of the "spec" spectrum. I don't think that the engineers were expecting MBA users to run FCPX (oh dear.), or Logic or Adobe CSx, and anyone who expects to run their MBA that hard is asking for trouble, IMHO. I believe the MBA was designed for people who don't have heavy computing requirements, who just need something streamlined and lightweight to write papers on, surf the web, keep in touch w/ friends & family, etc.
3) If we remove price from the analogy, I see the MBA as a Ferrari, and the MBP as a Landrover. The Ferrari is sleek, smooth, and super cool, but has severe limitations on where it can go, how many passengers it can carry, how much trunk space it has. If you take the Ferrari off-road, it probably won't last very long. The Landrover, on the other hand is very durable, can travel over most kinds of terrain, has a lot more storage and passenger capacity. All these complaints about the SSD on the MBA seem to me to be complaining that the Ferrari won't last as long in off-road terrain as the Landrover. To which I say, "DUH!!!"
Point being, if your needs require the kind of read/write usage that will wear out a SSD in a year or less, then the MBA is probably not for you. Get a MBP. There. Problem solved.
Now, if Apple announced plans to solder flash memory to the motherboards on the MacBook Pro line as well, then I would join in the uproar, because that would be a dumb move on Apple's part. But, as long as flash memory remains on a removable card on the MBP line, then users will have options.
Couldn't agree more.
Now, if Apple announced plans to solder flash memory to the motherboards on the MacBook Pro line as well, then I would join in the uproar, because that would be a dumb move on Apple's part. But, as long as flash memory remains on a removable card on the MBP line, then users will have options.
I'm all for them soldering the NAND to the logic board of the MBP if they can't use a SATA III mini-PCIe board for NAND. I want a thinner, lighter and faster MBP, but I also want capacity which is why I want the HDD to remain.
To me that means ripping out the ODD (Optical Disc Drive), making the chassis thinner to support at max a 9.5mm HDD (it current supports 12.5mm HDDs) or at least a 7mm HDD (these have one less platter and hold less data but still have a good amount of storage).
I want the OS to boot in under 10 seconds and have the same instant-on from sleep with a 30 day (or more) hibernation mode. This is all best served by getting the NAND close to the main board. If they can do it with a mini-PCIe card wonderful, but I'll take 64GB of on-board NAND for the OS and apps with a separate 2.5" SSD/HDD space over the current MBP setup.
8 / 10b Encoding - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8b/10b_encoding
Think of it as Binary ( 0101010 ) signals Rules for Signal Transmission.
And i was busy pointing other things out i forgot the most important point 6, or point 0.
0. Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 is 400Mbps Not MBps. 400Mbps is per NAND. I just happen to click and read the original Japaneses blog, which actually has a decent English translation below it. And even the source was correct with 400Mbps. This is not the first time AI got Mb and MB totally wrong. And most other new source like TUAW decided to be brain dead and just copy everything AI posted without thinking.
P.S - To all AI, all Apple news site, or even Tech news site, i am happy to provide you technical proof read services for free. Or you could actually make an effort yourself.
Why would Apple use Toggle Mode DDR 2.0 if it is only 400Mbps? Wouldn't that be slower than the ssd in the current MBA? Maybe it gives a faster seek time????
P.S. There was no need to post the link to wikipedia. I purposely said I would take your word for it. Your contribution to the thread was that read speeds are even slower than one might think after correcting for bits and bytes. That was enough for me.