Samsung intros 256GB SSD that may reach MacBook Air

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  • Reply 21 of 46
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    That is the mindset that you have to use a DVD drive for software installs. Besides the ever increasing internet footprint and speeds for all things digital, you could always use a USB flash drive to install apps. They are small and are getting cheaper every day. And even though the size of apps are growing the price is dropping and capacities are increasing at faster rates.



    Are OS X upgrades (Tiger/Leopard) available? What about other apps? If not, you would still need an Optical Drive to transfer the app to a USB flash drive. I imagine app companies will eventually put stuff on USB's, but when? How long will we have to wait? In the meantime, we'll still need OD's.

    What am I missing?
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  • Reply 22 of 46
    pg4gpg4g Posts: 383member
    Well, I suppose this is kinda tying into Jobs' view of the future: wirelessness and digital.



    I really want the MBP to lose its CD drive, as long as they can get iTunes downloads happening. I don't use the drive for anything any more it seems.



    iTunes downloads HERE WE COME.

    MBP Air-esque, here we come!
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  • Reply 23 of 46
    desarcdesarc Posts: 642member
    when will iTunes get a better name? it's been so long since it was just for Tunes....
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  • Reply 24 of 46
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    Are OS X upgrades (Tiger/Leopard) available? What about other apps? If not, you would still need an Optical Drive to transfer the app to a USB flash drive. I imagine app companies will eventually put stuff on USB's, but when? How long will we have to wait? In the meantime, we'll still need OD's.

    What am I missing?



    I assume you mean the major updates since the point updates are already disc free and down over the internet. Once it becomes cheap enough, Apple could start to offer the major OS X updates through an App Store within iTunes on your Mac. You can then DL it to a Flash Drive or burn to DVD. Or... if you have enough space left an installer could create a partition for this major update, then copy the install files to the partition and then restart and do the upgrade.



    If you don't have the bandwidth you could then purchase the flash drive version of the OS X update from Apple or any other retailers. Or, if you have the flash drive that came with your original Mac (looking toward the future here), perhaps it will update the USB flash drive with the next version of OS X.



    I don't understand why you think you'd have to transfer to a flash drive if you have it on a disc. If the software is already on an optical disc and you have an optical drive you can just install from there. This is just a progression of getting rid of a large portion of your notebook that doesn't have the speed, capacity or durability of flash drives. Assuming that the prices are within reason already, Apple could offer 10.6 on a flash on a 16GB USB (or even FW-400) drive and it would work on any Macs with those ports.



    I would expect that the natural order would be to start offering such updates only online or on Flash drives for sometime before you remove the optical drives from notebooks.
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  • Reply 25 of 46
    pg4gpg4g Posts: 383member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by desarc View Post


    when will iTunes get a better name? it's been so long since it was just for Tunes....



    Agreed.



    I vote for iStuff or iHub



    iStuff for the variety of the stuff involved with iTunes.



    iHub because iTunes is becoming the hub of digital life these days media wise.
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  • Reply 26 of 46
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by desarc View Post


    when will iTunes get a better name? it's been so long since it was just for Tunes....



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by PG4G View Post


    Agreed.

    I vote for iStuff or iHub

    iStuff for the variety of the stuff involved with iTunes.

    iHub because iTunes is becoming the hub of digital life these days media wise.



    Changing a well known and profitable brandname will usually hurt a product. Changing to an unknown, obscure term like iStuff or iHub would confuse the consumer and ruin everything about the name recogntion that Apple has worked so hard to create.



    They removed Music from the iTunes Store, that should be good enough, unless you think Coke should change its name now that it no longer contains cocaine.
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  • Reply 27 of 46
    anantksundaramanantksundaram Posts: 20,419member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by zeasar View Post


    IHaving the system recovery files on a USB has its advantages. .....



    Maybe. But they are too easily misplaced. The number of them that I have lost is beyond count.......
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  • Reply 28 of 46
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    This is my take on SSD, the manufactures are simply raping the customer base for little in the way of improvement over conventional disk drives. Until I can see a good explanation for the excessively high prices for these devices, I won't be a customer.



    Lets face it these sorts of drives only have a few chips in them. At best a processor to interface to SATA, the flash chip(s), and a few support chips. There simply is no justification for a $3000 price tag on any of these sorts of devices. One can only hope that Micron and Intel are serious about getting their new technology to market at a reasonable price point.



    The other issue is the use of MLC's. Frankly I'm not convinced that I would want to trust such a memory technology in a drive that has important info on it.



    In any event if we ever get over this pricing stupidity I'd like to try out a SSD in my MBP. If they can exceed 300Gb in the near future, at a competitive price, I'd be very interested. They would also have to better the current technology HDD in terms of power usage and heat output. Ideally I'd like to see 300Gb at half the power usage of my current drive.



    The other reality is that Flash may be just that, a flash in the history of computing. Lots of new and very interesting storage techniques being worked on in the labs that could easily replace flash in the near future.



    Dave
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  • Reply 29 of 46
    bigpicsbigpics Posts: 1,397member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Changing a well known and profitable brandname will usually hurt a product. Changing to an unknown, obscure term like iStuff or iHub would confuse the consumer and ruin everything about the name recogntion that Apple has worked so hard to create.



    They removed Music from the iTunes Store, that should be good enough, unless you think Coke should change its name now that it no longer contains cocaine.



    actually, the Coca-Cola brand name DOES always remind me of the sh*t marketed to us -- whose insanity can only be seen in retrospect -- do you really think today's Coke, whether classic (not really!), Diet or Plus is any better for you than yesteryear's??



    At least Bayer was not named after the branded Heroin it sold to American women in the late 19th and early 20th century. I've been collecting such early marketing scams on the photo album portion of my personal page if you want to see some glaring and enlightening examples.



    as we seem to be spending more time in virtualized environments and less in the real world, we are becoming married to it. so I propose a virtualized mate to interact with in this space, called, of course, iDo.



    and re rebranding the iTunes Store -- at some point this whole iThing may begin to look dated, even though it's been resilient. and iTunes and iPod and iMac probably all have "Q" (consumer recognition) scores off the charts.



    but Apple, contrary to popular brief, is not the originator of iBranding, nor any tech company, as that honor, tho' in an ungrammatical case, goes to the original Tarzan movies -- which if not corrected would have led to the mePod, meTunes and meMac, and a blowup sex doll called uJane.



    still, there are untaken iProduct names.....



    a cheap, strong cologne: iStink

    budget, wretched, but high octane booze: iDrink

    renaming the "brain-training" subgenre of programs (Descartes would approve): iThink

    a new line of microwaveable food: iEat

    a website broadcasting alpha wave inducing signals: iSleep

    a mobility assistive device with built-in mp3 player: the iWalker

    a new high-tech computer desk chair: iSit

    a site for politicians on how to answer tough questions: iLie

    and a smoke for committed smokers: iDie
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  • Reply 30 of 46
    lorrelorre Posts: 396member
    If they're gonna start selling apps at the iTunes store too, they should just split the apps up into iTunes and the iStore where you buy stuff. It just doesn't really make sense to start up iTunes to buy apps imo... perhaps integrate it into Safari but then people who like Camino or Firefox won't like that...
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  • Reply 31 of 46
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    SSDs like this are the future, but it might take a couple of years for the price to get down far enough.
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  • Reply 32 of 46
    sam damonsam damon Posts: 129member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    Samsung has introduced a 256GB solid-state drive that promises to kickstart the industry with twice the storage and twice the speed of earlier disks while also costing less to manufacture than past models -- and having a chance of landing in future Apple notebooks.



    Simply called the 256GB FlashSSD, the Serial ATA drive reads in-order data at 200MB per second, or double the rate of Samsung's past 128GB drive. It also boosts write speeds, often a bottleneck on solid-state drives, from 70MB per second to 160MB.





    As I have written in the past, pay attention to what Panasonic is doing. Some of the pro video users that hang out here know what I am typing about. The rest of you may need a primer on P2 cards.



    If you're too lazy to surf, suffice it to say P2 cards transfer data at 80 MB per second, and that 64 GB ones were just announced at NAB 2008. Note also that P2 cards function as a RAID.



    One would think there is some rich hacker-type that could hack a P2 card into serving as the main drive on a laptop Mac...
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  • Reply 33 of 46
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I assume you mean the major updates since the point updates are already disc free and down over the internet.



    I meant major updates like Tiger or Leopard.



    Quote:

    I don't understand why you think you'd have to transfer to a flash drive if you have it on a disc. If the software is already on an optical disc and you have an optical drive you can just install from there.



    NOT if you don't have an OD as you're advocating.



    Quote:

    That is the mindset that you have to use a DVD drive for software installs.



    I don't have a DVD drive. How the H-ll am I going to get it on a flash drive in the first place?

    Tiger, Leopard, and other apps DON"T come on a flash drive. Until they DO, we still NEED a DVD drive. How long will that be? I don't see that happening soon.
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  • Reply 34 of 46
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,954member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    This is my take on SSD, the manufactures are simply raping the customer base for little in the way of improvement over conventional disk drives. Until I can see a good explanation for the excessively high prices for these devices, I won't be a customer.



    Lets face it these sorts of drives only have a few chips in them. At best a processor to interface to SATA, the flash chip(s), and a few support chips. There simply is no justification for a $3000 price tag on any of these sorts of devices. One can only hope that Micron and Intel are serious about getting their new technology to market at a reasonable price point.





    You probably shouldn't buy it. It's not just about the capacity, though the highest capacity chips generally have the lowest yield rates. Using fewer higher capacity chips vs. more lower capacity chips can cost a lot more per GB, but it's needed to make the chips fit the package. Fast flash just costs more, you can't compare the price of an SSD against an SD card that might be rated for 6MB/sec speed (SDHC class 6 speed). The Samsung here is a lot faster than the fastest hard drive.



    Most people don't really need the speed enough to pay the price, so they won't buy. For a consumer, there's little reason. But if you're using it as a rugged flight data recorder, then it's a drop in the bucket.
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  • Reply 35 of 46
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    I don't have a DVD drive. How the H-ll am I going to get it on a flash drive in the first place?



    This isn't rocket science. The point is not to buy a DVD version of OS X and then move it to a Flash drive, the point is to only have Flash based upgrades when the technology evolves to a point when it becomes feasible. Why is that so hard to understand?



    Quote:

    Tiger, Leopard, and other apps DON"T come on a flash drive. Until they DO, we still NEED a DVD drive. How long will that be? I don't see that happening soon.



    Really? Not happening soon? What part of my projection of 2011 and "after the next update" implied this was happening now. Didn't Tigrr come out in 2005? Why would you think a 3 year old OS would be on a format that won't be advantageous for several years?
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  • Reply 36 of 46
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    Quote:

    eally? Not happening soon? What part of my projection of 2011 and "after the next update" implied this was happening now.



    I didn't see your 2011 projection.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I predict that the MB/MBP line will remove the optical drive after the next case overhaul.



    The next overhaul may be next month.



    Quote:

    Didn't Tigrr come out in 2005?



    I was using that just as an example because you said, "I assume you mean the major updates since the point updates are already disc free and down over the internet."



    Let's drop this because it seems like you're looking for an argument. I bow to your greater intellect.
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  • Reply 37 of 46
    pg4gpg4g Posts: 383member
    Lets assume the rate of speed increases to the internet continue (as they seem to have been pushed by mobile use and movie downloads) then it may not be all that stupid to anticipate movement to full internet base installations, and OS's may move to USB or firewire.



    I would predict the next OS update occurs via USB (as in, 10.6) as the Air seems to be a new direction Apple will want to stick with.
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  • Reply 38 of 46
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    With one of these drives, and 4GB of RAM, the MacBook Air will mature.
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  • Reply 39 of 46
    pyr3pyr3 Posts: 946member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by satchmo View Post


    The rants about the lack of optical drive/ethernet ports will probably subside when competitors follow suit. Just like the removal of the floppy drive, Apple leads the way.



    So Apple was the first computer maker in the history of computer to remove the optical drive from one of their models, eh? Or are you just trying to claim that Apple was the first *major* computer maker to remove the optical drive from one of their models? Are you willing to place a wage on either of those claims?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anantksundaram


    Maybe. But they are too easily misplaced. The number of them that I have lost is beyond count.......



    If it comes to having USB pen drives and/or SD Cards with software on it, you'll just end up with a new market for containers for holding them (more so than there is now when they are basically only used for cameras/pdas). It's not like they are that much different in size than keys. How often (or how many) important keys do you lose on a daily basis? (on that note I know someone that once lost her atm card 4 times within the course of a year, so it's not like importance of an object ever stopped people from losing things, I guess)
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  • Reply 40 of 46
    pyr3pyr3 Posts: 946member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by PG4G View Post


    I would predict the next OS update occurs via USB (as in, 10.6) as the Air seems to be a new direction Apple will want to stick with.



    No pun intended... of course.
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