13" and 15" MacBook Pros Have a Slower SATA Interface

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/14/13-and-15-macbook-pros-have-a-slower-sata-interface/)

As first described (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=718516) in our forums, Apple seems to have quietly downgraded the SATA Interface from 3.0Gbit to 1.5Gbit speeds in some of the new MacBook Pros introduced last week. Readers are reporting (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7810148&postcount=739) that both the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pro models are affected while the 13" MacBook (white), 17" MacBook Pro and 13" MacBook Air retain the 3.0Gbit SATA interface. SATA is the interface between a computer and its hard drives.

The slower SATA interface is unlikely to affect the bulk of users as even the fastest traditional hard drives are unable to saturate even the 1.5 Gbit interfaces. However, if you are planning on buying a fast Solid State Drive (SSD), it could affect the drive's performance. The downgrade of the interface in the new MacBook Pro has also been confirmed in early benchmarks (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7801924&postcount=338) using a fast enough SSD. Forum user fpnc provides an excellent summary (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7808311&postcount=669) of the findings so far:1.) It appears nearly certain that the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pros are all reporting a SATA interface running at 1.5Gb and not the faster 3.0Gb rate that has been in pretty common use for the last few years. These new models have the Secure Digital (SD) slot and also appear to have redesigned motherboards.

2.) Those who are using standard hard disk drives will probably see no difference in performance. If that is you, you can stop reading now.

3.) Benchmarks on FAST solid-state drives (SSDs) are showing a decrease in RAW disk i/o transfer rates on these same systems (in comparison to the previous generation MacBook Pros and MacBooks).

4.) The largest differences in the benchmark results seem to be in large, sequential disk READS (one of the traditional strengths with SSDs).

5.) To the best of my knowledge, no one has done any test with REAL-WORLD operations to show that the user experience (i.e. "performance") will be decreased with the 1.5Gb SATA interface. That is to say that thus far we've only seen benchmarks done with RAW disk i/o benchmarking tools.

6.) No one really knows why this has been done and no one knows whether it can be fixed with a software/firmware update (it may or may not be able to be fixed).While there is a lot of speculation about if this could be "corrected" by software in the future, there are no definitive answers. At a minimum, it should serve as a caution for those customers who were planning on upgrading to fast SSD drives in their new 13" or 15" MacBook Pros. While you may still see performance benefits over traditional hard drives, the total benefit may be blunted.

Article Link: 13" and 15" MacBook Pros Have a Slower SATA Interface (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/14/13-and-15-macbook-pros-have-a-slower-sata-interface/)

[Poirot818]

Thank you. Now that you've posted the story there's a much better chance that the other tech sites will pick it up.

[jciapara]

I think the majority of users won't notice it, but we'll see

[Me1000]

Wow, Apple... This is really lame!

[nws0291]

I am mad that Apple didn't state this downgrade before I returned my uMBP I bought a week before WWDC. They better fix this ASAP.

[Jayomat]

sorry for the noob question, but is it cheaper for apple to go back to 1,5 ? i guess....

[D0rk]

Gives me a reason to spend the extra money on a 17 inch, despite not really wanting the extra size and weight.

Unless this can be resolved by a firmware upgrade, I want to know that I can stick an SSD into my machine in a few years when they are cheaper and get the performance I paid for.

[cohibadad]

ouch. This is very disappointing if not correctable via software. I have an intel ssd in my 15" unibody MBP and was considering flipping it to one of the updated 15" models when I get a new batch for work. That won't be happening until this question is answered. Thanks for the heads up.

[fuzzielitlpanda]

thank you for posting really hoping this will get more attention on other major sites and apple will catch on

[drew0020]

I hope this is correctable with a software fix. Otherwise this is a disgrace Apple!

[Serge88]

One step forward, two steps back.

[nws0291]

sorry for the noob question, but is it cheaper for apple to go back to 1,5 ? i guess....

It's the same chip as the previous gen that was running a 3gb so hardware was unchanged. They seem to have crippled it through firmware or software.

[KingYaba]

No SSD for you!

[Phil A.]

AFAIK, before the NVidia chipset was introduced, all the mac portables used 1.5GBit SATA interfaces. It seems to me that for some reason Apple introducce 3.0GBit for a short while and then took it away again.

It does seem a bit lame, but I can't imagine it having much of a real world impact on most notebook users even with SSDs - it's not very often people read or move huge files (> 150MB) around on the internal hard disk so any real world performance hit is likely to be minimal. Even 1.5GB SATA is far faster than Firewire 800 so it really isn't that much of an issue...

[jglavin]

Could the slower interface improve battery life?

[NorCalLights]

One step forward, two step backward.

How is this two steps backwards? If anything, the new MBPs are 10 steps forward, one step backwards.

I mean really... you're not going to notice.

[Unprocessed1]

Could the slower interface improve battery life?

No, that's a false rumor.

[MrChurchyard]

Apple giveth, Apple taketh away. :(

[NorCalLights]

I am mad that Apple didn't state this downgrade before I returned my uMBP I bought a week before WWDC. They better fix this ASAP.

Oh that's funny... 'cause your signature states that you're using a 5400rpm HD. Even if you plan on upgrading to SSD in the future, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you won't ever see a difference in performance.

Do you have any idea how fast 1.5Gb/s is? 3Gb/s interfaces on laptops are for spec-whores.

[Unprocessed1]

Oh that's funny... 'cause your signature states that you're using a 5400rpm HD. Even if you plan on upgrading to SSD in the future, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you won't ever see a difference in performance.

Do you have any idea how fast 1.5Gb/s is? 3Gb/s interfaces on laptops are for spec-whores.

Maybe he wanted to install a 3rd party SSD, which is both faster and cheaper, like a rational person? Think of that?

[WannaGoMac]

Seriously, this type of cost saving maneuvers that become the system "Gotchas" when spec'ing a machine is worthy of Dell or HP the way they take small little things out that cost pennies but they do it to save cash anyway.

Sure hope this is a bug, as it is real lame of Apple to play this game.

[alexeismertin]

If somebody has an SSD Macbook/Pro showing SATA at 3g & access to the newer (SD) Macbook Pros with SATA 1.5g, perhaps trying the Apple supplied SSD in the 1.5g MBP and clean installing OSX would show whether this is software or firmware. Yes/No?

[Philflow]

No SSD for you!

Lol that was funny. Thanks for posting.

[designgeek]

Booooooooooooo.:mad: I was planning on upgrading to an SSD, now I think I'll keep my late 8 MBP.

[Fatdog]

Could the slower interface improve battery life?

I was wondering that as well. The AnandTech review of the new MacBook Pros showed an improve battery life that they believed couldn't be completely explained by the bigger battery. It seems unlikely that the slower interface could improve battery life, but I have no idea.

I do hope that Apple fixes this because some SSDs can max out SATA 1.5.

[LEStudios]

So who went to System Profiler on New MacBook Pros to verify this? Cause if this is the case then this is messed up! :(

[cyberjunky]

Very lame.

[zap2]

The current MacBook has 1.5 or 3.0 ?

[fuzzielitlpanda]

here is another benchmark i did in win 7 as xbench is not too reliable:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v237/fuzzielitlpanda/benchmark.jpg

For some reason, windows is showing the interface as SATAII, but you can see performance is hindered quite a bit.

[Unprocessed1]

I was wondering that as well. The AnandTech review of the new MacBook Pros showed an improve battery life that they believed couldn't be completely explained by the bigger battery. It seems unlikely that the slower interface could improve battery life, but I have no idea.

I do hope that Apple fixes this because some SSDs can max out SATA 1.5.

No, it doesn't affect battery life. At max it's 5-10 minutes, and def. not worth it. The batteries were redesigned for longer life, it has nothing to do with SATA I/II

[MrChurchyard]

Quick question: Does the white MacBook retain a 3GB/s SATA interface?

[zap2]

Bummer...although thats the speed of my current Mac Mini, and its fine. I wouldn't likely be buying a SDD anytime soon...still bummer for those who want it!

[Lipstick]

Quick question: Does the white MacBook retain a 3GB/s SATA interface?

Yes, it was in the first paragraph.

[Cabbit]

Well ok for a start moving to SATA 150 looks more like a bug as they would have to disable it on the chipset.
Next up only 4+ disc raid arrays can get close to maxing out SATA 300, SATA 150 is more than enough even for the fastest SSD drives.
Finally its a driver issue most likely as i don't see them installing there own special SATA controller separate to the included one on the chipset. That would not be a cost cutting exercise, it would cost more money to install a separate chip and don't think for a moment Nvidea would make a custom chip for Apple.

[Jimmetry]

You guys need to stop complaining about everything :rolleyes:

Normal hard drives (especially laptop drives) pretty much never reach these speeds... so the majority of people won't notice.

For SSD, the > 1.5Gb speeds are for read only tests... in real world circumstances the only time you'll notice a significant difference is during boot. Copying large files is limited by the interface at the other end, so no change there, and with normal usage the write time is still rather slow.

As for the comment about wanting to buy a SATA drive in a few years... to be honest, I think now is the wrong time to be thinking about that. Hard drives will change dramatically as SSD is perfected, and the interface will need to be much faster than 3Gb (6Gb is imminent already). And yes the inclusion of 3Gb would mean you have a slightly smaller bottleneck on your end, but there's still a gigantic one at the other.

[Unprocessed1]

The current MacBook has 1.5 or 3.0 ?

All new 13" and 15" MBP's have 1.5.

Only the 17" MBP, white MB, and MBA have 3.0

[Evangelion]

WTF Apple. You give us sweet new processor/ram specs then downgrade HDD/SSD performance.

The difference is not going to be that big. Yes, there would be a slight difference in the hi-end SSD's, but even there the difference is not going to be that huge.

It's like difference between 667Mhz RAM and 800MHz RAM. Sure, it would be nicer to have the faster system, but the difference isn't that big.

Are you trying to play some kind of psychological warfare on your customers or what? Its shameful that you advertise sweet new specs then go and downgrade something so damn critical.

Take a chill-pill. There's about 90% change that you wouldn't ever notice the difference, and even if you did, it would be minor.

I suspect its a little scheme so that apple can let some suckers buy them up then shortly after release a quiet update to 'fix' this issue, so that the hardcore mac rumor fans can splash out more cash.

Don't give up your day job.

[Salavat23]

For some reason, windows is showing the interface as SATAII, but you can see performance is hindered quite a bit.

That refers to the drive standard, not to the actual interface spec being used.

[rushmere]

WTF Apple. You give us sweet new processor/ram specs then downgrade HDD/SSD performance.

Are you trying to play some kind of psychological warfare on your customers or what? Its shameful that you advertise sweet new specs then go and downgrade something so damn critical.

I suspect its a little scheme so that apple can let some suckers buy them up then shortly after release a quiet update to 'fix' this issue, so that the hardcore mac rumor fans can splash out more cash.

Very lame.

There is no downgrade to HD performance - a HD simply can't transfer data that fast. It remains to be seen whether it has any noticeable effect on SSD performance.

[Unprocessed1]

Well ok for a start moving to SATA 150 looks more like a bug as they would have to disable it on the chipset.
Next up only 4+ disc raid arrays can get close to maxing out SATA 300, SATA 150 is more than enough even for the fastest SSD drives.
Finally its a driver issue most likely as i don't see them installing there own special SATA controller separate to the included one on the chipset. That would not be a cost cutting exercise, it would cost more money to install a separate chip and don't think for a moment Nvidea would make a custom chip for Apple.

Great post. I don't understand the people that think the downgrade was INTENTIONAL. It makes zero sense.

[OllyW]

Quick question: Does the white MacBook retain a 3GB/s SATA interface?

Yes

[dukebound85]

The current MacBook has 1.5 or 3.0 ?

the current white mb has 3.0

weird right?

[OldManSeed]

I got a 15" 2.66GHz uMBP in March '09. It has the 6MB L2 cache as well as the 3.0GB SATA interface. It is capable of 8GB memory.

When Apple announced these new laptops at WWDC, I was quite upset.

However, after learning of the downgrades, I am quite convinced that my machine is the best of the lot, perhaps even the best Apple has released in years.

Never felt better about a computer purchase at this point.

[Unprocessed1]

You guys need to stop complaining about everything :rolleyes:

Normal hard drives (especially laptop drives) pretty much never reach these speeds... so the majority of people won't notice.

For SSD, the > 1.5Gb speeds are for read only tests... in real world circumstances the only time you'll notice a significant difference is during boot. Copying large files is limited by the interface at the other end, so no change there, and with normal usage the write time is still rather slow.

As for the comment about wanting to buy a SATA drive in a few years... to be honest, I think now is the wrong time to be thinking about that. Hard drives will change dramatically as SSD is perfected, and the interface will need to be much faster than 3Gb (6Gb is imminent already). And yes the inclusion of 3Gb would mean you have a slightly smaller bottleneck on your end, but there's still a gigantic one at the other.

Many people with Intel SSD's have noticed their daily activities are noticeably slower. If people are going to dish out $300-800 on these drives, they want to get the best performance possible.

[jedijoe]

Ok, maybe in the Macbook line.. but in the *PRO* line. Come'on, SSDs are getting cheaper and cheaper, and if the price is right, SSDs >= 256GB, most people would start putting SSDs in their laptops.

If this is some sort of down-low, quiet money saving scheme purposely done by Apple, it really makes one think. Apple already going south (AGAIN) ... and without Jobs for 2 months!?!

Hell, I can't believe SATA 3Gbit/s is that much more expensive than SATA 1.5Gbit/s, I mean SATA 3Gbit/s has been around for years already.

[geenosr]

No SSD for you!

That's funny! Could the 1.5 spec have anything to do with the increase in battery life over the previous MBP's? Probably not, but I'm sure the A-team looked at each and every way to squeeze more battery life as evidenced with the previous post on the big difference with the new model over the older one. And however they achieved the extra battery life is ok with me.

[Rhalliwell1]

I really don't see why people are complaining. Unless you are going to have a SSD it's not going to make any difference what so ever. There are also reports that this slower sata bus is increasing battery life. If this is true; Good move apple.

[ntrigue]

Could the slower interface improve battery life?

No. An SSD is on or off. It doesn't use more or less power depending on application. You could accomplish more with a 3.0 interface thereby saving battery use.

[Cabbit]

Many people with Intel SSD's have noticed their daily activities are noticeably slower. If people are going to dish out $300-800 on these drives, they want to get the best performance possible.

If they are noticing a noticeable drop in performance than it is a bad driver not the controller speed. The Intel SSD drives can not individually get close to SATA 150.

[Poirot818]

There are also reports that this slower sata bus is increasing battery life.

Apple fanboys keep saying that and not providing a source. Stop making things up to defend them.

[twoodcc]

and i just ordered a 15" too. oh well. i guess i won't be buying an SSD anytime soon now

[imrichar]

Great, I just ordered an OCZ Vertex 120 and was planning on getting my MBP when I come back from vacation. Hope they figure this out. :mad:

[beardboy]

Could it not just be limited by the HDD - i'm not sure on 2.5" drives, but on 3.5" drives, there's a jumper to enable full speed, as by default they come limited to 1.5.

Has anyone opened the UMPB up and looked?

[Eidorian]

HD Tune is the standard for doing drive benchmarks.

Apple is one of the few companies that I know of where a step backward is a step forward. It might go along with the whole miniaturization fetish.

[sirjorj]

1.5 Gigibits per second = 187.5 Megabytes per Second.
From what I saw, the WD VelociRaptor (which I believe is currently the fastest hard drive available) averages about 100 Megabytes per second.
Intel's X25 SSD can do over 200 Megabytes per second according to a benchmark I saw, but real world applications don't see THAT much of a performance increase.
Yeah it is strange they went backwards, but its really not that big of a deal.
If it is true that it is the same hardware as previous 3.0Gb systems (as someone here said), this can almost certainly be upgraded via software. Heck, maybe it even automatically sets it based on what's attached. I wouldn't put it past them...

jorj

[WickedRabbit]

I'll put money that this is just a strategic move by Apple to get people to quietly deplete their inventory of the SATA I and then a few months down the road another 'quiet' update will be made that reintroduces the 3.0. Apple has a strong history of screwing over early adopters of all of its products in some way (as the last aluminum macbook buyers from only a few months ago are finding out right now) and I'm sure this is following the same trend.

Just wait a few months and you'll see the 'issue' will be resolved quietly and buy it then.

[bartzilla]

I got a 15" 2.66GHz uMBP in March '09. It has the 6MB L2 cache as well as the 3.0GB SATA interface. It is capable of 8GB memory.

When Apple announced these new laptops at WWDC, I was quite upset.

However, after learning of the downgrades, I am quite convinced that my machine is the best of the lot, perhaps even the best Apple has released in years.

Never felt better about a computer purchase at this point.

Whatever it takes to get you through the day. It isn't like your laptop turned into a pumpkin the moment they started waving new ones around on stage at WWDC. It isn't like my late '08 MBP turned into a pumpkin when they updated it to 2.66Ghz for the one you've got.

I really don't understand this obsession with lusting after the latest and greatest when you wouldn't even know it was different to what you already had without reading the specs.

[ddorman]

Don't the USB and Firewire ports also connect to CPU on a SATA bus? I might be wrong on that or just not understand it, but if that's the case it seems to me like that's where the real performance hit would come from if everything is now running off a 1.5 bus instead of 3.0. Which realistically might be plenty of bandwidth for most people, but keeping in mind these are the PRO machines and many of them will probably have a lot of digital video cameras and multichannel audio interfaces + external hard drives all running at the same time. Seems like that could be a serious set back.

[Cabbit]

Going SATA 150 will not improve battery life, if anything with a spinning disk the faster it is the less work it has to do, there for more battery life.
However there is no mechanical drive nor SSD in a single disk configuration that can max out SATA 150 so there would be no battery life difference ether way.

[Rhalliwell1]

Apple fanboys keep saying that and not providing a source. Stop making things up to defend them.

Read the comments (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=719253)

[jedijoe]

No. An SSD is on or off. It doesn't use more or less power depending on application. You could accomplish more with a 3.0 interface thereby saving battery use.

Completely incorrect. SSD have an idle and workload power. For example, the Intel X25-M lists its idle power consumption at 0.06W and the "typical workload" power consumption at 150mW.

[Unprocessed1]

If they are noticing a noticeable drop in performance than it is a bad driver not the controller speed. The Intel SSD drives can not individually get close to SATA 150.

I think the user reports might be exaggerated. Maybe it's taking 10 seconds to open 30 applications rather than the usual 6 seconds. Stuff like that.

[Cabbit]

Don't the USB and Firewire ports also connect to CPU on a SATA bus? I might be wrong on that or just not understand it, but if that's the case it seems to me like that's where the real performance hit would come from if everything is now running off a 1.5 bus instead of 3.0. Which realistically might be plenty of bandwidth for most people, but keeping in mind these are the PRO machines and many of them will probably have a lot of digital video cameras and multichannel audio interfaces + external hard drives all running at the same time. Seems like that could be a serious set back.

Firewire is not build onto Nvidea Chipset.
USB is built onto Nvidea Chipset.
No Nvidea chipset with the 9400m has a SATA 150 only controller.
SATA 300 is built onto the Nvidea Chipset.
The GPU is build onto the Nvidea Chipset.
The memory controller is build onto the Nvidea Chipset.

The other chips is the "i am a apple" chip, and the CPU.

[Unprocessed1]

I really don't see why people are complaining. Unless you are going to have a SSD it's not going to make any difference what so ever. There are also reports that this slower sata bus is increasing battery life. If this is true; Good move apple.

NO IT'S NOT. Please stop spreading these completely untrue rumors. Reading the front page of MR it only affects people that want to use SSD's.

Battery life in NOT increasing. That's rubbish.

[Prenvo]

LOL I just dropped £600 on the 256GB SSD upgrade ><

Here's hoping it's not noticeable...

[Poirot818]

Read the comments (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=719253)

...Yeah I'm sure the battery life was improved just because they downgraded the SATA connection to 1.5 Gbit/s.

Are you serious with that link? Did you forget that the new MBPs have the new and bigger batteries in them like the previous 17" MBP?

[Cabbit]

LOL I just dropped £600 on the 256GB SSD upgrade ><

Here's hoping it's not noticeable...
Did you have a SSD before?
If not then you wont know any different.
If yes then you wont know any different.

[Unprocessed1]

Read the comments (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=719253)

Yes, and people who actually know how the technology works have swiftly debunked that rumor.

[NintendoFan]

Going SATA 150 will not improve battery life, if anything with a spinning disk the faster it is the less work it has to do, there for more battery life.
However there is no mechanical drive nor SSD in a single disk configuration that can max out SATA 150 so there would be no battery life difference ether way.

All of Intel's SSDs can surpass SATA 1.5.

[Unprocessed1]

I'll put money that this is just a strategic move by Apple to get people to quietly deplete their inventory of the SATA I and then a few months down the road another 'quiet' update will be made that reintroduces the 3.0. Apple has a strong history of screwing over early adopters of all of its products in some way (as the last aluminum macbook buyers from only a few months ago are finding out right now) and I'm sure this is following the same trend.

Just wait a few months and you'll see the 'issue' will be resolved quietly and buy it then.

This is a 2nd generation product of the unibody, however, and that is unacceptable.

[torbjoern]

I am mad that Apple didn't state this downgrade before I returned my uMBP I bought a week before WWDC. They better fix this ASAP.

Did you really expect Apple to do that? Apple is a corporation with obligations to its shareholders, and we all know that verity and business never go together.

[Plutonius]

Seriously, this type of cost saving maneuvers that become the system "Gotchas" when spec'ing a machine is worthy of Dell or HP the way they take small little things out that cost pennies but they do it to save cash anyway.

Sure hope this is a bug, as it is real lame of Apple to play this game.

I'm curious to know why you absolutely state that it's a cost saving maneuver by Apple when it's the same chip as the faster previous version ?

To me, it looks like a bug.

[Poirot818]

15 people voted this story as positive...

[heisetax]

sorry for the noob question, but is it cheaper for apple to go back to 1,5 ? i guess....

But I thought that Apple sold a premium only computers. That means for a higher base price we expect no cuts to make the Mac or iPod a little cheaper for Apple to produce. But the removal of FW from iPods at a time when FW was becoming standard even on the $299+ computers in favor of the cheaper poorer slower operating USB. So we know that Apple has done it in the past.

Also with more & more removing their optical drives in their Mac laptops & putting a second 7200 rpm HDD or SDD. With either of these choices the slower older technology can not meet the needed bandwidth. Then not only will all SDD be slowed, the HDD users will enjoy watching their new systems slow down compared to their old. This shows that Macs can run with older technology even after it has been replaced by everyone else.

This is just another example that shows that only the 17" Intel MacBook Pro should carry the Pro name.

[Gwardys]

Alright. I'm pretty furious this very second. Just about an hour ago I plunked down nearly 2 grand between a new macbook pro and an x25-m. Should I cancel my order ASAP? Realistically is it going to be a big deal?

If it's the same hardware, then that means it is possible for a software unlock? Help me. Someone tell me what to do. I don't want to have spent money for something worthless now.

[fluffy]

Unless you're doing high-performance scientific computing across a HUGE dataset (which you will not be doing on a laptop) it is extremely unlikely you'll ever see anything even remotely approaching 1.5Gbps, much less 3Gbps.

Pro video at 1080p60 takes about 3Gbps *uncompressed*, but if you're doing that you're probably not recording directly to a laptop hard drive.

The highest-end pro audio is even less of an issue. 192KHz at 24 bits per channel (which is massive overkill and far beyond anything useful) is 4.6Mbps per channel. So at 1.5Gbps you're going to be able to handle over 3200 channels of audio simultaneously. There is NO WAY that could ever be necessary.

A 1 TB hard drive takes an hour and a half to be read at 1.5Gbps. Is there anything you could possibly do that needs to deal with that much data in that short amount of time?

Basically, the outrage over this reminds me of this rant by Louis CK (http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=54627), especially the part about WiFi on airplanes.

[Poirot818]

]This is just another example that shows that only the 17" Intel MacBook Pro should carry the Pro name.

It's also the only new MBP that kept the 3 Gbit/s SATA connection.

[Jota]

Thats awesome! I just ordered my Intel X25-M the same day new mbps arrived...Anyway, it will be faster than the 5400...

[dukebound85]

Alright. I'm pretty furious this very second. Just about an hour ago I plunked down nearly 2 grand between a new macbook pro and an x25-m. Should I cancel my order ASAP? Realistically is it going to be a big deal?

If it's the same hardware, then that means it is possible for a software unlock? Help me. Someone tell me what to do. I don't want to have spent money for something worthless now.

its not worthless

[scotty321]

This is just ridiculous. Why is Apple taking these professional machines and turning them into consumer machines? As far as I can tell, these MacBooks still have the word "Pro" in their names... yet Apple is turning them into ANYTHING BUT professional machines.

This, plus the ExpressCard slap-in-the-face to all of us professional users, is absolutely disgusting and unforgiveable coming from Apple.

I talk at length about the ExpressCard B.S. coming out of Apple in my blog entry here:
Apple: Bring the ExpressCard slot back to the 15″ MacBook Pro! (http://scottworldblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/apple-bring-the-expresscard-slot-back-to-the-15-macbook-pro/)

If you are as rightfully angry as I am, be sure to leave Apple feedback here:
Apple - MacBook Pro - Feedback (http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html)

[Unprocessed1]

Alright. I'm pretty furious this very second. Just about an hour ago I plunked down nearly 2 grand between a new macbook pro and an x25-m. Should I cancel my order ASAP? Realistically is it going to be a big deal?

If it's the same hardware, then that means it is possible for a software unlock? Help me. Someone tell me what to do. I don't want to have spent money for something worthless now.

Keep both. Your Intel will still be about 4-5 times faster than your HDD. Boot times and app opening will still be VERY fast.

[*LTD*]

Big deal.

Further, no one knows WHY it was done . . . and it seems there are plenty that are willing to jump to conclusions without finding out, and before any answers have been provided.

[heisetax]

It's the same chip as the previous gen that was running a 3gb so hardware was unchanged. They seem to have crippled it through firmware or software.

Does this mean that Apple is practicing crippling there hardware like Verizon does with there cell phones, (smart phones included.) Maybe this SATA buss slowing is just a sign of more than we first see.

So this may be a double or triple SHAME on Apple's part.

[bytethese]

Wow, I am actually on my way to the Apple store to pick up my new 13" MBP. I plan on popping in the WD Black 320GB drive I bought in the 13" and putting the drive from the 13" in my old 15" MBP for my wife. I was hoping with a 7200rpm spin that the drive would take advantage of being 3.0Gb/s in the new 13" MBP.

Does anyone know if better quality drives can take advantage of 3.0Gb/s or will only SSD's will notice a difference? I'm planning on running VM's for grad school work on this puppy and thought since that seems like a bunch of I/O 3.0Gb/s would help.

Thoughts on this?

[Unprocessed1]

Big deal.

Further, no one knows WHY it was done . . . and it seems there are plenty that are willing to jump to conclusions without finding out, and before any answers have been provided.

Yeah, let's give Apple a chance to respond. Lets just hope their explaniation is that it was a mistake on their part. :rolleyes:

[tezro]

I didn't go through all pages, but from what I read a benchmark was done without simply checking is in the System Profiler.

On my Mac Mini it says the following:

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP79 AHCI
Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

Why not check what it is on the affected MacBooks?

[Unprocessed1]

Wow, I am actually on my way to the Apple store to pick up my new 13" MBP. I plan on popping in the WD Black 320GB drive I bought in the 13" and putting the drive from the 13" in my old 15" MBP for my wife. I was hoping with a 7200rpm spin that the drive would take advantage of being 3.0Gb/s in the new 13" MBP.

Does anyone know if better quality drives can take advantage of 3.0Gb/s or will only SSD's will notice a difference? I'm planning on running VM's for grad school work on this puppy and thought since that seems like a bunch of I/O 3.0Gb/s would help.

Thoughts on this?

Only the higher speed SSD's like the OCZ vertez, Samsung, Intel, etc.

7,200 RPM HD's will NOT be affected.

[daneoni]

So who went to System Profiler on New MacBook Pros to verify this? Cause if this is the case then this is messed up! :(

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7804550&postcount=458

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7804575&postcount=459

[Unprocessed1]

I didn't go through all pages, but from what I read a benchmark was done without simply checking is in the System Profiler.

On my Mac Mini it says the following:

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP79 AHCI
Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

Why not check what it is on the affected MacBooks?

Everyone has already checked and they're all 1.5...

[Gwardys]

its not worthless

No. Not worthless, but crippled!

Keep both. Your Intel will still be about 4-5 times faster than your HDD. Boot times and app opening will still be VERY fast.

How much of a difference is this lower speed to the faster sata interface? This is my first ssd so I am expecting something quick, but is it going to make a huge difference? Especially with my x25-m will I even come close to these speeds at all?

[tezro]

Wow, I am actually on my way to the Apple store to pick up my new 13" MBP. I plan on popping in the WD Black 320GB drive I bought in the 13" and putting the drive from the 13" in my old 15" MBP for my wife. I was hoping with a 7200rpm spin that the drive would take advantage of being 3.0Gb/s in the new 13" MBP.

Does anyone know if better quality drives can take advantage of 3.0Gb/s or will only SSD's will notice a difference? I'm planning on running VM's for grad school work on this puppy and thought since that seems like a bunch of I/O 3.0Gb/s would help.

Thoughts on this?

Even your 7200rpm drive won't ever get near the 3.0Gb/s limit. As said, only the really fast SSD's will.
I don't have data on 7200rpm drives, but I doubt even those will go way over 50MB/s.

You're safe.

[acfusion29]

People just want EVERYTHING. It's ****ing annoying, seriously.

You guys wanted a card reader, you got one. You guys wanted firewire (in the 13" MBP), you got one. You have to make sacrifices sometimes because not everything is always going to fit.

Now be happy that you got what you wanted, I bet half of you won't even notice a difference between 3.0 and 1.5.

[mikethebigo]

One fair thing to point out is that if this is the biggest problem people can find with the new uMBPs, then Apple did a damn fine job otherwise.

From what I can tell, 1. it probably is fixable with firmware and 2. even if it wasn't, it won't make any difference anyway.

[Poirot818]

People just want EVERYTHING. It's ****ing annoying, seriously.

You guys wanted a card reader, you got one. You guys wanted firewire (in the 13" MBP), you got one. You have to make sacrifices sometimes because not everything is always going to fit.

Now be happy that you got what you wanted, I bet half of you won't even notice a difference between 3.0 and 1.5.

What exactly did we get for the sacrifice?

Also, it's the same chipset as before. You know, the one that was 3 Gbit/s.

[Fatdog]

Does anyone think that maybe Apple is using a new revision of the Nvidia chipset? Revisions are especially the same as the old chip, but that have minor changes (revisions) to upgrades the chip. Usually it's done for better yields in manufacturing or for decreased power consumption. Could it be that Apple is using a new revision in the 13" and 15" MBPs and that Apple just hasn't upgraded the drivers?

I'm just throwing that out there because the two products with the most dramatic upgrade at WWDC are the two products that have this problem. I don't believe that Apple would segment the product line based on something like SATA... That's just insane. This is probably just a temporary problem or oversight by Apple.

[acfusion29]

What exactly did we get for the sacrifice?

SD card reader and firewire.

[Cabbit]

Even your 7200rpm drive won't ever get near the 3.0Gb/s limit. As said, only the really fast SSD's will.
I don't have data on 7200rpm drives, but I doubt even those will go way over 50MB/s.

You're safe.

Fastest the get is 120 MB/s ish, Fastest SSD's come closer to 350 MB/s.
SATA 150 is 1.5 Gb/s, SATA 300 is 3.0 Gb/s. Most likely cause of slowdown is that SATA 150 does not have NCQ.

[Hattig]

sorry for the noob question, but is it cheaper for apple to go back to 1,5 ? i guess....

It's part of the 9400M chipset. There's no reason to downgrade unless it really aids power consumption. That, or NVIDIA had a cockup in a batch of chipsets.

[Eddyisgreat]

No. Not worthless, but crippled!



How much of a difference is this lower speed to the faster sata interface? This is my first ssd so I am expecting something quick, but is it going to make a huge difference? Especially with my x25-m will I even come close to these speeds at all?


You will.

I have the x25-m and a penryn macbook pro 2.5 (with twice the 6 mb l2 cache, cuz that makes a difference).

I had it as my boot drive internally, and for that it worked great, even though i'm only working with a SATA II interface.

I recently had to have it replaced because it died on me one day , and I just recieved the replacement. I was booting off my internal 5400 rpm drive and cloned it over to the x25-m over usb. Now i'm booting off the x25-m via a usb external enclosure and for booting/apps its STILL faster than the mechanical drive, though large transfers will be hindered by the slower interface.

[Gwardys]

People just want EVERYTHING. It's ****ing annoying, seriously.

You guys wanted a card reader, you got one. You guys wanted firewire (in the 13" MBP), you got one. You have to make sacrifices sometimes because not everything is always going to fit.

Now be happy that you got what you wanted, I bet half of you won't even notice a difference between 3.0 and 1.5.

I understand what you're trying to say, but I purchased this NEW laptop with the expectation that it would have everything a laptop from almost two years ago would have. All of those laptops have this as a standard why was this one dropped?

[daneoni]

SD card reader and firewire.

Are you actually being serious?

[Poirot818]

SD card reader and firewire.

Capping the SATA connection has nothing to do with those. They're completely unrelated.

[acfusion29]

Are you actually being serious?

Yes I am... did you understand my post?

Capping the SATA connection has nothing to do with those. They're completely unrelated.

How? They had to make room on the logic board to put those components in there. Things get shifted around. I'm pretty sure it's not software capped, it's hardware capped.

[BlizzardBomb]

The only downside for Hard Disk Drive users is that burst speed e.g. from the cache, will be capped. But seeing as most 2.5" Hard Drives only have a 8 MB cache, that would only be microseconds slower. Everything else will be fine.

[Jayomat]

People just want EVERYTHING. It's ****ing annoying, seriously.

You guys wanted a card reader, you got one. You guys wanted firewire (in the 13" MBP), you got one. You have to make sacrifices sometimes because not everything is always going to fit.

Now be happy that you got what you wanted, I bet half of you won't even notice a difference between 3.0 and 1.5.

nevertheless, IF it is just controlled by software, why would apple do this? it doesn't save them any money as far as i can see...

[Gwardys]

You will.

I have the x25-m and a penryn macbook pro 2.5 (with twice the 6 mb l2 cache, cuz that makes a difference).

I had it as my boot drive internally, and for that it worked great, even though i'm only working with a SATA II interface.

I recently had to have it replaced because it died on me one day , and I just recieved the replacement. I was booting off my internal 5400 rpm drive and cloned it over to the x25-m over usb. Now i'm booting off the x25-m via a usb external enclosure and for booting/apps its STILL faster than the mechanical drive, though large transfers will be hindered by the slower interface.

Yes I will what. Reach the speeds it is capable of and hit a bottleneck? Have you noticed a large difference in speeds or no?

If it's the same hardware between the two revisions, I'm just going to keep my purchase, and pray that Apple releases a firmware update.

[turkay]

How much does that SATA downgrade affects the performance? :confused:

[acfusion29]

nevertheless, IF it is just controlled by software, why would apple do this? it doesn't save them any money as far as i can see...

I don't think it's controlled by software or else it doesn't make any sense. It's most likely hardware restrictions.

[Poirot818]

Yes I am... did you understand my post?



How? They had to make room on the logic board to put those components in there. Things get shifted around. I'm pretty sure it's not software capped, it's hardware capped.

Put what components there? This has nothing to do with physical space. It supports a 3 Gbit/s SATA connection and it's being artificially capped at 1.5 Gbit/s.

[daneoni]

Yes I am... did you understand my post?

Yeah...yeah i did

How? They had to make room on the logic board to put those components in there. Things get shifted around. I'm pretty sure it's not software capped, it's hardware capped.

Its the same chipset as previous models

[frou]

acfusion29 - Please do some reading before flinging out conjecture. It helps no one.

[Phil A.]

How much does that SATA downgrade affects the performance? :confused:

Not at all if you're not using an SSD rather than an HDD, and by a debatable amount in real world applications if you are. IMO, the biggest effect will be psychological - i.e. people see that it's a slower interface and perceive a bigger performance difference than there really is.

I'm as big a "sucker" for specs as anyone else (which is why I went for the 2.93Ghz MBP which is probably not noticeably faster than a 2.6 in real world applications) so I can understand people's frustration and anger, but it probably isn't going to make a whole heap of difference in the day to day use of their machines. Having said that, I do have a 3GB SATA II interface in my machine so I'm not affected.

Human nature being what it is, if I was one of these people who bought a machine expecting a 3GB SATA-II interface but got a 1.5GB SATA-I, I'd be pretty fed up too...

[Data]

Strange that they did this since you can now order those books with an ssd ( anybody know with wich brand apple delivers the ssd as a bto ?) and then make the sata a sata 1 instead of 2.

[jbuk]

Ummm...

My Late 2008 Whitebook appears to have a 1.5GBit SATA interface from what I can see in System Profiler > Serial-ATA (see attatched image).

[turkay]

I'd read somewhere -don't remember where- that SATA 3.0 thing does not give that much performance over 1.5 because the HDDs can't access that kind of large bandwith. Is that true?

Edit: Nevermind, Phil A. answered it already. Thanks Phil!

[Evangelion]

it's both funny and sad to see people basically whining that "OMG, SSD is going to be slow on these new laptops!", when fact remains that ssd's will still be ludicrously fast when compared to HD's. So fastest ssd's out there might be able to saturate the sata-bus on the laptops. So what? Even if you had bus that was ten times faster than the one it has now and the ssd was the fastest model available, the difference would be minor when compared to the current situation. Sure, some synthetic benchmarks might be able to show the difference, but in real life things would be more or less the same.

And how much would faster sata be worth to you? Apple just lowered their prices while increased specs (and I mean specs that are tangible to just about everyone). Would you rather have higher prices so you could have a feature that wouldn't be noticeable in real-life use?

When compared to HDs, ssd's are fast because they increase transfer-rate by about 300% while lowering access-times by about 95%. And those benefits are there even if you had slower sata-bus. If you had twice as fast bus you might get additional 10% in bandwidth, but the difference in actual performance would be neglible. +10% is peanuts when you compare it to +300% in bandwidth and -95% in latency.

Rest assured, your ssd will be fast on these laptops. This is a storm in a teacup. .

[Chupa Chupa]

Put what components there? This has nothing to do with physical space. It supports a 3 Gbit/s SATA connection and it's being artificially capped at 1.5 Gbit/s.

I think to say the SATA bus is being artifically capped is jumping to the conclusion that this is intentional on Apple's part. We don't know that yet. This is new hardware so there are bound to be bugs. This could just be that and not something sinister on Apple's part.

Let's make noise about this issue so it gets Apple's attention, but lets also give them the benefit of the doubt and see if they come up with a firmware fix in the next few weeks before damning it.

[daneoni]

Ummm...

My Late 2008 Whitebook appears to have a 1.5GBit SATA interface from what I can see in System Profiler > Serial-ATA (see attatched image).

Intel's chipset supports SATA I-1.5 whilst Nvidia's chipset is SATA II-3.0

I'd read somewhere -don't remember where- that SATA 3.0 thing does not give that much performance over 1.5 because the HDDs can't access that kind of large bandwith. Is that true?

HDDs yes...high-end SSDs however can

[timon]

I can't believe all the panic I'm reading.

Did anyone ever use the brain they were given and think that the drivers may change the speed of the interface when a SSD drive is used?

The increase power usage running at 3gb/s would be offset by the lower power used by the SSD. Since hard drives can't take advantage of the extra speed there is no reason to go above 1.5gb/s.

I'd suggest that everyone take a chill pill and wait till some official word comes out.

[Poirot818]

I think to say the SATA bus is being artifically capped is jumping to the conclusion that this is intentional on Apple's part. We don't know that yet. This is new hardware so there are bound to be bugs. This could just be that and not something sinister on Apple's part.

Let's make noise about this issue so it gets Apple's attention, but lets also give them the benefit of the doubt and see if they come up with a firmware fix in the next few weeks before damning it.

Well I didn't mean to imply that Apple did it on purpose. However, the chipset supports 3 Gbit/s, it's reporting 1.5 Gbit/s, and benchmarks are backing that up. It has definitely been capped.

[arn]

I can't believe all the panic I'm reading.

Did anyone ever use the brain they were given and think that the drivers may change the speed of the interface when a SSD drive is used?



Based on the benchmarks linked, this is not true.

arn

[Poirot818]

Did anyone ever use the brain they were given and think that the drivers may change the speed of the interface when a SSD drive is used?

Maybe you should have used your brain to read the story.

[flopticalcube]

I can't believe all the panic I'm reading.

Did anyone ever use the brain they were given and think that the drivers may change the speed of the interface when a SSD drive is used?

The increase power usage running at 3gb/s would be offset by the lower power used by the SSD. Since hard drives can't take advantage of the extra speed there is no reason to go above 1.5gb/s.

I'd suggest that everyone take a chill pill and wait till some official word comes out.
From the OP:


3.) Benchmarks on FAST solid-state drives (SSDs) are showing a decrease in RAW disk i/o transfer rates on these same systems (in comparison to the previous generation MacBook Pros and MacBooks).

[daneoni]

it's both funny and sad to see people basically whining that "OMG, SSD is going to be slow on these new laptops!", when fact remains that ssd's will still be ludicrously fast when compared to HD's. So fastest ssd's out there might be able to saturate the sata-bus on the laptops. So what? Even if you had bus that was ten times faster than the one it has now and the ssd was the fastest model available, the difference would be minor when compared to the current situation. Sure, some synthetic benchmarks might be able to show the difference, but in real life things would be more or less the same.

And how much would faster sata be worth to you? Apple just lowered their prices while increased specs (and I mean specs that are tangible to just about everyone). Would you rather have higher prices so you could have a feature that wouldn't be noticeable in real-life use?

When compared to HDs, ssd's are fast because they increase transfer-rate by about 300% while lowering access-times by about 95%. And those benefits are there even if you had slower sata-bus. If you had twice as fast bus you might get additional 10% in bandwidth, but the difference in actual performance would be neglible. +10% is peanuts when you compare it to +300% in bandwidth and -95% in latency.

Rest assured, your ssd will be fast on these laptops. This is a storm in a teacup. .

Its the SAME chipset. Translation: It costs Apple NOTHING extra to have 3.0Gb bus speed.

[Chupa Chupa]

And how much would faster sata be worth to you? Apple just lowered their prices while increased specs (and I mean specs that are tangible to just about everyone). Would you rather have higher prices so you could have a feature that wouldn't be noticeable in real-life use...

Rest assured, your ssd will be fast on these laptops. This is a storm in a teacup. .


That is a fallacious argument since there is no additional cost to Apple to set the bus to run at 3.0 vs 1.5. The hardware is already in the box. This is a firmware issue. Moreover, 3.0 isn't even available in the top-of-the-line models of each size, so it's not a marketing gimmick either. Whether you pay $1200 or $2200 you still don't get 3.0 speeds on a "pro" computer. That is not a storm in a teacup, it's ridiculous.

SATA II is a relatively old standard anyway so logically it makes no sense why Apple cut it except that is was an overlooked mistake on it's part as it rushed them out the door in time for WWDC.

[turkay]

Ummm...

My Late 2008 Whitebook appears to have a 1.5GBit SATA interface from what I can see in System Profiler > Serial-ATA (see attatched image).

ditto, my late 2007 whitebook shows the same. :confused: Does my machine is capable of 3.0 or not?

http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/9473/picture1zrd.png (http://img241.imageshack.us/i/picture1zrd.png/)

[torbjoern]

People just want EVERYTHING. It's ****ing annoying, seriously.

You guys wanted a card reader, you got one. You guys wanted firewire (in the 13" MBP), you got one. You have to make sacrifices sometimes because not everything is always going to fit.

Now be happy that you got what you wanted, I bet half of you won't even notice a difference between 3.0 and 1.5.

Kudos. This is another way to view the difference between the UMB and the MBP 13". Earlier, I have stated that it's far better to have a great MB than a mediocre MBP, but now, it became even more obvious that the latter is merely a prototype (of its kind, that is) whilst the former is the best MB there has ever been. This applies to the construction as well as its specs - not to forget the aesthetics.

And for those who kick themselves because they bought the MBP 13": Congratulations on having purchased the cheapest MBP ever produced by Apple. You got what you paid for - how about an Acer Aspire next time? You know - the AA even comes with Blu-Ray drives!

[Evangelion]

HDDs yes...high-end SSDs however can

Moving from HD to SSD while retaining SATA 1.5 would give HUGE performance boost. Moving from SATA 1.5 to 3.0 even when using hi-end SSD would give only minor boost in performance.

[mdriftmeyer]

There is no excuse for this. Fix it.

[mdriftmeyer]

Once the firmware is fixed then people should have an eye on SATA 6 for future hardware.

[andiwm2003]

apple at it's best again. :rolleyes:

remember the poor RAID performance in powermacs? i think that got never solved until the macpro's came up.

like the agere chipset in the firewire ports.

i don't think this will affect me, even if i decide to spend money on a SSD. however if you think about upgrading to a faster SSD in 3 years it may become a unneccesary bottleneck.


good thing i don't need a MBP now so I can wait for Barefeats speed tests and buy then. or even wait for the next release.

[markintellect]

AFAIK, before the NVidia chipset was introduced, all the mac portables used 1.5GBit SATA interfaces. It seems to me that for some reason Apple introducce 3.0GBit for a short while and then took it away again.

It does seem a bit lame, but I can't imagine it having much of a real world impact on most notebook users even with SSDs - it's not very often people read or move huge files (> 150MB) around on the internal hard disk so any real world performance hit is likely to be minimal. Even 1.5GB SATA is far faster than Firewire 800 so it really isn't that much of an issue...

If I am not mistaken, the 9400M has got all I/O built in, including SATA. If the 13/15 inch MacBook Pros have the same 9400M chip, I see no hardware reason why they shouldn't have it. Maybe Apple had software trouble with 3.0Gbit so they just disabled it so that they could get them out of the factory in time.

[Poirot818]

And for those who kick themselves because they bought the MBP 13": Congratulations on having purchased the cheapest MBP ever produced by Apple. You got what you paid for - how about an Acer Aspire next time? You know - the AA even comes with Blu-Ray Drives!

Elitism at its finest.

[Azrel]

Apple is perfectly capable of using software deliberately to lockout hardware level functionality.

Take for example the previous generation of MacBooks and MacBook Pro's. Apple has locked many of these from accessing the full 8GB RAM limit of the hardware (to just 6GB).

Look at the iPhone and iPod Touch, which has had Bluetooth functionality built in since the beginning.

Wireless N functionality being a paid for software upgrade...

[Eidorian]

ditto, my late 2007 whitebook shows the same. :confused: Does my machine is capable of 3.0 or not?

http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/9473/picture1zrd.png (http://img241.imageshack.us/i/picture1zrd.png/)ICH7 and 8 both support SATA 3.0 Gbps.

[MACdaddy859]

Kudos. This is another way to view the difference between the UMB and the MBP 13". Earlier, I have stated that it's far better to have a great MB than a mediocre MBP, but now, it became even more obvious that the latter is merely a prototype (of its kind, that is) whilst the former is the best MB there has ever been. This applies to the construction as well as its specs - not to forget the aesthetics.

And for those who kick themselves because they bought the MBP 13": Congratulations on having purchased the cheapest MBP ever produced by Apple. You got what you paid for - how about an Acer Aspire next time? You know - the AA even comes with Blu-Ray drives!

LOL, makes me feel better now!

[NinjaHERO]

It's the same chip as the previous gen that was running a 3gb so hardware was unchanged. They seem to have crippled it through firmware or software.

As long as its the same chip, then at some point they should be able to raise back up. No biggy if they can fix it later.

[LEStudios]

All new 13" and 15" MBP's have 1.5.

Only the 17" MBP, white MB, and MBA have 3.0



I was pondering on replacing the 2009 Mac mini with a 13" MacBook Pro but my current Mac mini has SATA II and I had the 2007 Mac mini I see a difference in speed so this is a bummer for me. Apple marketed the MacBook Pro as a desktop replacement when combined with 24" LED Cinema Display but dropping the speed of the SATA Speed by 50% that really hurts! :(

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3586/3616497873_9bbcd3f48c_o.jpg

[Derrick Velasco]

MacBook Aluminum 2GHz just smiled, and it told me to rate positive.. :(

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

This is very interesting. I wonder what the real world experience will be with it. I also wonder why Apple would do this.

[torbjoern]

Moving from SATA 1.5 to 3.0 even when using hi-end SSD would give only minor boost in performance.
That says more about the current SSDs (even the hi-end ones) than the SATA-II standard per se.

[Marx55]

Any difference then between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm hard disks for the MacBook Pro 15-inch? Thanks.

[Azrel]

I am 99.99% positive this is a firmware issue. The 9400M integrates the IO, so the SATA II connection is there, it's just running at SATA I speeds. Look at the diagram bellow for a overview of the chipset used in the MacBook Pros.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/images/uploaded/Nvidia_GeForce_9400_Block_diagram.jpg

[SaudiMac]

I wouldn't care about it for now, but after a year when SSD prices are cheaper I might be interested in them.
This will effect my decision about buying it for now ...

[Anuba]

Seriously, this type of cost saving maneuvers that become the system "Gotchas" when spec'ing a machine is worthy of Dell or HP the way they take small little things out that cost pennies but they do it to save cash anyway.
They aren't "becoming" anything, they're being the same penny pinchers they always have been, they've always settled for upper midrange components instead of cutting edge, and then sold the computers at prices that suggest they're using bleeding edge components that hit the market 5 minutes ago.

I remember back when they launched the Mac Mini at what seemed to be a very competitive price. You could hear the deep collective sigh of relief from apologists who've always had trouble defending Apple's pricing, now they could finally say "Look -- here's proof that Apple can engage in competitive pricing too!". Then you started looking at the fine print and realized... "wait, hold on, these aren't regular low-end specs, these are low-end specs from two years ago. 32 MB video RAM? 512 MB? 4200 RPM, 40 GB drive? Where did they find these fossils, have they been digging in dumpsters outside Packard Bell's bargain bin PC factory? This isn't competitively priced, this is overpriced as usual. Leave it to Apple to make an overpriced $500 computer..."

Another nasty corner-cutting habit of Apple's is to take accessories out of the boxes and make customers pay extra for them, without cutting the price accordingly. Old MacBook Pros used to come with an Apple remote and a DVI adapter. The original iPhone came with a docking station. All that stuff costs extra now, and it's only a question of time before power adapters and power cords are no longer included.

Dell and HP may be penny pinching too, but they have a valid reason for it, because unlike Apple they have razor thin margins. Yet they still offer customers a lot of choices, and you can get Dells with top class components and no gotchas or bottlenecks, you just have to pay Mac prices for them.

[MagnusVonMagnum]

It never ceases to amaze me how Apple cannot do simple math. I mean to make everyone happy when you release an updated computer you make it BETTER. In all possible areas! You don't downgrade parts and you don't take away expansion ports when you could just include an $8 SD reader card to plug into that port. Apple seems to want to nickel and dime us to death all while charging far more than the normal profit margins due to a lack of competition for "Mac" hardware. Yet it is these little setbacks that tick people off and make them consider things like a Hackintosh. I know Apple wants to maximize its profits, but for goodness sake, does customer satisfaction mean NOTHING to them?

[Akira1980]

Any difference then between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm hard disks for the MacBook Pro 15-inch? Thanks.

No, you wouldn't see any difference until you go SSD.

[NorCalLights]

Maybe he wanted to install a 3rd party SSD, which is both faster and cheaper, like a rational person? Think of that?

Yeah I did think of that... and it still doesn't matter. He's not going to notice the difference. No one is.

Everyone needs to calm down about this one. We're talking about a similar difference to 667MHz and 800MHz RAM.

[caffeinejoe]

Alright. I'm pretty furious this very second. Just about an hour ago I plunked down nearly 2 grand between a new macbook pro and an x25-m. Should I cancel my order ASAP? Realistically is it going to be a big deal?

If it's the same hardware, then that means it is possible for a software unlock? Help me. Someone tell me what to do. I don't want to have spent money for something worthless now.

Yes ... your new $2k Macbook Pro is worthless. Cancel your order and buy an Acer PC Laptop.

[Apple Corps]

Any difference then between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm hard disks for the MacBook Pro 15-inch? Thanks.

No laptop hard drives can come close to saturating SATA I bandwidth - if I understand your question

[Chupa Chupa]

I know Apple wants to maximize its profits, but for goodness sake, does customer satisfaction mean NOTHING to them?


Compared to PC makers Apple could piss off half their customers and they'd still be ahead. Apple knows we aren't going anywhere. Hackintoshing is a hobby, not a viable solution for a production machine.

[ltldrummerboy]

No laptop hard drives can come close to saturating SATA I bandwidth.

Unless it's a fast SSD like the ones Intel makes.

[ItsGavinC]

Wow, Apple... This is really lame!

Yeah--fix the SATA speed that 99% of users won't notice and take back the 8 hours of battery life (which 99% of users WILL benefit from)!

[Unprocessed1]

ICH7 and 8 both support SATA 3.0 Gbps.

I can't imagine Apple not fixing this.

[jamesryanbell]

Glad I kept my early '09....I'm about to upgrade to an Intel SSD.

[Anuba]

Any difference then between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm hard disks for the MacBook Pro 15-inch? Thanks.
Neither comes close to saturating a bandwidth of 1.5 Gbit, so no.

On top of that, Apple's stock 7200 rpm drive (Seagate Momentus 7200.4) is actually slower than their stock 5400 rpm drive (Hitachi TravelStar 5K500.B) in real world use. Out of all the CTO options they offer (8 GB, 3.06 GHz, matte screen etc), this one is by far the most pointless.

[ltldrummerboy]

Let's make noise about this issue so it gets Apple's attention, but lets also give them the benefit of the doubt and see if they come up with a firmware fix in the next few weeks before damning it.

Thank you for your clear and thoughtful input on this. It's about time someone said something positive. I'm going to wait a couple weeks and if by then nothing has happened on Apple's end then I'll throw a fit.

[torbjoern]

I know Apple wants to maximize its profits, but for goodness sake, does customer satisfaction mean NOTHING to them?

Do you really think that would be good for business? It would just make it harder for Apple to deliver a better machine at the next WWDC. When people buy the Apple computers despite set-backs like this one, the computers are obviously worth the price anyway.

[monstar-x]

No SSD for you!

HaHa, i love Seinfeld :-)
No SSD for you :)

[bplein]

As an adopter of SSD in my MBP 2.33 at work (OCZ Vertex 120GB drive), I can tell you that I'm up against the SATA-1 (1.5Gbit) limit for sequential reads and writes. The drive is capable of more bandwidth. I have been contemplating getting the new MBP, and while this isn't a deal breaker, it's certainly a bummer.

:(

[chrmjenkins]

Those who are trying to undermine the people who are complaining, this is an example of justified complaining.

This is different than something such as "I can't believe they don't have this feature yet!" This is a case of "We had a feature and now it's gone, with no intelligible reason as to why it should be gone." That doesn't make sense. Also, sure they will still see almost all of the SSD benefit in nearly all situations presumably, but if Apple is touting a five year lifespan for these notebooks, who wants to be limited by 1.5 Gbps with the SSDs that will exist then (let alone two of three years). The expresscard slot is also valid criticism. There's no good reason to take it away when you could very easily buy a card that has SD readers built in.

[frou]

Neither comes close to saturating a bandwidth of 1.5 Gbit, so no.

On top of that, Apple's stock 7200 rpm drive (Seagate Momentus 7200.4) is actually slower than their stock 5400 rpm drive (Hitachi TravelStar 5K500.B) in real world use.Do you have a source with analysis of this? Plus I'm not sure of the definition of real world. That is interesting.

[Anuba]

if Apple is touting a five year lifespan for these notebooks, who wants to be limited by 1.5 Gbps with the SSDs that will exist then (let alone two of three years)
"We added a new battery that will do up to 1,000 cycles and last 5 years. In other news, we've future proofed the SATA interface, it's now good for whatever was cutting edge five years ago."

[Apple Corps]

Unless it's a fast SSD like the ones Intel makes.

I said HARD DRIVE not SOLID STATE DRIVE (SSD)

Also - the post I responded to referenced 5400 vs 7200 rpm drives

[Slurpy2k8]

I'll put money that this is just a strategic move by Apple to get people to quietly deplete their inventory of the SATA I and then a few months down the road another 'quiet' update will be made that reintroduces the 3.0. Apple has a strong history of screwing over early adopters of all of its products in some way (as the last aluminum macbook buyers from only a few months ago are finding out right now) and I'm sure this is following the same trend.

Just wait a few months and you'll see the 'issue' will be resolved quietly and buy it then.

What a stupid post. I bought the uMB 13' when it first came out, in October. I certainly don't feel 'screwed over'. Its the best laptop Ive ever used. Its been 8 frikkin months- certainly enough time to introduce some upgrades, without worrying that owners of the previous model will be 'screwed over'.

This mentality isnt rational. If I really want the new machine, I'll sell mine and pick up the new one for a couple hundred dollars difference. The problem is that so many people on this forum seem obsessive-compulsive types, who start breaking down whenver something better than what they own is released. Apple upgrade cycles are definitely longer than any other manufacturer I know, so stop bitching that your machine isnt the latest and greatest anymore. Its still just as good as when you got it, and you knew damn well what you were paying for. What, do you want Apple to offer you their latest model for free, or do you want them to stop updating their machines altogether? Jesus Christ.

[turkay]

HaHa, i love Seinfeld :-)
No SSD for you :)

Was that scene from Seinfeld? OMG how can i not remember that!

[daneoni]

Yeah--fix the SATA speed that 99% of users won't notice and take back the 8 hours of battery life (which 99% of users WILL benefit from)!

Negligible impact on battery life...if any

[Anuba]

Do you have a source with analysis of this? Plus I'm not sure of the definition of real world. That is interesting.
Sure: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17010/7

http://www.techreport.com/r.x/500gb-mobile/fc-create-mp3.gif

See the red bar (longer is better)? That's Apple's stock 5400 RPM drive. The two green bars below it are the Seagate Momentus drives, one of them is Apple's stock 7200 rpm 2.5" drive.

The Momentus 7200.4 scores better in long sequential reads, but that's about it.

[stefanski]

I actually replaced my disk with an G.SKILL FALCON 128GB SSD this weekend in my 4th Gen 17" MacBook Pro. It has a SATA 1.5 only. As seen in system profiler:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP41.00C1.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.28f2

Intel ICH8-M AHCI:

Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH8-M AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported

Now the interesting bit is that the ICH8 does fully support SATA II 3Gbit. Proof is in the attached screenshot, describing the register settings of the controller.

Which can be found here:
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/313056.pdf

There are similar threads in the Thinkpad forums and it would appear to have something to do with the optical drive bay and the chip that regulates the SATA-PATA interface on Santa Rosa chip sets.

Also read:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52255&page=8

In the end my SSD is fast. Compared to the old HD it is so quick I can't complain and the upgrade is well worth the money. The only thing I would do different is that I wouldn't waste time trying to find the fastest SSD. Just go for the cheapest instead as the full speed won't be reached anyway.

Here are my results:
Disk Test 208.19
Sequential 161.36
Uncached Write 220.17 135.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 202.65 114.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 90.71 26.55 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 233.17 117.19 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 293.31
Uncached Write 113.14 11.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 367.49 117.65 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2313.83 16.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 607.70 112.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[TEBnewyork]

Moving from HD to SSD while retaining SATA 1.5 would give HUGE performance boost. Moving from SATA 1.5 to 3.0 even when using hi-end SSD would give only minor boost in performance.

I already made the switch to an SSD in a new 13" MBP, yes it does give a huge performance boost. BUT - I went and bought an Intel X25 one of the more expensive SSDs around. If I'm now limited by the computer hardware perhaps I wouldn't have gotten that particular drive.

[GetSome681]

Going SATA 150 will not improve battery life, if anything with a spinning disk the faster it is the less work it has to do, there for more battery life.
However there is no mechanical drive nor SSD in a single disk configuration that can max out SATA 150 so there would be no battery life difference ether way.

Please stop posting these lies. There are a handful of SSD drives that can saturate a SATA 150 bus on sequential read/writes. Stop spreading lies or pretending you know things, because you don't.

[Gwardys]

I already made the switch to an SSD in a new 13" MBP, yes it does give a huge performance boost. BUT - I went and bought an Intel X25 one of the more expensive SSDs around. If I'm now limited by the computer hardware perhaps I wouldn't have gotten that particular drive.

YES YES YES. Except, I just purchased this all today. I'm pissed, and I have every right to be. It's a feature that is and should be there.

[Unprocessed1]

Please stop posting these lies. There are a handful of SSD drives that can saturate a SATA 150 bus on sequential read/writes. Stop spreading lies or pretending you know things, because you don't.

What the heck are you talking about? That statement you quoted was accurate...

[ijh]

System Profiler on 2.26GHz 13" MBP indicates 1.5Gbps WITH NCQ support. This is _not_ a SATA-I interface as NCQ was not part of that spec AFAIK.

[gnasher729]

Apple fanboys keep saying that and not providing a source. Stop making things up to defend them.

Having worked with hardware developers who used every trick in the book to reduce power usage, there is a very simple rule: Power consumption grows with the square of speed. In the case of a drive interface, the power consumption would run over a shorter time, so at double the speed, the amount of energy used to transfer one Megabyte of data would grow linear with the speed of the interface.

Don't attribute to malice what could be explained by stupidity, or possibly by someone taking into account things that you don't know about. Now 99% or more of Mac users are _not_ going to replace the drive in their MacBook Pro with an SSD drive that doesn't come from Apple, and those users won't notice a difference outside benchmarks, so if the power savings through a 1.5 GBit interface are significant, and I have no idea how much you energy would typically be used by the SATA interface, then reducing the interface speed is indeed the right decision.

[Poirot818]

so if the power savings through a 1.5 GBit interface are significant

Then why not do the same for the 17" MBP? Surely the 17" MBP needs all the power savings it can get to keep up battery life.

The 17" MBP keeps its 3 Gbit/s SATA connection and has an express card slot. The other MBPs have a 3 Gbit/s SATA connection that's capped at 1.5 Gbit/s and an sd slot instead of an express card slot. Draw your own conclusions from that.

[justit]

What if they crimped this to sell an upgrade SSD option at the apple store with the full 3 SATA speed using apple's pricing?

[Anuba]

FWIW, I stumbled upon a similar discussion regarding certain Lenovo models, and found this (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1425004) post...

I've investigated this issues at length through engineering and have received the following explaination of SATA data rates available on the Santa Rosa ('61) and current Montevina based systems (T400/T500, W500, W700, etc)...

"For Santa Rosa-based systems, the Intel ICH8 supports a SATA bus speed of up to 3.0 Gb/s. Lenovo made a design decision to prioritize maintaining compatibility with Ultrabay disk drives, which are connected via a SATA-to-PATA conversion chip which could not handle a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed reliably. Therefore the system was standardized to 1.5 Gb/s.

In testing rotating media drives, our measurements show data throughput difference between 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s bus speed is less than 5% since the drive mechanics are the limiting throughput factor, rather than the SATA bus itself.

For those customers who choose to purchase an after-market SSD drive capable of SATA bus speeds up to 3.0 Gb/s, the system will interface with them at 1.5 Gb/s. Lenovo's official position is that the Santa Rosa systems are working as designed.

The Montevina based systems which began shipping last year have direct SATA interfaces for both drive bays and are enabled at a system level for SATA bus speeds of 3.0 Gb/s performance. Current Lenovo drives have firmware set to 1.5 Gb/s data rates.

Exchanging these drives for after-market drives which support SATA bus of 3.0 Gb/s should provide for the higher data rate at the overall system level. Again, it should be noted that our performance measurements show less than 5% performance improvement between 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speeds for rotating drives, since the drive mechanics are the limiting throughput factor, rather than the SATA bus itself.

After-market SSDs which support SATA bus speed of 3.0 Gb/s will operate at that bus speed. Depending on the data transfer test method used, your actual data throughput from a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed should be 220-250 MB/s and about 90-120MB/s throughput when running on SATA bus of 1.5 Gb/s. This is due to the bus signaling used for the SATA bus, as well as overhead for error checking."
So it seems that the bus speed has an effect (albeit marginal) even on HDDs.

[aurichie]

Yes ... your new $2k Macbook Pro is worthless. Cancel your order and buy an Acer PC Laptop.

I just cancelled an order for a $3200 $17" MBP with extras because of this issue. Sorry I'm paying a premium price I expect a premium product. We were always led to believe PC manufacturers put in shoddy/cheap components to keep prices low. Apple is now doing the same and charging a huge premium. I'm going back to Dell's I think.

Very sad news. :(

[gnasher729]

Sure: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17010/7

http://www.techreport.com/r.x/500gb-mobile/fc-create-mp3.gif

See the red bar (longer is better)? That's Apple's stock 5400 RPM drive. The two green bars below it are the Seagate Momentus drives, one of them is Apple's stock 7200 rpm 2.5" drive.

The Momentus 7200.4 scores better in long sequential reads, but that's about it.

I am always very suspicious of benchmarks for hard drives, because often benchmarkers are not very clever and forget one very important thing about hard drives: Hard drives don't have one "speed". The read/write speed depends on which tracks of the hard drive you are reading. On the outside tracks, each rotation of the drive lets you access many more bytes than a track on the inside of the drive. So a drive could have a read speed "from 60 GB/sec to 30 GB/sec": When the drive is empty and you read the tracks on the outside, the same drive might read 60 GB/sec, and when the drive is full and you read tracks close to the centre of the driver, you only get 30 GB/sec.

Now if you take two brand new drives, one 320 GB, the other 500 GB, create two partitions on each drive, 250+70 on the first, 250+250 on the second, and you make speed tests on the second partition, then the second partition is close to the center and very slow on the first drive, but still quite far on the outside and a lot faster on the second drive.

When both drives are almost empty, the 320/7200 drive should be faster than the 500/5400 drive (if everything else is equal). As you copy one GB after the other to each drive, the 320GB fills faster and its speed will go down quicker. So if you intend to store 250-300 GB, the 500/5400 drive will end up faster.

[Glideslope]

Having worked with hardware developers who used every trick in the book to reduce power usage, there is a very simple rule: Power consumption grows with the square of speed. In the case of a drive interface, the power consumption would run over a shorter time, so at double the speed, the amount of energy used to transfer one Megabyte of data would grow linear with the speed of the interface.

Don't attribute to malice what could be explained by stupidity, or possibly by someone taking into account things that you don't know about. Now 99% or more of Mac users are _not_ going to replace the drive in their MacBook Pro with an SSD drive that doesn't come from Apple, and those users won't notice a difference outside benchmarks, so if the power savings through a 1.5 GBit interface are significant, and I have no idea how much you energy would typically be used by the SATA interface, then reducing the interface speed is indeed the right decision.

It should have also been made known at WWDC. :apple:

[deconstruct60]

presumably, but if Apple is touting a five year lifespan for these notebooks, who wants to be limited by 1.5 Gbps with the SSDs that will exist then (let alone two of three years).

Five years for the batteries or the computer itself? Applecare only goes 3 years so as far as putting their money where their mouth is... it is more like the battery has about a 5 year life. So by the time the battery is noticeably dying off you'd probably buy a new computer ( can the battery can be recycled along with the computer you are "trading in".)


However, the more times you cycle the battery the shorter its lifetime is going to be. The more power you draw will increase the number of times you cycle the batter. If 3 GB/s is a higher power draw ( extremely likely) than have taken the hit on that 5 years.

On the other hand, replacing a rotational hard drive with a SSD one would help save power later on in your laptop's life. Similar to reason outlined above that would stretch out your battery lifetime.

[Chupa Chupa]

I just cancelled an order for a $3200 $17" MBP with extras because of this issue. Sorry I'm paying a premium price I expect a premium product. We were always led to believe PC manufacturers put in shoddy/cheap components to keep prices low. Apple is now doing the same and charging a huge premium. I'm going back to Dell's I think.

Very sad news. :(


But the 17" is unaffected. The 1.5Gb cap is only on the 13/15" MBPs.

[Anuba]

I just cancelled an order for a $3200 $17" MBP with extras because of this issue.
But this issue doesn't affect the 17" MBP. Why on earth would you cancel it then... out of sympathy for owners of the 13" and 15" models?

[TEBnewyork]

I just cancelled an order for a $3200 $17" MBP with extras because of this issue. Sorry I'm paying a premium price I expect a premium product. We were always led to believe PC manufacturers put in shoddy/cheap components to keep prices low. Apple is now doing the same and charging a huge premium. I'm going back to Dell's I think.

Very sad news. :(

Well, If you had read the information before you cancelled you would have found that the 17" MBP is not impacted by this only the 13" and 15" are at 1.5.

[charlituna]

does customer satisfaction mean NOTHING to them?


yes because the 0.001% of folks that would actually be effected by this change is THE key to Apple's success. they should always do what will benefit those folks.

perhaps Steve should just hand you the throne cause you are so much smarter than he ever was. would that make you happy

[harshw]

Unless you're doing high-performance scientific computing across a HUGE dataset (which you will not be doing on a laptop) it is extremely unlikely you'll ever see anything even remotely approaching 1.5Gbps, much less 3Gbps.

And you're the smart one eh ? Well I do just that - on a laptop. And please don't tell me ' Ohh ... this is not for laptops '. So what is the MacBook Pro for then ? Watching Quicktime trailers and Apple v/s PC ads ? Some of us use laptops for a living including running high performance scientific computing on them

[SamCpp]

Oh that's funny... 'cause your signature states that you're using a 5400rpm HD. Even if you plan on upgrading to SSD in the future, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you won't ever see a difference in performance.

Do you have any idea how fast 1.5Gb/s is? 3Gb/s interfaces on laptops are for spec-whores.
1.5Gb/s (gigbit per second) is approximately 150MB/s (megabyte per second). Most if not all hard drives nowadays burst at over 150MB/s. Most SSDs average over 150MB/s read.

i.e. not just spec-whores are getting affected here. Anyone who uses new hardware will.

[deconstruct60]

Then why not do the same for the 17" MBP? Surely the 17" MBP needs all the power savings it can get to keep up battery life.


Bigger battery means more power (and cells) to throw at problems and still eek out the 8 hours. If haven't noticed the 17" are bigger than the 15"-13" models. ;-) [ more cells also means distributing the cell cycles over more units. The 13 and 15 have less cells so each one has a higher duty cycle. ]


Same rational would cap 17" below the 3Gz CPU option too.

[8theapple]

I just cancelled an order for a $3200 $17" MBP with extras because of this issue. Sorry I'm paying a premium price I expect a premium product. We were always led to believe PC manufacturers put in shoddy/cheap components to keep prices low. Apple is now doing the same and charging a huge premium. I'm going back to Dell's I think.

Very sad news. :(

17" is not affected and runs SATA 3. Good job.

[turkay]

And you're the smart one eh ? Well I do just that - on a laptop. And please don't tell me ' Ohh ... this is not for laptops '. So what is the MacBook Pro for then ? Watching Quicktime trailers and Apple v/s PC ads ? Some of us use laptops for a living including running high performance scientific computing on them

BTW there's gonna be no "non pro" notebook in the near feature IMO.

[deconstruct60]

1.5Gb/s (gigbit per second) is approximately 150MB/s (megabyte per second). Most if not all hard drives nowadays burst at over 150MB/s. Most SSDs average over 150MB/s read.

i.e. not just spec-whores are getting affected here. Anyone who uses new hardware will.

Burst. You wonder why burst and SSD are about the same???? Could it be that you are reading out of he RAM cache of the HD when "bursting"?

How many times does burst happen under real world workload conditions?
Especially on the laptop with just one user. ( two programs access the same file often or rarely ? )

Got any real world benchmark simulations where these burst conditions are sustained for a real work sized files and file systems?

[farkasam]

Most of the "power" users posting in this forum aren't even going to notice any difference with 1.5g SATA. Don't be such narcissists, Apple makes products that have to straddle the line between "pro" and "PRO" users. If you're so hardcore, build your own and stop whining!:D

[harshw]

BTW there's gonna be no "non pro" notebook in the near feature IMO.

Quite right. And I was actually waiting for a 13" pro laptop - preferably one with a faster CPU. After putting in a Vertex on my 13" uMB I saw that tasks which were IO bound suddenly became CPU bound. The Vertex can achieve 200mb/sec - 240 mb/sec reads and 140mb/sec - 170 mb/sec writes. Having a faster CPU was fantastic but with the SSD speeds capped to 150 mb/sec, that faster CPU wouldn't matter anyways

It's sad as the 13" MBP is otherwise a beautiful machine. I find the 15" too big for my regular travel and usage style.

[frou]

Sure: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17010/7Thanks for the link. Though, looking at the roundup, I wouldn't say it is cut and dry to call the Seagate slower.

And you're the smart one eh ? Well I do just that - on a laptop. And please don't tell me ' Ohh ... this is not for laptops '. So what is the MacBook Pro for then ? Watching Quicktime trailers and Apple v/s PC ads ? Some of us use laptops for a living including running high performance scientific computing on themI think it's become obvious that Pro currently doesn't mean much beyond design and fit/finish (i.e. the actual components are often not best in class)

[Eidorian]

I can't imagine Apple not fixing this.Well I've had a SATA 3.0 drive for ages and I'm on the latest firmware.

I don't think Apple is ever going to fix it unless we raise an uproar about it.

[harshw]

Burst. You wonder why burst and SSD are about the same???? Could it be that you are reading out of he RAM cache of the HD when "bursting"?

How many times does burst happen under real world workload conditions?
Especially on the laptop with just one user. ( two programs access the same file often or rarely ? )

Got any real world benchmark simulations where these burst conditions are sustained for a real work sized files and file systems?

Try running real world programs like SPSS, SAS, Mathematica etc that operate on large datasets and you'll see the difference. They are not 'simulations' - they're real and the Apple laptops are usually well liked in the scientific computing community ( nice GUI, BSD Unix etc ). This recent change in specs is not going to go well with that community

[turkay]

I don't think Apple is ever going to fix it unless we raise an uproar about it.

I don't think that's gonna make any difference. If some higher ranked Mac people, like Rob Griffiths moans about it then apple may take the issue serious or aware of it.

[Furrybeagle]

Bigger battery means more power (and cells) to throw at problems and still eek out the 8 hours. If haven't noticed the 17" are bigger than the 15"-13" models. ;-) [ more cells also means distributing the cell cycles over more units. The 13 and 15 have less cells so each one has a higher duty cycle. ]


Same rational would cap 17" below the 3Gz CPU option too.


Yes, but the 2009 13" and 15" uMBPs still have larger batteries than the 2009 13" and 15" uMBPs. Yet they still cut features? I'm confused... what's more important, 30 more minutes (at most), or faster interfaces?

Seriously, you think the Express Card slot is sucking up power when nothing is in it? Does the hard disk interface really take up so much power that it needs to be downgraded? What is this crap?

[Anuba]

Thanks for the link. Though, looking at the roundup, I wouldn't say it is cut and dry to call the Seagate slower.
No, it's faster for certain operations... but the bottom line is that the fastest 5400 RPM drive in the test (the WD Scorpio Blue) beat the crap out of the lot of them.. well, except the SSD. You'd think that the only 7200 rpm drive in the test would dance all over the 5400 drives, and this is probably the assumption most people make when they choose the 7200 rpm option.

[Eidorian]

I don't think that's gonna make any difference. If some higher ranked Mac people, like Rob Griffiths moans about it then apple may take the issue serious or aware of it.Eh, if we make Page 1 news on Tom's Hardware or Anandtech I'd consider it a small victory.

[turkay]

Eh, if we make Page 1 news on Tom's Hardware or Anandtech I'd consider it a small victory.

I hope so!

[deconstruct60]

That says more about the current SSDs (even the hi-end ones) than the SATA-II standard per se.

The funny part is that SATA II has just been (or very close to officially) superseded. (the new upper bound will be 6 Gbs. ) So all the folks bent out of shape about future (hardware 2-3 years down the road ) won't being able to run the SATA III stuff from that era either.

There are other constraints out there though. These Southbridge chips. No way they can run a constant sustained 3 Gbs off of SATA and also multiplex in the USB/ PCI 1-x / etc. other streams that they also have to deal without latency/bandwidth hiccups.

The SATA upper bound is for several storage devices to be connected. When it becomes just one device sucking all the bandwidth that would introduce other problems. ( no quite a big a deal when there is only one device though as often the case in a laptop. )

[Jethryn Freyman]

Honestly, that's a pathetic decision by Apple.

There was no logical reason to downgrade like that. Same goes for replacing ExpressCard with an SD card slot. Same goes for the glossy screens with no matte option. In every case, Apple has actually downgraded. It's not that they haven't adopted some new technology, it's that they're downgrading to older tech.

Don't call me a fanboy for complaining, I'm complaining because Apple has downgraded their computers. If you can defend a ridiculous decision like this, you are the fanboy.

My Macbook Pro is already choked by hard drive speed, this won't help.

[JayLenochiniMac]

Time for prev gen MBP owners to rub it in to the new MBP owners, after getting slandered on the increased battery life.

[bruinsrme]

If the 13 and 15 are usig ICH7 then the following may be applicable. taken from the ICH7 spec sheet

23:20
(Desktop Only)
Interface Speed Support (ISS) — R/WO. Indicates the maximum speed the
SATA controller can support on its ports.
2h =3.0 Gb/s.
23:20(Mobile)Only
Interface Speed Support (ISS) — RO. Indicates the maximum speed the SATA
controller can support 1h =1.5 Gb/s.

[ericinboston]

Talk about a SHAM! Apple supposedly "lowers" the price of the laptops to make them more affordable but they SECRETLY lower the quality too (and UPGRADE the NAME to PRO????).

Total scam. I'm extremely disappointed by Apple in this bait and switch.

If Apple had revealed the NEW specs and/or EVERYTHING they changed, no problemo...consumers would know what they are buying.

I won't doubt that within days there will be Petitions...heck, maybe even a lawsuit. Sure, some claim that "most users" will not notice the difference in every day use, but when you look at everything Apple changed, more disclosure was needed. Forget about all the "reasons" you believe/feel Apple did this...the fact remains that this is really misleading.

-Eric

[Gunga Din]

Early 2008 MBP. I went into the system profiler under Serial-ATA Device Tree and found this info above my Hard Drive listing.

Product ICH8-M
1.5 Gigabit

Is it suppose to be 3.0 on this model? Was it changed with a software update? I can't remember if it was ever 3.0.

[atomicshark]

Honestly, that's a pathetic decision by Apple.

There was no logical reason to downgrade like that. Same goes for replacing ExpressCard with an SD card slot. Same goes for the glossy screens with no matte option. In every case, Apple has actually downgraded. It's not that they haven't adopted some new technology, it's that they're downgrading to older tech.

Don't call me a fanboy for complaining, I'm complaining because Apple has downgraded their computers. If you can defend a ridiculous decision like this, you are the fanboy.

My Macbook Pro is already choked by hard drive speed, this won't help.

I have to agree with you. It is depressing to see how Apple tends to do this and seemingly in such a way that you feel like you need to buy a top of the line machine to get exactly what you need.

Technically if all Macbook Pros are the same, then why doesn't the 13" Macbook Pro have an option for a 7200 RPM drive? Why can't it have the same video card options as the larger models? Maybe it can only have the 9400M due to the small size of the 13" macbook Pro, but there is no excuse to leave out the option of a faster HD.

Anyway, I'd just love to see Apple upgrade new models, lower prices and do it without cutting back on specs.

[iMacmatician]

Why can't it have the same video card options as the larger models?Probably heat.

[mac jones]

it's a bit amusing that the previous post was: "Macbook's Battery life is friggin awesome!!" (or something like that)

So perhaps now we are starting to hear exactly how this was accomplished ;)

[Anuba]

Honestly, that's a pathetic decision by Apple.
It's an unfortunate decision, no doubt. But we don't know whether it's pathetic, dumb, unnecessary or [insert adjective here] until they've explained why it was done.

When Lenovo did the same thing (downgraded to 1.5 Gbit SATA on some models), it had nothing to do with cutting corners, it was strictly technical -- they had found that the SATA-to-PATA conversion chip couldn't handle 3.0Gb/s speed reliably, so they put an artificial cap on it for compatibility/reliability reasons. At least, that was the official explanation, but it's been suggested that the culprit was the Intel ICH8 component on the 965GM-chipset based motherboards, but Lenovo didn't want to deal with a blame war between themselves and Intel so they took the fall.

[Wild-Bill]

This is a poor move on Apple's part and they ought to be ashamed.

This is clearly designed to force people to buy an SSD-equipped model instead of buying the stock model and upgrading with SSD yourself. I'd really like to hear an answer from Apple on this decision.

I'd much rather buy the SSD of my choosing than one Apple has selected for me, complete with a ridiculous price hike for the drive.

Lower the price, lower the quality I guess is their new mantra.

I saw a thread on this on the official Apple forums but you can pretty much guarantee once the mods sniff it out it will be DELETED.

[budfoot]

Maybe they did it so they could up the RAM to 8gb... ;-)

[VaDor]

Well I think nobody likes a downgrade... If the old macbooks pro had 3.0GHz SATA , the new ones have to have 3.0GHz or Better !!

Only if exists a very good explanation for the downgrade! Better batery life doesn't count.. or apple could start putting core 2 duo 1.xx GHz processors in their macbooks for better battery.... :apple:

[harshw]

The funny part is that SATA II has just been (or very close to officially) superseded. (the new upper bound will be 6 Gbs. ) So all the folks bent out of shape about future (hardware 2-3 years down the road ) won't being able to run the SATA III stuff from that era either.

There are other constraints out there though. These Southbridge chips. No way they can run a constant sustained 3 Gbs off of SATA and also multiplex in the USB/ PCI 1-x / etc. other streams that they also have to deal without latency/bandwidth hiccups.

The SATA upper bound is for several storage devices to be connected. When it becomes just one device sucking all the bandwidth that would introduce other problems. ( no quite a big a deal when there is only one device though as often the case in a laptop. )

Hi

SATA is a point to point bus. The 6 gbits/s doesnt have a single controller supporting it yet. No single SSD can saturate the 600 mb/sec mark. And the 9400m combines Northbridge (MCH) and Southbridge (ICH) functionality. On desktop boards and previous gen Apple laptops, the 9400m provides 2 to 6 SATA 3 ports, supports DDR2 800 to DDR3 1066, integrated graphics and doesn't have much problems doing so. USB 2.0 doesn't consume that much bandwidth ( think DDR3 ) and also the laptop doesnt have as many PCIe connections as a common 9400m equipped desktop board. So I don't really agree with this theory.

[deconstruct60]

Yes, but the 2009 13" and 15" uMBPs still have larger batteries than the 2009 13" and 15" uMBPs. Yet they still cut features? I'm confused... what's more important, 30 more minutes (at most), or faster interfaces?


If faster interfaces are the penultimate requirement why not a Mac Pro.

Constructing laptops is all about making compromises. You're sure that the late 2008 and these 2009 13" and 15" have identical thermal constraints?
Was Apple setting expectations that the batteries will last 5 years in the late 2008 versions?


Seriously, you think the Express Card slot is sucking up power when nothing is in it?


Why Express Card getting lopped in here? The clocking difference between the 13"/15" and the 17" is on SATA. Or is better power management suppose to the root cause of every design decision difference between the 3 models? Seriously?

The fact that the inserted SD cards don't sit completely inside the new models means that internal volume is at a extremely high premium. (versus the relatively cavernous space the express card consumed.). Much more likely space not power was an additional contributing factor (besides the ones Apple explicitly give) to evicting Express Card.

Besides... an empty Express Card slot .. nothing better to motivate keeping it than for it to be canonically empty all the time. Don't need a power budget problem if it isn't being used.



Does the hard disk interface really take up so much power that it needs to be downgraded? What is this crap?

Less power also means less heat? Have you looked at airflow and heatpipe dissipation constrains of the design?

[DELLsFan]

Hopefully this will be a firmware tweak. If it's a hardware issue, I'll wait to buy until it is fixed ... as my next MacBook Pro will have an SSD.

[amg99]

Eh, if we make Page 1 news on Tom's Hardware or Anandtech I'd consider it a small victory.

News feed from DailyTech on AnandTech (http://anandtech.com/default.aspx)

Apple 13" MacBook Pro Owners Reporting Possible SATA Speed Caps (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15410)

I guess that's a tiny victory atm. :)

[harshw]

Constructing laptops is all about making compromises. You're sure that the late 2008 and these 2009 13" and 15" have identical thermal constraints?

iFixIt found that the 13" 2008 and 2009 models were identical - a casual glance wouldn't be enough to distinguish between them - except for the battery.

And the new battery is a LiPo which is more resistant to thermal degradation and also its non cylindrical construction is what makes it increase in capacity. Granted that the 60Wh battery might require more thermal consideration than the previous 45Wh battery BUT logic dictates that the charging current/voltage cycle will be kept similar or constant by Apple so as not to shift too far from the existing thermal envelope of the enclosure ( the enclosures are pretty much the same ) Proof of this is that the uMBP 13" charges slower than the uMB 13" and has the same charging voltage (within a .2 volt difference )

[Mackan]

I have to agree with you. It is depressing to see how Apple tends to do this and seemingly in such a way that you feel like you need to buy a top of the line machine to get exactly what you need.

That's Apple in a nutshell. Wonder when people will realize it.

[Unprocessed1]

News feed from DailyTech on AnandTech (http://anandtech.com/default.aspx)

Apple 13" MacBook Pro Owners Reporting Possible SATA Speed Caps (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15410)

I guess that's a tiny victory atm. :)

Here's the beautiful thing for apple right now:

If this was intentional, they can save their asses and pretend it was an honest mistake and make a firmware update (if possible). If they pretend like this isn't a big deal, actual PRO users that want to use a SSD are going to cause an unsavory uproar for Apple.

[parafish13]

whoa...

to me, the computers went from AWESOME + OUT OF MY BUDGET

to AWESOMER + LESS OUT OF MY BUDGET

and that = win.

Just because SSD speeds are lower doesn't mean I'm a cheated or unhappy customer "not getting my money's worth"

random number or not, I would still love a new MPB more than anything else

and for 100% of what I do, my current 1st-gen Macbook is more than fast enough

so stop whining...or...whine, but don't act cheated. I'm a proud Mac user not because of the tech stuff, but because I feel like I got my money's worth from the experience. Apple can do whatever they want (at least so far) and I'm certain my experience won't change one bit from this downgrade.

[t22design]

I'm really enjoying everyone getting their knickers in a twist about a change that virtually nobody is affected by.

Nice one.

[myca]

Burned,

Next refresh we'll get!

USB 1.1
802.11b
10/100 base ethernet
640 X 480 CRT displays
PATA HDs
4X CD Rom
Maybe a floppy too for good measure :)

And many more "Upgrades"!

But seriously though, there's got to be some logical reason, because even though I can't see this crippiling any notebook for the bulk of their userbase, they surely can't have done this on purpose, could they?

Plus I'd imagine SATAII being cheaper to implement now, as it is pretty much the standard, no other vendors use SATA 1.5 anymore, do they?

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm genuinly interested to see if anyone else is selling hardware with SATA 1.5 hardware on there.

[Unprocessed1]

so stop whining...or...whine, but don't act cheated. I'm a proud Mac user not because of the tech stuff, but because I feel like I got my money's worth from the experience. Apple can do whatever they want (at least so far) and I'm certain my experience won't change one bit from this downgrade.

Try spending $2000 on a laptop, only to find out that SSD performance will be hampered, and they're downgrading SATA tech from 3 years ago. And you want to return it to Apple? Just a small $200 fee.

[bit density]

Because of battery issues, and or SATA speed issues, please let me know in the next couple of weeks. If you transfered over anything really cool like Adobe CS4 MasterSuite that would be cool too.

Since your machine sucks so much, I am willing to give you 65 cents on the dollar.

Let me know!

[Lipstick]

whoa...

to me, the computers went from AWESOME + OUT OF MY BUDGET

to AWESOMER + LESS OUT OF MY BUDGET

and that = win.

Just because SSD speeds are lower doesn't mean I'm a cheated or unhappy customer "not getting my money's worth"

random number or not, I would still love a new MPB more than anything else

and for 100% of what I do, my current 1st-gen Macbook is more than fast enough

so stop whining...or...whine, but don't act cheated. I'm a proud Mac user not because of the tech stuff, but because I feel like I got my money's worth from the experience. Apple can do whatever they want (at least so far) and I'm certain my experience won't change one bit from this downgrade.

Funny how people can just go and make posts like this. Grow up, just because it doesn't affect you personally, there's no need to put down users that are otherwise concerned.

[turkay]

News feed from DailyTech on AnandTech (http://anandtech.com/default.aspx)

Apple 13" MacBook Pro Owners Reporting Possible SATA Speed Caps (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15410)

I guess that's a tiny victory atm. :)

from dailytech;

"The thread posted at Mac Rumors is more than 30 pages in length with numerous pages of clutter, though there is some interesting reading material available. DailyTech sent over an e-mail to the Apple support team, but will likely be told no comment until an official statement -- if Apple wants to release one -- is made."

[deconstruct60]

Hi

SATA is a point to point bus.


That is for a single link. Pragmatically those all of the "points" on one end of this network are shared. So in part the SATA speed is driven by the fact going to be multiplexed between multiple devices. Otherwise it would be a complete waste that the bus speed is 2-3x times as fast as what hard drives can typically do.


The 6 gbits/s doesnt have a single controller supporting it yet. No single SSD can saturate the 600 mb/sec mark.


Two points. Folks are twisted up about stuff they are going to buy 2, 3, 4 years from now. What I'm trying to illustrate is that there is no guarantee that the "bleeding edge fastest stuff" is going to be interface compatible with the controllers can buy now. 4 years from now they will exist. In the future there will be USB 3.0 and lots of new stuff (more cores , etc. etc.). The more important part is to look at what can do now with the equipment that exists now (or short term future). If those solve your problems then your in good shape.


Likewise, RAID principles don't stop working once you move to SSD drives. A Controller than can deal with 6 Gb/s is going to be much better at leveraging two 3 Gb/s SSD drives than a controller that can only deal with 3 Gb/s branches. You won't be able to RAID/stripe on the latter as the individual devices on each branch approach 3 Gb/s.




And the 9400m combines Northbridge (MCH) and Southbridge (ICH) functionality. On desktop boards and previous gen Apple laptops, the 9400m provides 2 to 6 SATA 3 ports, supports DDR2 800 to DDR3 1066, integrated graphics and doesn't have much problems doing so. USB 2.0 doesn't consume that much bandwidth ( think DDR3 ) and also the laptop doesnt have as many PCIe connections as a common 9400m equipped desktop board. So I don't really agree with this theory.

So the 9400 is capable of concurrently running all of the interfaces at full speed and concurrently sending all of that data to the CPU ? There is a switch in the 9400. Throw too much concurrency at the switch at the same time and it is easier to saturate it.

Again I think you are looking at individual branches as opposed to what the max bisection bandwidth is. Those are two different things.

Additionally, can package northbridge and southbridge into one phyisical package. That doesn't mean there isn't a single bus path between them in the implementation anymore.

[torbjoern]

Talk about a SHAM! Apple supposedly "lowers" the price of the laptops to make them more affordable but they SECRETLY lower the quality too (and UPGRADE the NAME to PRO????).

Total scam. I'm extremely disappointed by Apple in this bait and switch.

If Apple had revealed the NEW specs and/or EVERYTHING they changed, no problemo...consumers would know what they are buying.

I won't doubt that within days there will be Petitions...heck, maybe even a lawsuit. Sure, some claim that "most users" will not notice the difference in every day use, but when you look at everything Apple changed, more disclosure was needed. Forget about all the "reasons" you believe/feel Apple did this...the fact remains that this is really misleading.

-Eric
So you thought that you would get the "PRO" with BETTER specs and LOWER price?? Since when did Apple give anything away for free?

It's not a scam. It's the buyer's responsibility to figure out the value of the product, not automatically assume this and that. This is business, and Apple has obligations mainly to its shareholders.

Petitions? The sales numbers will speak for themselves.

[Eidorian]

News feed from DailyTech on AnandTech (http://anandtech.com/default.aspx)

Apple 13" MacBook Pro Owners Reporting Possible SATA Speed Caps (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15410)

I guess that's a tiny victory atm. :)Quite the enjoyable Picard face palm as well.

[myca]

Quite the enjoyable Picard face palm as well.

Just about to post the same thing.

Sums up this notebook refresh IMHO.
:p

[harshw]

That is for a single link. Pragmatically those all of the "points" on one end of this network are shared. So in part the SATA speed is driven by the fact going to be multiplexed between multiple devices. Otherwise it would be a complete waste that the bus speed is 2-3x times as fast as what hard drives can typically do.




Two points. Folks are twisted up about stuff they are going to buy 2, 3, 4 years from now. What I'm trying to illustrate is that there is no guarantee that the "bleeding edge fastest stuff" is going to be interface compatible with the controllers can buy now. 4 years from now they will exist.

Likewise, RAID principles don't stop working once you move to SSD drives. A Controller than can deal with 6 Gb/s is going to be much better at leveraging two 3 Gb/s SSD drives than a controller that can only deal with 3 Gb/s branches. You won't be able to RAID/stripe on the latter as the individual devices on each branch approach 3 Gb/s.





So the 9400 is capable of concurrently running all of the interfaces at full speed and concurrently sending all of that data to the CPU ? There is a switch in the 9400. Throw too much concurrency at the switch at the same time and it is easier to saturate it.

Again I think you are looking at individual branches as opposed to what the max bisection bandwidth is. Those are two different things.

Additionally, can package northbridge and southbridge into one phyisical package. That doesn't mean there isn't a single bus path between them in the implementation anymore.


deconstruct60

The point I'm trying to make is ... desktop boards do all the stuff with the 9400m, and have more SATA and PCIe connections - and everything works fine ! But the real clincher is that this all worked fine in the 13" MacBook. What does the 13" MBP have that's new ? A FireWire 800 port and a ExpressCard SD slot. That's 800 mbit/sec and some USB 2 peripheral. That's all that's new. Does it sound like an additional 3 gbits/sec of bandwidth ? Oh and SATA bandwidth figures are unidirectional not for bidirectional throughput.

So it doesnt make sense that Apple chose to cripple the SATA speeds down to 1.5 GBit/sec when they had the bandwidth, had the thermal envelope and had all the mojo in the world

[TEBnewyork]

So you thought that you would get the "PRO" with BETTER specs and LOWER price?? Since when did Apple give anything away for free?

It's not a scam. It's the buyer's responsibility to figure out the value of the product, not automatically assume this and that. This is business, and Apple has obligations mainly to its shareholders.

Petitions? The sales numbers will speak for themselves.

Thanks, but I am one of those impacted and I called Apple. Per Apple care, the SATA speed is considered an undisclosed technical spec. By the way, I am a shareholder and long term that doesn't make me happy.

[turkay]

Next refresh we'll get!

USB 1.1
802.11b
10/100 base ethernet
640 X 480 CRT displays
PATA HDs
4X CD Rom
Maybe a floppy too for good measure :)

And many more "Upgrades"!


Non-user-replaceable battery and now the capped SATA, these are not good news...

[applecultvictim]

Burned,

Next refresh we'll get!

USB 1.1
802.11b
10/100 base ethernet
640 X 480 CRT displays
PATA HDs
4X CD Rom
Maybe a floppy too for good measure :)

And many more "Upgrades"!

But seriously though, there's got to be some logical reason, because even though I can't see this crippiling any notebook for the bulk of their userbase, they surely can't have done this on purpose, could they?

Plus I'd imagine SATAII being cheaper to implement now, as it is pretty much the standard, no other vendors use SATA 1.5 anymore, do they?

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm genuinly interested to see if anyone else is selling hardware with SATA 1.5 hardware on there.

excuse me but this is stupid approach, I am not calling you stupid I am calling the approach you are taking here, so please let's not start a food fight.

I for once think this issue will change soon, it's obviously a matter of some temporary shortage of supplies or so, that :apple: must have been forced to use it. There out for a profit sure, but we are talking here about peanuts...they wouldn't put their reputation at stake for peanuts.

It's a matter of shortage of supplies imo.

[daneoni]

whoa...

to me, the computers went from AWESOME + OUT OF MY BUDGET

to AWESOMER + LESS OUT OF MY BUDGET

and that = win.

Just because SSD speeds are lower doesn't mean I'm a cheated or unhappy customer "not getting my money's worth"

random number or not, I would still love a new MPB more than anything else

and for 100% of what I do, my current 1st-gen Macbook is more than fast enough

so stop whining...or...whine, but don't act cheated. I'm a proud Mac user not because of the tech stuff, but because I feel like I got my money's worth from the experience. Apple can do whatever they want (at least so far) and I'm certain my experience won't change one bit from this downgrade.

Good for you?

[JensenJJ]

1.5Gb/s (gigbit per second) is approximately 150MB/s (megabyte per second). Most if not all hard drives nowadays burst at over 150MB/s. Most SSDs average over 150MB/s read.

i.e. not just spec-whores are getting affected here. Anyone who uses new hardware will.


1.5Gbps is not 150MB/s
If every last MB/s counts, then lets look at the real speed.

1.5Gbps = 192MB/s
3.0Gbps = 384MB/s

Intel® X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive
Bandwidth Sustained sequential read: up to 250 MB/s
Sustained sequential write: up to 170 MB/s

So here 1.5Gbit are still faster then it's write speed, but is 58MB under it's max read speed


Intel® X25-M Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive
Bandwidth Sustained Sequential Read: up to 250 MB/s
Sustained Sequential Write: up to 70 MB/s

And this time 1.5Gbit is MUTCH faster then the write speed, but still not as fast as it's read speed.


But what is it that you have to view that need to send 250MB/s of that to your RAM, that 192MB/s can not do.
you can't connect any thing to the MacBook Pro that can get near the 1.5Gbit/s limet, so it's only for internal use only.

And remember this is it's MAX speed, not it's avage speed

So if you open a 250MB picturer, then on a Intel X25 SSD it will take down to 1sec to load it to the RAM using 3.0Gbps, and down to 1.3sec on a 1.5Gbps
I can see the problem there. If I open 100 pictures of 250MB I can save a total of 30sec.

[*LTD*]

Does anyone actually know why this was done?

[myca]

Non-user-replaceable battery and now the capped SATA, these don't sound good.

Oh don't get me wrong, I think it's a sucky thing with the SATA, the battery I'm 50/50 about.

Maybe it's a simple maths thing.

On the 15"

FW 800 + Expresscard + 3 USB ports = SATAII
FW 800 - Expresscard + SD Slot - 1 of the 3 USB ports = SATA 1.5

On the 13"

No firewire + 2USB ports = SATAII
Firewire 800 + 2USB ports +SD Slot = SATA 1.5

Hmm

Only thing linking it is the SD slot, must be that :p

[turkay]

excuse me but this is stupid approach, I am not calling you stupid I am calling the approach you are taking here, so please let's not start a food fight.

I for once think this issue will change soon, it's obviously a matter of some temporary shortage of supplies or so, that :apple: must have been forced to use it. There out for a profit sure, but we are talking here about peanuts...they wouldn't put their reputation at stake for peanuts.

It's a matter of shortage of supplies imo.

No offence but YOUR approach is tooooooo optimistic and errr.. I guess you got it :cool:

[bit density]

Non-user-replaceable battery and now the capped SATA, these are not good news...

The first makes a better computer for me. PLEASE don't take it away. The second I'll never notice.

But now that it has FIREWIRE, I am actually going to upgrade, and 9400M, and 1Ghz frontside bus, and snazzier wider gamut screen. This all translates into realworld better machine, not to mention longer life.

I am getting mine next week.

The rest of this. Snicker. I am not putting SSD into this machine. And probably the machine that gets SSD will be e-sata. So for me. Tempest in a teapot.

[dmmcintyre3]

How non pro can they make the 15 inch? At what point can you call the 15 inch a MacBook without the pro?

(well I did play with one today at best buy and I liked it except the screen was very much like a mirror. Too bad they did not have a matte 17 inch. but they did not have the 17 inch at all.)

[Unprocessed1]

Thanks, but I am one of those impacted and I called Apple. Per Apple care, the SATA speed is considered an undisclosed technical spec. By the way, I am a shareholder and long term that doesn't make me happy.

Hmmm. Wonder what this will mean?

[Poirot818]

it's obviously a matter of some temporary shortage of supplies or so, that :apple: must have been forced to use it.

It's obviously not a shortage of supplies since it's the same chipset that's being used in the whitebook and that supports 3 Gbit/s speed. But I guess that's how Apple cult victims think.

[myca]

excuse me but this is stupid approach, I am not calling you stupid I am calling the approach you are taking here, so please let's not start a food fight.

I for once think this issue will change soon, it's obviously a matter of some temporary shortage of supplies or so, that :apple: must have been forced to use it. There out for a profit sure, but we are talking here about peanuts...they wouldn't put their reputation at stake for peanuts.

It's a matter of shortage of supplies imo.

Well thank you for not calling me stupid :)

I was making a joke (maybe a stupid joke, I'll hold my hands up to that).

But if you actually read my post I was trying to say that I think (hope) it has to be some sort of oversight or bug, as I don't see any reason for the SATA speed to have been capped.

If it was a suppliers thing/hardware problem and this can't be fixed, then I feel sorry for the people who bought the new notebooks, as I'm guessing all of the ones who are clued up with recent techy trends would have expected SATAII to be working as per norm.

P.S. Check your sarcasm meter before calling someones reasoning stupid in future please :D

[torbjoern]

Non-user-replaceable battery and now the capped SATA, these are not good news...
Maybe the hard-core Apple fanatics don't care all that much about it. I mean... those who owned several macs throughout the 90s and still keep the G3 iMac as a religious artifact in the secret room in their basement (no Fritzl-reference intended), do they care about reduced performance? Do they care about the limitations entailed by the fact that batteries from now on are non-user-removable? The answer is obvious.

I don't mind telling you that a few months' usage of the G3 iMac gave me the allergy to apples for nearly a decade - but those who zealously claimed that it could beat a mainstream Win 3.11 PC at the time (when Win was WIN), are the same ones who buy the new 13" MBP and then trawl the internet for hagiographies about it.

[*LTD*]

Unless you do constant large file copies all day long, this has pretty much zero bearing on actual system performance. Most I/O operations are small, and typically more or less random. SATA link speed doesn't matter in those (majority of) cases.

It's a bit of a perplexing move, but really not worth tearing out your hair over.

[Unprocessed1]

excuse me but this is stupid approach, I am not calling you stupid I am calling the approach you are taking here, so please let's not start a food fight.

I for once think this issue will change soon, it's obviously a matter of some temporary shortage of supplies or so, that :apple: must have been forced to use it. There out for a profit sure, but we are talking here about peanuts...they wouldn't put their reputation at stake for peanuts.

It's a matter of shortage of supplies imo.

Umm so according to your logic, they just decided to ripoff the hardcore buyer's that first bought the updated the MBP's? Your statements contradict each other.