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13" and 15" MacBook Pros Have a Slower SATA Interface
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Apple has been contacted, But its is a weekend, and we won't hear anything until atleast tomorrow. I won't expect any fix tomorrow unless they were aware of it before the keynote.
wow.
you guys have to realize that you don't need SATA 3... Sata 1.5 is good enough for you because apple says. Just like they said, people don't need firewire.
/sarcasm
Apple is managing to screw every unibody MBP owner out there on every REVISION. 1) first gen unibody owners(me) find out we can't upgrade to 8gb ram. Macbook users lose their firewire port 2) MB users get bad screens, few months later, MB get a name change and get the firewire port back. 3)MBP lose their express card and now we find out they get sata 1.5
Let me guess...on the next revision, they will give back sata3.0, the express card slot back but the users will find out their macbook pro doesn't come with a keyboard ah who really needs a keyboard anyways, trackpad is enough
you guys have to realize that you don't need SATA 3... Sata 1.5 is good enough for you because apple says. Just like they said, people don't need firewire.
/sarcasm
Apple is managing to screw every unibody MBP owner out there on every REVISION. 1) first gen unibody owners(me) find out we can't upgrade to 8gb ram. Macbook users lose their firewire port 2) MB users get bad screens, few months later, MB get a name change and get the firewire port back. 3)MBP lose their express card and now we find out they get sata 1.5
Let me guess...on the next revision, they will give back sata3.0, the express card slot back but the users will find out their macbook pro doesn't come with a keyboard ah who really needs a keyboard anyways, trackpad is enough
Just out of curiosity, what are the SATA specs of the rest the Mac line? Does the Mac Pro even have 3.0 gb/s SATA? What about iMac?
For the record, this thread made me loose my faith in humanity. All this bitching over a single spec? I live in California where we are asses-to-elbows in debt and we'll probably run out clean drinking water in 20 years*. So the latest and greatest offerings from Mac are NOT, in fact, the latest and greatest? Don't buy it. Buy the last gen MBP off craigslist or ebay that has 3.0. Get some perspective.
* - the rest of the world will follow shortly after
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/17/water.crisis/
I do not apologize for going off topic.
For the record, this thread made me loose my faith in humanity. All this bitching over a single spec? I live in California where we are asses-to-elbows in debt and we'll probably run out clean drinking water in 20 years*. So the latest and greatest offerings from Mac are NOT, in fact, the latest and greatest? Don't buy it. Buy the last gen MBP off craigslist or ebay that has 3.0. Get some perspective.
* - the rest of the world will follow shortly after
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/17/water.crisis/
I do not apologize for going off topic.
I bought a Corsair 256 GB SSD for my late 2008 MBP and it was the best update I have ever bought for any computer. This thing ROCKS. Both read and write speeds over 200 MB/s.
My MBP boots in under 10 seconds, shutdown is less than 3 seconds, and all of my apps launch before the associated icon completes one bounce in the dock. It is really incredible. My 2.8 GHz core 2 duo extreme MBP feels much faster than my 3.0 GHZ Octo mac pro because it boots faster and the GUI is so responsive. I wish I could buy a 500 GB SATA SSD for my MacPro but I don't think it is compatible with the smaller drive.
I feel sorry for all the people who can only run at 1.5 SATA rather than 3.0 SATA. Apple needs to fix this right away on their so-called pro machine.
it's not so much a spec(read my post above) it's just that apple is developing a track record for removing things they shouldn't. Why in the world would they remove firewire and bring it back? why can't first gen unibody owners upgrade to 8gb? why did they downgrade the sata port? why did they remove the express card slot?
apple is not a perfect company and there is no such thing as a perfect laptop but when apple does these silly things that make no sense at all, they have to get called out on it.
YES there are bigger things to worry about, but I think it's right for people to be ticked off about it. Apple needs to hear this so that they don't make a habit about doing dumb decisions like this...especially on a product aimed at working professionals.
The laptops, should have changed the name to macbook and dropped the "pro" part, instead of the other way around.
I think the problem with this decision is one of the future and not the present. Currently SSDs are way too expensive for the average user to consider purchasing. In most cases people are satisfied with their stock 5400 drive and I would even say the majority of people are completely oblivious to the benefits of an SSD. This, however, will change within the next 2 years. SSDs are going to be the standard before we know it and if today's top models (i.e. Intel X25-M) are being prevented from optimizing performance by the 1.5 interface, imagine a year or two down the line.
And before people bombard me with the "what you buy today will be obsolete tomorrow" argument, please take a minute to understand that many people consider buying a computer over $1000 as an enormous investment and fully intend to use them for the next 3-5 years. I mean Apple offers AppleCare for 3 years correct? I have to assume that this means that even they believe a computer is an investment for at least that amount of time. In 3 years SSDs are going to be cheap, they are going to be exponentially faster than today's models, and they will probably come preinstalled on all stock models.
Yes, technology advances rapidly. Yes, there will always be something better and faster on the horizon. Yes, people need to understand that when they make a technological purchase. But this is something that we can actually see the shelf life on. I won't be surprised if in 3 years the 3.0 interface won't be able to handle the fastest SSDs on the market but I know the 1.5 interface is already limiting today's models. Whenever possible, Apple (or any company for that matter) should include technology that gives it's consumers confidence that they will be able to benefit from the major technological advancements in the years to come. And in this case, it is most certainly possible...
And before people bombard me with the "what you buy today will be obsolete tomorrow" argument, please take a minute to understand that many people consider buying a computer over $1000 as an enormous investment and fully intend to use them for the next 3-5 years. I mean Apple offers AppleCare for 3 years correct? I have to assume that this means that even they believe a computer is an investment for at least that amount of time. In 3 years SSDs are going to be cheap, they are going to be exponentially faster than today's models, and they will probably come preinstalled on all stock models.
Yes, technology advances rapidly. Yes, there will always be something better and faster on the horizon. Yes, people need to understand that when they make a technological purchase. But this is something that we can actually see the shelf life on. I won't be surprised if in 3 years the 3.0 interface won't be able to handle the fastest SSDs on the market but I know the 1.5 interface is already limiting today's models. Whenever possible, Apple (or any company for that matter) should include technology that gives it's consumers confidence that they will be able to benefit from the major technological advancements in the years to come. And in this case, it is most certainly possible...
ditto, my late 2007 whitebook shows the same.
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Then who was phone?
My 2007 iMac has 3Gb Sata. My old PC that ive had for 7 years has a motherboard and a Sata 3.0 drive. it's not like this is a new technology... It's been a standard for almost a decade.
Btw, I just came back from 5th ave Apple store in NYC, and only 1 guy was aware of this, and he basically told me to get a previous model... Just like they decided to take out Express Card cause little amount of people use it, they decided to remove Sata 3.0...
TOTALLY UNCOMPARABLE IMHO.
Everyone call apple tomorrow 1-800-My-Apple and ask if its upgradable. i know I will.
My point was that he's talking about a storage medium at 1$ per gigabyte which is retardedly expensive, especially vs 9c per GB. You missed the point.
LOL this is hilarious, look at all these people arguing that you don't need sata II, they will defend apple to the death.
Look, we know we don't really need it. The point is that it has been the standard for years and years and to downgrade at this point would be the same thing as removing the video out port because only 1% of users use it and replacing it with a parallel port because you can print with that.
It's just stupid.
Look, we know we don't really need it. The point is that it has been the standard for years and years and to downgrade at this point would be the same thing as removing the video out port because only 1% of users use it and replacing it with a parallel port because you can print with that.
It's just stupid.
Why should Apple bother? If the resistance to common EE design principles, techniques, and laws of physics evidenced in this forum is the buzzsaw they'd run into, then that will be painful. Time spent doing that versus working on the next gen MacBooks. .... they should work on the next gen MacBooks.
When people draw conclusions and then construct arguments to support their conclusion, it is often pointless to present a case that deduces from the constraints that Apple followed if worked forward in making constraint trade-offs. When folks don't want something to be true you can be surprised how much they don't listen.
They explained why they dropped ExpressCard and there is still 50 pages of how that can't be true from folks who haven't conclusively exhibited a better grip on the overall market (i.e., all Mac Book Pros sold to everyone; not just them and their niche community ) than Apple.
It would might be nice to do. I have doubts as to the effect though. There will always be a set of disgruntled, back seat drivers around.
Posts like this guys are just stupid. My $200 Dell Mini 9 has support for SATA II, a card reader, an SSD, etc. You can buy 5 of these for the price of the cheapest macbook pro so get real.
Apple Tax is real whether people believe it or not. So what's next, floppy drives instead of hard drives? Are we supposed to accept crap because they don't list the specs? How about the crappy screens on all the previous macbooks? Now that apple has finally put a decent screen in it, everyone is brainwashed to think that the new mbp is the greatest laptop ever.
For you information in reality your new mbp is actually inferior to my old mbp that has a decent screen, expresscard, 3.0 SATA, and the list goes on.
Clock speed is not everything.
Apple Tax is real whether people believe it or not. So what's next, floppy drives instead of hard drives? Are we supposed to accept crap because they don't list the specs? How about the crappy screens on all the previous macbooks? Now that apple has finally put a decent screen in it, everyone is brainwashed to think that the new mbp is the greatest laptop ever.
For you information in reality your new mbp is actually inferior to my old mbp that has a decent screen, expresscard, 3.0 SATA, and the list goes on.
Clock speed is not everything.
Just to keep people on track here, you are talking about SATA2 with 3Gb transfer not SATA3 which isn't at all main stream yet
I understand but your also talking about to different things. I can buy Diesel cheeper then regular right now, But there is no point in having 1,000,000 liters of diesel for my Gas civic. meaning it doesn't matter how cheap you got 3.5 in HDD's for a bench system if we are talking about portable options for a portable system.
What a convenient supporting example to pop up.
....
Gee Apple you made a reasonable design choice to probably save on power... slower but no real impact on my work.
..... errrr but ...
Yet another exceedingly dubious analogy that doesn't fit the situation in the slightest.
You do still have a video port.
It just doesn't support 8640x5400 LCDs. on their laptops.
But then practically nobody has 8640x5400 LCDs and won't for many, many, many, years into the future.
The "Apple you should pick the design choices that other folks made because those other folks made them".... sure Oh wow that is a going to make them do an about face. Several folks probably works months on this after doing some hardcore research. Complete waste, just copy what everyone else is doing. Because all of those other folks have 7-8 hour laptops with 5 years of battery life. Maybe, just maybe, the folks at Apple are competent and have slightly different objectives than that meet 'right now' needs rather than mythical hardware from the future.
....
Gee Apple you made a reasonable design choice to probably save on power... slower but no real impact on my work.
..... errrr but ...
Yet another exceedingly dubious analogy that doesn't fit the situation in the slightest.
You do still have a video port.
It just doesn't support 8640x5400 LCDs. on their laptops.
But then practically nobody has 8640x5400 LCDs and won't for many, many, many, years into the future.
The "Apple you should pick the design choices that other folks made because those other folks made them".... sure Oh wow that is a going to make them do an about face. Several folks probably works months on this after doing some hardcore research. Complete waste, just copy what everyone else is doing. Because all of those other folks have 7-8 hour laptops with 5 years of battery life. Maybe, just maybe, the folks at Apple are competent and have slightly different objectives than that meet 'right now' needs rather than mythical hardware from the future.
We all know that standard sized HDD drives for desktop machines are the least expensive storage method.
But the point you failed to get was we are talking SSD drives for portables. The speeds are faster than HDD, the energy use is less, the size is smaller, and there are no moving parts to wear out. That is why even 2$ per GB is not expensive if you want those specs and a standard HDD can't meet that requirement. 9 cents per GB is great but it isn't applicable to laptops or for those who want 200 MB/s read/write speeds.
I'm so getting the previous 15" unibody if the Apple rep tells me tomorrow that this issue is not firmware fixable... People like me who planned on installing SSD and replacing the optical bay with another one or 500GB HDD will certainly not be happy once they find out about this.
I don't disagree with you at all here. In every product made by every company, there are always those who are not completely happy. I don't see it as a bad thing, sometimes the calls for improvements are justified and sometimes they're just petulant.
My problem with this change (SATA) is that it seems a completely unnecessary one to me and most others who have observed the situation.
Whilst I know that Apple do not care about about my individual opinion, objection to their previous decisions has been successful in the case of the transparency menu bar in Leopard and more recently, the reintroduction of Firewire in the 13" MacBook Pro.
Whilst it may have had a slight name change, this product (13" MBP) is still aimed at the exact same person as it was, when it was a Unibody MacBook.
They can't address every single thing that people pick out as wrong in their products, no doubt about that. But this decision or mistake in the MacBook Pro lineup (excluding 17") just doesn't make any sense, particularly at a time where SSD drives are starting to become the more popular choice for the 'advanced' user - hell, Apple even includes them as an option in BTO, so they're fully aware of what is happening in the market.
They can deal with this situation in one of two ways, they acknowledge and explain it or they just go on about their business. This time around, asking for an explanation on this is valid. At least in my opinion.
If they go on about their business and don't say a word then that's fine - I will be returning my MacBook Pro and I'm sure others will too; some already have. My problem is not the "great SATA speed decline of 2009" but rather a sneaky little downgrade that wasn't justified or explained - if that turns out to be the case in the next couple of days.
are you a pro user? did you buy the new MBP?
was it also a design choice to save battery life to remove the firewire port & give lousy screens to last gen MB users? was it also a design choice to remove the express card and put back the firewire port?
i mean seriously, how much battery life are you saving by providing sata1.5 port? couln't they just give you a 3.0 port and slow it down to Sata 1.5 with a pin.
Why can't you(and everyone else) just admit that it was wrong for apple to downgrade the port. Instead of making excuses for them.
I can't wait to read what apple officially has to say on this issue. I am sure it'll go along the lines of "non pro users don't need a sata3 port" I am guessing it'll be back within a year, along with the express card slot
I have searched Google and there seems to have a difference: 7200 rpm seems better than 5400 rpm:
http://www.barefeats.com/hard56.html
This is really bad unless it can be corrected via firmware. Most Apple users don't mind paying Apple's 30% margins because they usually deliver great technology. It's odd that Apple keeps the Macbook Pros at the forefront of performance on things like CPUs, chipsets, Firewire 800, battery technology, etc but then goes and does crap like this.
These are expensive machines labeled "Pro", and for the price we are paying they should not have 4 year old components.
Popular higher-end consumer SSDs (Intel X25M, OCZ Vertex/Summit, Corsair P256, Samsung, etc) have sequential read speeds over 200-220MB/sec, and some also have sequential write speeds over the 150MB limit of SATA I. Even many of the older-generation, crappy drives with the JMicron controller have sequential read speeds over 150MB/sec.
Additionally, even "power users" like to keep their Macs for many years. The SSD market is moving so fast that within another 12-18 months I'm sure new consumer drives from Intel, OCZ, Samsung, etc will already be saturating the 300MB/sec of SATA II. Just imagine what will be cutting edge in 2-3 years from now. Who wants to be left behind?
Whats important is that we wait for a comprehensive review/analysis. Even for those with good SSD*, the only time this will make a significant difference (>10%) is when either making a copy of large files or transferring large files from the SSD to another drive. And at least for now, the fastest consumer SSDs only reach read speeds of a bit over 200MB/sec at the maximum, so being bottlenecked at 150MB/sec will really only be noticeable when moving huge files or say making an image of the entire drive. Additionally, unless you are transferring files to a RAID array or a blazing fast external SSD, it won't matter because even the fastest harddrives (and most consumers SSDs) can't write at 150MB/sec.
edit: Unfortunately, it is looking worse than I had expected. New comparisons of SSD performance in old MB Pros vs new MB Pros show a major performance degradation in the new models!
-----------
* BTW, if you are looking for an SSD, I recommend the OCZ Vertex 120GB/$375 or 250GB/$725. Also, the Corsair P256 (256GB) is good as well. The Intel drives are very fast as well, but are 50-100% more per GB than OCZ, Corsair, Samsung, etc.
These are expensive machines labeled "Pro", and for the price we are paying they should not have 4 year old components.
Popular higher-end consumer SSDs (Intel X25M, OCZ Vertex/Summit, Corsair P256, Samsung, etc) have sequential read speeds over 200-220MB/sec, and some also have sequential write speeds over the 150MB limit of SATA I. Even many of the older-generation, crappy drives with the JMicron controller have sequential read speeds over 150MB/sec.
Additionally, even "power users" like to keep their Macs for many years. The SSD market is moving so fast that within another 12-18 months I'm sure new consumer drives from Intel, OCZ, Samsung, etc will already be saturating the 300MB/sec of SATA II. Just imagine what will be cutting edge in 2-3 years from now. Who wants to be left behind?
Whats important is that we wait for a comprehensive review/analysis. Even for those with good SSD*, the only time this will make a significant difference (>10%) is when either making a copy of large files or transferring large files from the SSD to another drive. And at least for now, the fastest consumer SSDs only reach read speeds of a bit over 200MB/sec at the maximum, so being bottlenecked at 150MB/sec will really only be noticeable when moving huge files or say making an image of the entire drive. Additionally, unless you are transferring files to a RAID array or a blazing fast external SSD, it won't matter because even the fastest harddrives (and most consumers SSDs) can't write at 150MB/sec.
edit: Unfortunately, it is looking worse than I had expected. New comparisons of SSD performance in old MB Pros vs new MB Pros show a major performance degradation in the new models!
-----------
* BTW, if you are looking for an SSD, I recommend the OCZ Vertex 120GB/$375 or 250GB/$725. Also, the Corsair P256 (256GB) is good as well. The Intel drives are very fast as well, but are 50-100% more per GB than OCZ, Corsair, Samsung, etc.
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