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

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

 
acfusion29 said:
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.
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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!
 
daneoni said:
HDDs yes...high-end SSDs however can
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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.
 
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.
 
Phil A. said:
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...
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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.
 
torbjoern said:
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!
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Elitism at its finest.
 
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...
 
torbjoern said:
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!
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LOL, makes me feel better now!
 
nws0291 said:
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.
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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.
 
Unprocessed1 said:
All new 13" and 15" MBP's have 1.5.

Only the 17" MBP, white MB, and MBA have 3.0
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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
 
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.
 
Any difference then between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm hard disks for the MacBook Pro 15-inch? Thanks.
 
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.

Nvidia_GeForce_9400_Block_diagram.jpg
 
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 ...
 
WannaGoMac said:
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.
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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.
 
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?
 
Unprocessed1 said:
Maybe he wanted to install a 3rd party SSD, which is both faster and cheaper, like a rational person? Think of that?
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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.
 
Gwardys said:
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.
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Yes ... your new $2k Macbook Pro is worthless. Cancel your order and buy an Acer PC Laptop.
 
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