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.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
13" and 15" MacBook Pros Have a Slower SATA Interface
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
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.
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)!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you have a source with analysis of this? Plus I'm not sure of the definition of real world. That is interesting.
"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."
I said HARD DRIVE not SOLID STATE DRIVE (SSD)
Also - the post I responded to referenced 5400 vs 7200 rpm drives
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.
HaHa, i love Seinfeld
No SSD for you
Was that scene from Seinfeld? OMG how can i not remember that!
Sure: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17010/7
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.
MacBook Pro 17" Model 4,1 has 1.5 only
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]
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]
Attachments
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.
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.
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.
What the heck are you talking about? That statement you quoted was accurate...
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.
- Status