Hi all,
I've been following this thread like a Hawk, as I'm, sure many of you new MBP owners (and potential owners) have also been.
I came across this article posted by ComptuerWorld today and it doesn't look like good news. Industry experts are speculating Apple may have been seeing data error problems at higher I/O rates with the 3Gbit/sec SATA interface. "It may be that those were higher error rates than they preferred," was the comment one expert said.
If this is the case, it's unlikely that apple will upgrade the firmware, assuming they were limiting the interface by software (and not by hardware). Even if they bowed to pressure and released an upgrade, it might translate to higher data error issues at the faster speeds. I really don't want to believe this, but this is the newest interpretation.
I think that we have all but ruled out any battery life and cost savings from downgrading to 1.5 Gb/s and so, assuming this wasn't some glaring oversight on the part of Apple engineers, it seems like a reasonable hypothesis. I must also assume, because none of Apple's current drives saturated the 1.5 Gb/s SATA that they figured it would be a minimal impact to most users. Us DIY upgraders and the like may be out of luck...
What a disaster....
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134529&intsrc=news_ts_head