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Apple Finishing Up Work on an Ultra-Thin 15" Notebook

dashiel said:
iCloud and Thunderbolt is the writing on the wall. HDD are the new floppy for Apple; they won’t be a singe Mac with a HDD by 2015. The 17" and MacPro line will be the last to go, but go they will.

Tim Cook said last year the MacBook Air was effectively the future of computing for Apple.
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Whoa. Not so fast. I am not alone in needing 750+ GB on the laptop and that much SSD storage will cost a leg and an arm - likely even in 2015. iCloud - are you joking? Tiered bandwidth pricing and caps, low broadband penetration, iCloud isn't free etc. mean that you will not store 100s of gigs of data in the cloud.
 
As an option to the existing line: Great.
As a replacement: No so great.

MacBook Pros are used by professionals all the time to do video and graphic work. They need the larger capacities that only HDDs can offer right now at anywhere reasonable costs. The cloud is not gonna cut it for editing HD video. Likewise, they need optical drives to burn copies and demos to DVD.

I'm not a video pro. I can do without an optical drive, although I will need an external to rip new additions to my DVD collection. I cannot settle for anything less than the 320 GB drive I have right now. And are Mac users really willing to accept lessor graphics performance when gaming (among other GPU capabilities these days) for the Mac is just starting to pick up? All these issues need to be addressed before Apple goes ans replaces the current MBP line. Otherwise, more and more pros are going to be jumping ship, and for good reason.
 
RichardBeer said:
Downloading software from a centralised cloud source owned by one authority, when there is no other option is simply setting up a situation where the consumer is dependant for the software supplied on the company, in this case Apple. Who can cut your access at their pleasure. And in the case of data, this means a company can access and potentially disseminate your information to whomever they please (regardless of the legality), and cut you off from your OWN data.
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No different than if you game w/ Steam. Also the data, is absolutely no different than Office 365 and Google Docs/Gmail do right now. Everyone already does it.
 
apple will scrap the air and pro product names and just call all apple laptops simply macbooks. the 11" and 13" will be in the air form factor while the 15" and 17" will be at a air/pro hybrid form factor minus the optical drive. I guarantee this is going to happen. I've been hundred percent correct on all my predictions on apple products for a good while now.

before you argue "what about this type of consumer!" and "wait a minute, that doesn't make sense, what about this feature blah blah blah"
the average consumer doesn't care, keyword being average. apple cares about the average consumer 1000% more than they do about tech nerds like all of us that frequent this forum so take your complaining somewhere else.
 
hamidb83 said:
I think it is a great idea. nobody uses optical drives anymore. But I really need my ethernet port :(.
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Wire internet? That's even less useful than an optical drive.
by ditching it they can slim the case down an have two lines:

MBP - Mac Book Pro
MBA - Mac Book Amateur

Seriously - a 15" MBA, with a real processor and large drive would be a nice addition - but Apple seems determined to keep the Air a step below in power to the MBP.
 
Gamoe said:
As an option to the existing line: Great.
As a replacement: No so great.

MacBook Pros are used by professionals all the time to do video and graphic work. They need the larger capacities that only HDDs can offer right now at anywhere reasonable costs. The cloud is not gonna cut it for editing HD video. Likewise, they need optical drives to burn copies and demos to DVD.

I'm not a video pro. I can do without an optical drive, although I will need an external to rip new additions to my DVD collection. I cannot settle for anything less than the 320 GB drive I have right now. And are Mac users really willing to accept lessor graphics performance when gaming (among other GPU capabilities these days) for the Mac is just starting to pick up? All these issues need to be addressed before Apple goes ans replaces the current MBP line. Otherwise, more and more pros are going to be jumping ship, and for good reason.
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It's probably going to have the SSD + HDD combo if the ODD is dropped.
 
RichardBeer said:
I don't see why everyone is so eager to give up physical media. I often use my DVD drive for watching DVDs, I prefer to have a hard copy as it is more reliable in the event of a hardrive crash and it protects my privacy in such a way that cloud storage never can.

Downloading software from a centralised cloud source owned by one authority, when there is no other option is simply setting up a situation where the consumer is dependant for the software supplied on the company, in this case Apple. Who can cut your access at their pleasure. And in the case of data, this means a company can access and potentially disseminate your information to whomever they please (regardless of the legality), and cut you off from your OWN data.

Therefore it seems more secure to use physical media. It also keeps control of the content in the hands of the user. I am surprised that more people do not see the dangers of cloud distribution.
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Have you heard of an external hard drive?
 
Cinch said:
I think there are still some people who want the ability to watch DVDs on their laptop. I do this on my six year old MacBook on rare occasion.
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That's what Handbrake is for. Rip 'em, save 'em. Just don't tell the DMCA. Spirit of the law, you own the discs, right? Right? I've been slowly working on this with our DVD collection. So nice to pull them right through the Apple TV. Besides, I haven't tested this, but I assume you'll have much better battery life playing back an H.264 from iTunes than spinning a disc for 1.5 hours.
 
jennyp said:
These new laptops look great, but they just don't have enough room on them for me. 256GB is just not enough space.
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Funny, my MBA has over 1 TB of available storage :

Code: 
$ df -h | egrep -v "map|devfs"
Filesystem                                Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2                             [B]113Gi[/B]   88Gi   25Gi    79%    /
afp_35Bu7f35Bu7f35Bu7f35Bu7f-2.2d000003  [B]916Gi[/B]  816Gi  100Gi    90%    /Volumes/Public

Internal storage is overrated. I don't need to drag along all my data with me all the time.
 
Yep and everybody blames Apple for recognizing where the future is going.

*LTD* said:
It's already happening elsewhere.

http://www.neowin.net/news/ford-motor-company-begins-to-kill-off-cd-players
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I'm beginning to believe all these people complaining about optical this and optical that, drive Chryslers. The real it is I use my optical very little and would certainly settle for an external when I need it. The rational is pretty simple really, hopefully we will have extra internal room for secondary storage. Because frankly I have to carry external storage devices every day to support my data needs, I'd much rather have that capability internal to the laptop than to waste space for an optical.
 
AppleDroid said:
This is the most ridiculous retort to an obvious baiting comment. Why do it? And even if someone has a source, that doesn't agree with your opinion, you can just claim "bias" and push it off as "unreliable".
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don't know if he was baiting, i'm kinda afraid he was being serious
 
Graphics professional here, still use optical drives very much at work and at home... it's much more affordable than buying USB keys and giving them to customers. I'm sure they'll be phased out eventually, but in the meantime I dislike attaching a lot of drives and carting them around, and cloud storage is not an option when you are not within range of a wifi signal. Hell, in some of the places I go, dial-up is a luxury. Anyways, glad my 15" MBP should be arriving tomorrow or the next day.

(FWIW, I drive an Accord in the winter and an assortment of bicycles from April to November.)
 
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parapup said:
Whoa. Not so fast. I am not alone in needing 750+ GB on the laptop and that much SSD storage will cost a leg and an arm - likely even in 2015. iCloud - are you joking? Tiered bandwidth pricing and caps, low broadband penetration, iCloud isn't free etc. mean that you will not store 100s of gigs of data in the cloud.
Click to expand...

I wouldnt even want to store all my files in a single place somewhere on the net. I need my files with me at all times. What happens when you don't have an internet connection?

To say hard drives/ssds are dead is very very ignorant.
 
This late 2008 unibody MacBook of mine works like a champ, but I swear, the minute this thing dies, I'm headed straight for the Apple Store to buy an Air.
 
I bet they will make the 11, 13 and 15 inch MacBook airs the new lineup of MacBooks.

Then sometime down the line the MacBook Pros will start approaching the same sleek design.
 
dashiel said:
People said the same thing when they axed the floppy and legacy ADB/SCSI ports from the iMac in favor of USB. Sometimes consumers need to be told what to do and the industry needs to be dragged forward, even if they are kicking and screaming.

I think your assertion about using the Apple store correct, but inaccurate. I can’t recall the last time I purchased software in a physical format, but I think it was likely Macromedia Flash 5 so you’re talking 10-11 years ago. In a world of nearly ubiquitous connection to the internet disc based software is an anachronism; it’s bad for the user and bad for the developer.
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I totally agree, I think that the majority of consumers really don't know what they want to an extent. I think that is what Apple is doing, and that sales are a sign that they are doing something right. I think, perhaps those who visit theses forums and are more technically oriented may make more of a fuss over it than the ordinary consumer.
 
35$ solves the lack of internal ODD :

27-151-231-Z01
 
Maybe they'll come out with a 17" MBA too. Apple seems to be pulling the optical drives so maybe the next MBP revision will blend with the Airs? 11", 13", 15" & 17" Macbook Airs.
 
OK great! Finally!

i emailed Steve about this over a year ago. I told him, "If you build it, I will buy one." I never got a response... but nonetheless- I am glad he put plan to action!

Took a LITTLE longer than I had hoped, but hey- beggars can't be choosers- am I right? Right!

So hey- Steve- nice work. Glad you took my advice. Can't wait to buy it!
 
Ditching DVD drive has many pluses for apple.

It obviously allows thinner mac, better battery life, etc etc. Another plus that others haven't mentioned is how frequently the dvd drives go bad.

Of the laptops (non apple and apple) I see at work, dvd drive is one of the most likely to fail during the 3 year. On top of that I'm sure there's lots of people use the internal dvd drive as cd/dvd player, which puts more strain on the component. Sure simple fix, but still more calls/visits to apple support, adding more support cost.

Too many pluses for apple not to speed up ditching of dvd drives.
 
RichardBeer said:
I don't see why everyone is so eager to give up physical media. I often use my DVD drive for watching DVDs, I prefer to have a hard copy as it is more reliable in the event of a hardrive crash and it protects my privacy in such a way that cloud storage never can.
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Ah but one can create their own personal 'cloud', server, ect... I have probably only used my optical drive half a dozen times. All of my media is either on my hard driver or an external drive. I can't be bothered with physical media, the capacity just isn't there.
 
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