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Apple Hints at a 'Product Transition' and a New Product Soon?

macerroneous said:
You have my concurrence. All our devices will have no optical drives and will be accessing local networks wirelessly.

Therefore, what we need is a beefed up time capsule to act as the server. It's got two hard drives, one is the server, the other is the backup. It's got the optical drive. It might even serve as the docking station for my tablet. It's got to have low margins or no one will buy it.
Click to expand...

It never ceases to amaze me how people who've never created a piece of music or edited a video on their Macs are truly clueless...

Try transferring 8 gig of video over wi-fi from your "server"... or huge full resolution .aif audio files.

Or, God forbid, 40 gig of an HD video presentation.

No, Steve is not getting rid of optical drives... just replacing combo and super drives with blu-ray drives.

And it's about time.

Those of you who enjoy watching downloadable compressed versions of "The Matrix" on your iPhones or video iPods (which should be a criminal offense) will just never get it.

:apple:

nxfxcom said:
Hello,

i would bet my life on the following:

1st. New Apple Cinema Display with build in Camera's (probably higher resolution)
2nd. Blue Ray Drive
3rd. A small update to the PB Range

I would bet 1k, anyone up for a bet ;)
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Anyone who takes that bet against you will lose... I'd say you're right on the money, since these are the things pros have been MOST screaming for for the past two years.

:apple:
 
dstrauss said:
Given Jobs' comment that Apple's competitors won't be able to compete on feature/price level, that leads me to think we are going to see a top to bottom reshuffle of the notebook deck (all with LED backlit LCD):

Mac Tablet, probably 10"-11" all screen device, $1800

MacBook Air, just like current model at $1000-$1200

MacBook Air II, 128gb SSD or 200gb HD, up to 4gb, at $2000

MacBook 13", aluminum, DVD, 250gb, no NVidea, $1500

MacBook 15", up to 320gb, 4gb ram, thinner & lighter, NVidea 256k, $2200

MacBook 17", up to 500gb, 4gb ram, BTO Blu-ray, NVidea 512k, $2700

Now how's that for dreaming and a cohesive product line. Stevie J, my number is 555-666-9999 when you're ready to talk...

PS - the Mac Tablet slides into an iMac type enclosure for docking and 24" monitor support...:D
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I think pricing would be close though...

Tallest Skil said:
Too bad it's not happening. Show me some battery lives in these Blu-ray laptops; I want to see them (can't find any).
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Did you see those new possible enclosures? It might be an indication that BluRay is coming. Larger batter = Better running time. That could mean it's a possibility.


Now I was thinking. What is the most expensive thing Apple has in it's lineup? SSD? Maybe rolling that out across product lines with a similar price compared to HD? With orders that huge, it would bring down the pricing for them across the board. New products would utilize it. Not really a well formed idea, but just a thought.
 
iMacmatician said:
Like what? Apple is already moving away from optical media.

Apple has missed the boat in Blu-ray probably because they don't want to jump on said boat.
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Exactly. Agree 100%.

Personal opinion: Optical media is dead (on computer platform bar video editing) and I wouldn't shell out extra money to have BD on a laptop. I do agree that movies will be delivered on some sort of physical medium for many years to come and we should have an option to attach an appropriate device on our computers for home theatre use.
 
Eric23A said:
What if Apple didn't go Blue-Ray because they're making their own format disc....


Just imagine....

The iDisc

10TB of space with 45 layers ;)
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Oh fricking great... just what we need, another format war, one Apple would lose if they tried it.

Of course, you're kidding....


:apple:
 
xbjllb said:
It never ceases to amaze me how people who've never created a piece of music or edited a video on their Macs are truly clueless...

:apple:
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I concur, I'm an avid (Verb) Final Cut user. As well as Music Collector...


Ergo,


You NEED an optical drive if you do any kind of Film Editing in order to dumb video and or burn video onto a disc... I've done field work and freelancing where I've traveled and I have to edit and burn on the spot. Of course I'm using a MacBook Pro because editing is a "Pro" in terms of specs.

In other words...

Apple Can't discontinue an optical drive in the MacBook Pro lineup because people won't be able to complete their job. And carrying an external drive would just be ridonculous
 
caprica said:
I think you guys aren't thinking outside the box enough :rolleyes:. It wont just be an update to the MBP or the iMac or the iPhone. Think bigger :). It wont be a new ipod or iphone update. think bigger again :eek:.

it will probably be something like:

iMarvin - your plastic pal who is fun to be with
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How about iMarlene... your plastic pal who is REALLY fun to be with:apple:
 
iMacmatician said:
Like what? Apple is already moving away from optical media.

Apple has missed the boat in Blu-ray probably because they don't want to jump on said boat.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and without the crucial 8% marketshare of the computer market (nevermind the living room) that Apple brings to the table, you can expect that boat to start sinking any day now...

Regardless of how well the Apple TV does, Apple will be swimming after said boat in due time. They don't dictate market forces as much as some ppl around here would like to think (just our spending habits). You may envisage yourself multi-touching your way through life on a 8" portable with no moving parts, but for the few ppl that actually use apple computers for a living, bluray drives are actually pretty useful.
 
Tablet

There have been lots of rumors about the Mac Tablet. More or less something like this. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ModBook
mb_tall0508.jpg
 
iMacmatician said:
Like what? Apple is already moving away from optical media.

Apple has missed the boat in Blu-ray probably because they don't want to jump on said boat.
Click to expand...

Well that would go down as the most asinine business decision in history.

For that reason, I'm betting blu-ray across the board.

:apple:
 
iMacmatician said:
Like what? Apple is already moving away from optical media.

Apple has missed the boat in Blu-ray probably because they don't want to jump on said boat.
Click to expand...

Not that I want to get involved with yet another Blu-ray argument but....

Apple is not moving away from optical media. A choice was made not to include a built-in optical disk in the MBA to satisfy a certain niche. It allowed a thinner, lighter, more power efficient form factor. But notice that Apple did offer a portable optical drive to compensate for the lack of a built-in drive.

Apple has not missed any so called boat. They have not even made a choice about any so called boat. BD was not the HD optical media winner until only a few months ago. Slot-loading BD were expensive, used a lot of power, were too big to fit in the thin Apple enclosures, and were not readily available.

Now BD is the clear HD winner. Drives are dropping in price. More people are buying HD content. More video content producers are using HD and need to author HD content on BD.

Let's see what happens this year. Apple most likely will offer BTO BD in pro models and imac.
 
Kinda off topic, but I wouldn't mind a stand alone bluray drive with built in ethernet/wireless that all my Macs could use (yes, appletv too). I don't think the appletv could handle it right now bandwidth wise, but it would be nice. Make it a writer and I'm doubly happy.
 
I believe the remarks made about Product transition refer to their environmental statements regarding their products and their impact on costs & earnings.

"Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in its products, and arsenic in the glass of flat-panel displays by the end of 2008."
-http://www.apple.com/environment/

So new Displays with or without touch capability & iSight seem a given and new notebooks also seem to be a given in this respect. Tweaks to all their products are a given within respect to their environmental goals.

The iPod Touch and iPod line as a whole could be redesigned/redefined also I believe.

Maybe they'll merge the Apple TV and Mac Mini? Who knows but it will be interesting nonetheless.
 
via MDN


So says our source — the same one who tipped us to wireless iTunes Store sales direct to iPod, iPhone a week before Apple debuted it — in staccato fashion:

Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion's haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at "low" price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will. This is some sick ****. App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.
 
MacinJosh said:
Exactly. Agree 100%.

Personal opinion: Optical media is dead (on computer platform bar video editing) and I wouldn't shell out extra money to have BD on a laptop. I do agree that movies will be delivered on some sort of physical medium for many years to come and we should have an option to attach an appropriate device on our computers for home theatre use.
Click to expand...


Dead for you. Not dead for customers who want optical capabilities. Opt out if you will, for built in Blu-ray, but don't tell the rest of us what we want or need. :rolleyes:
 
Something nice and usefull for the macbook and macbook pro would be an ejection system to pop out the cd/dvd drive and put in an extra battery.
So when you're on a day trip and have all youre files and media on the hard drive or on a usb-device (ipod, iphone, usb-stick) you don't need a cd/dvd drive and can put in an extra battery unit that will power youre computer twice as long.

Sounds like a nice idea to me. Hoping for swapping drives and batteries!
 
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