well this is kind of odd, but i've been getting this mens magazine called "complex" randomly in the mail and today they had a laptop feature in it. they have the dell xps 1330, a vaio, the macbook pro, and a macbook. funny enough the macbook is listed as 13", its aluminum just like the pro's, and is listed as $1,499. the "latch" so to speak doesn't look anything like the pro's, it looks magnetic like the macbooks. anyway could be a photoshop job on a macbook, but the specs and the latch make me think of all this new thin laptop buzz. maybe i can get my roomate to scan the page if no one else has caught this.
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Apple Ultra-Portable MacBook Rumor Roundup
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Really simple.
Any small notebook without an optical has a small external optical either standard or available for a small fee. This is used for OS installation, watching DVDs in the hotel or dorm room, burning things, etc. A typical external is about the size of a DVD jewel box - they're simply laptop drives with a USB/power cable.
For other file exchanges, use the network or a USB thumb drive.
If that's not good enough - then nobody's forcing you to buy the ultra-portable. Buy a bigger, clunkier and heavier laptop with an internal optical drive.
Lots of people, however, seldom use the optical drive and would rather have something smaller and lighter with better battery life. (Not that the DVD uses that much power, but removing the DVD gives room for a larger battery as well.)
Flash memory might no be what everyone expects
i was watching a video on youtube and the guy was showing the few laptops that use Nand flash memory, these laptops were very expensive and he said that since apple has been able to make the ipod hard drives so small, that they'll probably be able to include it in the ultra portable, as the flash memory could make the laptop very expensive due to the fact that it is new technology, thus drawing consumers away from the laptop, and since its very portable my guesses is that most college business and university students will have their eye one it, so having flash memory with a big price tag, may be something to consider, i mean how will it sell if its so expensive. Anyways like everyone else im just speculating , i just look forward to seeing what tricks apple has up their sleeve for this ultra portable
i was watching a video on youtube and the guy was showing the few laptops that use Nand flash memory, these laptops were very expensive and he said that since apple has been able to make the ipod hard drives so small, that they'll probably be able to include it in the ultra portable, as the flash memory could make the laptop very expensive due to the fact that it is new technology, thus drawing consumers away from the laptop, and since its very portable my guesses is that most college business and university students will have their eye one it, so having flash memory with a big price tag, may be something to consider, i mean how will it sell if its so expensive. Anyways like everyone else im just speculating , i just look forward to seeing what tricks apple has up their sleeve for this ultra portable
No offense but something like that mac in touch would be the biggest blunder EVER in the history of the computers, second only to the "cube" as you would have arm fatigue in less than an hour.
The only way this would ever, EVER work, would be if the touch was at an angle on the desk where you looked down and even then, your neck would get strained. I just don't see how the so called touch would ever be successful unless it was more like a mixer and you looked "down" toward it. Then maybe it would be a good product. Try holding your arm out for 15 minutes....see how bad it gets. The product would have to be down, like a mixer.
cheers
You have GOT to be kidding me. You can think of NO WAY to angle a tablet to avoid arm fatigue??
...you really are a PC user, aren't you?
Never think outside of the box. It could scare you.
Incase you have been living in the 90's for the past decade, there are wireless mice and keyboard you can conjoin to a stand-held ultra portable that turns it into a trimmed down iMac. -_-; Good lord. As for a tablet used in work when you unhook, it is in your lap and you use a stylus to write, or a pop up keyboard like the iPhone.
I suppose you still have the mullet. Billy Ray Cyrus is gone, man. Kurt Cobain is dead. We have wireless connectivity and multi-touch now. Someone invented a table and humans can sit, producing what is known as 'a lap'. Pay attention!
The biggest problem is the OS. Apple makes the cash from the OS. So unless they can sell OS to these things, they are kind of less than great business. Then again, they aren;t selling OS to iPhones either... yet.
WIRELESS. The portable would have to download through WIFI.
And an external drive hook up would work, but I suspect Apple would want simplicity. The ultrportable is probably still inbetween too much development and experimentation to become viable this January. I believe they will strt making flash-software sales sometime, or perhaps something similar, to replace the clunky, mechanical optical drives from all machines. But, that's perhaps 2 or 3 years off.
I remember a SONY interview in 1989 on radio. Some high exec was saying that now with CDs people are seeing stuf Sony and others have worked on for decades. The CD woud be replaced by a higher density disk around 2000 and then in 2012 they were planning to replace all that crap with tiny little chips the size of your pinky nail that will hold 1000 CDs worth of music, if needed.... I suspect the FLASH chips will be the next commercial step. Plug and play - no motors.
Edit - or the solution is IN THE STAND. If the ultra-portable is a detachable item from a stand, the stand has a DVD optical drive, charger, connections for corded mice/keyboard and maybe some other stuff in it. The monitor is the computer....you take it away in the office/school/etc and do work. THAT would be the solution for this time in the technology. DETACHABLE iMAC, basically.
...NAH....never will work. REDSOX claims it woul be a blunder to have a computer that can sit and move with you. Silly idea, really. No one wants to MOVE with a computer. The laptop was invented so we have to sit down and use the computer, not walk and use it. Best to use a pen and paper when on the move.
what i'd love to see is a macbook DS
think about it
with the multi touch technology they have now with the iphone. a laptop that changes it's keyboard area depending on the program your in. that would be awesome.
NAND comes up to 128GB which is enough, if not just put 2 in
it would need to be a pro to deal with the graphical issues with the dual touch screen. it would just be so cool cos you could hold it like a book or a laptop and the sensors would switch like an iphone.
it would be expensive but i'd buy one!
plus i'd love to see a sim card slot like the iphone so that i can take out my sim from my phone and use it in my mac to get the internet connection on the go. (or thethering from the iphone)
this could be the biggest leap in portable computing, dont let us down Steve!
and if your going to... employ me and i'll make good groundbreaking macs for you!
I kind of disagree with your specifics, but I agree in the direction you are thinking.
This January will most likely be just another laptop announcement. I do think that Apple is moving in a certain direction. Right now, it would be almost useless as a lone computer. When technology catches up with the idea, it will take off.
People sometimes take issue with Apple sacrificing function for form. I disagree. It's the idea of a better form that motivates technology to advance to the point that it can be contained in a given form. Otherwise function would only get cheaper, and we'd all have computers the size of houses.
But with specific regard to the Apple ultra-portable, It's clear that we don't have a a clear definition of what exactly an ultra-portable is. People are talking about size, weight, what to sacrifice, what to keep. These are all mislead ides.
If Apple ever releases something it calls "Ultra-Portable," there will be a very heavy emphasis on the literal meaning of the words. The big question is, "An Ultra-Portable What?" Laptop? Desktop? Ultra-Portable is only an adjective. It needs a noun.
What we will eventually see is what amounts to a monitor. At home you set it in a stand (that also happens to be a docking-station/charger, and lets you connect to your gigabit network, 5 TB HD, Blu-Ray burner, the coffee maker, etc.)
When on the road, the "monitor" folds in half. The bottom or top or left or right or wherever serves as a multi-touch keyboard, and the rest of it is screen space. Portrait mode for typing, landscape for video/graphics editing--whatever. It doesn't matter how you use it. You can use it anyway you want. Thus, a "12-inch" laptop becomes . . . well, literally, twice that in terms of usable space. Hell, maybe even 10 inches. Who knows what the design specs will be.
But that is the direction Apple is moving in. January? Probably not. But we might very well see something that moves in that direction.
Everyone who read this now owes me 2¢. And 50 years from now, when MicroApple actually releases the product I described, I get to say I told you so.
-MacV
I have questions about your assertion that Apple makes "the cash" from the OS. Yeah, It's probably true that the OS helps to sell the hardware, but an OS that costs 130 bucks every 2 years (give or take) isn't a whole lot of cash compared to hardware sold at a premium. Especially given that Apple's hardware tends to be long-lived.
Compare Apple to MS, and I think you come up with two very different business models. Apple uses a "cheap" OS to sell expensive hardware. MS uses cheap PC manufacturers to sell an expensive OS.
Either way, I don't have the figures to say that you are flat-out wrong, but I do think that Apple isn't exactly making bank from OS sales alone.
As far as using wifi to download software, well, your computer has to boot in order to access storage, load drivers, get an IP, mount a volume, and update the system software.
What if your system doesn't boot?
That's not to say that I am against dropping the optical drive. I do think the "wireless solution" is bit shortsighted though. If Apple would drop the expense of the optical drive in favor of another, more advanced technology, I'd be happy with it. I'm guessing the OS reinstall would be handled by flash drive.
If I get enough extra out of what I get instead, I'll be perfectly happy to buy and external drive . . . and so would a lot of people. Some people just want to rip CDs. Go get an external for 20 bucks. Some people want blu-ray drives. Go get one for 600 bucks or whatever they cost today.
That doesn't allow for the most elegant solution, but it does allow you to get exactly what you want/need. If Apple does release a notebook without an optical drive in Jan., you can bet there will be an Apple-branded external available.
here it is:
No more than another rumour...
Picked it up via Complex here: http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/ultraportable_macbook_coming_your_way.php
No more than another rumour...
Picked it up via Complex here: http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/ultraportable_macbook_coming_your_way.php
Didn't I say "network" in my reply?
Also, WiFi doesn't solve the "watch a DVD" problem in general.
If you're at home and there's another PC around, you could use network access and use the DVD drive in the PC as long as it's not in use. In the hotel, no solution works as well as a small external DVD drive.
No offense but something like that mac in touch would be the biggest blunder EVER in the history of the computers, second only to the "cube" as you would have arm fatigue in less than an hour.
The only way this would ever, EVER work, would be if the touch was at an angle on the desk where you looked down and even then, your neck would get strained. I just don't see how the so called touch would ever be successful unless it was more like a mixer and you looked "down" toward it. Then maybe it would be a good product. Try holding your arm out for 15 minutes....see how bad it gets. The product would have to be down, like a mixer.
cheers
Dude, the stand would be only for those times where you want to to type to the thing in a traditional manner. The rest of the time its in your hands. The stand is only for a visual reference. Look up the other mactouch prototype mockups over at gizmodo for a better idea on what a mactouch should be like.
Yes, but those iMacs had optical drives instead so a floppy drive was not crucial any more. If optical drives are removed for this sub-portable, then what replaces the optical drive?
SD cards or Flash drives
What are you talking about? Who said anything about someone not forcing somebody to buy a sub-portable Mac? I certainly didn't. I asked a question, and your post failed to answer it, so maybe you were a little confused by the question.
I was responding to 'I Was The One' who said that people doubted that Apple would remove floppy drives from iMac's in 1998, but I said that with optical drives, floppy drives were not necessary. If optical drives are removed from a sub-portable, then what replaces the optical drive? I don't mean added USB and firewire external devices either.
If the answer is that nothing replaces the optical drive unless external devices are purchased, then that would have answered my question.
So... This is likely just going to be a 12'' MacBook Pro, right? That is, this sub-notebook won't have a new name, right?
I wonder if they will also have a cheaper 12'' MacBook for the consumers...
I wonder if they will also have a cheaper 12'' MacBook for the consumers...
I honestly don't see my PowerBook 12" as a 'subnotebook' of any kind. It's not that light, and it looks and works just like a slightly underpowered 'normal' PowerBook.
I don't know wether I'd like to see a remake of this PowerBook 12". The touchscreen device sounds way cooler, and more useful.
I don't know wether I'd like to see a remake of this PowerBook 12". The touchscreen device sounds way cooler, and more useful.
I do hope so. "just" a 12" or 13" Macbook Pro, nothing more nothing less. Offcourse with a slightly changed design and a user removable HD. And please no magnetic latch since it make scratches on the surface like on my Macbook.
Well... starting at $1099 the Macbook is not to expensive in my opinion. Making it cheaper can also means making compromises in parts, so we get bad reports in the media again like "Apple macbook tft screen faults" bla bla bla. Apple is (should be!) about quality and a little bit exclusivity. For me it should stay like that and quality first class. Like steve says himself "we want to build the best consumer computers on earth"
With kind regards,
Bas
...Wait, what? Apple makes almost all of its profit from hardware sales of Macs and iPods/iPhones. The money they make from software sales is marginal at best.
doesn't the bottom macbook still have no superdrive ? so much for compromises
That part I'm totally agree with you. It should have a superdrive standard!
With kind regards,
Bas
I was thinking something along the lines of a built in card reader, price cut for the lower end of MBP, and/or new form factor. HOWEVER, these are really minor things and I agree the MBP is fine the way it is. I would just like the peace of mind knowing I am buying the most "up to date" product from Apple. I like to have the latest and greatest, and if at least a "refreshing" of the MBP line does not happen in Jan, well it has to come sometime... meanwhile I'd be stuck with the "older" MBP when it does happen. So that's my thought process
Please no 6 slot card reader in the MPB. It look so PC-ish. I like simplicity. It is not an effort at all to just connect your camera direct to your USB port.
With kind regards,
Bas
I agree its not stylish, but it does save me a lot of hassle. I always use my CF cards and a usb card reader to import my photos from my DSLR. I'd like not to have to carry around another device... just my opinion.
I'm an office professional who wants a machine with a small screen so that I can conveniently use it during meetings (easy to carry around like a small binder). Plastic Mac Books are cheap looking.
I'd buy without hesitation a Black 12" Mac Book Pro (alum case) 128GB flash & iSight camera for video conferencing. Hope this is a reality in January.
So now form is more important than function? It took Apple nearly two decades to give us secondary clicks, hopefully they will try to make more functional designs, too.
The rumors would seem to say this is true, but I still think a 128 GB flash drive would be very expensive. I know eventually hard drives will go the way of the floppy, but not yet. Flash memory is still just too much.
I like simplicty and sometimes I prefer form over function
I can only speak for myself, but for me cardreaders are not handy at all. I prefer to connect my digicam direct to my laptop instead of pulling out the SD card and load in the computer.With kind regards,
Bas