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Apple Ultra-Portable MacBook Rumor Roundup

kontheur said:
macbooktouch.jpg
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I know its a joke, but do you think they'd even bother with a keyboard or trackpad on something like that? If it has a touch interface, they'd just make it a tablet, wouldn't they?

Not sure if I'd be mentally prepared for that type of computer experience.
 
Get rid of the keyboard entirely?

Just a thought - but how advanced is haptic feedback these days? Presumably, you might get away with a flat keyboard, with teh keys shown underneath, and then get haptic feedback when hitting them? You could then throw in predictive text/autocorrect if you wanted.
By doing this, you could then use a stylus where the keyboard usually is, or even use your finger in a painting motion/ the usual; pincer motion etc. Might then save you from reaching for the screen/only smearing your "keyboard" rather than the screen.
 
t0mat0 said:
Just a thought - but how advanced is haptic feedback these days? Presumably, you might get away with a flat keyboard, with teh keys shown underneath, and then get haptic feedback when hitting them? You could then throw in predictive text/autocorrect if you wanted.
By doing this, you could then use a stylus where the keyboard usually is, or even use your finger in a painting motion/ the usual; pincer motion etc. Might then save you from reaching for the screen/only smearing your "keyboard" rather than the screen.
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that would be a nice innovation, but I feel the keyboard wouldn't work if it was completely flat, It would probably need some ridges and bumps to help you orient your hands when typing.

I can see however the trackpad being a sort of secondary display with the ability to do what the iPhone / iPod Touchs' are doing... The functionality of Apple's Touch UI is far superior to a lot of trackpads I've used on many laptops.

They actually wouldn't even need a screen, maybe if the trackpad was backlit, and had the optical glass like the iPhone / iPod Touch... that would be pretty slick. I can't imagine you dropping your laptop in a way to damage that portion.
 
Dear,

I think just a screen with a touch surface is something not gonna happen yet, but I see future for it between now and let's say 5 years.

What I really hope for is that Apple will introduce an innovative macbook (pro) with a second sub TFT touch-screen like the Iphone in place of a trackpad. This way you can move applications to the subscreen. Like the toolbar in Adobe Photoshop, A mixer in Digidesigns protools, Your Itunes list, Your widgets etc. etc. Thousands of applications to think of. Besides it looks and is incredible cool, it will be also very handy and productive.

With kind regards,
Bas
 
queshy said:
I used my macbook pro's optical drive <5 times...once to install leopard, once office, once to reinstall tiger, etc..very rarely. I wouldn't mind the omission of the optical drive. As long as they can put in a core 2 duo, give it 2 gb ram standard, 64 gb SSD, I'd be happy. 32 is a little smallish...
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Agreed.
I haven't used the optical drive on my iBook in over a year (in fact, it was fixed via firewire) and never used it on the 1 week old MacBook.

Oh, and I can't wait for MW.
 
TurboSC said:
I can see however the trackpad being a sort of secondary display with the ability to do what the iPhone / iPod Touchs' are doing... The functionality of Apple's Touch UI is far superior to a lot of trackpads I've used on many laptops.
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Turning the entire restpad for the palms i.e. the space from the front of the laptop up to the space bar row would be theoretically pretty easy. The glass section of an iTouch/iPhone is pretty sturdy and thin, so it'd replace pretty well the palm rest area. It'd sure give the touchpad area a kick up the ass for a start (going from say 1.5' x 2' to 3'x 15' size trackpad, with multitouch etc). Presumably, if the sensor can sense things on the pad, upgrades could be software based, rather than firmware, so as things move on, you could add new movements (touch, pinch, drag, select etc) and the processing of the input could be put onto the CPU. The ability to use a touchpad in the same flicking style as a iPhone through coverflow would be cool.

There seem to be several Apple technologies in "sleeper" mode right now, and hopefully we'll see some come to fruition in 2008 (to use all those new Intel chips perhaps).
 
Apple could bring back the Powerbook.
And Macworld is in less than a month. Are all of you really that impatient?
 
t0mat0 said:
Turning the entire restpad for the palms i.e. the space from the front of the laptop up to the space bar row would be theoretically pretty easy. The glass section of an iTouch/iPhone is pretty sturdy and thin, so it'd replace pretty well the palm rest area. It'd sure give the touchpad area a kick up the ass for a start (going from say 1.5' x 2' to 3'x 15' size trackpad, with multitouch etc). Presumably, if the sensor can sense things on the pad, upgrades could be software based, rather than firmware, so as things move on, you could add new movements (touch, pinch, drag, select etc) and the processing of the input could be put onto the CPU. The ability to use a touchpad in the same flicking style as a iPhone through coverflow would be cool.

There seem to be several Apple technologies in "sleeper" mode right now, and hopefully we'll see some come to fruition in 2008 (to use all those new Intel chips perhaps).
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maybe you are on to something. Apple could incorperate the touchpad patents we have been hearing about when it senses your palm or fingertips.
 
t0mat0 said:
Turning the entire restpad for the palms i.e. the space from the front of the laptop up to the space bar row would be theoretically pretty easy. The glass section of an iTouch/iPhone is pretty sturdy and thin, so it'd replace pretty well the palm rest area. It'd sure give the touchpad area a kick up the ass for a start (going from say 1.5' x 2' to 3'x 15' size trackpad, with multitouch etc). Presumably, if the sensor can sense things on the pad, upgrades could be software based, rather than firmware, so as things move on, you could add new movements (touch, pinch, drag, select etc) and the processing of the input could be put onto the CPU. The ability to use a touchpad in the same flicking style as a iPhone through coverflow would be cool.

There seem to be several Apple technologies in "sleeper" mode right now, and hopefully we'll see some come to fruition in 2008 (to use all those new Intel chips perhaps).
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wow... a glass touchpad / palm rest would be awesome. positioned right under the space bar... mmm, I can smell the sexiness now... come on MacWorld..
 
new macbooks in 2008

hey
i heard that they r gonna release a new macbook in 2008 .
can anyone please suggest if it is gonna be a replacement of the present 2.20 ghz macbook 13' white macbook ? i mean are these present macbooks 13' gonna phase out or coexist?
 
I'm still hoping for an iPhone/touch like multi-touchpad...only larger, with the ability to also function as a keyboard, and keeping a larger "primary" work screen that's not touch. It would keep smudges off your work screen, and remove the need to look around your hands to see the screen like you'd need to if there were only one screen that functioned as touch input as well. Also, think about all the possibilities if app developers can map input elements to a multi-touch display/touch-pad that's primarily for user input!

See my post in the other forum https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/394859/
 
Aiden's thought on the UMPC rumour

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/4662100/

Also, Intel will be showing a number of Silverthorne prototypes at CES. If Apple plans to "keep up with the crowd" and introduce a MID (Mobile Internet Device) with a 5" to 7" screen next summer, then showing a "Newton II" prototype at MWSF'08 would be a possibility.

It would also make sense that the "Ultra-portable" rumour might be a mixup of two different new products. One would be a thin 12" or 13" widescreen PowerBook replacement - something with about a MacBook footprint but much thinner and less plastic-like. Smaller, but in no way an "ultra-portable".

The second new product would be the UMPC (aka "Newton II" coming out in the summer).
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TurboSC said:
damn if this ultra-portable mix up is true, I just at least want them to bump up the MBP's so I can purchase one :p
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Yeah, I hope this ultra-portable doesn't delay the 13'' MBP that I've been waiting for. Maybe that 13'' MBP is the ultra-portable? I'll know in a little over 18 and a half days.
 
Martin C said:
Yeah, I hope this ultra-portable doesn't delay the 13'' MBP that I've been waiting for. Maybe that 13'' MBP is the ultra-portable? I'll know in a little over 18 and a half days.
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There's no way that a 13" can be "ultra-anything". The best that it could hope for is the "thin and light" category.

If a new style laptop arrives at MWSF'08, I'd expect a 12" or 13" wide that would be very thin (about 1.7 to 2 cm). For a full laptop, there's not a whole lot of point to making it smaller than an A4 sheet of paper - but thin and light are definite places to differentiate.

This laptop would be the long-awaited replacement for the 12" PowerBook G4.

(Of course, independent of the new laptop, expect the MBP to be upgraded to the Penryn Mobile 45nm processors at MWSF'08. Apple can't neglect their flagship portables the way that they've been neglecting the flagship desktop.)

I think that the "ultra" rumours are talking about Apple's Silverthorne UMPC - imagine a multi-touch PDA about the size of a DVD jewel box.

Imagine the possibilities if it's running a 64-bit Core CPU that sips power, so that full OSX 10.5 (plus multi-touch) as well as OSX apps will run on it.

Intel's roadmap is to push multi-core x64 from the cellphone to the datacenter - no wonder that they dropped the old PowerPC....

ps: I'll be really disappointed in Apple if they compromise the "thin and light" by squeezing an optical drive into it. Shave 3mm off the thickness, and 300g off the weight, and include a compact external USB DVD drive in the box for tethered use.

Opticals are like floppy drives were 10 years ago, it's time to jettison the old technology.
 
AidenShaw said:
ps: I'll be really disappointed in Apple if they compromise the "thin and light" by squeezing an optical drive into it. Shave 3mm off the thickness, and 300g off the weight, and include a compact external USB DVD drive in the box for tethered use.

Opticals are like floppy drives were 10 years ago, it's time to jettison the old technology.
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Agreed, a nice form factor dual layer ?light scribe? firewire optical drive like LaCie make would do the trick.
 
as much as it's down to hoping, I would personally be more satisfied with a 13" MBP than an ultra-portable... even though I'm very eager to see what kind of product Apple can envision with those words.

I would ideally like to see 13" MBP's and a new ultra-portable notebook... but that's a lot to hope for.

All this waiting is killing me... It seems time always slows down towards MacWorld.... *sigh*
 
TurboSC said:
as much as it's down to hoping, I would personally be more satisfied with a 13" MBP than an ultra-portable... even though I'm very eager to see what kind of product Apple can envision with those words.

I would ideally like to see 13" MBP's and a new ultra-portable notebook... but that's a lot to hope for.
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Don't give up hoping for an X38-based quad core mini-tower, with an upgradeable PCIe x16 graphics slot and room for a couple of internal disks. ;)
 
Another possibility

What if it isn't a UMPC? (or there are multiple versions coming out..)

Just a thought I had this morning waking up:

It could be a 13" slimline macbook with no cd/dvd drive. But what if... it was a revolutionary mousepad? Bear with me! Where does your normal input devices live? Your mouse possibly on a mousepad, alongisde your keyboard which is in front of you, both a foot away.

So what if you wanted to bring multitouch to every mac retrospectively, e.g. Mac Pros? Like you have a Touch pad for digital drawing, why not have a touch sensitive iTouch enabled Apple pad that could perhaps be separate, or double as a mouse pad?

Then your hand will naturally be near it whenever you're using the mouse, which is usually with your more dextrous favored hand.

Think iPhone style glass screen 4mm thick, 13" pad. Due to the area, the chiops have more space to sread out thin, FW cable connection, and boom - your apples now have pinch and twist, flick etc. Could have a screen display doubling up the monitor if required.

Why stop at just a wrist wrest laptop touch pad? :)
 
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