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Future of MBP's

B

BeachChair

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 11, 2008
590
5
Copenhagen, Denmark
What do you expect of the next generation of MBP's?

I think no optical drive is a given, at least for the sub 17" models.
I'm more curious if they will ditch the drive bay like they did with the MBA's.

I think the next generation of MBPs will have IPS displays with black frames, built-in SSD, very long battery life and strong specs. Imagine a 13" MBP without a drive bay and optical drive could have room for more battery and discrete graphics card, and probably even be thinner than the current crop.
 
BeachChair said:
What do you expect of the next generation of MBP's?

I think no optical drive is a given, at least for the sub 17" models.
I'm more curious if they will ditch the drive bay like they did with the MBA's.

I think the next generation of MBPs will have IPS displays with black frames, built-in SSD, very long battery life and strong specs. Imagine a 13" MBP without a drive bay and optical drive could have room for more battery and discrete graphics card, and probably even be thinner than the current crop.
Click to expand...

I seriously doubt they will remove the hard drive bay like with the MBAs. the reason they did that with the MBA is because they had to to be able to make it smaller. Theres serious drawbacks to doign this on normal size laptops: you wont be able to upgrade or rpelace the hard drive with any standard one, you will have to buy any upgrades directly from apple since the MBA SSD is proprietary from apple (and pay apples ridiculous prices, if you look at their site, to upgrade to a 500GB 5400RPM HDD instead of a 250GB will cost you $150 - buying one off newegg costs $40 and you still get to keep the 250GB drive that comes with your MBP), you wont be able to get alot of storage space if you prefer space over speed.

For a small and thin laptop they have the MBA. Trying to make their MBP line just as thin and light by sacrificing features would not make any s ense at all. The MBP line is designed to give more features and power, it is not exclusively focused on being as small and light as possible.
I do think there is a fair chance they will remove the Optical Drive bay from the 13" MBP, probably replace it with more battery and/or more connection ports.
 
Why Ditch the optical drive?

Before any one says anything, I know there are probably other posts with the reasoning for ditching the optical drive, but I'm going to ask in this post because it is relevant.

I know ditching the optical drive would be great for battery life and all that, but what about the people that use their optical drive? Will they come with an external or will it be available for purchase like the MBA? I just have a hard time thinking they will ditch the drive for a line of models that some what cater to people with out a whole lot of money to spend.(The 13") And I'm also sure a lot of MBP's go to college students and teenagers who surely use their optical drives.
 
I own a 13" MacBook Pro and I would love it if they replaced the optical drive with more battery AND better specs like a graphics card or something...

Maybe they could give half of the OD space to extra battery and the other half to built in flash memory (in addition to the regular hard drive!).

ODs are annoying, they suck battery, the spin up everytime you turn on the computer if you leave them in, they take up precious space when you don't even need it most of the time.
 
BeachChair said:
What do you expect of the next generation of MBP's?

I think no optical drive is a given, at least for the sub 17" models.
I'm more curious if they will ditch the drive bay like they did with the MBA's.

I think the next generation of MBPs will have IPS displays with black frames, built-in SSD, very long battery life and strong specs. Imagine a 13" MBP without a drive bay and optical drive could have room for more battery and discrete graphics card, and probably even be thinner than the current crop.
Click to expand...

IPS display and built in SSD and a very long battery life? Thats a tall order. Don't get your hopes up to much.
 
I reckon there will be flash storage options as well as the standard hard drive also the 13 inch will get an i series CPU and the 15 and 17 inches will get a sandy bridge CPU
 
either way, I can't wait for the next revision!
I've made up my mind to order it on day 1.
 
Ditto.

Add a slot for that SSD card to the new MBP, keep all the regular stuff (HDD, optical)

Even a 64GB SSD for the boot drive would be a huge advantage over the current (HDD or SSD only) MBP.

benledgebob said:
I reckon there will be flash storage options as well as the standard hard drive also the 13 inch will get an i series CPU and the 15 and 17 inches will get a sandy bridge CPU
Click to expand...
 
mrsir2009 said:
I own a 13" MacBook Pro and I would love it if they replaced the optical drive with more battery AND better specs like a graphics card or something...

Maybe they could give half of the OD space to extra battery and the other half to built in flash memory (in addition to the regular hard drive!).

ODs are annoying, they suck battery, the spin up everytime you turn on the computer if you leave them in, they take up precious space when you don't even need it most of the time.
Click to expand...

I would not be surprised at all if they removed the optical drive. It's essentially useless these days - I use mine occasionally for installing new software and every now and then for watching a DVD. It would be nice of them to include an external drive, but I think that's very unlikely. Like someone else said, a small amount of flash memory for a boot up would be extremely nice - give us a speedy boot up like the new MBAs. The rest would be well used towards more battery life or more HDD.
 
Dumbledorelives said:
I would not be surprised at all if they removed the optical drive. It's essentially useless these days - I use mine occasionally for installing new software and every now and then for watching a DVD. It would be nice of them to include an external drive, but I think that's very unlikely. Like someone else said, a small amount of flash memory for a boot up would be extremely nice - give us a speedy boot up like the new MBAs. The rest would be well used towards more battery life or more HDD.
Click to expand...

And perhaps a graphics card too?
 
What I want to see is a thinner, lighter, higher resolution MacBook Pro with a SSD like the air but with a small twist: RAID.

Imagine the speed of a dual-SSD RAID 0 setup?! TRIM would have to come first, however. In my current laptop (Lenovo T410) I have a 128GB SSD and a 500GB storage drive. This isn't ideal for power savings, but it works great if you're plugged in.

Dual display ports. They can do it with the Mac mini. I hope that if they don't put it on the 13" (if it lives) or the 15" model, they'd at least put it on the 17" model.

Better, dedicated GPU standard in all models. I like the concept of switchable graphics. I'm sure that will stay.

Equal or greater battery life.

CPUs can stay the same. A small bump wouldn't hurt.

eSATA is a stretch, but one can hope! :(

USB 3. It's about time.

Price drop. $100 off can go a long way.

Things to keep: backlit kb, ethernet port, 4GB RAM standard (not going anywhere)
Things that can go: FireWire. (bracing for flames) It's dying away. USB 3 (or eSATA look far better in the long-run.
 
jagger27 said:
What I want to see is a thinner, lighter, higher resolution MacBook Pro with a SSD like the air but with a small twist: RAID.

Imagine the speed of a dual-SSD RAID 0 setup?! TRIM would have to come first, however. In my current laptop (Lenovo T410) I have a 128GB SSD and a 500GB storage drive. This isn't ideal for power savings, but it works great if you're plugged in.

Dual display ports. They can do it with the Mac mini. I hope that if they don't put it on the 13" (if it lives) or the 15" model, they'd at least put it on the 17" model.

Better, dedicated GPU standard in all models. I like the concept of switchable graphics. I'm sure that will stay.

Equal or greater battery life.

CPUs can stay the same. A small bump wouldn't hurt.

eSATA is a stretch, but one can hope! :(

USB 3. It's about time.

Price drop. $100 off can go a long way.

Things to keep: backlit kb, ethernet port, 4GB RAM standard (not going anywhere)
Things that can go: FireWire. (bracing for flames) It's dying away. USB 3 (or eSATA look far better in the long-run.
Click to expand...

128GB SSD and 500GB storage would indeed be nice, but it would be a pain to compromise battery any more. I would say if the optical drive was removed and replaced with that + battery to make up for the extra consumption, life would be great. I agree - Firewire could definitely go, it's dying out fast. USB 3, however, I see no real advantage for...I've yet to actually buy something that has a usb 3 plug. Pretty useless in my opinion. Wait until there are some products that need it first...not saying it will never happen, just not necessarily in the next update
 
I guess I'm just used to the pricing of the dark side. ;)

Consider this: places without access to high speed internet are most likely not their target market. If for some reason someone who happens to be their target market lives in that location, they're free to purchase an external SuperDrive. Why should Apple cater to those people?

Forgive me if I sound derogative to less fortunate people. It's a fact that's slowly being fixed. If anything, Apple spurring an optical-free era could speed up the infrastructure improvement.
 
I've been thinking about the idea of USB 3 for a while now. Even if isn't adopted substantially before their next release, it would be really nice of Apple to future-proof their notebooks a bit.

Though something tells me that wont happen...
 
Playing devils advocate here, I have to point out - the consumer backlash for removing a CD drive from their biggest notebook line would be enormous. CD drives have been in laptops since the dawn of laptops - and getting rid of them would be very ill-recieved. People think they use them far more than they do. It would be like the flash thing all over again (I totally agree with them on that, by the way). Would apple really risk being the first to dispose of something like the CD drive in their major line?
 
Dumbledorelives said:
Playing devils advocate here, I have to point out - the consumer backlash for removing a CD drive from their biggest notebook line would be enormous. CD drives have been in laptops since the dawn of laptops - and getting rid of them would be very ill-recieved. People think they use them far more than they do. It would be like the flash thing all over again (I totally agree with them on that, by the way). Would apple really risk being the first to dispose of something like the CD drive in their major line?
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be the first time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#Legacy

Again, if Apple truly wants to play it safe, they would include an external in the box. It costs very little manufacture.
 
Dumbledorelives said:
Playing devils advocate here, I have to point out - the consumer backlash for removing a CD drive from their biggest notebook line would be enormous. CD drives have been in laptops since the dawn of laptops - and getting rid of them would be very ill-recieved. People think they use them far more than they do. It would be like the flash thing all over again (I totally agree with them on that, by the way). Would apple really risk being the first to dispose of something like the CD drive in their major line?
Click to expand...

That is why Apple is telling it everyone now. Read the line below the MBA . It says the next generation of notebooks. That means exactly that.

So everyone can get slowly used of the fact that there won't be an internal HD and no SD. Hopefully not all CPUs get crippled.
 
jagger27 said:
You don't get it. I'm arguing that you simply don't need an optical drive for normal day-to-day activities. I can't recall the last time I used my optical drive on the run. It will most certainly have room at home, however.
Click to expand...

I still like mine because I watch plenty of DVDs on my laptop. An external drive would't be that nice because it then hangs on the left or right of my lap as I like to have the laptop there. Anyway - in the end I am ok with buying an external one. Not sure if I would get the one from Apple or buy one that can burn in addition Bluray.
 
jagger27 said:
Perhaps not crippled. We'll see a plateau in terms of mobile performance soon enough. Graphene or photon-based tech may be the next step.
Click to expand...

Well I guess you know I meant the ULV versions like in the Air 1,4 Ghz, whats that? I mean it maybe ok in the Air but not in the Pro line. People really use it for HD editing, Motion and things like that.

But they say that this is the future of notebooks. Who knows what they really mean. My guess is the HD and SD.

I assume we see in the next revision next year.
 
I want 1440x900 13" and I'd buy now at current specs for low end 13" MBP.

Besides graphics card the current low end MBP 2.4 does not offer any advantage in daily use than my upgraded (ram and HD) late 2006 black Macbook. I have a macmini to do my processor intensive tasks overnight aka a big queue in handbrake. I'd rather buy a refurb Mac Pro and keep my black book then spend my my money on an underspeced MBP.

I'm not willing to spend $1800 for a 1440x900 15" MBP. I can afford it but do not see the value proposition. By not byting it and emailing apple, they know it does not fit my needs. The new MacBook Air 13" would be perfect if or close but I would like they same in the 13"MBP. Then I'd buy.
 
jagger27 said:
Perhaps not crippled. We'll see a plateau in terms of mobile performance soon enough. Graphene or photon-based tech may be the next step.
Click to expand...
I'd just like to say - I would LOVE to see some graphene based tech implemented in consumer technology - and if there ever was an open-minded, modern comapny that might do it, it would be apple.
I think we're all in agreement that the optical drive should go. And that we can probably expect this in an upcoming update.
 
Dumbledorelives said:
I think we're all in agreement that the optical drive should go. And that we can probably expect this in an upcoming update.
Click to expand...

I'm not.

Not until Apple shows off their app store.
or , Flash memory becomes cheaper than dvd media
or, ISPs (atleast in the US) stop lowing bandwidth caps (yeah, right).
 
think of the need for having an optical drive is a bell curve. most people, at least those who use an Apple computer, are on the right end with little need to use an optical drive. They download/stream music to ipod, have decent internet speed to get what they need, and is able to spare some cash to buy a SuperDrive when needed.

on the other hand, there are people who need the optical drive for whatever reason. but the trend is leaning toward an optical bay free Apple laptop.

Honestly, if you were to use a floppy disk, I assume you will need a desktop. why don't you just get a DVD rom and do those tasks on your desktop? worst case you can still transfer file with a USB stick.
 
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