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Ivy Bridge Mobile CPUs for Next MacBook Air and Pro Models Due around May
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I never understood the change there. Remove a functional port that a few people use for something almost no one uses
. Phones are becoming the most popular point and shoot cameras. It seemed like such a weird replacement port.
Those who got their 15" MBPs in February this year really hit the buying jackpot lol...
They got a tried and true well refined gold-standard laptop design, a new thunderbolt port, Sandy Bridge CPUs with great performance.... and the late 2011 refresh that came after it really doesnt add anything tangible at all - the 6770m is an overclocked 6750m, and likewise the 2.4ghz i7 quad (vs. the 2.2ghz)...meaning their MBPs right now are still 'current'....and now we see the next 'real' refresh is still half a year away. In effect they got 14 months of being 'the most current'!
I wagered that the early 2011 refresh was a 'stop gap' until the real refresh - like the Penryn refresh in early 2008. So I waited. I was wrong. lol
They got a tried and true well refined gold-standard laptop design, a new thunderbolt port, Sandy Bridge CPUs with great performance.... and the late 2011 refresh that came after it really doesnt add anything tangible at all - the 6770m is an overclocked 6750m, and likewise the 2.4ghz i7 quad (vs. the 2.2ghz)...meaning their MBPs right now are still 'current'....and now we see the next 'real' refresh is still half a year away. In effect they got 14 months of being 'the most current'!
I wagered that the early 2011 refresh was a 'stop gap' until the real refresh - like the Penryn refresh in early 2008. So I waited. I was wrong. lol
This makes sense from Apple's perspective. It will limit customer choice, but Apple is famous for that.
I hope that Thunderbolt is a reasonably priced alternative in the near future because I'm really tired of USB flakiness. It's supposed to let you put your Mac to sleep without unmounting external drives, but I've lost everything on three separate external drives doing that. In that regard FireWire has never let me down. USB has also been involved in (maybe to blame for) several incidents of the Mac refusing to wake from sleep.
On the flip side, USB 3.0 has almost completely replaced USB 2.0 in the storage market today. Even thumb drives (flash) are appearing in USB 3.0. That's one area where Thunderbolt will never catch on because it's totally impractical to put a $35 controller into a $29 device.
I also cannot see the mainstream PC market ever adopting Thunderbolt except maybe in a high end notebook. They'll continue to push the least expensive options in mainstream notebooks and let third parties come up with PCI solutions for the desktop.
I completely forgot that USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, ha!
So yes, you're right, as long as it's natively supported by Intel's chipset (which it will be) then it shouldn't be a problem for Apple to implement USB 3.0 where the old 2.0 ports were. Now whether Apple will actually do this is another matter. And just for the record I'm all for USB 3.0 to compliment Thunderbolt on a MBP/MBA.
No, it doesn't and the people who keep parroting stuff similar to this clearly don't get Thunderbolt at all.
To think that so many people were upset when Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel. The fact is that Apple should have moved to Intel years before they did. Apple was stuck with slow processors for years while PC's kept getting faster and faster. The move they made 5 years back has been really paying off.
Interesting. I know a lot of folks were returning computers and canceling orders over rumors of Ivy Bridge, but I knew from past experience it wasn't going to come until the May/June timeframe (if not later).
As far as the Air goes, for the average user I don't see any great benefits when you compare the current specs to Ivy Bridge. Greater graphics performance, sure...but I'd wager most using an Air aren't gamers, and serious pro users would be on the pro line by default. The 17w power rating is identical to the current model, so I imagine the battery life between the two will be quite similar.
Definitely correct me if I'm off-base on any of this.
As far as the Air goes, for the average user I don't see any great benefits when you compare the current specs to Ivy Bridge. Greater graphics performance, sure...but I'd wager most using an Air aren't gamers, and serious pro users would be on the pro line by default. The 17w power rating is identical to the current model, so I imagine the battery life between the two will be quite similar.
Definitely correct me if I'm off-base on any of this.
There are USB 3.0 pen drives.
There are none with Thunderbolt.
FireWire pen drives were expensive.
When the PowerPC was released on the PowerMac it was much faster than equivalent clock speed of the Pentium II. The problem with the PowerPC was it had a small market and IBM wasn't interested in cranking out improvements at the same pace as Intel and AMD. The G5 was a great chip but Apple wanted to release products like the Air whereas IBM wasn't motivated to make a cool running chip. Remember the cooling system in the G5 PowerMacs? The lack of efficient and cool running processors is what encouraged Apple to turn to other options.
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I'm curious about the Mac mini as it does use the mobile chips whereas the iMac uses the desktop chips which are to be released earlier in 2012.
Most of the Flash storage in these devices is really slow old tech that has trouble saturating a USB2.0 bus let alone gain any advantage from USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt or Firewire for that matter.
Also Spin Disk drives, keyboards, mice, 3G mobile internet dongles are all among the list of examples not worth discussing when talking new connection systems. I fact the most interesting thing that could happen to any of these things would be a wireless data and power standard equal to USB 2.0.
USB 3.0 flash drives are starting to compete with SSDs in performance.
Flash? Solid state? Whatever...
Just a friendly reminder to those of you pipedreaming, it is not (yet, nor will it be in the near future) physically possible to have a discrete GPU in a MacBook Air Form-factor. Period. Another friendly reminder, it is already possible to have SSDs in a MacBook Pro by way of a CTO order on the Apple Online Store; no removal of the optical drive necessary.
Also, for a discrete GPU to fit on the 13" MacBook Pro model, Apple would have to make a larger main logic board, Ivy Bridge or not. If you look at the designs of Apple notebook main logic boards, they don't get bigger as the years go on, they get smaller, and with the Intel HD 4000 being a step up from both the NVIDIA GeForce 320M and the Intel HD 3000, Apple likely won't ever see the need to give the 13" models a discrete GPU despite the niche community of users that MUST have a 13" form factor with the power typically associated with the 15" models; a vast majority of 13" MacBook Pro customers either don't care about what kind of graphics they have, or they have a second computer that does that heavy lifting for them.
Again, sorry to be Captain Killjoy over here, but I feel like someone should before we all start pining for that 15" MacBook Air with features typically associated with the Mac Pro, let alone the MacBook Pro, because when these threads devolve into that, they get ridiculous.
Also, for a discrete GPU to fit on the 13" MacBook Pro model, Apple would have to make a larger main logic board, Ivy Bridge or not. If you look at the designs of Apple notebook main logic boards, they don't get bigger as the years go on, they get smaller, and with the Intel HD 4000 being a step up from both the NVIDIA GeForce 320M and the Intel HD 3000, Apple likely won't ever see the need to give the 13" models a discrete GPU despite the niche community of users that MUST have a 13" form factor with the power typically associated with the 15" models; a vast majority of 13" MacBook Pro customers either don't care about what kind of graphics they have, or they have a second computer that does that heavy lifting for them.
Again, sorry to be Captain Killjoy over here, but I feel like someone should before we all start pining for that 15" MacBook Air with features typically associated with the Mac Pro, let alone the MacBook Pro, because when these threads devolve into that, they get ridiculous.
You're wrong. They can keep the thickness at the top the exact same as the current MacBook Pro which is where the CPU and GPU are located and taper it down to the bottom.
The optical drive is dead next redesign. Keep the top of the machine just as thick as the current MBP while removing the optical drive and they can easily stick a discrete GPU in the 13".
MacBook Air design =/= MacBook Air thinness
Not unless we're sacrificing the, Ethernet, FW800 port, and HDD as well. Have you ever taken one of these things apart or seen what they actually look like under the hood?
Again, Apple is not going to make that MLB larger. That's not what they do. Is it possible? Absolutely. Will they do it? That's an entirely different question.
MacBook Air design =/= MacBook Air thinness
Theory =/= Practice
The low voltage Haswell platform appears to employ itselt like a SoC processor. Even the PCH is brought onboard. Though what GPU can you shove into the ~4W space you just created taking the PCH off of the PCB?
The edge digs straight into your wrist.
Silly for a laptop to be uncomfortable to use in positions other than a desk.
LoL, the Apple solution to fundamental design flaw.
How Jobsian of you.
Sorry, i feel i should be able to lean back in bed and work from my lap--top without skin indents that make it look like i've lost the will to live.
Silly for a laptop to be uncomfortable to use in positions other than a desk.
LoL, the Apple solution to fundamental design flaw.
How Jobsian of you.
Sorry, i feel i should be able to lean back in bed and work from my lap--top without skin indents that make it look like i've lost the will to live.
Clearly someone can't comprehend what I stated previously. It's not that hard to think of. Remove the optical drive, there are now two sides of ports. Put the ethernet port at the top right of the machine followed by the firewire port. Put flash memory on the logic board so you can taper the machine down. There's a logical way of doing things, clearly you can't think of them so you have to ask me what they are.
They won't make the main logic board bigger? Sure they will. They did in the iMac where they switched over to desktop CPU's. They can do the same here. Remove the optical drive, free up almost half of the space located at the top of the machine, place flash memory on said logic board, then taper it down to the front with the battery having more room with no more space being taken up by the HDD.
Logical thinking =/= Brain dead thoughts
Oh, so you think that Apple is hike up the cost of the machine for those Blade SSDs that people love so much in the MacBook Air and tote that the MacBook Pros suddenly cost $200-1200 more for 128-512GB of storage? And you say I'm illogical? And you say I'm not thinking this through? I never said they couldn't give the 13" a discrete GPU, I said that they wouldn't. One consonant difference, but the two words are worlds apart here.
The MLB of every iMac since the switch to Intel has been smaller in size. Desktop CPU or not. Again, I've taken all of these machines apart for a living, pal. And given the decreasing thermal envelope, THEY HAVE TO GET SMALLER! you don't deal with heat dissipation by shrinking the case and increasing the surface area of the board. Computers just don't work that way.
"Brain dead thoughts" is an oxymoron. Just thought I'd let you know in case you didn't.
Put 128 on the low end 13" and 256 default on the other models. Given Apple's profit margins on these machines it's not that difficult to think of, not even adding the fact the cost of flash memory is going down and Apple buys these things in batch.
Oh really? And I quote:
"Just a friendly reminder to those of you pipedreaming, it is not (yet, nor will it be in the near future)physically possible to have a discrete GPU in a MacBook Air Form-factor. Period."
The logic board will now have to span across the entire machine in order for ports to be on both side. It's inevitable that they will make it larger (or at the very least longer) for one reason or another, pal.
Pot, meet kettle.