Likelihood of Fusion Drive?

[the1337n00b]

Hey guys, what do you think is the likelihood of the MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display having the Fusion drive, and when?

Any ideas? I'm looking into buying a rMBP whenever they refresh it, and the Fusion drive looks really great and helpful!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Highly unlikely, since that would reintroduce mechanical and spinning HDDs into the Retina line, which Apple surely does not want to. It would also mean taking away valuable space for the battery and the MacBook Pro with Retina Display would probably become thicker due to the height of 2.5" HDDs.

 

[richnyc]

Hey guys, what do you think is the likelihood of the MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display having the Fusion drive, and when?

Any ideas? I'm looking into buying a rMBP whenever they refresh it, and the Fusion drive looks really great and helpful!

It looks like there might not be enough space to fit it in. If I can see Fusion drives anywhere in the MBP line, it is the cMBPs. I wouldn't be surprised if 2013 cMBPs came installed with them as standard. I think rMBPs will stick with flash storage.

 

[Coldmode]

Hey guys, what do you think is the likelihood of the MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display having the Fusion drive, and when?

Any ideas? I'm looking into buying a rMBP whenever they refresh it, and the Fusion drive looks really great and helpful!

As an earlier poster stated, there is no chance they're going to put a spinning drive into a machine that has already gone flash only. The Fusion Drive is a temporary solution until the price of flash comes down and they can put all flash in all their machines.

 

[dusk007]

I doubt this will ever happen.
With the Retina line it seems very unlikely. Apple likes it that people want or need the expensive SSD upgrades from their store.
A cMBP slightly redesigned could handle it but they won't offer it because it would be too much of a nice feature.
Generally SSD prices are dropping and Apple expects people to rely solely on SSDs in the mobile space.

The only way there will ever be is to buy a Mac with an optical drive. Put SSD+HDD in and fix the fusion drive setup yourself.

I am not too convinced that Fusion drive is temporary. At least the idea using an SSD+HDD might stick around. HDDs will still store big data and at least in desktops it makes perfect sense to offer a lot of space but not wasting a huge SSD on it. In a notebook space, battery life, shock resistance and noise change things a little.

The price of flash will come down but people still find use for more and more data. There used to be a time when I thought 250GB is a lot. Now I fill 3TB with data spread over 4 disks.