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MacBook Pro 2008 "What is next?"
- Thread starter MikeZMacGeek
- Start date
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Either keyboard is fine...
I use the new (wireless) keyboard with my Mac Pro, the older style wireless keyboard on 2 iMacs, and the MacBook Pro style keyboard on my G4 PowerBook. I'm definitely not a power typist, but to me they're all fine. I'll be ordering a new MBP in January, and I'll be perfectly happy if they go to the newer style keyboard as long as it is still backlit.
I do hope they get rid of the metal latch though. What else for the next (January?) MBP? I'll be very happy with just a nice little performance boost from Penryn and a more powerful graphics card. Form factor is absolutely fine with me, and I'm GUESSING that it stays the same until the big update this summer.
I am chomping at the bit for the new MBP in January, and I just hope they are available immediately upon announcing them at MWSF. If it's one of those advance announcements and I have to wait ANOTHER month after that.... well, I guess I'll just have to wait. They're killing me.
I use the new (wireless) keyboard with my Mac Pro, the older style wireless keyboard on 2 iMacs, and the MacBook Pro style keyboard on my G4 PowerBook. I'm definitely not a power typist, but to me they're all fine. I'll be ordering a new MBP in January, and I'll be perfectly happy if they go to the newer style keyboard as long as it is still backlit.
I do hope they get rid of the metal latch though. What else for the next (January?) MBP? I'll be very happy with just a nice little performance boost from Penryn and a more powerful graphics card. Form factor is absolutely fine with me, and I'm GUESSING that it stays the same until the big update this summer.
I am chomping at the bit for the new MBP in January, and I just hope they are available immediately upon announcing them at MWSF. If it's one of those advance announcements and I have to wait ANOTHER month after that.... well, I guess I'll just have to wait. They're killing me.
If you know how to type, then it shouldn't be that big of a deal.
I agree... but I want a serious update for the MacBook Pros. The past three models have given us modest boosts already. Now is the time for a giant leap forward, at least 2.8GHz on the high-end models.
And yes... the only thing I want from the MacBook is the magnetic latch.
I really want to get be able to swap out the optical drive for a 2nd hard drive or a 2nd battery. I used to have an ASUS laptop where I had all 3 hot swappable. I rarely ever used the optical drive. Man, I would get 10 hours battery life on the double battery. I miss those days.
I am not sure if it has been posted already, but the 17" MBP could use the 8800M GTX.... It can only go in either that or a new iMac as its TDP is 35W. I don't think the other chasis can dissapate that much heat.
HotHardware G92M Preview
HotHardware G92M Preview
I can mention several situations I had wished I had a backlit keyboard. It is easier to access function keys you are not use to using that often in low light/dark conditions and also lets you keep lights off on aircraft when using a computer during long trips. I will say it is not very useful for your every day user, but I am sure many pro users find it a nice addition.
backlit key board is something I thought I would never use either...
I originally planed to get a 12" PowerBook when I was entering the Mac world 3 years ago, but then I went to the Apple store and tried out the 15", and the backlit keyboard was one of the selling points for me
I originally planed to get a 12" PowerBook when I was entering the Mac world 3 years ago, but then I went to the Apple store and tried out the 15", and the backlit keyboard was one of the selling points for me
New Macs
One thing you will learn about apple is they are into QUALITY. Look at their parts. Asus, Seagate, Intel, so on. All their parts are from quality manufactures. They want a quality reliable system. Apple is the talk since Intel came into play. And since leopard they have grown and been noticed. They understand investing in quality is the only thing that will get them in the spotlight. They know making little profit is critical to making large profit in the future. That's why i think they are going to try to keep the price low on this amazing technology and profit little.
FUTURE MAC
Penryn Processor:
3mb cache in portable Macs and 6mb cache in professional model
No Optical Drive:
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the typical Mac user rarely uses optical drives at all anymore. With the use of mp3’s, data, flash drives, and what not optical drives are going out the door. Instead they will start pushing USB 3.0 Optical Drives. Beside with the battle between HD-DVD and Blue-ray they don’t want to make a mistake. This way they won’t
USB 3.0:
no fire wire I’ll explain later.
Hard drives:
Mac is going NAND. They are pushing the technology of tomorrow. With no optical drive it’s easy to put two hard drives in the Macs. One runs a NAND for your system and one runs for storage. Or however you want to do it.
Ram:
will probably be bumped up to 800mhz mainly just to change it. I doubt ddr3 will happen but you never know. Depends on if the Macs come out in January or not.
Graphics:
Definitely looking to upgrade but no many options currently . I expect it to change only when better options are available. No reason why they have to change GPU with everything else
oLED:
definitely going to happen. I mean look at their iphone and ipod touch. I don’t know about you but the iphone was a surprise but even more surprise is the bold move of adding touch technology to their ipod. WHY? I mean that’s a little overkill, unnecessary don’t you think. Definitely moving to new and better touch technology on the next laptops. if nothing else, just to be different and grab attention of new prospective mac users.
Track pad:
won’t change. They don’t’ want a right click. They just want to be different.
Cameras:
will be upgraded too
Battery:
With no optical, NAND, LED, Penryn, This laptop is going to have an amazing battery life. With no Optical it will allow a bigger battery too. I mean we are talking 10 hours.
Looks:
just image getting rid of the firewire cause you have USB (size). Bye bye Big DVI thing. Instead just use the adapters you can buy from apple that plug in that thing to the left. No optical drive. Just imagine how much thinner and lighter the laptop would be then. Sound about right? My guess is they’d release a super portable version like 11 inch. Then a 13 inch comparable to the Mac book then the 15 and 17 of course.
Final Thoughts:
I think if this is accomplished this will make a significant push and notice ability in the market raising them from 9% or whatever it is to 20% in three years or less. Especially since vista sucks so much. All that’s happening in January is the penryn processors. The rest will probably happen in 5 months or so once the technology of USB 3.0 comes out. NAND is cheaper. And New mobile graphics are released.
One thing you will learn about apple is they are into QUALITY. Look at their parts. Asus, Seagate, Intel, so on. All their parts are from quality manufactures. They want a quality reliable system. Apple is the talk since Intel came into play. And since leopard they have grown and been noticed. They understand investing in quality is the only thing that will get them in the spotlight. They know making little profit is critical to making large profit in the future. That's why i think they are going to try to keep the price low on this amazing technology and profit little.
FUTURE MAC
Penryn Processor:
3mb cache in portable Macs and 6mb cache in professional model
No Optical Drive:
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the typical Mac user rarely uses optical drives at all anymore. With the use of mp3’s, data, flash drives, and what not optical drives are going out the door. Instead they will start pushing USB 3.0 Optical Drives. Beside with the battle between HD-DVD and Blue-ray they don’t want to make a mistake. This way they won’t
USB 3.0:
no fire wire I’ll explain later.
Hard drives:
Mac is going NAND. They are pushing the technology of tomorrow. With no optical drive it’s easy to put two hard drives in the Macs. One runs a NAND for your system and one runs for storage. Or however you want to do it.
Ram:
will probably be bumped up to 800mhz mainly just to change it. I doubt ddr3 will happen but you never know. Depends on if the Macs come out in January or not.
Graphics:
Definitely looking to upgrade but no many options currently . I expect it to change only when better options are available. No reason why they have to change GPU with everything else
oLED:
definitely going to happen. I mean look at their iphone and ipod touch. I don’t know about you but the iphone was a surprise but even more surprise is the bold move of adding touch technology to their ipod. WHY? I mean that’s a little overkill, unnecessary don’t you think. Definitely moving to new and better touch technology on the next laptops. if nothing else, just to be different and grab attention of new prospective mac users.
Track pad:
won’t change. They don’t’ want a right click. They just want to be different.
Cameras:
will be upgraded too
Battery:
With no optical, NAND, LED, Penryn, This laptop is going to have an amazing battery life. With no Optical it will allow a bigger battery too. I mean we are talking 10 hours.
Looks:
just image getting rid of the firewire cause you have USB (size). Bye bye Big DVI thing. Instead just use the adapters you can buy from apple that plug in that thing to the left. No optical drive. Just imagine how much thinner and lighter the laptop would be then. Sound about right? My guess is they’d release a super portable version like 11 inch. Then a 13 inch comparable to the Mac book then the 15 and 17 of course.
Final Thoughts:
I think if this is accomplished this will make a significant push and notice ability in the market raising them from 9% or whatever it is to 20% in three years or less. Especially since vista sucks so much. All that’s happening in January is the penryn processors. The rest will probably happen in 5 months or so once the technology of USB 3.0 comes out. NAND is cheaper. And New mobile graphics are released.
I truley hope you don't think this is the notebook comming in early 2008 or summer 2008 for that matter.
Firstly:
No Optical Drive: This is very possible on the ultraportable notebook but will not happen on the 15 and 17-inch notebooks any time soon. These notebooks are pro-series computers. As such, these notebooks will include optical drives to faciliate on the go, all-in one productivity if you are burning cd's or dvd's. Also, apple is not one for tangled wires so don't expect a line with all external drives until some wireless method is fast enough to facilitate full operation and equal speeds with wired options.
No DVI: Like hell. It is much better to have a DVI port directly through the graphics card like current methods becuase this facilitates better monitor support. (That is why macbook pro's support higher resolution than macbooks)
No Firewire: Like hell again. Apple supports its format over USB. Hence their push for firewire 400 and 800 over USB. Not to mention that many products still have firewire support. It will be a while before Apple gives up on firewire (if ever).
OLED: Going to happen, sure, but not for another 2 years at least. This technology is new and just hitting the consumer line on a very small scale. It will still be a while till Apple sees this as a reliable, viable alternative to LCD especially with energy efficient LED backlit displays currently available.
NAND: Not going to become mainstream on Pro level notebooks that require large hardrive space. Ultraportable yes, but the 15 and 17 are, again, designed for those making movies and doing high defenition photos. More hardrive space is required on these notebooks and it will be a while before NAND reaches the gb per dollar value that hard drives current have. Apple will move to hybrid drives before all NAND products.
Everything else you say is reasonable but the things above won't happen in 5 months. Their is no data or information that says this COULD happen nor reason WHY it should happen. Like I said have, NAND and OLED are too expensive to keep up with competitors price points and apple is not abou to abandon firewire and optical drives.
Firstly:
No Optical Drive: This is very possible on the ultraportable notebook but will not happen on the 15 and 17-inch notebooks any time soon. These notebooks are pro-series computers. As such, these notebooks will include optical drives to faciliate on the go, all-in one productivity if you are burning cd's or dvd's. Also, apple is not one for tangled wires so don't expect a line with all external drives until some wireless method is fast enough to facilitate full operation and equal speeds with wired options.
No DVI: Like hell. It is much better to have a DVI port directly through the graphics card like current methods becuase this facilitates better monitor support. (That is why macbook pro's support higher resolution than macbooks)
No Firewire: Like hell again. Apple supports its format over USB. Hence their push for firewire 400 and 800 over USB. Not to mention that many products still have firewire support. It will be a while before Apple gives up on firewire (if ever).
OLED: Going to happen, sure, but not for another 2 years at least. This technology is new and just hitting the consumer line on a very small scale. It will still be a while till Apple sees this as a reliable, viable alternative to LCD especially with energy efficient LED backlit displays currently available.
NAND: Not going to become mainstream on Pro level notebooks that require large hardrive space. Ultraportable yes, but the 15 and 17 are, again, designed for those making movies and doing high defenition photos. More hardrive space is required on these notebooks and it will be a while before NAND reaches the gb per dollar value that hard drives current have. Apple will move to hybrid drives before all NAND products.
Everything else you say is reasonable but the things above won't happen in 5 months. Their is no data or information that says this COULD happen nor reason WHY it should happen. Like I said have, NAND and OLED are too expensive to keep up with competitors price points and apple is not abou to abandon firewire and optical drives.
no optical drive? dont ppl still install software, games and watch dvds on their laptops? ppl are starting to use laptops as their desktop replacement? i dont think they will get rid of the optical drives?
as for DDR3. wont happen till the montevina update. it isnt supported on the santa rosa platform also it doesnt support 800mhz? if u did put one in wouldnt it just slow down to 6whateverMHZ? DDR3 and 800mhz wont be supported till montevina is released in 2nd quarter next year.
if only the 1066mhz FSB procs come out when montevina comes out. they arnt coming till 3rd quarter =\
cant wait that long so i might need to settle for the SR with updated procs. thats if they get updated in january.
your right about firewire. I was acutally going back to edit m post but i saw you already replied. I didnt' know what i was talking about. i didn't even know apple made firewire. I just jumped to the conclusion since USB 3.0 will blow everything out of the water that there wouldn't be a purpose for firewire.
You are right about the future mac minis not having an optical drive and they will only have one hard drive. I am almost positive that will happen. I wouldn't be too surprised if they don't add one to the 15,17's but it depends on how the war goes and i hope to God it''s blu-ray.
You are right about the hybrid nand stuff. I didnt' know they existed. I just figured the solid state drives would come down.
I think they'll get their technology down to where the DVI adapters will run very well out of the graphics card replacing it but we'll see.
You are right about the future mac minis not having an optical drive and they will only have one hard drive. I am almost positive that will happen. I wouldn't be too surprised if they don't add one to the 15,17's but it depends on how the war goes and i hope to God it''s blu-ray.
You are right about the hybrid nand stuff. I didnt' know they existed. I just figured the solid state drives would come down.
I think they'll get their technology down to where the DVI adapters will run very well out of the graphics card replacing it but we'll see.
USB 3.0 isn't even due out until 2009 and we won't see widespread adoption of it until 2010 at the earliest.
There's no way in hell they're getting rid of the optical drive (except maybe on an ultraportable).
SSDs are too expensive and are too small for mainstream use. They're great right now only for ultraportables. Again, probably 2009.
You also need to do some research on the Intel roadmap. When Penryn comes out, it will remain on the Crestline chip set, so the memory controller will be the same. That means it will be the same RAM until Montevina in Summer 2008.
There's no way in hell they're getting rid of the optical drive (except maybe on an ultraportable).
SSDs are too expensive and are too small for mainstream use. They're great right now only for ultraportables. Again, probably 2009.
You also need to do some research on the Intel roadmap. When Penryn comes out, it will remain on the Crestline chip set, so the memory controller will be the same. That means it will be the same RAM until Montevina in Summer 2008.
your right i don't know anything about the intel road map. links?
USB 3.0 is due second half of 2008
beside they could just upgrade all these things one at a time like they have been doing what it comes to GPU, USB, Penryn, SSD, Hybrid, and so on.
Optical, you are right unlikely but you never know. neat idea.
USB 3.0 is due second half of 2008
beside they could just upgrade all these things one at a time like they have been doing what it comes to GPU, USB, Penryn, SSD, Hybrid, and so on.
Optical, you are right unlikely but you never know. neat idea.
Steam is a good example of where games could go. instead of buy them at teh store just download it.
in the future when fiber optics is around downloading software instead of buying it on a dvd will be much faster.
Watch dvd's hmmm my guess is the way itunes is looking. netflix. popularity of tivo. downloading videos will be the next market. most people use dvd players on their TV's for watching DVD's.
Pirating is illegal so no need to burn them (in mac's eyes)
and Itunes is going movies i think so no need to get it on dvd.
There are many variables that if you look at a year ago or 3 years ago what changes have already happened.
just imagine when this mac is released a year or so from now how different will the world be.
besides with the way mac does iso's just use your external drive to backup your ISO's and DMG's to that external hard drive mac convinced you to buy for time machine. See how the plot thickens. how many people bought an external drive for time machine. you don't need to have the actual disk if it's on your drive for various things.
Think about it
Last thing i want you to think about is in my personal case The only things i've put in my optical drive in the past 6 months. is a leopard dvd, a tiger, one game, burned a dvd of data and backup files (which time machine would have replaced if i used it.), and one dvd movie, and burned one audio mp3 cd for my car which was 6 months ago and i dont' use it anymore cause my ipod connects to my car. see how that works. audio cd's arn't even being used anymore. remember how many audio cd's you burned 3 years ago? for car or whatever, a ton. now how many do you? see where technology is leading society. optical has gone down in use you have to admit.
Apple won't get rid of the optical drive in the next 10 years.
CDs and DVDs are not mainly used for pirating. Heck, Apple even creates consumer and pro-level software for DVD creation! Then you got Blu-Ray/HD-DVD coming so in a future gen of MBPs, they'll get that.
Nice try, but you are WAY off bud.
perhaps try doing some research before trying to tell everyone whats going to happen?
CDs and DVDs are not mainly used for pirating. Heck, Apple even creates consumer and pro-level software for DVD creation! Then you got Blu-Ray/HD-DVD coming so in a future gen of MBPs, they'll get that.
Nice try, but you are WAY off bud.
perhaps try doing some research before trying to tell everyone whats going to happen?
Agreed. One users experience doesn't represent the industry. Any "predictions" should be based off industry facts and perhaps consumers don't use cd's as much (though I still use cd's aggressively and use my system to play dvd's through my set up as well) but the industry still uses them as common place as paper for printers.
I never said get rid of using them permanently just from the casing. apple could push external drives
I doubt they will eliminate the optical drives from the regular laptops... they are still using the DVD burner as a "selling point" in this day and age!
I hope that USB 3.0 can sustain a write speed, which is why USB 2.0 isn't an industry standard in video editing and content creation. And if I am attaching external, large hard disks, USB 3.0's 4.8 Gbps has to beat eSATA's 3 Gbps and keep a constant write speed before I am convinced that it will make it into the professional industry.
I would like to see smaller ports though.
I would like to see smaller ports though.
i would just like to point out that apple is pro-bluray, and apple is on a list with other companies who support bluray. i think it will first be featured on the mac pro before making debut on laptops.
The only thing I'm really looking forward to is a design refresh. I mean, sure, the MBP looks good and all... but it's time for a change. For a lot of people, MBPs are indiscernible from Powerbooks, aside from the integrated iSight.
That, and a multitouch trackpad would be nice.
That, and a multitouch trackpad would be nice.
A January MacBook Pro upgrade would make me a very happy guy.
I'm hoping for a speed boost, not essential but would be nice, updated iSight, maybe a change of form factor because it's 2 years old now, yes it's still nice but I've never been one for that keyboard.
Any other goodies Apple feel like throwing in would be much appreciated.
I'm hoping for a speed boost, not essential but would be nice, updated iSight, maybe a change of form factor because it's 2 years old now, yes it's still nice but I've never been one for that keyboard.
Any other goodies Apple feel like throwing in would be much appreciated.