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Next MacBook Air to Adopt Faster, More Power Efficient SSD?

I'm not sure why people are complaining about Apple locking down the MBA.

In order for laptops like MBA to get thinner, everything has to be more integrated (or locked down) and the option to upgrade has to be eliminated in order to do this.

Apple isn't locking down the bigger laptops that can support upgradability, they're doing this for the ultra-thin laptops. The more they can solider onto the laptop, the more space they can remove.

You are not paying $1K for the option to upgrade, you're paying $1K for the best integrated laptop with the smallest weight and footprint.
 
It already flies. I guess Apple is trying to give it a little speed boost to try and make up for the slow crappy graphics it's going to have.
 
MikhailT said:
I'm not sure why people are complaining about Apple locking down the MBA.

In order for laptops like MBA to get thinner, everything has to be more integrated (or locked down) and the option to upgrade has to be eliminated in order to do this.

Apple isn't locking down the bigger laptops that can support upgradability, they're doing this for the ultra-thin laptops. The more they can solider onto the laptop, the more space they can remove.

You are not paying $1K for the option to upgrade, you're paying $1K for the best integrated laptop with the smallest weight and footprint.
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I agree with you completely. I just don't understand why people freak out about not being able to upgrade computers. I mean 20 years ago it was the way to cheaply have a "current" computer for many year. In the present, technology moves so fast and improvements are so drastic that you really can't make upgrades on a computer to make it last years and years. People need to embrace the fact that we now have cheaper "disposable" computers. So instead of buying a $3000 machine that will be sluggish in 2 years, you spend $1000 every year and have blazing fast computers...
 
djrod said:
You should try one
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Probably, I actually have but I do not know. I have a 17" MBP and is small enough.

I used to have 12" Powerbooks, 3 of them, because I used to work doing videos for live shows, I had a different application on each. Probably if I still in the same field I would have got 3 Mac Book Air.
 
Beyond gaming, some photo work, CAD, and some software development the Air is just about perfect for a business user.

I don't know who plays games on their laptops...my 1.86 can struggle a bit with Aperture, I only use it to dump off the camera until we're back home and maybe some light adjusting if we want to show someone something.

I'm what most people would refer to as a poweruser. We do software development and yes the Air is too light for that mostly because what we do is in Windows so by the time you virtualize, get all the app tools runnings its too slow.

Plus battery life is horrible when running a VM. Of course you could reboot into Windows.

I was extremely unhappy about their firmware deal with the iMac on the hard drives but then I started to think about it a bit more. If they are offering identical or faster speeds with a Thunderbolt external drive then why go through the trouble of upgrading the internal?

The MBA is highly proprietary and as someone else mentioned in this case it needs to be. They are trying to stuff everything in a small case and that cannot use off the shelf parts.

Plus you can expand with Thunderbolt peripherals, but of course carrying that is tough.

What matters to be is I leave the house, go see customers all day, work, and come home and the battery is still good.

With a bit more power/speed the MBA would be the perfect laptop for a lot of people.
 
hi

Yea right, apple invented the SSD sticks I seriously doubt they are going to replace it with unupgradable ones! That would be incredibly stupid.
 
MikhailT said:
I'm not sure why people are complaining about Apple locking down the MBA.

In order for laptops like MBA to get thinner, everything has to be more integrated (or locked down) and the option to upgrade has to be eliminated in order to do this.

Apple isn't locking down the bigger laptops that can support upgradability, they're doing this for the ultra-thin laptops. The more they can solider onto the laptop, the more space they can remove.

You are not paying $1K for the option to upgrade, you're paying $1K for the best integrated laptop with the smallest weight and footprint.
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Steve said all future laptops will be like the Air eventually
 
as a owner of a older eee 701 with a soldered ssd...you don't want to go there.....what once was a nice zippy little netbook,is now a painfully slow brick....

im not saying the new air will be anything close to the poor lasting ssd the 7" eee's had...but over time???

i had planned on buying my first air...but this news has me standing back until we hear further info (true...and or performance degregation over time)
 
peskaa said:
Personally, I'd accept it to get the battery gains, but then I can imagine some people being in uproar about the fact they can't upgrade in the future - however when you buy the MBA you can't touch the RAM, so the SSD is just a similar component.
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I know lots of people are always in an uproar about upgradability, but I have to admit that when I look back upon 20 years of my own computing history, it has been very very rare that I actually upgrade any of the parts of any of my PCs or laptops. RAM and HD upgrades excluded (fair enough, this is a negative of the MB Air in particular).

In my very first home-built PC I installed a Celeron chip thinking that eventually I would upgrade to a more powerful chip... but by the time I was ready to do that, they had changed chipsets and slot/socket architectures completely, so I needed a new motherboard... which needed new RAM and a new video card to go with it. I pretty much just built a new PC instead.

I've owned multiple laptops from Dells to PowerBooks and MacBook Pros (and one iMac) and the only thing I ever did was upgrade/replace the RAM and hard drives.

For all the talk of non-replaceable laptop batteries, I never bought new batteries for any of my laptops (including my current 2007 MacBook Pro). I would usually end up selling and buying a whole new model before it was ever time to replace the battery.
 
I'm not liking this. If something goes wrong, you need a new logic board. That'll cost all of you, especially US customers with such crappy consumer laws.

I'm all for making things more compact, but it's undoubtedly better to have some components separate, like the wireless card and the SSD.

Also, I can imagine all the fuzz occuring when people lose their data for pretty much any malfunction in their computers.

I don't think a soldered SSD will come to the 2011 Airs, but that's just a guess.
 
timoroso said:
I was planning to limit myself to the smallest capacity SSD and possibly upgrade later. This move would take away that possibility.
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Erm, is it even possible to upgrade it currently?

They don't actually use normal SSDs as they tale the flash memory out of them and attach them directly to the motherboard somehow, I'm not sure if they're soldered on or what but it must make it more complicated to upgrade.
 
peskaa said:
I think they just need to hurry up and release the 2011 models already!

That said, sticking the SSD onto the logic board is an interesting move. Personally, I'd accept it to get the battery gains, but then I can imagine some people being in uproar about the fact they can't upgrade in the future - however when you buy the MBA you can't touch the RAM, so the SSD is just a similar component.

For portability, speed and battery life I'd happily sacrifice being able to rip a laptop apart. If we're honest, how many MBA owners really change the SSD etc? 1%? Less than that?
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But the gains in speed and battery life are not for being soldered to the motherboard
 
I've read through this entire thread and I'm quite confused as to what this will really mean for the Macbook Air.

It's clearly getting mixed reviews and so far I've been set on getting the new Air but obviously, lots of people are thinking that this may be a negative advancement.

Does someone want to clearly outline the effects of this new change that maybe or may not be implemented.
 
iZeeshan said:
I've read through this entire thread and I'm quite confused as to what this will really mean for the Macbook Air.

It's clearly getting mixed reviews and so far I've been set on getting the new Air but obviously, lots of people are thinking that this may be a negative advancement.

Does someone want to clearly outline the effects of this new change that maybe or may not be implemented.
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Having the hard drive soldered to the board will not allow upgrades in the future, much like the ram is currently in the air. Third party hard drives also will not be able to be used. It forces people to pay for upgrades they may not need for a some time since they will never be able to upgrade it.
 
puma25uk said:
The sceptical in me says this is nothing to do with speed, but rather with limiting 3rd party SSD upgrades.
Custom hard-drive firmware on iMacs, now soldered SSD... Apple machines are fast becoming severely locked down, and turning computers into disposable units.

I love Apple but am getting royally pissed off with this artificial locking down, especially if I can't even reuse components like a screen.
If I can't afford a bigger spec machine right now, I can't upgrade in the future. Instead, I need to buy a new one :confused:
Unless I go MacPro which, let's be honest, hasn't received a lot of Apple's attention in the recent past...
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I really doubt they are doing this to limit 3rd party upgrades. My guess is they would do something like this to increase battery performance and to have room for other things like a Thunderbolt controller.

In other words they aren't doing it to limit 3rd party upgrades, but since they (as well as most consumers) don't care about 3rd party upgrades, nothing is stopping them.
 
This would make all the OCW SSD's obsolete. If it is the case, their advantage (monopoly?) on the MBA SSD will be over. I do wish their would be more than two 3rd party suppliers offering MBA SSDs as I am debating on upgrading myself or BTO.
 
hotcocoa said:
I really doubt they are doing this to limit 3rd party upgrades.
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Have you seen what the done to the latest iMac? One of the reasons, I think it is to limit any upgrades not from Apple. However to improve performance and specs are also the reasons.
 
Heilage said:
I'm not liking this. If something goes wrong, you need a new logic board. That'll cost all of you, especially US customers with such crappy consumer laws.

I'm all for making things more compact, but it's undoubtedly better to have some components separate, like the wireless card and the SSD.

Also, I can imagine all the fuzz occuring when people lose their data for pretty much any malfunction in their computers.

I don't think a soldered SSD will come to the 2011 Airs, but that's just a guess.
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Isn't that what warranties and AppleCare are for?

A spinning hard drive can certainly break too... losing all your data in the process...

You can help that by keeping good backups. That's good advice for any computer user.
 
Apple giveth and Apple taketh away. eth.

I was really looking forward to the new Airs, but this rumour dampens my enthusiasm somewhat. Being able to easily replace the internal storage should be a basic requirement of any computer - not being able to do so is just bad design, IMHO.

Of course it makes sense for Apple to try and sell more Applecare, more sealed unit designs that force people to spend Apple prices on upgrades, but it's sucky behaviour.

That said, as others have indicated this seems to all be part of the drive towards iOS devices and the mac being ever closer, presumably with an eventual goal of the two things merging completely (yuck).
 
Anyone who says Macbook Airs are for "light users" have never used a Macbook Air.

Now let me go back to editing my 1080p move in real time using Final Cut Pro X.

N00bs
 
Michael Scrip said:
Isn't that what warranties and AppleCare are for?

A spinning hard drive can certainly break too... losing all your data in the process...

You can help that by keeping good backups. That's good advice for any computer user.
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When your HDD breaks you replace your hard drive and put your backed up data back on your laptop.

Suppose your soldered on SSD breaks, just out of warranty, then what?
 
SSDs on iPhone

Why is it that the SSDs on iPhone aren't user replaceable either, but no one cares about that?

If Apple can find equally reliable and long lasting SSDs for MBAs, there's no reason not to solder them. No one (<5% of people) upgrades the current MBA SSDs, so it's only for reliability reasons.

In any case, this will probably lower the long term resell value of MacBooks, but it improves the experience for first-hand owners.
 
trims said:
When your HDD breaks you replace your hard drive and put your backed up data back on your laptop.

Suppose your soldered on SSD breaks, just out of warranty, then what?
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Suppose your {LCD screen, motherboard, power circuit board, Wifi board, Webcam, Microphone, power port, keyboard, touchpad} breaks, just out of warranty, then what?
 
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