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

[cairbre]

I think the MBA has come a long way when I got my 13' Core Duo MBP I looked at the air but it was to expensive and limiting so I went with the MBP.

If I were to up grade my MBP in a year or two then I really would look carefully at the Air. I really use my MBP as my secondary computer. I have an imac at work and a beast of a PC desktop upstairs to play games, have music on etc. and with iCloud I could have my music on all of my devices.

I am a gamer so I wont be abandoning windows any time soon but I have moved my work to the imac and am loving it. Apple has improved its gaming a lot but window is still the superior OS in this regard. (Runs for cover from the macrumors crowd picking up pitchfork!)

 

[res1233]

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

An MBA is certainly a capable machine, but it is in no way designed for high end users. I've used an MBA, but it would choke on a heavy workload. Limited RAM, slower CPU, and no Discreet GPU are just some of the limiting factors. It isn't marketed to people who need such things, and those people are not light users.

 

[Jaro65]

Love the sound of better battery life. That matters a lot in an MBA.

Though I'm not sure how will the Sandy Bridge i5 and i7 CPUs compare in their power consumption to the C2D CPUs that are in MBA now? Will we be actually gaining any more battery life out of the new MBAs?

 

[KnightWRX]

An MBA is certainly a capable machine, but it is in no way designed for high end users. I've used an MBA, but it would choke on a heavy workload. Limited RAM, slower CPU, and no Discreet GPU are just some of the limiting factors. It isn't marketed to people who need such things, and those people are not light users.

Not all high end users have heavy workloads. Let's face it, awk and sed ran on machines back in the 80s, yet they work the black magic of Unix like no other software can.

 

[Jaro65]

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.

You are either a very tall and powerful human being, or your mobility needs are simply different from a whole lot of us who jumped on the MBA bandwagon. I also have a 17" MBP, which was my main machine until I picked up a 13" MBA. The MBA is simply a joy to take along and use in various settings (sofa, bed, airplane, etc.) compared to my MBP. This is a totally different experience. While the MBA isn't as powerful as MBP, it is plenty powerful for the 95%+ of things I do. The MBP only gets turned on now and then.

 

[Tampa Tom]

... 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.
...

Old thinking (circa 2003) The computer must have user serviceable/replaceable parts.

New thinking (circa 2011) A computer is just like any other piece of consumer electronics (TV's, DVRs etc.) It is what it is and nothing is replaceable by the consumer because of the simple fact that 99.9% of the consumers have NO desire to do so.

The remaining .01% of the "complainers" are dinosaurs.

 

[Heilage]

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.

For me, personally, it's an extremely minor issue. I do hourly backups and keep the really important stuff off site as well. Even if my apartment burns, and all my computers get melted to nothingness, I still wouldn't have lost anything important. Norwegian Consumer Law also gives me warranty repairs for five years after the purchase date, so I don't even need AppleCare.

But I work as an Apple Technician, and when I think of the troubles this would cause in regards to customer data, and how bad people are generally at taking backups and using backups in the proper way, I cringe.

 

[FuNGi]

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.

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.

Yes but those 3rd party OCW upgrades cost an arm and .... an Air. $1,400.00 for the 480 GB blade is frickin' unbelievable. Actually the only thing holding me back from selling my original unibody MBP and going solo with my Air is the larger drive space needed. I prefer not using externals apart from backups. I've been patiently waiting for the blade SSD prices to come down and they just don't and apparently won't until a major production breakthrough.

I'm guessing Apple will sell the new MBA's with higher memory options at the same price points. Look for a 192 and 320GB upgradeable options on the new SB 11" and 13", respectively. Then we'll see how the "saved costs and space" are transferred to the consumer...if this rumor is real.

 

[cmaier]

Not all high end users have heavy workloads. Let's face it, awk and sed ran on machines back in the 80s, yet they work the black magic of Unix like no other software can.

Seems to run vi fine, too

 

[Chwisch87]

I am not entirely sure that we are gonna see anything other than a processor update. We always get these rumors before a product launch. Remember when we got all excited on the news the macbook pro was rumored to be getting an SSD boot drive with hhd for storage?? exiting stuff. didn't happen.

 

[TSE]

If it's faster and extends battery life I am all for it.

 

[wallysb01]

If this rumor is true, it will certainly force me away from the MBA.

I'm considering buying either a 15" MBP or 13" MBA and was waiting on this refresh for the MBA to make my choice. One thing I had mostly decided on was going for the bottom hard drive option, intending to upgrade once SSD price in the 256GB+ range dropped significantly. Its either that or wait for a reasonably priced TB capable external SSD, which I'm less than excited about...

 

[BeSweeet]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

400Mbps? I think they mean 400MBps.

 

[KillerTree]

Can you even replace the current Airs SSD?

 

[peskaa]

Can you even replace the current Airs SSD?

Yes.

 

[swingerofbirch]

For those saying it's problematic that you could wear out the SSD by writing to it too much, is that more of an issue with SSDs than with HDDs, and is it still an issue if you have the new TRIM feature in Lion enabled? What does it mean in practical terms--you have to be wary of how much you store? It seems like iPods, iPhones, iPads also use flash memory and people don't seem to worry too much about wearing out the flash memory. Is there a difference in the type of flash memory they use?

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Though I'm not sure how will the Sandy Bridge i5 and i7 CPUs compare in their power consumption to the C2D CPUs that are in MBA now? Will we be actually gaining any more battery life out of the new MBAs?

I've read in other MBA threads that the SB CPUs also have improved power consumption.

 

[Arcadie]

HDD's are measured in bytes not bits. generally only network speeds are measured in bits. Its alot more appealing to sell some one 16 megabits instead of 2megabytes per second.

 

[shurcooL]

For those saying it's problematic that you could wear out the SSD by writing to it too much, is that more of an issue with SSDs than with HDDs, and is it still an issue if you have the new TRIM feature in Lion enabled? What does it mean in practical terms--you have to be wary of how much you store? It seems like iPods, iPhones, iPads also use flash memory and people don't seem to worry too much about wearing out the flash memory. Is there a difference in the type of flash memory they use?

In practical terms, don't worry about it for SSDs made in 2011 and later. It used to be a bigger issue in the earlier days, and even then it was more theoretical than actual danger.

Just use your SSD the way you normally would and it'll last you way longer than the laptop itself.

 

[shurcooL]

HDD's are measured in bytes not bits. generally only network speeds are measured in bits. Its alot more appealing to sell some one 16 megabits instead of 2megabytes per second.

How is 16 megabits/sec more appealing than 2 megabytes/sec?
Is 2048 kilabytes/sec more appealing than 16 megabits/sec then?

 

[SPEEDwithJJ]

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?

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

Then just buy a new MacBook Air or Pro (whichever one catches your eye)?

 

[cvaldes]

In practical terms, don't worry about it for SSDs made in 2011 and later. It used to be a bigger issue in the earlier days, and even then it was more theoretical than actual danger.

Just use your SSD the way you normally would and it'll last you way longer than the laptop itself.

Yes, today's SSDs based on MLC NAND flash have 1-2 million hour MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). You really don't need to worry much these days.

Incidentally, that's about the same MTBF as a comparable old-fashioned magnetic hard disk drive.

 

[Bregalad]

Here's something to consider. Macbooks have an insanely high resell value. Rather than complaining about computers being locked down and unable to upgrade, buy a macbook and use it for 2-3 years and then SELL it rather than upgrading. Then buy a newer generation system. You'll be getting a much faster system anyway.

Case and point. I had a 2000 dollar macbook pro from 2009 and I just sold that thing for 1300 on ebay. 3 years and a loss of only 700 dollars is almost a steal. Put in a couple hundred dollars and I'm picking up a baseline 2011 macbook pro 15.

How's that for upgrade?

The only reason you can sell a used MBP for 65% of its original price is the ease of replacing the old hard drive with a new one.
If it was impossible to replace the internal drive because it was soldered to the motherboard you'd be hard pressed to get 25% of the original price after 3 years.
So your strategy becomes vastly more expensive if Apple solders the SSD to the motherboard.

 

[notjustjay]

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?

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

Well, the difference is that if my motherboard breaks I can say "Oh well, I guess it's time to migrate everything to a new machine", where if the SSD breaks I say "Oh crap, there go all my files."

Better make good backups of your data.

 

[Bregalad]

In practical terms, don't worry about it for SSDs made in 2011 and later. It used to be a bigger issue in the earlier days, and even then it was more theoretical than actual danger.

Just use your SSD the way you normally would and it'll last you way longer than the laptop itself.

I'm happy to hear the MTBF for modern SSDs is much better than it was in the past.

Even so I'd be very reluctant to buy any computer, especially a notebook, with an internal drive that couldn't be replaced. Drives (magnetic disk and SSD) are the only part of your computer guaranteed to fail eventually.

Over the past 20 years I've owned a lot of Macs and a few PCs. I've had more hard drive failures than all other components put together.