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Slimmer 13-Inch and 15-Inch MacBook Pros Reportedly in Production
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Yes, not only do I have CDs from 1994 that I still need to burn, but I have some visicalc manuals from 1980 that I need to scan. So I won't be happy unless they put a scanner in the new MBP.
For those who don't know, you can pick up a Samsung external DVD player for less than nearly any iPad dongle. And it takes up the space of about 8 stacked DVDs. Not that you'll be using DVDs in a couple years when there are plenty of commercial and public video storage services in the cloud.
I think a crystal ball would be the end for Mac"Rumors" (and all rumors infact) new names would have to be: MacFact, MacFuture, Tomorrows Mac...
I agree that you shouldn't be "carrying around" an optical drive. Just as you shouldn't be "carrying around" optical disks!
The issue is having the choice, but also you should ask yourself whether there is an alternative to using physical media? Regardless of anyone's opinion physical media is going to phased out by all manufacturers in favour of electronic distribution. Personally I'd rather have room for more RAM slots and a second SSD, but I get that others will use their ODD a lot and having no internal disk is a deal-breaker for them. If you are one of these people I'd start looking at the alternatives sooner rather than later because it won't be too many years before the whole industry does this. Just look at how they have all adopted crap glossy screens - if one does it, they all do it.
I'm replacing my HP with a MBP late this year. I also have an older HP Netbook and bought an external ODD for it.
I travel a lot. But the only time I've used a ODD on either in the last few years is to play a Tony Horton P90X dvd or two to get a workout in the hotel room. Or sometimes a movie that I only have on dvd. But not that often, really.
The current form MBP 13" looks good with an internal ODD. It's pretty slim.
But I'm not buying one until late this year. My bias is that a new MBP should have an internal ODD but I can certainly live without it if it doesn't and the space saved is justified for other reasons.
I travel a lot. But the only time I've used a ODD on either in the last few years is to play a Tony Horton P90X dvd or two to get a workout in the hotel room. Or sometimes a movie that I only have on dvd. But not that often, really.
The current form MBP 13" looks good with an internal ODD. It's pretty slim.
But I'm not buying one until late this year. My bias is that a new MBP should have an internal ODD but I can certainly live without it if it doesn't and the space saved is justified for other reasons.
I'd choose the one with the ODD because I actually use it. SSDs are nice but too expensive at the moment (you can get a 1TB HD for the price of a 256GB SSD, not worth it at all) and I'm sure they can upgrade the rest of the computer without removing a vital component like they've been doing so far.
Talk to this dude:
Image
The thing is, if a company like Apple doesn't force the issue, the change over from ODD to SSD will either take a long time or never happen. The price of SSD drives will come down and become competitive to ODD's. The shift will happen when enough manufacturers can recoup their investment in new production equipment that produces the SSD. Today, ODD drive manufacturers and even cd/dvd disc makers can just about give away their products because they've already paid for everything. They'll keep reducing prices in hopes that they can keep some of the business going - convincing enough people that what they offer is good enough to not move forward.
Heck, it worked for horse breeders back in the late 1800's / early 1900's as they tried to keep their businesses going as the automobile began hitting the market. Sure, there are benefits to the spinning disk drives, price per gb specifically, but it's not going to be enough to keep things going for them. Once I swapped my rig from an 07 15" mbp to the new air, I have a hard time going back due to the sheer speed of access to files.
SSD drives are not a direct replacement for ODDs so I don't see your point here.
Apple should, however, replace all HDs with SSDs, but only when it is viable to do so. At the moment, it is not viable. I'd much rather have a 1TB HD than a 256GB SSD.
Ah, rumors...
Don't mind losing the optical drive, and I am excited to be ditching my 4 year old 15" MBP. My wish list: anti-glare HD screen (retina is less important than 1080P, for my purposes); 3 or more USB 3.0 ports (can't imagine they will do this, as it competes with Thunderbolt), and at least 750 GB of storage. I have a massive music collection, and don't feel like paying Apple or Google to store it for me, and then depend on a good wi-fi signal to hear it. I am also pretty worried about Mountain Lion becoming too much like iOS. The merging of the MB line is inevitable, and would probably be happening now if SSD costs came way down. My question is: other than software (increasingly irrelevant in these oh-so-CLOUDy times), what is Apple going to do to differentiate these machines from cheaper competitors? Touch screens? If so, I am ambivalent...
Don't mind losing the optical drive, and I am excited to be ditching my 4 year old 15" MBP. My wish list: anti-glare HD screen (retina is less important than 1080P, for my purposes); 3 or more USB 3.0 ports (can't imagine they will do this, as it competes with Thunderbolt), and at least 750 GB of storage. I have a massive music collection, and don't feel like paying Apple or Google to store it for me, and then depend on a good wi-fi signal to hear it. I am also pretty worried about Mountain Lion becoming too much like iOS. The merging of the MB line is inevitable, and would probably be happening now if SSD costs came way down. My question is: other than software (increasingly irrelevant in these oh-so-CLOUDy times), what is Apple going to do to differentiate these machines from cheaper competitors? Touch screens? If so, I am ambivalent...
I think with the advent of retina displays in the iPad and the coming HiDPI mode they'll be less afraid of throwing high-res displays into their smaller notebooks. Apple's UI hasn't ever been able to scale and they've been working hard on that. Maybe that's why Mountain Lion is quickly coming this summer.
Apple could tidy up the naming and lineup by simply having:
on iOS:
iPods
iPhone
iPad
on OS X:
Macbook (was air)
Macbook Pro
Mac (was imac)
Mac Pro
on iOSX (future grand unification project):
iMac (notebook with OS X on the vertical display and iOS running on the horiz control surface in lieu of a keyboard).
I haven't used an optical drive once in any of the last three systems I've owned. There are better ways of both transferring and archiving files. I'd like a more portable machine that didn't sacrifice horsepower.
on iOS:
iPods
iPhone
iPad
on OS X:
Macbook (was air)
Macbook Pro
Mac (was imac)
Mac Pro
on iOSX (future grand unification project):
iMac (notebook with OS X on the vertical display and iOS running on the horiz control surface in lieu of a keyboard).
I haven't used an optical drive once in any of the last three systems I've owned. There are better ways of both transferring and archiving files. I'd like a more portable machine that didn't sacrifice horsepower.
MacBook Pro. Not MacBookPro. And yes, we get that. Although they're already quite slim.
There are millions of people who disagree with you. I happen to be one of them. Most of us have pretty compelling reasons. And know a lot more.
Um. No. iOS games tend to be kiddy toys. I don't own any new consoles. I like gaming on my COMPUTER with a MOUSE. And I don't want to have to buy a whole other computer just to game. That's stupid. I should be able to play wherever I go, with my laptop.
Laptops are for anyone who needs or wants a portable computer. Many gamers are in their fifties. Your condescention is amusing to say the least, especially given how clueless you apparently are. You think GPUs' only function is to accelerate gaming? Think again. CAD has always used GPUs.. and now so do pretty much all visual design applications (photo manipulation, video editing, etc., plus GPUGPU utilization is going up every day).
You're clueless.
As already eluded to... do what you want with the design. Just make sure I can get inside the damn thing to upgrade memory and drive space! Not worried about the CPU - this will be fine. Not worried about the battery either. I'll even fork over another $60 for an external CD/DVD burner.
Given the above parameters, thinner would be OK. An "easier" slide into a backpack is always welcome. I'm just an average guy with average needs who has high standards when it comes to build quality. (Basically, I'm probably Apple's target market when it comes to the MBP).
Give me this and I'm happy.
Given the above parameters, thinner would be OK. An "easier" slide into a backpack is always welcome. I'm just an average guy with average needs who has high standards when it comes to build quality. (Basically, I'm probably Apple's target market when it comes to the MBP).
Give me this and I'm happy.
Same here, I want new redesign MBP to be thinner.
Last time, I remember having a discussion with an old friend regarding optical drive, he was arguing and saying people still need that drive. I was little pissed
The point is solid state is a replacement for optical. I'm not saying that what is on the market today (for ssd) can replace the cheap and huge data storage options, but that isn't going to stay a static situation. You have to think Apple realizes that people want and need more space and they're not going to just keep offering ODD drives to solve the situation - because that's not moving forward. At some point you have to commit to what's new, take the short-term hit (in price or storage capacity or both), because that's how it works. Do you remember when cd's cost $5 each? Lots of people complained and kept buying 5.25" floppies for the exact same reason. So point being, it's going to change and that change is going to happen sooner rather than later - quite possibly with the new mbp lineup.
Connectivity and Merging
I doubt they would ever use touch screens especially since Steve Jobs referenced research in one of speeches that showed touchscreen laptops didn't work because people's arms would get tired and take away from the experience. And personally, I wouldn't mind Apple going away from usb connectivity as well. If they want to stop using optical drives, I think they should be able to rely on thunderbolt, bluetooth, and WiFi. My iOS devices already sync over WiFi and I just take out the SD card from my camera when I want to upload photos and videos.
I also think the eventual merging of OS X/iOS would be good or at least to a degree. iOS has a much smaller footprint and with the move to SSD(which is still too expensive for complete acceptance and application) an OS will have to take up a smaller amount of disk space.
I doubt they would ever use touch screens especially since Steve Jobs referenced research in one of speeches that showed touchscreen laptops didn't work because people's arms would get tired and take away from the experience. And personally, I wouldn't mind Apple going away from usb connectivity as well. If they want to stop using optical drives, I think they should be able to rely on thunderbolt, bluetooth, and WiFi. My iOS devices already sync over WiFi and I just take out the SD card from my camera when I want to upload photos and videos.
I also think the eventual merging of OS X/iOS would be good or at least to a degree. iOS has a much smaller footprint and with the move to SSD(which is still too expensive for complete acceptance and application) an OS will have to take up a smaller amount of disk space.
CDs offer a lot more space than floppies. SSDs offer a lot less space for a lot more money. An SSD drive is a better piece of kit, yes, but I don't see the point in buying one right now when the technology is still very much in development.
That's a cool technology that will never see the light of day in laptops, or any consumer-level computer. It might be useful as an archiving solution in data centres, where the customer insists on an optical format for a very specific reason.
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What about video editors and graphic (3d) artists on the go? Your comment is very narrow sighted. Not to even talk about using hires external displays.
xinu said:
What about video editors and graphic (3d) artists on the go? Your comment is very narrow sighted. Not to even talk about using hires external displays.
I kinda need an optical drive for my business I transfer VHS, Hi8, Mini-DV, and will be starting super 8 to DVD will stick with my mid 2009 MBP for a while yet, its maxed out anyways with 8 gig of ram Might have to opt for an iMac eventually
will stick with my mid 2009 MBP for a while yet, its maxed out anyways with 8 gig of ram Might have to opt for an iMac eventually