Apple apparently is looking at ways to make the optical drive thiner as well, so it may just hang around long than people think.
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The FUTURE of the Macbook Pro
- Thread starter AlvinNguyen
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The 15" MacBook Pro doesn't have heat issues. It gets hot, yes, but heat issues implies that it gets so hot it cuts out. Every MacBook Pro revision has been notorious for heat, and the metal case design only makes the machine "seem" hotter.
They don't need the thickness of the MacBook Pro at the trackpad end if they remove the optical drive. The only reason it is that thick is because the hard drive sits there (open up the case and see for yourself). If the hard drive is moved to the optical drive place, then a tapered design would not cause any compromise.
The 13" MacBook Air v 13" MacBook Pro, performance wise there isn't anything hugely significant. The Pro will perform better, but they both have integrated GPUs. Of course, you could use the space saved from an optical drive on the 13" and use that for a dedicated GPU.
But I doubt Apple will though. They'll see the 13" Pro and 13" Air as far too similar if the 13" Pro adopted the new tapered design. In a perfect world, I'd love a 13" Pro, tapered design packed with high-end GPU and CPU. But this is Apple.. and they'll force you to get an Air if you want a 13" laptop.
And to be honest, the high-end 13" Air is a very capable laptop.
It could be as thick as it is right now at the top end (which is thicker than the Air), and taper down like the Air near the trackpad. The logic board on the Pro is tiny, and they don't need to make it larger for better performance. Your main concern is heat, but if you were to actually look at where the CPU and GPU is in a tapered design (keeping the Pro at the same thickness it is at the thickest point near the hinge) then you'll not be creating any more heat issues.
Apple said that the 13" Air design (tapered) was the future of notebooks. There's been rumours of a 15" laptop circulating Apple with an Air-like tapered design. I'd place a high stake bet that the next generation MacBook Pro design will be tapered, exactly like the Air, and that they'll drop the 13" from the Pro range.
The 13" MBA is quite capable but it lacks expandability so it can't grow with you..Thats where the difference lie's the 13" pro can morph the MBA can..The other argument I guess would be just sell it and get a different computer that fits your needs but I think I'd rather tinker..maybe what is now the 13" MBP will become the MB I just dunno...
If they can make it thinner than it is now, the battery isn't big enough IMO. If the components get smaller, they can add a bigger battery, 4 RAM slots, etc... There's plenty of things I'd like them to use extra space for rather than making it thinner. All in my opinion, and I'm sure plenty will disagree, but the MBP is fine at the size it is.
I'd take added power/battery life in the current form factor over a smaller form factor.
I'm not disagreeing with the usefulness of extra space and expandability.
Thought the point in this thread was to actually speculate what Apple is likely to do. And it is really likely that they'll make the MacBook Pro tapered like the Air. I'm sure Apple will still make it a powerful machine. Of course, it'll not be the best PC laptop out there for performance because of the trade-offs Apple will make with thinness and battery life.
I personally don't like the idea of a large amount of 'hidden' SSD storage (ie, hybrid drive with 64GB+ of SSD). It's effectively wasted space for anyone with half a technical mind.
What I mean is, for it to be used as caching, anything on it needs to also be on the normal HDD. That means duplicate data, and wasted space. Furthermore, the system would constantly be swapping data in and out of the SSD, so you'd never be sure that what you want on the SSD will stay there. For example if Photoshop is cached, but then you go and watch a few HD movies, you might find that Photoshop has been un-cached, and replaced by said movies. Or, what would such a situation do if you wanted to run Boot Camp???
The best option in my opinion is still to spend that small amount of effort to install what you want where you want, and know that the resulting optimised setup isn't going to change.
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I just hope that the most recent trend in the MBPs continues. If Apple keeps using the best CPUs, and performance level GPUs, I will be happy. If Apple continues to pursue the idea of blazing speed when you need it, and great battery life when you don't, I will be happy.
If Apple continue to solve problems via great engineering, as opposed to compromise, I think we will all be happy.
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Duuude!!!!
MacRumors now has automatic post concatenation???
Sweet!!!
What I mean is, for it to be used as caching, anything on it needs to also be on the normal HDD. That means duplicate data, and wasted space. Furthermore, the system would constantly be swapping data in and out of the SSD, so you'd never be sure that what you want on the SSD will stay there. For example if Photoshop is cached, but then you go and watch a few HD movies, you might find that Photoshop has been un-cached, and replaced by said movies. Or, what would such a situation do if you wanted to run Boot Camp???
The best option in my opinion is still to spend that small amount of effort to install what you want where you want, and know that the resulting optimised setup isn't going to change.
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I just hope that the most recent trend in the MBPs continues. If Apple keeps using the best CPUs, and performance level GPUs, I will be happy. If Apple continues to pursue the idea of blazing speed when you need it, and great battery life when you don't, I will be happy.
If Apple continue to solve problems via great engineering, as opposed to compromise, I think we will all be happy.
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Duuude!!!!
MacRumors now has automatic post concatenation???
Sweet!!!
The high-end 13" Air is also 400€ more expensive than the base 13". The base 13" MBP is the only laptop that is both affordable and powerful. The MBA is either affordable and portable, or relatively powerful and portable. It is never affordable and powerful, as the 13" MBP is. And will never be until SSDs drop in prices dramatically and ULV chipsets improve.
The MBP is not simply a MBA with a Superdrive. It has LV chips (instead of ULV) which provides better performance on CPU-intensive tasks, upgradeable RAM, more storage space (a LOT more storage space!), better quality screen despite the lower resolution, and more ports. And it is also Apple's best selling laptop.
The Air is indeed the future of notebooks. There are few reasons to doubt that in the future ULV chipsets will be powerful enough for most tasks (tbh, they already are for a vast majority of users), and that SSDs are a far superior option than the currently-used HDDs. The MBA relies on both of these, and it's obvious that that is what the future holds in store for us. What isn't obvious is that prices of SSD and performance of ULV chips are satisfactory enough for Apple to do that jump immedeatly and kill their best selling laptop.
I agree with this statement. The 45W quad CPU in the big MBPs is almost as powerful as high end desktop CPUs. For example, my brand new work desktop has a quad 3.2 GHz CPU in it, and my notebook has a quad 2.2 GHz CPU, same architecture. <50% faster, for over 100% more power draw. But then if you consider that the single core turbo boost on my notebook is 3.3 GHz, but on the desktop is only ~3.8, that gap closes a LOT.
And when the even more power efficient Ivy Bridge and Haswell architectures are released, that gap is going to become almost non-existent, and will probably come down to a price gap, instead of a price and power gap between mobile and desktop chips.
I Think they will keep the Optical Drive, it is the MacBook PRO, Its for Pro Customers (Mostly) And A lot of people NEED that Optical Drive, with that in mind, after seeing the macbook air and inside of the macbook pro, I Think their will be a 8gb or 16gb SSD for the boot drive, soldered onto the motherboard like in the MBA, and that will be locked to ONLY the OS, and it will be raided with a large 7200rpm Hard Drive (500gb and up) that is located in the same place as it is now in the system, that said, it may have a redesign, But I Think they will only get a little thinner, nothing major, as The whole point of the MBA is its portability and thinness, most MBP customers don't case about that or they would buy the Air. So anyway, the optical drive should stay, and a small SSD for the OS soldered onto the mobo, and a standard 7200rpm Harddrive, raided to use for all storages, although this will most likely not happen until 10.8 (or OS 11) as such feature of it writing files to a specific drive without having 2 visible drives on the desktop would have to require a redesign of somesort.
There is nothing remotely "pro" about inefficient-slow-and-broken-after-few-month-waste-of-space-legacy technology from the 90ies in an portable device. I consider my self as a "pro"user who needs to work with material from many sources and I can tell you: everywhere I go there is a thumbdrive, external HDD, LAN or fast internet (for email or sharing via Dropbox etc.). And I work with most old fashioned clients like museums etc. If your workspace/s can't offer those (essential) requirements, you might reconsider if you (as a "pro" user) want to work there or upgrade your work environment to "pro" standards.
Who has the time to wait till a DVD is finished today (not to mention the hassle to find a blank disk)...
Actually I think a DVD ROM is as "casual" as it gets, because the only reason I can see for it is watching/ripping movies. But who (that is willing to pay a premium price for an premium "pro" device) wants to see SD crap on an 13-17" display anyway...
Bring on USB3, ditch the ODD and use the space for more ("pro") storage, ("pro") performance and/or a better ("pro") battery .
As I stated many times before, the MBP will not shed its ODD until at least 2014. There's the MacBook Air if you want a thin, ODD-free laptop that the masses want. The MacBook Pro is a (wait for it) PRO product. Which means it's tailored to fit professional needs, not consumer needs. To suit music professionals, Apple needs the ODD on the MacBook Pro.
Also, if you're going to argue against this, there is a reason why Apple Loops are released in CAF.
As for the SSD+HDD, that's the most likely route for the MBP.
Because clearly music professionals are the only type of professionals that exist.
And using a faster, more reliable and easier to replace external ODD is unacceptable to any professional.
Because clearly music professionals are the only type of professionals that exist.
And using a faster, more reliable and easier to replace external ODD is unacceptable to any professional.
As a mobile workstation, a lack of an integrated ODD is in fact unacceptable. Especially when you have a limited amount of USB ports.
Products like Avid Pro Tools come only in boxed disks.
Many scholarly products only come in boxed disks.
DVDs are still used by many private companies, such as the people who record video of special events (e.g. wedding, graduation).
Legacy/disk-only product support is required for many professions. For example, your company might force you to install Windows on your Mac.
The world isn't only made of big brand companies, you know.
I was not aware that USB and FW800 are faster than SATA connections...hmm..../s
Arguing is pointless. We're not going to change each other's minds.
However I doubt that even the fastest ODD is going to come even close to saturating a USB 2 connection.
700MB CD / 80 mins ~= 150KB/s
150KB/s * 32xCD reader ~= 4.8 MB/s
5GB DVD / 2hrs ~= 750 KB/s
750KB/s * 16xDVD reader ~= 12 MB/s
compared to:
USB 2 ~= 50 MB/s
Blu-Ray would probably saturate the USB 2 connection, or at least come close, but Apple don't offer those yet. And a Light Peak, or Express Card connection would provide more than enough bandwidth for that anyway.
However I doubt that even the fastest ODD is going to come even close to saturating a USB 2 connection.
700MB CD / 80 mins ~= 150KB/s
150KB/s * 32xCD reader ~= 4.8 MB/s
5GB DVD / 2hrs ~= 750 KB/s
750KB/s * 16xDVD reader ~= 12 MB/s
compared to:
USB 2 ~= 50 MB/s
Blu-Ray would probably saturate the USB 2 connection, or at least come close, but Apple don't offer those yet. And a Light Peak, or Express Card connection would provide more than enough bandwidth for that anyway.
The form factor wont get thinner as pro users will not pay $1500 for a 512gb ssd. The way i see it is that they drop the optical drive and relocate the battery so that two hard drive bays are at the front of the macbook (either side of the trackpad). If they do this they could possibly make it 3.5mm thinner if the hard drives are the reason for the thickness. However I doubt this as I'd rather have a powerful computer than an ultra thin one.
I cant possibly see a major redesign as they have already made it as thin as it can be, possibly make the screen thinner but again pro users would rather have the wide gamut.
I cant possibly see a major redesign as they have already made it as thin as it can be, possibly make the screen thinner but again pro users would rather have the wide gamut.
I dont think apple will have such redundancy in its line up. If you need ultra thin they already offer that. They are not going to revise the macbook pro to be considerably less powerful than what it is now. And why do you think 2012, skymont will be released in 2012 which will allow even better performance at less power and heat.
By Skymont I think you mean Ivy Bridge.
Skymont won't be around until ~2016.
Otherwise, I agree.
Whatever case design it is gonna be, you can be sure that it will still be a powerful machine for a "Pro" user. There will be no redundancy because the MBPs will still be heavier, thicker and faster than the MBAs, even with a tapered design for the former.
But with the tapered design, it will most likely still be as thick as the current ones at the top of the keyboard, just the bottom will get thinner. Is that really such a big advantages? The thickest point still dictates whether it fits in your bag or not! Will it get much lighter because of the new design? I doubt so!
Wouldn't a MBP without the ODD and a bigger battery be much more portable than one with tapered design?
Something new: Has anyone thought about new materials the new MBP will come with? Maybe a carbon fiber/aluminum alloy hybrid for reduced weight? Some other hardened plastic?
And what about a small touchscreen implementation next to the keyboard? Like an iPhone-style launchpad to quickly select your apps?
But with the tapered design, it will most likely still be as thick as the current ones at the top of the keyboard, just the bottom will get thinner. Is that really such a big advantages? The thickest point still dictates whether it fits in your bag or not! Will it get much lighter because of the new design? I doubt so!
Wouldn't a MBP without the ODD and a bigger battery be much more portable than one with tapered design?
Something new: Has anyone thought about new materials the new MBP will come with? Maybe a carbon fiber/aluminum alloy hybrid for reduced weight? Some other hardened plastic?
And what about a small touchscreen implementation next to the keyboard? Like an iPhone-style launchpad to quickly select your apps?
Exactly.There is no need for tapered edges, they would look odd on a MBP as it so much thicker than a MBA