Thinner MacBook Pro Models in 13-Inch and 15-Inch Sizes Coming in April?

[adder7712]

So long...good luck with Windows

What's so bad about Windows 7? It's way better than the mess that is called Vista.

Definitely looking forward for then new Ivy Bridge Macs. USB 3.0 + Thunderbolt will be amazing.

Just hope they wouldn't dump the Ethernet port, I can't get WiFi in my room.

 

[Renzatic]

What's so bad about Windows 7?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with 7, which is what makes Windows 8 so damn tragic. I just got through playing around with the consumer preview on my old laptop, and that guffed up interface is enough to make me consider running over and joining the cult.

Just..uggghh.

 

[adder7712]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with 7, which is what makes Windows 8 so damn tragic. I just got through playing around with the consumer preview on my old laptop, and that guffed up interface is enough to make me consider running over and joining the cult.

Just..uggghh.

How's the Start-menu replacement thingymajig working for you?

 

[dksram]

If your going to sacrifice the superdrive and a few other features why not just call it a MacBook Air?
Seriously. I see people leaving Apple for other laptops.

Think about it, You lose all the things that make it a Macbook Pro to make it lighter? Okay it weighs less than 4 pounds.

BUT BUT BUT

You have to purchase peripherals to make up for it? 1 to 2 extra pounds then dropping, breaking or losing those?

Maybe lose the superdrive and have thumb drives used in place of cd/dvd but if you need/want a cd/rom thats more to lug around.
I will say if you lose the superdrive add more battery. Also lets ditch the HDD and have SSD's instead.

 

[KnightWRX]

I know you like to troll sometimes, and I noticed the ongoing argument, but there are plenty of cases for things like discrete gpus out..

What are you talking about ? I'm only referring to people that say the MacBook Pro wouldn't be a "Pro" machine without X or Y feature when X or Y feature is not defining of a "Pro" machine at all.

What trolling are you even referring to ?

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You missed the point. I'm talking about the difference between a "Pro" machine and the "Air"

What difference ? The "Air" can be a "Pro" machine if the Air is used by a professional to perform tasks for his profession.

 

[Renzatic]

You know, I wasn't opposed to tiles. I thought they were pretty cool. I've even found myself growing fond of the sleek, minimal stylings of Metro after playing around with Metrotwit and the Zune marketplace. It's not like I'd even miss the old start menu. For me, it's depreciated to the point that I don't use it for anything except shutting down my computer, or doing a quick type-to-search. If MS implemented all these various parts properly, it would've been a grand replacement.

But they didn't. For all intents and purposes, it is very much a tablet interface stapled on top of Aero. They've taken two good UI's designed around two completely different input paradigms, and stapled them together to form a single awkward one that don't interact with each other quite as smoothly as they should.

See, when you're on the desktop, you have to contend with two taskbars. The tried and true Windows 7 bar, and the super secret, always hidden until you you move the cursor near it Metro bar. One deals specifically with desktop apps, the other, metro apps (appropriately enough). Now I dock my taskbar to the left side of the screen...which, unfortunately, is also where the Metro bar resides. If I go to launch my browser, which is the first icon at the top of my screen, I'm almost guaranteed to accidentally call up the "previous app" Metro thumbnail. It gets in the way, and it annoys the everliving hell out of me. And the "charm bar" on the right? It's flaky. The fact I have to use a mouse gesture to access it pisses me off to no end. There's no reason for it.

And when you're in the start menu, you can only multitask through Metro apps. There's no way I can access any of the various windows I have open on my desktop. This is something I'd expect, because, you know...the start menu is supposed to be a part of the whole "experience". You know, interconnectedness and all that good stuff. But nope. The desktop is now an app. It's treated like an app. It acts like an app when you're in the start menu. Hell, it acts like an app when you're in it. Which is why all the gestures you'd use to navigate around Metro specific apps are stapled on top of it. Which...yeah...leads me to my previous complaint.

It's a weird, uneasy mix of two setups that don't belong together. I won't bash it completely, though. It is stable, it is thinner, and it is fast. Even on the old laptop I installed it on, it probably gave me a good 15 second boost to my start up time. And this is on a live, from the desktop OS install. The first time I've ever done a Windows upgrade without reformating my drive beforehand.

Metro is an excellent tablet UI. I'd daresay it's even better than iOS in some regards. And Aero? It's just as solid as it's ever been. I even kinda like the ribbon on the explorer windows. But the two do not belong together. You cannot have a one size fits all interface between a PC and tablet, specially not when you ghettoize the one interface that most plays to the PC's mouse driven strengths. Windows 8 pretty much proved this to me.

 

[thekev]

What are you talking about ? I'm only referring to people that say the MacBook Pro wouldn't be a "Pro" machine without X or Y feature when X or Y feature is not defining of a "Pro" machine at all.

What trolling are you even referring to ?

The comment that what they need to drop are certain customers. It's typical for a brand to take note of what features their customers use. Quite a few of them that might have gone for a tower in the PowerPC days buy macbook pros today (observation over many many people, although I'm not one myself). They should consider how many people they could potentially burn if they drop a lot of significant features. There are people even on here that play games on their macs in bootcamp (again I'm not one of them), and Intel is really lacking a strong track record with gpus. Note how Apple used NVidia chipsets before the Intel lawsuit at least partially because of this.

Anyway the mentality on here is a bit odd on some of this stuff. I don't think Apple would actually drop the features available in the 15" pro unless they could in fact differentiate a set of Airs enough to justify comparable price points. If sales have been a bit slower over the past year or so on the macbook pros, it's most likely because the real gains after the beginning of nehalem have been on the low and high ends as in 12 core mac pro and dual core Air. The speed of of the quads and their associated gpus haven't been affected as much. The same goes for the imac. Look back a generation, and it's still got most of the performance. The biggest gains were from being clocked a bit higher. Don't get too caught up in geekbench scores between hyperthreaded and non hyperthreaded models. They can be misleading given that not all software benefits much from it.

 

[Bartboy919]

There are few things in this world more tragic than sarcasm misunderstood.

"Yeah, Bobby. Reindeer sweaters are the very apex of fashion these days. You're gonna get all kinds of laid tonight, man"!

"Really? Cool! Thanks for the friendly advice! I bet I'll have like 50 chicks on my arm tonight! All thanks to my reindeer sweater"! :drives off to club:

:a single tear rolls down my cheek:

I'm sorry, but I feel I must invoke Poe's law, as I have heard and seen people that ACTUALLY hold those views in regards to how they want the Pro line to develop.

They say, "Oh yeah, toss the dedicated graphics, no one uses that anymore". It infuriates me every time. If the Macbook Pro line nixs their dedicated GPU, i'm just not going to buy macbook pro's anymore. I love OS X, but I need a dedicated GPU. Nothing anyone says will change my mind about that.

 

[Renzatic]

I'm sorry, but I feel I must invoke Poe's law, as I have heard and seen people that ACTUALLY hold those views in regards to how they want the Pro line to develop.

Sometimes it's hard to tell when someone around here is being sarcastic, I'll give you that. But dude guy was so over the top, specially towards the end, I figured everyone would've picked up on it.

They say, "Oh yeah, toss the dedicated graphics, no one uses that anymore". It infuriates me every time. If the Macbook Pro line nixs their dedicated GPU, i'm just not going to buy macbook pro's anymore. I love OS X, but I need a dedicated GPU. Nothing anyone says will change my mind about that.

And yeah, there is a small group of people around here who are weird like that. They'll get that glazed over thousand yard stare look, and say "I'm a super-pro, been in the business for 500 years, and I edit 50,000x50,000 megapixel photos with my first generation Macbook Air all the time. Hasn't even hitched once yet. I don't know why anyone thinks they need more. It just works. I should know. I'm a super-pro". But the really truly honestly serious ones are fairly rare. Usually only posting on the days when the asylum lets them have access to the internet or something.

 

[jamieg]

What about boxed software? Much of the Pro software still sold only comes boxed and on DVD, look at like Pro audio software for instance, Reason, Ableton Live, Komplete, etc...there are many Pro software apps and suites that are not featured on the App store and are not downloadable, you have to have a CD/DVD drive to install them.

I know all the Adobe apps are available from adobe.com as downloads, as well as Microsoft Office from Microsoft, but much of this software is still bought and installed via optical drive, and NOT available on the Mac App Store at all.

Also, some people still like to rip CDs to iTunes, etc, and watch the occasional DVD. I have two MacBook Airs, but I also own a SuperDrive for installing those specific software suites I have on DVD, etc. I think we still haven't completely made the transition to a "No need, Optical-Drive-less" world, yet. A few more years, but many companies are still putting out their software exclusively on DVD in boxed physical packages that you must buy at a store and install on a Disc. So, we aren't there yet.

I've been using Ableton for years. I bought it on their website and downloaded it. The boxed version was a lot more expensive. I'm pretty sure you can download Reason too. Do companies still need to put their software in a fancy box to make you feel like you are buying something physical? The record industries sure don't!!

 

[heisetax]

Can't imagine them releasing a new MBP without Ivy Bridge. I don't really care about the redesign. Just want ivy bridge, USB 3, SSD and a 2nd HD option to replace the OOD.

There are many Mac companies that sell conversion kits for it seems like a few years now where one can take out the optical drive & put in a second hdd or ssd in its place. Go that route with what you now have to see if you like it as much as you think you will.

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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405)

I would rather they keep the thickness and stuff it with more battery.

Finally someone that really wants usefulness over small & pretty. I'd love to have a builtin 10 key keypad on a 17" MacBook Pro. HP can do it on a 15". Part of that is because of thickness. I'm willing to carry a even much thicker Mac laptop that what is currently made. A thinner MacBook Pro would probably mean that many useful features could be lost.

 

[pauliaK]

Update the 13" MBP screen to high res like the 13" MBA. Long overdue.

Way too long... It was THE reason why I ended up not buying one. It would be OK if there would be no MBA next to it in a store where you can easily compare and see how much worse the display on MBP is.

 

[heisetax]

Not much of a reason to have one anymore.

I'm in the middle here. Optical drives are still needed by many. I know on the one Mac laptop that I took the frive out & aded a second 750 GB HDD that there are times when I need an internal optical drive.

To keep both people happy it would be nice to see the option to have a drive or not to have an optical drive.

 

[bn-7bc]

Thinner, lighter, amazing screen, all SSD...
Take that to the bank.

Agreed apart from the SSD, I want a 1TB drive and I don't think 1TB SSDs are affordable yet. bot a quad-core MBP with 8GB+ ram wold be perfect. Let the 1TB HDD be the standard option and the SSD (whatever size is reasonably prized) be an upgrade option

 

[Macman45]

The 15" being touted as the "Computing Powerhose" seems to sound the death knell for the 17".

I'm hanging on to mine for grim life!

 

[mdgm]

Here's what I want:
1. Ivy Bridge
2. USB3
3. Keep Pro stuff like gigabit ethernet port
4. SATA III SSDs working fine in both hard drive bays
5. User replaceable battery (would be nice. This part can and will likely fail. Making it a non-user replaceable part was a bad move imo).

 

[David085]

Yeah it will be nice to have a thinner MBP for the 13" and 15" model similar to the MBA and it will be nice to do the same for the 17" model later on too

 

[MachineShedFred]

I think at this point Apple will release Macs in whatever order chips become available. The whole Mac lineup could us a refresh, some more than others though.

The whole industry is waiting on Intel for the Ivy Bridge CPUs and chipsets. We're inside the 90-day window on the original ship dates, but with the delays on some parts, that window may shift.

I say this as someone who has been briefed by a manufacturer of PC notebooks, as I'm the integration engineer for one of their customers who has about 50,000 of their laptops and desktops.

We have a 60-day briefing with them scheduled for the 15th of March where we'll get to learn more about model specifics and options. I'm sure I'll know more about the delays then.

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Here's what I want:
5. User replaceable battery (would be nice. This part can and will likely fail. Making it a non-user replaceable part was a bad move imo).

If you look at the UltraBook™ designs coming from the other tier-1 manufacturers (Dell, HP, Lenovo), they are all moving away from user-replaceable batteries for the simple reason that you can't get all the extra shielding and attachment / retention hardware into a form factor that thin and light, with the energy density necessary to get the battery life people want.

In order to use the Intel "UltraBook™" brand, they have to meet certain specs, and the state of the art can't meet those specs and still pass safety testing with a replaceable battery.

Apple led the charge for the thinnest and lightest, and they got there by doing away with all the non-battery parts of the battery (casing for the battery module, casing around the battery bay, locking mechanism to hold the battery in place, interface connector on the battery module, interface connector in the battery bay, etc.). They aren't going back.

 

[Apple Key]

Sometimes, I make archival backups, and I watch tons of DVD's on my macbook. The external one is S***... The external apple superdrive. I also always install my software with disc, because it's faster.

I see how it would be a pain for you then. I rarely watch DVDs on my computer. I usually watch on my TV. Most of the time, I'd rather download software from the internet than purchase a CD.

 

[wassup121]

The last four generations of MBPs were released:
October 2011 - Just after Lion's launch
February 2011 - 5 months before Lion's launch
April 2010 - In between OSs
June 2009 - 2 months before Snow Leopard

So I don't think their OS X release cycle has that much of an impact on their MBP release cycle.

touche sir!

 

[KnightWRX]

The comment that what they need to drop are certain customers

When did I make such a comment ? You're confusing me with someone else.

Again, I'm only taking exception to people who say the "Air" is not a "Pro machine" because "Pros needs optical drives or a dedicated GPU or a platter based spinning hard drive or insert your favorite feature here". I'm a professional, I use my MBA to work, and I have no need for that stuff.

It's the grand sweeping generalization and pigeon holing I'm talking about.

 

[greenmeanie]

I agree

This is pretty cool! I'd love a thinner MacBook Pro...

I'd like to be able to take mine to university campus every day, but it's just too heavy to lug around in my backpack all day. I would get an air, but the hard drive size is quite limiting

 

[MasterHowl]

I agree

Not really sure why people are down voting my original post, hah!

 

[mdgm]

Apple led the charge for the thinnest and lightest, and they got there by doing away with all the non-battery parts of the battery (casing for the battery module, casing around the battery bay, locking mechanism to hold the battery in place, interface connector on the battery module, interface connector in the battery bay, etc.). They aren't going back.

That's a shame because the battery is one component that will fail over the life of the computer.

 

[professorjay]

I guess I'll chime in.

I think there will be a redesign, and I don't see why it can't be slightly slimmer and still keep a dedicated GPU.

It wouldn't be possible ONLY if you assume the GPU heat right now is already on the absolute borderline of tolerance. And I'm guessing Apple engineers may have found some more efficient design to compensate as well.

ODD goes out. I understand the necessity for some, but it's a shrinking minority and Apple will cut the cord now.

Ethernet port stays, USB 3 stays, but I'm truly puzzled by the storage situation.

Anyways, just my guesses.