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Thoughts on the next gen rMBP coming with fusion drive

C

CultHero

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 20, 2007
281
1
I know this is a purely speculative post but in reading the speedtests on the new fusion drive in a mac mini got me thinking. It seems it would be an obvious addition to the rMBP if size or heat etc is not an issue?

I am one of those users who doesn't really want to mess with the internals and programming and just wants it to work.

I was looking at the opti-bay upgrade but after seeing retina I will be moving that way.
 
I don't see Apple put a hard drive in such a tightly packed rMBP.
Also Apple is very clear that they are going to use Flash storage for mobile devices.
 
I don't think there's enough space in the retine macbook pro for an hard drive addition to create a fusion drive. I don't think there will ever be a macbook pro with retina and fusion drive.

They can get the current generation normal unibody macbook pros, remove superdrive and make a fusion drive option for non-retina macbook pros however. That wouldn't be any different than adding an optibay and hacking the fusion drive.

Lastly i think future retina macbook pros will have less issues, will perfect themselves. They'll be more stable and more powerful. I personally have a 2010 unibody 15" MBP and i see myself replacing this one on 2014 or 2015. I think i am going to get much improved 2015 rMBP :D I think design won't change, additional ports may come, as i said there'll be less issues, more power, more retina apps.
 
Why when a standard SSD provides mostly better performance with less to go wrong?
 
this will be replacing an iMac for me so storage on the device is nice. Being limited to 768gig is a drawback for me.
 
Reliability (durability) are also concerns on portable devices: hard drives are extremely well manufactured, but they're mechanical. Mechanical devices that are constantly in motion will wear down and, especially if they're jumbled around a lot, the magnetic head can crash and your disk has failed.

That's not such a major problem on desktops: sure, it could still happen, but since something like an iMac isn't really mobile the durability doesn't matter.

Same kind of argument goes for heat and energy consumption (not to mention additional consumption to remove the extra heat, the cost of powering up to drives simultaneously, and of transferring data between the two while the machine is idle).

Moving from HDD to SSD is progress. HDDs aren't coming back to Mac portables. The only reason for Fusion Drive is as a temporary measure (similar to Rosetta) while flash continues to try and match magnetic mechanical storage for $-per-GB.
 
ok so with that in mind, what technological jumps are coming with the next gen. I know Haswell is spoken of, but I know nothing about that apart from more speed! With the fusion drive out of the way, I am inclined to move sooner rather than later unless there is something crazy to be expected in 2013.
 
Going to a Fusion drive would be a downgrade for multiple reason. Pure flash storage is still faster as ALL your files are on it and on the current rMBPs you can get up to 768GB SSD which is pretty big. Also adding a HDD means taking up more room, more heat, more power. SO basically it is EXTREMELY unlikely Apple would do that.
 
I wondered the same thing myself, I reckon it would have been awesome to launch with this and run it for couple of years before switching all flash. The classic MBP can run two drives with SSD and HDD so you can get so much more storage for a lot cheaper than the rmbp
 
- SSDs will get cheaper, storage capacity will increase, reach and exceed 1 TB eventually.

- CPUs and GPUs must get at least 2-3 times faster, powering up and rendering all that pixels of the retina display consumes a lot of energy, making them stronger should increase the computer's performance. Not that it's not good right now with the 15" but it should get much better in a couple of years.

- As i said before, we need more retina apps. You should be able to use everything retina. That's a drawback for me right now. I think rMBP owners are early adapters for now.

- Please, more reasonable prices. Should go down to cMBP prices at least. Also, more repairability would be nice

- More battery is going to be needed with more power of course.

-Last but not least, i think it should get a lot lighter although i think it won't since the design changes. It's not scientific at all but i lifted cMBP and rMBP both 15" with each hand last weekend at an Apple store and felt like rMBP is heavier. Specs say it's a .5 kilograms lighter but i was expecting it to be much lighter after iPhone 5 being super light weight.

In the future 3-4 years i expect at least half of these to happen. I think this is the roadmap of rMBP, new age of notebooks.
 
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