New MacBook Pro could arrive in April 2011 with SSD, Light Peak, no DVD
Update Put your checkbooks away, folks. Electronista has all but debunked this rumor. By crunching the numbers, they confirmed that (at today's prices at least), such a MacBook Pro could easily be priced out of the market. Read on and dream, but don't expect this machine to appear on your desk any time soon.
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Three Guys and a Podcast are reporting that the next-generation MacBook Pro will likely arrive in April 2011 with a new design inspired by the latest slim-line MacBook Air. That means that the high-end laptops will probably dispense with spinning drives altogether and come equipped only with solid-state drives of up to 512GB capacity. If you haven't yet finished ripping all of your CDs and DVDs, you'll want to complete that task before migrating to a new MBP because the internal optical drive will probably follow the floppy into the annals of history.
With the internal speed bottlenecks reduced by the flash memory drives and new Sandy Bridge CPUs, Apple will also work on speeding up the external communication interfaces. Light Peak may finally debut on the MBP, two years after it was originally announced by Intel. Whether or not Light Peak makes it to the party, we expect that USB 3.0 probably will arrive in an Apple product on these new machines. The fate of Firewire is unknown at this time, but it seems unlikely to make the cut, especially if Light Peak is included. The one exception may be if Apple keeps one of the current generation 15-inch machines in the lineup as an entry model. If the 13-inch MBP also remains in the lineup, the new interfaces, CPUs and perhaps a higher resolution display will be what set it apart from the similarly sized Air.
Users are expected to be able to put this speedy new hardware to work with a new version of Final Cut Pro that should debut around the same time. Not much is known about FCP at this time except that it should be faster.
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Update Put your checkbooks away, folks. Electronista has all but debunked this rumor. By crunching the numbers, they confirmed that (at...
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Hey found a cool site that has predictions and proof that it is cling out in march. Here it is:
http://www.squidoo.com/macbook-pro-2011
They already have iDisk (integrated with MobileMe) with up to 20GB, so I guess you could consider that your "storage", although it is not much.
February 06 2011 at 4:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyOne thing is certain. There is no way in hell the SSD will be 512 GB.
February 06 2011 at 4:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyApple will have to continue making SSD optional, theres no way they would force consumers to pay even more for a notebook have you seen the prices on a SSD, no way will most people only want a 128gb. unless of coarse Apple is gonna integrate some type of storage online in itunes and force you to pay monthly for that too. and theres people who still need there cd/dvd drives, not everyone is usb savy. the point of a notebook is convenience , not to have external drives all over the place.
February 06 2011 at 1:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI'm glad I purchased my MacBook Pro this past summer. I do not want to have a laptop (which is an on-the-go machine) without a optical drive. Isn't that the point of laptop, to have a portable version of a desktop computer. Having to lug around extra peripherals to do something that could just as well be built into the machine is unacceptable.
November 29 2010 at 3:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI hope this is a BS. Light Peak is mostly vaporware for now and making us all to throw away our Firewire devices would be ... There are areas where Firewire is very widely used - pro audio is being one example (from interfaces to DSP farms). If there would be easy ways to get Firewire ports (ExpressCard?) then maybe ...
The same about storage. 500GB SSD costs ~1.5k$, I'm using 1TB drive in my MBP 13 and I'm dreaming about another one. And for those talking about external hard disks and superdrives ... Hell, I don't buy a laptop to carry whole bunch of external stuff with me.
If this B$ turns out to be true, I'd love to know how they plan on distributing the 46GB of software currently on the FCP DVDs. I don't know about you, but my broadband can't handle that. For that matter, can you imagine Apple's servers trying to push 46GB out to each user every time there was a sale?
Superdrives ain't going anywhere.
On USB 3:
The descrete USB3 chips where not really suitable for laptop use until very recently. On top of that the controller tech really isn't mature. It is complete possible that Apple could use the recently revved USB3 chips but it is a question of a willingness to waste a lot of PC board space for little gain. The alternative is to go with AMD hardware. In any event the technical issues keeping USB3 out of Mac are slowly fading away. So if we don't see USB 3 soon we will know Aplle has issues with it.
By the way Light Peak will not make USB in any form obsolete. I fully expect USB to be around for ages. FireWire though is dead. It is all about expenses associated with the hardware and the effort required to implement. It will be a very long time before we see Light Peak in sub $100 devices.
Very informative re USB 3!
I forgot the main new reason we don't need optical drives anymore:
DropBox.
Which, might, tho' be another reason why we could use a 3g chip on an a la carte plan like the iPad.
Sorry, but no optical drive won't fly with me. I have hundreds of CDs and DVDs. Almost everyone has at least an occasional need to use optical media. Please save your form over function requests for computers that I will never use such as the MacBook Air.
November 29 2010 at 10:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI think the idea is to get rid of optical drives in *portable* units only. Why haul around the drive if you rarely use it? You'll likely have one at home, even if it's an external device.
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