MacBook Pro rumors: SSD boot drive standard, bigger trackpad, lighter weight

Citing a source from within Apple, Boy Genius Report has some interesting tidbits on the imminent MacBook Pro update. According to BGR's source, the MacBook Pro's trackpad will be getting even larger than those in the current lineup, and the overall weight of the notebook has dropped by about half a pound.

The most interesting bit is something that's been circling the rumor mill for a couple years. Supposedly, the new base model MacBook Pros will feature a small internal solid state hard drive (SSD), 8 to 16 GB in size, that houses OS X and all its associated system files as a "boot drive." User files will be stored on a separate standard hard drive -- or, as a build-to-order option, everything can be stored on one large (but very expensive) SSD, same as the current models. The idea behind this hybridized two-drive setup is the faster SSD would be used to speed up system performance while the slower but much larger standard hard drive would serve up users' documents, applications, media files, and so on. The overall result would be a much speedier MacBook Pro, at least in terms of disk performance.

This hybrid SSD-HDD setup has been a perennial rumor that hasn't made it into a portable Mac yet, so don't get your hopes too high. That said, it's looking more plausible now than before, considering the MacBook Air's diminutive flash memory-based storage. We should know for sure one way or another within the next week, because all signs point to a MacBook Pro upgrade very soon.