[drewprops]

It would be neat to see a different exterior on the new machines, so long as it's super tough. Over the 7 years I've had this machine my natural space pirate acids have pitted the metal where my left hand rests. I would hate to dissolve a new computer too quickly.


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[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by chucker One would hope they wouldn't make it that ugly. Looks generic to me.

I agree. I like how the silver aluminum makes it easy to notice bevels, curves, angles, etc. An all-black design, while sleek and different, just seems un-Apple. They're so into that aluminum Unibody milling stuff. I guess it could be some black colored aluminum.

Would Intel show a specific brand/model in their advertising? Or would they just use a generic-looking "placeholder" notebook of no real note?



In any case, I don't think it's anything. A year or two ago, I did call for the pro stuff (including towers) going black. But now that the entire product line (except for the $999 white MacBook) has gone aluminum and silver, things look nice. You see a nice, matte-finish silver/aluminum computer without a bunch of crap (stickers, etc.) and 4,000 ports pooching out and you pretty much know "it's a Mac!".

They're not as flashy as they were 8-10 years ago, with the fruit 'n' jellybean design approach, but they've got a sleek, sophisticated and cohesive look going now.

[Jason]

New MBP on Thursday now apparently.

[Mugge]

Originally Posted by drewprops (...) my natural space pirate acids (...)

Arrr. Have ye been watching too many space pirate wenches on it?

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by chucker One would hope they wouldn't make it that ugly. Looks generic to me.

And yet, the flying windows look like OS X, with the "traffic lights" in the top-left.

Originally Posted by drewprops It would be neat to see a different exterior on the new machines, so long as it's super tough. Over the 7 years I've had this machine my natural space pirate acids have pitted the metal where my left hand rests. I would hate to dissolve a new computer too quickly.

The unibody Macs don't seem to suffer from this. Maybe they use a more resistant alloy or a different finish.

[drewprops]

We'll see if these Thursday rumors prove true. Who's going to hold their breath? I had a pair of glasses that had gold-plated temples and after a year or so the gold had been "eaten away".

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[Robo]

Best Buy's online laptop picker has a bunch of "New Apple SKUs" in the $1,199 to $2,499 range.

[Maciej]

Boys, with these rumors swirling it really makes me regret getting a new MBP last year!

I'm really curious to see if they make some subtle changes to the design of the line. These unibody MBPs were first released in fall of 2008, so maybe 3 years on it's time for at least some alterations. (Although I really feel like this design is pretty perfect, so gorgeous.)

[drewprops]

My excitement is mitigated only by the snotty nose I'm currently tending. I will be perfectly happy with a refresh of specs. Anything else is gravy.

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[turtle]

I don't care what comes out in the next few months. I love my MBP! I might however have to replace mine with a new one and pass this on to my wife.

[psmith2.0]

I guess something is going to happen this week...all the rumor sites are talking about sealed palettes(sp?) showing up at stores with "don't open" orders attached. Interesting.

Maybe it's the iPad 2?

The fact that there's no big event makes me think it'll be a nice under-the-hood update, and probably nothing too earth-shattering on the design/appearance front. If it was some all-new design and/or material, they'd want to highlight that and play it up. So I can see new processors, the usual hard-drive and graphics(?) bumps and maybe 1-2 other things.

I was 4GB was standard across the line. Going into 2011 and Lion on the horizon, 2GB just seems to be pushing it. Seems a bit 2008-ish at this point. It's always nice to get a new Mac and not feel like the first thing you have to do is go to OWC or Crucial to get additional RAM.

[Robo]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 I guess something is going to happen this week...all the rumor sites are talking about sealed palettes(sp?) showing up at stores with "don't open" orders attached. Interesting. Maybe it's the iPad 2? The fact that there's no big event makes me think it'll be a nice under-the-hood update, and probably nothing too earth-shattering on the design/appearance front. If it was some all-new design and/or material, they'd want to highlight that and play it up. So I can see new processors, the usual hard-drive and graphics(?) bumps and maybe 1-2 other things. I was 4GB was standard across the line. Going into 2011 and Lion on the horizon, 2GB just seems to be pushing it. Seems a bit 2008-ish at this point. It's always nice to get a new Mac and not feel like the first thing you have to do is go to OWC or Crucial to get additional RAM.

Thursday is A) the launch of the Motorola XOOM, the first "real" iPad competitor, and B) Steve's birthday.

Apparently, last year on Steve's birthday, Apple sold its ten billionth song on iTunes. Hell of a birthday present!

I wouldn't read too much into Apple not hosting an event. A redesigned iMac, a redesigned MacBook, and the new Magic Mouse were all introduced on one day in October 2009 with no event of any kind. I imagine the reasoning was simple: people were already talking about Apple's "ten inch tablet" at that point, and if Apple hosted an event, people would have expected that. I imagine the reasoning here is similar: people are going to expect the iPad 2 at Apple's next event, and Apple's not really in the business of disappointing people.

Two back-to-back laptop events would be kind of weird, anyway. I think Apple's basically going to have one Mac event each year, in the fall, and it will basically alternate between redesigned laptops (2008, 2010) and redesigned iMacs (2007, 2009 with no event, 2011?). This works out nicely — one iPad event at the end of Q1, one iPhone event (WWDC) at the end of Q2, one iPod event at the end of Q3, and one Mac event at the beginning of Q4. I don't think Apple wants to wear out their welcome with more events than that. Obviously, Apple has more Macs to redesign than one event can cover, so some Macs will be redesigned without an event — like last year's Mac mini redesign, for example.

That said, I'm not saying there will be a redesign.

The rumors are all over the place — LightPeak? Liquid metal? Flash memory? A hot-swappable drive bay? What I think is interesting is that the days of the 13" MacBook Pro really being the MacBook Apple was aiming at everybody (remember, going into the recession, it was launched as simply "the new MacBook") are over — Apple has the MacBook Air family now. So maybe it makes sense for the MacBook Pro line to start taking on some more "Pro" features. I know I've seen a lot of people here wish they could replace their MBP's optical drive with a hard drive or a bigger battery. If the MacBook Pro moves to having flash memory standard (on a MBA-style, unenclosed RAM-like stick) that could happen, right? You'd keep the OS and apps on the (comparatively small) amount of internal flash memory, and then you could pop in a larger hard drive, an optical drive, or a additional battery, as necessary? Such a mechanism would add bulk to the current MBP, but moving to a little stick of flash memory instead of a hard drive would make up for it, maybe?

[Jason]

It's probably a stupid question but with all this talk of Light Peak, are there actually any peripherals out there that could use it?

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by Robo Thursday is A) the launch of the Motorola XOOM, the first "real" iPad competitor

You mean this month's go of it? Maybe this one will be the one...








On a related note: Motorola's Xoom won't immediately support Flash. OMG!!! Failure! Let's not hold our breath waiting for all the usual press to rip this aspect. Apparently Apple is the lone a-hole in this regard, after all. On the upside, the damn thing will probably work better and gain about an hour of battery life. But I know there will be freak-outs among the propeller heads/neckbeards (thanks, Gruber...my new favorite word).

[Messiahtosh]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 You mean this month's go of it? Maybe this one will be the one... On a related note: Motorola's Xoom won't immediately support Flash. OMG!!! Failure! Let's not hold our breath waiting for all the usual press to rip this aspect. Apparently Apple is the lone a-hole in this regard, after all. On the upside, the damn thing will probably work better and gain about an hour of battery life. But I know there will be freak-outs among the propeller heads/neckbeards (thanks, Gruber...my new favorite word).

And it costs $800...equivalent iPad is $730.

Personally, I wouldn't spend over $650 on a tablet.

[kscherer]

Lost in these forums, somewhere, I speculated that the next generation of MacBook Pro would have dual drives. I may be proven right after all. Rumors must be taken with a grain of salt, but there seems to be mounting evidence of my rightness.

[Frank777]

Cringley's often too far ahead of the curve, but his latest take on LightPeak, Mac Minis and the server market is really intriguing.

[drewprops]

It's been interesting to note how many BS "news" sites have popped up, perpetuating certain Macbook Pro rumors as if they're confirmed facts. Temper your expectations, folks!


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[Jason]

Yep, no LightPeak.

[psmith2.0]

iMacs possibly getting updated alongside new notebooks?

Talk about a cool day...

The pro notebooks and the flagship desktop.

Talking about new screen sizes, which I find tough to believe. Larger? Smaller?

[Yontsey]

I like the rumor of the 8-16gb SSD for the OS itself for instant boot, not to mention the rumor of them shaving a half of a pound off it the MBP. Might be tempted to upgrade and sell my Macbook and Mac Mini for it.

[psmith2.0]

Is that a single drive unit, or will they have to redesign and make space for a SSD drive and the traditional spinning drive?



If so, do you think the optical drive is being yanked?

I used to be against that, a few years ago. But seeing how everything seems to be heading to a MobileMe, YouTube, Flickr, etc. type of sharing (or uploading files to printers, or e-mailing PDFs to others), I guess a new generation of Macs that didn't have built-in optical drives wouldn't be a huge crisis...as long as Apple offered that stadalone USB SuperDrive for a decent price. To have one on hand should you need to burn a CD or DVD a couple of times a year might be nice. But if it means a thinner, lighter machine to leave something out that I've personally not used in about seven months now, I guess I can be okay with that.

If you could buy that USB SuperDrive for $49-59 (if you burned disc on any sort of predictable basis), that would be an acceptable trade-off. The current $79 strikes me as a little steep for what it is...

My only reservation is that Apple has always had the "whole package" approach, including the drives and methods to burn stuff to disc, right out of the box. That might take some time to get used to, the absence of a SuperDrive on all upcoming Macs. But maybe if Apple does that, in the same way that removing the floppy instantly weaned people off floppy discs, people would take advantage of the Internet for sharing/transferring files, for business or pleasure.

And if the optical drive is missing from all Macs eventually, maybe Apple could lower the price on the standalone USB SuperDrive, knowing they may make it up in volume (a larger target audience of people who may shell out $50 for the drive, because their new MacBook and iMacs are without).

I thought the removal of the optical drive was a bit premature in 2007-2008. But now, I've re-thought it and I've also asked around (friends and family) and none of them seem to be burning discs. We could all chip in $5-10 and buy a "community SuperDrive" that we share amongst ourselves, as needed.

But now, heading into 2011 with all the online-based ways of sharing or transmitting your photos, music, video, documents, etc., I'm not so hell-bent on Macs having to come with SuperDrives anymore. I'm okay with it as an affordable optional accessory (especially if 3-4 people wanna go in on it together, and pass it around).

[Yontsey]

I still can't see Apple getting rid of the optical drive right now. There are still plenty of things that use cds/dvds. Like your AppleTV thread, Scates, people ripping their dvd library to iTunes for that, and same with cds. Also, larger app's such as Logic Studio that is 50+gig's. I couldn't see something like that being in the App Store. Not to mention not all software makers are in the App Store just yet so that would alienate certain programs that you could use.

I think the way they were doing the 8-16gb drive is something similar to the MBA where it's in the bored, not really taking up any room, still allowing a traditional HDD or SSD, as well as the optical drive. If I'm paying $2k+ for a MBP, I don't want to have to go pay for a USB Super Drive as well.

[drewprops]

I could certainly live with an external optical drive. Maybe it will even do Blu-Ray!


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[Yontsey]

Originally Posted by drewprops I could certainly live with an external optical drive. Maybe it will even do Blu-Ray! ...

Agreed. It's about time Apple uses these in their pro machines. Apple is stubborn sometimes when it comes to using some of the more current technologies.

[Frank777]

Originally Posted by Yontsey I still can't see Apple getting rid of the optical drive right now. There are still plenty of things that use cds/dvds. Like your AppleTV thread, Scates, people ripping their dvd library to iTunes for that, and same with cds. Also, larger app's such as Logic Studio that is 50+gig's. I couldn't see something like that being in the App Store. Not to mention not all software makers are in the App Store just yet so that would alienate certain programs that you could use.

That's all correct. The question is, do Pro users need the drive while travelling? If yes, the drive stays. If no, the drive is going external.

[Yontsey]

Originally Posted by Frank777 That's all correct. The question is, do Pro users need the drive while travelling? If yes, the drive stays. If no, the drive is going external.

Can you really give a definitive answer on that though? If you need more of the portability without the drive, why not just go with the MBA?

[drewprops]

I think we all realize that there may be a "disc-less" configuration... worrying about a sweeping change may be unnecessary, yet. The biggest concern in my mind is performance, performance, performance mixed with stability, stability, ,stability.


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[drewprops]

Dude!!!!!
CNET is reporting that Intel will introduce Light Peak on Thusday!!! You know what that means, yeah?


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[psmith2.0]

Wow...if this is all true, it should be quite an update!

- no more white MacBook (Apple goes back to two lines of 13" inchers) - 16 GB SSD mSATA drives on all models to store the system - Core i3 and third USB port on the 13" model - Matte screen option on the higher-end 13" - Option to replace the SuperDrive with a SSD on the 15 and 17" models - HD screens on all models : 1440x900 on the 13", 1680x1050 on the 15" - 200 to 300 grams lighter : 1.8 kg for the 13", 2.3 kg for the 15", 2.65 kg for the 17" - Better battery life : 12 hours on the 13", 10 hours on the 15" - 8 GB of RAM on the 17"