Analyst: Apple to debut flash-based ultraportable Mac in January

“A flash memory-based ultraportable Mac may hit the market as soon as Macworld Expo, [according to] a leading analyst,” Jonny Evans reports for Macworld UK.

Evans reports, Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster made his predictions in his latest note to clients, pointing to Samsung’s recent introduction of new 64GB flash memory drives.”

“‘We believe NAND Flash drive sizes have now reached capacities that Apple would consider large enough to include in a new MacBook model,’ the analyst wrote,” Evans reports.

Full article here.

26 Comments

  1. I really think all analysts are the same. When one says something, they all say the same thing over the next few days. At some point this will happen, and it could be January, but do we need to hear the same thing from an analysts professing it like it’s truth?

  2. Dunno…how many times did we hear iPhone rumors before it came out? There have been a few misses, but the former out of work kremlinologists and NSA analysts who now watch Apple seem to have been fairly spot on lately.

  3. From electronista cited in Appleinsider:

    The publication notes that while sales of Mac OS X increased dramatically between September and October, climbing from a rate of 15.5 percent year-over-year to 60.5 percent, Microsoft suffered from the reverse effect. Sales growth of Windows plummeted from 75.3 percent to 28.7 percent. The sudden switch provided Apple with about 53.9 of the total OS-only marketshare in Japan during October

    It’s a very short data period but a nightmare statistic for the boys in Redmond. MW: “ahead.”

  4. What is a reasonable footprint for MacOS X 10.5? How much of that 64GB (binary GB!) will be available after accounting for the OS and virtual memory?

    By keeping your Apple Lossless music on a server and only putting AAC 256 on your laptop, you can carry a lot of tunes in <10GB. You can even carry a portable external drive in the 80GB to 160GB range to open up your options for “big” data.

    32GB seemed a bit on the small side. But 64GB seems to me to cross a critical threshold for a viable, powerful ultraportable from Apple.

  5. I hope it’s more like 10″. There is nothing ultraportable about a 13″ laptop in this day and age.

    Quite frankly I’d rather have the rumored multi-touch Newton so long as it has Flash and enables me to view porn on Xtube, YouPorn, Pornotube, Megarotic, etc. If not I’ll take the so-called ultraportable but it better not be too expensive.

  6. The next MacBook Mini will be the smallest, most practical and longest lasting ever featuring a 1.6GHz ultra-low-voltage Core 2 Duo Penryn based processor with up to 4GB RAM and a 32GB flashed based drive, and most importantly an 11.1″ OLED display which consumes only a fraction of the power a comparable LCD display does. More importantly, with touch technology we make if feel like you’re writing right on the surface – the pixels appearing not a few fractions of an inch away from the pen’s point, but right under it. At under two pounds the MacBook Mini will have more than ten hours of battery life – opening the doors to aspiring artists looking for a new medium to envision their dreams.

  7. If this becomes a reality, this thing will be priced in the $2200-2500 range due mostly in part of the NAND drive. I can’t see how they can price this notebook under $2000 with these features. However, I like to see innovation on Apple’s part since these features will eventually will trickle down the Apple notebook line.

    I’m a student who has been waiting thus far before purchasing a new Apple laptop (1.33 GHz iBook G4 holding great) however I know that the new notebooks that are going to be released in January are going to be outside of my price range.

    I really don’t mind since that means I have enough funds to buy a iPod Touch!

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