“October means a couple of things. First, a new fiscal year for Apple. We’ll get to hear 4th quarter results and annual results in mid-October,” E. Werner Reschke writes for T-GAAP. “This let’s us know whether Apple is on track or has slipped somewhere. Second, it usually means new products of one sort or another.”
“Traditionally October has also been a time when updates to MacBook Pros come to the fore,” Reschke writes. “With the MacBook Air’s popularity — its sleek design and affordable price points — we wonder what exactly the updated MacBook Pro’s will sport this time around.”
“Our curiosity goes straight to the chassis. Right now if you set a MacBook Air next to a MacBook Pro the Pro looks like a boat anchor,” Reschke writes. “To fix that perception we can see Apple rolling out two chassis for the updated MacBook Pro line-up. The first would house the standard hard and super drives and look similar to today. But for those who want to look more MacBook Air-ish, a second design would not contain a super drive and only use the slimmer SSD.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
This new model “MacBook Pro” sounds more like a souped up MacBook Air, or a new brand name altogether. It sounds like they’re moving back to three models of notebooks instead of just two, now with the MacBook vanishing.
new brand name. must be. we have air and pro. wheres the standard gone?
The new MacBook Pro will be a souped up MacBook Air… No question about it.
The new definition of “Pro” is only going to be determined by what you do with it, and not what hardware you have.
“To fix that perception we can see Apple rolling out two chassis for the updated MacBook Pro line-up.”
Sure. Because that’s how Apple rolls: Complexify the lineup.
Don’t you think they would come up with a more elegant solution?
In the proposed scenario with no HDD and no optical drive, what would differentiate the 13″ Macbook Pro from the third generation 13″ MBA? More SSD storage? That could be an option to the existing MBA. Bigger displays? That would work for the 15″ and 17″. But that, too, would essentially represent only an extension to the current MBA lineup unless Apple retains the internal optical drive on the Macbook Pro.
If Apple follows this path of eliminating both the HDD and optical drive, then the MBA will supplant both the Macbook and the Macbook Pro lines.
Certainly not next MacBook Pro!… Hey, with a DVD scar? Come on!!!!
Apple will offer legacy support for optical drives in the same way that they did for floppies on the iMac.
I doubt this rumor. Perhaps 15″ and 17″ MacBook Airs. But I think the Pro models will retain multiple ports + ExpressCard/32 in the 17″ model.
The article is sheer speculation without even a rumor for backup. However, it’s fun to speculate.
Apple used to have three laptop designs: MacBook Air, MacBook, and MacBook Pro. They discontinued the MacBook as soon as they had a 13-inch MacBook Air at the same price. This go round, they could replace the 15-inch MacBook Pro with a 15-inch MacBook Air if they can keep the price. The 17-inch MacBook Pro has to stay as is for now until SSDs have higher capacity and lower prices. The 17-inch model needs more storage.
But I’d like to see them rename the whole product line.
Once I bought an Apple, but there are no computers by that name any more. In the 1980s, I worked on a Macintosh, but I can’t buy a Macintosh any more. Their top of the line sounds like a professional hamburger. “Mac” started as their customer’s nickname for Macintoshes. I think it is nice they adopted it as part of the official names of the products, but when we get to the point where there is a Mac Pro without a Mac, an iMac without an iMac Pro, and a MacBook Pro without a MacBook, the naming convention has run its course.
I hope the new names do not begin with a lowercase letter and don’t have a capital letter or a space in the middle, so it’s easier to write about them. Apple and Macintosh were much better names than iMac, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air. Now that they no longer make a distinction between personal and professional laptops, “Pro” essentially means nothing.
Certainly Apple has the creativity to revamp their product names, like they did when they switched to Intel. One more time, with feeling!
They have already released the second type of MacBook Pro and it is called the MacBook Air?
I see no reason why Apple would add another line of laptops.
I can only assume that the latest MDN poll is intended to be a troll detector…so far we are at 9.71%.
Hey! How about a couple of new chassis models for the Mac Pro? How long before we see a more compact version of the expandable Pro series desktops. I need card slots, lot’s of RAM, and extra drive bays. What I don’t need is 40 pounds of aluminum casing. Please, Apple, we’ve seen rev after rev of the entire Mac line, EXCEPT the Pro Mac. It’s time.
I think apple will rely on it’s natural momentum to carry it through the holidays, then in early spring introduce optical drive-less MBPs, but without the MBA taper, thus maintaining an aesthetic of dominance and power with it’s solid, squared-off look. I think it’s only a matter of time before they make the MBAs just regular MacBooks, then come out with newer MBA made out of carbon fiber or something.
There is no way that Apple can replace the MBP’s high-capacity hard drive with an SSD of similar size without raising the price considerably. As for eliminating the optical drive, this would be a great move is Apple wants to trigger another deafening howl of protest from their customer base.
No this is the pro air.
“pro air” – sounds like a hair dryer
I don’t want no stinkin’ optical drive in my next Macbook Pro. I want a fast 120GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive. In a 13″ with a matte screen, a FW800 port, and a fast graphics chip.