“Apple is working on a 15-inch ultra-thin Mac notebook, MacRumors has learned. We aren’t certain if it will be called a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, but we do know that it is already in late testing stages at Apple,” Arnold Kim reports for MacRumors.
“Many now expect that Apple’s design choices in the Air will eventually make their way to the MacBook Pro product, with the use of integrated SSD and lack of optical drive being the most notable changes allowing for such a thin design,” Kim reports. “While we don’t know for a fact, we expect that any future “ultra thin” laptop from Apple will also dispense with a built-in optical drive.”
Read more in the full article here.
Michael Rose reports for TUAW, “This 15″ Air-esque rumor corresponds pretty well with what we’re hearing, but with a few additional tidbits: chances are these will be the next MacBook Pros, not oversized Airs. There’s also a 17″ model in the works. And we might see them under Christmas trees, with a few weeks to spare.”
Read more in the full article here.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – please do not get rid of the hard drive option for the MBP. Storage space matters. If I have to drop storage space from 750GB on my current MBP to 512GB on my next one (and pay an arm and a leg to get even that much) it will be a huge disappointment. 🙁
Of course, I post this and _then_ notice that the article this post is based on is dated July 26th. :-/
Agreed. In July I bought a 15″ MBP for what will be a second/travel computer whenever I can get the proposed MP. I opted for the no cost option of the 500G 7200 drive over the 750 5400 drive. I’m already thinking I may need a bigger HD than the 500. Prices for SSD for the 512 are understandable, but still ridiculously expense.
I need the DVD Read / Write capability. Any product that does not offer that would come under the heading of a cute toy. I could live with the SSD but not if it jacks the price way up.
The Apple USB External SuperDrive is $79. Works great.
Yeah, there’s a workaround for the lack of an optical drive. But if there’s there’s not the option for a hard drive vs. the SSD, there’s no real workaround for the lack of inexpensive storage space.
I agree. I have two 1TB drives in my MBP. I can understand the desire for a 17″ MBA, but that’s a really different product.
Are you the same guys who said you didn’t want Apple to get rid of the floppy drive. Computing is changing and iCloud is becoming your backed up storage solution. Optical drive are rarely used and there are streaming services to store the same data or media content without the bulk and the cost of local access. Get with the times. Consider a wireless storage solution.
Wireless storage is really only useful for backing up documents you don’t use on a regular basis. If you’re dealing with pro audio or video, you have to have your files on your local drive. I even dealt with this when I tried to use iMovie files on an external hard drive, iMovie froze. Local storage is crucial. And you talk about cost, but SSDs cost more money to get less storage space. Hard drives still have their place, and SSDs have their place as well – it shouldn’t just be one or the other.
You have no idea what you’re talking about if you think a wireless storage or iCloud solution is an alternative for internal storage. Pros don’t need large capacity storage for mere backups, but for actual work. You just try editing a large video file over a local wireless network server, or on iCloud (hint: iCloud doesn’t do live-edits of even simple documents, nor is it a drag-and-drop network disk, which is why early reviews comparing it to Google Apps and Dropbox were stupid).
Losing the floppy was a logical choice–it failed to keep up with the times in terms of both storage and speed. Hard drives on the other hand keep increasing in capacity and speed.
If these will be “ultrathin”, then it will be MacBook Air 15″ and MacBook Air 17″.
MBP will stay in its original size, since, as Eric said above, there no workaround for storage space, as well really fast graphics which take much more space and battery than ultrathin design could handle — even being widened to 15-17″ screen size.
I read on TechzTalk.com that Apple could use 28nm AMD graphics chip that will come next year and Ivy bridge processor with configurable TDP to improve performance while decreasing the size of the 15-inch MacBook Pro. However TechzTalk says that ultrathin 15-inch MacBook Pro won’t come till Q2 2012.
http://techztalk.com/techwebsite/10-31-11-ultrathin-15-inch-macbook-pro-not-coming-before-q2-2012
Just because they’ll be thinner, it doesn’t mean they have to be as thin as the air. I don’t even expect them to be “tapered” like the Air is.
ahh! i knew it!!
but…two updates in the same year?
They just received a spec bump a few days ago. This would be for next april-ish.
“Soon” is not going to be before the end of the 2011.
I think MacBook Air will be renamed just “MacBook,” at the current 11-inch and 13-inch sizes. MacBook Pro will be 15-inch and 17-inch (no 13-inch).
No more built-in optical drive, but MacBook Pro will still hold a 2.5-inch hard drive (for slower “massive” storage), in addition to 128 or 256 GB of ultra-fast flash-based storage.
I recall a rumor about iMac (before the previous refresh) that they would have both hard drive and flash-based storage, but they would be “consolidated” by the system to look like one “volume” to the user. OS and app files on the flash portion and user data on the hard drive portion, but the user does not need to set anything up or even think about it; it just works that way automatically. Maybe that rumor was for the NEXT refresh of both iMac and MacBook Pro.
If this is what will happen to MBP (though I doubt), it will not be really called “Pro” any more, since ultrathin design can not handle pro levels of storage, pro level of CPU, pro level of graphics and pro level of Thunderbolt port (MBP have 40 GBps Thunderbolt cumulative channel bandwidth, while MBA have 20 GBps with simpler Intel controller).
This reminds me of recent 7mm-thick “iPhone 5” stories. Some of “pro” features like good camera with five layers of lens have to be taken away to make such thin phone. So I am not sure that Apple will make that thin phone next year, too.
If you read my comment, I said it would have BOTH flash-based storage and room for one (or maybe even TWO on 17-inch) 2.5-inch hard drives.
I think the components that take up the most “thickness” (and internal volume) currently are the optical drive and keyboard (the battery takes up a lot of internal volume too but does not add to thickness). And they are stacked, with the optical drive under the keyboard. A standard 2.5-inch hard drive may be about as thick as the optical drive, but it is much smaller; it can be below the palm rest, so that it is not stacked with the keyboard mechanism.
With that layout, I think MacBook Pro can be about one-third thinner than it is now. It won’t be as thin as MacBook Air, and maybe not “tapered,” but it can be significantly thinner when the optical drive goes away.
I see; but does this intermediate thickness MBP make much of sense to do for Apple? Making MBP less pro, but still not as thin as MBA is half-solution that Apple usually does not like. I think they might rather introduce MBA 15″ and MBA 17″ and keep MBP factor for full-featured, pro-use in every measure use. But lets see.
Sure, I think so… But it would not be a “half-solution.” The current limitation on MacBook Pro “thinness” is because (as I see it) the optical drive and keyboard mechanism have to be stacked, one on top of the other. If the optical drive goes away (but the hard drive stays), the new limitation is the thickness of a 2.5-inch hard drive (by itself – NOT stacked with keyboard mechanism).
Apple would then create the optimal design for that set of requirements, and it would naturally be thinner. It would not be an “intermediate” design, because SSD cost is not going to drop low enough to allow 1TB of reasonable-cost storage during the next few years. Like previous MacBook Pro designs, it will be used for a few years and then replaced by a new design. And perhaps that NEXT design will be SSD-only.
The built-in optical drive is obviously going away soon – even the consumer-oriented Mac mini no longer has one. But I agree with you, that if there no internal storage option of at least 1TB, then it’s not really “pro.” So it needs to have a hard drive option to provide that mass storage.
2.5″ disk drives are 9.5 mm thick.
I could see the optical drive going, but it would be hard to part with my new 2.5″ 750 GB 7200 RPM drive.
The current MacBook Pro (15-inch) is 0.95 inches in thickness, which is 2.4 cm or 24 mm. The “lid” is probably about 6 mm, so that makes the main body about 18 mm in thickness. A 2.5-inch hard drive is 9.5mm thick. If that dimension is the design limitation on the next MacBook Pro’s thinness, add another 2.5 mm for the casing, and you get about 12 mm in thickness for the main body (not counting the screen portion).
And that is about one-third thinner than the current MacBook Pro, which I think is significant, even if it’s not as thin as the SSD-only MacBook Air. It will look almost as thin because the overall body is wider.
Natural evolution. I would imagine the Mbp would stay for several years until SSd become larger enough to match the largest Hd
Yep they just refreshed the Mac Book Pro line. It’ll be at LEAST another 6 months before another refresh. Losing the optical drive and having both an SSD and a regular hard drive would be nice. I can’t believe how long it’s taking for both capacity and price to drop on SS’s. Apple needs to build their own plant.
Eric noted above, MDN is linking to a story from July! So the then-rumoured MBP refresh has already occurred, and proven false (no radical thin design, just bumped CPU and HDD).
MDN should update this story to note this, or retract the story entirely.
I’d say 6 months at most. This “upgrade” was so wimpy it’s basically screaming at us that it’s a stopgap measure before they get the next generation ready.
someone tell me the “why” SSD drives cannot or don’t equal hard drives in memory space?
Take, for example, the 13″ MBP. If you were to buy it today, upgrading from a 500GB hard drive to a 750GB hard drive, it’s only $100 more. If you want to replace your 500GB hard drive with a 512GB SSD, it’s $1200 more. Even if you want to replace your 500GB hard drive with a 128GB SSD, it’s $200 more – $100 more than the 750GB hard drive.
Now, if your question is why that is the case, I have no idea. Maybe someone else can explain it better than I can.
Price and volume. As the earlier post pointed out SSD drives cost a lot more. With the MBAs Apple is soldering in the drive sticks and doing away with the replaceable drive.
I personally would like a soldered in SSD stick that holds the core OS and a replaceable stick for expanding space that clips in just like ram does on a MBP. Not exactly Apple’s style since they like to keep it simple.
SSD prices will go down but as long as it is not a mainstream component the volume cannot drive down the price.
The SSD is NOT soldered. Only the RAM is.
I think an SSD can actually be larger (in terms of storage space), at the same physical size. I believe there are 4TB specialty SSD’s available now, which is more storage than even the physically larger 3.5-inch hard drives. But the limitation is cost. It’s much more expensive per GB for SSD.
Ultimately, I think SSD cost per GB will be lower. But that time is not now. I think an ideal current setup would have both types of drives. A small ultra-fast SSD (on a “stick”) for OS and app files, and a standard “big” 2.5-inch hard drive for storing user data.
yeah, was looking for an engineer’s opinion. but thanks nonetheless.
Ive got an 08 MBP- Ive been holding out for a sleeker/thinner case. The MBP looks fairly outdated next to my ipad 2… I would be fine losing the DVD unless its a blu ray
Lets not all get our knickers in a twist. Apple knows computing better than any one of us. Have they ever really got it so wrong that we were unable to buy it’s products.
Yeah I know I leave myself open to attack from some that have a peeve with something like the floppy or the blu-ray or maybe even the glossy screens.