Apple To Radically Revamp Macbook Pro In 2012

[george]

Apple To Radically Revamp MacBook Pro in 2012

In a move that’s likely to disrupt the notebook computer market even further, Apple looks set to totally revamp it’s entire 2012 MacBook Pro lineup, jettisoning optical storage and traditional hard disks in favour of fast Flash-based Solid State Storage (SSD) drives and a slimmer, lighter chassis much like the MacBook Air. That’s according to recent reports from authoritative Apple news sites such as ...

Full story: http://www.nettechblog.com/macbook-pro-revamp-2012/

[Jimi007]

That wasn't too much of a guess... Apple never bothered with a blue ray optical drive, most of us rarely use any optical drive anymore. SSD drives are the way to go, other than for storage of large amounts of data. With "Thunder port" being way faster than anything else that's available to connect to external drives it would just make sense not to use large internal drives anymore.

[SoloFlyer]

and you dont need an optical drive to re-install the software/apps that the local app store decided they needed to wipe to get you back up and running ... which APPL claims shouldne t ahappen in the first place?

[mogandave]

Look for touch-screens on the new MacBook Pros.

[nikster]

and you dont need an optical drive to re-install the software/apps that the local app store decided they needed to wipe to get you back up and running ... which APPL claims shouldne t ahappen in the first place?

Not really an English sentence, but I believe you are talking about the local Apple dealer? Thailand unfortunately does not yet have an official Apple store and until then we'll have to make do with second rate service. The guys here are getting better but at a rather slow pace and only very gradually.

Once the official Apple store hits - the Apple store run by Apple as they have in China, HK, Japan - service will dramatically improve. Was the same in the USA - Apple dealers were these old little shops where grumpy staff would maybe take care of you but only if you were on their good side. Then Apple stores nearly wiped them out and they only had themselves to blame.

Somebody told me a story yesterday - her young niece had dropped her iPad and cracked the screen. The niece was too embarrassed to admit it but clearly that's what happened. She took the iPad to the Palo Alto Apple store.

"Hey... my iPad is.... damaged"

Genius bar clerk: "Yeah, what happened?"

"I think my niece dropped it but she's too embarrassed to admit it"

"Really? Hmmmm... you know... most people make up stories...."

She left the store with a new iPad. Now this is customer service that gets told in stories, and that is just exciting. People will come back and buy more product.

Chances that happening in Thailand: Zero.

Lastly: You don't need a CD drive to install any Apple software. That shift has been happening over the last year. OS X comes on a USB stick. OS X also can be re-installed over the network - it's a bigger deal than you'd think as it means the firmware (boot ROM) on newer Macs can connect to the network and download the required files to install the OS... if you have a dead mac all you need is a network connection to restore it...

[nikster]

That wasn't too much of a guess... Apple never bothered with a blue ray optical drive, most of us rarely use any optical drive anymore.

Good point. Apple betting against Blu ray I guess was yet another smart bet. At the time most PC people were raging that Apple didn't put those BD drives in their premium laptops. Now it turns out oh well Apple actually was right and nobody's using BD. BD suffered from high prices in the beginning and once the prices came down everyone was already downloading their content rather than buying it on disks.

I've been without optical drive for 2 years, can't say I ever missed it. I replaced the optical in my MacBook Pro with a SSD for booting and apps. The speed difference is huge!

I am looking to buy a new Mac and now I guess I'll have to wait for those new MacBook Air-like MBPs. I do not dare to hope that they have *both* a retina display and SSDs - I think the retina display will come later, maybe next year. Production and software support are simply not ready for a large scale rollout.

I'd love a MacBook Pro that's thin and light and comes with SSD standard but need a 15" screen minimum.

I am pretty sure Apple will not put an actual SSD in it, rather they'll use Flash memory boards like they do in the MacBook Air. That's their strategy - save on cost, weight, and size and give up easy user-upgradeability for it. Was the right thing to do for batteries, and it's the same with SSDs. Also OWC already makes SSD boards for the MacBook Air and if all the Mac laptops share the same hardware interface then they'll undoubtedly make upgrade kits for the pro too. (you can get up to 480GB SSD in the MacBook Air... for a price...)

[Jimi007]

and you dont need an optical drive to re-install the software/apps that the local app store decided they needed to wipe to get you back up and running ... which APPL claims shouldne t ahappen in the first place?

No, you don't need an optical drive to get back up and running. Even on an older Mac, you can boot off an external firewire drive, wipe the internal drive and install again from an external drive. Or like I do, have a firewire 800 drive with the OS on one partition and the whole drive backed up with carbon cloner on another partition. Just boot up holding down the option key and I have my choice of several drives to boot from as I have 2 firewire 800 drives as well as the internal drive. And Thunder port is even faster than firewire 800.

Edited February 12, 2012 by Jimi007

[ubonrthai]

I'll happily say good bye to the optical drive. Some kind of flash memory for startup and apps would be great too. However, I hope they don't jump straight to SSD only. SSD's are too expensive. $800 for 512GB? I use 525GB out of 1TB on my current MacBook Pro, most of which is pictures and video. I dread the thought of having to whip out an external drive and cable all the time.

[negreanu]

Nice as it will to have the weight and size reduction.

I feel that the graphics card will suffer and it may even lose to integrated graphics only such as intel 3000/4000. Which is a deal breaker for me.

Also I will miss having dual drives in current Macbook Pro. SSD and 1TB combination.

Decisions....

[nikster]

Nice as it will to have the weight and size reduction.

I feel that the graphics card will suffer and it may even lose to integrated graphics only such as intel 3000/4000. Which is a deal breaker for me.

Also I will miss having dual drives in current Macbook Pro. SSD and 1TB combination.

Decisions....

Even though a high end gfx card is a niche market I can't imagine they'll ditch them altogether.

[negreanu]

Even though a high end gfx card is a niche market I can't imagine they'll ditch them altogether.

I just don't think they can get it in the form factor. Actually they ditched discrete graphics on the 13" macbook pro. Not quite sure what makes the 13" designated as Pro anymore. 13" macbook air is more powerful!