Next 15in, 17in MacBook Pros to be MacBook Air skinny
Stand out by slimming down
Apple has completed development work in a 15in MacBook Air-skinny notebook, it has been claimed.
Little is known about the laptop's specification, reports MacRumours, which was first out with the news. But given its slimline design and Apple's current strategy, it's safe to say the thing won't sport an optical drive, absent from the Airs and just dropped from the Mac Mini desktop.
SSD or HDD? Certainly there will be a solid-state option, but a decent storage capacity at a sane price still mandates an HDD these days.
Sandy Bridge chippery - or the platform's successor - Thunderbolt portage, USB and an SD slot will complete the spec, we'd say. The current Airs lack Ethernet, and we can well imagine Apple leaving Gigabit off a 15in version too. One of the key features it's pushing with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is AirDrop, a file swap system that only works over Wi-Fi.
Whether the machine will ship under the MacBook Air brand or that of the MacBook Pro line - or even if it'll ship at all - isn't known.
Website TUAW reckons the machine will be marked 'Pro' and will debut in time for Christmas alongside a similarly skinny 17in machine. ®
COMMENTS
Pro(sumer)
Let me hazard a guess, that they'll get that skinny by removing all the things that currently make them Pro.
I see me rushing to buy one of the last Unibody Macs
The problem with the air range is that there is no no user upgradeable hard drive or memory, no inbuilt DVD drive, and to get the battery life and control heat, most likely the larger units will sport less powerful CPUs and graphics than current Unibody models.
None of this is attractive to the power users like myself that buy (in particular) the 17" MacBook Pro. I need a portable powerhouse, not a desktop. And for that reason I can see myself picking up a new 15" or 17" MacBook Pro in September, before the 'new and improved' (read: walled garden) models arrive.
Music? iTunes. Video? iTunes. Software? App Store. Nope. Don't get it. And with the pigs ear that is Lion it will (a) get downgraded to Snow Leopard and (b) be the last Apple hardware I buy. Sad.
Let's wait and see on this, but...
I have a feeling this might be true - and they'll be removing everything that makes it a 'Pro' system.
Given that I'm already on the long-term migration path off OSX after the hideous blunder of Final Cut Pro X, I'm left feeling that I have no horse in this race. Looks like my last Mac laptop will be coming soon, and just strapped to the old Aja IO that FCP X made obsolete, for doing standard definition field recording.
I loved what Apple was doing in the 2008-2010 era, but they're going too far in the "lock 'em down" direction for me to feel comfortable. Not supporting Blu-Ray playback was the first sign...
Foresight
I wrotre this last week, perhape I may be right....
Okay, so this is the wrong place to make this comment but has or is anyone bothered that the new Mac Minin has no DVD drive. So what !!! some may say, but I for one who was waiting to buy another Mac mini to replace my aging old Mac Mini may need to fork out additional money to buy an external DVD drive.
What for, well to burn DVD for videos I produce, to RIP CD's to iTunes ( why buy CD's when I can download from iTunes store, because I can get legal music cheaper from online stores and also to load my Logic Pro 9 and DVD version of Aperture.
Perhapes future Macs will not be supplied with a DVD player, Apples future, rip off Brits with ever increasing prices in the App Store, iTunes, iCloud, once your captured your stuffed; me iGo back to PC.
.
USB DVD writer?
You do know that, because of their high power requirements, many of them use two USB slots? How's that going to work when the cable is 8" long and the Macbook's USB slots are on opposite sides of the case?
Whether or not 10 years will see the death of moving parts in computers, the fact remains that now, in the real world, they are still necessary. Ethernet cables are a necessity. DVD or Blu-Ray drives are a necessity. If you have to carry around a second bag full of extra plugins just so that you can use your incredibly thin laptop, doesn't that rather ruin the point of the incredibly thin laptop?
