What We Expect (And/Or Hope For) In The Forthcoming New MacBook Pro
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
by Charles W. Moore
There seems to be an almost unanimous consensus developing in the Mac Web blogosphere that a new Apple notebook announcement on October 14 is pretty much a lock, or at least it will be a surprise if there isn’t one. More imponderable is the nature of what will be announced - will it be another speed bump and refreshment of the current designs, or something more radically new?
Personally, I’m anticipating the latter. American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu has been cited in several reports this week saying “We continue to believe that MacBook Pro and MacBook are due for refreshes with more radical redesigns, likely at a special event later this fall. In addition, we are picking up that MacBook Air could see a minor refresh and potential price cut to increase its value proposition as build plans have slowed from earlier robust levels as customers have opted for MacBook or MacBook Pro instead,” and something like that would be my speculative best guess as well.
Computerworld's Seth Weintraub has recently sifted and analyzed the rumor tea leaves at some length, and come up with a detailed outline of what we should expect in new MacBook Pros. Which first brings us to the question of whether, as some have suggested, Apple might be fixing to fold the MacBook and MacBook Pro product families into a single combined category, presumably with a fairly wide range of equipment levels and options. Personally, I’m skeptical about that. Maintaining a separation in equipment and price points between consumer level and “professional” machines is a useful and sensible marketing strategy, although I don’t doubt that more commonality of form factor (eg: aluminum cases for the MacBook) is not unlikely, adopting styling cues from the MacBook Air, although hopefully with more sensible decisions regarding thickness, I/O connectivity, and expandability.
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Whatever, the MacBook Pro in particular is overdue for more than a refresh, with its case design dating all the way back to 2003, or even 2001 if you count the Titanium PowerBook as the precursor. The MacBook for that matter is not a radical departure from the dual-USB iBook form factor that was introduced MacBook Pro 2001 as well, although there are some significant differences such as the keyboard design and the MacBook’s vastly superior access to the hard drive.
Weintraub, at least for the MacBook Pro, anticipates a totally new case design in aluminum taking “rounder, skinnier” design cues from the MacBook Air. I agree that this is most likely.
Another thing he considers to be probable is 16:9 aspect ratio LED screens as opposed to the 16:10 ratio screens that have been the norm since the intro of the aluminum PowerBooks, with 16 inch and 18.4 inch variants offered, plus a long shot 14.1 inch baby MacBook Pro that would fill the void left by the dearly departed 12” PowerBook. I agree that a move to 16:9 seems a good bet - not one I’m particularly enthusiastic about, being personally more interested in display vertical depth than wideness. A small MacBook Pro would be wonderful, and is something I’ve been agitating for since the demise of the 12” PowerBook, but that may be too much of a reach at this time.
Will there be built-in 3G Wireless technology? Last week IDG News Service's Stephen Lawson reported that fast cellular modems for laptops are flying out the door as business users hit the road and tire of looking for Wi-Fi hotspots according to an ABI Research analyst’s report. Seth Weintraub says that with gained experience from the iPhone Apple should be well-positioned to offer a 3G option with a strong antenna in the new MacBook Pro, but even better would be built-in WiMAX support. I’m in wait-and-see mode on this one.
What about a multi-touch glass trackpad, possibly with even a screen under the glass? I’m skeptical about that intriguing bit of iPhone/laptop convergence making the cut this time, but Apple could surprise me. They certainly have before.
Seth expects the new ‘Books to incorporate keyboards similar to ones in the MacBook Air or the Apple Bluetooth desktop keyboard, and I would say that’s a fairly safe prediction, alas, as I’m not a fan of that particular keyboard design, preferring the more traditional key action of the current MacBook Pro, and especially it’s easy-to-remove and replace modularity. Replacing a MacBook or MacBook Air keyboard is a major operation.
Another wrinkle Weintraub predicts is optional HDMI video output. I’ll reserve judgment on that.
Maybe GPS? Not terribly useful in a laptop, but Apple has the technology from the iPhone.
Seth Weintraub is a Blu-Ray fan. I am too from a technical perspective, but perhaps a more probative line of speculation would be whether the new laptops will have an internal optical drive at all. If Apple opts to go with an external optical drive (which would be fine with me as long as it is easily bootable), offering a choice of SuperDrive or Blu-Ray would make sense and let the customer decide.
Weintraub seems very positive that Apple will offer a SSD option. I wouldn’t bet against it, but with 128GB being the current practical capacity ceiling, at least cost-wise, how many users are going to be happy with that small a drive in a MacBook Pro?
An HD Camera? Not a big draw as far as I’m concerned.
Intel Penryn II 45nm processors are a virtual certainty, but the question is whether they will come with a version of Intel’s Centrino 2 chipset that was released back in July, or if there is substance to the persistent rumor that Apple will go with an NVIDIA chipset. In any event, massive speed improvements are not likely, and unneeded anyway, but there should be substantial improvement in thermal footprint - ie: the new CPUs should generate significantly less heat, thanks to advances in chip design and a less restrictive 1066 MHz (vs. current 800MHz) front side bus, which also supports faster RAM. The Intel Centrino 2 can also support 2GB of “Turbo Memory” - which is an on-chip flash memory cache designed to speed up repetitive operations applications.
While integrated video support seems to be the trend in the PC laptop world, Weintraub thinks Apple will likely continue with separate graphics processor units and dedicated VRAM. I hope he’s correct in that prognostication.
What about 8GB of RAM upgrade headroom? Wheeee! - wouldn’t that be a hoot in a laptop? Might be functionally useful with OS 10.6 Leopard’s 64 bit support as well. I’m not holding my breath.
Weintraub thinks it’s likely the current price points ($1099 for the MacBook, $1999 for the MacBook Pro) will hold, but with a price drop having been widely rumored for months, just holding the line would be a bit of a disappointment, although not a bitter one given the anticipated levels of value-added.
Only three weeks to go before all will be revealed, at least we hope so.
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