Is The “ThinBook” Coming This Fall?
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
by Charles W. Moore
The Mac Web was awash (yet again) last week with rumor about the imminent release of a new MacBook Pro “ThinBook,” a thread of speculation that began shortly after Apple discontinued the erstwhile 12” PowerBook in May, 2006 with no replacement, unless you consider the 13” MacBook a satisfactory subnotebook substitute.
The thing is that the MacBook is almost as big and heavy as the old full-size Titanium G4 PowerBook, and not that much smaller than a 15” MacBook Pro. For serious road warriors, these computers are much more bulky and weighty than what is ideal for extended lugging around.
I’ve thrown my oar into the speculation pool from time to time myself, and I have to say I’m somewhat surprised that no Intel Mac subnotebook has materialized yet, although Apple has had a tendency to sporadically address the subnotebook market with lengthy lapses interspersed. For example, the PowerBook 2400c was discontinued in April, 1998, after which there was a very long Apple subnotebook drought until the 12” dual-USB iBook was unveiled more than three years later.
However, Apple has to be bleeding potential sales to users for whom the MacBook is just bigger and heavier than they want to carry, and the various featherweight and compact Windows PCs such as the very slick and attractive little Sony Vaio TZ90 (I’m especially smitten by the TZ90 in elegant-looking “Bordeaux” livery) prove irresistible by comparison. So I still am of a mind that Apple needs to get this market category covered, and I still think they will do just that in the near future, possibly before Christmas and almost certainly by Macworld Expo.
As for the above mentioned latest wave of rumor buzz, here’s a capsule of what’s being floated.
In a subnote to a report about surging Mac computer sales, thestreet.com’s Scott Moritz commented that “people inside the company and those close to Apple’s plans say there will be a big announcement regarding a so-called subnotebook Mac. The ultra-thin device will have a 10 inch-to-12 inch screen, sleek rounded edges and weigh less than 2 pounds.”
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Moritz also says that the new subnotebook’s introduction is planned for next quarter, with it in the channels in time for the holiday season. If that’s the case, it would have to be slotted into a relatively narrow window after next month’s OS 10.5 Leopard release hoopla, which I’m pretty confident Apple would not want to dilute or distract from with a major hardware introduction.
9to5mac.com's Cleve Nettles also predicts that slim aluminum MacBooks are coming soon from Apple, and says that based in information they’ve received from unnamed sources, will be available in Black and silver anodized aluminum livery, are considerably slimmer than current MacBooks and MacBook Pros. have a 13’3” display like the current MacBooks, a keyboard like Aopple’s new wireless BlueTooth unit, an innovative new touchpad, and will be “priced extremely aggressively.”
AppleInsider also says the new Apple notebooks may come clad in black aluminum, will have a more compact footprint and a thinner display bezel than the current MacBooks, and are expected to include LED-backlit 13-inch LCD panels, on-board NAND flash (for faster application launching and boot times), and lack a traditional optical disc drive.
Picking up on that latter point, 9to5Mac’s Chauncey Dupree contends that if the new Apple subnotebooks do arrive sans an internal optical drive, we should “likely expect the laptops to be bundled with external bus-powered Firewire or USB DVD drives to compliment the package and do software reinstalls. Either that or huge thumb drives!” Bundling an external drive with a subnotebook Mac has plenty of precedent. The original PowerBook 100 and the PowerBook 2400c both came with external floppy drives, and one was optional with the PowerBook Duo.
Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng adds that a good friend of hers at Apple “has told me that he is very excited for the next update to the company’s laptop line, for his own personal use. That, and he indicated that the laptops should be appearing “right around product cycle, if you follow that sort of thing.”
Well, I have followed that sort of thing for many years now, and more often than not there is a notebook update and speed bump of the current ‘Book lineup sometime in late October through late November, although I don’t recall any major new notebook product announcement in the late fall in the past decade, so the reference to “product cycle” is equivocal. PowerBook / MacBook Pro new product releases have traditionally been at Macworld Expo San Francisco (Titanium PowerBook, 12” and 17” Aluminum PowerBooks, 15” MacBook Pro), March ( Pismo PowerBook), April (17” MacBook Pro), May (dual-USB iBook, MacBook), the Worldwide Developer’s Conference, usually held in June ( WallStreet and Lombard PowerBooks), Macworld Expo east coast in July (Original Clamshell iBook). Macworld Expo Paris in September ( FireWire Clamshell iBook, 15” Aluminum PowerBook). THe only exception would be the original PowerBook G3 “Kanga” which debuted on November 10, 1997, so a major new MacBook product release in November, while not entirely unprecedented, would arguably not be consistent with Apple’s traditional notebook product cycle. For what that’s worth.
Personally, and this is entirely off the top of my head - I have no clandestine “sources” or “insider information” - I’m expecting the iPhone-esque convergence we’ve seen with the aluminum iMacs and the iPod touch to be reflected as well in the new Apple subnotebook’s styling, and it wouldn’t surprise me greatly at all if this machine turns out to have NAND flash storage memory instead of a hard drive. A touchscreen is unlikely this time around, but that trackpad innovation cryptically referred to by 9to5Mac could well incorporate some sort of tablet feature.
Also, earlier this year, Last week MacNN and others reported that Apple has patented a retractable notebook port system with I/O ports that close to conserve space but flip down to provide access when needed, thus conserving space by recessing the various port connections into the body of the laptop. “Mobile devices such as notebook computers are becoming increasingly thinner,” Apple observed in its patent filing of April 17, 2007 but first published in August. “As a result, connections systems need to be reduced in size to accommodate smaller form factors... For example, a notebook computer may have a highly tapered chassis shape.” That sounded very interesting - a notebook docking system that sounds like it might be at least conceptually reminiscent of the old PowerBook Duo Mini Dock.
Whatever, that does appear to confirm that Apple has been working on a “thinner” notebook. I don’t think it’s a matter of “if,” but rather “when.”
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