Apple’s Special Event: The Waiting Game For Mac ‘Book Updates Continues
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
by Charles W. Moore
Apple certainly knows how to, paraphrasing one of Diana Ross’s many hits as front lady for the Supremes back in Motown days, “just keep us hanging on.” The new iPods are very nice. I would love to have any of them and I’m really pleased that the nano has been restored to its original, oblong form factor. However, with due and substantial respect to the importance of the iPod to Apple’s success, past, present, and future, I was hoping for some more meat at the Apple Event yesterday, which is to say some notebook, or even desktop system announcements. Pretty much everything Macintosh is due or overdue for a refresh.
An optimistic spin one might put on it is that the longer Apple holds off, the greater likelihood of a substantial redesign for the MacBook and MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air is actually longer overdue for a refresh (which would be its first since its original rollout last January) than the bigger MacBooks, which had a modest revision at the end of February.
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Apple’s usual time slot for late-year notebook refreshes is October-November, although in “normal” years that follows a spring update in late April or early May, so with the last one in February, they’re all definitely overdue in terms of time interval, so late September/early October may be more like it this year.
A report last Saturday by Reuters’ Garry Barker says Apple is rumored to be close to releasing new notebook computers in both the MacBook and MacBook Pro ranges as well as refreshed iMacs.
As others have predicted, Barker says the MacBooks are likely to get new aluminum and stainless steel cases along with the latest Intel Centrino 2 based chipsets. More speculative are rumors of a touch-screen tablet with a 12-inch screen incorporating an iPhone style virtual keyboard and gesturing features. Whatever floats your boat. I’m not much of a touch screen fan. Barker also mentions the possibility of a speed-bumped Mac mini, which would be welcome attention to that neglected model.
Back with the conventional laptops, another probative bet would be illuminated keyboards in the MacBook, and larger trackpads supporting more gestures.
I’ve found this year waiting for new Mac notebook announcements especially frustrating, as I’ve got the bug to upgrade my system, but I don’t want to make the jump before I get a gander of what’s coming up next in the MacBook families. It will be ironic if I ultimately end up with a current-version MacBook or a refurbished MacBook Pro, which is entirely possible, but I want to be able to make an informed choice.
Actually, when I bought my current No. 1 Mac, I didn’t anticipate that it would still be my front line computer 32 months on. My provisional plan was to go with one last Power PC ‘Book for a year or 18 months and make the jump to a MacIntel when the timing seemed auspicious or Apple came up with something I would find hard to resist. However, the 1.33 GHz 17” PowerBook I bought (Apple Certified Refurbished) proved to be such a delightfully dependable and satisfactory tool, it removed a lot of the incentive to move on to something else in any sort of rush. To this moment, it’s never given me any trouble, hassle, or grief, and it’s hard to give that up to roll the dice with a new machine.
Nevertheless, it’s getting to be time. The 1.33 GHz G4 was a sterling performer running OS 10.4 Tiger, but with OS 10 Leopard it’s not been as happy a camper. It still runs well enough that I’ve never been seriously tempted to go back to OS 10.4 (which would be easy to do since I still have Tiger 10.4.11 installed on one of my hard drive partitions). However, it would be nice to let Leopard flex its muscles on a Mac that really has enough power to run it properly.
The 80 GB hard drive in my PowerBook is also getting filled up. If it weren’t for the Leopard performance issue, I might have considered upgrading the HD, although that’s not a simple proposition on these aluminum PowerBooks, alas.
A third consideration is software compatibility, as gradually more software leaves OS 10.4 Tiger behind, or never supported it in the first place. That hasn;t been a really big issue so far, bit it’s becoming more of one lately, and that’s a trend that will continue.
And of course I don’t have to with to more than adequately address any of those issues. pretty well any Core 2 Duo based ‘Book should offer more than ample performance and hard disk capacity to satisfy someone like myself, still getting along reasonably happily with an old G4.
Another point to ponder is whether to go with a MacBook, which gives one the most power for your money in Apple laptops, or spend several hundred dollars more and get a MacBook Pro. I’ve gotten quite used to this 17” display, and am not sure how frustrating I would find it going down to a 13” screen. Probably more than a little. My 17-incher is of the older 1440 x 900 resolution, which is the same res. as the last several revisions of the 15” G4 PowerBook and all 15” MacBook Pros, so I wouldn’t have to get another 17” machine to stay with the view I’ve got - albeit in a slightly smaller area. If money were no object, a 17” MacBook Pro would be my pick without having to deliberate for more than an nanosecond.
An imponderable at this point is whether I’m going to prefer the very mature current MacBook Pro design to whatever Apple replaces it with, if that’s what’s about to happen. I know I’m partial to the conventional keyboard of the present machines to the assumed “chiclet” ‘boards the next-gen MacBook Pros are very likely to ship with. On the other hand, if rumors and purported spy photos are correct, the new design should have an easy to access and change hard drive similar to the arrangement in the MacBook, which would be a welcome improvement.
I’m also hoping that while a degree of MacBook Air styling themes and seem like an almost inevitable probability, that it won’t be anything as radical as the Air, especially in terms of the I/O port array, and that they won’t go any thinner in section. Apple needs to remember that these bigger Mac notebooks are serious worktools for some of us and tipping the form vs. function balance too far in the direction of form will not be welcomed gladly, however cool the rig looks.
As I noted above, it will be ironic if after this long wait I end up with a Mac model that was available back in February, but I wouldn’t rule that out by any means.
In the meantime, the waiting game continues.
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