Give the MBP a Socket, Apple!

[Erasmus]

So, why would the MBP be best with a socket? Simple.

The next revision of the MBP, being the Santa Rosa revision, seems to be mostly improving everything BUT the CPU, which only gets a very, very small bump. The revision is still great however, because of all the other upgrades, being possibly either or both LCD backlit and very high res screens, flash booting, faster bus speeds, and of course, the big one, in all likelihood there will be either a Radeon X2xxx or Geforce Go 8xxx GPU for insanely fast mobile graphics power.

Conversely, the MBP upgrade at the end of the year will probably be almost exclusively focussed on the processor. It is obvious that Penryn will be amazingly fast. Intel has said that the new Hafnium material they use improves the characteristics of the transistors five fold. I would imagine that this could mean Penryn reaching speeds of 4Ghz or more, while using under half the power. Or any combination of power savings and speed.

So, basically, Apple should put a socket in the Santa Rosa MBP, instead of just soldering a Merom to the motherboard. This would enable people to buy a Penryn CPU, maybe even quad core, who knows, and put it in their Santa Rosa MBP.

I would guess that Apple won't do this, because the socket will be hard to fit in the MBP, but considering the absolutely massive power advantages of Penryn, this would be an excellent selling point of the new MBP.

True, it would impact Apple's sales in the future, but considering the platform will be replaced, and sockets changed, the MBP will probably only be compatible with first or maybe second rev Penryn CPUs, limiting considerably the effect of people upgrading instead of buying new.

I think a user replaceable CPU is far more important and likely than a user replaceable graphics card. Perfect example, iMac.

 

[robbieduncan]

1) The % of users who would actually use this is vanishingly small

2) The % of users who would try to use and mess it up is non-zero. If it was officially user upgradable (no current Mac including the Mac Pro is) then Apple would have to field these as warrantee claims so costs go up

3) This would reduce the chances of a user buying a whole new machine. Profits at Apple go down so they have less to spend developing new machines and OSX

4) A sockets using much more vertical space than surface mount. This would mean thicker, uglier MBPs. More people would be upset that leaving it they way it is now.

 

[suneohair]

No and No.

As the above poster said, having no socket reduces the size of the MBP. It is not an iMac where space is to some degree unlimited for such parts.

I guarantee most people aren't cracking their iMacs open. Maybe the Mini, but even that is limited. Again, they have sockets because they can.

Graphics is a far more likely upgrade than cpu. Have you paid attention to the homebrew PC market. What are people changing out? GPUs. CPUs have much longer life than GPUs. CPU advancements are rather slow and when they come the differences arent as drastic.

New games demand more powerful GPUs. Done deal. You definetly have your assumption of what should be upgradeable wrong here.

You are one in 10 million that would even dream of upgrading a CPU in a notebook. I personally don't want my notebooks thicker so you can upgrade the CPU.

 

[miniConvert]

Hmm, yeah, lovely thin MacBook Pro, or a socket so the processor can be changed...

I'm going to stick with the droolworthy thinness if that's ok. CPU's really don't need upgrading that often, even in PC's they rarely need to be upgraded during the life of the system. Apple uses high end CPU's in the first place (other manufacturers are still selling Celeron's and Pentium M's in laptops...) so there's more than enough power to last the life of the notebook.

 

[Erasmus]

I am fully aware of everything that has been said here, and I would probably never replace the CPU in a computer, but it comes back to the fact that the Penryn upgrade could easily be absolutely massive. True, no doubt Intel will limit the speed of the processors so they have somewhere to go in the future.

So, on second thoughts, maybe the Penryn upgrade won't be so great after all.

I just wanted to make the point that the Macbook/Pros are the only Apple computers that don't use a socket. It seems to me that if Apple wanted the MBP's CPU to be user serviceable, even if unofficially, they could, without changing the outside appearance. A socket can't be that thick!

I have to admit though, that it will never happen

 

[robbieduncan]

It seems to me that if Apple wanted the MBP's CPU to be user serviceable, even if unofficially, they could, without changing the outside appearance. A socket can't be that thick!

Unfortunately that's just not true. Adding a socket would force Apple to make the case thicker. Sorry that's just the reality. Surface mounting removes at least 5mm from the total depth required.