What things will we realistically see in the refresh?

[Scottsdale]

Are you serious? Noone said anything about the price but people keep saying "the macbook will be replaced by the mba" or even worse "the mbp 13" will be replaced by the mba".
And my answer to that was that the MBP (and the macbook) offers more than the air for reduced price. Got it now? If not, I won't keep explaining it, try to read and think more carefully if you're intersted. Otherwise just don't quote and reply to me.

I agree with you. I bought my kids both MBPs because they watch DVDs and listen to CDs. I rarely touch those things.

The MBP has better battery life (depends), an optical drive which is still important to some, a FireWire port, an Ethernet port, and the ability to accept a standard 2.5" HDD which some people need 1TB of data on their Mac at all times. Even if the MBA gets backlit keyboard, HD webcam, and Thunderbolt, it's a different market than the 13" MBP.

I also agree with keeping the white MacBook. I am typing from one right now, and I cannot believe how relevant and capable these things are all of these years later. It is about getting all of the features for the lowest cost for those who don't care about aluminum for the premier Apple look or extreme portability. Apple is king at making its products differentiated for each market. While they seem similar, they are really created to match the prices. People need to not think of value as only being what the top-end specs of the Macs are. There are premium materials in the MBA like Flash storage, and miniaturizing the CPU is an expense too. Look at standard voltage C2D vs the LV SL9600 Apple uses in the 13" MBAs. For me, the best value is in the MBA but that is only because I put an emphasis on mobility. For someone else, it might be lowest cost with most features. For yet another, it might be best appearance, with all of the features. There are the MBA, MB, and MBP markets.

I do agree with many though, the 13" MBP NEEDS a real GPU. It would further differentiate and classify the MBP as a real "pro" Mac rather than just being a label that doesn't really apply. I also disagree with those who say the MBA doesn't have space for a real GPU. There are 7W AMD GPUs that are discrete and would work perfect in an MBA with a ULV CPU. It could even come in under the current CPU TDP. The Nvidia 320m uses more than that, by one if you calculate out the bridge.

 

[PaulWog]

I do agree with many though, the 13" MBP NEEDS a real GPU. It would further differentiate and classify the MBP as a real "pro" Mac rather than just being a label that doesn't really apply. I also disagree with those who say the MBA doesn't have space for a real GPU. There are 7W AMD GPUs that are discrete and would work perfect in an MBA with a ULV CPU. It could even come in under the current CPU TDP. The Nvidia 320m uses more than that, by one if you calculate out the bridge.

Exactly!

My mom's laptop that we bought for her a few months ago runs on a 1st-gen i5 mobile processor, 4GB of RAM, and a Radeon 6550 1GB graphics card. Those are very very very good components in a laptop. And it's a 13-inch laptop, and relatively thin (as thin as a Macbook Pro). Its shortcomings are that the screen isn't quite as nice as the Macbook Pro's screen, and the touchpad is not as nice (though it's a decent touchpad). Its casing is made of a mix of 50/50 metal & plastic. The price of the unit? $799.99 + taxes. That's cheap!

So why can't a Macbook Pro 13-inch come with a 6550? My mom's computer certainly doesn't overheat in the least. Running HWMonitor, the graphics card usually runs between 30-40 celcius at idle (closer toward 30), which is a very cool idle temperature for a mobile graphics card.

Soooo... Apple... why can't you manage an updated graphics solution in the Pros?

Graphics seems to have always been the bane of Apple. It's the one thing that truly holds Apple back from a select group of consumers. They charge an arm and a leg to have decent graphics in most scenarios. For everything else, Apple is absolutely awesome! It's just the graphics end of things that I wish they'd shape up and get competitive with. Then I might actually be a 100% Apple consumer on all my computing needs. Until then (if ever they were to become better with their graphics marketing)... guess I'm just going to stick with the Air products for school and such

 

[fat jez]

Size and space. If you take off the bottom of a 13" MBP, you'll see that between the battery, superdrive and hard disk, there's not much room inside left for the logic board. A small logic board means not enough room for a discrete graphics chip, unless it can be combined with a Northbridge. Since Intel don't license the manufacture of chipsets for i series processors to anyone else, that's your limitation.

 

[orfeas0]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

The reasons they won't put a discrete gpu in the 13" pro (at least for now) are:
They will have to increase the price, and it's already a bit high for its specs.
But i think it's mainly because they want gamers or people who need a real pro machine to buy the bigger pros.
Ism't that an irony, since it is a macbook PRO? Yes, but oh well! Maybe they'll change/remove that "pro" soon!

A question: when the 13" was "macbook" and not pro (bu still aluminun), were there actually 2 models of the macbook (plastic and aluminum), or did they remove the white for a while? Because if it's the first, we may be looking at an introduction of a new macbook model soon (without odd, maybe. Something like a white plastic air. After all, it is the future of macbooks).

Edit: dont bash me on typos plz, im on an iPhone.

 

[berkleeboy210]

Any chance of an SD Card Reader appearing in the 11" ?

 

[Apple Expert]

Any chance of an SD Card Reader appearing in the 11" ?

Probably not.

 

[Alchematron]

Anyone think the battery life will be improved beyond 5 hours for the 11"?