Katie Marsal
An Apple support file unearthed on the weekend confirms that at least two portables will get an update in short order.
The premature posting found by readers doesn't reveal much of the hardware design. However, it does confirm that both the mainstream and pro notebooks will share the same core platform and that the MacBook Air's design requires a different approach.
It also indicates that Apple will continue to use a discrete AirPort card rather than building it into the mainboard.
Apple is poised to introduce the new systems next week at its notebook event and should bring with them a new NVIDIA-based platform; the similarity in maintenance lends support to beliefs that the change will not only apply to the 13-inch MacBook but to MacBook Pros as well.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Andrew Orr
34 Comments
Deliberate leak.
They go through all this trouble shrinking things. They switch to the nvidia chipset, because it needs only one chip. And then they don't integrate airport onto the logicboard? How odd.
It also indicates that Apple will continue to use a discrete AirPort card rather than building it into the mainboard.
I thought the Airport Extreme card has always been on a separate daughter card in the MBP so I don't see how the lack of change is noteworthy. It makes more sense to keep it separate anyways so that a defect Airport Extreme card can be swapped out without having to replace the whole motherboard. It probably reduces electrical interference and propagation too.
I wish that the author of these articles, Aiden Malley, would stop referring to the new Macbooks as an "Nvidia-based platform". As long as these computers continue to use Intel main processors, it is simply misleading, to the point of asinine absurdity, to refer to the platform as "Nvidia-based", and this observation is true notwithstanding the de facto meaning of the word "chipset". This style of writing, whereby the author displays a gross lack of basic communicative sense, is commonplace among people who write these sorts of articles for Web sites such as this one. But just because it is commonplace does not make it okay. It simply does not make a whit of sense to refer to these computers, which use Intel processors, as "Nvidia-based platforms". Anyone whose communicative skills are as poor as this has no business even writing a personal blog.
I hope we see some native (hardware) support for disk encryption. This feature could be used to great advantage to differentiate the MB from MBP.
Re: "nVIDIA-based platform", I would add that creating public animosity towards Intel or any other hardware manufacturer or rubbing their noses in a lost market opportunity is not helpful or important.