Daniel Eran DilgerThe rumor, published by BGR, first notes that "new laptops will contain glass trackpads that are even larger than the pads found on current-generation MacBook Pro models."
It then adds that "next bit of information doesn’t quite make sense to us," but describes an 8 to 16GB Solid State Drive being used as the Mac OS X startup volume even on base models, which will retain a regular hard drive as well.
Higher end models are said to use SSD exclusively, much like Apple's existing MacBook Air line.
The advantage to using a hybrid SSD/HDD configuration, of course, is that the main benefit afforded by SSD is read speed, while its greatest drawback is expense per gigabyte of storage. SSD also has issues related to rewriting data as efficiently as conventional mechanical hard drives.
By combining both types of drives, Apple could provide rapid boot and "instant on" features currently available on the iPad and MacBook Air, while also providing large amounts of general storage for power users' large documents.
The report also noted the new models are about a half pound (0.2 kg) lighter than existing models. It also describes five different SKUs, harmonizing with existing reports on the new models.
Read more about MacBook Pro models in our latest reports on the subject.
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63 Comments
8 to 16? that's it? By this I mean, would this be exclusive to the OS? Or would other applications be installed on this drive? Sounds nice for a boot drive, but I would love to have this an application drive and an hdd as a storage drive
IF you're just using it for fast boot and instant-on, how much do you need? That's an honest question, as I have no idea.
8 to 16? that's it?
That would make sense, if it's just being used to boot from, as Mac OS, to my knowledge only uses about 6-7 GB of storage space. Everything else, from additional programs that don't need to be started at bootup (iLife, iWork, etc.), to all documents, movies, etc., would be stored on the HDD. I think it's an awesome idea.
I remember seeing something similar to this on some of the very first linux netbooks, but was confused when they didn't continue to do it. Seems like a great idea to me.
But, but, but, I only boot my computer twice a month. What real advantage would this be? My hard drive based Mac wakes from sleep in a couple seconds.
IF you're just using it for fast boot and instant-on, how much do you need? That's an honest question, as I have no idea.
This is perfect. I have a 120GB SSD in my 13"MBP and a 640GB spinning drive in place of my CD drive. I get fast boot and lots of storage.
I have all of my applications and the system on the SSD and I use 15GB of it, my home directory is on the spinner. For now this is the best of both worlds until 1GB laptop SSDs are reasonably priced. If I were to do it again I would get the fastest 32GB SSD and a 1TB spinner for storage.