Future of Mac Discussion

kitkat9933 · 3 Nov 2012 at 14:17

For a while now all Macs and even iOS devices have been either partly or fully covered in Aluminium.

It looks nice, and it fits into Apples style. However, my question is, do you think Apple devices will stay in Aluminium for the foreseeable future? Or do you think in the next few years we might see a change to something else?

James

^187 · 3 Nov 2012 at 14:30

There was talk/rumour recently about Apple buying a shed load of carbon fibre, so maybe they will move to that, they're probably just playing about with it at the moment. But in the interest of weight and strength it might be something they use.

Skyboat · 3 Nov 2012 at 14:53

I would say carbon fibre too. Most big industries are beginning to move towards it (aerospace, automobile) due to its obvious benefits but don't expect high-end gadgets to be made out of it for a good number of years at the very least.

Somnambulist · 3 Nov 2012 at 16:37

Apple supposedly bought a large quantity of carbon fibre parts (unknown parts) from a Jap company this year. They've also spent $1b on R&D, so I'm naturally eager to see the results of that.

AbsenceJam · 3 Nov 2012 at 16:52

The heat transfer and dissipation benefit of aluminium is a central part of the design of the Macs. I don't see how they can change it unless the latest components of the future start using far less power.

kitkat9933 · 3 Nov 2012 at 16:57

AbsenceJam said:
The heat transfer and dissipation benefit of aluminium is a central part of the design of the Macs. I don't see how they can change it unless the latest components of the future start using far less power.

Thats a really good point on your later sentence. I remember when I was on the phone to an Apple Technician once they said how they rely on the Aluminium casing to dissipate over 50% of the heat from the internal components.

Marky · 3 Nov 2012 at 16:58

As already mentioned

Aluminium is great for now, but future products will probably use carbon fibre to make it stronger and lighter

slinxy · 3 Nov 2012 at 18:36

AbsenceJam said:
The heat transfer and dissipation benefit of aluminium is a central part of the design of the Macs. I don't see how they can change it unless the latest components of the future start using far less power.

There's talk that they are moving away from Intel, so who knows there's components may need less power in future. It may see the end of windows on a mac or with microsoft 8 supporting ARM processors and the talk of microsoft midori nothing is ever clear. When I first using macs, the whole idea of intel cpus and windows on them wasn't even a pipe dream.

Syther101 · 3 Nov 2012 at 18:46

One thing to add onto this discussion. What is everybody's thoughts on pretty much all of the Mac line ups not being user serviceable? (Air, MBPr, New iMac range)

Personally this is a massive turn off for me. Personally I have only just got my first Apple product (Computer wise) and well I am really liking it too my surprise (MBP 13"). I would like to think I would continue to perhaps getting their products in the future but I just can't see my self buying a product that isn't upgradeable. I mean whats the point. A computer that could easily last 5 years is now being limited to 2.

If they are going in this direction they should give you the choice of the thinner iMac or an alternative older version.

Any Mac purchasing in the future might well be simply of the software kind and doing some magic with some other hardware if you get my drift.

Syther101 · 3 Nov 2012 at 19:05

kitkat9933 said:
Thats a really good point on your later sentence. I remember when I was on the phone to an Apple Technician once they said how they rely on the Aluminium casing to dissipate over 50% of the heat from the internal components.

This!. They are ether going to have to drastically re-think their heating solutions or stick with the Aluminium.

I mean my MBP already hits 90c when gaming on the Intel 4000 graphics on Minecraft etc. I would hate to think what this value would be without the current casing XD.

233 · 3 Nov 2012 at 19:16

I would cream my undercrackers if apple were to switch to titanium or carbon fibre or some other exotic material.

and as for apple moving away from intel, if they really wanted to they could buy AMD with the cash down the back of one of the sofas in Tim Cooks office.

the industry is predicting that Apples cash reservers could hit 200 billion dollars next year, tbh they could buy intel outright for that

edit quick google suggests that apple have enough cash on hand right now to buy up every single share in Intel at current prices, that is a truly scary thought.

AbsenceJam · 3 Nov 2012 at 19:23

Delta12 said:
I would cream my undercrackers if apple were to switch to titanium

They used it before aluminium. It's much more expensive, heavier, scratches more easily and is about 1/12 as effective at heat transfer.

uniQ · 3 Nov 2012 at 19:25

I have a feeling the next iteration of MacBooks will come in a black aluminium option.

slinxy · 3 Nov 2012 at 19:29

At the rate that they ARM chips are developing.. maybe we will see them in laptops and desktops too that will certainly resolve heat issues.

Skyboat · 3 Nov 2012 at 20:48

Syther101 said:
One thing to add onto this discussion. What is everybody's thoughts on pretty much all of the Mac line ups not being user serviceable? (Air, MBPr, New iMac range)

Personally this is a massive turn off for me. Personally I have only just got my first Apple product (Computer wise) and well I am really liking it too my surprise (MBP 13"). I would like to think I would continue to perhaps getting their products in the future but I just can't see my self buying a product that isn't upgradeable. I mean what.

They are essentially applying their iOS business model to the traditional computing market. Forcing users to upgrade every couple or so years. We've already seen hints of this in software (cue Mountain Lion requirements), in hardware in the MacBook Air and the new Retina-enabled MacBook Pros. Simple answer? Because they can.

slinxy said:
At the rate that they ARM chips are developing.. maybe we will see them in laptops and desktops too that will certainly resolve heat issues.

The ARM architecture has a LONG way to go to fully replace the x86/x64 architecture on desktops. Even Intel's Atom chip has significantly faster FLOPS than what is currently possible with ARM SoCs, and Haswell next year will just raise the bar again with regards to performance. Current ARM chips are not any more efficient w.r.t. performance/watt than what can be currently bought from either Intel or AMD. Saying all that, I can see low-end netbooks being developed in the future, possibly a Chromebook running a variant of Android similar to the Windows 8 RT Surface that Microsoft have just released.

PardonTheWait · 3 Nov 2012 at 23:10

Syther101 said:
One thing to add onto this discussion. What is everybody's thoughts on pretty much all of the Mac line ups not being user serviceable? (Air, MBPr, New iMac range)

It's the price you pay for that sort of performance on those chassis really.

The 27" is the same as before to be fair, user serviceable RAM which won't affect your warranty, presumably the HDD will be reachable if you're confident but will void your warranty.

Opening up the retina MBPs and the airs, you can see there's really no other way, there's just no spare space in there at all.

Syther101 · 3 Nov 2012 at 23:19

PardonTheWait said:
It's the price you pay for that sort of performance on those chassis really.

The 27" is the same as before to be fair, user serviceable RAM which won't affect your warranty, presumably the HDD will be reachable if you're confident but will void your warranty.

Opening up the retina MBPs and the airs, you can see there's really no other way, there's just no spare space in there at all.

Yeah it's a fair point. The only thing I would have wished for would have been user serviceable Ram on the Air and MBPr. Pretty sure that is something they could have done without sacrificing a lot of space but they surcame to greed of customers being locked into their upgrade system. Which is a shame as due to this system I recently got locked out of being able to get a MBPr. Due to only having store credit I wasn't able to get a model with upgraded Ram and didn't have enough money for the next version up. Their was no way 4Gb of ram would have lasted me the 3 years of University I was hoping to get from a laptop. Like said above I opted for the standard pro and with the extra money whacked in an SSD and replaced the Dvd drive with the old HDD.

Edit:
Ow and another thing. Why do they make something so simple as swapping out a HDD so overly complicated. Surely that should be something they allow you to do but god with the iMac lineup having to take out the whole screen just to get to the HDD is crazy. I would never be able to get the dust off that screen after taking it apart and every time I noticed a spec after that point it would bug the hell out of me XD. A simple bay on the side or bottom like the Ram door would be simple enough.

PardonTheWait · 3 Nov 2012 at 23:43

There's probably a lot more that goes into this than you realise.

You say you could just pop the HDD in an easily reachable bay on the side of an iMac... Well... you couldn't. Sorry. It just wouldn't fit. With the depth of the panel there's no room, the optical drive doesn't have any space around it and they're 9mm units I think? There's really not a lot of spare space in an iMac - or rather there are lots of very small bits of spare space!

If you want the designs to be so sleek, they pretty much have to be that way, and if you want easily replaceable HDDs, the machine just has to be uglier and fatter unfortunately.

There's a knack to getting iMac screens back on without dust, but you're absolutely right it's a big pain.

I've serviced quite a lot of Macs, and the amount of times I've got the screen back on first time with no dust?

One! One time! We've got a special magic roller and everything.

As for MBA RAM... there's just no room, honestly. It is tight as **** in there, the logic board is tiny. There's a keyboard on top of there that's also recessed into the top case, remember. There's just no space. RAM slots are actually quite bulky when you're talking about a machine as tiny as an Air. It's nearly all batteries and once you take into account the wall thickness of the chassis, there's nothing spare.

Also bear in mind that the majority of their customers don't care. We do, but we're great big geeks, most people aren't fussed.

I'm with you btw on wanting upgradeability, I'm sizing up my next computer and I think I will get a Pro and put in an SSD and optibay.

On a 15" rMBP (haven't opened up any 13s yet), the logic board is so small and thin it feels like it's going to snap when you fit it. There's a fan cutout on one side and the logic board goes down to about 7mm x 1mm at one pint. Really flimsy.

Syther101 · 3 Nov 2012 at 23:55

PardonTheWait said:
*SNIP*

Again very good point. I can totally understand the whole Air and rMBP. But I'm sure it would be easy to have a 2.5" slot in there somewhere. I mean iFixit even managed to fit an extra SSD in without taking anything out. But again like said the majority of their market doesn't need these extra's so why would they. It's abit of a shame thou. Tbh I kinda wish they start losing money from these strategies at some point in the future so they start to re-think things a little. Who knows once the plans Jobs pre-designed run out maybe Tim will do things a little differently. Not going to get my hopes up anytime soon thou XD