New ultra-portable MacBook rumours - your views?

RE: Thread title

I would never consider the ultra-portable. Full stop.

Way too small; 13" feels small enough, nevermind 10 or 12"
No optical drive (if it's true). May make re-formatting a problem for some?
Expensive! Paying MBP prices for something smaller than a MacBook. Crazy.

I did read an article saying that they are limited to the size of the current casing (slimness) because the largest port in the case is the RJ45 connector, and thus need to find a way to shrink it before it can become slimmer. Perhaps they've ommited it and gone totally e-SATA + WiMax? Who knows, that'd be interesting!
 
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Well I am holding out for an ultra-portable (as is my boss) just because we need portability over power. The desktop work machines (and mine at home - when it works) are powerful enough. I want a small device, wifi, a massive battery life, easy to type on keys (so that rules out blackberrys/palmtops etc...) and that's it. I don't care about anything else.
 
NickK said:
Well optical isn't a problem looking at it:
a) iTunes is Apple's preferred way of delivering music.. including films..
b) USB sticks are large enough to take over from CD/DVD.
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The only problem with that is in this case, the solid state drives are massively expensive so you're going to be pushed for disk space anyway. Storing films locally is just going to gobble it up.

If they start releasing films on USB sticks or flash memory cards then I'm all in for that. That would be brilliant in fact.
 
Few more rumours out:

MacRumors has heard reliable confirmation about some features in upcoming Apple notebook releases due at Macworld San Francisco 2008.

A Mac sub-notebook is indeed expected to be coming at the Macworld and, as rumored, will not coming with an internal optical drive. This omission is presumably due to Apple's ongoing efforts to reduce the size of their laptops. Instead, Apple is said to be offering an external optical drive with the sub-notebook. This detachable external drive would allow customers to read/write from CDs or DVDs as usual, but would allow users to leave this extra bulk at home when on the road.

Apple is also said to be introducing more than one notebook revision at Macworld. What combination of Sub-Notebook, MacBook or MacBook Pro remains unknown, but we've heard that at least one of these new notebooks will incorporate a multi-touch trackpad. The possibility of a multi-touch trackpad has been suggested by both rumors and published patent applications but has not previously been explicitly confirmed.

Macworld Expo kicks off on January 15th, 2008 with Steve Jobs' keynote address.
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The no-optical drive should mean a true ultra-portable afterall :)
 
Basically I'll be buying this assuming they don't completely screw up the spec. I'd love to swap my 12" dell ultraportable for a mac. I'm hoping a 12.1" widescreen for the display and weight around 1KG. That would suit me perfectly...

spec wise, it doesn't matter much, it's an ultraportable so performance isn't the point. something along x61 line would be great and should be acheivable (dual core 2Ghz and 2GB RAM maybe...)

I suspect it'll be very expensive though, like £1500 or more, justified mainly by flash memory and a lot of miniaturization. Its a lot of money yes but compares broadly with windows machines in the same bracket, an x61 with 2Ghz and 2GB RAM - which weighs around 1.2KG costs £1300 + vat roughly and it's that sort of machine (and sony's ultraportables) that it has to compete with. It's a lot of money and most people will think it a rip off but it's what I need and I'll gladly pay that for it...
 
I hope they don't bother with an optical drive - the MBP is bad enough for eating up discs on the move, I fear what an 'ultra-portable' device would do.

It'll no doubt be beautiful, I think the first thing I would do (if I got one) would be to install Tiger onto it though.
 
Hmm...

Real or fake?

20080103-xhuyb16213t8fn9d5a3u78jhen.jpg


Source.

Has a dodgy trackpad, but could be to do with Apple signing a multi touch trackpad patent a while ago.
 
Justin said:
Real or fake?

20080103-xhuyb16213t8fn9d5a3u78jhen.jpg


Source.

Has a dodgy trackpad, but could be to do with Apple signing a multi touch trackpad patent a while ago.
Click to expand...

Saw this on mac rumor forums, I think its fake, as pointed out that trackpad is ridiculously wide, would impair typing? ....guess we'll know in two weeks...ooh cant wait to see whats in store :)
 
Reading an article on this topic in this weeks MicroMart magazine, the selling price is rumoured to be around £750 (not sure if that's with or without VAT)
 
Yeah I don't get that wide pad. I have no idea why you'd need a pad that wide. Multi-touch could easily work on the standard sized touchpad.

But the overall laptop size would be great :)
 
Don't forget..

They could easily implement a proximity sensor that disables the trackpad whilst typing (like the iPhone; switches off the display when held near the ear) :)

I can't see it having flash memory, not over 60GB anyway.. those chips are EXPENSIVE!

I'm thinking a flash-assisted drive, that cache's the data to improve speed.
 
gazfocus said:
Reading an article on this topic in this weeks MicroMart magazine, the selling price is rumoured to be around £750 (not sure if that's with or without VAT)
Click to expand...

I'd say thats rubbish tbh, it's very low for a laptop in that class and although that might help it get massive market share it doesn't fit with what apple usually do (high price to ensure exclusivity - iphone a prime example). Then again it could mean its a slightly different product to what people expect...

In theory apple could cut down OSX a bit to improve performance, make sure it'll still run all the usual apps (ilife, iwork etc) but be pretty much useless for photoshop etc and sell it as something like a 'companion' device to work with a desktop mac. technologies like back to your mac and all that would make that quite plausible. Dunno how useful that would be to people in the end (it'd be perfect for me, I need safari and ssh to work on the move, ilife etc is nice for messing about but all I'd miss in terms of pro apps is dreamweaver...BUT photographers would be upset if it was useless for photoshop)

Either way, I can't see a rumored price in £s going around, any rumors in dollars would make sense. That said $1500 is a reasonable price for it, at exchange rates that is £750 BUT at apple exchange rates it'll cost at least £1000
 
I was listening to the MacBreak Weekly podcast (24/12/2007) and they did raise a good point..

"Can you see Apple inventing this product, creating a new sub-notebook product line without severely impacting the iPod Touch/iPhone & MacBook lines?"

Afterall, they've never had more than 2 lines; pro and normal.. and they already have 2 notebook products in that class, so will it fit in with their mantra to release this device?

In other words.. "is this all just rumor, and are they really going to create it?"

I'd like to see a tablet-companion for the notebooks, sort of like a OS X-running-"booster" pack to use with the notebooks.
 
MrMoonX said:
I cant see the point i mean the macbook is pretty portable and is certainly the most portable laptop I have owned
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given the screen size it actually weighs a lot, before i got my mac I had a sony vaio SZ, which has a very similar spec and a 13.3" screen, it was 1.7KG, whereas the macbook is 2.1KG or something like that I believe.

My work dell laptop is a 12.1" widescreen and weighs 1.2KG, the macbook's nice but it isn't a replacement for that unfortunately...
 
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