I have read a number of possible notebook predictions on the web today about Tuesday’s media event in Cupertino & figured I may as well add my tuppenny/cents worth also. Both Justin and I were discussing over the weekend what we believe will come out of the event tommorrow & I would like put down my predictions in this post. Maybe Justin (good buddy) will put out his prediction in a post also after this, but anyway here I go:
Major revision to Macbook & Macbook Pro: This is obvious I know as the media event is about notebooks, but judging by the number of images that have been posted over the weekend from the Chinese blog macx.cn which were reposted by a number of other blogs including this 9to5 mac article, these images show that the redesign of both Macbook/MB Pro bring them closer in looks to the Macbook Air. It looks according to these images that the MB Pro is gaining a new port on left hand side where all the other ports (USB, Firewire etc) are being moved also for this redesign. This new port is at the same level as the Macbook Air sized trackpad but it is unknown what the function of this port is. I first figured that it might be there to house a HDMI port but it is too big & not the right shape, but read another 9to5 mac article which suggests that it may be there to house a DisplayPort socket which could be correct as the unknown cutout shape on port would match this type of socket. That could also make it related to the patent that Apple filed & which I read about in Engadget via PC Joint relating to an iMac shaped docking station (link) for Apple notebooks. In relation to the redesigned Macbook images that the Firewire port has been dropped completely in favour of USB 2.0 only, I believe that this is to make a clear distinction between the consumer focused Macbook & prosumer/professional focused MB Pro. Firewire (pioneered by Apple) I have found to be an excellent connection & transport port for data (use it for my external HD) so I’m surprised that Apple may be dropping it from the Macbook. Apple will also be using an Nvidia chipset in both sets of notebooks with the Macbook dropping the integrated Intel chipset for the Nvidia MCP chip instead as reported by other various blogs. The DisplayPort which is a competitor to HDMI which also offers content protection will lead to the introduction of Blu-Ray drives for the Pro notebooks which was mentioned by Kevin Rose which would be enabled in the release of OSX 10.5.6 also. Would figure myself that they will only be introduced on the top-end 15″ & 17″ (the displays could be in 16:9 ratio which would slightly increase screen sizes) & as a build to order option online for lower specced MB Pro model.
Upgraded Macbook Air: This notebook will receive upgrades of it’s processor, memory, graphic chipset & storage capacity-no casing redesign (Nothing wrong with that in my book). The graphic chip will be upgraded to the Nvidia MCP integrated one that will appear in the new Macbook which will give it more graphical oomph. The existing specially designed Core2Duo chip provided by Intel will be replaced by a new 45nm low voltage Core2Duo chip with increased clock speeds to cover the two models in this line. I believe that solid state drives could become standard across the line with Intel possibly providing the new drives in an 80gb & 128gb capacity with substantially improved access times & even faster boot times.
iLife 09: It’s been over a year since the introduction of iLife 08 & since iLife is bundled with the sale of all Macs I believe that this event would be a perfect time to introduce the latest version. If the Blu-Ray rumour holds true, the only substantial change I would expect would be an iDVD Blu-Ray authoring facility being added to bring iDVD to parity with Roxio’s Toast which has this feature. There will also be minor changes made to the other iLife components with further integration with MobileMe possible.
The above are the products I believe will be introduced at the event tommorrow.
We should remember that Steve is well known for the “one more thing” surprise, so we might get something extra possibly not quite related to notebooks directly (Touch Tablet = wishful thinking on my part).
However, I’m looking forward to tommorrows event with anticipation which will definitely take my mind away from the expected harsh budget our government is delivering earlier tommorrow also.
