Here’s my bet. MacBook Diminutive will be announced at MWSF. (It won’t be named that, it’d be named MacBook nano or MacBook mini or MacBook thin, with a Pro in there perhaps.)
It’ll be small (smaller than the current MacBook, and thinner than an inch), but not awesomely tiny (say, like, 7″ screen). Under no circumstances will it weigh more than 1.5 kg (3.3 archaic pounds) at its minimum bootable configuration (with battery but without any other removable part). (The MacBook is currently the lightest Mac at 2.27 kg or 5 lb.)
It will probably feature a 1.8″ hard drive (such as is used in the iPod classic), a new smaller hard drive form factor or a solid state disk around 64 GB. It won’t feature a built-in optical drive. The optical drive will be delivered either via an external drive (bundled), or with a dockable bottom plate. The bottom plate could also possibly hold a battery and extra ports - the smaller the laptop itself gets, the more valuable the “border space” gets. Larger ports, like DVI, take up a lot of space, and the Ethernet jack is higher than the audio and USB ports.
It may have a new form of FireWire, or a new FireWire plug.
It will come in any of, or a mixture of, aluminum, carbon fiber and black plastic.
It will not be the same product as the “tablet” or “Newton II” or “Mac touch” or what have you. Its trackpad or keyboard may incorporate multi-touch, though. (The current scrolling trackpad already uses two-finger sensing.)
Speculate in the comments.
I doubt they’d make it with a dockable wedge attachment on the bottom, though OS X would tolerate live removal a lot better than Windows — my dad has a Thinkpad X41, and you have to shutdown entirely to dock or undock. This means it’s always docked. LAME.
My bet is that the bottom will be exactly a centimeter thick — that’s how tall ethernet and Mini-DVI ports are (firewire ports are more like 8mm).
It’ll be interesting to see if the HD will be a discrete component — best possible scenario would be a 1.8″ form-factor SATA disk, flash by default. For that to happen they’d have to have some secret contracts with Samsung to manufacture the drives. Compact Flash would be unlikely, too slow.
Most probable is that it has non-upgradable flash soldered onto the motherboard.
By http://blasdelf.livejournal.com/ · 2007.12.29 22:18
A wedge makes it sound like it’s tilted, so just to clarify, in my mind this bottom plate attachment would definitely be flat. There’s nothing to gain except an odd shape by making it wedge-like and they could really use the rest of the space, especially for ventilation for an optical drive.
Apple did apply for a patent on collapsible receptacles, where the blank half of the USB port could fold up, but I fail to see how that could unfold in a way that would save any real space.
Apple will not make anything that’s not hot-pluggable. Having to shut down is, as you say, completely bogus.
Putting a new spin on the FireWire bits in the post, it occurs to me that the bottom plate could be powered entirely by the recently ratified 3200 Mbps FireWire variant, but probably with a custom plug.
By Jesper · 2007.12.29 22:38
I really don’t think they’ll go with an expansion plate for the optical drive — there’d be way too much extra space in it. It’d need to be at least a centimeter thick to accommodate the optical drive, which would only use up a quarter of the volume. Filling much of the remaining space with li-poly battery would make the weight absurd, and still leave large voids of air. Optical drives are largely sealed, ventilation is a non-sequitur.
The attachment couldn’t be standard firewire — that wouldn’t accommodate bidirectional power, and be overkill — the optical drive could just be SATA with no mediation.
Also, Apple has made something not hot-pluggable: the six SATA ports on the Mac Pro are not hot-pluggable. Even if you try to destroy the accompanying device node beforehand, you’ll still get a kernel panic in an hour or so.
I’m hoping the screen will have higher pixel density than the Macbook’s screen — either 1280×800 in around 11 inches, or a higher res packed into the same space.
I’m hoping the keyboard will be a bit like my 12″ Powerbook’s — flush with the sides, using as much available space as possible.
By http://blasdelf.livejournal.com/ · 2007.12.30 04:15
Mac Pro point: Okay, sure, but they wouldn’t make an optical drive on a laptop non-hot-pluggable.
By Jesper · 2007.12.30 12:23