Report: Ultralight MacBook at Macworld
Rumors that Apple (AAPL) was set to release an ultralight notebook computer real soon now have been circulating as far back as Dec. 2006.
By July 2007, MacScoop was quoting “trusted sources” that before the end of the year the company would release “a notebook that is so small and light that it could redefine the standards of ultra-portable computing.”
Now it’s pretty clear that 2007 will come and go without delivering on the rumors.
But in his latest report to clients, Piper Jaffrey’s Gene Munster says he’s 75% certain that an ultralight MacBook “or possibly an entirely new product” will be coming in January at Macworld Expo.
What makes him so sure? The new 64 gigabyte solid-state drive with NAND flash memory that Samsung released last week. “We believe,” he writes, “NAND Flash drive sizes have now reached capacities that Apple would consider large enough to include in a new MacBook model.”
Ryan Block at Engadget couldn’t wait. He dropped one of the new Samsung drives in a MacBook Pro. His report:
This is really how everyone’s laptop experience should be: free from worries about platter scratches or head crashes from bumps or drops; silent, cool drive operation; super fast access to your data. It’s just an early taste of what portable computing will be like in a few years, and it’s amazing. (link)
UPDATE: AppleInsider, which has been tracking development of the ultralight Mac since February, treats the Macworld unveiling as a done deal — and goes on to add some detail to the machine’s putative specs. “The 13-inch portable,” writes Kaper Jade, “will mark the Cupertino-based Mac maker’s re-entry into the sub-notebook market — arriving in a form-factor that’s approximately 50 percent lighter and strikingly slimmer than the company’s current 15-inch professional MacBook Pro offering.” (link)
Leopard is ready to go for this. A Mac laptop will actually have some room left over for user storage.
Consider the following install sizes
1. Leopard — 9GB full install
2. Vista — 45 GB (15GB required free space on drive by MS) full install
It’s a shame that Apple is going for a fairly conservative solution for their ultralight Macbook. There is clearly a market out there for a product that uses IPhone / ITouch type hardware together with some spreadsheet / word processing capability – yet provide instantaneous access, ease of data entry and userfriendliness – yet come with a 12″ or 13″ touchscreen.
It’s a shame that we always get ‘the classic solution’, the moment people think about notebooks or laptops.
“Report”? I think you misspelled “rumor” there.
The only actual report is from an analyst who thinks there might be an ultralight or something completely different next year. I suppose the misrepresentation in the headling had its desired effect, as it convinced me to click on the link, but it has further poisoned my opinion of this blog’s author.
The problem with ThriftyTechie’s theory is that s/he is thrifty; Apple has spent decades crafting its users not to think crap-low-end-best-buy as the primary purchasing criterium. That’s Dell’s M.O. and it’s why Dell is now #2. Apple users/acolytes/wingnuts are willing to pay for the proper hardware for the proper use; one reason my LC-III had a SCSI disk rather than PATA. They were more robust; end of story. Leave the disk failures to the AST Bravos & Co.
As an aside, I don’t use OS X, but an Open Source OS that’s not Linux. OS X is beautiful but I find it too intrusive in operation. Still going the SCSI route though…
Could this be the resurrection of the PowerBook name?
There’s no question that 64 GB would be plenty of storage for an ultraportable device. Even 30 GB would be adequate for a syncable ultraportable used as a secondary computing device…
The problem, as always, is cost.
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
I’ve read about a ’strange touch pad’. i’ve read a cell phone some how into the ultra. what if the touch pad was a iphone looking touch pad. so when you use the open fingers on the pad it would open up pictures just like it does on iphone. that way i would be using les keystroke and les ‘mouse’ funtions. plus get a cell phone system in it.