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Speculation has been rampant for months: Apple is going to replace
the MacBook Air - introduced
in January 2008 and last
updated in June 2009 - with a smaller, lighter, more affordable
alternative. This could be the week Apple announces it.
Apple's "Back to the Mac" event, scheduled for Wednesday, October
20, will preview Mac OS X 10.7, which is generally believed to be
code-named lion (based on the image used in Apple's invitation). What
else will Steve Jobs unveil? Time will tell.
The most likely candidate is a new MacBook Air, followed by a new
consumer MacBook. These are Apple's only notebooks not based on Intel's
current "i" series of CPUs, and the i3 CPU is just waiting to be used
at the low end of the MacBook spectrum.
My guess is that Apple is going to introduce an 11.6" MacBook Air
(MBA) using the same aluminum unibody construction it pioneered with
the first MBA, and that it will be smaller, thinner, and lighter
without sacrificing a full-size keyboard. That's all doable with an
11.6" widescreen display.
Looking Ahead
Let's try to look further down the road. What technologies is Apple
likely to embrace in the near future? What changes might we see in the
product line in the year ahead?
Retina Display Macs
One of my thoughts is that we'll begin to see Retina display
technology come to Apple's notebook line. As screen resolution and
pixel density have increased, it has become more and more difficult to
read what's on the display. What if Apple were to move to a very high
density display, on the order of 200 pixels per inch, and have the OS
and existing apps us it at half the resolution?
The current 13.3" MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air use a 1280 x
800 display with a density of 113 pixels per inch (ppi). The 15.4" and
17" MacBook Pro's standard screens are in the same area (110 and 117
respectively), and the high-density displays boost that to 128 and 132
ppi. (For comparison, current iMacs have 102 and 109 ppi displays).
Going to a high-ppi display would be an industry first. Nothing with
a 9" or larger display has a higher density than 150 ppi. Samsung's
Galaxy Tab has a 7" 171 ppi display, but in general the larger the
screen, the lower the pixel density.
That said, 200 ppi isn't at all uncommon on smaller displays, the
it's feasible, although production costs would be high initially and
yields could be low. But we're talking about Apple, which has become a
driving force in the portable computing industry. Apple single-handedly
created display shortages for its competitors due to the popularity of
the iPad, for instance.
I don't know how quickly Apple could get to 200 ppi, but that should
be its goal in the portable range. At typical working distances, this
should provide the same "you can't distinguish the individual pixels"
experience at the iPhone 4 and 4th generation iPod touch. On the
desktop, I suspect that 150 ppi would do the same thing.
There would be a fundamental disconnect between your working
(virtual) resolution - which might be 72 ppi, 96 ppi, or something else
- and the actual screen resolution, which might range from 110 ppi to
200-plus at some point in the future. If you're using 12 point text in
Word or Pages, it would display using your virtual resolution, so there
would be more pixels used to display type, making reading much easier.
Graphics, such as file icons and images viewed in iPhoto or Photoshop,
would take advantage of the full resolution of the display.
Just as we're now seeing iOS apps written to take advantage of the
Retina display, some day we'll see Mac OS apps written to take
advantage of Macs that use different working and display
resolutions.
Apple's QuickDraw technology has had the ability to do this kind of
thing since the late 1980s, and now that it's made its debut on the
iPhone, and it's only a matter of time until we see it on Macs.
Who knows, maybe the new MacBook Air will be the first, giving Apple
a real leg up on its competitors.
Good-bye to Optical Drives
The PowerBook 100 (1991) was
the first Mac without a built-in floppy drive, and the original iMac (1998) was
the first desktop Mac without one. No Mac introduced since then has had
a built-in floppy drive.
The original MacBook Air (2008) was the first Mac without an optical
drive since CD-ROM drives became standard across the board over a
decade ago. Eliminating the built-in optical drive is the logical next
step for Apple in making its MacBook line slimmer, adding room for even
bigger batteries, and reducing production costs by leaving out what has
long been a standard feature.
Just as Mac owners now buy an external floppy drive if they ever
need to access floppy disks, optical drives will soon become external
peripherals for Apple's entire notebook line. Optical drives have
by-and-large been displaced by USB flash drives for moving data, and
the
iTunes Store can replace the DVD (and Blu-ray disc, which Apple has
never embraced) as a source for video content.
If you need to rip a CD, watch a DVD, or burn a disc, you can buy a
$99 external SuperDrive, something MacBook Air owners are already
doing.
Power
It's time for Apple to embrace one of the wireless charging
technologies for its notebooks, its iPods, and its iOS devices. No more
need to plug the device in to charge it - just lay in on its charging
mat. On the Mac side, is should be possible to use wireless power for a
wireless mouse and wireless keyboard. It's a technology that is on the
brink of taking off.
USB 3.0
Apple is overdue, and as a premium brand, it should have been the
first to offer the ten-times-as-fast USB 3.0 in its computers across
the board.
The Next MacBook
My best guess is that the MacBook as we know it is on its last legs.
The next generation MacBook will still us a unibody polycarbonate
design, but it will be based on the new 11.6" MacBook Air. No internal
optical drive. Smaller, lighter, and a bit less expensive. And we'll
see even more MacBooks on college campuses as the new size puts them in
direct competition with netbooks, which will be seen for the
underpowered things with scrunchy keyboard and low resolution displays
that they really are.
$300 to $400 for a 10" netbook or $800 for a real Mac notebook? No
brainer. Only the terminally cheap will continue to buy Windows and
Linux netbooks.
Apple will make a killing selling $99 external SuperDrives, since
most people remain convinced that they actually need them. They may be
right, but in many cases they'll simply gather dust alongside those USB
floppy drives we had to have a decade ago.
The MacBook Pro
I suspect Apple will continue to make a 13.3" MacBook Pro, but that
it will become more similar to the 15.4" and 17" models in terms of
technology. (Until now, the 13" MacBook Pro has shared most of its
design with the 13" MacBook, but if that model disappears, Apple will
want to leverage the "Pro" technology.)
Built-in optical drives will be history by the end of 2011, battery
life will increase by another hour or two, prices will continue to inch
downward, and Apple will continue to own the premium notebook
market.
The Mac mini
Maybe this week or, more likely, early next year, the Mac mini will
be redesigned around Intel's i3 CPU, just as today's iMac already uses
it and the MacBook is expected to embrace it. It will probably retain
the optical drive for another year or more, as it's widely used as a
media center computer.
The iMac
Resolution independence. The optical drive may last another year
here, but its days are numbered. Since the iMac has an all-in-one
design, we might see an optical drive bay where a SuperDrive could be
installed.
The Mac Pro
This is a real cash cow for Apple, and with anywhere from four to 12
cores, it's far beyond what most mere mortals will ever need. Expect
Apple to continue using the same design in the years ahead. Optical
drives will remain a standard feature, USB 3.0 will become standard,
and it will continue to grow ever more powerful.
A Midrange Mac?
As much as many of us would love to see it, I don't think we'll ever
see a desktop Mac that's got expansion slots and drive bays that isn't
a Mac Pro. I love my G4 Power Macs, which have been upgraded time and
again, and I would love to be able to buy an Intel Mac with the same
capabilities for far less than $2,500, but Apple doesn't seem at all
interested in this market.
My options: Buy a Mac mini and limit myself to one internal hard
drive and its built-in graphics but be able to use it with a wide range
of displays or buy an iMac, limit myself to one internal hard drive and
its built-in graphics and be limited to whatever display was built into
it at the factory.
Not the only options I want, but geeks are not a core market for
Apple. My next Mac will be Intel-based, and it will more likely be an
iMac than a Mac mini, as there's no economical way to use my 22" Apple
Cinema Display with its ADC connector on any modern Mac.
But that's down the road. Until the economy recovers, there's no
money, but I'll continue to dream of what my next Mac might be and the
technologies Apple will embrace in the future.
Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986,
sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and
has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.
Links for the Day
Mac of the Day: Performa 630, introduced 1994.07.01. The first desktop Mac with an IDE hard drive could accept a TV or radio tuner.
