The Apple MacBook Air has been a ground-breaking first-generation product (in my opinion). So, what will Apple do to top it when an update comes later this year? There are some telling indicators already. This is what I expect--and hope for--as a user.
(Credit:
Apple)
First, a disclaimer. I am not an Apple fanatic. The MacBook Air is the first Apple product I have ever used for more than a few days. For well over a decade, I have been wedded to Wintel (Windows-Intel) laptops.
Before I dive into upcoming features, I should also mention that I have been extremely pleased with the Air and have used it almost daily for the last four months. But I would be remiss if I didn't say it is overpriced, as all subnotebooks are.
• Overpriced but still an amazing design Apple made a very studied decision to exclude certain features. This makes the Air an Air. Apple could have included more ports and a little more of this and pinch of that--but then it would have been just another subnotebook.
So, I expect Apple to maintain the uniqueness of the Air for the next refresh.
But improvements are always welcome. And here are a few things that potential buyers can expect to see when a new Air is rolled out.
Apple has begun to give us hints of things to come. A $500 price cut for the solid state drive (SSD) model is one of the biggest indicators so far.
• A bigger, better solid state drive The next Air will offer drives that range in size to more than 100GB. A likely offering would be 128GB from vendors like STEC. (Samsung supplies the current SSD.) Intel and Micron Technology can't be ruled out. Their drives will come in 80GB and 160GB capacities.
These SSDs will also likely use multiple-level cell (MLC) technology, in contrast with current drives that use single-level-cell (SLC). MLC allows higher-capacities but presents power and data reliability challenges, which suppliers claim to have overcome.
• Processors Invariably, all notebooks get upgraded with better processors and graphics. I think the Air's current performance is superb for a subnotebook. I have owned many subnotebooks over the years and anemic performance can render them practically unusable as an everyday machine. But I haven't had this problem with the Air (see note at bottom).
Intel's upcoming 45-nanometer "Montevina" (Centrino 2) low-power offerings should make this experience even better. Though an initial Montevina refresh is slated for July 14, low-power versions won't appear until this fall. Intel refers to these as SFF (small form factor) processors. They will come in high-performance, low-voltage, and ultra-low-voltage variants.
SFF Montevina processors will range from 25-watt (2.4GHz) to 17-watt (1.86GHz) to 10-watt (1.2GHz). The current Intel processor used in the Air is rated at 20 watts at 1.8GHz.
Whether Apple chooses one of these or opts for something not currently on the Intel roadmap of course remains to be seen.
• Graphics Graphics will get upgraded. Montevina will come with Intel's GMA X4500 graphics, which Intel has said repeatedly will be three times faster than current X3100 integrated graphics.
• Battery Insufficient battery life is a problem that plagues all subnotebooks. It has often been suggested that Apple include a removable battery (for easy replacement), but that could compromise the ultraslim design. Having said that, I have been pleased with the battery life compared with other notebooks I have owned.
Hazarding a guess at other features such as upgraded hard disk drives, better screens, and external extras like a docking station is too speculative (and the latter would also compromise the design), so I'll refrain from making any predictions.
But the Air shouldn't change too much. With a simple performance upgrade, it would be an even more remarkable computer.
(Note: No, the Air is not as fast as a 14-inch Hewlett-Packard 6910P, for example, but no PC maker can squeeze that kind of performance into a Air-like form factor.)
Notice any similarities between the Hewlett-Packard Voodoo Envy and its thin rivals, the Apple MacBook Air or ThinkPad X300? Yes, they're all very thin. But look inside and you'll see more common features.
To deliver reasonable processing power at low power the Voodoo Envy opted for the same special low-power processors used in the Air: the Intel SP7700 and SP7500.
You won't find these processors listed on Intel's processor pricing page. They were designed originally for the MacBook Air and use a special 22mm x 22mm package and have a thermal envelope of only 20 watts at 1.8GHz and 1.6GHz. Typically, Intel processors running at those speeds have a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 35 watts.
Correction: The ThinkPad X300 uses an Intel SL7100 not an SP processor. It comes in the same small package as the SP processors but runs at a lower clock speed--1.2GHz--and uses less power: 12 watts versus the SP's 20 watts.
HP Voodoo Envy
(Credit: Voodoo)Interestingly, these processors are older 65-nanometer "Merom" processors--not the newest 45-nanometer Penryn generation. But there are updates on the way, according to Intel. "You can expect to see later this year a 45nm small form factor Montevina," an Intel representative said.
"Montevina" Centrino 2 processors coming out later this year will include low-power models such as the SL9400 and SU9400, running at 1.86GHz and 1.4GHz with a TDP of 17W and 10W respectively. One processor, the SU3300, will have a TDP of 5.5W.
New versions of the SP "small form factor" processors are also expected later this year. Future versions of the Envy and Air will likely use these Montevina processors.
This isn't where the silicon similarities end. The Envy, like the Air and X300, uses Intel X3100 integrated graphics and offers either a 64GB solid state drive or 80GB hard disk drive (4200RPM), just like the Air.
Finally, though not related to silicon, all three notebooks have a similar form factor: 13.3 inches. All in all, making for strikingly similar designs in many ways.
Future versions of the MacBook Air will pack larger-capacity but lower-cost solid-state drives, emblematic of the next generation of flash storage that will make a quick descent from current stratospheric pricing.
STEC solid-state drive
(Credit: STEC)Today, a consumer pays dearly for a solid-state drive (SSD). For example, for only 64GB of SSD storage on the MacBook Air, a consumer must pay a premium of about $1,000 over the 80GB hard disk drive model.
But the cost per gigabyte of solid-state drive storage will drop as notebook PC makers like Apple switch to solid-state drives with capacities above 100GB based on multilevel cell (MLC) technology. Adoption by notebook PC makers is expected to start in the third quarter, according to industry sources.
Virtually all SSD manufacturers have moved from single-level cell (SLC)--which is used in products like the MacBook Air, the ThinkPad X300 and HP 2510p--to MLC technology.
"Compared to the price you're paying today for a 64GB drive. You'll get a 128GB of storage for less than half the price (of the 64GB drive)," said Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC, a supplier of MLC-based solid-state drives.
STEC offers solid-state drives with capacities up to 256GB in a 1.8-inch form factor, the same physical size as those drives used in ultra-light, ultra-slim notebooks today. These drives are based on MLC technology and offer better performance than hard disk drives.
Wilkison said that his company's drives offer read speeds in excess of 100 megabytes-per-second (MBps) and write speeds better than 65MBps. This compares favorably with standard 2.5-inch hard disk drives. The STEC products page lists enterprise SSDs with read/write performance of 200MBps and 100MBps, respectively.
Intel is set to move into the high-capacity SSD market on the back of its multilevel cell technology and current SSD manufacturers such as Samsung and Toshiba have also moved from single-level cell to multilevel cell.
MLC is a more sophisticated technology than current SLC. Its advantages are not only lower cost but higher capacity. Instead of the relatively small-capacity 64GB SLC-based drives being offered today in notebook PCs, manufacturers are targeting MLC-based drives ranging up to 256GB by the end of this year or early next year.
The disadvantage is more complexity, which can result in lower performance. "Inherently, MLC is slower and inherently (has) less write cycling endurance," Intel has stated in the past.
Avi Cohen, managing partner of Avian Securities, sees it that way too. "You lose some speed and you lose some reliability when you move to MLC," he said. "Errors per cell with MLC is an order of magnitude worse than SLC, which isn't that great to begin with," Cohen said.
But manufacturers like Intel and STEC say they mitigate the reliability problem and boost performance with proprietary controller chips. "We spend 85 percent of our time grappling with this reliability issue" when talking to customers, said Wilkison. "NAND (flash memory) will forever have limitations...It will be subject to a finite number of program and erase (record and delete) cycles," he said.
"There's a lot of background operations happening to manage the media. Moving the data around to make sure you're evenly wearing down the drive. You're not necessarily pounding on one specific spot and then killing a (memory) cell prematurely," Wilkison said. "This is all controller intelligence."
The kind of technology to optimize the longevity of the drive is generally referred to as wear leveling. Error detection and error correction technologies are also used, Wilkison said.
Wilkison said he believes these techniques result in solid-state drives that are just as reliable as hard disk drives. And he expects a surge in adoption of solid-state drives in notebooks. Whereas today there is only one notebook model per company that comes with a solid-state drive, the number of models offered with such drives will increase exponentially in the second half of the year, he said.
"Today it's a very boutiquey option. Volumes are very trivial," according to Wilkison. "It's one thing I do have visibility into" (because STEC is in talks with a number of computer makers). "It's an exponential number of platforms that are moving forward with SSD," he said. "What was one platform (model) per company in the first half of the year is going to be six in the second half of the year."
There will still be a "price delta" between hard disk drives and solid-state drives but that will continue to come down with MLC technology, he said. Reports have cited Intel pricing as approaching $1 per gigabyte.
Solid-state drives have no moving parts. Hard disk drives, in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, solid-state drives avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of hard drives. Therefore, solid-state drives are generally faster and in some respects more reliable.
The MacBook Air, IdeaPad U110, and ThinkPad X300 are the three hottest ultraportables out there. They all sport unique styling outside. And Intel blue inside.
The IdeaPad U110, like other ultraportables, uses an Intel low-voltage processor
(Credit: Lenovo)Styling and design are now so crucial in notebooks that when a model arrives in pink the color change alone is news.
Ditto for the styling imperative for some of the sveltest, lightest, and most impressive of notebooks: the Air, X300, and just-released U110.
Scratch the surface (or lift up the keyboard in this case), however, and you'll find that their unique exteriors house similar Intel core electronics.
Does this have anything to do with nefarious strong-arm tactics on Intel's part? Or just that AMD and Nvidia don't have competitive offerings in this space? The evidence points pretty convincingly to the latter.
Graphics--an increasingly important differentiator in any computer--is the same across all three notebooks: Intel X3100 integrated graphics. No Nvidia option here. No AMD-ATI. Intel across the board. The reason for this is strictly practical. For heat and power consumption purposes, these ultrasmall designs cannot accommodate an extra graphics processor. (It should be noted also that Nvidia and AMD-ATI integrated graphics are typically not used in ultra-low-power designs.)
The processors are all Intel too with some differences. Again, a practical consideration since AMD doesn't offer ultra-low-power x86 processors with relatively high performance.
The newest 11-inch U110 IdeaPad has gone with the Intel Core 2 Duo L7500 processor. It runs at 1.60GHz and integrates 4MB of cache. The low-voltage L7500 has a thermal envelope (referred to as Thermal Design Power or TDP) of only 17 watts. Much lower than the typical 35-watt Intel mobile processor. AMD mobile processors have similar above-30-watt thermal envelopes.
The 13.3-inch ThinkPad X300 uses the Core 2 Duo SL7100 LV chip running at 1.2GHz. This is a 60 percent package "shrink" of Intel's original Core 2 Duo design and draws a mere 12 watts. Why the shrink? These variants consume less power compared to larger counterparts, giving laptops longer battery life.
The Mermon package shrink featured in the X300 debuted with great fanfare in the MacBook Air. The Air uses 1.6- and 1.8-GHz versions of this Intel chip with a 20-watt TDP.
Similarities between ultraportables extend beyond Intel to storage options too. The Air, X300, and U110 all offer either 4200RPM hard disk drive options or 64GB solid state drives. The 4200RPM drives in the U110 and Air can be real performance bottlenecks if a user pushes the usage envelope. The X300 only comes with a solid state drive.
The solid state drives, while expensive, have proved to be able performers, even bettering high-end hard disk drives in some benchmarks.
During a keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, an Intel executive brandished a Netbook that looked Air-thin. Will inexpensive Linux Netbooks be a poor man's MacBook Air?
Ultrathin Intel Atom-based Netbook shown at IDF.
(Credit: Intel)Most of the photos to date of upcoming Netbooks are ho-hum designs, engineered to be inexpensive yet practical for users such as young schoolchildren. But some upcoming designs look intriguing--and extremely thin. (See close-up photo here--PC Watch.)
"This Netbook is running Linux...As you see, this doesn't mean an ugly design. It's a really nice-looking, stylish design," said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobility Group, when waving a very-thin-looking Netbook (photo) at the audience during his keynote at IDF.
Consider the typical specifications for a Netbook (best exemplified by the tiny Eee PC) and it's not a stretch to design an ultraportable, ultrathin Netbook:
Power-sipping Atom processor: This chip will draw as little as 0.65 watt, much less than the Air's Core 2 Duo chip which has a TDP (Thermal Design Power, or thermal envelope) of 20 watts. This means less heat dissipation.
Solid-state drive: Netbooks (Eee PC, Intel Classmate) will typically use SSDs, not hard-disk drives--another power- and space-saving feature. (There will be exceptions such as the 2go, which packs a hard drive.)
No optical drive:: Typically, Netbooks won't come with optical drives--meaning power and cost savings.
Smaller display: Netbooks will have small, less-power-hungry displays, ranging from seven to nine inches.
Though not as well-endowed as full-fledged notebooks like the MacBook Air, Netbooks won't set you back $3,000 either. It's likely that the price will be much closer to $300--but that's a big unknown at this point.
Intel sees two distinct market opportunities for the Netbook. In the developing world, Netbooks will attract first-time buyers. In more mature markets, they will become supplemental PCs.
Though the MacBook Air and ThinkPad X300 might be prettier and thinner, Toshiba's outdone them both in a crucial area.
Japan's Toshiba announced Monday that it had bumped the specs of its Dynabook SS RX to include a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) as an option. That's twice the size of the Air and the X300, both of which come with a 64GB SSD. (Note: It's an option for the MacBook and standard on the ThinkPad.) So far, it appears it will be available only in Japan starting next month.
Toshiba upped the Dynabook SS RX's capacity with a 128GB SSD.
(Credit: Toshiba)The 128GB SSD is an option, and the standard is an 80GB hard drive. Other specs include a 1.2-gigahertz Core 2 Duo U7600 processor and 2GB of memory. With the hard drive, Toshiba promises battery life of just over 6 hours, and with the flash drive, 12.5 hours.
Longer battery life is one of the principal benefits of using solid-state drives in PCs, as well as faster boot times, and because they lack the moving parts of traditional mechanical drives, less chance of losing data if you drop or bump the notebook. Also, they're lighter, thereby enabling notebook makers to slim their PC design down.
There's still a downside to SSDs. Price is the biggest one by far (an SSD option can double the price of a laptop with a traditional hard drive), but it also has the potential to wear out quicker than conventional drives.
Despite that, all the top hard drive makers are getting into the flash business. Samsung's vice president of memory marketing, Jim Elliot, said the company (currently ranked 4th in total hard drives shipped worldwide) expects the market share of solid-state memory to increase from 1 percent used in PCs today to 27 percent over the next three years.
China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou said he will "keep all options open" on the introduction of the iPhone in China, Paul Midler reports.
In January, a China Mobile executive announced that talks had broken off over Apple's desire for control. Now, Wang says talks have not "officially" begun.
China Mobile is the largest mobile provider in China, a market that is projected to reach $2.8 billion by 2010, and urban China is by no means a no-iPhone zone. Apple develops more advanced locking techniques at roughly the same rate unlocking techniques make their debut in electronics markets worldwide.
Street prices for imported and unlocked iPhones vary with the news about any official sales in China. After January's news of the breakdown in China Mobile talks, prices spiked. But I suspect the gray market will not die even if China Mobile and Apple make a deal.
Apple products, even though they are made in China (my MacBook was shipped direct from Suzhou, near Shanghai), tend to be more expensive here. I overheard a Chinese couple in the Bainaohui electronics market at Chaoyangmen yesterday getting ready to buy a MacBook Air for about $2,700 (compared with about $1,800 in the United States). In a less extreme example a few weeks ago, the Beijing price at an authorized dealer for my friend's new MacBook was about $300 higher than in the United States or even Hong Kong.
No doubt, if the higher prices continue to dominate, people will keep asking friends to pick up iPhones in the United States or elsewhere to be unlocked here.
The Reuters article that Midler links to reminds us that iPhone talks are under way with NTT DoCoMo in Japan. Maybe the trip for gray market phones won't be as far...
Apple refreshed its MacBook and MacBook Pro product lines last week. I was hoping for more significant improvements, but the changes were minimal.
Apple's MacBook Pro
(Credit: Courtesy of Apple)The updated models come with new Intel processors, larger hard disks, more main memory, and more graphics memory.
The new Penryn processor was expected to improve battery life, but I noticed something when I compared the specs for the old MacBook Pro to those of the new model. The new machine's stated battery life has dropped from six hours to just five. However, Apple now refers to five hours of "wireless productivity," whereas the old machine didn't use that qualifier. This suggests to me that Apple is now rating battery life with wireless networking enabled, and may have been doing the measurements with Wi-Fi off on the older machines. If that's what happened, Apple should explain it; without the explanation, the apparent drop in battery life is disappointing.
Well, these machines are just a midlife kicker. The real advance will show up later this year when Apple ships machines based on Intel's forthcoming Montevina platform, which includes the same Penryn processors but introduces a new family of chipsets code-named Cantiga.
Apple will presumably add other new features along with Montevina. I have no idea what Apple is working on, but we can look at other PC notebooks on the market today to see what technology Apple might consider adopting:
- Extreme Edition processors
- Support for more than 4GB of DRAM--Mac OS X "Leopard" is a full 64-bit OS and 4GB isn't really enough any more, especially if you use a virtualization environment such as Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion to run Windows apps within Mac OS X
- Integrated WWAN--I use an Option ExpressCard 3G adapter for the AT&T network, but I'd rather have this function built in to free up the slot
- Blu-ray optical drives--I expected to see this feature last year!
- A secondary solid-state hard disk--I suggested this feature in a blog post last June, and now Sony has it in its Vaio TZ92 notebook
- Intel HD audio
- Nvidia's GeForce 8800M GTS and GTX graphics chips
- Hybrid graphics--the ability to use a discrete graphics chip for high performance or the simpler graphics engine in the chipset for longer battery life; Sony offers this feature too
- A fingerprint reader--Apple's systems are already more secure than most Windows machines, but a fingerprint reader would be a useful complement to existing security measures
- Tablet mode--maybe not on all machines, but it'd sure be nice to see a tablet-capable MacBook
Apple has often been ahead of the competition. Earlier PowerBook and MacBook models were among the first notebooks to introduce super-thin cases, Gigabit Ethernet, motion sensors, LED backlights, DVI video outputs, FireWire, and other advanced features. Perhaps Apple is looking well beyond the features I've listed here, some of which have become almost routine in Windows notebooks.
Of course, even without these improvements, existing MacBook and MacBook Pro machines are still among the sleekest, fastest, and most capable notebook PCs on the market. But no tech company can afford to stand still, not even Apple.
And I need a reason to replace my own MacBook Pro. It's almost a year and a half old, and I'm getting itchy. C'mon, Apple, surprise me!
(Credit:
Apple)
Some conflicting accounts coming out of the Web-o-sphere on Tuesday about Apple's revamped MacBook Pro laptops. At the heart of the controversy are reports that the new 15- and 17-inch Pro models have taken a nosedive on battery life, despite the inclusion of allegedly power-saving Intel Penryn processors.
Both Ars Technica and Gizmodo pointed out that Apple's own numbers on how long the battery should last in a 17-inch MacBook Pro have changed with the new models--going from more than 5 hours to only 4.5 hours.
There are actually a couple of different things going on here, all of which add up to new MacBooks that should last just as long as their predecessors, if not a little longer.
Apple says it's changed the way it reports battery life. It used to report numbers from three stock battery life tests, a so-called "highway" test, designed for maximum battery life, a DVD playback test (similar to what CNET uses), and a wireless productivity test.
Apple's Anuj Nayar tells us that the company used to publish all three scores on its site, but highlighted the highway test. Now, the highway test and DVD playback tests are out, and the wireless productivity test is the new default. So looking at Apple's older numbers is a bit like comparing you-know-what to oranges.
On the other hand, the new Penryn processors and optional LED backlit display (17-inch Pro only) should offer some advantages in battery life.
Battery numbers should always be taken with a fairly hefty grain of salt--your laptop's battery life is highly dependent on how you use it, from applications to screen brightness to USB-powered peripherals. We'll know more when we get our hands on one of these new models and run it through our own testing, so stay tuned.
Apple updated its MacBook and MacBook Pro lineups today with Intel's Penryn processors, while bringing multitouch trackpads to MacBook Pros.
The MacBook Pro is available with Core 2 Duo (Penryn) processors at up to 2.6GHz and up to 6MB of cache memory. Storage options have been revised to include up to a 300GB hard drive. In addition, Apple has added Nvidia's GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor with up to 512MB of video memory. The 17-inch model now gives you the option to upgrade the LCD to an LED-backlit unit for $100. That feature is still standard on the smaller 15-inch model.
The MacBook Pro will also now include the multitouch trackpad, first introduced with the MacBook Air. The trackpad lets users rotate photos and browse Web pages using gestures such as pinch, rotate, and swipe.
A MacBook Pro with a 15-inch display, 2.4GHz processor, 3MB of L2 cache, and a 200GB hard disk lists for $1,999. The 17-inch model, with a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo chip, 6MB of L2 cache, and a 250GB hard drive is priced at $2,799, Apple said.
The MacBook misses out on the multitouch trackpad, but the prices of the three baseline models stay the same while the configurations get CPU and hard-drive bumps. The $1,299 and $1,499 models now come standard with 2GB of RAM. Previously, doubling the standard 1GB of RAM set you back an additional $150. The $1,099 MacBook includes a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo (Penryn) processor, 1GB of memory, and a 120GB hard drive (up from 80GB). The $1,299 model gives you a 2.4GHz chip, 2GB of memory, and a 160GB drive (up from 120GB). The $1,499 black model now comes with a 250GB drive (up from 160GB).
One thing Apple did not announce Tuesday--at least not yet--is an iPhone software developer kit that it had promised for sometime in February.
CNET Reviews' Matthew Elliott contributed to this report.
