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Entirely Speculative Headline of the Day

New MacBook Pros: Solid-State Drives, No Optical Drive, Next April [Rumor]

by James Plafke | 12:55 pm, November 29th, 2010

If Three Guys and a Podcast‘s report holds true, the next iteration of the MacBook Pro will release in April 2011, featuring solid-state drives, and will dispense with optical drives, like the recent version of the MacBook Air. It is also speculated that the new MacBooks may feature Intel’s Light Peak optical cabling, which is supposed to be a universal bus to replace various buses, such as SATA, USB, HDMI, PCI Express and FireWire.

With the recent MacBook Air replacing standard storage with an SSD and continuing to be without an optical drive, along with Apple’s ever-growing digital download stores, namely the iTunes Store and Apple’s App Stores, it does seem like these rumors could be true, whether or not they’d be desired by the majority of the public.

Apple might be taking a gamble on removing the optical drive from their laptops, as many people still own CDs and DVDs, while the more hardcore computer user probably has a decent amount of disc-based software on a shelf somewhere and would be fairly unhappy if it became obsolete.

(Three Guys and a Podcast via The Unofficial Apple Weblog via DVICE)

  • Capri

    Well I’m sticking with my Macbook, but rumors are just that, rumors.

  • Lasha Krikheli

    Somehow, I really doubt Apple will dump the optical drive just yet. Discs are still too efficient to be replaced by something that’s still not as common as it should be (flash drives!?).

    The SSD part is a given. Apple is already offering SSD options when configuring existing MacBook Pros.

  • Anonymous Coward

    I would love it if apple ditched the optical drive.  Yes, I might have a lot of media that would become “unusuable” (if I didn’t have an external drive), but any disk that I do actually use has an ISO backup on my hard drive.  Getting rid of it would save weight, allow for a larger battery, or better graphics card, or any number of features that I might actually use.  I haven’t touched the drive on my macbook in so long I think dust might be gathering.  I will admit that some people use their’s and apple should offer a version with an optical drive, but a lot of people like me don’t use them, they’re just a waste of space that we pay extra for.  Get rid of it, it should have been done in the last refresh!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000839854015 Wilson Wijo Henley

    I think removing the optical drive would be the most stupid shit apple could do. If your mac crashes and you need to reinstall lion, you’ll have to download it and install it..what the hell..your mac just died and you must download a 6gig OS ? And am I the only one to watch DVDs? Am I the only one that still loves to buy a physical game ? What’s the trip to want always online online and download download?

    SSD decision too is almost stupid. It will cost 600$ for something that I don’t want, don’t need and that is barely useless. I don’t want a more than more thiner macbook pro..I want to be able to stock files without having to buy an external HD..and install a game without having to download it 2 weeks before. But well..there’s is A LOT of stupid shit from Apple even if their macs and ipods are the best machines on the market.

  • Bkt5789

    I disagree Wilson. I’d LOVE to have a laptop without an optical drive. I barely ever use a disk, and external optical drives are kinda cheap, so if they can save weight, and have a better design, and use the extra space from the lack of an optical drive for something better then I’d be a very happy camper.

    I’m also very onboard SSDs because they are significantly faster than your standard kinda lame regular hdds. There is also less moving parts, less noise… Its a wonderful technological advancement. Also, they’re getting cheaper and cheaper, just as hdd tech was.


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