New MacBooks Pros will look very similar to the current MacBook Air line, the tech media has been reporting. The new laptops will be super thin and light according to a report in tech blog Gizmodo . “Apple is revamping their MacBook Pro line in 2012 in a radical way—not merely evolutionary,” the website stated, with further details about the expected features of the new thin and light pro units in Apple’s laptop stable.
According to Gizmodo, the new MacBook Pros will be much less like the current generation and much more like the MacBook Air, the progenitor of the Ultrabook category, which was called the future of computing by the late Apple founder Steve Jobs.
Just like the Air, the new Pros are expected to drop many legacy technologies. This means that they will likely ditch optical (DVD) drives as well as Hard Drives, which will be replaced by speedy but more expensive SSDs. The new units will most likely also ship without ethernet network ports, just like the Air, and will rely on a combination of wi-fi and, possibly, 3G or 4G cellular connectivity if the new iPad is any indication.
Here is what Gizmodo is guessing will be in the new MacBook Pros:
“Faster Guts” – The new pros will “use Ivy Bridge, the new Intel 22-nanometer architecture with 3D transistors that will provide quite a speed boost over the current MacBooks.”
“No Hard Drives” – HDDs are “antiquated technology with a negative impact on battery life. Apple loves SSD and Apple users love SSD. They may not be the cheapest, but it’s the fastest, safest and most power efficient storage technology for mobile devices.”
“No Legacy Stuff” – The new Pros wil “get rid of…optical drives, and no more Ethernet port and FireWire. These machines will have nothing but a bunch of Thunderbolt and USB ports, plus the SD memory card reader, just like the MacBook Air.”
“Retina-ishDisplay” – While the rumor is that the new MacBook Air will get a full on retina display , Gizmodo claims that the Pro will not get the complete retina treatment but that the new displays will be “close enough.”
Perhaps Apple will just increase the resolution to 180 or 200ppi. Given the distance from your eyes to the screen, 200ppi will be enough to achieve close to the effect of a “retina” display in the iPhone, the point in which you can’t see pixels. And still, it will be a lot of extra pixels.
The most exciting features, discounting the better battery life and killer graphics, will be the “redesigned enclosure” and a “full surface trackpad.”
The new enclosure will be “the biggest selling point of these new MacBook Pros” Gizmodo reports.
These things will have a super-slim wedge profile. Perhaps even more so than the Macbook Air, given that they will have a largest surface to spread the components. They will also be really light compared to the current machines, all thanks to the saving achieved by getting rid of so much legacy crap. Although maybe they will be less aggressive on the weight shaving and increase the space used by the battery.
In my mind though, the best part would have to be the rumored “full surface trackpad.”
This is something that has been rumored before, but now I believe it may happen: the entire palmrest of the new MacBook 2012 will be a multitouch trackpad. It’s obvious that, technologically, Apple can accomplish this. They have patents that cover detection of palm touch vs finger touch vs accidental touch. Even a Wacom Bamboo tablet can distinguish between my fingers and my palm.
The next Mac OS X will only get deeper into multitouch, just like Microsoft is doing with Metro and Windows 8. A full surface trackpad—not a touchscreen—will be the key in this transition for laptops and the desktop (for an idea of how this could work you only need to see the video next to these lines).