the Technology Affinity blog

Right, now after the rumor press has gone mad and there has been a lot of spoiling the wait for the announcement I share my take on things.

First off, let’s take another look at the picture that was used on the invitation:

What if this was it?
What if just this element was the notebook and there was now bottom part behind it that it sits on?

My dreams would certainly come true if this was the long sought after MacTablet. But again, I might be just dreaming and misinterpreting my hunch.

In any case, looking at the the recent technology development, I think it is very certain certain that we will see:

• Widely adopted NVIDIA graphics chipsets in all lines, but my hope is that only graphics related chips will be used. When ASUS started to take NVIDIA chipsets for other functionality things went downhill, but let’s call those teething problems for the later models of motherboards with NVIDIA chipsets seemed to be well embraced by the power-user community, i.e. power-hungry gamers etc.
• BlueRay support. Apple pretty much have to include this right now, as now the format war is over and there is no point waiting any longer. Mac users are already a little frustrated that Apple managed to bet on the wrong horse, that being HD-DVD, when they introduced the MacBook Pros for the first time.

Additional features that are possible but not certain to me are:

• WiMax and/or 3G support in the MacBook Pro line at least. If the images on the web of the aluminium chassis are real, then the little opening on the left hand side that people have been trying to figure out, could be a SIM swapping tray/slot. UPDATE: Turns out the mystery port is the new location of the battery charge indicator. A simple but smart move.
• OLED dispays for the MacBook Pro line. Changing the displays to glossy screens helped the readibility of the LCD screens a lot, but OLED would be a real winner. However I realise that the costs might still be too high, even for the MBP line.

UPDATE: Ok, so my dream did not come true, again. Also I was wrong about the BlueRay inclusion. Licensing too complex? Really, Apple? Frankly I am disappointed about the lack of BlueRay support in the new notebooks. As far as the display change is concerned I was half-right, LED is better than LCD, and at some point we will be able to see OLEDs without glossy screens for sure.

However, adding proper graphics chips is are huge relief, replacing LCD with LED displays is great, adding backlighting for the keyboard of the top-end MacBook is filling a void, and I really like the new design.

I am impressed by the new manufacturing process, even though I can’t help but wonder why noone has thought of this process before, after all carving smaller functional pieces out of bigger slabs of metal/stone or chunks of wood is a rather ancient technique, and the precision tools (drills, lasers, UV light, etc.) required for working with bricks of aluminium have been available for a while.

So my consideration is now around, selling my black 2.4GHz MacBook, and acquiring the successor model.

Filed under: APPLE, HARDWARE