Summer 2012 Macbook Pro??

[mac_shinobi]

Not going to happen. Optical drives will be removed from all Mac's eventually. The Mac mini and MacBook Air were just the start.

Aside from the external optical drive apple offer, is there a cheaper way of getting an external optical drive connected to the mac mini that would work ?

[morganw]

Any external USB DVD drive should do. You can probably get one for about £12. I did try the remote CD drive thing as well that lets you share the optical drive from another system, it did work but was pretty slow over wireless.

[alttab]

to be honest, i think i'd skip the 13.3 inch macbook pro anyway in favour of an ivy bridge update to the 13.3 inch macbook air.

having an optical drive or a firewire port isn't really a reason to opt for a device these days anyway. the only reason i can see for going for
the macbook pro 13.3 inch is if it was considerably cheaper than the air even with the supposed ivy bridge specs.

basically, once they figured out they could add a second usb port AND sd card slot to the mba and updated with the i5/i7 chips the macbook air
became the pound-for-pound king of notebooks. I'd consider a 15inch macbook pro IF it came in considerably lighter than the current model but it remains to be seen whether it's clearly distinguishable from the mba with much more horsepower, or whether it'll be something designed to steal the thunder from the Samsung series 9 15inch models with a design refresh. the current macbook pro does need a design refresh to make it look as svelte as the larger series 9 model.

aswell, it's going to be a case of apple being careful not to eat up any other of it's existing product lines with any new designs it comes up with.

[Arthur]

Aside from the external optical drive Apple offer, is there a cheaper way of getting an external optical drive connected to the mac mini that would work?

As morganw said, any USB drive will work. If you need one that can be powered via a single USB port, the Samsung SE-208AB is a good choice. I bought a Pioneer DVR-XD10 for my Mac mini, since I hate glossy plastic.

[mac_shinobi]

As morganw said, any USB drive will work. If you need one that can be powered via a single USB port, the Samsung SE-208AB is a good choice. I bought a Pioneer DVR-XD10 for my Mac mini, since I hate glossy plastic.

How much for the pioneer one and where from?

[ZeroHour]

I bought one of these for my macbook pro: Samsung SE-506AB/TSBD External BluRay-RW / DVD-RW Drive - Black (Retail) [SE-506AB/TSBD] not tried burning/reading yet but it does show up.

[mac_shinobi]

I bought one of these for my macbook pro: Samsung SE-506AB/TSBD External BluRay-RW / DVD-RW Drive - Black (Retail) [SE-506AB/TSBD] not tried burning/reading yet but it does show up.

I don't have £90 unless you have one of these for free :P which I doubt

[Arthur]

eBuyer and Scan both sell the Pioneer DVD drive.

[Brucy]

With the announcements yesterday does anyone know roughly how long it will take for the retailers to discount the current (old?) line, if at all?

Am interested in a pro/air and if there's a bargain to be had (in apple terms at least!) so much the better.

[Arthur]

Am interested in a pro/air and if there's a bargain to be had (in Apple terms at least!) so much the better.

Personally I don't think the discounts will be large enough to warrant going with an older model. Spending the next 3-4 years without USB 3.0 ports would drive me crazy.

[mac_shinobi]

Personally I don't think the discounts will be large enough to warrant going with an older model. Spending the next 3-4 years without USB 3.0 ports would drive me crazy.

Probably not going to happen but I wish they would make the iPhones use Thunderbolt and still compatible with USB so i could transfer all my stuff in seconds instead of waiting 30 mins for all the data to transfer etc. Not sure if charging would work on thunderbolt though ?

[Arthur]

Probably not going to happen

You are right. It probably won't.

I imagine in a few years time 802.11ac or 802.11ad (7Gbps @ 60GHz) will completely remove the need for cables to transfer files to and from your smartphone. Everything will be done wirelessly (even charging).

[localzuk]

The ability to not run at 1,000,000 kelvin?

Yeah, that would be a major boon if they did it. My 2008 MBP was capable of melting through legs.

[mac_shinobi]

You are right. It probably won't.

1. I know NAND Memory like phones have is different to an SSD but they have the 1.8" SSD for the mac book air ( so possibly using SSD Like memory with a thunderbolt controller to deal with the memory ) thus freeing up the iPhones actual CPU for other tasks ??

Also looking at the graph it shows that the iPhone 4 had slightly faster memory than the 4S ( iPhone 4 got around 22 vs the 4S which was getting about 18 ) ??

Also if the iPhone or even the iPad had thunderbolt and you had a thunderbolt NAS ( Pegasus ) or something like that you could transfer music / movies etc to your mobile device a lot quicker, even if you had to transcode it to MP4 or the likes, movies I normally have end up around at least 1Gb if not more and takes a while to transfer via USB 2.0 ( 3.0 is not an option as I only have a 2011 mac mini which has USB 2.0 not 3.0 )

[FN-GM]

Just noticed they have got rid of the 17" ones