I don't think Apple will completely kill of the Pro market. There are far too many audio & graphics professionals who rely on their products and spend a considerable amount of money on them. They are the core Apple users that kept the company alive before the Ipod. Not that loyalty matters much to any company these days, but I could see them limiting their products to maybe one or two Pro level products (and possibly no laptops). This would still keep the high-end graphics & audio producers happy. They probably don't care much about the DJ market...

I had a great conversation with a lead apple product development team member last week in Las Vegas at the NAB show and he assured me that the Mac Book Pros are not going away. They're only getting better. The sell 5x as many MBPs as Airs. They know that the product is used in many industrial markets including design, music, video, architecture & business.

that's why that site is called macrumors. They're just rumors.

New MBP's are set to release this quarter with a slimmer casing, longer battery, higher storage capacity and a ton of other exciting features. They ARE ditching the 17inch. That is strictly based off a steady decline in sales.

THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!!
I love my 17 and will not play on a smaller laptop.

Get your misquotes here! Code:E makes it easy! Get your misquotes!

If Mac stops the Pro line no biggie, got a PC latop that will replace it

Though i suspect Mac will not let this happen - the next Air line will meet the Pro halfway, so it will still be as fast/robust - just not as thick.

For the most part - they are removing the DVD drive - who needs that shit anyway? If that is the only thing holding up the Pro from getting thinner - so be it

If you are gonna miss the DVD drive, then you are still using floppy discs, modems, and typewriters, and are sniffn too much white-out

Actually your response basically covered everything I said. The 17 inch is going away as I quoted from macrumors and the macbook pro is getting more streamlined...so basically becoming a 15inch air.

I am not seeing the streamlining of the 15inch macbook pro as an improvement. Optical drives will be gone...which means no room for a second drive. The implementation of SSD for the OS means way smaller storage space as the prices are still insane for anything over 256gb. They are probably going to lose a port or two (possible FW800) and move to more Thunderbolt dependency. Once again...a waste of money for the consumer as the prices are still insane on any TB products. Lastly...probably a bigger push for integrated graphics because of space and heat issues with the new design.

This is definitely not looking good.

I won't miss the optical drive but I will miss the space that removing it allowed me to put a secondary drive in.

I heard there will be enough space for up to 4TB of SSD (expandable) and a processing technology for an integrated graphics and optical pathway.

Making the transition much quicker and not using as much heat.

Thunderbolt is here to stay. Transferring 1GB per second is leaps and bounds above anything else. At the least this is what the video djs, vjs, graphic designers, artists, etc need

I understand that but I don't see Terabyte SSD pricing coming down anytime soon. You are talking over 1K for just a 600gb drive at this time. The prices have not dropped that significantly over the past couple of years.

Integrated graphics are still not at the level of a dedicated video card. Let's take Video DJing out of the equation. Try using an integrated video card with a video editing program. How about trying to process RAW images? It won't cut it.

Thunderbolt is here to stay but I am not sure how quickly we are going to see it getting implemented. It's still $50 for a simple cable. Also take into account that you don't see any real speed advantages of using it unless you are running SSD raid (which goes back to my comment on SSD pricing).

until they can make TB cost inline with FW and USB i don't see consumers adopting it. i am not going to pay $50 for a cable so that i can transfer a 1gb file in 10 seconds.

the other thing is that thunderbolt drives start at $400 and to get TB speeds you have to use SSD drives in raid 0. let's see...thunderbolt drive with 2 ssd @ 240GB...$850 (cable not included).

and even if you could get SSDs cheap, you can't purchase empty thunderbolt enclosures.

fail

ha. i just saw an elgato thunderbolt external. single ssd @ 120gb for $429.95 (no cable). #gethefuckouttahere

Bestbuy has a 4tb thunderbolt external for like $500...im FINE with that

www.xbitlabs.com

not exactly portable lol

you don't need a 17" to gig, hell you could use a 13" and be fine, now for those of you running syphon and resolume ave, well you'll probably need two laptops.

I hope they ditch the stupid ass OD and have an SSD for the OS and a rotational drive as an extra.
I've been running like this for well over a year and haven't need my OD once.

The late-model MacBook Pros are likely to be viable for the next several years...by that time I would hope that the pricing, size and capacity of SSD's makes the current worry about the "slimming" of newer MBP's a non-issue. Or at least less of an issue. In the meantime, it appears that DJ's using external hard drives may become more common again.

I also find the post-Snow Leopard Apple OS developments uninspiring at best, but I guess that's a whole other thread.

I'm more worried about the slimming of the laptop being bad for heat issues.
You can always run an external for video (god forbid), but a 512 SSD is more than enough for your videos in a club environment.

The heat issues with slimmer-smaller laptops is a concern, but I do multiple formats and even 1tb is a limitation.

yes but is has HDDs in it, not SSDs. it'll be faster than FW, but no where near Thunderbolt speeds. and you can bet their aren't blacks or velociraptors in there.

They're also going to be the larger "desktop" 3.5-inch drives inside, which have far less resistance to vibration/shocks than most 2.5-inch drives designed laptop use.

I absolutely love the 17inch for gigs, the massive screen size is why I bought it, if only for the amount of library you can see. I had a 13" before, far too small. And what about all those apps that love to throw controls all over the screen, photoshop, DAWs, Less than 17" and things start to get a bit cramped.

I was seriously starting to think about redoing my home setup and getting rid of the iMac, just running everything off the mackbook and NAS drives. If they get rid of the 17", what will I use? there's no way in hell I'm getting a PC.

I hope that rumour is bollox

The second hdd in my macbook pro sits the place of the optical drive using an optibay have two 7200rpm 750gb lacie hdds inside , with the new generation MBP if they ditch the fw800 port and the optical drive too then i'm pretty much fu##d :((

I dont know how i misquoted anything there. Maybe you dont understand my meaning.

Its not just a simple cable, read up on the technology. But it still is not worth $50

Thats what hes after, he meant you said something that can be turned into a misquote easily

maybe since the laptop is suppose to be slimmer, going to a 16" screen and dropping the 15" and 17" could be a possibility. that's the new rumor i'm going to start. you heard it here first.

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