Apple Laptop Watch: Week 1

Apple is expected to launch their new notebook lineup sometime during the month of August. So lets quickly go over the rumors.

The first one is the multi-touch based notebooks. There are a couple of options – I consider the tablet form factor most likely (8-10″), followed by a touchscreen notebook (13″ MacBook + multi-touch), and finally, a touchscreen MBP (15/17″). A docking feature with the tablet (to an external keyboard, mouse and optional monitor and with USB/Firewire ports) would be an outstanding choice for folks who want a Mac PC at home but don’t want the all-in-one solution that is the iMac. They can still have a Mac, plus they can pick it up and go sit in front of the TV or lay in bed with it and use the internet like they would an iPhone. External storage via USB and firewire could supplement internal flash-based storage, and having the basetation Ethernet and wifi equipped would allow or accessing the external drive and anything else hooked up remotely via the network seamless (e.g. Time Machine, camera/camcorder, etc).

One of the problems with the multi-touch on a traditional laptop however is that if you put your fingers all over the screen, it smudges and doesn’t look good. With the iPhone, you can just rub the screen on your shirt or wipe it with a thumb and the different angled smudges just become one giant one (which I find less distracting), neither of which you can do with any screen bigger than 4.5″. This is a huge aesthetic problem, and Apple is known for aesthetically pleasing designs, so I have a hard time thinking multi-touch devices would have this problem, so it would require that Apple would need a good way to solve it…

Next is the new enclosures, with the MacBook Pro getting an overhaul and the MacBook getting an aluminum shell instead of plastic, both falling in line looks-wise with the MacBook Air. Granted they wont be nearly as thin, I do expect them to get about 10% thinner – each about 0.9″ from the current 1″ thickness, and compared to the .76″ thick MBAir. I would expect most of that reduction be made up in the lid thickness due to a move to LED-based screens.

There are also rumors of a price cut, which is definitely possible. A ~10% price might seem like a lot – $999 MB, $1599 MBAir and $1799 MBP – but dropping the MacBook to pre-intel switchover prices probably wont increase market penetration that much above the 30% year-over-year increase they see already. But there are lots of issues with Apple scaling up their computer hardware sales – most notably technical support and the Genius Bars. So it might be in Apple’s interest to keep their prices above the market average to keep the rif-raf out.

Its my not so humble opinion that the people who are looking for the $300 or $400 computer are looking for a deal, and free tech support via a Genius Bar is likely to be used far more that it would otherwise. My prime example is the people who aren’t tech savvy and don’t want to spend much on a computer that call Dell for help with their router they bought from Best Buy. What does Dell have to do with the router? Nothing, except for the person bought it to use with their new Dell. And I’ve heard that the techs answer the questions instead of hanging up. I would expect Apple to politely tell the individual that they need to go call the Nerd Crew or whoever does in-home tech support.

Anyways, I’d like to think that the update would come in early August, but its possible that its announced as early this week for shipping in 2-3 weeks.

The next item is the MacBook Air – and the switch to the Penryn SFF platform. I’m inclined to think that we’ll see the 1.6GHz model dropped and just have the 1.8GHz model with 2GB of RAM and 64GB SSDs as a $399 upgrade over an 80GB HDD and possibly a 128GB SSD upgrade for $699, but with the SSDs offering more performance over the HDD-based model (120MB/s and 80MB/s r/w speeds over the 40/40 r/w speeds). Battery life would probably increase about 20% or so over the current model (which varies widely depending on workload), up to at least 3 hours. Appearance would otherwise remain unchanged, possibly a bit thinner an still one USB port and no Ethernet, though the though of a low profile “proprietary” ethernet jack comes to mind as a possibility (proprietary in the sense that Apple is the only one that uses it, but its not locked down and we see other manufacturers pick it up and run with it for both cables and ports on their hardware).

The MB Pro would see the new enclosure and a CPU upgrade, plus possible multi-touch, save the items I mentioned above about smudges. The mobile quad-core part for a possible 17″ MBP launches on August 17th according to Fudzilla, so its possible that we may not see an announcement until then (with immediate shipping on all parts except for the quad core 17″ MBP which would be a few weeks).

Finally, there were rumors today that the new laptops wont be launched until the end of September, which I tend to doubt because the back to school shopping time during August would meant that Apple would miss a big sales opportunity. Its why I expect the announcement to be fairly soon, with ship dates around August 15th.