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Has Apple Hit A “Glass Ceiling” In Notebook Design?

Last week a reader suggested that there is really not that much left for Apple to do in portable computer design. That’s something of an overstatement, but I get where he’s coming from.

A little over a year ago, I thought it peculiar that Apple chose to kick off its MacIntel era with a machine that looked almost exactly like its immediate predecessor - that machine a 28 month old design at the time. However, the pattern repeated with the Intel Mac mini; the 17-inch MacBook Pro; the Intel iMac, and the Mac Pro Tower. The only clean slate MacIntel form factor so far, nearly 13 months on, is the MacBook, which is highly derivative in form factor of the iBook it replaced - a bit thinner and wider with a widescreen display, but really not very different-looking at all, which is even more remarkable when you consider that iBook form factor itself was into its sixth year when it was finally discontinued.

However, I appreciate Apple’s dilemma. After four years ownership and a bit, I still think my 12” iBook represents well nigh perfection in a portable workhorse computer. Its keyboard is mediocre, but aside from that it’s an extraordinarily satisfactory little machine. I even have mixed feelings about the purported superiority of the MacBook’s widescreen display. The extra screen real estate is nice to have of course, but it comes at the cost of a less-handy (and heavier) piece of equipment.

Replacing the 12 inch iBook with the MacBook and discontinuing the 12-inch PowerBook entirely has left a gaping void in Apple’s portable lineup, so they certainly have room for new innovation there, although the erstwhile 12-inch PowerBook is going to be a tough act to improve on form factor wise.

Pretty much the same as the 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks left little apparent room for improvement. The current top-of-the-line 17-inch MacBook Pro is essentially a faster but otherwise modestly upgraded version of my 2003 vintage 17-inch PowerBook. Aside from the faster Intel processor and superior motherboard design (admittedly, those are big “asides”!), the other distinctions are pretty much evolutionary and added on; more powerful video support, larger capacity hard drives, 50 percent greater RAM capacity, an iSight camera, a higher-resolution display (which the last generation 17-inch PowerBooks also had), and so forth. It looks a virtually identical to the PowerBook in casual observation, and has close to the same feature set.

A similar dynamic applies to the 15-inch MacBook Pro, which means that the last completely fresh Apple professional notebook design was in September, 2003. That said, it really is hard to visualize how Apple could improve on the aluminum notebooks’ basic design.

On the other hand, there is always room for improvement in engineering. To my mind, the biggest design improvement with the MacBook compared with the iBook is the radically improved access to the hard drive, something one would hope will be incorporated in a MacBook Pro redesign at some point.

Something else that’s rumored to be coming is LED display backlighting, which should be a substantial improvement on the traditional fluorescent tubes.

Some have touted NAND flash memory replacing hard drives as the “next big thing” in laptop computers. Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath. NAND technology has a long way to go to match even today’s most modest hard drives in terms of capacity and longevity. The extremely limited storage capacity of the new iPhone is an object lesson in the limitations of NAND’s current state of the art, and hard drive technology isn’t standing still by a long shot. Last week, Seagate Technology has introduced what it claims is the world’s fastest hard drive - the Savvio 15K drive, and it’s a 2.5” form factor unit. The Savvio, I hasten to emphasize, is not a laptop drive, but rater a SCSI enterprise drive intended for use in servers, but it does indicate what’s possible in 2.5” drives.

However, I do imagine that NAND/hybrid technology will be found in Apple portables relatively soon. Intel’s “Robson” Hybrid NAND/flash hard drive technology incorporates an integrated module that incorporates NAND flash memory as a ‘smart storage’ buffer between system RAM and the hard drive. The Robson memory storage subsystem plugs the performance gap between processor and HDD by acting as new layer of cache in the system memory/storage hierarchy. For example Robson could be used to provide non-volatile storage for system boot files and other frequently-accessed system files, which could be read and written or rewritten when appropriate substantially faster than from the fastest notebook hard drives. This would facilitate, among other things, speedier bootup, shutdown, wake from sleep, potentially livelier application performance, extended battery life, and hooray! - less heat generation. Hybrid hard drives technology can of course be used in desktop computers as well, but its most profound advantages will be experienced in notebooks, where the hard drive could theoretically be kept spun down most of the time, resulting in decreased power consumption (Robson itself reportedly draws a minuscule 0.1 watt), less heat being generated, and a faster boot process.

According to Intel, Robson technology will be available on Intel’s forthcoming “Santa Rosa” CPU - the company’s next-generation mobile chip, and that pre-production lab testing improves (running MS Vista) multitasking performance with 2x improvement in application load and run time as well as a 2x improvement in resume time from hibernation over systems without Robson, as well as extending battery life by an estimated 20 minutes in lab testing, and Intel expects these factors to improve as software and hardware are tuned for production release. While the performance boost with OS X may not be quite that dramatic, I will be very surprised if we don’t this technology in the MacBook Pro fairly soon and probably eventually the MacBook as well.

It has also been reported that Apple has passed over Samsung’s new flash-enhanced hybrid hard drive solution, which differs from Robson in that it integrates the flash memory into the hard disk itself rather than on the logic board. Hard drive maker Seagate is also reportedly developing flash-hybrid drives for introduction later in 2007.

A major advantage of keeping the flash module separate and distinct from the hard drive is that the hard drive can then be upgraded to a larger capacity or faster drive of any brand and still retain the benefits of the flash technology. Apple might also provide a socket on the logic board so that machines that did not include Robson as OEM equipment could be later upgraded. Robson apparently will work with any SATA hard drive.

The principal benefits of “Robson” should be:

• Lower Power Consumption in notebook computers - hard drives are one of the biggest energy draws

• Diminished Heat Generation - hard drives generate heat, so the facility to keep them spun down most of the time should help significantly in this area.

• Decreased Noise Levels - this appeals to me greatly. Without the hard drive spinning all the time, less heat being generated will reduce the need for fan-forced cooling, a return to silent running with Apple laptops could be at hand.

• Enhanced Reliability: hard drives that aren’t spinning wont wear out nearly as rapidly, and risk of damage from head crashes will be diminished (even more than they already have been with Apple’s Sudden Motion Sensor technology).

• Enhanced Performance thanks to the speedy flash memory buffer being accessed rather than the sluggish hard drive most of the time

• Virtually Instant Bootup, at least if the boot data for an entire operating system can be completely loaded into the flash buffer. Flash hybrids may be may be able to boot from cold in as little as 10 seconds or even less.

Disadvantages:

• Seek time for data not stored in the flash memory cache will be longer, waiting for the sleeping hard drive to spin up.

• Flash memory has a finite number of write cycles before it fails, although this will be a less important issue with Intel’s Robson system with its discrete flash memory modules than with the hybrid hard drive systems of Samsung and Seagate, since the module will be separately and much more cheaply replaceable.

Speaking of heat, which I was a moment ago, the biggest engineering challenge with notebook computers for Apple, and for that matter other manufacturers, is heat reduction. My 1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook is compromised in this area (frequent fan cycling is really the only thing I don’t like about it), and it was downhill from there until the introduction of the Core 2 Duo revision B MacBook Pros and MacBooks last fall, which regained some ground in the other direction. Personally, I will not be satisfied until the silent placidity of my G3 iBook and my Pismo PowerBook is re-achieved. I’m hopeful but not optimistic.

Finally, back in the context of design, Something I would love to see Apple do, although I’m skeptical that they will, is co-branding, a la Acer’s very successful line of Ferrari laptops, and Asustek’s Lamborghini-branded laptop, the second generation of which has just been announced.

Apple’s MacBook Pros and MacBooks are mighty attractive machines, but a bit of color - even tastefully-done color accents, would be a refreshing change. And it’s not that Apple has no precedent for building colorful computers.

A Formula One motor racing tie-in like the Acer-Ferrari relationship would be very cool. I’m not holding my breath waiting for it to happen, but Apple already has iPod-related tie-ins with BMW and Mercedes-Benz (as well as several other automakers), and both firms are in the vanguard of Formula One racing as engine suppliers. A Mercedes-McLaren or BMW F-1 themed Apple MacBook Pro would be delightful. I wish Steve Jobs was interested in motor racing.