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The Road Warrior Looks Ahead At The Coming Year In Apple Notebooks

On Monday, we discussed how well my forecast for the Apple 'Book orbit in 2007 had panned out. In this, the final The Road Warrior column of 2007 I'll take a look at what may be coming for Apple 'Book aficionados in 2008 and stick my neck out a bit with some new predictions.

We won't have long to wait to see if an Apple subnotebook actually is unveiled at MacWorld Expo after all the rumor hype. I'm inclined to think that it's highly likely this time, even though we've been to this well before and come up dry.

Notebook computers - not iPhones or iPods - are Apple's hottest product these days, and as such it's reasonable to assume that Apple will give them some attention and limelight at Expo this year.

Also, the reports of ultraslim notebook prototypes being seen in the hallways at Cupertino and a report this week that had at recent holiday event where Apple had artists perform, the latter were promised each of the new laptops to be released at MacWorld have the ring of incidental authenticity about them.

So, neck-on-the-block time, here's my projection of the shape it is likely to take:
• Very thin form factor, probably not as thin as the new Apple aluminum keyboards, but trending toward that.
• Styling theme - think iPhone
• 12" widescreen display, 1280 x 800 resolution
• LED display backlighting
• 2- 2.4 GHz Intel mobile CPU, maybe Santa Rosa, maybe the new Penryn mobile processor
• 1 GB RAM upgradable to 4 GB
• 64 GB NAND Flash data storage (although I'm still equivocal about this, and won't be terribly surprised if it has a hard drive of 120 GB and up, at least as an option)
• ATI Radeon X1900 GPU with 256MB VRAM (as opposed to the MacBook's integrated "vampire" video)
• Lithium Polymer battery providing up to six hours runtime
• Dual-layer SuperDrive, but not necessarily inside the main notebook case. The old PowerBooks 100 and 2400c both had bundled external floppy drives, and I won't be surprised at all if Apple goes with something like this to help achieve a shockingly thin case profile. I can't imagine them selling a machine at the premium price of $1,700-plus without some sort of optical drive solution included. You still have to install software, and not everything is downloadable from the Internet. Likewise, some sort of backup and data copying medium is really indispensable or maybe you just want to watch a movie on the 12" widescreen.
• An iPhone-style camera and or GPS (long shots)
• 3 pounds weight or less
• iSight, Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n, Firewire 400 (and maybe 800), USB2.0, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, audio in/out, mini-DVI
• Price at $1,750 - $1,799

That's all based on pure speculation - I have no insider information or secret sources - so if Steve Jobs pulls something entirely different out of his proverbial hat at the Expo keynote, well, I've been mistaken before.

Now, the MacBook. There have also been rumors of an aluminum Macbook, but I'm extremely doubtful, and what I think may be happening is some confusion with the much more probable aluminum subnotebook. The MacBook form factor is just 19 months old - a spring's chicken by recent Apple praxis. Heck, they hung on to the dual USB iBook form factor for more than five years, and the current 15" and 17" MacBook Pro case designs date back to the correspondent PowerBook G4 models of September and January 2003 respectively.

It's not impossible of course, but I am exceedingly doubtful that Apple is planning any major form factor revisions for the MacBook in 2008 (the cooling vents and keyboard were changed a bit with the Santa Rosa MacBook revisions in October. What we are likely to see is a switch to LED-illuminated 13.3" displays in the MacBook from the current CCFL backlights, and that may indeed be announced as early as Macworld Expo.

Eventually, we will almost certainly see a switch to Intel's new Penryn mobile processors, but the MacBook Pros will get those first.

Speaking of which, I think that there will be a major revision of the MacBook Pro form factor before too long, and it could happen later in 2008. I would bet on a Penryn upgrade of the current models first, but what do I know?

As perviously noted, the professional machines' case design is getting pretty long in the tooth. Personally, I was surprised that Apple decided to recycle it with the initial MacBook Pro release two years ago as it was hardly fresh even then. However, given the enormity of the shift to Intel processors, sticking with the tried-and true case design was understandable then. Sticking with it much longer two years farther down the road is less understandable, even though it's a pretty good design.

What they might do with the MacBook Pro is in many ways tougher to predict than the form a new subnotebook might take. There is not much about the aluminum 'Books that cries out for revision. Their worst shortcoming is the difficulty of accessing the internals for upgrading or repair, so easier access to the hard drive at least would top my laundry list. I would love to see a removable device expansion bay in the big 'Books again, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. Safer bets would probably be: "thinner," and adoption of the new Apple keyboard convention pioneered by the MacBook, and more recently carried over to the new Apple aluminum keyboards. NAND flash memory should sometime be available in the big MacBook Pros, at least as an option, but the capacity is not up to the requirements of a professional notebook in the contemporary context.

Being in the hunt now for my next system upgrade, I'm a bit torn over whether I should go for the thoroughly debugged tried-and-true, or risk buyer remorse if Apple comes out with a really delectable redesign of the MacBook Pro a few months from now. I'm not at all sorry that I opted to go with one more Power PC system two years ago rather than being a MacIntel early adopter, but my 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4 is just beginning to get to that critical point where it's feeling overextended in keeping up with what I'm asking of it. OS 10.5 Leopard represents the tipping point, I guess.

I would love to have a 17" MacBook Pro to take its place, but they are too expensive for me to justify given my requirements, even as Apple Certified Refurbished units, and the 15" MacBook Pro now has the same 1440 x 900 display resolution as my 17" PowerBook, and I find that ample, so rationally, the sensible choice or me would be the entry-level 15-incher, especially as it already has the LED backlighting while the latest-model 17" machine still has conventional CCFL illumination.

Actually, a MacBook would have more than enough power for me, but I have to admit that I've gotten used to 900 pixels of vertical resolution, and using the 17" PowerBook for two years has convinced me that having the high end features has its charms. I also prefer to have a real graphics processor unit with its own VRAM and a PC Card slot provides an avenue for expansion in the future if needed. And while I don't dislike the MacBook's unconventional keyboard on the basis of some brief experimentation, I'm cautious about whether I would find it comfortable through more lengthy typing sessions. I have fibromyalgia and chronic neuritis, and have found from bitter experience that keyboards that feel fine at first often cause pain in longer typing sessions. I know that the 'boards in the MacBook Pros are ones that stick with me. On the other hand, the MacBook has that easy-to-access hard drive, and the 15" model is not easy to open and work on.

The way I'm thinking right now, it will probably boil down to choosing between the middle-model MacBook and an Apple Certified Refurbished 15" Santa Rosa MacBook Pro, unless Apple rolls out something irresistible at MacWorld Expo.

Winding up The Road Warrior for 2007 with some site notes, the coming year will mark the 10th anniversary of this column, which debuted in the Autumn of 1998.

Thanks for reading, and especially to those who have submitted sometimes challenging questions and interesting comments to The Road Warrior MailBag. Wishing all a very Happy New Year, and I hope you will visit often in 2008.