Macworld Forums: Apple's all-flash MacBook Pro, iCloud drive industry changes - Macworld Forums

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I'm gonna hold out and see if a 17" version will be offered before the end of the year. Last time, they upgraded the 17" separately.

My current MBP 17 has 1.5 TB of hard drive space as I replaced the optical drive last year so that I could run Snow leopard on one drive and Lion of the other.

"macbook air netbook"
really? Computerworld is calling the Macbook Air a netbook? too laughable.

Apple is really going off the deep end with the cloud. Don't get me wrong iCloud is great. But I don't need a very pricey laptop that's really just a glorified iOS device. I've already got an iPhone and an iPad. I need a laptop to do real work. And that means i want a big hard drive, and an optical drive -- preferably one that handles blu-ray. The MacBook Air is already there for people who want a limited functionality laptop. Apple is starting to run off the rails with its cloud obsession. I sincerely hope they don't screw-up the iMacs like this.

The cloud is not a solution to eliminating the demand for large hard drives. Relatively slow Internet (compared to any local storage) and ever-increasing data caps make putting more than maybe 100GB on the cloud disastrous. When I'm on a vacation, taking photographs, I'm lucky if I can send 200 images a night up "to the cloud", even if I'm staying somewhere with good Internet access. Cellular? I'd burn through a month's data cap in a day or two at most. And if I was shooting video, it would be even more insane.

 truthjustice, on 12 June 2012 - 06:10 AM, said:

1. they still sell new models with optical drives and big HDDs

2. this is the future. Optical drives like floppies drives will be gone. Just like the PC industry held on to floppies for many years longer than Apple, they finally dumped them too. Solid state drives are also the future. a half to three quarters of a terabyte in a very portable machine should be fine. If you really need more space, you might need a less portable machine, or you don't need access to all that data at all times, and external thunderbolt drives are just as fast as the internal drives and you can have many terabytes of extra storage space. Right now this is a very progressive machine so its very expensive to do all this, so its not for everyone. This is the main reason they made upgraded older model Macbook Pros as well.... for now.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I like most of my data on my computer... not floating around in somebody else's cloud.

 truthjustice, on 12 June 2012 - 06:10 AM, said:

768GB isn't big? As far as I can tell, all the new laptops run Mac OS, not iOS. And have keyboards. And don't have touch screens. And use core i7 processors.

And if you need an optical drive, I suggest that you stick a crowbar in your wallet and find $30 for the occasional use DVD RW drive (or $100 for a blu ray drive).

BB

 appledogx, on 12 June 2012 - 06:43 AM, said:

Right up to the moment you lose that data!

Simple question. What happens if your internet connection goes down? Apple should not be using iCloud to make up for the fact that they skimped on the hard drive.

 talmy, on 12 June 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

That's where Thunderbolt comes in. Thunderbolt picks up where cloud storage starts to fail.

 netcougar, on 12 June 2012 - 07:18 AM, said:

Apple is hardly skimping, they are simply using SSDs which have certain limitations (in capacity and price). Most critical iCloud data can be cached locally on the devices, so you don't always need to be connected. And for more mission critical data you can use the local storage combined with Thunderbolt external devices to meet your needs.

“Remember, you’re walking around with all of your data, as opposed to having it in a cloud that may be more secure.”

Yeah, because networked data never goes down, is inaccessible, gets hacked, is accessible by government officials (with or without a warrant), or is slow to access. That seems WAY more secure. Uh-huh. If I'm working in the field on an HD video project on a MacBook Pro, do I really want to wait for my files to filter back and forth to the cloud, over semi secure systems? I make backups as a matter of course all the time. Physical backups that I control and store securely. The Cloud for main storage? It's good for kids and their lower resolution audio and video on iPad/iPhone/iPods, but for adults working with sensitive media forget it.

For those who suggest tacking on an external hard drive or optical drive, you're missing the point of a portable machine, especially a high end one.

 MutantPie, on 12 June 2012 - 07:39 AM, said:

I don't think so. There are some very portable external hard drives and even portable RAID systems. For anyone doing mission-critical work, having multiple backups is critical whether you are in the field or in the office. No matter what laptop you have, it will not give you the sort of data protection you'd want for these applications. It's either network or external storage.