Aluminium, etc. Probably an update for the Pro to keep the high-(sp)end users happy.

MacBook users like me want a Mac but cheap. Time for Apple to rerelease the Pippin before we move to laptots.

How can it be made from a single piece of aluminium?

Shoorely you'd need at least 2 pieces - one for the top of the case and one for the bottom. I guess both pieces could be cut from the same aluminium sheet, but would that be so amazing a feature that it is listed in the high-level overview?

Perhaps Apple's nabbed some "super alloy" from a UFO parked in the Mojave desert or sumfink...

Does this mean the touch pad could also be a display?...

So extra series of icons which could be accessed... as well as a desktop. E.g. in photoshop the 'context menu' appears on your touch pad instead of a separate menu on the screen. Now that would be really neat.

Or how about a list of emails on the touch pad... but opened on the big screen. Watching video... the touch pad displays the fast forward / rewind buttons. Want a fast boot...? the touch pad displays your mail etc without requiring the full CPU to be on (like some of the fast BIOS solutions on HP machines)..

No fanboy - just Apple tend to be much better switched onto what the user experience is about than Microsoft. But each has advantages and disadvantages... Use the best tool for the job

IMHO it's gonna be much, much better to keep the interactivity on the touchpad of these laptops, I think people will find it easier to move between the touchpad and the keyboard as they've already been doing for years already and also, who's gonna want to have a ton of finger smears all over their nice, new, expensive screen the whole time?

please remove any mention to any machine that we may or may not be making. Otherwise we'll sue yo ass, nail your tongues to the desk, superglue your fridge shut and shut you down you mo fo's.

kind regards,

Apple Legal Department

The orginal artical states that the screen size will be 14 inch and 15. 6 inch.

One of the things that makes me think that this is about the MacBook Pro line is that they have larger screens, 15" and 17", where as the MacBook line have 13" screens.

Doesn't the Pro already sport the multi-touch mouse pad (as well as the aluminium chassis as you mention)? Surely this announcement wouldn't be much of an update to the Pro line at all.

"but would that be so amazing a feature that it is listed in the high-level overview?"

Hm. Well speaking as a bitter, rejected mac user who misses the days of the computer company rather than the bubblegum shit dispensing walkman company, I would say that would be *exactly* the kind of feature listed.

I mean, "the world's thinnest laptop"? What's that about? Since when was "thinness" a feature? The descent continues. "can't tell you much about the next computer, but it'll be very smooth"

No mention of power or specification, but it'll have a glass trackpad and be made of a single piece of aluminium. Who cares about anything else? Look at the shiny coin. Watch it sparkle. Shiny. Shiny coin.

Paris, cos she's effectively in charge.

Going to be a bugger to open and close then.

I want a SMALL MacBook!

It should be small, the size of an Eee or so, with long battery life.

Take, say an iBook G4 1.33GHz(which was pretty decent, powerwise, or maybe a 1GHz?), get rid of the CD-ROM/SuperDrive, drop all external connectors except Power, one(maybe 2) USB, firewire, VGA and a SD-slot. Well, maybe a headphone jack, too...

Junk the HDD and insert a 4GB SSD instead.

(Should be enough for a clean and lean OS X with some space left over for user files.)

If anyone from Apple likes the idea, feel free to ask me if I want to beta test it... ;-)

Hm, I doubt I will ever buy a low end Apple notebook again. Too much trouble on the iBook, too spoiled by Powerbooks. Regardless, one should welcome a MacBook redesign. They are horrible. And as AC said, who cares about thin? Give me a LIGHT but sturdy machine with lots of battery time any day.

The reference to "future product transition" affecting sales by Apple's CFO, and then press speculation about new products has the effect of deterring certain consumers from buying product.

This is entirely reasonable, who wants to buy a product that's replaced the following month with a better, more powerful model? The effect is it'll adversely affect current revenue.

El Reg, if you're going to quote un-named sources, don't rely on secondary sourced quotes, get them first hand. Otherwise, it's all just a rumour.

I don't really care about computing power or zillions of colour or touch-anything-design-whatever-feature: I want a 10" thingy that _just_works_

"Going to be a bugger to open and close then."

oh, i don't know. aluminium bends pretty easily!

A 10" would be OK, I guess, but a smaller one, weighing less than 1Kg would be REALLY nice.

(The HP nc2400 13" 1.2Kg I lug around now is 'rather too large' when I try to pack light enough to get everying into a 'carry on' for airplane travel)

Stu writes: "please remove any mention to any machine that we may or may not be making. Otherwise we'll sue yo ass, nail your tongues to the desk, superglue your fridge shut and shut you down you mo fo's.

kind regards,

Apple Legal Department"

Whoa. Dude!

I didn't know the Piranha Brothers were running the Apple Legal Department now...though their threat list seems to have omitted Nailing Their Head To The Floor.

The MacBook Air is currently selling very well for Apple (second in the UK Apple Store sales chart) and is a 'premium' product, therefore any new MacBook that's significantly cheaper than an Air but looks like one and isn't much thicker will inevitably cannibalise some existing Air sales and reduce Apple's profit, at least in the short term, hence very likely to be the real reason for the "future product transition" profit reduction warning.

I will probably get one of these new MacBooks, although the temptation to try and load OSX onto something smaller such as an MSI Wind/Acer Aspire One is currently very great.

Paris, because we like something that's good looking.

Bought a 12" G4 PowerBook over 5 years ago. Still use it as my main machine for surfing/email. A wonderfully compact and powerful machine (in its time).

Still lie awake at night wondering why they dropped the 12-incher.

Be nice to have a machine that not only looks good but also runs a good deal cooler than the current batch. Thinner suggests hotter and that's bad.

But I read in an Apple mag like the week I decided to order this thing that now was the perfect time to buy a macbook pro because they won't be updating it for at least another year.... fast forward a couple of months and boom - they announce a new macbook - I didn't even get 6 months of being top of the range....

I do love the little thing though, it's a beast! :)

The jobs-saint icon - because he obviously wouldn't release a new tweaked model of the same product every few months to encourage people without self-control to spend that little bit more than they should! ;)

"Still lie awake at night wondering why they dropped the 12-incher."

Probably because it's so easy to drop!

Every client of mine who has bought the 12" powerbook has dropped it at one time or another - often more than once! One chap has dents on every corner. I had to take a small hammer to it so that we could get the charger to connect.

Uh, they did that. It's call the MacBook Air. Where have you been?

I don't need something small like the Air or an EeePC, I need something large and powerful. Minimum resolution is 1920x1200 (15" or 17" is fine.) I need good OpenGL rendering for medical imaging. I need a powerful CPU (quad core), and large hard drive (500GB 7200rpm min), and how about a BluRay burner. BluRay playback only drive is useless to me, I don't use my laptop to watch movies, I use it to create stuff. Oh and make the battery last 6 hours while burning DVDs non-stop. I don't care how thin or light it is.

Now that's a laptop I'd buy!

I also wanted it SMALL, not FLAT...

Kind of an important difference there...

You know, something to replace my ageing Psion netBook, but lighter and with better networking functionality...

(I've gone back to a Psion S3c for notetaking these days. I tried the Bestlink Alpha-400, a cheap Eee clone, but even if it has a decent word-processor, the lack of a sleep function is kind of a downer. )

*Sigh*

I may end up buying an Eee after all...

Anyone have slightly used 701 for sale?

"Now that's a laptop I'd buy! "

Yeah, but not carry very far !!

'speaking as a bitter, rejected mac user who misses the days of the computer company rather than the bubblegum shit dispensing walkman company'

You are the ghost of MacBiter (god rest his soul) and I claim my ten pounds :)

Would love to hear what MacBiter would have to say about the current state of the company-formerly-known-as-Apple-Computers.

no!

What for?

Let's cut the eye-candy crap. My wish list includes a lighter 12" (or smaller) iBook, that I can take on a 'plane, and a desktop Mac, larger than the 'Mini', which holds a standard 750GB Hard Drive, sensible graphics card, DVD burner and LOTS of ports.

Sad face because I know it won't happen.

I swa the joke alert icon but am still waiting for the joke. Can you tell me when it is coming?

...and several hundred pieces of plastic.

Seriously though, who says it has to open? Maybe the next MacBook will just be a 15" touch screen.

...if it's got a backlit keyboard and a higher res screen i'll be over the moon. 1440x900 would suffice.

Otherwise i'll have to wait on a revised MBP

"Still lie awake at night wondering why they dropped the 12-incher."

Brushing up on my pythagorus theorum...

12" has screen area of approx 69sq inches

13.3" has screen area of approx 75sq inches

very similar areas due to wider 16:9 radio of the 13.3" macbook

Now, an EeePC sized mac 8-10" screen. That'd be nice. As would an LCD behind the trackpad

An innocent mistake spells out a neat idea...

"Doesn't the Pro already sport the multi-touch mouse pad"

A flexible, roll-up mousepad-like multi-touch USB accessory! where is it???