New MacBook Case Leak Rumors

Someone noted that there are more macbook case leaks which look to all but confirm a new MacBook and possibly a MacBook Pro expected to be announced for later this week. There seems to be fewer ports, and no leaks of a 17" aircraft carrier laptop.

Wait for Tuesday....

Seriously, we knew more laptops were coming [cnet.com], but it's just one day away to get the actual announcement.

Re:Wait for Tuesday....

Seriously, we knew more laptops were coming [cnet.com], but it's just one day away to get the actual announcement.

Yeah, but the Mac fans are all on the edge of their seats! Gotta know in advance of the announcement! Of course, true Mac fans will all be watching the actual announcement live on podcast tomorrow because The Great and Mighty Steve may actually say something important!

The true Mac fan will, of course, be meditating on all The Great Steve has to say....ooooohhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmm......must achieve enlightenment.....oooooohhhhhhhmmmmmmmmm......

Re:Wait for Tuesday....

I like the recessed keyboard. It'll act like a drain and funnel spilled liquids into the computer rather than letting them leak on my desk.

Boring.

Okay this is just dull. A new case? There really better be more to it.
Things I would love to see.
A new Mac Cube. A slightly larger mac mini with a PCIe slot for a video board ,a 7200 RPM drive, maybe room for an extra drive, and two to four dimm sockets.
Price $499. It would kill HP and Dell in one fell swoop.
A mac Netbook.
Back in the day the Steves tried to make computers for everyone. Now the Steve makes them for the "elite". Kind of sad in a way.
Yes I do like their good design work and great OS but they are making money hand over foot so why not go for a knock out?
The Apple Volksputer.

Sorry,

Nothing is going to kill Dell/HP except for themselves. The simple fact is most people buying PCs don't care about Mac because it does not have Windows on it. I know some live in a fantasy world but it is true, people don't care. If it works and they are used to it they will keep it.

As for those specs, Apple is doing a good job of moving further away from end user friendly hardware with each and every release. Steve isn't making computers for the "elite", he is making computers that make Apple money and making Apple money means that if you want an upgrade you buy a new computer.

Re:Sorry,

I don't think you get it. People don't want Windows anymore. They want their software. I see more and more people buying Apples then running Windows on bootcamp, Fusion, and Parallels. The average home user just need a browser, email, iTunes, Quickin, and TruboTax. Maybe a few casual games.
The average home user can already move to the Mac with little to no problem.
The big thing is cost. If apple would come out with a Mac Mini that only cost $499 and was expandable You would see even more people buy them. The game market for the Mac would massively increase as would video card options.
People only buy Windows machines for two reasons. They are cheap or they have to run some program under windows.
Apple is already increasing their market share and more and more developers are porting to the Mac. Soon it will be only the the cost that keeps people on Windows.
Heck I am a Linux guy at heart but If Apple produced a $499 expandable Mac I would buy it.

Re:Sorry,

I work for a software developer

Well, those are some impressive credentials. What are you, secretary? Assistant (to the) regional manager?

So I do know windows inside and out.

Oh, so what does this imply? That you know the .NET stack? In-depth knowledge of the Win32 API?

Can you at least make an argument without using baseless claims and accusations? Anecdotal evidence, hard evidence, anything?

Re:Sorry,

"Apple themselves have put up a barrier to that. In order to actually develop programs for Macs, you have to pay them quite a bit of money just to get the basic dev tools, and even more in order to make higher end programs."
Huhh?
Okay do you know how much MSDN+Visual Studio costs?
The professional version is $1,199 per year!
It goes up from there.
For the ADC it starts at $499. But you can get ADC online version which includes XCode for... Free.
Apple is if anything is cheaper than Windows for the official developers packages.
Free "gcc" development tools are available for both.

Re:Sorry,

Yeah... except that people do care. Maybe people aren't switching en masse out of hand, but Mac's percentage of the market has been rising, and (anecdotal evidence, yada yada) I know several people who've made the switch already, and several others who are just waiting for the end of their current computer's useful lifetime. Not that Mac is going to suddenly overwhelm the PC market, but it's not infeasible to compete with and/or overthrow monopolies, just hard. Plus, the likelihood of Dell/HP killing themselves isn't really small enough to discount.

Also, people don't actually buy computers for Windows. In fact, if Vista showed anything, it's that people buy computers FOR THE COMPUTER. If the OS makes it look more likely that the computer will be buggy, well, that will inhibit growth.

A lot of Mac's decisions do irk me, but I also feel that I have to point out that they're close to being as upgradeable as the PC in each product subcategory. Their laptop isn't particularly locked down by laptop standards, although it does lack a fscking manual eject on the CD-ROM*. The iMac is at least as upgradable as Gateway's or Sony's "Computer + monitor," and isn't a piece of crap, to boot. The Mini... well, the Mini is locked down, but it's also half the size of the Shuttle mini cases. The Mac Pro... I've not looked at it, but it seems upgradeable enough.

* Off topic, but holy crap I hate that there's no way to physically force the Mac laptops to give back your CD if it can't recognize that it has it.

Re:Sorry,

I recently went back to school after some years of working in the industry. To say that people don't care if the computer does not have Windows on it is a conjuncture that might have had some validity in 2001. Now a days people are not afraid to leave Windows. I look around at most of my classes and 8/10 kids with laptops are actually using Apple! These are the same kids who in a couple of years will be graduating and going into the industry. I predict a major shift away from Windows. It has already started. Microsoft is slowly becoming less relevant.

Re:Boring.

The "new case" really is the interesting part if various rumours are to be believed. Word has it that Apple's fabricating the shells from aluminium using a proprietary laser/hydro cutter setup, and has slashed costs as a result. They may even be constructing the shells and assembling the machines in-house now, something they dabbled with in the past. A leaked price list for the new range of notebooks includes a $800 machine that may well be the new entry-level Macbook.

Rumors that the case leaks?

Well, there goes my plan for cooling with mineral oil! [tomshardware.com]

Actually, this is slightly interesting

It looks like they fixed a problem I have with the current MacBook Pro: hairs near my wrists get stuck in the tiny crack between the top surface and the gray plastic edge. The new design seems to have abandoned this (albeit, very minor) irritant. Not sure this needed /. front page position, though.

okay I like apple but

Why less ports? My MacBook Pro has less ports than a mid line ThinkPad I had at my last job. I had 3 USB ports I seem to recall, my MacBook Pro only has two. I have one used for an external harddrive/keyboard (they are multiplexed through my monitor) and the other one for my cordless mouse. Great so when I need to use a thumb drive or something I got to choose between my full sized keyboard or my mouse :-)

The sad thing is presumably these extra components have gotten cheaper as USB is old tech as is Firewire. While connectivity realestate is at a premium for a laptop I'd think you'd want to have at least comparable to your competitions mid range offering.

Macrumors.com

I thought I should mention MacRumors [macrumors.com], a long-established site for Mac-related rumors and news, since it looks like Taco wasn't aware there are already sites that do this sort of thing.

Case leaks?

Man, I thought for a moment this was a story about another dangerous flaw being suppressed and denied by Apple. Case leaks. Some mysterious goo or battery acid comes pouring out of your macbook.

OMFG!!

OMFG!! Did ...Did you see THAT!?? I can't believe it! Ohh noooo! He couldn't! Damn, Steve nailed it again! Ohh nooo, it is..it is sooo G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S! The first *aluminium* MacBook...Brilliant! And did you see the keyholes?? OMG it has soooomany! Damn I want one! And the bigger trackpad?...Astonishing! I better ran off to camp in the waiting line and keep posting from there...

Airplanes and cars did this transition too

What's new here is not just another revision of an exxisting product. Apple has turned the physical structure of the notebook inside out. Older notebooks have an internal metal frame of some kind. Parts were screwed to the frame and then the case acted as a cover. What Apple has done is mde the cae out of very rigid aluminum. The parts are now screwed to the inside of the case and there is no internal frame. The case itself is the frame.

Cars and airplanes went through this kind of transition too. In the early days of cars and planes each had an internal frame but now the skin itself is the frame.

What we should expect is a stronger and lighter computer. Maybe better cooling too and easier to re-cycle later after it is no longer useful as a computer.

"starting to"?

Apple is starting to value form OVER function

"starting to"?

Re:Apple posts rock for two reasons

Pompous attitude of its user base... ethical concerns over its atmosphere of secrecy and dodgey take on copyright and patent issues... I could go on.

I'm not a Mac hater, but neither are they the shining gods of saving us all.

P.S. It's M$. You know, because the dollar sign looks like an 'S'.

The Apple Product Cycle

In my humble opinion, there should be a law that would make linking of The Apple Product Cycle [misterbg.org] with every single mac/slashvertisement mandatory.

Re:whoopdifriggindo

whoopdifriggindo is a tag, not a post.
whoopdifriggindoisatagnotapost is a tag.

That's why it's offtopic.

Information Leaks vs. Dripping Battery Fluid

It's not the best of headlines - my interpretation of "case leaks" was "it's dripping battery fluid" or "RF leaking enough to interfere with nearby devices", etc. That would have been worth a Slashdot article.

But if the leak is just not-yet-announced marketing information, then it needs to be pretty interesting.

Re:whoopdifriggindo

Difference is that apple has not released anything, nor have they confirmed that they are releasing anything, it's all just speculation - ergo not newsworthy at all. In other news: Scientists say that the sun will rise again tomorrow. Stay tuned for more information, and pre-rise photos of famous landmarks.

Re:whoopdifriggindo

This is a website primarily for free software and GNU/Linux news though.

Citation needed.

That's one part of what slashdot is for, and it seems likely that that's primarily why *you* are here, but that's not a universal. Besides, even if it *is* the primary reason for slashdot (it's not, but let's just pretend), then if there is a primary purpose, there would reasonably be articles with secondary purposes, like this one.

Some additional purposes of slashdot are:

1. Gaming
2. Sony bashing (this has waned significantly)
3. Fawning over Apple (what this article is about)
4. Security scaremongering
5. Predicting the death of various technologies
6. Tech politics
etc.

I know in recent years that has weakened slightly, but I think the release of a bunch of software that everyone is encouraged to download, share, study, modify, run and distribute is somewhat different to 'proprietary software company release new model of their $2000 operating system dongle' in terms of its usefulness to society.

I agree. At least with OS X, society can actually use the system.

I submit that more people listen to music, share photos and videos, video chat, etc, because of Apple's hardware and software and than because of Linux. Maybe some day (a day which perpetually seems to be perpetually just ahead, like a horizon that can never be reached) Linux will catch up or surpass Apple's products, but until then, Apple is quite important to society.

On the other hand, more web sites function because of Linux than because of Apple's servers (although in this case, OS X is more able to replace Linux as a web server than Linux is able to replace OS X as a desktop OS).

In other words, each has its place here on slashdot.