Let the Mac/Apple guessing game begin.
 

Well, rumors has it there will be a new slim laptop called air. Solid state HDD and no optical drive. I sincerely hope they rethink the latter and include the optical drive.

macrumors.com has a picture of the presentation screen for the keynote and there is an image for garageband. My guess is an update on iLife 08 is in the works.

I'm hoping for an ipod touch with a bigger HDD than the current models. I'm holding out till there is.

I guess iPhone would also have a bigger hdd but as much as it looks slick I love my blackberry and will stick with that.

Well, those are my guesses.

The last time I've used my optical drive was to install Leopard. Other than that, I wouldn't miss it.

I'm really looking forward to having a ultrasmall Mac and possibly even integrated EVDO or similar wireless. I'm not sure I could live with a small solid state HD though, as I'm almost maxing out my Macbook Pro's 250gb drive.

I use my optical drive a lot. Watching movies etc. I'm also often given promo cds of bands when at conferences and trade shows so must have the drive.

If I'd go with a smaller laptop (which for travel is great) I'd have a desktop at home. But optical dive is essential. Sometimes i'm thinking of getting a 12" last edition powerbook. Used to have a first edition and loved it!

/E

This piece from Fortune on cnn.com's Money section says to look out for:

- A skinny MacBook (under 3 lbs., flash "disk")
- iPhone updates
- Movie rentals
- DRM-free music
- Microsoft Office 2008. (No surprises here, the reviews are already in.)
- The Beatles. (Yoko Ono’s John Lennon Educational Tour Bus mobile recording studio; a press reception in the bus.)

Regarding the "skinny MacBook:" part of the weight reduction, per other sites, would come from using an external optical (CD/DVD) drive. This cuts the weight of the base machine, but for those of us who travel and use our laptops in part to watch DVDs en route, it means we have to copy them to the internal drive before we leave or carry in total more weight than we otherwise would.

There are also concerns with flash drives as disk replacements. Reportedly, they have a finite number of write cycles before they start to fail. This isn't a problem in any application paced by human activity. Photographers can shoot a thousand shots a day for months before a memory card (same technology, different form factor) starts to go. However, when the OS writes to the "disk" a hundred times per second, for things like backing store that take place on electronic rather than human time scales, the device might not show the lifetime we've come to expect from rotating magnetic drives. One solution would be to modify the OS to reduce this activity by orders of magnitude. This is possible; whether or not Apple did it, assuming a product like this will actually be announced, is (at least to me) pure speculation.

i guess that we will know in about 24 hours the answer to all of the above speculations. I am getting rady to switch from a PC to a Macbook, and have anxiously been waiting for Macworld before doing so. I agree that an optical drive is important if you want to watch movies on the airplane. Otherwise, a flash drive would be fine.

If they do introduce a ultra-compact laptop there is no way it will include an optical drive and will probably have a modified ethernet jack as these are two things that limit how thin Apple can make these machines. Obviously there would be some sort of dock and/or a portable optical drive for when it's needed. Optical drives are power hungry so if you're using them to watch movies while on the go you're doing yourself a disservice. There are plenty of tools out there to rip your movies to your HD. I'm looking forward to this type of laptop as it's exactly what my wife has been looking for.

Other than that I hope Apple will combine the functionality of the crippled (read: nearly useless) AppleTV with the horsepower and functionality of the MacMini and produce a serious media center mac. At this point I don't really care about DVR functionality as the TiVo has done that to near perfection. Nor do I think apple would be able to go into the DRV market as their relationships with the media networks would quickly crumble. Apple is keeping them happy by giving them a cut of the sale of all of their stuff, if Apple suddenly allowed users to record their stuff for free there would be big problems.

I would love a lighter MAc - but the 15 inch macbook pro isn't too bad.

I've been waiting for Apple to introduce a smaller/lighter laptop -- the 15-inch Macbook is great but far too big & heavy for me to travel with. Needs to be less than 4 (preferably 3) lbs.

I once used a laptop with an external optical drive, but found it not to be worth the hassle: Either I carried the drive with me and didn't use it, or I left it at home and ended up needing it! Notebook optical drives are so light these days that (IMHO) it's a poor compromise to omit one.

I currently have a Sony T-series, < 3 lbs with optical drive and hi-res display, and I would love to replace it with a comparable Mac! I guess we'll see shortly whether Apple will be getting (more of) my money.

Integrated EVDO (HSDPA)?
 

I go back and forth on integrated HSDPA. I have an HTC TyTN which has 3g on it and can be easily tethered. There are times that I would like to just open up my laptop and not deal with tethering, but I also like being able to use my data on the go when I don't have a laptop. I supposed I could purchase two plans, but that seems over the top. (Well, I kind of did. I have a $5 data package on my little slider phone, but...).

Given the fact that Apple is in bed with Cingular on the iPhone, I'd also imagine that any data would be focused on GSM rather than EVDO. I just hope they don't lock down their data card as tightly as the iPhone.

Ah what fun during the silly season that is the week of Macworld...

Apparently this is the leaked keynote for tomorrow :D

The link that was just provided suggested that the DVD drive was at least quasi-integrated.

Didn't I just say in another thread that the Macbook needed a refresh? :)

But how much does it weigh?

DVD drive pops open on side ... ?? No slot loading optical drive?

-David

Hahaha, the one thing to never ever do is to believe the horribly faked keynote outline that gets leaked a few days before the event. That outline mentions updated Mac Pros. The Mac Pros were updated last week with better specs than this outline claims.

Today's SF chronicle says that the big thing is gonna be movie rental and possibly ultra light notebook with the Solid state HD.
According to the article the Conference Manager? said they want to keep it about Mac's and not Iphones or Ipods.

Love to see a smaller and lighter MacBook pro. But with solid state drive is not going to cut it for me. I want 340GB in a 13" that weighs less than 3.5 lbs. Knowing Apple, whatever it rolls out, it will be 40% premium in price over a PC equivalent.
Will find out tomorrow.