davedelong.com

This year's Worldwide Developer Conference saw two really interesting announcements for the Mac laptop line. They are:

1. The introduction of the SD card slot
2. The elimination of any significant model from the Macbook line

The SD Card slot

I'll just come out and say it: I believe that the SD card slot is the beginning of the end of the optical drive. Now, before you get all up in arms about your beloved SuperDrive going the way of the floppy, let's stand back and think about this for a minute.

When was the last time you used your optical drive? For me, it was a couple days ago, when I was watching a movie. But before that, a long time ago. I don't use my DVD drive for anything except watching movies. If I have a game that I want to play that requires a CD or DVD, then I use Disk Utility to make a DMG of the disk and use that instead, and that usually works just as well. I can't remember the last time I burned a CD. I've never burned a DVD. It's just not worth my time. If I want to archive data, then I'll put it on sort of external drive, like a USB drive or hard drive or something. That's media that's easily written, read, and re-written. CDs and DVDs don't offer the same degree of flexibility when it comes to writing and re-writing data. Yes, you can buy CD-RW and DVD-RW disks, but they're orders of magnitude slower than transferring something to an external hard drive.

From a technological point of view, the optical drive is the largest consumer of space within a laptop, after the battery. It is also one of the primary consumers of power, and it is the most prone to failure or corruption (how many scratched disks do you have? I've got a fair few). One of the trends in laptops is that everything is moving to solid state. Almost nothing physically moves anymore, with the exception of the fans and the hard drive. However, even the spinning hard drive will phase out as solid state drives become more and more prevalent. This allows for greater reliability: fewer moving parts, fewer opportunities for physical malfunction. By killing the optical drive, Apple would be increasing the available space in a laptop that could be used for a second hard drive, a bigger battery (would you like a 15 hour laptop battery?), or something else we haven't thought of. Perhaps they'll just reorganize the guts of the machine and make it slimmer and lighter.

The replacement for the optical drive is, of course, the SD card slot. SD cards have gotten pretty cheap (you can find 16GB SD cards for under $40). And they're tiny! They're the size of a postage stamp, yet they hold 8 times what a conventional DVD can hold! The newer SDXC format cards can hold up to 2TB, assuming you can figure out how to cram that much onto a thin wafer. They're readable and writable and (more importantly) conveniently re-writable. Finally, and I believe this is the clincher, they're bootable. I would not be surprised if, come September, Apple offered Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" on an SD Card instead of a DVD for a small premium. Snow Leopard will already be a bargain at $29, but for an extra $5 or $10, I'd be willing to get it on an SD card instead. It's something that's far more portable than a DVD, so you can just toss it in a pocket of your laptop bag or something. Then when you're away from home and the precious install DVDs, your computer freaks out, and you need to repair permissions or recover a deleted file or something, you can just slip out your Snow Leopard card, boot off that, and fix whatever it is that you need.

If you happen to need a DVD drive for your occasional movie watching or whatever, well, then I know a company that would be thrilled to sell you one.

The Fate of the Macbook

The other really interesting announcement last month was the transition of the 13" Unibody Macbook to be branded as a Macbook Pro. This makes sense to me, and I believe it was a smart move. However, we now see something odd on the Apple store. Take a look at this:

• These are the available Macbook Pro models
• These are the available Macbook models

Notice anything? In case you missed it, there are six base Macbook Pro models and one Macbook model. One! That's it! The beloved Macbook line, which has so faithfully served so many college students and teenagers for the past three years has been entirely gutted. All that's left is the lone plastic Macbook. I'd like to point out that this is the ONLY device, whether laptop, desktop, iPod, or iPhone that has an entirely plastic case. Everything else has transitioned to sculpted aluminum. And to anyone who has hefted a Unibody laptop, the difference between plastic and solid aluminum is very noticeable. And this brings me to my next prediction: The Macbook is dead, or at least will be very soon.

What's going to replace it? Another Macbook, of course. But a Macbook unlike any Macbook we've seen before: a tablet. We've heard rumors off and on about a mythical Apple tablet for the past year or so as netbooks have become increasingly popular. However, we've also heard deterrents from Steve Jobs and others that Apple doesn't believe the time is ripe for it. This is why I believe it is going to happen soon:

1. As I've already said, the laptop line looks strangely lopsided. Every time Apple's product line gets lopsided like this, they announce something new.
2. We've heard rumors of Apple buying 10" touch screens. I'm typing this post on my Macbook Pro, and 10 diagonal inches would go from roughly the left edge of the laptop to about the right edge of the "m" key on the keyboard, if it were six or seven inches "tall". That's a pretty good size for a tablet.
3. It's also about the same amount of volume as a Macbook Pro would take if you were to remove the optical drive and shrink the battery a bit (and make it non-removable, of course). Did I mention that it looks like Apple is going to kill the optical drive? This would be the perfect place to start.
4. The SD card would be the perfect portable mass storage medium for a tablet. I think I've outlined pretty well above why I believe that to be the case.

So the question is "when?". I think there are two possible times: Mid-September and January. January has traditionally been a time for Apple to announce new products. However, I think September makes more sense: they'll be able to do three things at once: Announce a 3rd generation iPod touch (this is pretty much a given), officially launch Snow Leopard, and launch a new product that was the reason why they put the effort into slimming and optimizing the OS: an ultra-portable tablet. Oh and by the way, if you buy the tablet, your OS will come on an SD card instead of a DVD.

Why September? The Back-to-school promotion will have just ended, which means Apple will have just finished shifting a large amount of stock. College students need computers, and parents, who are already paying for tuition, won't want to pay a couple hundred extra for a Macbook Pro, so the white Macbook will essentially be sold out. Second, it's the perfect time to start gearing up for the holiday season. iTunes regularly grinds to a halt on Christmas day, and this year will be no different. People will be downloading apps for their new iPod touches, iPhones, and Macbooks.

I think this would be a really shrewd move by Apple. They'll have effectively raised the entry price for an Apple laptop from $999 to $1199 (but somewhat justifying it) and they'll have introduced a whole new breed of device in the $800 - $1000 range.

What do you think?

Dave