"Ultimately it may not matter, as users will get whatever Apple decides to put in their laptops"
And they could put an actual brick in it and people would still buy it.
What annoys me is that other manufactures, in general, and with all sorts of electronics, actually list and put detailed specs of what you're paying for. With Apple you often dont know who makes this and that, what it's specs are, and what you're getting. People will buy it even though they have no idea what they're getting and no matter how poor the components are. Then to top it off Apple will do loads of false advertising, making false claims. Some of there TV Ads have been taken off air in my country because of false advertising, but generally people still dont care.
When it comes to SSDs, when shopping for a new laptop for my dad a couple weeks ago, I didn't find HP or Dell being forthcoming about the performance characteristics of their SSDs, other than costing approximately $400 extra for 120 GB of space. For that amount of money, I can get a 160 GB Intel 320 SSD for $299. Apple isn't unique in not revealing the performance of the SSD up front.
Shoot, for that matter, no OEM is up-front regarding the performance of any single piece of the hardware, you just get the specs. Otherwise, we wouldn't need sites like Anandtech to cut through their BS.
To be fair, it isn't as if Apple sent the faster drive out to reviewers and then started putting in a slower drive.
Are you from the UK? They have criticized some of Apple's ads in the past, but it seems that they were really nitpicking, and they haven't singled out Apple either for "false" advertising that didn't really strike me as misleading. Anyway, I compared Dell's tech specs per their website to Apple's, and they are broadly comparable in terms of disclosure. For the most part, Apple does use decent components. Toshiba and Samsung are both reputable manufacturers of SSDs. NVIDIA GPUs are pretty good, and Apple's LCDs usually fare pretty well in AnandTech's comparisons.
Try talk to peers who works in the chip industry or OEM manufacturing houses like Foxconn, Foxlink, Quanta, Compal or any component suppliers and you will find out the test spec requirement for Apple parts are much higher than most other PC manufacturers.
1. Most manufacture dont tell their Customer what SSD controller they used either. 2. And therefore no SSD performance characteristic are given, 3. They have their own OEM Gfx Parts Number as well.
People dont care because false advertising are being done much wost by other companies.
You'd have enjoyed the Australian advertising for the iPad 1. They refer to the A4 processor as "crazy powerful". It's not as much misleading as it is completely meaningless. Apple store staff are trained to use such meaningless terms. My favorite is "funnest". It's not a real word, but it implies a high degree of fun. They are not resposible for providing a product that is fun, nor more fun than other products as there is no legal definition and the implication itself is subjective. Therefore they have no liability to supply the implied expectation.
As you said, these terms are meaningless. That's why you can't really say if they are true or false. But when Apple advertises that the iPad lasts 10 hrs, then it really does. The "false advertising" claim, was as far as I know, for shorter App load times in the ads than in real life. And that really was nitpicking, because every advertiser does it.
"And they could put an actual brick in it and people would still buy it."
But you can bet your ass it will be low-profile, high-gloss, antiscratch and oleophobic-treated bricks!
Please... That's just stupid. And other manufacturers don't list detailed specs of the contents of their PCs, because they CAN'T. They buy stuff in bulk from any number of suppliers, you'll get what they put into your HP, Dell, whatever just like with Apple.
Integrators change components all the time. You know very well that other PC manufacturers like HP and Dell change their bill of materials on a given model all the time, and don't disclose things like the manufacturer of their WiFi chipsets.
"False advertising"? Apple claims to give you an SSD of a certain size. They do not claim any particular manufacturer of any particular component, nor do they owe you a list. They also don't say who manufactures their screens, track-pads, or other major components. Apple computers are not kits.
And no, people would not buy it if it had a brick in it. This contempt for people who don't lurk PC tech websites has to stop. It's one of the reasons why the stereotype of "comic book store guy" exists, and why the rest of the world looks at techies as Asperger's poster-children, and ignore them when it comes time to pass laws or set company policies. Having a black T-shirt, cold-cathode glowies in your PC case, and a Front-242 CD doesn't make you master of society.
Why doesn't Congress listen to techies on subjects like copyright and electronic monitoring? Could it be because of how techies present themselves?
They are just bog standard Intel, Broadcom components and LG TFT-panels nothing sub standard about that, neither is there really any substandard parts available. It's not like you will get a specific RAM-chip in any other OEM machine or something like that. Neither does it matter when all it does is running by-spd. Tech specs are clear, you know what cpu you get, how much ram in what speed and what GPU. You know you will have your broadcom wireless, minidisplayport and Intel thunderbolt and that you don't have to choose the camera as option and so on. Nothing unclear about buying a mac if you choose to do so. Intel platforms are usually what the consumer wants :)
Sure they sell lifestyle instead of hardware in ads but so does the competitors which generally don't advertise a specific product to begin with. You have to choose carefully within a lineup of the OEMs products to get what you want.
B3an writes: "And they [Apple] could put an actual brick in it and people would still buy it."
I take it that you're unfamiliar with the aphorism that it's "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
Apple has by far the best reputation for quality and service in the industry. Don't take my word for it - read the reviews of its products. They don't have people waiting in line at their stores because they make shoddy products or advertise falsehoods. Their customers are smart and will pay for quality. Apple doesn't have 60 billion dollars in cash because they have stupid customers.
"Their customers are smart and will pay for quality. Apple doesn't have 60 billion dollars in cash because they have stupid customers."
Actually, when someone owns an iPhone and uses it purely for texting and calling... I'm not going to call that stupid, but I'm going to come very close.
I can't wait to see mSATA SSDs in full sized laptops, especially ultraportables.
Full-sized laptops would rock if they could use a ~64GB mSATA SSD for boot and a ~320GB HDD for storage. They might even maintain enough space for a disk drive!
I don't like the lower resolution. 768 vertical pixels just doesn't do it on a computer like that. I could live with it on a netbook, but I need to do occasional Office work on my laptop. I need more than 768 vertical pixels to fit the enormous ribbon and what not.
I think I would actually give up the IPS display if I could get a 1600x900 12.5" screen. For typical productivity work and web surfing, it would be worth it.
Otherwise, I love the mSATA SSD option. I was rather bummed out when the X220 didn't launch with such an option.
You won't have to wait long! Thinkpad X220 will be available with 80 GB mSATA SSD plus a 320 GB HDD in the 2.5" drive bay. Lenovo says availability is April 2011. Rumors point to Monday 4/18.
Except Lenovo insists on sticking with the outdated Trackpoint. It was innovative in the 1990s. It's 2011. I switched to a Mac (a Rev A MacBook Air, actually) in 2008 and don't see going back. Apple figured it out with the trackpad and others still haven't caught up, though Samsung is close.
Let's face it. Apple is rarely first to market, but they define its direction right now. There were ultraportables before the MacBook Air, but the Rev D made the category mainstream. I give credit to Apple for sticking with the product even after lackluster sales in the first 2.5 years and 3 revisions.
Apple does not sell by tech specs alone. Apple is the only company in tech that has a rabid hard core following that stuck with them through thick and thin. Good for them for creating this image for themselves but it is false to say that Apple somehow sold more ultraportables than previous ones from other brands just because they were inherently better in some way.
However, my point was that the MacBook Air really didn't start selling well until the latest version, which has substantially better specifications than its previous versions (apart from the CPUs, which are unchanged). Therefore, it wasn't just Apple's "rabid hard cord following" that sold ultraportables. It was a good design, including decent components. For the average user coming from a hard drive, whether they get the Samsung drive or the Toshiba drive that runs "only" 85% as fast as the Samsung, they will likely experience a significant performance boost.
I've had a 128GB SSD in the HDD bay and a 2.5" HDD in the Ultrabay of my T400s for the last couple of years. A great combination. Now with microSSDs you do not need to sacrifice the optical drive to have the best of both worlds in the non-ultraportable machines.
The HD can be se to go to sleep mode after 2 minutes of inactivity for instance. That way it won't suck your battery unless you actually access the HD.
You would still gain some of the shock benefit of the SSD since you can choose what data to put into the SSD. You are right that the HD would be as vulnerable as it has always been but some of your data would be in the more resistant SSD.
It makes no sense to put SSD+HD combo into MacBook Air but in a normal laptop like the MacBook Pro it would make sense, at least in my opinion. SSD prices are still too high, so OEMs can't replace HDs with similarly sized SSDs without a huge price increase.
Tiring to see the usual barrage of Apple hating posts and very few objective comments.
A lot of companies like Samsung and HP lately have copied Apple's product and marketing strategies but failed on delivering the actual goods and services.
Take the newest Samsung ultraportable notebook, they tout it as a Macbook Air competitor and charges more than the MBA. Samsung up to today has yet to improve their reliability and tech support, with an Apple product. You get a real English speaking customer support person on the phone and you never get bounced around and get results in one call.
I'm tired of HP, Dell, and even Toshiba tech support where you get bounced around 2-3 people on the phone and get nowhere until you threaten them.
They are very different. That's a 1.8" ZIF form factor, ie an iPod drive.
Funny how even that tech was developed by Apple, incidentally -- 1.8" drives existed, but like in the first iPods, they used a PCMCIA II form factor, with PATA over the connector. The ZIF form factor was developed for later iPods because the PCMCIA connectors were way too expensive to only use once, during assembly, or maybe twice during repair. Also, too large, lots of useless plastic. Presumably these are a SATA ZIF variant rather than PATA, I should hope. Z11 isn't that old.
Going by the ruler visible, the formfactor is 85x48 mm, and mSATA varies in length but is always 30 mm wide. So basically the Air mSATA size is about 1/2 to 2/3 the area of the Vaio Z SSD area. Some other mSATAs are much smaller: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4078/intels-ssd-310-...
When is the last time you've bought a wooden chair and asked about the brand of glue, or even the maximum supported weight for that matter?
To 95% of buyers, the brand of SDD does not matter, and detracts to the sale. You want the customer to focus on the chair's(notebok's) general build quality, worksmanship, color and design.
For the other 5% (us), we feel cheated whenever a brand changes a feature underneath the hood or doesn't spill the beans on the details.
If customers want to be better informed, there needs to be new scales to clearly mark a single sum number appreciation. 'Both of these are class 3 SSDs on the Anand scale'... this is the same for displays... I really have a hard time understanding which notebooks have adequate displays without comming to anand, so how would my grandfather feel?
May be apple changed the ssd from toshiba to samsung due to limited supply of toshiba memory due to japan disaster. we have to remember they might be using all the tashiba flash memory for the apple portables like iphone , ipad due to huge demand..
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
33 Comments
Back to Article
B3an - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
"Ultimately it may not matter, as users will get whatever Apple decides to put in their laptops"And they could put an actual brick in it and people would still buy it.
What annoys me is that other manufactures, in general, and with all sorts of electronics, actually list and put detailed specs of what you're paying for. With Apple you often dont know who makes this and that, what it's specs are, and what you're getting. People will buy it even though they have no idea what they're getting and no matter how poor the components are. Then to top it off Apple will do loads of false advertising, making false claims.
Some of there TV Ads have been taken off air in my country because of false advertising, but generally people still dont care.
Zok - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
When it comes to SSDs, when shopping for a new laptop for my dad a couple weeks ago, I didn't find HP or Dell being forthcoming about the performance characteristics of their SSDs, other than costing approximately $400 extra for 120 GB of space. For that amount of money, I can get a 160 GB Intel 320 SSD for $299. Apple isn't unique in not revealing the performance of the SSD up front.Shoot, for that matter, no OEM is up-front regarding the performance of any single piece of the hardware, you just get the specs. Otherwise, we wouldn't need sites like Anandtech to cut through their BS.
KPOM - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
To be fair, it isn't as if Apple sent the faster drive out to reviewers and then started putting in a slower drive.Are you from the UK? They have criticized some of Apple's ads in the past, but it seems that they were really nitpicking, and they haven't singled out Apple either for "false" advertising that didn't really strike me as misleading. Anyway, I compared Dell's tech specs per their website to Apple's, and they are broadly comparable in terms of disclosure. For the most part, Apple does use decent components. Toshiba and Samsung are both reputable manufacturers of SSDs. NVIDIA GPUs are pretty good, and Apple's LCDs usually fare pretty well in AnandTech's comparisons.
gunblade - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
Try talk to peers who works in the chip industry or OEM manufacturing houses like Foxconn, Foxlink, Quanta, Compal or any component suppliers and you will find out the test spec requirement for Apple parts are much higher than most other PC manufacturers.iwod - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
You are right, BUT,1. Most manufacture dont tell their Customer what SSD controller they used either.
2. And therefore no SSD performance characteristic are given,
3. They have their own OEM Gfx Parts Number as well.
People dont care because false advertising are being done much wost by other companies.
Andrew Rockefeller - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
You'd have enjoyed the Australian advertising for the iPad 1. They refer to the A4 processor as "crazy powerful". It's not as much misleading as it is completely meaningless. Apple store staff are trained to use such meaningless terms. My favorite is "funnest". It's not a real word, but it implies a high degree of fun. They are not resposible for providing a product that is fun, nor more fun than other products as there is no legal definition and the implication itself is subjective. Therefore they have no liability to supply the implied expectation.BlendMe - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
As you said, these terms are meaningless. That's why you can't really say if they are true or false. But when Apple advertises that the iPad lasts 10 hrs, then it really does.The "false advertising" claim, was as far as I know, for shorter App load times in the ads than in real life. And that really was nitpicking, because every advertiser does it.
FaaR - Sunday, April 17, 2011 - link
"And they could put an actual brick in it and people would still buy it."But you can bet your ass it will be low-profile, high-gloss, antiscratch and oleophobic-treated bricks!
Please... That's just stupid. And other manufacturers don't list detailed specs of the contents of their PCs, because they CAN'T. They buy stuff in bulk from any number of suppliers, you'll get what they put into your HP, Dell, whatever just like with Apple.
You're just a hater, and that's all.
Spazweasel - Monday, April 18, 2011 - link
Yet another Apple-hater screed.Integrators change components all the time. You know very well that other PC manufacturers like HP and Dell change their bill of materials on a given model all the time, and don't disclose things like the manufacturer of their WiFi chipsets.
"False advertising"? Apple claims to give you an SSD of a certain size. They do not claim any particular manufacturer of any particular component, nor do they owe you a list. They also don't say who manufactures their screens, track-pads, or other major components. Apple computers are not kits.
And no, people would not buy it if it had a brick in it. This contempt for people who don't lurk PC tech websites has to stop. It's one of the reasons why the stereotype of "comic book store guy" exists, and why the rest of the world looks at techies as Asperger's poster-children, and ignore them when it comes time to pass laws or set company policies. Having a black T-shirt, cold-cathode glowies in your PC case, and a Front-242 CD doesn't make you master of society.
Why doesn't Congress listen to techies on subjects like copyright and electronic monitoring? Could it be because of how techies present themselves?
Penti - Monday, April 18, 2011 - link
They are just bog standard Intel, Broadcom components and LG TFT-panels nothing sub standard about that, neither is there really any substandard parts available. It's not like you will get a specific RAM-chip in any other OEM machine or something like that. Neither does it matter when all it does is running by-spd. Tech specs are clear, you know what cpu you get, how much ram in what speed and what GPU. You know you will have your broadcom wireless, minidisplayport and Intel thunderbolt and that you don't have to choose the camera as option and so on. Nothing unclear about buying a mac if you choose to do so. Intel platforms are usually what the consumer wants :)Sure they sell lifestyle instead of hardware in ads but so does the competitors which generally don't advertise a specific product to begin with. You have to choose carefully within a lineup of the OEMs products to get what you want.
NCM - Monday, April 18, 2011 - link
B3an writes: "And they [Apple] could put an actual brick in it and people would still buy it."I take it that you're unfamiliar with the aphorism that it's "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
thatch - Monday, April 18, 2011 - link
Where do you live? Haiti ?Apple has by far the best reputation for quality and service in the industry. Don't take my word for it - read the reviews of its products. They don't have people waiting in line at their stores because they make shoddy products or advertise falsehoods. Their customers are smart and will pay for quality. Apple doesn't have 60 billion dollars in cash because they have stupid customers.
MrTroy - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
"Their customers are smart and will pay for quality. Apple doesn't have 60 billion dollars in cash because they have stupid customers."Actually, when someone owns an iPhone and uses it purely for texting and calling... I'm not going to call that stupid, but I'm going to come very close.
appliance5000 - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
I don't think people would buy it if a brick was inside - nope ,I'm pretty sure that's a mistaken assumption.ImSpartacus - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
I can't wait to see mSATA SSDs in full sized laptops, especially ultraportables.Full-sized laptops would rock if they could use a ~64GB mSATA SSD for boot and a ~320GB HDD for storage. They might even maintain enough space for a disk drive!
Gobbledock - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
You want a Thinkpad X220 with microSSD option.ImSpartacus - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
I don't like the lower resolution. 768 vertical pixels just doesn't do it on a computer like that. I could live with it on a netbook, but I need to do occasional Office work on my laptop. I need more than 768 vertical pixels to fit the enormous ribbon and what not.I think I would actually give up the IPS display if I could get a 1600x900 12.5" screen. For typical productivity work and web surfing, it would be worth it.
Otherwise, I love the mSATA SSD option. I was rather bummed out when the X220 didn't launch with such an option.
ch0p - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
You won't have to wait long! Thinkpad X220 will be available with 80 GB mSATA SSD plus a 320 GB HDD in the 2.5" drive bay. Lenovo says availability is April 2011. Rumors point to Monday 4/18.Gobbledock - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
However you have to sacrifice a bit of style to get more substance (and an up-to-date processor!)ImSpartacus - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
No, you actually GAIN a bit of style when you upgrade to the Thinkpad..)
KPOM - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
Except Lenovo insists on sticking with the outdated Trackpoint. It was innovative in the 1990s. It's 2011. I switched to a Mac (a Rev A MacBook Air, actually) in 2008 and don't see going back. Apple figured it out with the trackpad and others still haven't caught up, though Samsung is close.Let's face it. Apple is rarely first to market, but they define its direction right now. There were ultraportables before the MacBook Air, but the Rev D made the category mainstream. I give credit to Apple for sticking with the product even after lackluster sales in the first 2.5 years and 3 revisions.
ananduser - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
Apple does not sell by tech specs alone. Apple is the only company in tech that has a rabid hard core following that stuck with them through thick and thin. Good for them for creating this image for themselves but it is false to say that Apple somehow sold more ultraportables than previous ones from other brands just because they were inherently better in some way.KPOM - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
However, my point was that the MacBook Air really didn't start selling well until the latest version, which has substantially better specifications than its previous versions (apart from the CPUs, which are unchanged). Therefore, it wasn't just Apple's "rabid hard cord following" that sold ultraportables. It was a good design, including decent components. For the average user coming from a hard drive, whether they get the Samsung drive or the Toshiba drive that runs "only" 85% as fast as the Samsung, they will likely experience a significant performance boost.Gobbledock - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
I've had a 128GB SSD in the HDD bay and a 2.5" HDD in the Ultrabay of my T400s for the last couple of years. A great combination. Now with microSSDs you do not need to sacrifice the optical drive to have the best of both worlds in the non-ultraportable machines.OS - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
i wouldn't want dual ssd and hdd in a notebook, it would make your battery life worse and you would lose the shock, impact benefit of ssdthat kind of setup would basically preclude the thinnest and lightest designs also
solipsism - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
That makes no sense.Kristian Vättö - Sunday, April 17, 2011 - link
The HD can be se to go to sleep mode after 2 minutes of inactivity for instance. That way it won't suck your battery unless you actually access the HD.You would still gain some of the shock benefit of the SSD since you can choose what data to put into the SSD. You are right that the HD would be as vulnerable as it has always been but some of your data would be in the more resistant SSD.
It makes no sense to put SSD+HD combo into MacBook Air but in a normal laptop like the MacBook Pro it would make sense, at least in my opinion. SSD prices are still too high, so OEMs can't replace HDs with similarly sized SSDs without a huge price increase.
vision33r - Sunday, April 17, 2011 - link
Tiring to see the usual barrage of Apple hating posts and very few objective comments.A lot of companies like Samsung and HP lately have copied Apple's product and marketing strategies but failed on delivering the actual goods and services.
Take the newest Samsung ultraportable notebook, they tout it as a Macbook Air competitor and charges more than the MBA. Samsung up to today has yet to improve their reliability and tech support, with an Apple product. You get a real English speaking customer support person on the phone and you never get bounced around and get results in one call.
I'm tired of HP, Dell, and even Toshiba tech support where you get bounced around 2-3 people on the phone and get nowhere until you threaten them.
OCedHrt - Monday, April 18, 2011 - link
Sounds like what Sony had in the Z series laptop since Z11. Which was, uh, quite a while ago.And they are Samsung MMCRE28GQDXP-MVB drives for 64 GB. They may be different but this is what they look like: http://img144.imageshack.us/f/dsc00924c.jpg/
Sure looks like a SSD blade to me.
JasperJanssen - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
They are very different. That's a 1.8" ZIF form factor, ie an iPod drive.Funny how even that tech was developed by Apple, incidentally -- 1.8" drives existed, but like in the first iPods, they used a PCMCIA II form factor, with PATA over the connector. The ZIF form factor was developed for later iPods because the PCMCIA connectors were way too expensive to only use once, during assembly, or maybe twice during repair. Also, too large, lots of useless plastic. Presumably these are a SATA ZIF variant rather than PATA, I should hope. Z11 isn't that old.
Going by the ruler visible, the formfactor is 85x48 mm, and mSATA varies in length but is always 30 mm wide. So basically the Air mSATA size is about 1/2 to 2/3 the area of the Vaio Z SSD area. Some other mSATAs are much smaller: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4078/intels-ssd-310-...
gseguin - Monday, April 18, 2011 - link
When is the last time you've bought a wooden chair and asked about the brand of glue, or even the maximum supported weight for that matter?To 95% of buyers, the brand of SDD does not matter, and detracts to the sale. You want the customer to focus on the chair's(notebok's) general build quality, worksmanship, color and design.
For the other 5% (us), we feel cheated whenever a brand changes a feature underneath the hood or doesn't spill the beans on the details.
If customers want to be better informed, there needs to be new scales to clearly mark a single sum number appreciation. 'Both of these are class 3 SSDs on the Anand scale'... this is the same for displays... I really have a hard time understanding which notebooks have adequate displays without comming to anand, so how would my grandfather feel?
adhigadu - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - link
May be apple changed the ssd from toshiba to samsung due to limited supply of toshiba memory due to japan disaster. we have to remember they might be using all the tashiba flash memory for the apple portables like iphone , ipad due to huge demand..macbookair2 - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
I'm thinking of getting a macbook air, is there any way I can know beforehand what chipset is used?