Ask About Computers Blog

Apple is rumored to be working on a highly portable computer that The INQUIRER is calling a subnote or subnotebook.

Said subnote is to weigh half as much as a MacBook Pro.

How will the notebook do that? With flash memory naturally, “rather than a hard drive”.

Read more: The INQUIRER, CNBC

It is hard to believe that the primary storage of iPods used to be hard drives. Today iPods predominantly use NAND flash for storing movies and more.

It was a tumultuous event when Apple introduced NAND flash memory in place of hard drives. Fortunes rose and fell. Memory companies did really well. Hard drive makers suffered.

Today the opposite state of affairs is in effect. Hard drive companies are doing really well, and memory makers are suffering. In spite of flash-based iPods.

However, a relatively new technology could do for computers what NAND flash did for the iPod. That technology is solid-state drives. One day computers will start to have solid-state drives, either in place of hard drives or in addition to them.

And just as Apple did to the iPod–replacing hard drives with NAND–so Apple was recently rumored to be about to do to notebooks. Apple had “plans to announce a flash-memory based MacBook Pro laptop”.

Apple of all IT companies is obsessively tight lipped over its devices under construction. CEOs from other companies, that partner with Apple, allegedly earn the ire of Steve Jobs when the CEOs divulge more than they should.

MacWorld comes in January. Maybe we will know more then.

We all know that solid-state drives are coming. We just don’t know when. Today you can buy a computer with a solid-state drive, but the technology still hasn’t really taken off.

Financial analysts don’t think that solid-state drives will firmly take hold until 2009 at the earliest. Some techies, however, think that it might happen as early as 2008. When and if Apple introduces solid-state drives, this would provide the necessary impetus to propel solid-state drives upward to the stratosphere.

In the meantime, NAND flash and the memory business is in the dumps. Manufacturers have made far too much memory, and what should be good times–the holiday season–are not. Memory is not expected to recover until the second half of 2008 at the earliest.

Solid-state drives could change all that.

Read more: Tech Trader Daily

Apple dropped Computer from its name in January.

The release of the Leopard OS was recently pushed out to October, so Apple could focus on the more imminent release if the iPhone. The last OS X upgrade was in 2005.

In spite of strong growth for the past two years, Macs still had only 4.9% of the market last year. “Windows still dominates the personal computer market”.

This means that there is still plenty of room for growth and for Macs taking numbers from the PC camp.

AP