Gizmodo 
Enter your username and password.
-
posts about #macbookprosataspeeds more → 
Did Apple Downgrade the Hard Drive Controller in the New MacBook Pros?
Tip your editors:
Editorial Director:
Brian Lam | | Twitter
Editor:
Jason Chen
| AIM | Twitter
Features Editor:
Wilson Rothman
| Twitter
Senior Contributing Editors:
Jesus Diaz
| AIM | Twitter
Mark Wilson, Reviews
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Matt Buchanan
| AIM | Twitter
Adam Frucci
| Twitter
Sean Fallon
| Twitter
Jack Loftus
| Twitter
John Herrman
| Twitter
Dan Nosowitz
Chris Mascari
Kat Hannaford
| Twitter
Rosa Golijan
| Twitter
Chris Jacob
Columnist:
Brendan I. Koerner
Interns:
Don Nguyen
Kyle VanHemert
Comment Account Questions:
| posts about #macbookprosataspeeds more → |
Did Apple Downgrade the Hard Drive Controller in the New MacBook Pros? |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
06/15/09
So basically, I'm supposed to be mad about this as a matter of principal, right?
06/15/09
06/15/09
06/15/09
06/15/09
Which is generally why people still buy PCs - because they want to put clicky things in shiny slots and sparkle them up with electricity.
FUNNNNN!
06/15/09
... and this time we shall march up and down the great glass staircase at HALF THE SPEED we marched before when the scoundrels removed our beloved firewire from the 13" macbook, and we will not stop until every last mac can once again shuttle data at 3X the 100 Megabyte per second speed limit of firewire 800.
Headroom, people, it's all about headroom!
I've already contacted Lauren's agent, and she's signed on to give the keynote at 5am. Starbucks has agreed to donate coffee. Boskevv has agreed to handle the email blasts. Does anyone twitter? Our voices must be heard!
06/15/09
Casual? Hillbilly? Snob?
06/15/09
06/15/09
06/15/09
06/15/09
06/15/09
06/15/09
The new 1.5 Gigabit SATA controller allows data transfer at 150 megabytes per second.
Firewire 800 sends a max of 100 megabytes per second (firewire 400 maxes out at 50).
Neither will be slowed down by a limit of 150 Megabytes per second.
06/15/09
06/15/09
This doesn't effect read/write speeds of any hard drive that comes with the mac. It only effects speeds that exceed firewire 800 speeds by over 1.5X.
Unless you're planning on swapping out your hard drive for an SSD (which as a college student, highly doubtful), or plug it into a high speed RAID, the new slower speed hard drive controller still provides more speed than you'll probably ever use.
Yeah, it sucks that a spec gets downgraded. But the reality is the new downgraded speed is still faster than anything you'd likely throw at it.
06/15/09
06/15/09
The fastest 7200 rpm hard drive doesn't transfer data anywhere near 3.0 gb/s. The fastest any hard drive can transfer data is 127 MB/s. That's still under the speed limit of the new downgraded spec, and whatever drive you put in your laptop won't be as fast as 127 MB/s anyway.
I do audio so I need 7200 rpm drives as well, and the 1.5 gb/s controller doesn't bother me at all. It will still be faster than whatever data my hard drive is capable of moving around.
06/15/09
Its obviously an older macbook pro.
06/15/09