<p><pre><code> "Fusion Drive might be the most interesting announcement
today for our day-to-day computing. Similar SSD-as-cache
arrangements have been kicking around in the Windows PC
market for a while, and the Seagate Momentus XT brought a
large cache to laptop drives a few years ago, but these
have only brought mixed success and mediocre improvements so far.
With tight OS integration, larger performance gains are
possible."
</code></pre>
As someone that has used Momentus XTs in a few different systems, they make a very significant day to day difference when compared to a non-cached standard HDD of similar RPM. The improvement clearly isn't the same as a true SSD, but is is very noteworthy, especially given the price per GB of these drives versus true SSDs.<p>Also, I don't see how having "tight OS integration" will improve this sort of drive. The drive already knows which sectors you are accessing the most and can optimize the cache for that, how is involving the OS supposed to make a significant difference here?
I can't believe they upgraded the iPad to version 4? This seems like only yesterday that the iPad 3 was announced.<p>Also Marco says at one point about the six different versions of the macbook pro for only 3 different size points. Is this a sign of the Jobs touch being lost?<p>The iPad mini is different in that the Nexus 7 was the first sub ipad size tablet to make a mark before Apple. This won't make a huge difference to mini sales, but it does reek off Apple chasing tails.
The 13" Pro can't be the perfect choice without discrete graphics. The Intel HD 4000 may be the best Intel graphics to date but a 4 megapixel display is going to bring that chip to its knees.
What would be great is if Apple stops selling spinning platters all together and just sold SSD drives. This would probably drive the price point of SSD down further and more quickly. I put an OWC 6g extreme SSD drive in my mbp and it felt like a whole new 10x faster machine. I'll never go back to spinning disks.
<i>"The Mac Pro will continue to lose customers to the iMac and Retina MacBook Pros"</i><p>I suppose that's true, but the point that appears lost on Apple is the number of customers that they're losing to other PC manufacturers altogether.<p>I really do wish they'd either kill the product so that we all know it's not part of their landscape moving forward, or upgrade it already.
> I don’t mind the lack of a Retina screen in the first version. As we can see from the iPad 3 and 4, lighting and driving a 2048x1536 screen just can’t be done well in a small, thin, light, inexpensive device yet. Maybe next fall, or maybe the year after that.<p>This is being presented as though the only two choices were "retina" or 1024x768, which is obviously not true. I understand Apple's rationale for using the previous generation's resolution, but it means they shipped a device which is inferior to the competition in at least one measurable way. I'm not a spec-driven purchaser. I don't care that the iPad mini has less RAM or fewer cores than the Nexus 7 (disclosure: I own this). But a tablet's display is a critical part of the experience and I find Apple's decision here to be a let down.
The retina MacBook is heavier than I expected. Appreciate chopping out an optical drive doesn't magically shave 1kg off but I'm still slightly disappointed, despite placing an order regardless.