Are Consumer Hard Drives Headed Into History?

Lucas123 writes "With NAND flash fabricators ramping up production, per GB prices of solid state drives are expected to drop by more than half by this time next year to about 50 cents. Even so, consumers still look at three things when purchasing a computer: CPU power, memory size, and drive capacity, giving spinning disk the edge. SSD manufacturers like Samsung and SanDisk have tried but failed to change consumer attitudes toward choosing SSDs for their performance, durability and lower power use. But, with the release of the new MacBook Air (sans hard disk drive), Steve Jobs has joined the marketing push and may have the clout to shift the market away from hard drives, even if they're still an order of magnitude cheaper."

Comments

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[RotateLeftByte]

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Unless you're going to use apple software there's no point in buying apple hardware.

What a load of old Tosh.

I use Mac's. I use OSX.
But I also use software from the likes of
Adobe (photoshop, lightroom)
Eclipse (Java IDE)
Mozilla (Firefox & T'Bird)
Paragon (ntfs & ext3 drivers)
Oracle (OO)

Just like I used to do with Windows.
I got fed up with Windows (Vista) getting in my way where XP/Server 2003 Didn't. Then there is all the malware and the need for AV stuff etc.
After writing software for a living since 1975 I switched 3yrs ago and have not regretted it one iota. My Mac's just work.

Last year my car was broken into and my MBP was stolen. I went out and bought a new MBP, hooked up my TimeMachine Backup and a few hours later, i was back in business. No product re-installs, no hunting for serial numbers. Nada. Zilch. All done with OOTB O/S software. Try that with Windoze. The same applies when you want to upgrade your HDD. No WGA nightmares(will it or won't it work...).
Sorry, OSX gives me a far nicer user experience. It allows me to get on with my proper job, Developing Business Software that runs mostly on Unix or Z/OS.

Re:Steve Jobs has clout

[jimfrost]

Like a bunch of others I use Firefox too, and recommend it, on MacOS X. Safari is fine these days, but for a long time I got more reliable results with Firefox and it's nice to have the same software everywhere.

The Apple tax bit is a little disingenuous. The mini is indeed expensive (but so very small and quiet and there is value in that) but above that the machines end up being pretty well price-competitive with similar hardware.

I hear "I can get a way better Dell laptop for $600" compared to a Macbook, but it isn't true. The display is crap, the build quality is worse than crap. A comparable laptop is a Thinkpad ... And the prices are damn near identical.

Last I checked that was true of all--in-ones too (not my cup of tea). The low end of the Pros are a little expensive, but by the time you're halfway up the line they're a bargain.

Mind you, it irritates me no end that there is no expandable desktop unit except at the high end. On the other hand, the G5 Quad I use for photography is five years old in a couple of weeks and still going strong. Typical Windows desktop lives (and Linux for that matter) are no more than 3 years before it becomes difficult to expand the box enough to run the latest software.

None of that is whoy I buy Macs though. My time is valuable. I spend almost zero time maintaining Macs. No malware. No weird-ass registry issues that are only solveable by rebuilding the machine. Back-ups using in-the-box software that are unobtrusive and restores that are fast and painless. Basic software that works at least reasonably well, and often extremely well, without having to buy anything extra.

I use and manage all of the versions of Windows manufactured in the last decade regularly (some much more often than the Macs). I find it telling that in order to make it run smoothly, reliably, you have to spend hundreds on aftermarket software, and recovery from malware is painful beyond belief if you don't have a recent image. Even migrating to a new box is painful. Dealing with these things costs time and money, and the problems are all but nonexistent on Macs. (Many are nonexistent on Linux too; I make heavy use of Linux for development and on servers. Great bang for the buck.)

From a consumer point of view Macs are a way better deal. Not so much in business given the poor bulk management tools and Apple's legendarily bad business-class hardware support. Remember, though, that many of those tools exist primarily because it was impossible to manage the fragile Windows infrastructure without stuff like fast re-imaging. Windows breaks way more often than anything else and is the least repairable without rebuild system I have ever seen (and that's saying something, I wave worked with a lot of weird stuff).

Someday you should get me going about the design of the Windows VMM amd NTFS; the apathy Microsoft shows toward improving basic function is mind-boggling. There is no reason I should have to defrag drives regularly, that was a solved problem in 1985, for instance, and Microsoft could have all but eliminated it with trivial (and backward compatible) changes to the block allocator. Drives me nuts.