A Flash-Based MacBook? Don't Bet On It

It's dumb, dumb, dumb to predict what Apple's going to do, since even the craftiest of pundits are so often so very wrong. I've promised myself in the past I'd stop doing it, but I can't resist: I think the current scuttlebutt about a super-thin MacBook with a flash hard drive debuting at next month's Macworld Expo is unlikely to become reality.

Flash drives are still really expensive and really limited in capacity compared to their platter-based brethren: Samsung's 64GB model goes for about a thousand dollars, while a 250GB traditional drive goes for maybe $150 or so.

That price differential would make it tough for Apple to sell an ultralight flash MacBook for the $1500 that's currently being rumored. But cost wouldn't be the big gotcha: A 64GB Mac notebook would simply be cripplingly underpowered for today's applications, such as storing music and movies or running Windows courtesy of Boot Camp or Parallels. Who wants a MacBook with a drive that's tinier than that in an iPod Classic? Maybe some folks, but probably not me.

What's more, Apple wouldn't have to use flash to build a really cool, really sleek MacBook. If Toshiba can build a 2.4-pound machine with both a traditional hard drive and an optical drive, so can Apple. That's the Mac portable I'd like to buy, and I think there's a good chance that something like it will arrive shortly.

Like I say, predictions about Apple tend to be wrong, especially when they're based on preconceived notions about what's possible and/or sensible from a technology standpoint. The company's been known to ship surprisingly cheap, surprisingly capacious flash-based products before, as it did with the original iPod Nano. Once it can put a 128GB flash drive in a Mac notebook and sell it for $1500, such a laptop would make perfect sense. And who knows--it's possible that it's struck a deal with someone like Samsung to make that doable.

But I'm guessing not, or at least not for Macworld Expo...which I'm looking forward to attending and blogging about right here.

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