Real Question: Why does the MBP 13 and 15 come with a 5400 HDD? Much impact?

I know these machines are really speedy and superbly made and I want one. I'd prefer the 15 inch but the 13 inch is cheaper --- tough decision. (Primarily price.)

I was wondering how these could be so fast (OS X?) with a 5400 HDD and why Apple uses this? (Compared to 7200.) I've read that i7s and even i5s like "to play" with 7200 HDDs. How did Apple manage to overcome this? Any why --- quieter, more reliable, better battery life? Thanks!

P.S. Any thoughts on the 13 inch vs. the 15 inch appreciated. I do want the 15 inch screen size and 6750 card. Once again, tx. for quick reply.

 

The 13" and 15" MBPs are Apple's top selling models. Actually, the 13" MBP is Apple's most popular MacBook and that is the one that sells the most. They can sell more for a slightly lower price if they use a 5400RPM hard drive. They could slap a 7200RPM HDD in each of those but that would also equate to a price increase, that is why Apple offers them as an option upgrade.

However, after going from a 5400RPM HDD to a 7200RPM one, I must say that there is much hype over nothing. I never really noticed a difference between the two in day to day activity. In fact, even when I clocked them, programs opened at about the same speeds on both hard drives. The major upgrade was installing an SSD in my 13" MBP. That makes programs load in 2-3 seconds and it takes a full 12 seconds for OS X to boot. I feel that any upgrade between a 5400RPM HDD to a 7200RPM HDD is going to be minor especially compared to an SSD. Others may disagree but I am just speaking from my personal opinion.

As for the whole 13" vs 15" debate, go with whatever one fits your budget and comes with what you want. I went with the 13" because it was less expensive, I didn't need a quad-core processor, and the smaller form factor means that it is more portable. I can easily throw it in my backpack along with a few books and not really notice too much of a difference. I would have to take out a book or two if I wanted to haul around the 15" MBP (which is also surprisingly light). I also use my MBP a lot at home hooked up to my 1080p HDTV so I use the 13" display only when I am on the go.

Personally, I think it would be better to buy a 13" MBP, put a higher end SSD in it, and maybe upgrade the RAM if you are really worried. For everyday activities, you won't notice a difference between the 13" and 15" stock models in terms of performance. The 15" will perform better when you start adding in extreme multi-tasking but I have done quite a bit on my 13" MBP all at once without it slowing down so I hate to see how many programs have to be open in order for the quad-core in the 15" MBP to start becoming relevant.

So, unless you are going to do some type of extreme HD video editing, complex photo editing (requiring multiple cores), or gaming, you really aren't going to need anymore than what the 13" MBP offers in terms of hardware. The display size is all a personal preference and in this case, more is better but it also makes for a larger, heavier unit.

 

All hard drives are so slow.. there is little difference in a 5400 and a 7200 ... compared to running a SSD which is lightning compared to any hard drive. If you want speed, you go for a SSD, otherwise the differences are negligible.

 

I actually do think I could notice the difference between a 5400 and a 7200 rpm HDD speed-wise in my MBP (both the stock and the replacement were Hitachi). It wasn't night and day, but I thought it booted faster and loaded big programs like games a bit faster. However, I can also definitely notice the noise difference. It's not that the 7200 is loud, it's that it's not as silent as the 5400. So I suspect that's a big part of the decision. The 5400 fits in more with the refinement-over-absolute-performance approach of Apple.

For contrast, with my Vaio, since the cooling fan at idle is a bit louder than the MBP's fan at idle (it's quiet but noticeable, whereas the MBP's fan is basically silent at 2000 rpm), I never notice the HDD noise. But I can pick out the HDD noise when the fan is idling in the MBP, and maybe Apple knows that some of its customers wouldn't like that.

As for the price, the price difference to Apple between a 500 GB 5400 RPM and a 500 GB 7200 rpm is so negligible, and the profit margin on the MBP is so broad, that I can't imagine that cost savings is the motivation. The MBP clearly isn't built with a "cut a corner to save $10 here, cut a corner to save $10 there" philosophy.

 

The 15" is definitely a lot better for performance applications ~ even Matlab/Mathematica spit out calculations faster I think. Plus the graphics card helps me in Altium/Solidworks on the Windows side.

If you want to run games like SC2, the 15" is really nice. I can run SC2 on Ultra. For other games (like Windows games) you can run them with relatively good performance as well.

I like the 15" screen a lot more then a 13" screen, and the MBP 15 is really small and light weight for a 15" laptop.

The 15" vs 13" really centers on what you are doing with your laptop. If you are just browsing the web, the 15" only has a bigger screen over the 13". If you are running applications that demand power, then 15" offers a bigger benefit.

I know on my 15" I can have like 2-3 windows of chrome open and like 30-40 tabs, Skype, iChat, iTunes, Matlab, Mathematica, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, some programming IDES open and display on two monitors and my computer doesn't skip a beat. I'm not sure if the 13" can do that, it probably can though.

 

The performance gap between the MBP 13 and the MBP 15 is vast, particularly now that they have a good GPU in the base MBP 15 ( thank you Apple!!!). The price gap between the MBP 13 and the MBP 15 is not nearly as vast as the performance gap. I mean, from $1200 to $1800, you go from a dual-core i5 to a quad-core i7, from no GPU to a 6750M, and from a low-resolution 13" screen to a medium-resolution 15" screen, without adding any thickness or losing any battery life.

I really like the updated MBP 15 and I really like the MBA 13. The MBP 13, however, I just can't get excited about.

 

I think it also has to do with the heat produced as a result of a faster drive, though Apple remarkably has reduced the heat signature on its new MPBs. I have a 2011 and I remember that I could burn myself if I touched the chasis around the screen on the 2007 models doing the same stuff.

12 seconds seems a lot longer to loader OS X on an ssd, unless you are running lion. Lion, for some reason, is slower than leapord and it doesn't matter if you click off the box to not open programs at start up like they were when you shut down your computer. It seems Lion has vistanized the OS X experience.

 

I respectfully disagree. Lion runs faster and I have faster boot and application launch times than I did in Snow Leopard. I'm running an i7 iMac which I did a clean install from the start. Maybe you should check your setup.

 

I did disk repair last time, so I'll see if that improved things. Funny thing is that I took it to the Apple store because of a wireless issue, but the computer seemed to become slower than before. They did tell me that they would do a reinstall of the OS without disturbing any documents / files, but they did end up installing a new card so I wonder if what they said regarding reinstalling the OS is even true? I might end up selling this one only it is because of the really glossy screen and perhaps having no SSD in it. I put a screen protector on it, but I still have bubbles on the protector though the glare has been cut down 70-80%.

 

Not really. That is a cold boot. Snow Leopard would take about 40 seconds to boot from the hard drive and Lion took approximately the same amount of time after performing a clean install (it would take 45 seconds to boot after just upgrading). In fact, my 12 second boot time (which is something I have actually timed with a stopwatch) seems a little on the fast side as people are generally seeing 15 second boot times on SSD equipped 13" MBPs. Even 15" and 17" MBPs seem to normally boot in around 15 seconds using SSDs. However, the introduction of newer SSD technology (such as the Vertex 3) is shaving off a few seconds.

Either way, OS X still has to boot and it is a full desktop OS so I am not sure why 12 seconds seems like it is a long time when that is just a fraction of the original boot time.

 

Thanks for the info/opinions. Very helpful. 15 inches would be my favorite but have to think a bit more this week --- the matte screen would really be nice, too.

 

I got about the same time, though I don't know if me typing the password in would be considered as boot time.

 

Not only i7s and i5s, but pretty much any processor- i3, core 2 duo, whatever- will benefit greatly from an SSD. The hard drive is the slowest component in your computer. Making it faster is extremely beneficial.

As far as 5400 rpm's vs 7200, it's a relatively small trade between noise/battery and performance. I think the reliability of both would be comparable. Apple didn't do anything special to their processors to compensate for having a 5400 RPM drive. It is what it is. It works fine. The difference is not very significant, but an SSD would be a big upgrade.

 

what about the SSD hybrid drives? Any word on those?

 

Wouldn't hybrid SSD drives cut into the sale of macs that have ssd's in them?

 

Not really, just like HDDs don't cut into the sales of Macs that come equipped with SSDs. From what I have read regarding hybrid drives, they aren't really worth the price. Things load a little faster and OS X boots a little quicker but SSDs still provide much, much, much better performance. If anything, the hybrid drives that provide 64GB of storage for programs and the OS along with additional HDD space for media would be able to keep up with SSDs. The hybrid models that don't operate like that are still going to be beat by SSDs.

 

I would also pass on the hybrid drive unless the hybrid portion of the drive was large (64 GB).

It seems like a tall order to get much benefit out of 4-8 GB of SSD on a regular drive.

 

The only slight difference you will see is probably load times in games, even then, the difference is hardly noticeable.

 

New MBP 13" owner here, runs like charm. It's more about OSX being optimized than having a "slow" 5400rpm drive.