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Apple Intros 17" Unibody MBP, DRM-Free iTunes
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 06, 2009 01:56 PM
from the life-after-jobs dept.
from the life-after-jobs dept.
Phil Schiller delivered the keynote at MacWorld, the first after the Steve Jobs era of keynotes. Here is Engadget's live blog. The big news, predicted by many rumor sites, was the introduction of the unibody 17" MacBook Pro. As rumored, the battery is not removable, but it's claimed to provide 8 hours of battery life (7 hours with the discrete graphics): "3x the charges and lifespan of the industry standard." $2,799, 2.66 GHz and 4 GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, shipping at the end of January. There is a battery exchange program, and there is an option for a matte display. The other big news is that iTunes is going DRM-free: 8M songs today, all 10+M by the end of March. Song pricing will be flexible, as the studios have been demanding; the lowest song price is $0.69. Apple also introduced the beta of a Google Docs-like service, iWork.com.
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Behind the Scenes In Apple Vs. the Record Labels 146 comments
je ne sais quoi writes "The New York Times recently posted an article describing what really happened between Apple and the Record labels that culminated with the January 6th Macworld Keynote by Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller." Essentially they discuss a bit of a swap: Apple allowed variable pricing for songs and the industry allowed DRM free music. And apparently the iTunes homepage is a huge hit making device. Big shock.
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Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Insightful)
I was really hoping to see an updated Mac Mini.
Re:Darn... no iPhone update (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a DOCK so that people who don't want to work all the time hunched over a laptop screen but DO want the convenience and reliability of a Mac laptop can work without having to place their laptop on a stack of paper reams to get it to eye level?
Frankly, I've never understood why any manufacturer of ANY laptop, Mac or PC, would make a desktop-replacement grade laptop with no way to dock it so you can comfortably work AT A DESKTOP!
Get a clue laptop makers!
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Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Insightful)
Monitor + USB Keyboard + wireless mouse >>> Dock
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Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Interesting)
No, docks are so you don't HAVE to waste time plugging and unplugging your monitor, keyboard, mouse, external speakers, USB/Firewire devices, Etc. Just slap down (or slide in) the laptop and fire it up. Business-class laptops have had and still have this feature. For some reason home PC users and Mac users don't get that option.
I have yet to hear a logical reason why beyond "well, you can just manually plug them in." Which isn't a good reason because it doesn't address the inevitable wear and tear (and breakage) on a port that constant removal and reattachment of connectors causes.
Heck, this is why Apple swapped to the magnetic power plug! Why are the rest of the connections less important?
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Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)
Because with Apple the AirPort Express is your "dock", as most of what you're asking for can already be done wirelessly. Plug your speakers and your printer into your Express, and you're good to go the second you set your notebook down.
Use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. No wires. Do Time Machine backups to Time Capsule. No wires. Actual, physical wires are so... '80s.
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Re:Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a wireless monitor? Where you get it?
Also wireless keyboards and mice use some kind of battery. Which has a bad habit of dying at the worst time. At your office, having a monitor, corded keyboard, and mouse is not out of the realm of possibilities. Being able to go in your office/cube slide in or drop in your laptop. Turn it on and use the regular keyboard, mouse, and monitor is a very good thing. I know a few people that dual monitor their docked laptops while at work.
And exactly is a wireless network your dock? And as others have said, wireless doesn't always cut it for work functions.
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Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Informative)
Heck, this is why Apple swapped to the magnetic power plug! Why are the rest of the connections less important?
They swapped to the magnetic power plug to prevent the problem of people tripping over the power cord causing the laptop to fly across the room.
Apple does offer a close solution if you buy one of their new displays, it comes with a cable that splits to three connections for the laptop: power, display, and USB (goes to a built in USB hub).
The thing you forgot is that lots of docs were used to extend the number of ports available on the laptop, I remember one I had that contained an additional 5 ports (not including display, keyboard, mouse, and ones already present on the laptop) on the dock, so you could plug it in and get it all. There was even an option on mine to have expanded ram on the doc for the laptop to use.
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Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but does iTunes run on Linux yet?
*ducking*
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Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Funny)
I can just hear artifcats in 128 MP3, but not in 192kb MP3.
Couple more weeks with those earbuds and we'll fix that for you.
I said, COUPLE MORE WEEKS ....
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Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, not all of us Apple users have iEverything so we can play our AACs everywhere. Hell, my phone has problems with anything other than .mp3 but I wouldn't give it up for an iPhone.
You are aware that AAC is not exclusive to Apple, right? Even the Zune can play AAC-encoded files.
The parent of your post has a valid point in saying that some older players can't handle anything but MP3. But it seems to me that complaining about AAC because of Apple is analogous to saying "I'm sticking with VHS tapes because not all of us can afford those new Sony DVD players".
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Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update (Score:5, Funny)
All my music is DRM-free, that's how I was able to get it :D
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We're being weened of MacWorld (Score:5, Insightful)
Should have better video then 9600m for a $2700+ s (Score:5, Insightful)
Should have better video then 9600m for a $2700+ system come on other laptops have SLI at that price.
And $1200 to go from 4gb to 8gb?
I hope apple has a big Superbowl ad to show off the other new hardware.
Re:Should have better video then 9600m for a $2700 (Score:5, Informative)
Well, with all Apple computers...it is best to buy them with minimal RAM, and put it in yourself from 3rd party purchase. Apple has pretty much always been a rip off when having them to upgrade the ram.
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So....what about TV? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two semi-glaring points:
-What about TV show and movie purchases? What level of DRM can be expected there (I don't know level of DRM applies now, so feel free to call me a clod who's talking out of an orifice other than stdout ). The verbiage seems to very carefully mention "songs" only, no other iTunes available media.
-What about my current iTunes song library? Will the DRM magically disappear with my next update? Do I need to download my library again, (and thereby lose the totally pointless play count next to my songs? What will I do? That's how I keep score damnit!)
Re:So....what about TV? (Score:5, Informative)
-What about my current iTunes song library? Will the DRM magically disappear with my next update?
You still have to pay 30 cents per song [apple.com] (or 30% of album price) to remove the DRM on previously purchased songs.
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No more DRM on music, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Still, it's a step in the right direction, and I applaud the people over at Amazon (and everyone else selling music without DRM) for doing it first. Without that step, I'm willing to bet that Apple would have stayed with DRM on their music catalog. It looks like part of Defective By Design's Anti-DRM wishlist [defectivebydesign.org] came true.
That said, Apple is also now charging if you want to get rid of your DRM (which means upgrading to 256 kbps tracks). From Apple.com:
Yes, just $0.30 per song to get rid of the crap that we forced on you in the first place. Awful.
In other news, I was getting my updates from MacRumorsLive.com, when their feed was cracked by 4Chan. The site crashed half-way through the keynote. Here are some screen caps for anyone interested:
http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned.jpg [realfx.com]
http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned2.jpg [realfx.com]
http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned3.jpg [realfx.com]
iTunes DRM-free - But Shell Out To "Upgrade" (Score:5, Informative)
I bought three albums on iTunes this past weekend. At least one of them is DRM-laden. Colour me unimpressed, but I'm not really surprised. I don't have rose-coloured glasses on when it comes to Apple. I sometimes use iTunes when it's 3:00 a.m. and I'm hankering for new music. I fire up the Bands Under the Radar podcast and poke around until something catches my fancy. They made it convenient, so I put up with the conversion process to other drm-free formats.
"It's also easy to upgrade your iTunes library to iTunes Plus. You don't have to buy the song or album again. Just pay the 30 per song upgrade price. (Music video upgrades are 60 and entire albums can be upgraded for 30 percent of the album price.)"
Turly DRM Free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Informative)
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upgrading purchased music (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a fairly nice development. Let's not cloud it with pointless conspiracies.
BTW, Apple, by definition, can't "sell out". Thanks for playing though.
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Staying with DRM isn't pro-consumer (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry you don't like higher prices. But you finally own what you buy. If you're still concerned about ITMS's prices, you really shouldn't have been using them in the first place as they've always been outrageously expensive.
-B
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Sold out? By offering tiered pricing? Really?
In the real world, everything has different prices depending on demand. The "Everything should be 99c" thing may simplify things, but it's hardly fair, either to the labels or to us. Apple was trying to force both the record labels and customers to do something completely ridiculous in the name of simplicity, and consider "The Birdie Song" to have the same value as "Bohemian Rhapsody".
I appreciate like most of Slashdot you have a hate-on for the labels, and therefore consider anything the labels want to do as wrong, but Apple was on the wrong side here.
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
In the real world, everything has different prices depending on demand.
In the real world, products are both rivalrous and excludable. Downloaded music is neither.
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want to make the point that Bohemian Rhapsody should be free, considering it entered the moral public domain in 2003 (released in 1975, 28 year copyright term). It's high time our community codified our disdain for perpetual copyright by insisting on a moral public domain.
The Birdie Song (I had to look it up) was released in 1981, so we moral people should continue to pay for it (or better, not listen to it) until sometime later this year on the anniversary of the release date.
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, maybe not. Do you think the labels would want DRM-free music? Doubtful. My guess is that amazon only got the deal they did without DRM because Apple was doing so well and wouldn't play ball on the tiered pricing. What if the labels only could concede DRM-free music if Apple gave in on the tiered pricing? It's not an unequivocal victory but if I had to choose I'd much rather have tiered pricing and DRM-free music than DRM-ed music and non-tiered pricing. Now if they'd just let me get the songs off my ipod using iTunes and not having to resort to third party software I'll be happy.
I haven't bought a single song from the iTunes music store because of DRM, I might actually consider it now.
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
That's about what I'd expect. Karaoke songs, cover bands, independent bar bands, etc, will all probably have their stuff at $0.69. There's no shortage of that stuff on iTunes. The really old (but still not major) mainstream songs will likely be $0.99.
Everything with a bit of popularity and all the new released I'll bet will be $1.29.
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Informative)
The press release at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/06itunes.html [apple.com] claims "... in April, based on what the music labels charge Apple, songs on iTunes will be available at one of three price points--69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29--with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29."
This would seem to indicate that the average price should fall, and that there will be no $2.50 tracks.
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Re:So,no more DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that recent stats. show that less than 10% of the full catalog make 90% of the sale volume, price those at 1.29, 70% at 0.99 and the remaining 20% at 0.69 just to show some goodwill, and everyone will pay an higher price.
You will pay more, unless you really are into those rather odd songs.. ;)
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Re:17" Macbook (Score:5, Informative)
" simply cannot fathom why Apple keeps making these things without a number pad. "
Probably because the number pad prevents the QWERTY keyboard from being centered.
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Re:Battery?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Battery?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Battery?! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Bunk! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well for one, the battery compartment takes space. External shielding takes up space. Most of all, the battery has to be a certain shape to fit into and out of a laptop .
Take a look at any laptop battery. They can't be the footprint of the entire laptop because there would be no way to install it. They have to be brick shaped. By making the battery non-removable, the battery can be optimizied to take as much space internally as it needs. If you at the MacBook Air [anandtech.com], you'd see that 2/3s of the internal space of the machine is battery. You can't do that with a removable battery.
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Re:Bunk! (Score:5, Insightful)
How does the fact that it is not removeable affect its shape by 40%?
Here's a hypothetical cross section:
Traditional Laptop:
Laptop Case - Battery Case - Battery Cells - Battery Case - Laptop Case
1mm + 1m + 3mm + 1mm + 1mm
MBP:
Latop Case - Battery Cells - Laptop Case
1mm + 3mm + 1mm
Overall thickness reduced by 2mm. The "Battery" part is reduced from 5mm to 3mm, saving 40%, by not having to give the battery a redundant plastic shell.
The only way I could see that happening is if the battery was the size of a watch battery. After all, all you need to do to make a battery removeable is install some contacts (which would have to exist in some form or another anyways) and a latch mechanism (which could be just a simple screw).
Not really a valid example. Comparing the can requirements of a 1 volt battery that delivers milliamps to a 10-14Volt 1-3amp battery. The much larger and more powerful battery needs more insulation and rigidity etc to prevent it from shorting out, catching fire, exploding, etc. In the MBP this is taken care of by the laptop case. In a removable battery, the battery has to have its own suitable enclosure.
Remember "40%" may seem like a lot, but we're talking about a laptop that's only a dozen mm thick. Removing a couple mm thickness from a single part is a BIG deal.
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Re:Battery?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it depends how much volume you use having to create a bay for the battery, with walls to cut it off from internal components, then a way to hold the battery in, so tabs on one side and a mechanism on the other to latch it in (or some other metod to hold it in there), then a study connection point for the terminals inside this bay.
Now you have to engineer your removable battery to be more sturdy than an internal one only (since it has to be able to easily survive in a computer bag, or through repeated handling that an internal-only battery doesn't have to be so concerned with, since it has the external case to protect it and is not subject to removal and handling as often.
Also now, you can create a very oddly-shaped battery to fill awkward spaces that would otherwise be wasted if you had to use a more conventional shape that is easy to remove (and more difficult to damage).
So all together you have a battery that has a) less duplicated protective casing (battery itself and battery bay in laptop), b) capable of being moulded into odd shape to take advantage of extra space, c), no need for latches and other components to hold the battery in and enable it to interface with the DC board (you can just have it fixed inside the case with a smaller system, and just have a couple of flying leads and a simple IC plug to mate it to your power system - no need for quick release terminals.
As soon as these things go on sale you know someone is going to take it apart and see what they've done inside the case. 28% more volume doesn't sound outlandish when you can dispense with a lot of the compromises you have to make when the computer itself has to be designed around the battery being removable - the battery might be really thin and sandwiched very intricately around all the components, which have now been able to spread out a little since there's no defined battery bay any more.
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Re:Battery?! (Score:5, Informative)
You should look at the x-ray images they showed. You do indeed lose even more that 30% of your space. And this is pretty obvious too since the fill factor for cyllinders is on that order. They went to flat pack batteries.
So they not only made the battery last longer but it also is thinner.
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Re:Battery?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, it isn't that hard to make a user removeable battery. Just do it -- people want it. It is a freaking laptop!
I recall people complaining a lot louder when they lost their floppy drives, LPT ports, RS232, ADB/PS2, etc. Nobody's stopping you from keeping your old laptop, getting one on ebay etc.
I have the previous gen 17" MBP and have never needed to remove the battery except to upgrade RAM/HD. I'd happily trade the feature in exchange for more internal charge capacity.
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Well two ways to look at it (Score:5, Insightful)
One is that you do save some space by integrating the battery. There is a non trivial amount of extra material for making it removable since it had to be in it's own enclosure and such. So one could claim that is was done to either decrease size, or to increase capacity (by having larger cells).
The other is that this makes the device much more disposable. Apple is in the hardware market, they make their money on buying new gadgets. It would be best for them if people viewed the gadgets as disposable and simply tossed them after a few years.
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Re:Battery?! (Score:5, Insightful)
If it makes the laptop smaller and lighter, some poeple (myself included) happily will give up a replaceable battery.
Thinking back over the last 15 years for the seven or eight laptops I've owned (two Mac, the rest various brands of Linux/Windows laptops) I've bought a new battery I believe twice, both as replacements not secondary batteries.
I've never carried two at a time so I could swap one when it was dead.
Apple isn't a stupid company. They wouldn't make that change if they didn't believe that loud-mouth-whiners-aside, it would impact sales in the least.
Case in point -- they dropped Firewire from the MacBook. That means you can't use your family's DV or HDV camcorder anymore with a MacBook to use the new iMovie to edit your videos... and yet sales took off of the new laptop. That feature excluded that laptop from my consideration, but the fact that I don't like it doesn't mean it wasn't the right decision for them.
Just because you don't like a fixed battery doesn't mean "people want it" or it was a bad decision.
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Re:slashvermacment. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is extremely important that Slashdot apprise us of every new product coming from Apple Corporation, in near-realtime fashion.
Please slashdot, tell us more about Steve Jobs' health, Apple Corporation mythology, and Mac purchasing opportunities!
Usually I'd agree with you but this news about DRM is pretty important because it completely changes the dynamic of the music industry in relation to the Internet considering iTunes recently surpassed Walmart in music sales. That is clearly stuff that matters and if you can't see that you're geek license should be revoked on your way out.
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Re:Sometimes CEOs are really worth the billions. (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, the opposite happens too; HP's stock shot up by billions the day Fiorina departed. So when my dad said, "Jobs proves CEOs are worth their pay," I had to disagree. You can't generalize like that.
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Re:Karl Popper would disapprove... (Score:5, Insightful)
They stated it can be charged 1000 times. That means if you use your laptop every day you will need a new one in 2.7 years.
No, that means if you *charge* your laptop battery every day you'll need one that often (I didn't check your math, but that's not my point). If you use your laptop as a desktop replacement, as many Apple owners seem to do (especially that big honkin' 17" we're talking about), it's probably plugged-in all the time, and I'm hoping that Apple made it not recharge the battery all the time it's plugged in, so it may last much, much longer than that. It depends on how you use it. Not that I'm defending the idea of a non-removable battery (I think it's completely asinine), but let's not go overboard.
I'm more a fan of the ThinkPad way of doing things - one big main battery, with a removable optical drive that you can replace with a second battery. Now *that's* giving a user options.
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1000 recharges only drops it to 80% (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the news reports are not getting the complete picture. Apple have posted a dedicated battery page [apple.com] that talks about it in more detail. Here's the paragraph that expands on the 1000 charge info:
So it's not 1000 recharges and then throw it away!
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wrong. wrong wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
They stated it can be charged 1000 times. That means if you use your laptop every day you will need a new one in 2.7 years.
if you use it every day, including saturdays and sundays, FOR 8 HOURS A DAY, then in 2.7 years, the battery will be down to an 80% charge or 6.4 hours. Which is longer than your current 5 hour battery lasts.
I seriously doubt many users use a computer 7 days a week, soley on batteries for 8 hours a day!
finally you can replace the battery. There's just no simple pop-out mechanism. But unscrewing the case once in the life of a computer is not a big deal.
Additionally Apple care will cover the battery for 3 years-- that's not something you get on most warantee contracts.
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Re:Karl Popper would disapprove... (Score:5, Informative)
you can probably take it to a service location to have the battery changed
That's a good point, if I know that the battery can be replaced, I have no problem with the new system, but I can't buy it if I don't know for sure...
<sarcasm>No, the battery is welded to the uni-body laptop frame, to replace the battery costs $4k and your left arm.</sarcasm>
iPods, iPhones, etc. all have enclosed "non-removable" batteries that can be replaced, either through Apple themselves or through third-party replacement kits. The Apple Air laptop has a similarly non-removable battery that can be replaced (only 7 screws between you and the battery, not bad). I really don't think Apple will go to great lengths to make it impossible so it should be similar to iPods and the rest.
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