MacBook Pro Specs Leaked, iPad Event March 2 368
Stoobalou updates us on the various Apple rumors, saying, "Snaps of Apple's imminent update to the MacBook Pro range have been leaked, confirming most of the rumors doing the rounds." Light Peak looks like it will be called Thunderbolt. The 13" will feature 2.3ghz Dual Core i5s and 4 gigs of RAM. In addition to the MacBook Pro rumors, the iPad update rumors have been confirmed, with
invitations going out to the formal announcement on March 2.
hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Need to drop the 13" Pro (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet it's some marketing ploy from Apple also when we have photos of sick Steve Jobs in front of a cancer treatment facility.
It's also a marketing ploy when all the news site can't shut up about a smaller 6 inch iPad, and a "cloud iPhone that's half the size of iPhone" knowing full well it's bullshit.
And it's marketing ploy when random outlets report that iPad 2 will be late for months because of production issues.
Or maybe it's just that everyone can't stop reading about Apple, and therefore there's huge pressure for a leak to occur.
The reason leaks don't occur in Oracle or Computer Associates is, no one gives a damn. And leaks do occur at Microsoft and Adobe too, but again, no one gives a damn.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
But...but...I need to know about everything Apple!!!
Oooooh. I just heard that Steve Jobs had a bowel movement! zOMG!!!!!1111eleventyone
I'm so sick of the Apple news posted around here! So I'm gonna keep bitching about it over and over again on every Apple thread so this ad supported site knows just how annoyed I am! When Apple stories often reach 200+ comments, they'll surely back down one day!
Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we stop calling them leaks and start calling them press releases? Nobody is fooled by this anymore.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
What's interesting is that it seems Apple's product announcements are the only remaining tech that gets everyone talking, whether pro or against, people do talk about it. Dell might have released half a dozen new systems last week, but who'd know? I was in a tmobile store the other day and saw a number of Android-based handsets that I hadn't heard of. And even though I consider myself a geek, I have very little idea what the Xoom is, other than a Motorola tablet, and more to the point, why should I care?
I'm not saying that we should care about Apple product announcements, but Apple seems to be the only ones who can generate any significant buzz about whatever it is they're announcing.
power icon? (Score:1, Insightful)
Who's the marketing dipstick that decided to demarcate the lightpeakthunderboltwhatever port with the most recognizable symbol for power worldwide, the lightningbolt? Cause that's not gonna be confusing as hell for the general audience.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that we should care about Apple product announcements, but Apple seems to be the only ones who can generate any significant buzz about whatever it is they're announcing.
The hype can get out of hand, but I think Apple more or less earns this exposure. The reason is Apple is one of the only companies that really puts effort into design.
Now, I say this despite not being much of a consumer of Apple products. My desktops (work and home) run Linux, though my laptop is a (4-year-old) Macbook Pro. But even though I have many reasons I don't like Apple products (lockin, etc.), I recognize the serious effort and skill they put into designing not just a product, but a successful user experience.
One of the reasons journalists and bloggers and design professionals and design enthusiasts all watch Apple closely is that they are one of the only companies that actually carries a design through to its full conclusion. Other manufacturers can, and do, come up with innovative ideas and the beginnings of a good design, but they all ultimately compromise on that design (usually for money). Think of something as simple as putting all those "Optimized for Windows" and "Intel inside" stickers on a laptop: I suspect those were not there in the original artist renderings; they are a corruption of the design. The crapware that is loaded is another corruption. Trying to get the price down to competitive levels requires all kinds of compromises in terms of build details, quality, etc. Edges don't meet quite flush because of some engineering or price constraint (not because it makes the device more pleasing to the user). UI elements are not very responsive because it would have taken too long to optimize that code. They don't worry about there being a subtle (but satisfying) 'click' when plugging-in a cable. And so on. (Note that I'm using "design" as shorthand for "design of the user experience"... obviously these companies have successfully engineered/designed products for a certain constraint-set.)
Apple makes its fair share of gaffes, and it's not obvious that all of their design choices are worth the premium costs. (Again, I mostly don't buy their stuff.) But as far as test cases to ponder, their products are the best around. One can really evaluate the pros and cons of a touch interface now that Apple put serious effort into designing a UI that is touch-centric (previously most touch interfaces were either crappy overlays on top of mousing UI (e.g. Windows tablets) or just terrible to begin win (e.g. a kiosk touch-UI)...).
So, in short, by having a focused vision and seeing it through to the end, they create products that are not ugly mixtures of compromises (where when things don't work you're left wondering if it's because it was a bad idea or poorly executed); their products are consistent and cohesive (so that you can evaluate a given design choice, and copy/improve/ignore it as needed in designing other products). Even if you don't like (and don't buy) their stuff, it's worth watching what they produce.
Re:Not fiber? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a box full of various adapters that Apple forces me to buy every time they change display interconnect to the 'next best thing'. Between the computers changing ports and the display manufacturers trying to keep up, the permutations can become large. Those adapters are $25 each from Apple.
On the other hand, I can still plug in the same USB devices I did from 1998.
People have a legitimate gripe here.
Apple is silent, while other talk up nothing. (Score:5, Insightful)
When Apple talks, it actually means something, unlike the empty promises made my other technology companies.
It's because Apple doesn't announce products months or years before they are released. They only announce them when they are sure they'll have a product to ship. All you hear from other companies is hyped up initial announcements followed by delays and retracted features. From Apple you hear about new products that will actually ship as promised. It's not because Apple is better at shipping quality products on schedule (though they are). It's because they don't go on blabbing about every new technology they have in the works years before a working prototype has even seen the light of day.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is it that you have to consider people idiots for not agreeing with your opinions? How is being a specwhore objectively smarter than liking clean design and a good experience?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
That makes total sense, if you're still living in 1995 and bitter about not being able to build your own clone.
In today's world, the iPad is somehow the cheapest game in town, the iPhone is competitively priced, and the computers are flying off the shelves because by now, everybody knows somebody who won't stop going on about how much easier his life got since he bought one. (I realize that the latter statement is one completely alien to the crowd here, as no /. would deign to waste his time on mere mortals. ;-)
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
I can get a nominally better-equipped laptop for cheaper, but it doesn't actually perform better. I've never found a Windows-based laptop yet that doesn't take at LEAST 30 seconds to wake up from sleep or hibernation, and it's usually a minute or more (especially after a system gets gunked up with all the usual crappy drivers at auto start programs). My MacBook Pro wakes up in the time it takes me to type my password. As soon as the screen appears (which is immediately after typing my password), it's ready to use. This fact alone has saved me hours of annoyance in the past year I've had it.
Also on Windows machines, I've had plenty of problems with little glitches here and there, unexplained slowdowns, screen freezes, you name it. With the Mac, those problems have been drastically reduced. Yeah, the Windows machine specs out nicer, but that doesn't mean much outside of test-bed environments, looking at performance from a clean install on a pristine new computer.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Because each one of us a human, and colour and various other aesthetic properties matters to nearly all humans. It might be fashionable in some parts of geek culture to outwardly reject such things but I suspect those who do are doing so against their nature.
2. A confident indivual doesn't care what choices in computing devices others make. Not even enough to compose a post deriding those choices.
3. "Worth the money" is entirely subjective. I won't argue that I have too much money, but most all of my friends prefer some Apple product over its competitors. Either the phone or the music player or one of the laptops. We all do this not for the reasons you believe, but with our eyes wide open to know exactly what it is we are buying, from the processor to memory to storage to colour. It isn't that we want or need to spend money to impress anyone. Quite the contrary: if there were something better we would simply buy it.
But regardless, your concern over how we spend our money falls on deaf ears. We didn't ask you before we made it and we certainly won't start now.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the Windows machine specs out nicer, but that doesn't mean much outside of test-bed environments, looking at performance from a clean install on a pristine new computer.
You cannot buy a pristine new windows laptop at this time. Only offered by Apple. Everything else is stuffed with bloatware by the manufacturer.
It's called industrial design (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not talking about color, we're talking about carrying half a kilo less than a similarly specced laptop, having a well thought out system of interchangeable plugs for the power adapter so you can easily bring it to another country, having a high quality LCD panel, having a backlit keyboard, having a solid aluminium enclosure that doesn't twist when you open the lid, having a computer that wakes from sleep in less than the time it takes to open the lid, having a power connector that automatically releases if you trip over the lead, having a nice wide trackpad that you can use gestures like two-finger tap for right click and two-finger drag to scroll. It's called industrial design. It's something people who have money are willing to pay for.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever read the "Mythical Man Month"? Nine women can't have a baby in a month, and you can't put every possible feature into a new product.
If every product waited to release until they could include all technologies it would ever have, well, we'd never actually see products due to all of the new stuff that gets built.
Like them or not, Apple releases a product that people are free to buy or not. And then, quite predictably, the ones that sell get near-annual refreshes to add features to them -- smaller, better, faster, more storage, touch screen. I've lost count of how many generations of each of the kinds of iPods there are.
And, really, Microsoft has been bragging about coming out with an iPad killer since about two weeks before the product launched. To the best of my knowledge, that doesn't exist yet.
At least Apple actually released something.
Re:It's called industrial design (Score:2, Insightful)
It's something people who have money are willing to pay for.
Then stop defending Apple as some superior user experience and admit you actually have money to burn, thats why you bought it. Ive used tons of different laptops with equal or better user experience than Macs. Apple just gives you a better looking setup with some extra ergonomics. You cannot possibly tell me that they are charging whats fair for their products when they make more profit per PC than any of the other manufacturers.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
3. As a techwhore, I know enough about Apple's products to realise they're not worth the money being asked for them, unless it was important to me that an electronic gadget needed to match the outfit I was wearing on that particular day.
You're obviously trolling, but seriously, where does this idiotic meme come from? Macbooks are white or unpainted. Meanwhile, over at Sony [sonystyle.com], the Vaio Fall Collection (this is no joke) are available in black, gold, glossy carbon, bordeaux red, sangria red, striped, wavy black, wavy white, arabesque black, arabesque gold, crocodile black, and crocodile pink. FUCKING. CROCODILE. PINK. So you're clearly an asshat who doesn't know the first thing about accessorizing your computer to your wardrobe, since you should obviously be running Win7 if you have to match your PC to your boots. And by the way, you'll pay as much or more for a Vaio as you will for a Macbook.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and if the Apple branding on your devices isn't important, then how about scratching off the little Apple logos on each one then?
Seriously?
Why don't you modify your bios logo? Why don't you change all the kernel text to remove Linux from it so is unrecognized able? Did you remove the manufacture logo and identifying marks from your car?
You don't 'scratch off the little Apple logos' because theres no reason too, and the idea that you would bother doing such a thing shows that you're really the one concerned with logos.
Your sig gives a clear warning that your posts are from an irrational Apple hater. I realize you probably think you're being witty and showing us how smart you are, but it doesn't. It just shows your more concerned with raging against the machine than doing anything practical. Basically it lets us know your opinion doesn't really matter unless you're trying to compare your differing levels of douchebaggery.
Re:It's called industrial design (Score:4, Insightful)
I think my macbook's backlit keyboard is pretty cool. Sometimes, like right now I'm in a dimly lit room and I don't feel like turning on a light. I've had many friends say that they wish their laptop's keyboard was backlight.
Each to their own.
Re:It's called industrial design (Score:4, Insightful)
No, he has confirmed that the feature is cool because it provides functionality, not because it's pretty. ABS in a car is pretty cool too, and it used to be something you had to pay extra for -- was it a status symbol, or a safety feature? Might it have been both?
I could argue that I have never needed the oxygen mask in an airplane. That doesn't mean that I don't think it's functional. A lighted keyboard would be cool -- not in a "Type R" kinda way, but in a "this is useful" kinda way.
Just because you have never had occasion to use a feature, doesn't make it a cosmetic feature.