New Apple MacBook Pro Reviewed 627
adeelarshad82 writes "As fate would have it, an Intel chipset glitch delayed shipments of almost every laptop manufacturer, save one. Apple, which has typically been last in transitioning to new technology, is now among the first to launch laptops with Sandy Bridge. The Apple MacBook Pro (Thunderbolt) is the fastest laptop out there. Powered with a Quad-core Core i7 processor and AMD Radeon HD 6750M, the MacBook Pro has a lot of fire power to offer. Unfortunately though it is still a bit expensive and there is a lack of Thunderbolt devices to take advantage of the new interface."
Uh oh (Score:2, Insightful)
It's bad news when TFS is a troll.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, no kidding. This would be the Apple that invented Firewire, right? The Apple that brought networking to casual PC users? The Apple that killed off the floppy drive? The Apple that was first to trade old-school serial ports for USB? The Apple that was first to embrace 802.11b wireless? The Apple that was the first manufacturer to ship systems with Nehalem chips? I could do a Google search for "Apple was the first manufacturer" but what would be the point? That one sentence is so ludicrously off base, it makes me not want to read another word.
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Informative)
Apple is typically very aggressive about killing legacy things in favor of whatever new hotness they have decided on, even when customers whine about it, and they have recently been Intel's shiny launch partner of choice(so there is usually a short period of exclusivity for Intel's new hotness). They are also pretty aggressive about deciding that some feature should be 'baseline' rather than 'upgrade' at a relatively early date(this shows up with things like bluetooth today, or 802.11b back when that was optional on nastier PC laptops...) That is the yes.
The "no" is that Firewire was pretty much the last hardware standard that Apple had a major hand in. USB? Appeared on PC motherboards well before Apple ones(it was Intel's baby after all), Apple was just the first to burn the legacy options. 802.11b? All of Apple's 1st gen gear was rebadged Lucent off-the shelf stuff. Apple made it an available consumer option while Lucent was still squeezing the enterprise guys; but that was pure sticker engineering? Killed off the floppy? The first to stop offering it across the board, possibly; but you've been able to spec PCs without floppies well back into Apple's beige era. 64bit desktops? Hello AMD, 3D cards? Apple's selections are always archaic, even now that they are an Intel shop. etc, etc.
By virtue of their disinterest in coddling legacy users and low price points, Apple does, certainly, come up a lot on the "pushed technology X into ubiquity within their product line by murdering its predecessors and making it a standard option" list. However, the list of "was actually first" is substantially shorter, especially in more recent years. The list of "invented here, rather than launch partnered here" is shorter still, especially these days.
They undoubtedly do adopt-and-polish quite well; but their actual degree of pioneering needs to be kept in perspective.
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Insightful)
The claim was "last in transitioning to new technology".
Just adding the new technology and keeping the old isn't transitioning. Apple has often been first in dumping the old and hence first to transition - though really it's been due to them being small enough and being the monopoly producer so that they could much more easily. If Dell decided to make some of those changes a big chunk of their customers would just buy from HP instead, for example.
Thread creep (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting how the thread topic has slipped. When the initial criticism, "Apple...has typically been last in transitioning to new technology" was pointed out to be not merely false, but flagrantly so (Apple not only has not been last, but in terms of transitioning, they have tended to lead the pack in abandoning old tech), those looking for some excuse to pick on Apple pretend that the question was whether whether Apple was first to use new technology.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Informative)
USB? Appeared on PC motherboards well before Apple ones(it was Intel's baby after all), Apple was just the first to burn the legacy options.
USB was an obscure curiosity when Apple aggressively adopted it in the original Bondi blue iMac. I clearly remember watching the market for USB peripherals be completely driven by demand from iMac (and then other Apple model) owners at a time when PC users stayed away from the technology because it was incompatible with all their PS2, serial and parallel port peripherals. Often the place to find USB equipment was in the Apple section in stores.
802.11b? All of Apple's 1st gen gear was rebadged Lucent off-the shelf stuff.
This one I remember very well. Apple spearheaded the consumer wireless market with the introduction of the $299 Airport "UFO" wireless hub. I had wanted wireless for a while but couldn't afford it. The only other options were all so far above that first Airport price point that it was a shock to the market. The other thing Apple did to lead in consumer wireless was to make it an option in all their computers, especially in laptops, and then a standard option that you had to de-select and finally as an unremovable feature.
Killed off the floppy? The first to stop offering it across the board, possibly; but you've been able to spec PCs without floppies well back into Apple's beige era.
Maybe so, but no sane PC user did back in those days. The floppy ruled the PC data storage and transfer world well past the point when Apple users had moved on to other technologies. It took forever for PC USB boot support to be common enough to supplant the ubiquitous PC admin's emergency boot floppy.
Everything you have said is technically true but misses the whole story. Sure, Apple didn't invent the technologies you mention but Apple's influence was instrumental in getting early adoption going and building markets for them.
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Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Informative)
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Yup, there seem to be a lot of people who forget the history of USB. I got a PC in 1996 that came with two USB ports, a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, and a parallel printer. There were few USB peripherals around, and the ones that existed were very expensive or gimmicks. Then, in 1998, Apple made USB the only option, and suddenly there were loads of manufacturers trying to sell USB devices to iMac owners. If you walked around a computer store, you could spot the USB devices, because they were using the same
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Err, Apple also brought us the one button mouse, fought USB as long as it could, and everytime I go to a meeting someone yells "anyone got a displayport adapter to vga so I can use this projector?" Not to mention some of us still need serial ports on our computers, but I guess that's beside the point.
Not to mention PC makers have had the option to not install the floppy years before Apple mandated it. That AMD really brought us into the 64 bit era, and that wifi was not at all an Apple thing. Or that I ca
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sorry, but this
fought USB as long as it could
is demonstrably false.
USB 1.1 was the first iteration of USB that was actually widely implemented by a lot of manufacturers. It was introduced in September of 1998, however the original iMac was released August 15th 1998 with USB 1.1 ports as the sole method of hooking up the keyboard and mouse as well as an additional USB port. The mouse plugs into the keyboard which uses one of the ports. Please explain how Apple shipping their brand new line of computers with USB 1.1 as the sole method of hooking up a couple of required peripherals 3 weeks before it's official release equates to "fighting USB as long as they could", especially since I remember buying Dells in the early 2000's that still shipped with PS2 mice and keyboards. I still have the iMac and some of the Dells lying around here someplace...
If you want to rag on someone because you think they're a fanboy, fine, but get your facts straight.
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Insightful)
So? It's legitimate to point out that only very rarely is Apple first at anything, most of the time they prefer to wait for a market to be at a tipping point before releasing a product. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, it's just disingenuous to suggest that Apple is an innovator, it's been a good long while since they were doing much more than perfecting something that somebody else did first, which is a much easier task.
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It's where a process of change turns from a gradual mode to a very sudden one, often due to the network effect and positive feedback.
Perhaps you could read a book [amazon.com] or something? It's available in formats other than dead tree, if that's too unhip for you.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems pretty accurate to me. Most new technology (eg: CPUs, GPUs, memory types, etc) are on the market for months (at least) before Apple picks them up. They tend to keep older technology around for longer, as well (eg: Mac Mini still has a Core 2 Duo).
The rare counter-examples (eg: Firewire, Mini-DP) are rarely found outside of the Mac ecosystem.
That's before even going into the technology other vendors have that they stubbornly refuse to implement. Like, say, a docking station for their ostensibly "professional" laptops.
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Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Informative)
Because the observation is incorrect – apple tend to launch their new lines just as new parts become available – just as they've done here. With the original Core architecture, apple were releasing machines exactly as intel released the CPUs. Same with Core2, same with the Santa Rosa chipsets for them, okay Core i7 they were a bit slow on, but that was because of the mess with nVidia and chipsets (which incidentally, nVidia made *specially* for apple, and then released later as ion). And finally, with the MacBook Air, apple got intel to produce an entire new packaging for their CPUs just to fit in apple's laptop.
I dunno about you, but being the first out, or at very least one of the first, with all but one of the major upgrades is hardly what I'd call being consistently the last to transition.
He's quite right (Score:3)
When you look at Apple's tech support it is really scattershot. Some things they jump right on, and force people in to before it is ready. USB is a great example. It was real early in the development cycle, peripherals were starting to appear but it was still ramping up. Apple forced it as the only solution and made everyone deal with it.
However other things, like the C2D in the Mac Mini, which is now one of your only options for a server, they lag behind. With the release of Sandy Bridge that is two full g
Apple usually have reasons (Score:3)
Usually, there's a practical or strategic reason for these things - even if you don't agree with that reason. Apple don't want to introduce Blu-ray because they're trying to ditch the optical drive anyway (...besides, the only place I want to watch 1080p movies is my living-room TV, and flash or external HD is better for backup).
However other things, like the C2D in the Mac Mini,
...which is there because of the spat between Intel and Nvidia meaning that there were no Nvidia chipsets for the Core i, and the Mini and 13" MacBook Pro didn't have space for a di
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On the Mac It's called iUbuntu.
That sounds like a somewhat dirty double-entendre.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
By god, you're RIGHT! I read a story right here on Slashdot the other day, a news story that broke the breaking news that Ubuntu had "lost a lot of love" from "the community". And here you are, hardly a day later, confirming that Ubuntu just isn't all that.
So now, I know better than to buy some vanilla hardware and put Ubuntu on it, especially since there are these new "Sandy Bridge" processors coming out just around the corner! And (gasp!) a brand new MacBook Pro, too!
How much do you want to be that I'll be getting an offer for a pre-approved credit card in the mail on Monday with a with a limit that's almost exactly the several thousand dollars that this new MacBook Pro will cost (of course, I'll want to add enough memory so it will actually run the new version of Final Cut Pro 7 that just came out (only $999 while supplies last!)). And look at this! The introductory rate on the credit card is 5% until the end of April. I wonder if that's a better rate than I can get if I sign up for the Visa card that (wow!) is right there on the Apple website. I can get a decision in JUST 30 SECONDS!
It's almost as if Apple and Intel and Visa and Kingston and Slashdot and the Slashdot "user" that posted the story about all the "love lost" for Ubuntu could tell the future and were reading my mind to know exactly the decision I was going to make. How could I ever have even considered putting Ubuntu on last year's hardware?
God, but the Free Market Economy is a wondrous thing. It's like living in a universe where everything works in harmony, if you just can extend your credit a little...bit...more.
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I can't say I've used ubuntu much myself, I prefer SuSE, arch, Debian, or slackware. Ubuntu has always seemed a bit like Linux with training wheels.
I can't say I saw the article the GP mentioned, but I think people will find that there are those who used Linux before Ubuntu and avoid it, and those who discovered Linux through Ubuntu. Some day the training wheels come off and people try something different.
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"That doesn't sound much like trolling to me, if you consider that Apple (more specifically Steve Jobs) refuses to allow USB 3.0 or even SATA 6GB/s."
Of course they did... because they were working on getting "Thunderbolt", which is better than both. A new technology. Which they will have for a year before anyone else.
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>"Thunderbolt", which is better than both
Sure, if you want any device plugged into your expansion port to have full root access to all of your data [theregister.co.uk] If on the other hand you want to be able to know you can safely connect someone elses camera/USB type drive to your laptop without fear, then you will still want USB ports.
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No, it can't be easily fixed in software because no software is used to control it.
Incorrect, the OS can control it.
Firewire and Thunderbolt access hardware without any processor interaction or notification.
Correct.
Which means that a connected device is free to read and write to any existing piece of memory
Incorrect.
As the above-mentioned article [theregister.co.uk] says, "Intel processors offer the means to significantly rein in Thunderbolt by restricting a device's access to memory locations of the computer it's attached to. But as of now, there are no indications Mac OS X makes use of this. “With the newer Intel processors, I think it would be pretty easy” to restrict Thunderbolt's memory access, Graham tells The Reg. “I don't see any problem why they can't do it.
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Makes sense (Score:3)
I can't imagine how Macbook shipments would be affected, given the flaw only affected SATA ports beyond the first two. Presuming that SATA devices linked through Thunderbolt don't count either.
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Speculation at the time was, as seemed logical, that this was basically a reflection of the fact that all the OEMs didn't want to hold up their laptop releases for something that basically
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Most PC laptops these days have at least 3 SATA ports on them (internal HDD, internal optical, eSATA).
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I don't know which way any individual o
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It might not be just costly, it might be impossible. I can't imagine there's a lot of board space left in a 12" laptop.
Basically, Apple is getting the jump on everyone else because they offer fewer features.
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As best I can tell, you can get USB connectors that will fill exactly the same board holes as eSATAp connectors, just not making contact with the SATA signal lines
Of course how much that helps depends on which ports they chose to use for internal functionality and which for the eSATAp port.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
As you decided to use Dell as an example, I'll carry on – lets use a larger sample than your biased sample of 2:
Inspiron Mini 1018 –no eSATA
Inspiron Mini 1012 – no eSATA
Inspiron Duo – no eSATA
Inspiron z101 –no eSATA
Inspiron 14r – eSATA
Alienware M11x –no eSATA
Inspiron 15r –eSATA
Inspiron M5030 – no eSATA
Inspiron M501 –eSATA
XPS 15 –eSATA
Inspiron 17r – eSATA
XPS 17 – eSATA
Alienware M17x –no eSATA
So if by "most" you mean "less than 50% of laptops made by one of the companies that uses eSATA the most", then you'd be right... Unfortunately that's not the traditional definition of "most".
A BIT expensive?! (Score:4, Insightful)
It costs $2199 which for many means an additional $150 for the screen resolution it should have as default. Worse that $150 is the only way to get a non-glossy screen. So lets just say 2349 to get off the ground. Want a three year warranty? Considering your down 2349 its worth it to pay off the risk of that, but at 349 its 15% of the cost of the laptop.
Then you can go on with the extras beyond those two requirements. Sorry, in a day when you can buy a laptop for under 399 these premium laptops are absurd. I know you get what you pay for, but you really don't. The price difference stops somewhere well south of this things price point. This is like saying you need a Porsche for your commute because parking at Starbucks in a Chevy is so not your perceived status.
Don't get me wrong, I have an iMac, but I can at least see some of the value in its 27 inch screen. I can't find the value in their laptops. I know other companies make expensive laptops but damn, there are near equivalents for 90% of the apps most people will run for half this price let alone a quarter.
Amazing laptops in the range of workstation prices (looking at the real Mac Pros - the tower units).
Re:A BIT expensive?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Do some people buy MacBook Pros as status symbols? I'm sure they do. But some of us work in pro video. There are people who legitimately need high-end laptops, and a lot of them, because of Apple's strength in the creative pro market, use Macs.
With quad core processors and tons of external bandwidth over Thunderbolt, these new MBPs are game changing for pro video, or will be once a couple of TB devices hit the market. For instance, TB is fast enough to hook up both a RAID capable of handling multiple 1080p video streams and a video interface capable of doing uncompressed HD output to a broadcast monitor. This makes these pretty much the first laptops ever (outside of crazy hack jobs, maybe) that can plausibly replace towers for working with uncompressed HD video formats. That's pretty handy.
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If you're going to be chained to a RAID array, why would you use a laptop when an equivalent desktop is going to be around twice as fast ?
Portability, obviously. It's a lot easier to take a laptop and a RAID box out in the field than to carry around a desktop, keyboard, mouse, monitor, monitor cables, power cables, speakers, etc.
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The idea is not to be chained to the RAID array. Get some work done with the RAID array, copy the file over to the laptop and take it over to the client's place for demonstration. Sure, you could also do the same with a desktop and a laptop in combination, but having a single device saves a fair bit of overlap.
Re:A BIT expensive?! (Score:5, Insightful)
$2000 is very, very expensive for a laptop. Period. You can get a high-quality, durable PC laptop like a ThinkPad T510 for around $900.
Amusingly, I worked at a company where those were the laptop options, Thinkpad or MacBook. The IT department kept statistics on failure rates (among other things) and their numbers lined up right about with Consumer Reports. Those high-quality, durable ThinkPads fail a whole lot more often than Macbooks. That's not to say Macbooks are a better deal for all use cases, if you keep a few extras laying around and have good backups/restore and a good repair program, but let me tell you, it doesn't take too many hours of lost work from a $100K+/year engineer to make the return on more expensive but more reliable laptops a bargain.
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I'd really have to see the data with my own eyes, as in my experience (and more than a few studies back me up on this) Thinkpads are far and away the most reliable laptops in the market, MBPs included.
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Re:A BIT expensive?! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Who needs touchpad when you have trackpoint? Touchpad is the first thing that gets disabled on on my ThinkPads...
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I'll lump any and all trackpads along because, compared to trackpoint, it's an inherently deficient concept, and for a very simple reason - input device that requires you to move arms/fingers less for the same speed and precision is always better.
For the record, I have tried trackpads on Mac laptops (non-extensively - I don't see them as worth their money), and I also have a Mac Mini with their wireless trackpad thingy. They're not all that better than your average PC trackpad, except for multitouch (and th
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Sorry, in a day when you can buy a laptop for under 399 these premium laptops are absurd. I know you get what you pay for, but you really don't.
How much does that $399 laptop weigh? How thick is it? How long is the battery life?
Have you noticed that the manufacturers of those $399 laptops also sell much more expensive laptops that, at least by the very narrow logic you seem to be following, don't spec out any higher? Do you ever criticize those, or are they given immunity because they aren't of Apple manufacture?
Apple simply doesn't try to compete in the 2-inch thick, 9-pound, short-battery-life segment of the laptop market. Not everyone carries ab
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Was that the Apple Powerbook 540c (2.3" thick, 7.3 lbs, not counting the power supply)?
Re:A BIT expensive?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you comparing a laptop from 1994 to laptops from 2011? Hardly seems fair.
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Amazing what difference [virginia.edu] a few years can make.
Re:A BIT expensive?! (Score:5, Informative)
You're just making up numbers. The only " 2-inch thick, 9-pound" laptops are 17" beasts designed for gaming, and they don't cost $399. Most of the 399 laptops are in the 5 to 6 lb range and are about 1.25in thick. Most of them have reasonable battery life too, at least 4 hours.
How about this? You can get a ThinkPad T410 for under $1000 with an i5 and 6 hour battery life that weighs less than 5 lbs.
I'm about to buy a T420s, which will cost around $1300 with a Sandy Bridge i5 and a higher resolution display than the 15" MacBook Pro. And it's thinner. And it weighs almost 2lbs less.
There is no getting around the fact that Apple's laptops are very, very expensive.
The build quality / durability argument doesn't hold because top-tier business laptops (ThinkPad T-series, EliteBook, Latitude E-series) now go for under $1000 and most have passed MIL Spec tests for vibration/drops/dust/etc (which the MacBook has not).
The performance argument doesn't hold because PCs and Macs now use the same Intel chipsets and CPUs, so the performance is the same.
The weight/size argument doesn't hold because you can get PCs with the same performance that are as small and light as the MacBook Pro - or in some cases lighter and smaller. The ThinkPad T420s is lighter (by almost a pound) and thinner than the MacBook Pro 13 and it has the same Sandy Bridge dual-core CPUs.
So we're left with the OS, the design, and some other features like a higher-contrast-ratio LCD. If you are willing to pay more for that, that's your decision. But stop trying to pretend that you aren't paying a big premium for those features.
You're buying the PC equivalent of a a Lexus. Yes, it's nicer than the Toyota that costs half as much. It's not twice as nice, though. And trying to pretend that it's somehow justified from a value standpoint is stupid.
Re:A BIT expensive?! (Score:5, Insightful)
How about this? You can get a ThinkPad T410 for under $1000 with an i5 and 6 hour battery life that weighs less than 5 lbs.
Comparing the most $969 (on sale – it's usually $1405, significantly more than the mac) T410 to the 13" MacBook Pro:
Slower CPU (yes, it may be clocked higher, but sandy bridge more than offsets that).
Slower GPU (yes, even the discrete NVS3100m is slower than the HD 3000 – you can check various benchmark sites for that).
Half the RAM
Half the HDD space
Shorter (though not much) battery life.
Much worse trackpad
No thunderbolt
The performance argument doesn't hold because PCs and Macs now use the same Intel chipsets and CPUs, so the performance is the same.
Incorrect –the Mac is using a Sandy Bridge i7, the T410 isn't – this is the same kind of performance difference as between a Core2Duo and a Core i7 – Sandy bridge is a complete new architecture.
So basically, you're saying "zomg it's $200 cheaper", when it's got $200 less in it...
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you have to go to the 15.6" Lenovo to get 1920x1080 (stupid resolution for a laptop)
I was about to go into an unhinged rant at you over that, fearing you were one of these people that think 1280x1024 makes the writing look a bit small and holding back the rest of us. Then..
would much rather have a 1920x1200
Thank you!
HD TV has a lot to answer for, but making 1920x1200 screens cost prohibitive to use in a laptop is probably the worse of the lot. I'm going to lose 10% of my screen space when I next upgrade my laptop because I just can't find anything with a good resolution and all the other things I want inside.
I am however l
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Oh come on, there's plenty of people who think that Apple's laptops are a bargain.
Back in 2002, I paid over $3000 for a top of the line BTO Powerbook G4 800MHz, with 256MB RAM and 60GB hard drive. (After my student discount) Today, the top of the line MacBook Pro is $600 cheaper. Dell's top Alienware laptop is $3500.
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Playing around with options ( http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dkcwbn2&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&model_id=alienware-m17x [dell.com] ), you can spec one to over $4900.
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If you exclude software and cosmetic customisations, you top out the Dell at $3,949. For Apple, it tops out at $4,049 - the main difference being a marginally faster processor (2.3 v 2.13), double the SSD space, and a more modern graphics card. For a hundred bucks, I'll take that.
Re:A BIT expensive?! (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is, at the entry level, Macbook Pros are actually extremely good value. Before I go on I'll just note that I'm far from an Apple fanboy and I live in Australia where prices are less than optimal. Now the lowest spec 13" MBP is $1200 ($1400 in AU), for that you get cpu performance equal to that of the previous generation (2010 model) 17" MBP, you get an extremely well crafted enclosure with a nice design in a portable form factor. I have been shopping around for a new laptop and for me the key points were: small, light, attractive, powerful. My options were basically Vaio, Dell XPS studio, HP Envy or Macbook Pro. The MBP was cheaper than all the other options with the nicest design (Australian market here, prices differ quite dramatically). Apple also offer me a student discount, and a free iPod.
I don't like Apple, I really don't (I DO however very much like their industrial design), but I shopped around for a long time and the MBP came up as the best value laptop within my reach. I could have gone down and bought some ugly thick plastic fantastic with better specs for less, but as I said it was crucial to me to have a nice design and a slim package. I'll grant that the MBP cost does not scale well with options, particularly if you opt for alterations when you buy. That said I think I've scored a ridiculously good deal, I'll be installing my own SSD and expect that to reap far more performance gains than bumping up the CPU (at $300 premium no less).
FWIW I was looking at the 14" HP Envy for $2400, the Vaio Z at $3000, or the MBP 13" at $1270 with a free iPod, these are Australian prices.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Vaio Z and the Envy both have significantly better graphics cards than the current 13" MBP, right?
Also, Sony is pretty well regarded as having vastly overpriced laptops.
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totally hated how Apple forces you to use iTunes and locks down everything to their way
Except for the standards-based browser, talks-to-everything email app, third-party apps like GoodReader, DropBox, AirVideo... which offer alternative ways to sync/share/stream material... Oh, and while you do have to use iTunes to sync videos and music, iTunes will happily accept audio and video in a variety of common formats from any source (you may need to re-encode the video - but there is free software for that and it makes sense to optimze video for the target device anyway). Yes, there is an element o
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I can't speak for the Mac owners you know, but I got my MacBook Pro in 2008, before the unibody series. I've spent $100 upgrading the RAM recently, but other than that am perfectly happy with it, and it is running just as well as it was when I got it.
My sister on the other hand has churned through 3 laptops in the same time. A keyboard began to play up, then the power began to play up. Another had a hinge that came loose and is now doing duty as a headless home theatre laptop. The third has survived a year
Thunderbolt an Apple exclusive? (Score:2, Insightful)
..."Apple is rumored to have an exclusive on this technology until 2012."
*shakes head* So much for wide support. Lots more people buy Mac then they used to, but 8 times as many people still buy PCs. Peripheral vendors aren't stupid.
Re:Thunderbolt an Apple exclusive? (Score:4, Informative)
A rumor that Intel quickly denied. Others can support it, Apple was just first. The original statement was to the effect it'd probably be about a year before others would support it, because it would require new hardware, etc.
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The thing is Apple buyers do spend more on their kit than PC buyers (there is variation - I'm talking "on average"). So if you're making some pricey device you are likely to find that a disproportionate number of your customers are Mac owners. Now if you're going to tell me that you won't see devices with ONLY a Thunderbolt port - I'd agree with you. There are plenty of peripheral makers who make most of their money from Apple owners (LaCie spring to mind).
Plus this is a rumour, it may not be true. I actual
Re:Thunderbolt an Apple exclusive? (Score:5, Informative)
Not according to Intel, they don't. [pcmag.com]
"Other system makers are free to implement Thunderbolt on their systems as well, and we anticipate seeing some of those systems later this year and in early 2012."
Thunderbolt will appear on PC laptops as soon as the Sandy Bridge chipsets without SATA problems start shipping. Apple has the head start here because their machines don't have the eSATA port that is standard on most PC laptops today.
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Mac was first with FireWire. It became a standard and others hopped on the bandwagon. Sure, USB eventually won out, but that was arguably a VHS/BetaMax situation... FireWire had definite advantages that were seldom exploited by users or even the industry (like the ability to link 2 devices via FireWire without using a computer as the go-between).
Mac was first with DisplayPort. Sure, their connector (Mini-DisplayPort
The most important question ... (Score:2)
Aluminum is the old black (Score:3)
This has gotta be bad for Apple. The lack of cosmetic design changes is going to cause a lot of their users to not-upgrade and stick to old hardware, which is also more likely to be running old versions of OS X. By not changing their unib
A thing about reviews (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no Mac fanboy. I'd probably attract criticism for being a Mac hater. In any case, I think some negatives are just unfair.
TFS says that Light Peak doesn't have peripherals yet, and paints this as a negative on the MacBook Pro. Why do all reviewers feel a compulsion to make up shit if they can't think of anything negative? That's like some video game reviews I've seen, where they can' t find anything to complain about, so they take a star off because they just don't like the genre. That's a good reason to fire a reviewer, in my opinion.
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Well, I wouldn't call it a negative unless its replacing some other more important component (like giving it less USB drives or whatever), but if you have a socket which has nothing to plug in yet - and which Apple are pushing forward/banking that it becomes popular and doesn't bomb - then its pretty useless if it fails. Of course if you have unlimited space, no complaint - but I always get the idea that they removed a USB to shove it in or something.
Can't find a USB count in the article, may have missed it
Re:A thing about reviews (Score:5, Informative)
It was announced that LightPeak will use a compatible connector with, I suppose, a fiber connection embedded in it somewhere. But otherwise the connector is the same.
Apple has done similar things before. My older MacBook Pro, for example, has fiber-optic connections embedded in the 2.5mm Line In and Headphone jacks. I don't know of many people who have made use of the fiber connectors for sound, but they are there, nevertheless.
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I think you mean "supported" by Windows 98 :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZQGRATlwA [youtube.com]
It'll be interesting to see what peripherals come out for T-Bolt - like someone above said, pro video is the target market for this. Right now, a MBP can give you attachment to superfast storage OR pro monitoring OR pro capture, but not all at once. T-bolt will change all of that.
Everyone else will just buy a T-bolt to USB3 adaptor for their Western Digital external HD.
Fastest Laptop Out There? (Score:2)
Not hardly. A 2.2GHz, Intel Core i7-2720QM isn't close to as fast as the Core i7 960 in my laptop.
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It's closer than you think because of architectural improvements. The i7-2820QM is around the same performance as an i7-920. So your i7-960 is probably about 20-30% faster.
As someone with a race-to-the bottom Dell laptop (Score:5, Interesting)
My next lappy will be a Mac, and I can use Boot Camp when I need Windows.
There's a difference between cheap and value.
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Bah, I can buy 3 decent laptops for the price of one of these.. by the time the first two die and I get the third, the third will be superior in specs in every way to this Mac Pro.
You're not buying a nice suit, it's perfectly ok for it to not last long -- technology advances too fast for you to hang on to the same piece of electronics for years and years.
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technology advances too fast for you to hang on to the same piece of electronics for years and years.
Technology might advance, but that doesn't mean needs do. For 80% of the people buying these things, the power of a laptop from 3 years ago is more than sufficient - a bit of document editing/spreadsheets, emails, internet, photos and the like and you're hardly likely to notice a change. From personal experience, many would prefer to have a laptop that doesn't break and goes along perfectly fine for 3 years rather than have to upgrade every 12 months.
(posted from my 2008 MacBook Pro)
Re:As someone with a race-to-the bottom Dell lapto (Score:5, Funny)
The parts falling off my Inspiron were of the very highest quality.
Re:As someone with a race-to-the bottom Dell lapto (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thing people overlook in laptops is the display. The brightness, contrast ratio, black levels, and color gamut on the Apple LCDs is vastly superior to almost everything else out there. I've seen a Dell with a better screen, but Dell discontinued that screen option shortly after it was introduced. And it's like that for all the high-end PC notebook screen options I've seen on Anandtech -- you can't actually buy them. While the TN LCD isn't amazing compared to the better S-PVA and IPS panels on desktop monitors, it's almost unequaled among notebooks.
There's the little touches too, like the external LED battery check, the MagSafe power connector, backlit keyboard, glass touchpad, compact power supply, etc.
You get what you pay for. A $1200 MBP is a lot better than two $600 budget laptops.
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You can't deny the MBP is built to a high standard, thats just a dumb thing to say (unless you've never actually picked one up). Yes the components inside are the same, no the internals are not the sum of the unit. The thing is at the higher end, MBP is competitive in pricing, I recently spent a long time searching for my next laptop, and high end build quality was an important factor on my list. The reality I was faced with (as someone who has lived a lifetime of hating all things Apple) is that the MBP is
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I was referring more to the build quality. How tight are the tolerances? How closely does the lid match the body? How much flex is there in the chassis? How much play in the hinge? Etc.
I have heard they get hot, so does my HP Thinkpad, it gets extremely hot (and also features a reasonably high build quality). Have you compared the temperature of you MBP to that of a high end Vaio, Dell Studio, or similarly positioned laptop?
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so does my HP Thinkpad,
When did HP buy Lenovo?
Optical drive still not optional (Score:2)
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I know someone who put his existing hard drive into one of those adapters, and installed an SSD where the original drive was. He raves about it.
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http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ [mcetech.com]
I've been planning to put an SSD in one of these into my MBP for a while.
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I bookmarked this blog post a while back when I saw it, in the event that I bought a Macbook Pro.
http://remiel.info/post/1601242301/making-the-leap-to-ssd-on-a-macbook [remiel.info]
Unfortunately, Apple's downgrading of the GPU in the 13" model has prompted me to look for other options.
Can You Still Make a "Penis Panini" With Them (Score:3)
Sorry, but glossy screen == no buy (Score:3)
The reviewer doesn't even enlist the glossyness of the screen. If you look at reviews over at notebookcheck.net, you'll see this review is just 'lame'. A laptop is taken outside, how does it behave under conditions with a lot of light (even indoors)? Stuff a buyer would want to know.
Ok, maybe not a mac-user, but still.
Re:Sorry, but glossy screen == no buy (Score:4, Informative)
There's a non-glossy screen option in the store. Also comes with a higher resolution.
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An MP4 movie is hardly the sort of thing you'd test a quad core with a demon of a video card though is it?
My 4 year old mobile phone can constantly loop an mp4 - granted the screen size is much smaller, but you're not going to buy a laptop like that to watch MP4s on it for 6.43 hours are you? You'll want to play something high-end, which will pull a ton of cycles on the cores and the GPU.
I don't think it'll even need to switch to the primacy GPU for the mp4 viewing experience ...
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Re:Don't forget about the 30 minute battery life. (Score:5, Insightful)
I see you also didn't RTFA.
The reviewers tested five laptops. On the MobileMark 2007 test (which runs on Windows 7, for which the new MacBook Pros have not yet been optimized) the MacBook 15-inch (Thunderbolt) lasted 4 hours 40 minutes. That was much longer than the Dell XPS 15 (3:48), Asus N53DV-A1 (3:51), and Asus N53JF-XE1 (3:15). It was only outlasted by the HP Pavilion dv7-4283cl (5:46), a much inferior system that scored last or second-to-last in all the other tests, losing sometimes by a huge margin.
So I would say that yes, the new MB Pro has a very, very decent battery life especially for such a powerful portable machine.
Re:"Now among the first" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:APPLE IS TOTAL CRAP (Score:4, Funny)
And then we shall bomb your country and export democracy with our backyard-manufactured junk Apple computers. And take your oil. We're gonna bomb you until you bring us flowers. Haliburton all over your bitch. You might as well surrender right now, it's what the Republican Guard did.
Think of how a nice fresh coat of white phosphorous will make you look bright and shiny. And there's gonna be waterboarding. That's pretty much a given. Depleted uranium fertilizing your lawn.
You might as well just give up and start mailing us bulk fuel today. I prefer 87 octane, thx.
It's your own fault for being such a terrorist, really. You know Jack Bauer is right.
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If disk performance is important to you, then get the 7200rpm option or use an SSD. Otherwise, why waste the battery life if you don't need the I/O performance?