Apple Launches MacBook 2016 With Intel Skylake Processor, Longer Battery Life 179
Apple, on Tuesday, announced a refresh for its 12-inch MacBook laptop. The 2016 MacBook comes with an Intel Skylake processor -- sixth-generation dual-core Intel Core M model, offering up to 1.3 GHz clock speed with Turbo Boost speeds of up to 3.1 GHz, faster 1866 MHz memory, and a 'rose gold' color variant. Apple assures 10 hours of wireless Web browsing time, or 11 hours of movie playback on a single charge. The new model will hit retail stores on Wednesday. It starts at $1,299 for the 256GB SSD and 8GB (up from 4GB) version, and goes all the way up to $1,599 for the top-of-the-line model which offers 512GB SSD.
A couple of points: the first-generation MacBook didn't fare well with reviewers and plenty of users alike. Second, today's announcement also hints that the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro lineups won't be getting the Intel Skylake upgrade for at least a few more months -- which is really sad, because, at present, they come equipped with almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips. No wonder, Oculus executive made fun of Apple's computers.
A couple of points: the first-generation MacBook didn't fare well with reviewers and plenty of users alike. Second, today's announcement also hints that the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro lineups won't be getting the Intel Skylake upgrade for at least a few more months -- which is really sad, because, at present, they come equipped with almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips. No wonder, Oculus executive made fun of Apple's computers.
more ports, please (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a single USB-C port. While I like the magsafe charging connection of older macboks, I can support charging via USB-C - the more devices that can charge via the same standard connector, the better. While I like having the USB-A plugs, I'm willing to bet peripherals will transition with time to USB-C, and I can even deal with needing a dongle until that happens. What I find unacceptable is the fact that there is only a single USB-C port.
This makes me think of the early days of USB -- it was assumed people would chin their devices, as was common with SCSI. But then, peripheral manufacturers stopped including the pass-through connector. At first, this was annoying, but the fact is, it would be annoying to have to disassemble a chain of devices because you want to remove one from the middle.
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I keep wondering why USB-C power bricks aren't built as USB hubs.
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I agree it was far more common with firewire, although monitors would be another one that often did include a hub. They went and stuck card readers in them, along with extra USB ports. Some even let you control brightness/contrast and other settings via USB.
Chaining also made sense with firewire, as devices were not all slaved to the host like with USB.
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I have an awful lot of monitors with USB hubs as well.
I have never ever got on well with those things. I don't want a bunch of wires hanging from my monitor.
My USB hubs live below the level of the desktop where they belong.
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A Hub in a monitor is useful for stuff such as keyboard and mouse. You already have at least 1 power cord and 1 video cable going to your monitor. Adding 3 USB cables won't change the usability. It's much better than requiring another box (USB hub) with one more power cord.
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On my desktop system at home, the video cable and power cord snake through the stand and down behind the table unseen. The USB ports are off to the right of the monitor where the cables would be hanging in mid air. I went wireless and keyboard/mouse wiring was moot.
At work I've got 5 monitors on my desk along with gadgetry of all sorts and three power strips to plug in all the power bricks. So there's nothings to be done. I gave up making that tidy. Trying to use a wireless mouse is futile. The RF environme
TonyMacX86 news. Skylake now recommended. (Score:5, Interesting)
I jumped over to TonyMacx86.com and as of 4/12/16 they have moved the recomended CPU from Haswell/Broadwell to Skylake.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/buil... [tonymacx86.com]
For those that like to tinker and build your own Hackintoshes.
Would be interesting to know... (Score:5, Interesting)
the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro lineups won't be getting the Intel Skylake upgrade for at least a few more months
Technical or commercial reasons?
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The whole Mac side of their business seems to be getting very little attention, which is rather sad. The current offerings were overpriced and used less than stellar hardware when they were first shipped, and mostly that was a looong time ago. Beautiful cases, but mobile grade guts with integrated graphics (or massively marked up GPU's).
My wife has 2 macs, and I would kind of like to have one on my desk too (grew up on macs BITD), but every time I take a look at the offerings I see a bunch of machines at
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Reasons are varied.
1) Apple doesn't make much money off it - Apple's record is traditionally to concentrate on the money makers. The other products they don't spend much R
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Both.
Apple plays the long, long, long game with their supply chain and they probably had plenty of existing inventory. (Look how long apple kept selling the optical drive sporting non-retina MBP)
Sure it makes them sluggish but they enjoy profit margins that are 1000% better than their competitors. - Fun fact. Despite Apple not being the biggest PC maker in terms of units sold.. They make more money at it than anyone else by a HUGE margin. Quality over quantity.
Lenovo, Dell, HP, Microsoft. They all wish they
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I don't have an internal information, but when internal information has been leaked, the general answer has tended to be "it's complicated". It could be that they're planning a major redesign that will require retooling their factories, and they were more focused on that. It could be that the new chipsets don't have adequate support for some feature or port that Macs rely on. It could be that the new chips change the heat dissipation profile, requiring a redesign of the internal systems of the device. I
what about macbook pro (Score:2)
I'm considering upgrading my 2013 model. Should I wait a couple of months?
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Cool. I got mine awhile back strictly for music production to keep it separate from my PC for gaming and dev. I'm no fanboy but I have to admit it's a great laptop. I'm in love with time machine.
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http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac
That's a more trustworthy source than anybody posting here.
Semi related: how do you make a clickable link?
Re:what about macbook pro (Score:5, Informative)
Semi related: how do you make a clickable link?
Like in HTML: <a href="http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac">MacRumors</a>
Which gives:
MacRumors [macrumors.com]
I don't know if there's a list of "allowed HTML tags and entities" anywhere anymore. BTW, I used <quote> for quoting you.
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Yes, you very definitely should wait if you possibly can:
http://www.macrumors.com/round... [macrumors.com]
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Whoops, wrong link: http://buyersguide.macrumors.c... [macrumors.com]
Yeah I knwo it's a web glitch (Score:2)
Say what about the first gen... (Score:2)
A couple of points: the first-generation MacBook didn't fare well with reviewers and plenty of users alike.
My 2006 Black MacBook was useful for eight years until developers followed Apple's lead and started dropping support for 32-bit programs. Never mind that it runs 32-bit Windows 10 and Mint Linux without problems. I have yet to find a true successor to this great laptop.
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They were talking about the first generation of the 'new' macbooks with the 12" screen and USBC charging connector.
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12" really..... (Score:5, Insightful)
the 15" line needs a refresh badly, and we need the return of the 17" with a 4K display.
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My 2011 17" is still chugging along, and it's been through a lot, including being dropped on a corner that slightly dislodged the video cable. I put in 16GB RAM years ago (try that with the 8GB soldered-RAM models they are selling now!) and only recently did the trackpad start to get flaky. Fortunately I had just picked up a first-gen unibody 15" a month before and found out about the problems with old trackpads, so I already knew about the adjustment screw.
At least they still sell the 13" with optical dri
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So you buy Apple products because you need to repair them 6 times? I can't remember a single laptop (including a lot of cheap ones) requiring more than one repair. And all of them lasted at least 3 years, often 5-7.
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Those of us that really use laptops experience differntly.
Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba. I blow them up at least once every 24 months. bad ports hinges shatter, etc... MY macbook 6 years old and still perfect.
But then I do real work unlike most that never let their laptop leave the desk.
Throwing shade (Score:2)
No wonder, Oculus executive made fun of Apple's computers.
They weren't even focused on the laptop platform (Since the vast majority of PC laptops can't effectively run VR), but on the mac pro, which is actually a quite powerful system - albeit not suitable for VR since it is focused as workstation platform and not a gaming one. If you're going to slight apple, at least make it generally relevant. Granted, I'm still not sold on the 12" models.
3 years old CPU (Score:2)
" they come equipped with almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips"
That must be a joke, right? Apple computers are expensive, but at least they give you the latest technology, isn't it?
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" they come equipped with almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips"
That must be a joke, right? Apple computers are expensive, but at least they give you the latest technology, isn't it?
It's not quite that bad, but it's bad. Apple hasn't even kept up with yearly updates on the Mac side of things. The Mac book was over a year old when this came out. The Mac Book Air is 407 days since last revision. Mac Mini is getting close to two years and the Mac "Pro" is close to three years old.
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Its not actually that bad, period. All Intel consumer cpus since Haswell have roughly the same cpu performance. Only power consumption and GPU performance have steadily improved since then. So frankly it isn't much of an upgrade unless your old Macbook is going dead on you from battery drain.
If you still have an old Macbook with a HDD in it, then an easy mini-upgrade is to replace that HDD with a SSD. Poof, it will feel like new even with relatively limited ram. I did the 'ol switch-r-roo on my wife's
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Of course new CPU is more efficient.
Re:More battery lies (Score:5, Informative)
Video decode uses a specialized, highly optimized decoder chip, most likely part of the GPU. The silicon is designed to decode H.264 and probably the various MPEG codecs using as little power as possible. CPU usage is very low while playing video.
Web browsing does JIT compilation of text-based script languages, initiates dozens of network connections per page load to pull in resources, and has to parse & render all of that using the general purpose CPU. That requires much higher CPU usage, and much greater power demands.
The difference is obvious on smaller (IE less compute) devices like phones. Smart phones have been able to play video flawlessly for years, but they still generally feel slower, more jumpy than most full computers for web browsing. Video decode has a very well defined, relatively small set of operations that can be optimized in silicon. Web browsing is wide open, anything goes in terms of computation. The additional flexibility required makes silicon-based optimization much more difficult, and power demands increase.
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You need to send this memo out to Amazon video and Netflix. My macbook gets awfully warm when playing video from these sources. iPad stays nice and cool however. They (Amazon, Netflix, Apple) should fix this but alas, probably never will.
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The problem is Intel's chip. They have some hardware-accelerated h.264 (and HVEC/VP9) decoding support but they prefer you use the (lower quality) Quicksync they put in silicon to do video decoding. Browsers and apps have to specifically use that when decoding and the quality difference is noticeable.
Their newest Apollo Lake atom-based chip *finally* fully hardware-accelerates HVEC and VP9, so I think devices with those will be competitive with the iPad when it comes to video streaming. But I don't think Sk
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Well the battery lifetimes are all really weird, but....
Video playback has stayed about the same, but technology has advanced to specifically help that out a lot. When doing nothing but playing a video, a modern computer basically turns off most of itself (much like the brain of the people watching many videos).
On the flip side, 'web browsing' means more and more javascript and css animations and such. As bad flash was/is for browsing, it's status as a plugin not guaranteed to be everywhere forced some me
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Heck, when you watch media from an optical drive through OS X's DVD player or iTunes, it'll read-ahead several minutes worth of material and turn off the drive for that time. That also saves battery, and watching DVDs is quieter that way, too.
Re:More battery lies (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from what the other posters have said, text rendering is actually one of the most processor-intensive tasks that a typical desktop does. Each codepoint has to be converted to one or more glyphs. These glyphs are sequences of bezier curves that are rendered to raster images (which are typically cached). Next, you need some fairly complex calculations to work out the spacing between glyphs, which is starts as a fixed advance and is then subtly tweaked based on pixel alignment and shape of the next character. Now you have a set of glyph runs, but you want to render a paragraph of text, so you need to work out where to break the lines. If you're something that sucks less than MS Word, you then use a fairly simple dynamic programming algorithm to work out the place to break the lines for optimum readability, otherwise you use a greedy strategy. This is fairly easy in a rectangle, though gets more complex if there's a background. Now you know where the glyphs need to go, and all that's left is to alpha-blend them with the background (remember, antialiasing needs an alpha channel and sub-pixel AA means that each rasterised glyph will be in three colours). This last step is typically offloaded to the GPU, because the CPU hit of just that part is quite noticeable.
And then, if it's a web page, something tweaks the DOM, or a new CSS file finishes downloading, and you need to do the whole thing again.
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Since the majority of the American public now plays video games I suspect that the most processor-intensive task performed by the typical desktop, by a wide margin, is some part of video gaming. Since the majority of graphics processing seems to happen on the GPU now, I would presume that to be physics simulations, but I'm honestly not sure. It's clear that it's not font rendering, though. I can websurf without my CPU even bothering to clock up, and more to the point, we had rendering of kerned outline font
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Re: More battery lies (Score:1)
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What in the f*** allows you to render full motion video at screen resolution more efficiently than you can render a few static lines of text?
Video decoding is hardware assisted and it's power-optimized to hell and back. Javascript engines can't really compete. Modern websites are, unfortunately, power hungry. It's a combination of absolutely abhorrent APIs offered by the browsers, and the cluelessness of front-end developers. Unfortunately, browser APIs exposed via javascript seem to suffer from the same lack of direction, cohesion and foresight in API design as plagues PHP.
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And watch the Apple fanbois try to justify the ridiculously overpriced outdated hardware in Macbooks.
You are very very wrong.
First of all, I'm not a "fanboi"
Secondly I have no idea if this Mac is overpriced.
Thirdly I have absolutely no clue what a "similar" specced PC would cost.
Fourth I don't care what a similar specced PC/Laptop will cost because that one would not run Mac OS X. At least not legally.
Five I have nothing to justify. Why would I have?
You buy for your gods sake what you want to buy.
And please
Re: Apple fanbois (Score:4, Interesting)
And please leave me my freedom to buy what I want for what reason I want for what price I want.
Take a deep breath. Now let it out slowly and repeat after me: "Everything's going to be okay. No one's going to prevent me from spending as much as I want on a laptop."
Now don't you just feel better!
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You have to shoot toughbooks so you can justify getting a new one.*
But they make macs look cheap. You get what you pay for, at best, you can also pay for BS.
* Truth is I've been shooting old computer hardware for decades. It was the 'only thing to do' with old hard drives containing Netmare 2. Got to be a habit.
Re:Apple fanbois (Score:4, Interesting)
As much as I enjoy mocking Apple, I have to say that my desktop PC at home is running a Intel i7-2600K which first showed up in 2011, so is five years old now (well, 4.5, it was released around October IIRC). It's still very competitive and runs modern games and apps just fine. The Skylake equivalent is only about 5-15% faster for most tasks.
That CPU was a great purchase with hindsight. It's more than justified its high price. More luck than skill of course.
So anyway, I can't really mock Apple in this instance. Their hardware still sucks for many other reasons though.
Re: Apple fanbois (Score:1)
Re: Apple fanbois (Score:4, Informative)
They have been RAM bandwidth constrained for a _long_ time.
Don't buy new motherboards because of a new CPU family. Buy new motherboards because of new RAM, which usually comes with a new chipset. If the chipset/CPU doesn't do anything for the RAM bandwidth, skip the upgrade.
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Most improvements are of the nature of parallel RAM pipes in the chipset. Clock improvements count too.
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Its a Mac so it must suck!!!!
And how does this "Apple hate" developed in a nerd community like /. ?
You think we just don't like the art of the logo?
Re:Frist POS (Score:5, Informative)
It comes from a long line of Nerd hate.
Back in the 1980's the good old IBM vs Apple debate. Then it moved to a command line vs GUI debate.
by 1990's With Windows becoming the dominate "OS" Windows 3.1 was more of an advance shell for DOS, and the inclusion of a large range of PC Compatibles it morphed further to General Purpose PC's vs. Apple.
During these geek wars for the past generation, had diminished Apple.
Then during the late 1990's Apple switch to "Cute" with the Fruit Colored iMac. And the Powerbook. Which were popular enough to get a few converts. But the geek debates were much less than as the PC was still the victor. However you got the Linux fanboys joining up with the Apple Fanboys as Microsoft was the common enemy, giving Apple a bit of an edge, and impression of the underdog outsider.
Then there was the iPod, which was popular. That allowed people to get interested in Macs again. so during the 00's Macs were getting popular with Microsoft messing up with major security problems with Windows XP and failures like ME. A lot of the people switched to Macs to avoid being boring PC guys. But this caused the hate wars to begin again. As apple is now becoming a major player on the block. No longer the underdog, but a major influencing threat. The Linux allies broke off and started to side more with Microsoft on the grounds that you can get more versatile hardware.
Then Apple changed the game with the iPhone. Which spawned tablets and other touch devices. Which diminished the popularity of Personal Computers in general. So the war moved mostly to Apple vs Android, however interests in Macbooks vs PC's have diminished. But in terms of Hardware manufacture Apple is the big name, and who do we have as a popular PC manufacturer? No longer IBM, Compaq, Gateway, and Dell. Lenovo Thinkpads keeps the business market. But the others not so much, as the big name.
So the underdog PC's are now getting Apple hate.
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Funny thing - I went primarily Mac for my home user boxes because it was 1) an actual *nix (well, literally a certified UNIX variant), and 2) it could run all the CG/gfx app suites that I wanted it to run.
I never really got into the flamewars except for the occasional poking of fun at whatever side needed poking. For years on end, I happily ran a Mac Cube, the later a monster PowerMac on one big KVM switch with all my 'doze and Linux machinery.
I will say this, though: While I was re-installing Linux every y
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Later Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel.
FTFY.
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The iPod won because it looked simple. It wasn't that much easier to use than it's competitors and it had far less features, but it literally looked simpler because of less buttons.
Again, Average consumer doesn't like to think so they go with the simple product.Same logic for iPhone.
Macs really only still exist because Apple subsidized their spread into
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Bring back the rainbow apple...
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And how does this "Apple hate" developed in a nerd community like /. ?
Being on the same side of a controversial issue is an alternative to actually having friends.
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I'm not much of an Apple fan, but let's be fair here. At some point a company needs to refresh its product line. Just because there's been little improvement in technology really isn't Apples fault. And it's not like you have to buy a new one. Now if Apple stops releasing OSX updates for older models, then you'd have a point.
Re:Get ready to empty your wallet again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another increment in technology, overpriced to get as much out of the less technical as possible...smh
Are macbooks overpriced? Last time I checked (a few years ago, I admit), they weren't, at least not significantly. They were in the same ballpark as others given the the specs which of course include weight, size and some general notion of "build quality".
Main difference is htey don't drop prices so before a refresh, they're a little overpriced for the specs relative to the competiton, but just after the refresh they're pretty decently priced.
I don't even owna mac.
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The Macbook Air is reasonably priced compared to other ultralight laptops if you take resell value into account.
The same goes for the macbook Pro. If you compare it to the Dell XPS 13/15 and do some math on the resell value (assuming you sell it after 3-5 years) then the Dell is only a couple of hundred bucks cheaper.
The new Macbook is reasonably priced only if you desperately want a beautiful, lightweight, laptop for casual use and you have enough money that you think $800 and $1600 is the same amount of m
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You can get two ultralight Asus laptops for the price of one Macbook.
Last time I was in the market, when the UX21 was current, the UX21 and 11" air were about the same price, but the UX21 had a larger SSD. Hardly 2 for 1.
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And it's absolutely Apple's fault that Intel isn't increasing the performance of their chips.
There's people in this thread complaining that they haven't refreshed the CPUs in MacBook Pro, and at the same time bitching that there isn't a large delta of performance between this MacBook and the last one. What is Apple supposed to do when their supplier doesn't deliver components that compel an upgrade? Should they release a new version or not?
Short version: people are just bitching because Apple. Apple is
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I was almost sold on a Mac Mini until I found out that you cannot upgrade the RAM in the newer models.
You can't upgrade a Mac Mini because it's already the best. Next year when Apple comes out with a Mac Mini "S", you buy that and discard your old one. That's how you upgrade. Get with the program!.
Re:Price Point (Score:4, Informative)
I was almost sold on a Mac Mini until I found out that you cannot upgrade the RAM in the newer models.
Buy and upgrade an older model from OWC.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Apple_Systems/Used/Macs_and_Tablets [macsales.com]
Re:Price Point (Score:4, Informative)
Or just get an Intel NUC or one of the many other, cheaper, better and smaller units.
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Or just get an Intel NUC or one of the many other, cheaper, better and smaller units.
Do they run Mac OS X?
Re: Price Point (Score:2, Insightful)
/ducks
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They can run Mac OS X if you want.
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That aside, I recall building a hackintosh used to require fairly specific hardware, but I haven't followed those types of projects for years now. Is there generally better support for commodity hardware now or is it still a matter of carefully selecting parts to avoid strange behavior or other issues?
Further, unless you're doing it just to do i
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The main thing with hardware is to use an Intel chipset and CPU. Beyond that Mac OS supports ATI and Nvidia graphics cards (as well as the built in Intel GPU), various sound cards and on-board sound etc.
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Not legally in most places,
Has it been confirmed by a single court that Apple can legally restrict what I can do with the software I purchased from them?
My understanding was that the User Agreement was moot.
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We had a thread about them a month ago, but here you go. [intel.com]
My feeling is that thing is going to spend a lot of time throttling because of poor thermal design since that's what the i3 and i5 NUCs have done throughout their history, but that thing is a legitimate quad-core machine.
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You can say that about almost every one of Apple's main computer products these days. The older gear is better. The only notable benefit of their recent iMac, Mini, and laptop offerings is that they are smaller. Upgradability is less, maintenance (getting into them to fix or replace things) is more difficult, they've cheaped out on sub-2GHz CPUs at the low (affordable) end while keeping the prices roughly the same, and removed the discrete graphics in all but the highest-end machines. The new hyper-thin
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They're just too expensive for what you get most of the time, and some of the cosmetic design decisions (e.g., thinness) come at too high a cost in terms of practicality.
That's why I don't ever want to see an Apple Car. It'll cost too much and be too thin.
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Apple car an thin death trap that is dealer maintenance only (even tries and oil) at apple prices.
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I don't understand why phones kept getting bigger and laptops keep getting smaller. My Macbook is a 15" and I can't imagine going any smaller and still being able to do the things I need to do. I already have to squint and put my face two inches from the screen to read any text on an RDP session.
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Reading the press release sets a few alarm bells off. Seems to have only one USB-C port again. They say it is fanless and has no vents, for entirely passive cooling... Which means lots of throttling.
Re: Price Point (Score:2)
We often find perfectly reasonable, relevant, on-topic, insightful and informative comments at -1.
Tell me about it; my comments that get down-modded are always reasonable... j/k; I'm almost certainly one of the biggest assholes on this site - but hey, I try! ;)
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You may still love it. But would you buy it again at full price in 2016?
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Does this get posted by script, or does someone actually bother to type it?
Can someone explain why it is funny? I don't get it.
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Re:Make fun of the slow software, not the hardware (Score:4, Informative)
Compute CPU power is not much more than it was 3 years back.
In some regards, that is true, in others, less so.
Haswell to Skylake is rather pointless, but Sandy Bridge to Skylake is not, depending on what you're doing.
The other factor is power consumption, which has been Intel's real focus.
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it's $1299 for $499 worth of hardware, and you can't upgrade or replace any of it when it breaks,
While you might have a legitimate complaint that Apple prices are high, you do realize that this is a laptop right? Most laptops do not have replaceable/upgrade-able parts these days. Can you upgrade the GPU on many laptops? Not unless you replace the whole MB.
but people worry about that the other models will have a three-year-old CPU for a few more months, as if the computer is somehow totally unusable.
Not understanding what you're saying here. Why are people worried about older models with older CPUs that they'll be able to buy still from Apple?
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Will common shortcuts like alt-tab, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X work in OS-X?
Alt-tab was from Windows (but OS X has had it for over a decade), and how the hell do you not know that the Z/X/C/V for text editing came from the original 1984 Macintosh? It only got changed to use ctrl because Microsoft couldn't force computer manufacturers to add a command key to the keyboard. (They clearly got more powerful since then, as you can see from modern PC keyboards.) Just be thankful you don't have to use the original 3-button X Windows copy/paste!
I haven't cared much about the package manage
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Alt-tab was from Windows (but OS X has had it for over a decade), and how the hell do you not know that the Command-Z/X/C/V for text editing came from the original 1984 Macintosh? It only got changed to use Ctrl because Microsoft was too stupid to use the Alt key for Command (which is in the proper location), and used Alt for other keyboard functionality.
FTFY.
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- will be just as much work making OS X more like my linux machine in terms of a good terminal emulator?
Yes. I can't believe how crappy is the default OS X shell/terminal compared to a standard Ubuntu install.
Coreutils suck, lack many useful options of the GNU variants used in Linux. You have bash, but without bash-completion (not to be confused with plain old tab-completion) it feels like you are stuck with a Linux distro from the 90s.
- How about decent package management? How do fink/hombrew/pip etc compare to apt?
It sucks a lot more. A lot less integrated with the system, packages are more buggy, less maintained. They also often duplicate packages already provided by the OS.
- Will common shortcuts like alt-tab, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X work in OS-X?
No, most of
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I know that Apple could do better, but nobody serious uses whatever is bundled with OS X when it comes to gnuland. Macports is where it's at, and the first thing you do after installing macports is sudo port followed by selfupdate and install coreutils. Then close & reopen the terminal tab, and you're up and running.
Re: OS X for software development (Score:2)
iTerm2 is exactly what you want.
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- OS X's terminal is perfectly usable. Default shortcuts are funky, but you'll get used to them. :)
- macports is what you should be using. I like it more than the RPM I've been using since RedHat 2 (not RHEL 2, mind you).
- very good in macports, OS X comes with some older python version preinstalled, though
- Cmd-Tab, Cmd-C, Cmd-V, Cmd-X all work
- bettersnaptool handles all that, but of course you can arrange your windows whatever way you wish
- minor (n.n.x) version updates don't do that, major version updat
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- will be just as much work making OS X more like my linux machine in terms of a good terminal emulator?
That depends on
- How about decent package management? How do fink/hombrew/pip etc compare to apt?
It's a whole different game. Brew is currently the best among them. You should view it as a way to install a couple (or dozens) of additional tools, while in Linux it's basically almost the way the OS is put together.
- How is the python tooling?
It does depend on how you use it. On my Linux boxes, I never uses pip, and always search through apt for the library in question. That won't work under OS X. However if you use pip, which basically is independent of the OS, then you won't encounter difficulties.
- Will common shortcuts like alt-tab, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X work in OS-X?
On OS X, you'll ha
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- I do wish Apple provided the multi port adapter with the laptop. I rarely use it but have to have one around just in case (USB-A and HDMI)
Or even better, they could include a USB A and HDMI port on the laptop. That would be revolutionary. I wonder why nobody had this idea before.
- Now that they provide a USB-C to lightning cable, I can use the same charger for my phone and laptop. They should have the option to get these with new phones.
Or you know, they could just use USB-C on phones instead of useless proprietary ports. It would be nice if phones with standard ports existed.
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it's every easier, you can just use a C to C cable and charge one Macbook from another, which means perpetual energy.
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Apple will replace OS X with iOS.
Latest rumor is that Apple will rename OS X to MacOS to be consistent with iOS, tvOS and WatchOS.
http://www.slashgear.com/apple-further-hints-os-x-name-change-to-macos-15436420/ [slashgear.com]