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MacBook Pros Upgraded and Shipped
Moby Cock writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple has started shipping the new MacBook Pro with an upgrade to the CPU clock speed. The two models now sport 1.83 GHz and 2.0 GHz Core Duos (up from 1.67 GHz and 1.83 GHz). A 2.16 GHz upgrade is also available. The price point remains the same." Dear Apple: Slashdot needs to review 5 of these indefinitely. Thank you XOXO ;) Seriously, i'm waiting for someone to give good benchmarks on these- especially testing for Warcraft. Now that it has a new Universal Binary I can't wait to see how it holds up against a modern windows machine.
So that means it is 6 times faster right? RIGHT?
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
I was just warming up to the idea of a 1.8 this 2.16 Ghz is gonna take some getting used to. Can I handle that much speed?
Ahhh. WoW - the single most important universal binary released so far. I hope Blizzard listens to their customers and releases universal binaries of thier existing OS X compatible games (WC3, SC, Diablo2). With regards to the story, cool that Apple bumped everyone up a notch on the speed pole for free.
This guy's the limit!
That there's a TPM chip installed shipping enabled, with no end-user controls to verify the trust settings match the security context in which it's installed. Like my maxed out iMac Core Duo... Privacy Commissioner in T-10 days... still no response from Apple Privacy... Check the documentation http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/specs/bestpra ctices/
You'll see what I mean...
Caveat Emptor.
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
macrumor.com says that they're getting the upgraded model.
Cheers,
Ian
Does anyone else here get the irony of /.-ers spending virtual lifetimes bashing 'Doze, hating every byte of M$ kruftware, and yearning for an environmental catastrophe in Redmond, then getting all excited about the potential of running XP on a new MacBook?
Am I alone here when I utter a collossal WTF?
Now, I do think native speed virtualization would be a major boon for the platform. And, yes, native x86/DirectX gaming on a Mac would be nice.
However, with all of the talk about Mac performance gap, *NIX on the desktop, Win Sux, etc, one would think that the community would get very excited about fast portable, Darwin on dual-core, i.e all of the great native things already going on, and more extensible than Doze will ever be.
Yet, what we hear is crying that, unless it runs Windoze, it is useless or somehow disappointing. WTF, again I ask.
My 550 TiBook is a classic piece of machinery, like the NeXT Cube (got one), Sparc 10/20 (got two), the compact Mac (got two), and other timeless designs.
These new machines signal new life for Apple's manufacturing, and innovation for years to come, thanks to a high-speed portable line and its revenue stream. Get excited about that!
First time I see someone booting XP on a Mac, I'm gonna kick them in the nuts, Roshambo style.
Does anyone have any idea what the battery life of these things are? It was previously unannounced because they were still testing pre-shipping versions. Well, now they're shipping. And the only thing on the technical specs page is a footnote that says
Yeah, that helps.
*blinking cursor*
So, we all know that Intel releases incremental speed bumps nearly every quarter or even more frequently, and this seems to have worked well for Apple here. But what about the quarterly (or more) price drops? A series of cuts is scheduled for the Pentium D over April and Q3 2006 that will almost half some prices. Will Apple catch things into even better margins, or will we see much more quickly update specs AND prices?
Well Windows Vista setup boots, but there is no graphics driver for the UGA BIOS so you don't see anything - but remember the keypresses to exit Vista setup and Robert is your mothers brother the computer reboots.
So it seems the like "Running Windows natively" problem has become one of getting Windows drivers for the Mac hardware which given most of it is now Intel standard stuff means we are really waiting for Apple or Microsoft (or perhaps ATI) to release that driver or for someone to hack the Windows driver to work with the Mac BIOSed X1600s.
$2B OR NOT $2B = $FF
Wait for VPC or VMWare. Letting Windows boot your hardware is just begging for a world of pain.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So far Classic is a dead issue (pun intended, but unfortunate for us and Apple) and I'm sure there will be more.
To me it's just another cycle of waiting (hoping) vendors update thier products (as well as making the upgrades affordable) or manufacturers bother to re-code thier device drivers to work on yet anothewr new Apple platform.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Yes we know that macbooks aren't exactly cheap ... and nor are gaming capable PC laptops -- they come out quite comparable pricewise. You certainly can't buy a PC laptop with all of the features of the MacBook for much less than the MacBook costs.
James P. Barrett
So my question is, why should I switch?
My question is, why should we care?
If you're actually happy with your Windows box, good for you. Why even post in this thread?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You do realize these laptops are 32 bit only? The 64 bit portable CPU (Merom core) will be available by year end (together with the matching desktop core - Conroe). It also seems that the current core (Yonah) has 64 bit instruction set support (AMD64/EMT64/x86-64, whatever you want to call it) although it has been disabled by Intel. The interesting bit for me will be the upcoming iBook. I want to see how Core Solo stacks up against the G4 (seeing that Duo doesn't really clean out the house against the single G5). I think there may be a couple of surprises.
They've been working on the iBrick for years. I heard it makes the satisfying Apple boot sound when you throw it through a window.
from http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/design.html Pretty slick.
Apparently, it's been used on countertop deep fryers for a while now (after some really horrible incidents where people pulled or tripped over cords and got hot oil spilled on them).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
While I like the specs of the new MacBooks, at their price point they don't quite cut it. Perhaps the second revision will make changes. Its just so hard to justify $600+ MacTax for 1lb of less weight and a few minor extras. Case in point CompUSA is selling an Acer duo, (1280x800 display x1400 graphics, 2GB memory, 120gb hdd, for 1299). While I understand that to some their is better engineering in the Mac I doubt the assembly lines used by either is much different). Yeah I know, its the software/experience/quality. There are levels to which all of us assign imporantance to these items. However most of it is opinion and we can all find pro and con examples to back our case. To me the justification of owning one of the new Intel based macs is being able to run any x86 OS.
These machines are for the pro users; the people who need the absolute fastest Mac laptop they can get and they need it right now. If your livelihood is based directly on Mac platform then the MacTax is incidental. Personally I wouldn't recommend anyone getting a rev1 Mac of any type. You'll be better served by waiting til the intel ibooks are released anyway. Might as well at least wait until universal binaries are out for everything you use.
I bought a top of the line PBG4 last May, and for the first time in my life I feel like I bought a machine at the best possible time. They've bumped the screen resolution and improved battery life, but that's basically the only improvement in 9 months. By the time I'm ready to upgrade they'll be deep into Intel revisions with every program universalized. This was not the case when I bought my Mac SE, Centris 610, Performa 6200, or even my G4 Tower. And don't get my started about my 286, or K6.
> As far as I can tell, the MacBook lacks any kind of feature that sets it apart, other than running MacOS X.
Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?
Just because the browser comes pre-installed doesn't mean that it's bundled quite the way IE is. You can still remove it, and install any other browser you want.
Ignoring, for the moment, the architecture behind Safari I think that people get too hung up on "what" and forget the "why." There are two big problems with IE+Windows. One is that it mingles code for file browsing, web browsing, and vital parts of the OS. Basically, it mixes code very insecurely in ways that allow interaction with the internet to potentially cause serious changes to the core of the OS. It also allows local users to abuse the Web browser and gain access to escalated privileges. Basically, it is an insecure and basically unfixable architectural mistake.
The second issue is not technical. As a monopoly it is illegal for MS to leverage their OS monopoly to gain a Web browser monopoly. The most common way to do this is bundling both products together, which MS did. MS supplies multiple components of an overall computer: OS, applications, mice, etc. Because they have a monopoly on one, they cannot legally bundle the others with that one. They can bundle their mouse with every copy of Office sold, but they cannot bundle Office or the mouse with their OS.
It is important to note that this does not mean an end user can't buy a bundle that includes Windows and a computer and IE. Retailers are free to bundle anything they want, so long as they don't have monopolies. Dell can bundle all of MS's products and only sell that combination and there is no legal issue. Only MS is legally bound not to do so. They have to sell them separately to Dell so that Dell can choose the best browser to sell to their customers, even though the market forces them to sell Windows as the OS on those computers.
Apple does not have a monopoly on desktop OS's or Web browsers so they can bundle the two. If they gained a monopoly on either, they could not. The same goes for IBM, and pretty much any Linux distributor.
To summarize, the problems are the insecurity of an architecture that commingles the core of the OS with a Web browser and illegal business practices. I haven't seen either problem with any alternative OS's.
I run max res (1600x1280, or something like that), with textures at full distance/quality, and I get minor choppiness (off and on, once things load it's smooth) in IF by the bank/AH. Gryphon filghts are amazing (not only can I see the landscape, with great clarity, I can see OTHER gryphon flights cross my path -- something I could never do before)
All this using the 20" Imac duo, with 1G memory. (The universal binary vs. Rosetta made little difference in performance). IMO, the only thing that could kill the laptop is disk latency, but with those 5400rpm SATA drives in the macbooks, I doubt it will.
One thing I have noticed with Mac WoW vs. Intel WoW -- zooming out (like, with the scroll wheel) goes maybe 15 yards back in the Mac version and double that in the intel version. (e.g.: on the IF bridge in front of the AH, I can stand in the center and zoom out, straight up, and my visibility is almost exactly the length of the bridge -- on my intel box, the visibility is double that (I can see quite a ways of of the bridge)). Sadly, Blizzard has not responded to my support request regarding this.
So you are spending close to $2000 so you can have slightly better graphics in WarCraft? ;)
You must be new here.
Its just so hard to justify $600+ MacTax for 1lb of less weight and a few minor extras.... Case in point CompUSA is selling an Acer duo... for 1299.
Some of the hardware differences:
To be fair, bumping up the 1.8GHz Mac to 2GB Ram & the 120GB drive puts the cost at $2699. At that point you may as well add another $200 and get the 2.0GHz chip too. But is having a laptop with the above hardware improvements that runs OS X worth twice as much cash? That's a personal decision, but I bet lots of folks will vote with their wallets on this one.
In my mind notebooks are the only sector of the personal computer market where you really do get what you pay for. Regardless of the brand, use a $3000 notebook for a month then try to go back to a $1500 one. You won't be pleased.
--Mid
Compare for yourself:
MacBook Pro Specs
Acer Aspire 5670 Specs
The Dell 9300 is a single Centrino laptop. Not at all in the same class as the MacBook.
The e1705 has dual-core models available starting at $2221 ($1971 after rebate.)
So, for $20 less than the MacBook, you get a nearly identical-spec machine with a little bit more memory and... WOAH. Stop the press.
That $1971 Dell comes with "Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950", while the MacBook features a screamin' ATI Mobility Radeon X1600.
The closest the Dell can do to match that is add the NVIDA® GeForce(TM) Go 7800... For $300 more!
So, if you want a laptop that is suitable for gaming, you will pay $300 if you follow the "Dell Dude's" advice.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Wow, being upgraded from 1.83 GHz to 2.0 GHz for free constitutes being "screwed" now. That's some way to twist it!
Lalala
Just to be pedantic: The WebCore/WebKit frameworks are sort-of tied into the OS. If you replace/trash Safari.app, you have not touched the parts that actually do the job of rendering web content. You also can't just replace the version of Safari that shipped with your computer (speaking in general terms... there are means to use the latest versions, but these often have the requirement of the latest OS anyways). In these regards Safari/MacOS X is similar to IE.
However, Finder.app does not use Safari, and dependancies are few and far between (Help.app would be one), so this is a much more limited thing than IE.
Actually, if you knew the majority of hardware problems with the initial G4 PowerBook were all related to the case (which had problems with it's hinges - which got stiff and cracked, the plastic border round the side which split apart due to stress from the hindges and weak points such as the audio port, the cable for the LCD panel which got streched leading to the displays breaking down, the rubber feet were always coming off and this lead to overheating and stability problems - and this is just a partial list), you'd understand why it's significant, and why the OP has an valid point.
Sticking with with almost an identical form factor is still significant.