Apple Announced 17" MacBook Pro

artlu writes "According to Reuters news, Apple has announced the launch of the 17" MacBook Pro. The new MacBook will retail for $2,799, come with iLife '06, and begins shipping next week. Details are not yet on Apple's website, but hopefully these notebooks will be triple booting as well!"

Comments

Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue?

[crazyjeremy]

Taken from http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jht ml?articleID=186100229 "The graphics processor of Apple Computer Inc.'s MacBook Pro portable has been deliberately slowed down, a Mac user reported recently, probably as part of the overall effort to lower the heat the machine generates. According to a posting on the French language site MacBidouille, a user identified as "SpacetitoX" uncovered the underclocking of the MacBook's ATI Radeon Mobility X1600 graphics chip after adding Windows XP to the computer, then running a beta version of the "ATITools" overclocking utility. By replacing the existing ATI drivers added to the MacBook Pro for dual-booting into Windows XP, SpacetitoX was able to boost one benchmark's result from 61 frames per second to 91."

Some notes

[daveschroeder]

- FireWire 800 (9-pin) is included, in addition to FireWire 400 (6-pin) (so no, FireWire, and particularly FireWire 800, is not dead, as some like to continually predict)

- 3 USB 2.0 ports are included; 2 on the left, 1 on the right

- The left side ports are: power, 2 USB 2.0, analog and digital optical audio in and out, ExpressCard/34; the right side ports are: DVI (supports VGA, S-Video, composite), 10/100/1000 ethernet, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, 1 USB 2.0, security port

- An 8x dual layer SuperDrive is included (unlike the 15" MacBook Pro)[1]

- While this is known by many, it bears repeating that the wireless chipset in all Intel-based Macs supports 802.11a/b/g, though Apple doesn't advertise 'a'

- The 1680 x 1050 resolution of the 17" display is the same as many desktop 20" widescreen LCDs such as the Apple 20" Cinema Display and the 20" Dell 2007WFP

- Retail $2799, Education/government $2599 with 2.16 GHz Core Duo, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB 5400RPM Serial ATA drive, 256MB ATI Radeon x1600, and 8x dual layer SuperDrive

- For detailed specs, see here

I'd also note that for some people who might think that the 15" MacBook Pro looks like a bad deal next to this, the 17" is simply too large for many people, and many of those same people have no need for the faster dual layer SuperDrive, nor for FireWire 800.

And the Apple we site does not have to explicitly say it for us to know that, yes, of course the 17" MacBook Pro will support "Boot Camp" (and triple booting[2]), which is simply an umbrella marketing name for a collection of technologies that support booting Windows on Intel-based Macs:

- A Compatibility Support Module (CSM, BIOS compatibility layer) for EFI: this is already a non-beta, supported component of the recent rounds of firmware updates for Intel-based Macs, which the 17" MacBook Pro will ship with

- The ability to live-resize partitions on a GPT formatted volumes: this is already a non-beta, supported component of "diskutil" as of 10.4.6

- A collection of Windows drivers for the hardware in Intel-based Macs: almost all of these are non-beta, preexisting third party drivers

- A setup assistant that brings everything together: this is the only part of the solution, from a technical standpoint, that is "beta"

[1] Some may note that the new 17" MacBook Pro, at the same thickness of the 15" MacBook Pro (1.0"), includes an 8x dual layer SuperDrive versus the 4x single layer drive in the 15" model. It might be recalled that the reasoning for not including a faster, dual layer SuperDrive in the 15" MacBook Pro was because of the necessary space not being available inside the case; the 15" MacBook Pro could only use a 9mm tall mechanism as opposed to the 12mm mechanism currently required for dual layer capability and the greater speed. How, then, can the 17" MacBook Pro (or even the previous 17" PowerBook), at the exact same thickness, include this drive? Does this mean Apple was holding back? Is the 8x DL drive due in a 15" MacBook Pro imminently? The answer is no: the reason why the drive didn't (and still doesn't) fit in the 15" MacBook Pro is because the wider trackpad mechanism Apple chose to use encroaches internally on the space needed for a 12mm drive by about 1/8" laterally. However, this is not the case on the 17" MacBook Pro.

[2] Who wants to dual boot, much less triple boot? I'd rather have all of my environments running side by side in virtualization. And yes, I know there are some specific reasons people may want to dual boot (such as games for native 3D graphics support), and that's fine...but other than for those specific tasks, who would really prefer dual/triple booting over virtualization, especially given the excellent benefits Intel VT now offers for virtual machines?

Re:Some notes

[antifoidulus]

I'd also note that for some people who might think that the 15" MacBook Pro looks like a bad deal next to this, the 17" is simply too large for many people
Which is why I'm surprised they didn't come out with the 12" one before the 17", it seems, at least in my personal experience(obviously I don't have stats on hand) that the 12" is much more popular than the 17". Though they could still be having heat issues with the 12" mac book.

Re:Some notes

[Reaperducer]

I'm really glad to hear that Firewire 800 is still there. I didn't realize how much of a mental dealbreaker this was for me until I saw it and felt relieved. All of my external drives are triple interface (FW400/FW800/USB), but I really prefer using 800. Speed is important for me when I'm moving around lots of data; it's not uncommon for me to have to move 40 gigs from one drive to another a couple of times a week. FW800 is also fast enough that I can keep my Virtual PC partitions on it and not really have any noticible slowdown from the internal drive.

Re:Some notes

[xjerky]

Yeah, I really wanted a 12 inch MacBook Pro to replace my 866MHz G4 Powerbook, but I got tired of waiting and bought a Mac Mini instead. I'll just keep the Pbook for now and enjoy MacIntel goodness at home for the time being, plus save myself over $1000 to boot. I figure in a year or 2 Apple to provide something in the MacBook Pros that will compel me to get one, like say Gigabit Wireless or something. For now it looks like there's just a speed bump.

Re:Some notes

[mikeisme77]

Speaking of people not wanting the 17" because it's too large... For me, the 15" is even too large (I have a perfectly capbable desktop, and just need something small and light for mobile purposes). Anybody have any idea when the 12" is going to be out? That I'd be interested in. Or a Mac Tablet, but I figure the 12" will be out MUCH sooner, and I'm looking at a new laptop by August at the latest.

Re:Some notes

[ZombieRoboNinja]

"who would really prefer dual/triple booting over virtualization, especially given the excellent benefits Intel VT [intel.com] now offers for virtual machines?"

Me, for one.

I don't know the ins and outs of virtualization, but it seems to me that if I'm running Windows apps side-by-side with native Mac apps, I expose myself to the same spyware, viruses, and other annoyances inherent to Windows. I'd MUCH rather have Windows restricted to its own little disk partition, which I could nuke any time I need to. And since (1) the only Windows apps I'd want to run are games, and (2) it supposedly takes only about 15 seconds to boot these things, I'd just as soon boot into Windows when I absolutely need to and keep my MacOS main partition "pristine."

Re:Some notes

[ktappe]

Does this mean Apple was holding back?

Unfortunately, that does seem like a possibility. With dual-layer DVD and FireWire 800 both missing from the 15", it appears on the surface as though those features were reserved for the 17" model. Apple needs to realize that many of us cannot/will not buy the 17" because it is simply too large & bulky. And that fact is no reason to punish us by keeping features off of the 15" that both its PowerPC predecessor had and its 17" bigger brother has. So as much as I want a MacBook Pro so I can utilize Windows virtualization, I won't be buying one until I see these features returned to the 15" model.

-Kurt

Re:Some notes

[Anonymous Coward]

I was royally pissed when I thought that FW800 was abandoned. I can deal with abandoning really old technologies like the floppy disk, parallel port and a few others, but with FW800 back I hope Apple will keep up with FW development and come out with FW1600 in the future or perhaps it will give way to eSATA with transfer rates of 1.5Gb/s to 3.0Gb/s.

As for Intel VT (Vanderpool) technology, its coming in the 64-bit Merom CPU this fall. Perhaps then I'll be ready to upgrade my current Powerbook G4 to a triple OS laptop (which I need as a systems admin).

Re:Some notes

[SachiCALaw]

You can still keep your Mac partition "pristine" with a virtual machine. Even better, if the Windows virtual machine gets infected, you can wipe it and "reinstall" a clean version in a matter of seconds as opposed to the hour or longer it would take you to wipe a "physical" copy from the hard drive and reinstall it (and your apps.)

Re:Some notes

[daveschroeder]

So as much as I want a MacBook Pro so I can utilize Windows virtualization, I won't be buying one until I see these features returned to the 15" model.

Then you'll probably be waiting a long time.

1.) I just explained exactly why the dual layer burner isn't present on the 15" MacBook Pro. It's a purely physical/technical reason. Until there is a 9mm 8x dual layer burner, you won't see one in the 15" MacBook Pro, period.

2.) FireWire 800 was also left out of the 15" MacBook Pro for space reasons (adding it requires additional support chipsets that aren't a part of any of Intel's standard chipsets, which means a comparatively considerable amount of space is required to implement it. Yes, it's still small, but every ounce of space counts.

Do you really need a dual layer DVD burner and FireWire 800 on a 15" Mac laptop so much that you'd forgo what is almost a perfect environment for virtualization of multiple operating systems, alongside Mac OS X?

Re:Some notes

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtualizing an operating system gives you a far safer abstraction from viruses and spyware than dual-booting. Instead of "its own little disk partition," the Windows OS will reside in a single file, and it doesn't have access to any real hardware. If viruses/spyware devour the Windows OS, delete the file and reinstall. Better yet, take a snapshot of the clean OS, configured as you like--if there are any problems, revert to the snapshot. Easy peasy.

Re:Some notes

[daveschroeder]

As for Intel VT (Vanderpool) technology, its coming in the 64-bit Merom CPU this fall. Perhaps then I'll be ready to upgrade my current Powerbook G4 to a triple OS laptop (which I need as a systems admin).

No, VT is here today, on the current Core Duo T2500 Apple is using in all Intel-based Macs. Parallels Workstation takes full advantage of Intel VT, today. You don't have to wait to have your triple (simultaneously running) OS environment, since I'm looking at it on my MacBook Pro in front of me right now.

Re:Some notes

[lababidi]

You can purchase this Laptop as a Developer for $2239 using the ADC Discount found here.

Re:Some notes

[FinestLittleSpace]

Virtualisation often works in much the same way as dual boot; i.e. you have a seperate partition, and it loads core windows components off that. It's pretty bloody hard to get a virus from one platform to the other. I'm sure there's a car analogy somewhere here...

Re:Some notes

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine that the 12" will be released when Merom hits the market. It will be both cooler and more powerful, and will alleviate a lot of the heat problems that some Core Duo laptops have been having.

I personally would not recommend that anyone buy a laptop at all until Merom.

Re:Some notes

[Enrique1218]

Dude, you must kiiled on those research papers in college...Some notes? sheesh!

Re:Some notes

[daveschroeder]

I don't know the ins and outs of virtualization, but it seems to me that if I'm running Windows apps side-by-side with native Mac apps, I expose myself to the same spyware, viruses, and other annoyances inherent to Windows. I'd MUCH rather have Windows restricted to its own little disk partition, which I could nuke any time I need to. And since (1) the only Windows apps I'd want to run are games, and (2) it supposedly takes only about 15 seconds to boot these things, I'd just as soon boot into Windows when I absolutely need to and keep my MacOS main partition "pristine."

Well, yes, if all you're using is games, you'd need to dual boot anyway, since you'd need native 3D graphics support. But ignoring that for a second:

There is nothing about virtualization that would make the Mac environment any more susceptible to anything in the Windows environment: the Windows environment is still completely sandboxed, and doesn't have ANY access to the Mac partition(s) unless you were to explicitly grant it. Theoretically, in order to even touch anything in the Mac environment, a piece of Windows malware would have to exploit a vulnerability in the virtualization software itself, that could be exploited via Windows, AND could also be used to affect the host's filesystem. Ironically, it would actually be EASIER in a dual-boot configuration: a hypothetical piece of Windows malware could include a rudimentary driver to recognize HFS+ volumes, at which point it could then install whatever it wished in the Mac environment, or otherwise alter the contents of the Mac OS X partition.

Of course, the likelihood of either of those things happening is extremely remote.

The funny thing is, that the "nuke any time I need to" is actually much, much, much easier in virtualization than anything else: the entire Windows "volume" resides in a file on the Mac OS X disk. You can keep a backup of it, and if anything were to ever happen, you could simply delete it, and duplicate your backup pristine Windows "volume" - since it's just a file - in seconds.

But that also ignores that, while Windows (or another x86-based OS) run on an Intel-based Mac could be subject to the vulnerabilities of that operating system, it is still typically:

- completely isolated from the network, operating "behind" the host operating system
- not used for traditional tasks typically used as attack vectors, like email, web browsing, and downloading files
- usually not used as the primary operating system
- able to be completely restored relatively easily and quickly from a default image, if compromised

Re:Some notes

[Anonymous Coward]

The talk is that the 13.3" widescreen iBook will be out in May, and that there will be no small-form-factor MacBook pro. Some folks call it the iBook, some the MacBook, but I suspect it will be called iBook but have more or less the capabilities of the old 12" PowerBook (but with the iBook's more rugged exterior).

Re:Some notes

[alanQuatermain]

Grrr, sometimes I hate the ADC discounts. Members in the US get the price dropped by US$460. Members in Canada get the price dropped by CDN$165. Also known as US$145. Guess which one I get?

-Q

Re:Some notes

[Gulthek]

don't know the ins and outs of virtualization, but it seems to me that if I'm running Windows apps side-by-side with native Mac apps, I expose myself to the same spyware, viruses, and other annoyances inherent to Windows. I'd MUCH rather have Windows restricted to its own little disk partition, which I could nuke any time I need to.

You should understand that its easier to nuke a virtual OS than it is to nuke an OS on its own partition. A virtualized OS also is protected from accessing the guts of the computer by the controlling operating system. If you run Windows directly from its own partition, you are indeed susceptible to all the viruses and network attacks that you are afraid of. But if you run Windows from within a virtual computer under Mac OS, the virtualization program can limit what Windows can access (i.e. no or extremely limited networking traffic, no hard disk writes, whatever).

Re:Some notes

[Anonymous Coward]

When the 15" model came out, people went looking for a FW800/PCIe support chip, and couldn't find any. I suspect the feature is new because the chip is new, and they'll probably rev the 15s at some point. eSATA will probably replace FW800 anyway for small raids.

Re:Some notes

[lazarusdishwasher]

I'm sure there's a car analogy somewhere here...

I think I have a car analogy for you.

virtualisation would be like bying a ford truck but you have to run onstar, So you put a small GM car in the bed thus giving you onstar capabilities without having to rework the ford for the onstar device.

Re:Some notes

[paulxnuke]

I haven't played with Parallels (no intel Mac) but I have used virtualization software before.

The 2 OS's usually coexist by way of shared folders, sort of like having them on a network. Running the Mac at the same doesn't make any security difference (dual booting may actually be worse, since XP running "alone" is more likely to be able to access the entire Mac partition rather than just a few explicitly shared folders.) Also, having the Mac available for most Internet functions reduces the need and risks of using Windows online.

Running an OS (particularly Windows) in a VM is vastly preferable to having it installed normally on a partition. Windows has to be reinstalled periodically; Norton Ghost or the like helps, but it's still a hassle. With (for example) VirtualPC, reinstalling windows amounts to starting from a backup image file. VirtualPC on Windows even lets you protect your virtual file systems, by letting you decide whether to save changes to the image file at any time. This means you can test new programs (what I mostly do) and then restore your drive to its previous state by rebooting the VM, or save changes if everything works.

I see value in dual booting, but unless you need that last 1% for games or hardware tests, virtualization wins overwhelmingly on pretty much every level (this laptop is enough faster than my office Dell that I can afford a little overhead.) This sounds like my next computer: I'm in no great hurry: I'll wait for the bugs to shake out, the processor to be upgraded once or twice, and a free copy of 10.5 to be loaded (hopefully w/ virtualization built in), and I'm there.

Re:Some notes

[stripes]

All of my external drives are triple interface (FW400/FW800/USB), but I really prefer using 800. Speed is important for me when I'm moving around lots of data; it's not uncommon for me to have to move 40 gigs from one drive to another a couple of times a week. FW800 is also fast enough that I can keep my Virtual PC partitions on it and not really have any noticible slowdown from the internal drive.

Have you tried timing the mass data move with FW400? There are a lot of disks that can saturate FW400 on paper, but don't in practice (or do, but not by a whole lot). If you have I would love to know what the actual speed difference is (I recently bought a FW400 enclosure to do backups, and would like to know what I'm missing since I have FW800 on my laptop...not that I think I'll care for backups).

Re:Some notes

[yet another coward]

3 USB 2.0 ports are included; 2 on the left, 1 on the right

"But when we pulled out the switch all three of 'em come on."

Re:Some notes

[AugstWest]

Ridiculous, shrink this trackpad and give me dual-layer support.

That's just lame.

Re:Some notes

[Ohreally_factor]

I never buy 1st rev stuff, but the idea of getting a mini is tempting. I bought a 12" G4 PB last fall, knowing it would be the last of it's generation, on purpose. I wanted to get something that would be viable until at least the 2nd or 3rd rev. I'm not into the bleeding edge anymore.

But damn, $800 bucks would get me that core duo dual booting goodness.

Re:Some notes

[Ohreally_factor]

I suspect it will be called iBook but have more or less the capabilities of the old 12" PowerBook (but with the iBook's more rugged exterior

I hope it has DVI out. That's the main reason I went with a 12" PB over an iBook. DVI is a must for powering my old 22" Cinema Display.

Re:Some notes

[mrgeometry]

So, do you have one of those jobs where you copy 17 MB from one folder to another...? ;-)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_and_petrified# Minor_trolls)

Re:Some notes

[shmlco]

...the right side ports are: DVI (supports VGA, S-Video, composite), 10/100/1000 ethernet, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, 1 USB 2.0, security port. I wish they'd wise up and change the security port location. You're most likely to use a SP when your computer is a) at a desk and b) plugged into A/C power. So why isn't it back next to the power connector to minimze cable runs? No, you have to have a power cable on the left, and then run a security cable all the way around the computer, and in front of all the other cables on the right. But no, they have to do the cute asethetic biggest hole to smallest hole port ordering.

Re:Some notes

[ktappe]

I just explained exactly why the dual layer burner isn't present on the 15" MacBook Pro. It's a purely physical/technical reason.

No, you just explained the exact opposite. The 15" and 17" are the very same thickness and therefore there is no technical reason for the 15" not to also have the dual-layer drive. (Posts are already proliferating on various Mac sites making the exact same observation.)

-Kurt

Re:Some notes

[Ohreally_factor]

Isn't it about time you guys just became the 51st state? If for no other reason than for ADC discounts? Excuse me, I meant to say, "Isn't it aboot time . . .?"

Re:Some notes

[Ohreally_factor]

Read them carefully. That bit about 802.11a is going to be on the test, I'm sure of it.

Re:Some notes

[daveschroeder]

No, you just explained the exact opposite. The 15" and 17" are the very same thickness and therefore there is no technical reason for the 15" not to also have the dual-layer drive.

Um, yes, there is a technical reason. The 17" is both wider and deeper than the 15". There are things in the 15" that get in the way, thickness-wise, that DO NOT in the 17", period (like the trackpad and the keyboard). You don't have to believe it, but it's not an artificial reason, or to get people to "buy the 17" by arbitrarily keeping the DL drive out of the 15. The word directly from an engineer at Apple:

Actually the reason for the thinner 9.5 mm ODD in MBP15 is because it overlaps the keyboard front-to-back. The 17 is deeper front-to-back, hence the keyboard does not overlap the ODD and it can use the 12.7 mm ODD.

This is one reason why the G4 15" is 1.1" thick - it uses the 12.7 mm ODD.

(Posts are already proliferating on various Mac sites making the exact same observation.)

Yes, and they're all wrong.

Re:Some notes

[Paradise Pete]

You can purchase this Laptop as a Developer for $2239 using the ADC Discount found here.

I take it that price is for paying developers, not those at the free level. (The link didn't work for me.)

Re:Some notes

[Bob McCown]

HAHHAHA.. +1 funny if I had modpoints. Well played.

Re:Some notes

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard reports that virtualization software can easily circumvent the security of the host system it runs on. Is this true?

Re:Some notes

[daveschroeder]

I have heard reports that virtualization software can easily circumvent the security of the host system it runs on. Is this true?

No, not really.

For convenience, I'll regurgitate here some things I said elsewhere in other followups in this thread:

There is nothing about virtualization that would make the Mac environment any more susceptible to anything in the Windows environment: the Windows environment is still completely sandboxed, and doesn't have ANY access to the Mac partition(s) unless you were to explicitly grant it. Theoretically, in order to even touch anything in the Mac environment, a piece of Windows malware would have to exploit a vulnerability in the virtualization software itself, that could be exploited via Windows, AND could also be used to affect the host's filesystem. Ironically, it would actually be EASIER in a dual-boot configuration: a hypothetical piece of Windows malware could include a rudimentary driver to recognize HFS+ volumes, at which point it could then install whatever it wished in the Mac environment, or otherwise alter the contents of the Mac OS X partition.

Of course, the likelihood of either of those things happening is extremely remote.

Also, the entire Windows "volume" resides in a file on the Mac OS X disk. You can keep a backup of it, and if anything were to ever happen, you could simply delete it, and duplicate your backup pristine Windows "volume" - since it's just a file - in seconds.

But that also ignores that, while Windows (or another x86-based OS) run on an Intel-based Mac could be subject to the vulnerabilities of that operating system, it is still typically:

- completely isolated from the network, operating "behind" the host operating system
- not used for traditional tasks typically used as attack vectors, like email, web browsing, and downloading files
- usually not used as the primary operating system
- able to be completely restored relatively easily and quickly from a default image, if compromised

In closing, yes, a malicious piece of software could potentially affect a VM. But there is nothing inherent in a VM that makes it easier to "take over the machine" or circumvent host security. If anything, it would be harder. It would be much easier to simply attack the host system directly with malware designed for that OS.

Re:Some notes

[squiggleslash]

FireWire 800 (9-pin) is included, in addition to FireWire 400 (6-pin) (so no, FireWire, and particularly FireWire 800, is not dead, as some like to continually predict)

I hardly think that continuing to have Firewire 800 on the most high end model of Powerbook/Macbook, while removing it from everything else it was on (so far, perhaps the replacement to the PowerMac will also have it, but again, we're talking about FireWire 800 ONLY on HIGH END gear) represents any kind of reason for confidence when it comes to Apple's long term support for the standard.

It's very clear that as a consumer technology, Firewire IS being deprecated by Apple. They've taken steps to actively discourage its use by iPod users, by, for example, not even including the (custom) cable required to enable it; iPod nanos and shuffles have no FW support. And of the new computer systems, covering every market, launched in recent months, only one, this MacBook Pro, has support for it.

I know you like the technology. So do I. But it's in the same position as SCSI was in the late nineties, it hasn't taken off as hoped, SATA and various network-based technologies have eaten its lunch in the storage market, and the video market is slowly going USB for very obvious practical reasons. If the latter shows sign of acceleration, and especially if video over USB is standardized in much the same way as HID, USB Storage, ACM, etc, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple drop the technology completely. They've done this before. Just as most DV cameras are Firewire today, most scanners were SCSI in 1997. That didn't stop Apple dropping SCSI.

I don't think one can realistically say "Aha! ONE model of Mac, aimed at high-end "pro" users, STILL has Firewire 800" as meaning "Apple isn't deprecating the technology." If we see FW800 on Mac minis, or Firewire cables bundled with iPods, including nanos, then we'll have cause for (some) hope.

Re:Some notes

[Anonymous Coward]

I am more concerned about the ability of the virtualization software to take full control of your system by moving your current operating system into a virtual machine (unbeknownst to you) and then doing whatever it wants (you won't know, especially if you aren't looking). It could wait until your next Software Update to actually start being more than minimally active. Then any slowdown you might notice would likely be blamed on the update. I agree that Windows/Linux/whatever you run in the intended VM won't be much of a security risk (unless you do dumb things to allow it). But you sure seem to have to trust the VM software provider not to do anything you wouldn't want them to.

Re:Some notes

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Gosh, you *really* do need to post using my name!

Re:Some notes

[Ilgaz]

I was testing an antivirus program on my brand new mac and I misunderstood how to install it (PC switcher).

There was a system problem clearly and by chance I copied a 17 MB!!! file from one partition to other... It took 2 mins!

Troll became right for first and last time. I should really have a screen movie recorder that time :)

Re:Some notes

[Ilgaz]

The monsters Lacie (.com) sells definately uses the firewire 800 to the limit. One point further, you move to external SATA 2 with a card.

Re:Some notes

[Ilgaz]

People like me knowing how Intel works and how they became Intel was afraid of their tactics when Firewire 800 wasn't present in 15" machine.

If there were a single guy explaining the point instead of shouting "powerpc zealot!!!" all over, I would take back my argument.

If Intel is not in IEEE 1394 commitee and still pushing USB 2 to professionals , you become paranoid a bit.

I know one use for firewire 800 on a laptop. Uncompressed field recording for movies/TV. Sound engineer guy told me as the reason.

No details on Apple's site?

[hcdejong]

What's this about, then?

Re:No details on Apple's site?

[gh5046]

Didn't you know? Apple does rolling releases through the world. What might be available in New York still isn't available in California because of the timezone difference, and their website accounts for it.

It's on their homepage now...

[MMC Monster]

It's featured on their homepage now, BTW.

Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G4?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

From the article:

and an all new system architecture that delivers up to five
times the performance of the PowerBook(R) G4

I wish Apple would stop doing this - this creates a misleading impression about the macbooks, it would be better phrased as:

Up to 5 times faster for many operations, but substatially slower for legacy software & software that relies on altivec.

Also from the article:

features a MagSafe(TM) Power Adapter, invented by Apple especially for mobile users.

What?

Invented by Apple?

Let have a look at available from amazon

For safer operation, the magnetic cord easily detaches from the fryer if accidentally pulled.

These things have been standard in the food industry for years & are compulsory on some cookers in Japan.

I think Apple meant to say

features a MagSafe(TM) Power Adapter, adapted from others inventions by Apple especially for mobile users.

Meh. Anyway, there a couple of pics at the Apple store, looks pretty nice, but nothing particularly new to see here.

+1 Slashvertisment.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[LiquidCoooled]

Isn't that more indicative of the drivers used in Windows XP though?

Or were the benchmarks done in OSX then in Windows in which case other issues could arise.

Also, newer beta drivers are always improving things and tweaking applications.

Theres no way you could determine if the Mac driver was underclocking in OSX without doing the benchmarks in OSX.

MacBook a/b/g WiFi card

[Kadin2048]

I definitely hadn't heard that about the MacBook's wifi card (not that I've really been following it or anything, since I'm not really in the market for one).

Does Apple's driver actually use the 802.11a functionality? Or is it just there in the hardware, but unimplemented by Apple? (So that you'd have to use Windows drivers or something in order for it to be useful.)

Also, what's the status on Linux drivers for whatever chipset they use in there? (Are they retaining the same chipset across all models?) Has anyone had success with ndiswrappers, or are you basically hosed for a WL card when booted into Linux?

Re:MacBook a/b/g WiFi card

[daveschroeder]

Yes, Apple's driver supports the "a" functionality. Also, on page 62 of Apple's MacBook Pro user's guide, it confirms that it is capable of connecting to "any 802.11a-, 802.11b-, or 802.11g-compliant product."

Apple has so far used the Broadcom BCM4311 and Atheros AR5000 Series (AR5006EX) wireless chipsets, both of which support 802.11a/b/g. Don't know what the status with regard to Linux is for any of those chipsets.

Of course, I've used RHEL, Fedora Core, and CentOS happily with networking, in virtualization, on my MacBook Pro, so there's no need to worry about "Linux drivers".

Re:MacBook a/b/g WiFi card

[Anonymous Coward]

The Atheros chipset's FCC ID is PPD-AR5BXB6-M:

https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/eas/reports/ ViewExhibitReport.cfm?mode=Exhibits&RequestTimeout =500&calledFromFrame=N&application_id=443136&fcc_i d=

Price

[larry2k]

That's a phenomonal price for what you get. Over the high end 15.4in MacBook Pro you get a faster processor, larger screen and resolution, faster superdrive and an extra USB port and for just 300 bucks more. Amazing

Re:Price

[Redundant offtopic t]

Oh, it's better than that. If you bump the CPU and disk drive on the 15 to equal the 17's specs, the 15" comes to $2899 (and then if you want FW800, you have to find an expresscard). The 17" sells for $2799.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[MustardMan]

The hardware was underclocked - you can use the ATI tools to reset the clock speed, then when you reboot in os X the new clock will remain. The setting is stored on the video card.

12"

[sehryan]

I wish the 12" MacBook would get here. I am in the market right now for an ultraportable for my wife, and would probably get an Apple if they offered it.

Re:12"

[SpinJaunt]

I am also looking for a decent 12"er.. laptop that is. A lot of 12"er's are way over priced :(

I predict it will be called MacBook and powered by a Core Solo --shame.

Re:12"

[Anonymous Coward]

The general consensus is that the 12" Macbook Pro will be released when Merom hits the market. With the heat problems the Macbook Pros have been having, a 12" wouldn't be viable at this time. Merom should change that.

Re:12"

[PDubNYC]

"I predict it will be called MacBook"

Ya, you and 35,000,000 other people. Well done, Kreskin.

Re:12"

[fafaforza]

Rumor has it that Apple will be releasing a 13.3" widescreen laptop soon. Not sure myself, so check out the rumor sites.

Re:12"

[Queer Boy]

You're going to have to wait for the MacBook and then it's supposed to be 13" widescreen. So no ultra-portables from Apple. I wish they would have a portable that was thin and light again. My PowerBook 2400 weighed 4 and a half pounds, although the iBook G4 comes close at 5.

Re:12"

[fermion]

I am sure there is some reason to want the new iBook, like we need to run windows, but consider what one really needs an ultraportable for. To do some basic work, to do some basic email, to do some basic browsing. The 12" powerbook is not so great for video editing. It is not so great for picture editing. It is not so great for most high power applications. It is not because it is slow. It is not slow, it is plenty fast. It is because the screen is small and the unit gets very hot when it does a lot of work.

The new 13.3" MacBooks will likely be bigger. If I wanted a small computer, I would wait for a 12" to come up refurbished, and get it for a song, or a least about as much as you would have to pay Dell. The Sonys are also cute, but way expensive.

Re:12"

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have the 12" PowerBook (powerful-but-small) confused with the 12" iBook (cheap-but-runs-Office). The PowerBook and (presumably) MacBook Pro line is for all the latest features you're willing to pay extra for, dimensions-be-danged.

The built-in screen size is irrelevant whenever you're sitting at a desk with an external monitor, so that's no limit on the types of tasks people do with small machines. Is the Mac Mini useless because it has no built-in screen? I usually need to work with two monitors, one at least 21" 4:3, so a 17" 16:9 built-in LCD would probably never be a major selling point for me unless it also came with a full-size 100+key keyboard and built-in Wacom tablet---different strokes.

Many of us, for whatever reason, need as powerful a machine as money can buy in as small a box as we can cram it all into---for the price of a new Hyundai, if necessary, because our software already costs as much as a Rolls. We'd rather not sacrifice CPU, graphics card, RAM, HD, network connection, optical drive, etc.; however, we'd be willing to give up a few duplicated ports, the internal modem, 9mm drives, backlit keyboard, speakers, etc.

Apple, PLEASE make an ultraportable, high-performance MacBook Pro ASAP, and charge whatever price you want for it under $20,000. I will gladly pay the premium.

1600x1050 LCD

[Pfhor]

Same pixels as the 20" lcd cinema display.

120gig SATA drive

2.16ghz Duo's

256meg ati graphics

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

Re:1600x1050 LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

From this page, http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/graphics.html it looks like the resolution for the 17" MacBook is actually 1680 x 1050.

12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[grm_wnr]

Since my own blurb for this was rejected (no blame on the editors, they were probably flooded with stories on this), I'll state an observation here: The 17" PowerBook G4 is now gone, but the 12" model stll hasn't been updated yet. Is that an indication that the rumors about a 13.3" MacBook to replace the 12" PowerBook and the 14" iBook are true?

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[Anonymous Coward]

An who is quivering with anticipation with this.

I mean, honestly, I don't understand why Apple didn't have an Intel replacement for all their models. Was is that much more difficult to develop a 17" version and a 12" or 13" version?

I don't mind Apple rumours, but it isn't really a rumour considering that largely it is expected for Apple to replace all their laptops with Intel based ones.

Just to be the first to "rumor" this, but I expect Apple to come out with Intel based iBook's as well.

I can't get excited about something that is easy to predict and expected, as is a 17" model of an Intel notebook.

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[grm_wnr]

Well, okay, it isn't the most exciting rumor, but I've seen laptops with a 13.3" screen and it's a really nice size - the interesting bit isn't that smaller Intel Mac laptops are coming, the interesting bit is that it's a new size, a semi-new line of laptops, and that it bumps down the iBook down the Apple food chain quite a bit (I guess they're keeping the iBook brand name though, or they would've killed the iMac brand as well).

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[mcbridematt]

The difference between the 12" iBook and 12" PowerBook is mainly down to fine print: audio line in (analogue but still useful), 5200rpm vs 4200rpm (yes there is a difference), 12" iBook slightly bigger in all dimensions, DVD burner not default, no monitor spanning without hacks, graphics even more god awful than the PowerBook[1], etc.

[1] NVIDIA should take the GeForce4 Ti 4200 and shrink it right down and use that as a mobile chip. Screw pixel shaded desktops, no use if your graphics chip isn't going to render anything beyond the desktop at 15fps.

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[Enrique1218]

Given that core-duo are so much faster than the g4, I figured Apple would drop the price on the PowerPC models. Guess not!! Yeah, I heard about the emminent demise of the 12" Model. But, with such the delay we are seeing in the Macbook, they must be bringing out a new design. One where the the weight will be in the 4 pound range. I suspect that there won't much a need for a 12" notebook with that out.

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[znu]

Jobs has said he wants all of Apple's computer products to have 'Mac' in their names, so iMac stays, but iBook presumably goes. My guess for the naming scheme would be:

Desktop: Mac mini, iMac, Mac Pro (the G5 tower replacement)
Laptop: iMacBook, MacBook Pro

Maybe we'll see a 'MacBook mini' as well, if Apple decides to release one of those tiny 10" notebooks.

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[njfuzzy]

No, this means that the 17" PowerBook has been replaced already, and the 12" hasn't. For now, they might as well sell the models they have. I don't think the current line-up really reveals much about what the final line-up will be.

My prediction is that they will eventually add a new Mac Book mini-- ultra-thin, expensive, with specs between the Mac Book Pro and iBook/Mac Book, and probably a 12" widescreen or smaller. If the small Pro model is too similar to the Consumer model, it doesn't work out. On the other hand, having no subnotebook would be a lost opportunity for Apple.

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[Anonymous Writer]

Laptop: iMacBook, MacBook Pro

They could also simply go with "MacBook" rather than "iBook" or "iMacBook". That would seem to fit the naming convention better, even though it doesn't have the "i" in it.

Re:12" PowerBook G4 remains...

[ElitistWhiner]

There are no reasons to sell a MacBook 12". Success at 12" is first and foremost defined by the physical package 12"/5#. The 12" Powerbooks "just work" which is Apple's mission. Jobs would never change something that works fantastically well for people.

Apple's success with its 12" form-factor are a reflection of its requirements and specifications. Success at 12" doesn't require dual technologies, high technologies nor patented technologies.

There are improvements Apple could make to the 12" Powerbook but none are reflected in the new Intel generation MacBooks. In order of priority, specification change candidates are:
1 Plastic Case (ala iBook) brushed Alum for screen only
2 Metal Base (ala iBook) lose Powerbook Alum frame design it is too weak for roadwork
3 Redesign Slot-load to prevent deformation
4 Asymetrical FW pin design inside Firewire port
5 Backlit keys
6 Dual independent FW ports (!redundant) bye-bye modem
7 New patented Audio port bye-bye analog audio ports (too weak for roadwork)

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[pryonic]

Oh everything's stolen these days. Why the fax machine is nothing more than a waffle iron with a phone attached!

17" Screen?

[Metabolife]

I'm guessing it will be used mostly for desktop replacement with this large of a screen. My 15.4" screen seems too large to travel with, I can't imagine having to carry around a 17" to class or on an airplane.

Re:17" Screen?

[DrXym]

If it's a desktop replacement, why not just buy an iMac and save yourself half the money?

Re:17" Screen?

[PsychoSid]

Because there's no power socket I can use on the plane/train etc

Re:17" Screen?

[dfghjk]

you lack imagination then. It's incrementally larger than the 15.4" model. To each his own, but I find traveling with a large notebook quite easy (and easy to imagine as well).

Re:17" Screen?

[DrXym]

You think you can use a 17" Mac on a plane? Unless you're sitting in business or 1st, you wouldn't even get the thing to rest on the clip tray. Even then, the thing is so wide you'd be jamming your elbows into the person next to you. Same for a train - you'd hog the whole table for your "laptop". I know this from the difficulties using my smaller and lighter (but still large) T41. My device is right on the limits of acceptable mobile computing.

Anyone genuinely interested in mobile computing would get the 12" or 15" model. That's assuming a 12" Intel version existed.

The only reason I can see for buying a 17" laptop (as opposed to an iMac) is if you need desktop performance but occasionally need to move the device around between sites. This may be suitable for people who spend time with customers and so on. It would be a wretched device for computing between sites. It seems to me that you'd be better off buying an iMac for home and an iBook for planes / trains if that's what you're after. It's still cheaper. For now of course you'd have to use a PPC iBook, but I assume that Apple will get around to an Intel version in due course.

Where's the SMALL ones?

[Jethro]

I love my 12" Powerbook. It's SMALL, it's light, it's easy to carry around, it fits in a backpack, it can take a 4' fall onto concrete not even dent (ok, maybe that was just luck). It's perfect. The screen's big enough, and the keyboard is full-sized.

I don't want a giant laptop. I want some features that the bigger ones have, like the illuminated keyboard and maybe a PCCARD slot. I definitely do NOT want the bulk.

Come on, Apple! Gimmie a 12" (or the not-even-rumoured-much 13.1") MacBookPro! And if it can use the same battery as my Powerbook that'd be nice!

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[clifyt]

"it can take a 4' fall onto concrete not even dent (ok, maybe that was just luck)"

It was just luck.

If it had hit on a corner, you would have been screwed. Well, screwed from an aesthetic point of view...my 12" took such a tumble and now has 'character'. Kinda bugs me occasionally because its such a beautiful machine. Same sorta thing happened with my Wallstreet G3...great neoprene cover that no other laptop has matched for the grip, and while at a friends place, I threw it under a couch...unfortunately, the springs poked through and as I pulled it out, it had 3 HUGE gouges in the soft plastic.

The thing I've learned about Macs is that you really shouldn't get too attached to the beauty...thats one of the things that makes them so great looking -- you have to take great care of them to keep the image, but if all you are interested in is a workhorse, it does the trick regardless of what it looks like.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Matey-O]

They've already committed to migrating off G4/G5 by the end of the year. I suspect you won't have long to wait.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Jethro]

The thing I've learned about Macs is that you really shouldn't get too attached to the beauty...

Oh, no worries. I've actually gone to some lengths to make it look more beaten up than it is. I figure people are less likely to steal a laptop that seems to be held together with duct tape. (it's actually just gaffer's tape, but they don't know that).

That 4' fall was off the table at airport security. Fell smack on the LCD. I was really surprised when it actually turned on later that day...

For how long I've had this guy, it's in AMAZING shape. The bottom's a bit scratched and the original battery died, but other than that, nothing.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Jethro]

I know (or at least I hope). It's just a bit annoying when you go "I'll buy a new laptop when they release the 12"/13.3"/small MacBookPro (and then I'll sand off where it says MacBookPro and etch in "Powerbook ID")" and then they release the giant one first.

On the plus side, now I know I should start putting money aside...

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Ukab the Great]

After a few small dents, my powerbook had so much "character" that the Apple store decided that my 3-year Applecare warranty was just too plain and boring to be used with it anymore.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Deviant]

I definetly agree. I have a 12" PowerBook myself and it has worked out beautifully for me - the best of both worlds. I have a beautiful 19" LCD and a keyboard/mouse/speakers set up on a desk at home to make up for the size when I need it. When I am in class and on the go I have my nice, small, light and incredibly sturdy feeling laptop with great battery life. When I come home I plug it in and I have an even bigger LCD than the 17" projected with a gorgeous DVI picture. I also have a Dell Inspiron 8600 which is roughly the size of the 15" MacBook Pro and I don't think I could go back to carrying that large of a laptop with me.

Please Apple give us something of the same quality and form factor as the 12" PowerBook with some Core Duo love! Then again, maybe you shouldn't as I think that I can still get a couple years out of this 12" PB at this rate and nothing else would tempt me to upgrade...

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[jgs]

I bounced my 15" AlBook off a hard floor. Everything continued to work fine, except for the latch. It would catch -- sort of -- but sometimes the lid would jiggle open when I was transporting it, which is bad since then the computer wakes up and commences generating heat and running down the battery. Sometimes I'd get it home and find out by looking at the log that it had had tens of wake/sleep cycles.

Anyway, I eventually decided to send it in for repair, fully expecting to billed for it. To my great surprise, they fixed it free under AppleCare. The case is still dented, but the latch works fine now.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Jethro]

Then again, maybe you shouldn't as I think that I can still get a couple years out of this 12" PB at this rate and nothing else would tempt me to upgrade...

*grin* seconded. Though I might have to et a Mac Mini or something for the real workhorse stuff.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[C.A. Nony Mouse]

I love my 12" Powerbook. It's SMALL, it's light, it's easy to carry around, it fits in a backpack, it can take a 4' fall onto concrete not even dent (ok, maybe that was just luck).

Yes, it was. I know from personal experience.

It's perfect. The screen's big enough, and the keyboard is full-sized.

Agreed.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[soft_guy]

I have an older PowerBook G4 (last of generation TiBook) that I've kept in such nice looking shape some people ask me if is a MacBook Pro.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Sloppy]

Yeah, I don't understand why small laptops are getting rarer. IMHO, the only reason the 12" Powerbook should be discontinued, is if they are introducing a 10" one.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[soupforare]

It's because laptops are turning into luggable computers again.
If you want small, you've got to import from Japan. :/

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Ohreally_factor]

I've sent my old Titanium (800/DVI) in for other reasons, and they fixed the case and other problems, for free, and without being asked.

The last repair was a broken hinge just a few weeks shy of the warranty expiring. I was hoping that they'd be out of parts to repair it and just send me a new Powerbook, but no such luck!

I hear an occasional horror story about Applecare, but in my case, it's paid for itself at least three times over.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[killjoe]

Unfortunately when you buy a mac laptop you have to get applecare. Their quality control is just lousy. They provide nice service when things go wrong but things go wrong way too often.

Re:Where's the SMALL ones?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be a while, and slower too cuz the current Core Duo puts out too much heat compared to a G4.

My MBP is significantly hotter than my 12" PBG4 which is hotter than a 15" PBG4.

Laptop, I don't think so...

[s31523]

I like how Apple responded to complaints of heat with "well, that is why it is a notebook and not a laptop". I am waiting for someone to up the clockspeeds to "normal" (since Apple apparently purposely slows things down), burns their thighs and other sensitive areas, then sues Apple, just like that chic sued MacDonalds... Soon, instead of the sticker that reads "Intel Inside", there will be warning labels that read "CAUTION: Contents extremely hot. Not suitable for laptop computing".

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[nule.org]

I was at a lan party this weekend with my new 15.4" MacBook Pro and spent several hours playing games (WoW in OS X and Dawn of War: Winter Assault in XP, still need to pick up UT2k4 for the Mac) and while the top certainly got warm right near the screen, I didn't mind it on my lap. Then again, I don't want kids anyway.

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand all the complaints about the MacBook running hot. I was using mine the other day on my lap wearing just a pair of silk boxers (my wife commented that I looked cute sitting there by the light of the screen). Sure, it was warm, but it certainly wasn't any warmer than an electric blanket. In fact, I've got 2 older windows laptops that run hotter than it. One is a Dell CPi 266MHz PII, the other is a Toshiba 2805-S402 850MHz PIII.

As for the people claiming Apple's battery life estimate for the MacBook is way off, I consistently get 3.5+ hours of battery time with the screen at full brightness while browsing online over the wireless connection. (I got an extra .5 hours last night when my wife shut off the light and the screen dimmed to match. You've just gotta love the little details on this thing.)

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

"And that Lady who sued Mcdonalds she lost on Appeal."

Citation?

You're wrong. There was no appeal made. A settlement was made between Liebeck and McDonalds.

Here, here, and here all point out that you are wrong. It's odd that someone who is trying to claim to know "the real facts" makes such false claims.

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[Vengie]

Actually, please don't make things up.
I hate when people with no clue discuss Liebeck v McDonalds.

During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebecks. This history documented McDonalds' knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard. McDonalds also said during discovery that, based on a consultants advice, it held its coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees fahrenheit to maintain optimum taste. He admitted that he had not evaluated the safety ramifications at this temperature. Other establishments sell coffee at substantially lower temperatures, and coffee served at home is generally 135 to 140 degrees. Further, McDonalds' quality assurance manager testified that the company actively enforces a requirement that coffee be held in the pot at 185 degrees, plus or minus five degrees. He also testified that a burn hazard exists with any food substance served at 140 degrees or above, and that McDonalds coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured into styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat. The quality assurance manager admitted that burns would occur, but testified that McDonalds had no intention of reducing the "holding temperature" of its coffee. Plaintiffs' expert, a scholar in thermodynamics applied to human skin burns, testified that liquids, at 180 degrees, will cause a full thickness burn to human skin in two to seven seconds. Other testimony showed that as the temperature decreases toward 155 degrees, the extent of the burn relative to that temperature decreases exponentially. Thus, if Liebeck's spill had involved coffee at 155 degrees, the liquid would have cooled and given her time to avoid a serious burn. McDonalds asserted that customers buy coffee on their way to work or home, intending to consume it there. However, the companys own research showed that customers intend to consume the coffee immediately while driving.

The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages. This amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill. The jury also awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages, which equals about two days of McDonalds' coffee sales. Post-verdict investigation found that the temperature of coffee at the local Albuquerque McDonalds had dropped to 158 degrees fahrenheit. The trial court subsequently reduced the punitive award to $480,000 -- or three times compensatory damages -- even though the judge called McDonalds' conduct reckless, callous and willful. No one will ever know the final ending to this case. The parties eventually entered into a secret settlement which has never been revealed to the public, despite the fact that this was a public case, litigated in public and subjected to extensive media reporting.

She didn't "lose on appeal" -- please shut the hell up.

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[Vengie]

Please check my post below. The facts in the "coffee case" have nothing to do with what you learned from the media. Try to be informed instead of looking like someone that has bought into the public hysteria.

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[s31523]

I was simply making a reference to a well known case that revolved around burning one's self on someone's product. Try not being such an pretentious a-hole.

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[Vengie]

You referenced in a way that perpetuates an urban myth that portrays the legal system in a heinously incorrect light. now go back to your cubicle, you sweaty long haired mongrel

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[s31523]

What urban myth? There is nothing mythical about the case you provided details on, someone did sue mickey D's over hot coffee, did they not? How does my reference portray the legal system in a heinously incorrect light when I provided no details on the case and made no mention of the verocity of the case. Again, my point was to say hey, people have sued over getting burned, be it coffee in the lap, or a hot curling iron... I can honestly see someone sueing over a hot-ass laptop, err sorry, notebook PC being placed on bare skin while watching TV. And I never left my cubicle, and I am pretty much bald! ;) HA

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[Gentlewhisper]

Then again, I don't want kids anyway.

Was there even choice involved? :)

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[fnj]

I am waiting for someone to up the clockspeeds to "normal" (since Apple apparently purposely slows things down), burns their thighs and other sensitive areas, then sues Apple, just like that chic sued MacDonalds...

No offense, but dumb analogy. The analogy that would make sense would be to a hypothetical case where someone bought coffee heated to a customary, comparatively moderate, temperature at McDonalds, then took it home and nuked it, and then burned themselves. That never happened, and they would have no case, just like your stupid hypothetical Mac user would have no case.

In the infamous real McDonalds case, the coffee was delivered by McDonalds at an extremely high temperature, well beyond what is customary or what makes sense for any drink.

Re:Laptop, I don't think so...

[Anonymous Coward]

By your own citation, the approximately $3 million dollars that had been awarded by the jury for punitive damages (the amount that near everyone seemed to lampoon in public) on appeal was reduced to less than half a million. That is a 6x reduction. If that's not called losing on appeal, I don't know what is. The victim certainly did not win on appeal. She also did not break even on appeal. I would say she lost on appeal, substantially.

Most important detail

[Microsift]

At $2799 the 17" MacBook Pro with a 2.16Ghz core duo costs the same as the 15.4" model with 2.16 Ghz core duo, one must assume a price drop is imminent on the 15.4" model.

Re:Most important detail

[ronanbear]

I just noticed that. And I just used my last MOD point a minute ago.

The 120GB harddrive on the 17" makes the 15" with processor upgrade especially poor value. Apple usually fix this sort of thing quietly within a few days.

Re:Most important detail

[ivan256]

A poor value? I don't know about that... One of those is a machine I'd actually want to carry around with me on a day to day basis, and the other is an enormous beast that is practically non-portable and better replaced with a desktop system... Even at the same price, it would be the best decision for me to go with the 15" over the 17". Of course, over $2000 for a laptop is just plain rediculous, and I say that as a person who has bought powerbooks in the past, so I wouldn't buy either of them.

Re:Most important detail

[MyDixieWrecked]

the 15" is actually 100$ more expensive.

And the 17" has a better burner and more ports.

the 15" doesn't look like such a hot deal, anymore.

I just hope the 12" has a backlit keyboard and a decent screen (unlike the G4 12"). ...spike

Re:Most important detail

[danpat]

Good prediction. Looks like the 2.16Ghz version of the 15" is quietly gone from their store.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/wo/0.RSLID?mco=608880DF&nclm=MacBook Pro

Re:Most important detail

[Anonymous Coward]

I purchased a 2.16 GHz MBP, like, yesterday.

Fortunately, Apple has a price guarantee:

PRICES
The Apple Store endeavors to offer you competitive prices on current Apple products and selected Sale and Apple Certified Reconditioned products. Your total order price will include the price of the product (on the day of shipping) plus any applicable sales tax and shipping charges. Apple reserves the right to change prices for products displayed at the Apple Store at any time.

Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment.

Re:Most important detail

[anagama]

The 2.16ghz version never had it's own column. You always had to select the 2ghz version, and then choose the processor upgrade in the customization screen. That option still exists at the same price as before the 17" came out (the upgrade is $300). Of course, for the same HD and processor as the 17", the 15" is actually $100 more than the 17".

Heat & noise problems solved?

[Junks Jerzey]

Lots of reports of noise and excessive heat from the first rount of MBPs. Apple's much touted fix resulted in the problem getting worse for many owners (see macintouch.com MBP reader reports). So these issues are still out there, and the heat issue is severe (MBP so hot you can't touch it in places near the keyboard).

Here's hoping that these issues are resolved this time around.

Re:Heat & noise problems solved?

[pubjames]

I got one last week and it is completely silent. It does get a bit hot, but it is not as bad as I was anticipating.

Re:Heat & noise problems solved?

[nule.org]

I got mine on Thursday. It certainly gets warm, though I wouldn't call it untouchable. I even spent a few hours at lan party on Saturday with it on my lap. Even under the load of 3d games and 3dmark06 (scored 1114, btw) it wasn't terrible. As for noise I could hear the fan when 3dmark was running, but it was awfully quiet even then.

Re:Heat & noise problems solved?

[Anonymous Coward]

The build quality of the macbook pro's pretty much sucks. The heat problems at lease come from badly applied cooling paste. If your macbook pro doesnt get hot, then you have a model that just happens to have the cooling paste applied in the correct spot. After having observed this and other problems with the macbook pro i must conclude that the build quality is really CRAP, i cant believe a $2200 laptop has issues like i've seen with this thing.

Re:Heat & noise problems solved?

[toQDuj]

Oh yes, because if the heat paste is applied in the incorrect manner, the heat will not be conducted well, the chip will overheat and you'll notice much less of the heat on the outside.

get your facts straight before dissing the mac.

I've got my PB G4 for two years now and the only thing that has broken was the hard drive, and that was even my fault. The Fujitsu Siemens I had for 4 years before had to be sent in for repair 13 (!) times. broken displays, hard drives, video memory and whatnot.

B.

Wow, imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda imagining a beowuld cluster of these...

Great price. Great specs. FW800 and Dual layer Superdrive are good points. Screen res is also great. Too big for me, but much anticipated to many professional buyers.

13" please!

[benbritten]

I had a 17" g4 and it was absolutely fantastic. I write code, and having all your .h and .m.cc.c.whatever files open at the same time, as well as all the interface windows open all at once is a great boon to efficient programming. However, eventually i came to hate lugging it around (at 7 pounds, still lighter than most of my friends shitty dells at the time) and i finally downgraded to a 12".

best choice i ever made. the 12" is not noticeably slower for doing the stuff i do. (compiles a tiny bit slower, but whateva) and it still runs the 23" cinema when on my desk. weighs just over half as much, and fits in a much smaller space (so i can lug around my big nikon d70 as well)

Anyhow, props to Apple for releasing the mothership of laptops, the 17" really is a sweet machine, but the second they announce a 13" intel based lappy, i am there.

1680x1050? That sucks!

[swimmar132]

They should've made it 1920x1200. 1680x1050 is great on a 15" screen (assuming that you have a OS that you can easily adjust the text size i.e. gnome). I'd want to see a higher resolution on a 17" screen.

Warning.

[DAldredge]

This is a First Gen product from apple a company who doesn't exactly have the best track record with 1st gen products. You may wish to wait 3-4 months till the next revision comes out if stability is important to you.

But the 1680x1050 panel is nice. Wish I could buy a couple of 17 inch LCDs that size.

Re:Warning.

[daveschroeder]

This is a First Gen product from apple a company who doesn't exactly have the best track record with 1st gen products. You may wish to wait 3-4 months till the next revision comes out if stability is important to you.

Even so, it might be worth noting that Apple has the best track record across all computer manufacturers, in terms of "initial quality" (out of the box reliablity/usage characteristics), overall quality, lack of need for repairs, and technical support, consistently, and has for years, according to consumer organizations like Consumer Reports.

I think it's safe to say that ANY first gen product from any manufacturer will have problems, but even so, Apple actually has consistently less problems with quality, and specifically "initial quality", than any other vendor, at least by whatever metric Consumer Reports uses to come up with their reports every 6 months.

Still, even considering the above, it's always wise advice to wait for the second generation of ANY new product. Whether it's a new vehicle platform, or a laptop. (One might presume, however, that some things Apple learned from the 15" MacBook Pro rollout have been applied to the initial rollout of the 17" MacBook Pro.)

Re:Warning.

[thelamecamel]

I keep hearing that Apple's first gen products are unreliable. Personally I've had a 1st gen original iMac (screen replaced after about 4 years, then finally retired two months ago in full working condition), a 1st gen iPod (still on original battery, in use 2 hours a day 5 days a week), and now I'm on a dual core iMac, where the biggest problem is a screen redraw ripple when scrolling.

I also know of some people that had lemon after lemon in later revisions.

I'm sure there were some cockups, but which first gen models were no good?

Re:Warning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because Jobs is successful and you are a tiny penised loser, it does not mean that you need to post this bullshit all the time.

Re:Warning.

[gyrogeerloose]

Best reason to wait for Rev 2 on any Apple product is that the company generally upgrades the unit specs without raising the price.

Case in point: Against my better judgement, I purchased a first generation Mac mini. It's be a great little unit, given me no trouble at all, but the Rev 2 models came with 512 MB of RAM (which I paid extra for), Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (which I didn't need, but would have happily taken for free...).

I am now waiting for the second-generation MBP to arrive before I buy. Alas, due to completely indifferent IT guys where I work, I occasionally need to run Windows in order to access our VPN from home.

Re:Warning.

[gh5046]

Because of the Powerbook line and the issues that have already been worked out with the 15" MacBook Pro, I'd imagine this would be more like 2nd generation.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[sammy baby]

I suspect that it is a heat issue, yes. I seem to recall seeing another article (can't find the link just now) that suggested that the actual CPU is underclocked as well.

Honestly, the only thing I do with my laptop that's really CPU intensive is Photoshop. (Okay - and some of the more obnxoiusly resource-intensive parts of OS X itself). For me, the real test of performance will be cranking through a bunch of sharpening scripts under Photoshop on an 8 megapixel, 16-bit image. Since Photoshop CS2 is still a Rosetta application, the performance numbers I've seen for it say "about the same speed as before," so there's no real point in me upgrading yet.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[CastrTroy]

You have to realize that Heat = Wasted Electricity. On a laptop, battery life is bad enough without worrying about the graphics processor killing your battery. I'm sure they could build a laptop with 20 hours battery life. But nobody really seems to be focussing on this. Low power chip + old school graphics card because it doesn't affect office work anyway, and you could probably have a pretty low power computer. Use a slower hard drive, and give it enough ram that it doesn't need to have a swap file, and you'd probably get quite a bit more of life out of the thing.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[gedto]

So the resolution on the 20'' Cinema Display should seem absurdly low for you... as it is the very same as this one. Do you imagine how tiny would everything look in a 1900x1200 17'' display?

MacBook Pro

[pubjames]

I got one of the 15" ones just a few days ago. It rocks.

If you have a significant other that isn't interested in computers, get one of these and then demonstrate Frontrow with the remote to go through your photos/music/video. You might find they suddenly take an interest...

Re:MacBook Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you have a significant other

You must be new here

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[ktappe]

you can get a Windows laptop with better specs for under half the price.

Here we go again; the claim that a better Windows box costs half as much. But, as usual, no specifics are provided, mainly because it's untrue. Perhaps a (close to) equal box can be gotten for a few hundred less, but definitely not "half". Or, if I'm wrong, please feel free to provide specific links and specs to back up your claim.

-Kurt

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[Random Destruction]

Really? I was pretty happy with it.
What I'd love to find is a 19" desktop lcd with decent res. I can't even find any that do 1600x1200 (well I found one, but the price was very unreasonable). Do these actually exist, or are you just asking for a lot? ;)

Re:Slashot = Digg?

[Kildjean]

If Hemos posted it, it's news... If you don't care about it, then look another way... ;)

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[TheRaven64]

I just had a quick look at the Dell site, and I couldn't find any laptops with higher specs at any price. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong place. Could you provide a link please?

Re:THREE USB PORTS!!!!!!1!!

[10Ghz]

"I've been thinking about upgrading my old G4 powerbook for sometime, but have not been able to find a notebook from any vendor with 3 usb ports"

Dude, WTF? We just got bunch of HP nc6220. Three USB-port (one on the left, two on the right). We also got a bunch of tc4200 tablet-PC's: three USB-ports (one on the right, one on the left, and one in the back). You obviously haven't been looking very hard.

ExpressCard/34

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with this ExpressCard/34 crap! This 17" model has the same problem as the 15" in this regard.
If Apple are not going to grace us with a ExpressCard/54 slot, they could have a least kept the PC Card Type II slot.
Professional users of CompactFlash cards require a non-USB interface. USB 2.0 is too slow!!

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to make a good argument that apples are too expensive at least try to make a good comparison. For example, try finding the closest IBM in specs, then compare prices. Go ahead right here.

Re:Cold Day

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Hell will freeze over when people start appreciating quality.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[benbritten]

Ugn. please.

every time there is an apple thread, someone comes out and says 'wait PC's are cheaper!! and here is a comparison!!' and then some apple fanatic comes back and refutes it and blah blah blah.

Look, my time is worth money. windows and linux take effort. I want my tools to work, so I can get to the business at hand. when my tools dont work, i have to spend time fixing them simply so i can get back to work. Having used windows previously (which made me even more of a mac fan) I can tell you that my mac 'just works' and windows does not (i mean, it works, kinda, if you know how to set it up right and keep it running, oh, and reboot every so often and.. and.... and...).

So, again, my time is worth money, if the mac were 5 times as expensive as the dell, it would still pay itself off in productivity in about a month in comparison. So, feel free to buy the cheaper machine, more power to yah. I would rather spend my free time with friends and family and my work time being creative. (as opposed to spending my free time fixing my computer, and my work time jumping through hoops to get shit done)

Some guys

[cyfer2000]

Some guys from fatvallet.com or dealsea.com will soon post detailed specification and price of a Dell and say "See man, cheaper!" I bet.

Re:Some guys

[Anonymous Coward]

fatvallet? Is that like FatWallet for ze Germans?

Re:Some guys

[Anonymous Coward]

Ja. .fillertext

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Mafiew]

When dell gives those 750$ off coupons they boost the base price so it's not really as good as it seems. So, when buying a dell take a look at the prices when they are not offering any promotions to compare. The deals are still pretty good though, you can get a discount of 25% off or so.

The thing is, Apple's not really competing with Dell as Dell's laptop's are made inexpensiveley. Dell can't be beat on value but Apple's laptops are really nicely made with excellent keyboards and very solid cases. With IBM's laptop division gone to Lenovo, I think Apple laptops are poised to take the high end market, a great place for a company looking for large profit margins.

Re:THREE USB PORTS!!!!!!1!!

[Otter]

I've been thinking about upgrading my old G4 powerbook for sometime, but have not been able to find a notebook from any vendor with 3 usb ports (and on different sides!!!!!)

As I mentioned in the Lenovo article a few days ago, the two advantages my T40 has over my TiBook are:

1) It's a more effective tool for clubbing baby seals.

2) The USB ports on the side are much more comfortable when using a memory stick on an airplane tray table.

I don't know if Apple changed the slots from the back to to the side in this model or earlier, but over here it's a welcome improvement. Now about those baby seals...

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[swimmar132]

If it's too small, you should be able to scale things up. I thought OS X's UI was resolution independent by now.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[Hao Wu]

1920x1200 would be perfect, considering Blu-Ray/HD-DVD both use 1920x1080. Those extra 120 lines at the top or bottom would be just enough for a nice control strip, play/pause buttons, etc.

Re:THREE USB PORTS!!!!!!!!

[ktappe]

I don't know if Apple changed the slots from the back to to the side in this model or earlier

All ports were moved to the sides with the advent of the Aluminum models back in 2003.

-Kurt

Weight

[amcdiarmid]

At 6.8 lbs, this is a porky laptop. Perhaps it's not bad for 17", but right now there is no sub 6 lb. Apple Laptop.

Too bad...

Not like it's impossible, just look here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16834220021

$.02

Re:Weight

[lubricated]

Man, I knew nerds were wimpy, but 6lbs?!!? What is that the most excersise you get. My 17" Dell is about 8, just throw it in your backpack.

Re:Weight

[Anonymous Coward]

At the moment, the ONLY Apple laptop that weighs more than 6 lbs is the 17" MacBook Pro. Nice of you to complain about the weight of a 17" laptop by pointing at a 12" model that's only 2.5 lbs lighter.

Oh, and you might want to double-check that weight. It's common for PC laptop weights to be advertised as the weight WITHOUT the battery. Apple doesn't do that, which probably explains the .5 lb difference between your link and the 12" PowerBook.

Re:Weight

[Thrudheim]

"right now there is no sub 6 lb. Apple laptop . . . Too bad"

Try doing some research before making claims like that. The 15-inch MacBook Pro weighs 5.6 lbs. Besides, your counterexample has only a 12-inch screen. It's not really fair to compare its weight vs. that of a 17-inch machine and then call the latter "porky."

Re:Weight

[amcdiarmid]

OK, fair enough: There is no sub 6 lb. Intel Mac. Happy?

For those who say geeks are wimpy: If you carry the *&** thing for over an hour a day, or more, weight matters.

(At one point, I rollerbladed 5 miles to work with my laptop. Kinda got sensitive to weight that way.)

Re:Weight

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking bollocks again mate, the 15" is 5.6lb

Re:Weight

[be-fan]

The 15.4" MacBook Pro is a 5.6lb Intel Mac. Indeed, it was the first one to come out, and has been out since February.

Re:Weight

[Ohreally_factor]

I used to think the same thing, until I spent two months walking and taking busses thru Mexico. For serious backpack type traveling, every pound counts. That thin Tibook I carried felt like it weighed a ton. I'm very much looking forward to my next trip with my 12" PB.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[mmeister]

Up to 5 times faster for many operations, but substatially slower for legacy software & software that relies on altivec.

Well, Apple does say UP TO 5 TIMES FASTER, so they are aren't lying. I would never expect them to say anything negative about their product in any of their marketing material, that's just retarded.

That's like going to a job interview and focusing on all your faults, rather than what you have to offer the company. We all have faults, it doesn't mean we should tout them.

Apple has always been a forward thinker. Legacy support has always come at some performance price. If you want to get angry, get angry at the likes of Adobe, which apparently bet on Apple's Intel switch starting later, rather than sooner. They got caught with their pants down (an Intel Mac version is still OVER A YEAR AWAY).

Re:Slashot = Digg?

[tremor_tj]

100% agree with you. The reality distortion field is in full effect.

Special Apple event?

[kuwan]

Interesting that the announcement was made without any kind of special media event that gets the entire tech world whipped up into a frenzy. Apple gets so much free press from their media events that it seems a bit unwise to have a product announcement without one. Maybe they didn't want the inevitable letdown by all the fanboyz wanting a new video iPod followed by predictions of Apple's pending doom because they only announced a new computer.

Re:Special Apple event?

[Anonymous Coward]

they annoucned for the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas - sort of like they do every year on this day.

Re:Special Apple event?

[Keith Russell]

Apple was targetting their audience for this one. Since the 17" PB has been a popular choice for video editing/processing, Apple chose the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention to introduce the 17" MBP.

Re:Special Apple event?

[kuwan]

Yes, but for most of the recent product introductions Apple has sent out media invitations a week or so before about their upcoming products. For this announcement there was nothing, just a press release. They've generated a lot more buzz with the special media events.

Re:Special Apple event?

[Ohreally_factor]

OK, so Steve Jobs will announce the 12" Macbook Pro on June 30th at the keynote for the National Conference of the LPA. He will probably also take the opportunity to introduce the new iPod Pico.

I wonder if I can sneak in if I walk on my knees?

Re:Special Apple event?

[Keith Russell]

Well, consider the timeline of the last major product announcement.

1. Invite journos to 1 Infinite Loop with promise of "fun, new products".
2. Watch journos (pros and bloggers) run rampant with wild speculation.
3. Unveil some fun, new, but not earth-changing products.
4. Watch same journos (pros and bloggers) run rampant with furious recriminations for not living up to wild speculation.

I don't blame Apple for being a little gun-shy right now. I doubt Apple will pre-announce another product launch before the next keynote.

Universal Version of Final Cut Studio

[utexaspunk]

They also released a universal binary version of Final Cut Studio.

Re:Universal Version of Final Cut Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

That's been out for a while, son. I've had my DVD for more than a week.

Re:Universal Version of Final Cut Studio

[utexaspunk]

Yeah. It looks like it came out at the end of March. I didn't notice it until I saw the page for the 17".

nice - how about the Mac Mini's fast OS switching?

[fak3r]

this is nice, but who would have thought the next Power...MacBook Pro would come out, instead of a 'consumer line' (read, NOT a ~2800$ laptop) MacBook to really get ppl switching.

For me I'm really starting to fall for (or lean hard towards) a Mac Mini Duo -- not only can you triple boot on it, there's now video of it doing 'fast OS switching', much as it does its 'fast user switching'.

Damn, this is getting fun.

You've got it backwards

[antientropic]

It's exactly the other way around: if you want to be immune from Windows malware, then you should run Windows inside a virtual machine. Then you can restrict it to its own virtual disk (which would just be a big file on your Mac disk), restrict it from accessing the network if you want to, and so on. On the other hand, if you dual-boot into Windows, then a Windows program with sufficient privileges can destroy your Mac partition as easily as it can with the Windows partition: just run fdisk. So there is no fundamental level of extra security in dual-booting.

Re:You've got it backwards

[corrosive_nf]

Actually if you want to be immune from Windows malware, then you should'nt run Windows at all.

Re:You've got it backwards

[vaxt]

Windows Cannot read let alone write HFS+, the virus or whatever would have to ALSO be a program that can read AND write to HFS+. Seems unlikely.

Re:You've got it backwards

[petermgreen]

you don't need to know how to write to a filesystem to do some serious damage. dumping random garbage on random sectors of the drive would be perfectly nasty to any partition on the drive for example.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[hunterx11]

Clearly you haven't read Apple's business plans:

1. Maintain a tenuous balance on the edge of total collapse for decades 2. ??? 3. Profit

Only in this case, instead of nobody being sure who knows what step 2 is, we all know that Jobs knows, but he won't tell anybody.

Phht..... Too big...

[ShyGuy91284]

I don't like big-screen notebooks myself. I worked on a 13 inch display just fine on my desktop back in the day. Even if your laptop is going to be your primary computer, I'd prefer something light and compact even if it was my primary computer, and to just hook that up to a larger external display at home (an iBook in my case which isn't the smallist, but it is far from large). But we'll see how I stick to this when I actually can afford a 17" MacBook Pro....

Re:Slashot = Digg?

[caluml]

I suppose the problem is the line between quality items, and filling the front page. You have to give the users something to discuss between major news items.
But seriously - a new laptop.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[z-kungfu]

LMAO... since Dell makes such crappy laptops I went to IBM (Lenova) to spec out a comprable T series. Hmmmm... I couldn't get all the features and yet it turned out more expensive... I then went to Dell and spec'd one out, the same thing happened... Hmmmm... I guess you're still living in 1999...

To whoever wrote the article

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if you got through 9th grade or not, but please notice a new articles headline should always be in present tense.
Struck me immediately as odd, page full of new feeds, and this one article with the odd name.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[falcon5768]

sorry I call Shenanigans on you. Even with Legacy software there is a noticable speed boost over how slow the G4 was. Maybe be not 5x but then they never SAID everything was 5x as fast, only up to.

there's the keyboard,too

[barutanseijin]

The pb12 has a decent keyboard, but you can't say that about the ibook. Worth the price difference? Probably not, but...

No thanks..

[HerculesMO]

Spending nearly $3000 on a computer that isn't nearly as powerful as $3000 would buy me otherwise? No thanks... I'm waiting for a sub-$1000 Mac so I can just have a Mac... I'm not going to spend obscene money on something that quickly will be outdated. Even if it is a Mac.

Re:No thanks..

[javester]

Man. I have news for you. Everything in the computer world will be quickly outdated...
BTW, have you tried comparing the MBP 17" with anything else in the PC world? These guys did, and they actually found it $500 cheaper than a similarly configured Dell XPS 1710 gaming laptop!

Re:No thanks..

[Darth Maul]

Your wait has been over for a while now:

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

Re:No thanks..

[Kildjean]

I think that Apple has to release their "cheapo" line soon. I for one would like a laptop but i am not ready to dunk $2000 on one. I own a PowerMac G5, so its not an Apple thing, its a money thing... ;) Either that or just go and get an imac... but I want a Mac laptop!!! and cheap to boot. (and no not a g4)

Re:No thanks..

[HerculesMO]

Carrying that around isn't really a feasible solution, as I'd have to carry a small LCD as well.

Re:No thanks..

[Anonymous Coward]

Man. I have news for you. Everything in the computer world will be quickly outdated...

That's not news to him, that's exactly what he said. Hence not wanting to spend more than $1000 on something that will be quickly outdated (any computer). I've been the same way when purchasing. My last laptop purchase was a Thinkpad T23 that I bought for $300. Why pay $1600 for a new machine when an old machine will work for me for next few years and has the small form factor I want in a laptop? Unfortunately, buying Apple notebooks used is not usually a great deal (you don't save much money, plus the G4 is ridiculously slow). I'm look at buying their Intel iBook personally.

Re:No thanks..

[oscarmv]

You won't find a more powerful laptop for that price right now. Unless it's a 'laptop' only in name. Considering the weight and dimensions, this thing is a beast.

Re:No thanks..

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a laptop by any means. This is more like a Pizza-box-top

Re:No thanks..

[Anonymous Coward]

If the only reason you are buying a Mac is to have a Mac... you are wasting your money no matter what version you buy.

Re:No thanks..

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what your problem is? You're poor.

Re:No thanks..

[be-fan]

Sorry to break it to you, but $3000 is the going rate for laptops in the Macbook's class. Dual-core 2.16 GHz processors with 1GB of DDR2-667, 100GB 7200RPM HDDs, and 17" screens all in 1" form-factors don't come in $1000 machines. Have you priced out a Dell XPS notebook lately? The cheapest one, when outfitted comparably to the Macbook, sets you back $3400. Sure, you get a faster GPU and a higher-res screen, but that's an extra $600! For a Dell!

Re:No thanks..

[twistedcubic]

You can get a new iBook G4 for less than $1000. Many university computer stores still have them in stock from last year.

Re:No thanks..

[HerculesMO]

I would, but it can't run Windows... so it's useless to me. I need a laptop I can use for work still... not *just* a mac :)

Re:No thanks..

[totoanihilation]

Sure, you get a faster GPU and a higher-res screen, but that's an extra $600! For a Dell!

You forgot to mention that the MBP has an iSight, gigabit (vs 100megabit) ethernet, firewire 800, is 1" thin, and weighs several pounds less. Plus, it comes with great software like iLife.

Re:No thanks..

[toddestan]

He doesn't want a high end laptop, he just wants an inexpensive Intel Mac laptop. So far, Apple hasn't provided one, though I'm sure Apple's $999 price point isn't going anywhere, so it's only a matter of time.

Re:No thanks..

[Listen Up]

Quit your bitching. You have gotten a lot of great replies from people, but now you are bitching about not being able to run Windows and OS X on the same laptop, for under $1000. So, you need a MacBook, but don't want to pay what it costs to own one. The MacBook is not any more expensive than an equivalent laptop from any non-Apple competitor. How much of a cheapass are you? If you need to have a Core Duo processor laptop for under $1000, then wait 5 or more years and try to buy one off of eBay, Apple or non-Apple.

And it is almost gauranteed you do not need any special software on your Windows laptop that is not available on OS X as well.

Re:Apple user interface?

[jcr]

Gray text on a black background!

Looks fine to me on an Apple cinema display. Maybe you need to adjust your monitor gamma.

-jcr

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

And who says Dell is cheaper? Have you tried speccing a similarly configured laptop at Dell? These guys did, and the MBP 17" was actually $500 cheaper than a similarly configured Dell XPS 1710 gaming laptop!

How about this

[BodhiCat]

How about delivering the 15" 1.83 MacBook that I ordered last week? I even paid extra for second day air, but I haven't heard from the computer store yet.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[gEvil (beta)]

Yes, but it's enough of a change that they'll probably be granted a patent on it. Not that I'm supporting their claim of inventing it. Nor am I saying that our patent system is right for granting it to them...

Re:Phht..... Too big...

[Locus Mote]

"I don't like big-screen notebooks myself. I worked on a 13 inch display just fine on my desktop back in the day. Even if your laptop is going to be your primary computer, I'd prefer something light and compact even if it was my primary computer, and to just hook that up to a larger external display at home..."

If you are primarily using your laptop for text-related work like programming or writing, then fine, a 17" doesn't make sense. Don't buy one. But just because it isn't the right machine for you doesn't mean Apple shouldn't produce it. Isn't that why Apple produces multiple product lines (pro/consumer) with varying sizes? I don't believe that Apple announced it would stop producing 12" or 15" machines in order to focus on 17" ones.

There is a large market for 17" Apple laptops. I personally know many architects, graphic designers, web designers, and a photographer who all own 17" PowerBooks. I own one, in fact. As an architecture student, I can't imagine having a small screen.

Re:Apple user interface?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks great on my cinema display.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[generic-man]

Step 2 is obviously introduce high-margin MP3 player with unprofitable music/video store that ties users* into said high-margin MP3 players for life.

* BZZT! WRONG! YOU CAN BURN YOUR 128KBPS AAC FILES TO CD THEN RE-RIP THEM INTO MP3 FORMAT! U SUCK! APPLE ][ 4EVER!

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur! My Tosh is now 2.5 years old and it has a 1920x1200 screen, and it's a thing of beauty. I haven't been able to buy myself a new laptop for the last couple of years because I can't find one as good.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, resolution independence isn't available yet in OS X, but still in development (some suspect Leopard may ship with it). Once that's true, then super high density displays will make a lot more sense.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is talking about 'total collapse'?

iPod sales have dropped in half and every indication they will continue at that slower rate this year as the market is hitting saturation.

And Mac sales are continuing to be flat or slow relative to the rest of the pc market.

Nobody who didn't buy a Mac over the past twenty years is going to rush out and buy one of these expensive Intel Macs outside of a handful of people with a large amount of disposable income.

Apple is not going to collapse. Apple just isn't going anywhere. They will continue to rake in large but smaller and smaller iPod revenues and 97% of the computing world will live their lives oblivious to the Mac platform.

Re:12" (once the MacBook/iBook is revised)

[pbooktebo]

I think the 12" won't debut until the new iBook (MacBook?) is revealed. The current 12" PowerBook is engineered in a very similar way to the iBook, and there have been lots of rumors that the next version will have lots of new bells and whistles (one prominent rumor is that it will have a wide screen.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[generic-man]

Thank you. I'm willing to pay you up to $15,000,000 for sharing this information with everyone.

Sincerely,
generic-man
Apple Marketing

Re:THREE USB PORTS!!!!!!1!!

[Anonymous Coward]

From any vendor? My Inspiron 9300 has six USB ports - four on the back and two on the left side. You must not be looking very hard.

Toshiba weighs more

[Macka]

The 17" Toshiba Satellite P105-S921 starts at 7.1 lbs and gets heavier the more things you add to it. It's thicker too (and doesn't have as good a screen rez either).

Don't.

[jcr]

If you change that setting, and you cook your machine, it's your own fault.

-jcr

Re:Don't.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you install new software, you also might accidentally corrupt your partition table. Does that mean that it's a bad idea, or even very likely if you know what you're doing?

Re:Don't.

[alanQuatermain]

There's a difference though:

• If you install software which corrupts your partition table, you can always wipe the disk & re-install.
• If you raise the clock speed & heat output on your GPU and it cooks other components, or burns up due to not having enough heat dissipation to run at that speed, then you need to replace the hardware.

The first situation is easily sortable. The second situation depends on whether the manufacturer will replace the machine under warranty. If they won't (which is reasonable -- you would have to go through some awkward steps to do this) then you've got a nice new Apple-branded flower press.

Personally, I'd love to bump the clock rate, if I had one. But I'd wait to see if the only adverse effect is a more noisy fan. I'd also likely wait for an OS X utility that would switch it, because I'd want to raise the clock speed only when I'm about to *use* it, which would likely only be for certain things (i.e. the latest games which don't play well with a lowered clock).

-Q

Re:Don't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you again? Please, put your login name again. And again. -anonymous fucktard

Re:Don't.

[jcr]

Dude, I don't know what your issue is with me signing a post, but i'm not going to change that habit just because some anonynut on /. bitches about it. Try to work it out in therapy.

-jcr

Re:Don't.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

If you change that setting, and you cook your machine, it's your own fault.

Happen to know, say empirically, if is in fact will happen? Did Apple just underclock the card to save battery life/fan noise (in which case it'd be nice if they ramped it up when it's plugged in, vs. on battery) or is the fan and friends not able to dissipate the heat from an upclocked video card?

Re:Don't.

[jcr]

Happen to know, say empirically, if is in fact will happen?

You might be able to get away with it, but you would be doing so at your own risk.

-jcr

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[hackstraw]

SpacetitoX was able to boost one benchmark's result from 61 frames per second to 91.

So, the fastest LCDs in terms of refresh rate are those that have 12ns or ~83 Hz refresh rate, most are still in the 60 to 70 Hz range.

I guess its impressive to have an LCD being told to refresh its pixels faster than it can, but...

I would assume that Apple set the refresh rate of the card to match the monitor for other reasons like heat and battery life. But then again, Apple has never really been know to be a gaming platform.

Also, this brings up an excellent question. So, if someone dual boots a Mac, changes the hardware settings and breaks the machine or cripples its performance, is that worthy of a call to Apple for support?

So many features...

[ChTh]

...and still no damn docking port. Did Steve have a bad experience with a docking station as a kid, or what's with the aversion?

Re:So many features...

[libra-dragon]

I wonder about that too. I've never been in a corporate laptop environment where there weren't docking stations. Having such an option couldn't hurt their advance into the corporate environment.

I was a big fan of the PB Duo, but their prices were way too high. Take out the iSight and add a dock port for the corporate customers. Just a simple ~$400 dock that duplicates video, audio, fw and usb.

Re:So many features...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs a docking port when you have eth0 and eth1? "Docking" has been an obsolete concept ever since networking became popular back in the 1980s.

Re:So many features...

[cypherz]

I agree. I've owned a great many laptops (currently have four inc. one Mac iBook). Most were for "corporate" use. I've never had a dock be anything but trouble as connectors get worn or dirty. Crashes galore and other sorts of problems. MY GF's little HP notebook even got stuck in the dock. The problem was electrical not mechanical as the dock had an electricly operated "ejector" that wouldn't eject. Cleaning connectors fixed the prolem. Notebook docks are basically for dorks.

Re:So many features...

[ironring2006]

What do you really need the docking port for though? If you've got a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, you don't even need to plug them into the docking port. You've got 802.11, you've got SuperDrive, you've got iSight, you've got just about every other connection you could possibly need. The only real thing you have to plug in each time is power and external monitor. If you really need to, get a USB hub for all your other peripherals and you now have at most 3 things to plug in. You'll probably find you make better use of your deskspace when you don't have the laptop there and a docking station isn't in your way.

Re:So many features...

[totoanihilation]

What's wrong with this? BookEndz docks

They're most likely more reliable than the crappy connectors on those other laptops. And as a bonus, they don't even go up to 400$ in price.
Apple doesn't have to do _everything_, you know ;)

Re:So many features...

[binary paladin]

Honestly, it's a convenience thing anymore. I'm not a big fan of wireless keyboards/mice and I'd want to stay wired. Plus two printers. Plus my external drives. You're right though, a USB hub would solve this.

However, if there was some sort of a mini station so that when I got home and connected my laptop to that gave me: power, wired ethernet, sound, all my USB devices and my other display, it would be nice. If you're someone who moves a lot, it's a lot nicer to plug into one station rather than have to plug a bunch of crap in every single time you want to hook up. Even eith everything on a USB hub, without a station I have 5 individual connections to make. If they're going into a docking station I can keep them better organized.

I know there are plenty of port replicators out there for the PowerBook right now though. They pretty much do the trick.

Of course the docking station a client of mine just got for his HP is more obnoxious and inconvenient than just plugging everything in.

Re:Apple user interface?

[TheRaven64]

As others have pointed out, it looks fine on a properly calibrated display. For some reason, a lot of PC displays seem to have their gamma settings far too low. This is most noticeable with pale greys, which appear almost black on an incorrectly calibrated screen. The GNUstep project encountered this a lot; they kept the colours from the old NeXT systems and a lot of PC users complained that everything was too dark.

I strongly recommend that you run some kind of calibration software on your display. This usually takes 10-20 minutes of you answering questions about relative colours until the software can determine the colour curve of your monitor and apply the correct corrections.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[TheNetAvenger]

You have to realize that Heat = Wasted Electricity. On a laptop, battery life is bad enough without worrying about the graphics processor killing your battery. I'm sure they could build a laptop with 20 hours battery life. But nobody really seems to be focussing on this. Low power chip + old school graphics card because it doesn't affect office work anyway, and you could probably have a pretty low power computer. Use a slower hard drive, and give it enough ram that it doesn't need to have a swap file, and you'd probably get quite a bit more of life out of the thing

Um, do you understand the concept of 'power saving features'? And I see you are already modded 'insightful'? I am actually on SlashDot and having to explain that laptops DO power saving on their own. Geesh.

This is why a Laptop can and will slow the Video and Hard Drive and even the CPU when on Batteries based on your settings.

However if you are plugged into an AC Outlet, THE COMPUTER SHOULD PERFORM AT FULL SPEED.

So when you are on battery, the performance of most of the components in the Laptop Scale down to whatever level you set and find acceptable. I have a 2Ghz Laptop that will drop the CPU down to 500mhz performance range when on battery, and will slow the video card down to the point is only good for doing word processing. You can also set the laptop to not scale down at all for the sake of performance.

This is what laptops are made to do. There is NO benefit that Apple had to reduce the performance of the computer, just for the sake of batteries - NONE.

Saving batter power is not a credible excuse for a feature reduction on a Laptop of all things.

You also realize that even the 'slowed' down version of the ATI Video is considerably slower and less 'efficient' than mobile GPUs like you would find in a standard Dell or many other brands. So the video is already slower and has less RAM starting out than other laptop brands.

There is NO way this is a good thing. PERIOD.

Once again, Apple is NOT LEADING technically, and they are STILL NOT EVEN keeping up. Macs used to be the technology kings, now they are the 'cheap' version of what you can get from other companies. Why aren't Apple Mac users angered by this, instead of buying the BS from Apple? Why can't we demand Apple to be a 'technology' leader without being called heretics?

This new laptop doesn't even 'look' as cool as the laptops from Dell that have been out for almost a year, and the Dell Laptops from 1 Year ago are actually faster on some things, like video, and this isn't even comparing the performance of the current offerings from Dell and other companies that are still a generation ahead of the 'new' Apple notebook.

I was half excited at the announcement, and the Video performance was the first thing I noticed (before even reading about the slower clock speeds). The second thing I noticed is the Display resolution on the 17" models even. What in the heck are they thinking? Different I guess, but for doing graphics work I like the 1920x1600 17" laptop screen I bought over a year ago. Even my 2002 Toshiba 15" had 1600x1200. Why do I have to go with a lower resolution display if I want a Mac? So much for leading...

Why in the heck is Apple NOT focusing on graphics people, those of us that demand high resolution displays. For illustrating to photo editing and even how about HD Video? I can play a WMV 1080p on my 1yr old Laptop and I can't on anything Mac has to offer. SAD. (Don't go into the tiny print and icons with higher resolutions, OSX should have been doing better at a scalable UI long before now, at least meet the WindowsXP level for goodness sake.)

Mac Users deserve better. PERIOD.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[ivan256]

Does your fryer remain powered up after the cord is rapidly yanked?

Didn't think so.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[Nugget]

Nope, sadly, not yet.

Re:Apple user interface?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I went to the apple site to look at the new powerbook... (excuse me, macbookpro) what did I see? Gray text on a black background! I'm not an old codger by any means, but I can't read that.

Maybe you should adjust the brightness and/or contrast of your monitor. Very light grey text on a black background is the ideal color scheme for monitors. Since the screen is emitting light, even for "black" colored items, it has a tendency to cause eyestrain. Staring at a light for extended periods is just not what our eyes were designed for. The highest contrast of colors is black and white. We're accustomed to black on white due to historical printing technologies, but while it provides the best contrast it also emits the most light and causes the most eyestrain. Reversing the color scheme to be white text on a black background keeps the contrast as high as possible but minimizes the light emission, and hence, minimizes the eyestrain. Darkening the white text to a very light grey helps to soften it a little and further reduce brightness, while only minimally affecting the contrast.

So Apple is using the color scheme that is exactly the ideal, as recommended by numerous independent studies and researchers and as recommended by every design and usability manual I have ever read. This leads me to two conclusions. One, if you're having a problem you probably have your monitor messed up. Two, some people will complain no matter what you do.

Was the Apple user interface group out back having a smoke when this page was being designed?

I doubt it. You'll note the interface tends to a medium to light grey. This provides the ideal contrast compromise with both grey text on black backgrounds (ideal for viewing on monitors and variations of which are the standard for terminal windows and other text interfaces for those of us who have to use them all day) and with black text on a white background, which is the standard printed text view, used by common text editors, word processors, and when viewing anything destined for print.

I can't find anywhere on the site where I can send them a quick email to point out their faux pas, so I have to satisfy myself with ranting here.

Hopefully they won't follow your recommendations, but there is a "contact us" link at the bottom of the page (and all their Web pages), which provides feedback links for the Web site and all the products. The one you want is This one.

Re:Uhm. It's a MAC people!

[soft_guy]

Serious gaming is an oxymoron.

If you want to game, get a PlayStation. If you need a computer to get work done, get a Mac.

If you want to run the latest virus, get Windows.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[tgibbs]

Funny--I'm hearing people I wouldn't expect, long-time Wintel users, talking about buying one of the new Macs. It seems there is a lot of pent-up demand for Macs, which has been held back mainly by fear.

What if I get a new Mac and after a few months decide that I actually like Windows better?
What if Apple goes out of business and I can't get software?
What if my employer requires me to use a particular Windows application?
What if a program or game that I want is only available for Windows?

Suddenly, all of these worries have vanished.

Mass

[Anonymous Coward]

As a service for the imperially impaired, here is the metric metrics:

At 3.1 kg, this is a porky laptop. Perhaps it's not bad for 43.2 cm, but right now there is no sub 2.7 kg Apple Laptop.

The other MacBook pro is, of course, the 39 cm model. Hopefully a MacBook with a screen size in the lower thirties isn't kilometers away from release.

Once Again

[TheNetAvenger]

- The 1680 x 1050 resolution of the 17" display is the same as many desktop 20" widescreen LCDs such as the Apple 20" Cinema Display and the 20" Dell 2007WFP

Who again is NOT totally angered that Apple won't offer high resolution displays. Comparing the pixel count to their 20" Display is SAD, SO SAD...

I have a 2002 Toshiba Laptop with a 15" screen that does 1600x1200, and a 17" Laptop that does 1920x1200...

Why is Apple still the poor cousin when it comes to graphics? (Let alone the Video solution they are using is 2-5 times slower than offerings from other companies.

I was really hoping they would offer people that work with graphics (even as a hobby) a high resolution display.

And if people complain about tiny print or tiny buttons, once again I will say, Why in the HELL does OSX NOT do a better job of Scaling the UI? Even WindowsXP does a better job, OSX should at least catch up to such a low bar.

Besides, I have good eyes, and the 'smooth' lines and crisp video you can get at a higher DPI is more than worth it. I can at least play WMV HD 1080p on my 1yr old 17" laptop, why in HECK can't I play that resolution of Video or Movies on a Mac of all things. An area of the industry they pride themselves on. (Yes I know the 30" screen has 1920x1200, but we are talking laptops here.)

Every Mac user needs to say, Ok, Apple, (A,B,C are really good, but you totally blew it on D,E,F, and G features.) Why is Apple the cheap version of what I can buy from Dell?

Re:Once Again

[Moofie]

"Who again is NOT totally angered that Apple won't offer high resolution displays."

*raises hand* Me. Totally not angry. OS X works just fine even on "modest" resolution displays.

Re:Once Again

[Babbster]

Yes I know the 30" screen has 1920x1200, but we are talking laptops here.

For the sake of clarity, the 23" Apple Cinema HD display is 1920x1200. The 30" display is 2560x1600 and requires that fancy dual-link DVI connection.

Re:Once Again

[cypherz]

I think you are trolling Apple fans, but just for once, I'll bite:

"Who again is NOT totally angered that Apple won't offer high resolution displays. Comparing the pixel count to their 20" Display is SAD, SO SAD..."

I'm not. The resolution of the 17" MBP is the same as my 17 inch HP notebook. High quality 1080p video scales and plays just fine on the MBP. 30 extra pixels would be nice, but since all my notebooks are for writing code when I'm on the road, who cares?

"I was really hoping they would offer people that work with graphics (even as a hobby) a high resolution display."

Errm. it IS a high-resultion display. You're really concerned about those 30 pixels aren't you? Are you editing HD video in 1080p? I didn't think so. I know folks who DO edit HD content for a living and I'll bet they're not bitching about 30 pixels missing on their MBP's.

"I can at least play WMV HD 1080p on my 1yr old 17" laptop, why in HECK can't I play that resolution of Video or Movies on a Mac of all things."

I'll bet you don't. Who uses .wmv anyway? That's a totally shite format, un-portable to anything else without standing on your head. For just WATCHING HD content, nobody will notice that 30 pixels except professional editors.

"Why is Apple the cheap version of what I can buy from Dell?"

It totally ISN'T the same thing. The Dell can't legally run OS X. The Dell doesn't have a built-in video camera. The Dell doesn't have Firewire 800. The Quadro video is pretty bitchin' I'll admit. The drive options are the same for the Dell. I guess, if ALL you look at is the video chipset, then the Dell rocks. I don't think many people are gonna do that. They're gonna look at the sleek Apple enclosure, the clean, beautiful UI, and UNIX reliability and they're gonna pay the extra bucks for the MBP. The Dull just doesn't cut it.

Re:Once Again

[Firehed]

To be honest, I'm not bothered. As a gamer, I like high resoltion, but as a TFT gamer I also like to actually be able to play games at their native resolutions. I've got a 24" Dell and seeing that the only game I can get to run moderately well at 1920x1200 is CS:S, I wouldn't want something with a higher pixel density - I like having the size. Yes, for desktop work and whatnot, having a 15" 2560x1600 display would be insane (perhaps too much, but I'd bet the iPod video screen would be about that resolution if you extrapolate it), but if the option becomes either running everything natively at lower resolution or making the display up-scale half of what I do (which always looks worse), I'll take the lower resolution.

Re:Once Again

[dfghjk]

I certainly agree with you, and I'd add that PC notebooks offer 1920x1200 resolution in a 15.4" screen as well as a 17" one. I love those.

What really annoys me is all the talk about screen dpi. Screen dpi is not entirely the issue since viewing distance also comes into play. What really matters is the angle of view and the arc of a single pixel. Since notebooks are viewed frequently at closer distances than desktops, their screen dpi values should naturally be higher. PC notebook manufacturers seem to get that while Apple does not. Apple is stupid for doggedly sticking to 100 dpi displays despite the fact that (a) you don't want that, (b) technology has offered better for a long while, and (c) it was never a good idea in the first place. I once owned a 30" cinema display but sold it because I couldn't stand the coarse, 100 dpi jagged image. I currently use the 9MP IBM monitor. Sure it's 200 dpi but I just sit closer and get superior results. Too bad Apple broke support for it in OS X.

Re:Once Again

[TheNetAvenger]

Are you editing HD video in 1080p? I didn't think so.

Really don't want this to be a flame war at all, but you picked one of the lucky peeps that do edit 1080 content. Granted it is not for network, but I do work with HD content. So you can maybe understand the frustration?

Why is this something so common on Windows Laptops and we have to beg and fight to get even 720p capable displays from Apple?

The Dell doesn't have a built-in video camera. The Dell doesn't have Firewire 800. The Quadro video is pretty bitchin' I'll admit.

But see it isn't just the Dell, go look at other Laptops. They have 17 and even 15" screens with higher resolution, even DUAL SLI NVidia 7900GTX mobile GPUS, (which is 5-10 times faster than the ATI in the new Mac), and yes even a built in camera.

Even the 'old' laptop I am using that I keep referencing is a Dual-Core 64bit Processor, (and I can run a 64bit OS on it like WindowXP64 or Linux), it also has a RAID HD Setup with 120GB of storage (almost twice as fast as the 'new' Mac), and even a Geforce 7800 Mobile GPU with 512mb of RAM (That is 2-3times the speed of the ATI card in the 'New' Mac, and it was bought last summer.

And to me this is old technology when I look at some of the new models out there. Yelling how many Firewire ports the Mac has, just isn't cutting it, as most of the non-Mac brands also offer Firewire STANDARD.

I also use the Internal Bluetooth, the 108g Wireless(Faster than a/b/or g), a 1000mBit Ethernet, a Hardware Encoder TV built into this 'old' laptop that makes one nice PVR, Quad (surround) Internal Speaker Setup, a Subwoofer, and the list goes on and on. Plus I have 1920x1200 display, which I can't even BUY from Apple in a portable.

This is not Apple Bashing, this is a cry to get others to say, ok, nice try Apple, now here is WHAT WE WANT. We want the toys all the Windows & *nix people get. Admittedly I not a Mac only person, but that actually makes it easier for me to go, hey I have all these features on non-Apple hardware, what the heck is Apple doing. How are they going to get me to have faith in them being the 'leader' again? In almost another lifetime ago I was a graphic designer and my Mac use to be my friend.

Re:Once Again

[cypherz]

Ah. I see. It sounds like you are using a custom built desktop replacement notebook. Sounds like a nice machine BTW. You're right. To get ALL that stuff like you've got in your bespoke "notebook" you'll have to go to an Apple professional-class desktop.

Are you *carrying* that behemoth notebook around that much? If not, why not get a 15 inch MBP and hook a 30" Cinema Display up to it? Just wondering.

Re:Once Again

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as 1080p HDTV. It is an invention (or non-standard extension if you will) of the limit of HDTV, 1080i. Finding any meaningfully important content in an 1080 horizontal pixel resolution is a chore at best. If you are honestly complaining about this (you really have enough "1080p" content that this matters to you), I have to say sorry but you are not just in the minority, you are probably a party of one.

Your video speed complaint is just plain wrong, as the video cards in the MacBook Pro laptops are just-released and specifically designed for the market demographics of the MacBook Pro. They are not for playing games, as the video cards you seem to want all users to waste their battery life on are.

As for scaling the UI, it is rather apparent you are not Mac user and you have no idea what you are talking about. Quite to the contrary of your comment, it is very much Windows XP's necessity to catch up to Mac OS X for the ability to scale the UI and have a consistent, visually-appealing UI. You really should take the time to use the computer platform you are so intent on criticizing. You might not sound like a fool then.

Maybe you are projecting?

Re:Once Again

[MoneyT]

Ok, so what are the things you're not telling us about this laptop of yours?

How many pounds is it? Personaly I don't call it a laptop unless I can carry it all day without throwing my back out.

How big is this thing that you can fit two HDDs in it and a surround sound speaker system.

How many minutes of battery life do you get driving two HDs, two 64 bit AMD hot plates (and for the record, my desktop is an AMD but you can't tell me those things aren't hot) and this 3x faster video card?

And how many banks did you have to rob to afford it?

Don't get me wrong, there's room for apple to improve on their laptops, but aside from IBM, Apple is the only company I know of that makes a laptop that's balanced rather than awsome in one area and a POS in the others.

Re:Once Again

[theolein]

I Couldn't really give a flying fuck what you want. I for one am extremely glad that Apple sells laptops with usable screens as opposed to Dell (I used to have an Inspiron 8200 with 1600xwhatever resolution) where, even using Windows fucking awful large fonts, the text was tiny. The software I use, Adobe products, use hard coded font sizes in their apps and they become unusable at that resolution.

But whatever, you're just trolling in any case because judging by the way you come when you mention your Dell piece of shit, you wouldn't switch for the world.

Fine.

Re:Once Again

[Morky]

The answer is there is a pixel limit for a UI to be usable if it is not resolution independent. Jobs poorly stated this when he said 100 dpi is the optimal limit for a display. He meant at the UI resolution Apple is currently stuck at, but he was trying to spin it into a positive. Neither WinXP or OS X are resolution independent. Vista's UI is resolution-independent, and wouldn't be surprised if this were a feature of OS X Leopard. Still, apps have to be updated to take advantage of this, so it will be a long time before resolution independence will be standard. I've used a WinXP laptop at 1600x1200. You can get really high res images on your screen, but it sucks as soon as you need to use the UI.

Re:Once Again

[5pp000]

I agree. I refused to buy a 17" PowerBook for a long time because 1440x900 was flat inadequate. When they went to 1680x1050, I did buy one, and I consider it _barely_ adequate, but would happily have paid more for 1920x1200.

I don't do video editing -- I just like the screen real estate, and don't mind small text.

Re:Once Again

[TheNetAvenger]

Are you *carrying* that behemoth notebook around that much? If not, why not get a 15 inch MBP and hook a 30" Cinema Display up to it? Just wondering.


Well, to be honest, I have nice desktops, but I tend to be on the move more than in any one location.

Even a bit more of a brick notebook at 10 lb, it is handy to be able to take a computer that can bounce the performance of most desktops, slip it in a case and have it in my car, hotel, etc. It works well in several ways, but it is not a light weight meeting style laptop. That is what my older Toshiba was(although it still had 1600x1200 on a 15" display), and I also have a couple of other units I use for notes and when I just need to write.

Ya, the one I have and was referencing is a brick, but at least I can have as much power as I want, and not be glued to a desk. It is last years model pops almost 7,000 on 3DMark05 and I don't have to mess around when I do graphics, development, or want to run the newest game.

I use the Dell as an example, because it seems to be well known to Mac users since it is a big brand. It offers 1920x1200 on its 17" display, has a TV Tuner, has Geforce 7900GTX w/512mb, etc etc, and is in the same weight and size class as the Mac. But there are handfuls of other good companies with units in the same range as well. And their current Bricks even outperform the Dell XPS class.

The point is though, there are Dells and other brands that offer the same size and class as the Mac, yet you can get the extra features you CANNOT get on a Mac.

That is what bugs me. Apple should be setting the bar, not barely keeping up.

Re:Once Again

[daran0815]

> Too bad Apple broke support for it in OS X.
Out of curiosity, what has broken?

Daran

Re:Once Again

[TheNetAvenger]

The software I use, Adobe products, use hard coded font sizes in their apps and they become unusable at that resolution.

But whatever, you're just trolling in any case because judging by the way you come when you mention your Dell piece of shit, you wouldn't switch for the world.


1) In your attempts to assume, you miss the fact I also do graphic design and own almost every Adobe product for both Mac and Windows.

2) Although I didn't specifically say, but it should be noted I DON'T OWN A DELL, have never OWNED a DELL. The reason I jumped into this article was I was looking for a mid-sized laptop (although I like my bricks and TabletPCs), and I thought the new Apple would have made a nice alternative, it once again came up short. Like they have done for several years now. I hate having to give up performance to have a Mac. I remember when they were the 'leader' and having one was no compromise, sad that it isn't now, and other Apple users should also express they want more from Apple.

3) Sorry your eye sight isn't the best, that I can understand that reason for not wanting higher DPI displays when running OSes that are not Resolution independant...

Take Care...

Finally!

[tekcsound]

A MacTel that I don't mind shelling out $$ for! I've been spoiled by my 17" G4, so the thought of downsizing, losing my FW800, and doing withouth DVD-DL was too much. I guess it's time to start saving up. Maybe by the time I have the $3000+ they'll have come out with a convertible tablet model... but I won't hold my breath.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[ronanbear]

Those cookers have an AC element. The magsafe connector is DC which is more susceptible to arcing.

A deep fat fryer is much heavier and uses a thicker and heavier cord which is less likely to be damaged. There's still a considerable difference between the two systems. As a result of Apple using magnetic adaptors its likely that many other laptop manufacturers will follow suit within 5 years. This is one of the major reasons why it has attracted so much attention.

Re:Cold Day

[base_chakra]

Gosh, not me! I found $7,000 between the couch cushions yesterday, so needless to say I'm really hoping Apple releases an 18" MBP!

Battery Life

[Anonymous Coward]

Any idea what the battery life will be? Know Apple doesn't publish specs, but any rough educated guesses?

OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[Kadin2048]

Of course, I've used RHEL, Fedora Core, and CentOS happily with networking, in virtualization, on my MacBook Pro, so there's no need to worry about "Linux drivers".

Sounds neat; just out of curiosity, what are you using for the virtualization?

And perhaps I'm revealing my ignorance here, but how does the guest OS on a virtualized system handle networking? There must be some sort of psuedo-device driver that you install so that it can talk to the virtualized 'hardware,' or else the virtualization software must emulate some kind of commonly-supported networking hardware. I guess I'm just curious what you have to do to the guest OS, if anything, to get it to work inside the sandbox.

Right now all my equipment (Mac stuff, anyway) is PPC based; however I find the whole virtualization concept really intriguing and I'm hoping that by my next round of upgrades, it'll be sufficiently mature to make dual-booting (or having a separate PC for Linux connected with a KVM switch, my current solution) unnecessary.

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[revscat]

Sounds neat; just out of curiosity, what are you using for the virtualization?

A friend of mine sent me a link to Parallels, which allows you to run different OSes under OS X. Haven't tried it yet, but the guy who sent it to me did. "It works", says he.

More than that I don't know. He's not exactly chatty. :)

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[daveschroeder]

Sounds neat; just out of curiosity, what are you using for the virtualization?

Parallels Workstation. Takes full advantage of Intel VT, too.

And perhaps I'm revealing my ignorance here, but how does the guest OS on a virtualized system handle networking? There must be some sort of psuedo-device driver that you install so that it can talk to the virtualized 'hardware,' or else the virtualization software must emulate some kind of commonly-supported networking hardware. I guess I'm just curious what you have to do to the guest OS, if anything, to get it to work inside the sandbox.

It can either be NATed behind the host OS, or it can have its very own IP on the same network as the host machine. The virtual machine has an emulated network interface with its own MAC address. You don't have to "do" anything in the guest OS. It's a very generic network card that has had drivers available (and in my case, always included) in every OS I've installed so far.

Right now all my equipment (Mac stuff, anyway) is PPC based; however I find the whole virtualization concept really intriguing and I'm hoping that by my next round of upgrades, it'll be sufficiently mature to make dual-booting (or having a separate PC for Linux connected with a KVM switch, my current solution) unnecessary.

Well, you'll likely be very happy then, because, even at this early stage, that's exactly what I'm using it for right now. All on one machine that I can carry around with me.

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[nuzak]

> And perhaps I'm revealing my ignorance here, but how does the guest OS on a virtualized system handle networking?

One way gives you a totally virtual interface that appears on the guest and host side, that the host routes for you (with or without NAT), or the hypervisor (virtualizer). VMware and most other hypervisors also let you expose the network hardware directly to the guest. As long as you use a different IP, it has no problem with it.

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[nuzak]

s/, or the hypervisor (virtualizer)//

little dropping left over from editing. sorry about that.

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[Jeremi]

Is Parallels Workstation able to run a MacOS/X image as a guest under MacOS/X? That would be rather useful for testing software compatibility under multiple versons of the OS (and of course for the ever popular "infinite recursion" trick)

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[nathanh]

Sounds neat; just out of curiosity, what are you using for the virtualization?

Parallels.

And perhaps I'm revealing my ignorance here, but how does the guest OS on a virtualized system handle networking?

Parallels creates a bridge betwen the guest (virtual) network interface and the host (physical) network interface. This appears as Realtek RTL-8029 card to the guest OS. The guest OS can then request a DHCP lease, participate in broadcast protocols on your LAN, connect to the Internet via your LAN router, etc.

I guess I'm just curious what you have to do to the guest OS, if anything, to get it to work inside the sandbox.

Surprisingly little. The emulated video interface is an i815. The emulated mouse is a psmouse. The emulated network card is a Realtek. The emulated hard drive is an IDE interface. Debian/Linux detected all that hardware automatically and Just Worked. Other hardware (bluetooth, airport, sleep) doesn't matter to the guest OS; the host OS handles all that guff. Even the dual-touch touchpad scrolling works inside the guest OS because Parallels emulates it as scrollwheel events. The video performance is not good enough for movie playback but perfectly acceptable for a GNOME desktop.

Linux inside Parallels on a Macbook Pro is very close to perfect. Parallels has taken away the last thing that annoyed me with Linux - driver support - and made it a non-issue. I've been running Linux inside Parallels for a week now and I'm very happy with the results.

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[nathanh]

Correction: the emulated video interface is VESA. The i815 is the emulated bridge chipset.

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[nuzak]

> Is Parallels Workstation able to run a MacOS/X image as a guest under MacOS/X?

Beats me, I should imagine so... you probably can't re-use the same partition though.

And there is no infinite recursion trick -- most virtualizers fail miserably under another virtualizer, with the exception of Bochs, which is actually a full-blown emulator (fast it is not). IBM big iron can run nested LPARs, but its hardware is specially designed for virtualization.

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[Jeremi]

most virtualizers fail miserably under another virtualizer

Really? That's disappointing. I'd even call that a bug, since the VM is supposed to be able to run any software that the machine it is emulating can run, and the machine it is emulating can run a VM...

Re:OT: Macbook and virtualization.

[nuzak]

Virtualizers don't usually emulate the hardware, they simply trap privileged instructions and vector them to their own handlers instead of the host OS's. Everything else executes pretty much natively. That's the difference between a virtualizer and an emulator (VirtualPC is indeed an emulator, and it's really good at it, but it's still slower). This sort of trapping is supported directly by the CPU, but you can't nest the traps, at least not on x86. IBM big iron is a different story, and they're not so much trapped as they assume you're virtualizing everything in the first place.

I suppose though you could build the virtualizer to go through extra layers of indirection to support nesting, but that would create some pretty big overhead and so it isn't supported. I suspect it's only a matter of time before it becomes a practical necessity though.

There's a little hole or spot just to the left...

[chocolatetrumpet]

There's a little hole or spot just to the left of the latch to open the display - anyone know what it is?

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[timster]

Just in case anybody is inclined to believe this troll, iPod sales continue to increase.

Re:Cold Day

[Anonymous Coward]

sucks to be poor, I guess

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[vjmurphy]

Dell has very nice desktop 20" LCDs with 1600x1200 resolution. They are quite spiffy. The 2001FP, I do think.

Re:There's a little hole or spot just to the left.

[easter1916]

That's the IR receiver for the Front Row remote...

Re:THREE USB PORTS!!!!!!1!!

[Keith Russell]

You might want to get that sarcasm detector looked at.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[CastrTroy]

I'm not really worried about video performance on a laptop. As long as it can play dvds, that's probably all it needs. Even that isn't necessary for a work laptop. Just something that can run run standard desktop applications. Get rid of all the 3D processing stuff, and just provide something that will work for desktop apps. And the fact that a lot of laptops come with 256 MB RAM is pretty bad. Using the hard drive as RAM has got to be pretty hard on the battery. Use 1 Gig of ram, and disable the swap completely. There are many things that could be done to cut down on battery usage, and they aren't being done. The fact that it even has a 2gig processor and a 3d graphics card shows that they really aren't trying to reduce battery consumption all that much. If you mixed a pentium II level processor and graphics card, with today's knowledge of power savings and advanced batteries, and threw in a bunch of ram to make it run fast, it would last twice as long as today's laptops.

Update! They are talking about it on their site

[Zoko Siman]

It's on the front page infact

obligatory link:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/wo/0.RSLID?mco=9EE597FB&nclm=MacBook Pro

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[manthrax3]

So, the fastest LCDs in terms of refresh rate are those that have 12ns or ~83 Hz refresh rate, most are still in the 60 to 70 Hz range.

Even so, 91 fps on one game might be overkill, but the hack could also mean that you have the horsepower to push out 30fps in a more complicated game that would otherwise be unplayable.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you talking about the Inspiron range? Those bricks aren't portable at all! They are all in one desktops should really be considered competition for the iMac rather than Macbook.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[booch]

Unfortunately, just using an older video chip would not give longer battery life. Mainly because newer chips are manufactured with smaller transistors. So the newer chips can do more work with more transistors taking up about the same amount of space and power. Newer chips also have better power management features, to shut down parts of the chip when they are not in use.

Now, if you took some of the new features of the new chips and removed them, you'd have a smaller/cheaper chip that would take less power. I think this would be a great idea. The main problem is that the manufacturers think they wouldn't make enough money on them.

Intel makes ultra-low-power (ULV) CPUs, but they're not used all that much in mainstream laptops. I suppose people still want fast computers, even when they don't have that much need for the speed.

And don't forget the wireless and LCD backlight. Those are other major contributors of power utilization. Hopefully OLED will help resolve the latter. I'm not sure if there's any hope in reducing power used by radio transceivers.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[jest3r]

I really want to get a new MacBook pro, however I don't want to deal with the heat issues that I'm currently dealing with on my 12" G4 PowerBook.

The metal exterior looks nice but gets almost too hot to touch (on the Powerbook G4 at least). This doesn't seem to happen on the plastic G4 iBooks (as much) so i wonder if the case itself is the problem? I have had to replace my harddrive 3 times since purchasing the notebook (almost 3 years ago) each failure was heat related according to the Apple tech guy.

It seems ludicrous that Apple would be underclocking hardware to run it cooler, but if the new MacBook pros do run cool it would probably be worth the upgrade. Can anyone with a macBook pro confirm if they run cooler than their G4 counterparts?

Re:Phht..... Too big...

[ShyGuy91284]

I never said they shouldn't make it. I was just giving my opinion on it.

Re:Cold Day

[tbone1]

Hell will freeze over when people start appreciating quality.

You've never been to Michigan in the winter, I take it.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[giffnyc]

if someone dual boots a Mac, changes the hardware settings and breaks the machine or cripples its performance, is that worthy of a call to Apple for support?

Horrors! Imagine the problems I might cause by actually writing software for my computer that "broke my machine or crippled its performance"! Surely I wouldn't deserve support. Maybe we can modify the DMCA so that us madmen will be prevented from running whatever code we want on our machines.

What is this sort of reactionary condemnation of people that want to play sophisticated games on their Macs or run a different OS or experiment with changing driver code? The distilled quote seems to be, "I use my Mac for x, therefore user who try something else are violating the intention of the manufacturer." So what? Tweaking hardware to see what it can do or to expose a possible bad design decision or (shock, horror) to learn something new is interesting to a lot of folks. Sheesh.

Re:Apple user interface?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could've used one of the zap bookmarklets ("zap" or "zap colors" would work) to make the page readable. I've found it very useful for reading poorly designed webpages (*cough*MySpace*cough*)

17" vs. 15"

[oscarmv]

It's for all those who think that two more inches will make all the difference.

(being more serious, this is what I want, but I'll wait until the 64-bit version. Certainly my current 15" MacBook Pro can't be beaten for the price, as a work laptop I don't have to pay for :P )

Re:17" vs. 15"

[nsayer]

It's for all those who think that two more inches will make all the difference.

Your girlfriend certainly did. :)

Oh wait. This is /. ...

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[Anonymous Coward]

the application is 'about the same speed as before', but the operating system is not. The entire machine is faster. My wife has the 15" MBP and I have the 17" G4. The difference is vast.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[mmkkbb]

I think Apple meant to say

No, you think Reuters meant to say.

Ram is expensive too

[KZigurs]

RAM uses power too. Generally ~10W per desktop DDR module (512/1024mb, depends) and 2-5w per SODIMM module. So more ram isn't exactly an answer.

Bigger. Faster. Hotter.

[donaldlatif]

"5x faster. 36% brighter. Capable of burning a 17" hole through your pants. Now that's an iLife!" Smokin! Seriously, though, if the 15" runs hot, these must be almost literally smoking at 1" thick.

Re:Bigger. Faster. Hotter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why must that be? It comes with the 2.16GHz just like the 15" can, at 1" thick, just like the 15".

Re:Bigger. Faster. Hotter.

[Macka]

Why? It's got almost the same innards as a 15" but with more space and metal to dissipate the heat. If anything it should run cooler, or at least take longer to heat up.

Re:Apple user interface?

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU faggot.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[sammy baby]

the application is 'about the same speed as before', but the operating system is not. The entire machine is faster. My wife has the 15" MBP and I have the 17" G4. The difference is vast.

I understand - what I'm saying is that the performance gain in hardware is pretty much canceled out by having to run the app through the code-morphing Rosetta foo. Since the only thing that I really have performance issues with is Photoshop, I don't yet have a compelling reason to upgrade.

That's not to say that I don't drool over them a little, but I have one of the last Powerbook G4 models, so trying to upgrade now would get me a smack from the spouse. :)

That is fucking terrible.

[Homestar Breadmaker]

But seriously, just use a decent browser like opera and click the little "use my stylesheet" button, and suddenly everything is perfectly readable.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but by the time Blu-Ray/HD-DVD notebook drives arrive, this revision of the MacBook will be obsolete anyway.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I will get this 17", but would spend more money on one from Apple if they gave the OPTION of the higher resolution screen.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[oscarmv]

It's coming in Leopard. There's some support for it in Tiger, but it's kind of a work in progress (mostly stuff for developers and nothing that isn't disabled by default).

Re:nice - how about the Mac Mini's fast OS switchi

[Macka]

This full screen mode + full screen (cube) switching seems to be a new feature included in their Beta 4 release, only out about a week. Have to say I'm dam impressed with this too. Native virtualisation is what I've been waiting for before upgrading my PowerBook. Now I'm just agonizing over whether to go for a 15" or a 17", and whether to risk getting something so new considering the teething problems the 15" had.

Still, it's nice to have the choice rather than no choice at all.

Yes

[amcdiarmid]

Datastates hijacked my DNS a while ago. They only charge me peanuts, but will not relase the DNS that I requested they not re-register for me. (Was going to change to Go-Daddy.)

Sorry about the bad website & lack of resume. Not worth the $$ to sue, can't claim enough damages. Oh well.:

BTW: if you want to point out crap about peoples sights, you can email, or change the subject line to not get called a troll. (On the other hand, most of my comments get caled troll anyhow. Perhaps not.)

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[rjstanford]

What is this sort of reactionary condemnation of people that want to play sophisticated games on their Macs or run a different OS or experiment with changing driver code? The distilled quote seems to be, "I use my Mac for x, therefore user who try something else are violating the intention of the manufacturer." So what? Tweaking hardware to see what it can do or to expose a possible bad design decision or (shock, horror) to learn something new is interesting to a lot of folks. Sheesh.

Its just like working on a car, guys. You redo your interior and the engine blows? Hey, the manufacturer is liable. You chip your turbo up from 7psi to 18psi (removing an "artificial limitation" on the hardware) and the engine blows? Its your own damn problem, and you have some expensive head work in your future.

I don't see any reason why computer-mods wouldn't be covered under the same framework. Paint your case and the computer blows up? Their problem. Overclock your video card and it overheats and fries something? Your problem. Or are you saying that's "not fair"?

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

You were on exactly the right track, then you went off in to fanboy left field. You can "Get Stuff Done" with an experience that "Just Works"(tm) in Windows XP if you're not stupid. The things that Windows users should be doing to prevent problems are common fucking sense.

If I'm a stranger, I walk up, and I hand you a suspicious looking candy and say "here, eat this!", do you just eat it? No, you eye it suspiciously and most likely turn it down. Why? Because from the time that we're kids, we're taught "Don't take candy from strangers." So why can nobody get the same clue about the internet? I've never once gotten a virus or spyware infection from doing what the typical user does in a day. Even using IE with XP Service Pack 2, you have to go to pretty considerable effort to overcome the computer's default setting to refuse to "take candy from a stranger", i.e. run an untrusted executable.

While I am by no means a Microsoft Apologist or Windows Evangelist (I run Ubuntu as my primary desktop for anything but games and graphics work), I can safely say you can get stuff done just fine in XP. Without constant reboots. No seriously. My uptime, on average, is a month or more. And that's on my desktop here at work, plus the reboots only occur for patches. Our 2K and 2K3 servers spend upwards of 3-4 months up at a time and only have to reboot for patches.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a bluescreen on this desktop I'm typing this from. And all three times were due to badly behaved nvidia drivers, not Microsoft code. Yes, I like using linux at home. Yes, I feel Apple (finally) makes a good OS with OSX. But if you want *any* credibility with the people you're arguing against, you damn well better pick points that they can't instantly refute from personal experience when you spout off about why your product is "better".

Face it, the reason you use your Apple instead of an Microsoft product is one of two reasons when it comes right down to it:

1) You hate Microsoft.
2) You love Apple.

While it can be any combination of those two, fanboyish arguments like yours are just as fucking retarded as the people that make stupid arguments about Apple's prices. And to clear up where I fall on the issue: yes, Apple's laptop prices are pretty much in line with the best other companies have to offer for similar performance. Have been for a while.

Re:Apple user interface?

[hey!]

You need to be aware of the language of color -- as used by marketing people.

White -- approachable, easy to use.

Primary color combination -- fun, stimulating.

Black -- powerful.

What they're trying to tell you is that this is one honkin kick-ass desktop replacement. You could look at the specs of course, but the marketing people have given up on you and your sort. They assume you'll either live with it or do a View->Page Style->No Style.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell XPS - better screen resolution and graphics.

why would you wish to triple boot?

[DaEMoN128]

I can use a true unix when runing osX. If that doesn't float your boat, run kde/gnome/windowmaker/blackbox/fluxbox/your choice of display managers on top of X that mac ships with its computers. I can run just about anything linux on a mac without having to completely install a linux system. I can see the want to run windows for certain programs/games/video codecs/just be cause I can run windows on a mac/pong emulator :) ... etc. Can anyone tell me why I would want to run linux on a mac instead of running X.org and a gdm/xdm/kdm session?

Before you flame, I have an SusE/Win2K dual boot, an XP/Ubuntu dual boot (laptop), and a mac.

Re:why would you wish to triple boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I love the "I run Suse and Ubuntu" excuse.

Ever just think that people don't want to run OSX or Windows, or hell, not even linux?
Yes, there are actually people that think that, can you believe it? I mean, for an Apple Fanboy, that must be so hard to believe, because everyone wants to run OSX, it's the best thing ever, how could they possibly refuse to run it? It's just unimaginable! ... it's unthinkable!

Re:why would you wish to triple boot?

[DaEMoN128]

Sure I have thought of it. I just dont see the purpose. I have a mac yes, fanboy, nope. I dont even use it, I dont use my computers at home except for maybe an hour a week. Later

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Learn the difference between a press release and a report.

If you can't read critically, you shouldn't be commenting on /.

For those complaining about the heat...

[nbahi15]

Numerous complaints about heat have come up in the Apple 17" annoucement. To this I say remember the test environment. We the Northen Californians do not run around with shorts and sandals on. We wear slacks, jeans or trousers in general. We also are wearing flame-retardant, three-season North Face jackets. At all times we layer in the Bay Area. Layering for the rest of the cool challenged is the concept of multiple 'layers' of clothing between you and your body. I know for those that live in the midwest it makes sense to jump around in an oversized T-shirt, however those of us more north and west of you consider leaving the house with only one T-shirt on as uncouth.

So therefore, a warm laptop is a good thing, not a bad one. It will provide additional warmth whether you are surfing the web from Mount Tamalpais, or IMing from Golden Gate Park.

Re:For those complaining about the heat...

[Anonymous Coward]

> the concept of multiple 'layers' of clothing between you and your body Ah - one of those NoCal out-of-body experiences we keep hearing about... AC

Re:For those complaining about the heat...

[ironring2006]

Numerous complaints about heat have come up in the Apple 17" annoucement. To this I say remember the test environment. We the Northen Canadians do not run around with jeans and sneakers on. We wear wool long johns and snowpants and snowmobile boots in general. We also are wearing flame-suseptible, three-inch whale blubber sealskin jackets. At all times we layer in the Arctic Area. Layering for the rest of the cool challenged is the concept of multiple 'layers' of clothing between you and your body. I know for those that live in the midwest it makes sense to jump around in an oversized T-shirt, however those of us more north and north of you consider leaving the house with only one North Face fleece jacket on as uncouth. So therefore, a warm laptop is a good thing, not a bad one. It will provide additional warmth whether you are uploading your seal clubbing statistics from Baffin Island, or selling your gold stocks online from Dawson City.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[espressojim]

I have a dell d800 with a 1920x1200 screen as well, and it's 3 years old. I love the screen resolution, and hate everything else about the laptop..

Why say small then demand large?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make sense. Most of us want small laptops. I don't want to lug around something with a big 12" screen. My Vaio with a 10" screen is the perfect size. I had a 12" PowerBook for a while, but I sold it. The Vaio is slightly smaller than a piece of paper so it fits perfectly in your hand if you're holding a notepad or stack of papers. It's the perfect size for people that work. The 12" just isn't good if you want small or if you want desktop replacement since it's too small for that. It's really not useful.

As an example, when I worked at CompUSA I didn't see anyone that specifically wanted a 12" PowerBook. Everyone I sold one to wanted a smaller one or the 15", but instead bought the 12" because it was the smallest one Apple made or because it was much cheaper than the 15". They didn't buy it because it was the one they wanted. It sold only due to price of the fact that a better, smaller one didn't exist. Come-on Apple, sell the product that people want.

Re:Why say small then demand large?

[Jethro]

I'm going to pretend they're holding off on the 13.3" until they're sure it's really, REALLY good.

Re:Why say small then demand large?

[hab136]

As an example, when I worked at CompUSA I didn't see anyone that specifically wanted a 12" PowerBook. Everyone I sold one to wanted a smaller one or the 15", but instead bought the 12" because it was the smallest one Apple made or because it was much cheaper than the 15". They didn't buy it because it was the one they wanted. It sold only due to price of the fact that a better, smaller one didn't exist. Come-on Apple, sell the product that people want.

I specifically wanted the 12" Powerbook, and bought mine from CompUSA. I can't stand the small keys on the sub-sub-notebooks like the Vaios. The keyboard can't get any smaller on the 12" PB (it's already crammed in), unless they did a crazy fold-out one like the old butterfly Thinkpads.

Hmm, actually a 10" powerbook with a fold-out keyboard would be cool. I don't know if I'd trade my 12" PB for it, but I would've considered it.

http://www.google.com/search?q=thinkpad+701c

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Those cookers have an AC element. The magsafe connector is DC which is more susceptible to arcing.

A deep fat fryer is much heavier and uses a thicker and heavier cord which is less likely to be damaged. There's still a considerable difference between the two systems. As a result of Apple using magnetic adaptors its likely that many other laptop manufacturers will follow suit within 5 years. This is one of the major reasons why it has attracted so much attention.

To summarize, you think because they've made the cord thinner & DC its an "invention" rather then just a great idea.

Re:Apple user interface?

[yuvi]

I agree - I absolutely hate reading white/grey text on black. Thankfully, I discovered a well-hidden keyboard shortcut in OS X that inverts the screen, which makes reading such text much easier for me: Control-Option-Command-8. Hit it again, and the screen inverts to normal. And you can also quickly increase your screen's contrast with Control-Option-Command-. to increase it, and Control-Option-Command-, to decrease it (it's normally the lowest setting you can hit with those keys).

15" MORE expensive than 17"???

[Anonymous Coward]

If you spec out the 15" and 17" so they have the same specs (2.16 GHz, 1GB ram, 120 GB HD) excepting the better optical drive in the 17", the 15" comes out $100 MORE expensive than the 17". How is this possible? Are they planning on dropping the price of the 15", or just forcing everyone to get the 17"?

I'm in the market for a new laptop, and bootcamp has convinced me to give apple a try. I'm not sure which size to get (right now I've got a 12.1 inch Dell 700m, which is a bit cramped, but very easy to carry around).

Part of me wants the newest/best laptop available (17"), but part of me wants to be able to carry it around at least relatively easily (15.4"). However, given these price points, the 17" is a no brainer.

Anyone have any experience with 15 vs 17 and relative portabilities?

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[HTH NE1]

1920x1200 would be perfect, considering Blu-Ray/HD-DVD both use 1920x1080. Those extra 120 lines at the top or bottom would be just enough for a nice control strip, play/pause buttons, etc.

And a display capable of such a 16:10 display would also be better for those planning to run Final Cut HD in the field without a second, larger AC-connected display.

Which makes me wonder: does someone make batteries for external displays so you can plug them into a laptop, power down the laptop's display, and extend their joint battery life?

Who am I kidding? A power source would be needed for the large external drives to hold the footage being edited as well. I'd need a complete power solution like a portable generator with power conditioner. Still, a 1920x1080 or x1200 display built-in would be preferable.

Re:17" Monitor

[Macrat]

Go buy an old SGI 1600sw display.

http://www.ultraflexinc.com/monitor.html

Still expresscard/34, UGH!

[SuperBanana]

ExpressCard/34 [expresscard.org]

Just lovely- there goes any hope of getting Expresscard/54, which actually would have been useful. Right now, pretty much the only thing you can get in the /34 form factor is ESATA. You can also get a couple of cards that duplicate existing Macbook ports (ethernet, firewire, etc.)

Expresscard/34 isn't wide enough for Compactflash. It's not big enough overall for a video adapter (the real reason I think Apple isn't including Expresscard/54).

Both /34 and /54 combined don't have nearly as many cards available for them as there are for PCMCIA and Cardbus.

Re:Still expresscard/34, UGH!

[nsayer]

Right now, pretty much the only thing you can get in the /34 form factor is ESATA.

That's not quite true.

Re:Still expresscard/34, UGH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Still? ExpressCard is a brand new standard. I am glad Apple is only using the /34 (or 34 mm) version. This will create a great market for these smaller devices and help advance technology to everyone's benefit. As for the 12-year-old CompactFlash standard, you can buy FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 adapters today. As for video, it can certainly use an external dongle (just like the serial port card listed by the other poster) to allow it. The 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pro's already have external video output anyways.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Ginnungagap42]

The Dell XPS is a nice notebook. And when it is similarly equipped as the Apple 17" notebook, the price jumps to $3,393.00, making it $594.00 more expensive than the Apple.

Just saying...

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[proxima]

What I'd love to find is a 19" desktop lcd with decent res. I can't even find any that do 1600x1200

It is indeed one of the strange differences between desktop LCDs and laptop LCDs. For better than 1280x1024, you really need to move up to the 20" models.

I ended up choosing dual 17" 1280x1024 monitors (Samsung 740B) over a single 20" screen. The prices were roughly the same for similar display quality (though I chose to buy a dual-DVI NVIDIA Quadro card from Ebay to drive them both).

I'm not fully aware of the technical differences between desktop LCDs and laptop LCDs, but I have noticed that desktop LCDs are always much thicker (basically the thickness of the entire laptop itself), capable of being much brighter (at least compared with most laptops), and never having that "glossy" design that some Sony and other laptops ship with these days. I suspect the brightness comes from having the room and power to have bigger lights, and the thickness makes them easier to manufacture. For example, my 4 year old 15" Eizo seems to have a lot better brightness and more correct color than my wife's 12" Powerbook G4 that is connected to it.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[Anonymous Coward]

For the heat issue, it all comes down to the design of the laptop. At least with the G4 laptops ASUS made most of them (if not all), as well as the motherboards for the G4/G5 desktops. Anyway, Apple insists on a completely flat bottom for asthetic purposes. Anyone who knows about laptop design knows that this is a very bad thing when it comes to heat, as a laptop needs strategically placed ventillation holes in the bottom of the machine for proper cooling.

My ThinkPad R51 (P-M 1.5) has 4 specially placed air intakes on the bottom and doesn't even get warm to the touch during normal use, and just moderately warm if it is under full load and charging.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[ignatz72]

Mustard, are you sure about this?

ATItools is a windows driver tool, it loads with Windows and intercepts driver calls to increase clock speeds as desired... And from my use of the tool, I've not seen an option to set these speeds via the card (i.e. firmware on the card), only by installation of the low-level Windows driver.

I've read plenty about OS X boots reverting back to Apple's driver speeds, and many people clamoring for ATICelerator or other progs to do what ATItools does.

I do wish I was speaking from the experience of owning an IntelMac, as I'd know for sure, but from what I've gleaned, ATItools is not setting the speeds on the card...

GPU benchmarks

[Kohath]

Does anyone know where I can find game benchmarks for the ATI x1600 Mobile (Apple's laptop GPU) vs. DESKTOP GPUs? Everyone benchmarks the mobile GPUs against the other moble GPUs. I want to know how it compares to my PC.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[podperson]

Frankly, I don't know why somebody doesn't build something along the lines of a 68040 powerbook with 2GB of RAM, no hard disk, running Mac OS 8.6 and a modern battery. You'd get a perfectly fine laptop for most of the things you really need* and ridiculously good battery life.

* The big exceptions would be a solid modern browser and QuickTime. I don't see why Apple couldn't address both if it wanted to release such a product (fat chance!)

Re:Apple user interface?

[Anonymous Coward]

Staring at a light for extended periods is just not what our eyes were designed for. [...] Reversing the color scheme to be white text on a black background keeps the contrast as high as possible but minimizes the light emission, and hence, minimizes the eyestrain.

My eyes must be really weird, then. Reading white-on-black text for any longer than a minute or so leaves afterimages, and my eyes start to hurt after about fifteen minutes, whereas I can read black on white on a computer screen all day long with no ill effects.

Then again, I am one of the few people bothered by rainbow artifacts on DLP TVs with 4x color wheels, so I'll admit that my eyes aren't normal to begin with...

Errata on dual layer SuperDrive

[daveschroeder]

Sent to me by a little birdie:

Actually the reason for the thinner 9.5 mm ODD in MBP15 is because it overlaps the keyboard front-to-back. The 17 is deeper front-to-back, hence the keyboard does not overlap the ODD and it can use the 12.7 mm ODD.

This is one reason why the G4 15" is 1.1" thick - it uses the 12.7 mm ODD.

When I initially disassembled the 15" MacBook Pro, it appeared that the trackpad mechanism was the reason. Evidently that is not the case. In any event, the physical dimensions of the 17" MacBook Pro (and 17" PowerBook) are what allow it to have the thicker drive module, even in light of being 1.0" thick.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Espectr0]

Here we go again; the claim that a better Windows box costs half as much. But, as usual, no specifics are provided

HP dv8000t 17"
Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo processor T2600 (2.16 GHz)
2.0GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x1024MB)
17.0" WSXGA BrightView Widescreen (1680x1050)
120 GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2
FREE Upgrade DVD /-RW/R CD-RW Combo w/Double Layer
FREE Upgrade to Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG w/Bluetooth
256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7400
$1,929.99

And no heating, funny noises or other issues. More than 800$ less.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[Jerf]

Oh, it's obvious if you just put the pieces together:

1. Maintain a tenuous balance on the edge of total collapse, firmly on the bottom of the market.
2. Invert reality. Now you're on the edge of complete success, firmly on the top of the market.
3. Profit!

As you might imagine, such an audacious business plan takes some time to perfect and pull off. We're in around year 2 or 3 of step 2.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[saltydogdesign]

For the record, massive profits != "edge of total collapse."

Re:nice - how about the Mac Mini's fast OS switchi

[fak3r]

Still, it's nice to have the choice rather than no choice at all.

you said a mouthful there, while I don't use XP at home, *if* I had the option to I would run it just to kick off Steam and Download some Half-Life based games to play some different online FPSs (I run RTCW, Q2, Q3, Doom, UT2005, etc under Linux) that my other windows friends play, that I haven't had the opportunity to.

Plus I really want to see if businesses will see the benefit of buying Apples over Dells and HPs for their employees, or at least us IT folks that know a thing or two...

So if nothing else, interesting times.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[ZachPruckowski]

Firewire 800?
Illuminated Keyboard?
Motion Sensor?
iSight?
Movie Editing Software?
Music Editing Software?
X11 compatibility w/o dual-boot?
Mac OS X?

Toss all those on there, and then come talk to me about price.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Zathrus]

Here we go again; the claim that a better Windows box costs half as much. But, as usual, no specifics are provided, mainly because it's untrue.

No, it's not untrue. I've done the comparisons numerous times, with very specific builds and including the pluses and minuses of each system (there are distinct +'s for the Apple, and distinct +'s for the non-Apple). Here's a link to the last one I did on this site, and it was almost exactly "half the price" of the equivalent Apple:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18237 9&cid=15077483

Of course, die hard Apple users will ignore specific system comparisons and keep telling themselves that "its untrue" and that "nobody provides specifics"... without bothering to either look for someone who does or trying to do so themselves.

But here, since you want to be spoon fed:
Dell Inspiron 1705 (under Home): Upgrade CPU to 2.16 GHz ($480), select re-install CD ($10), remote control ($23), WUXGA screen (1920x1200; $119; higher res), 1GB 667 MHz memory ($140), 120 GB HD ($116), 8x DL DVD burner ($48), 802.11 a/b/g wireless ($23), Bluetooth ($39), 256 MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 ($239 -- much, much more powerful than the ATI X1600 for once).

The base price is $2844. The default discount is 20% off, for $2275, but you can apply a $750 off coupon instead making it $2094.

Alternately, drop the memory down to 533 MHz, get a 2 year warranty, and pay $2829/$2122/$2079.

Not half price this time, but $750 is still quite a chunk of change.

And, no, I don't expect it to convince you. But I'm really sick of Apple zealots claiming that Apple doesn't charge a huge premium on their systems.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[moosesocks]

I'm going to bet that you've got one of the first-generation 12" Powerbooks. They were notorious for heat problems (I used one once. couldn't put the damn thing on your lap it was so hot). Soon after receiving tons of feedback from angry customers, Apple indroduced a second revision that largely corrected the heat problems.

In later models, the heat output was even reduced. I've got the latest version of the 12" Powerbook, and I've got to say that it's one of the "coolest" machines i've ever used, especially when CPU throttling is enabled (which it should be if you're running on batteries). Battery life is a little over 2 hours which you can stretch far beyond 3 by not playing music, turning off airport, turning down brightness, etc. Easily the best machine I've ever owned, and definitely the finest powerbook ever produced (It's the smallest apple on the market, and yet it's mostly feature-complete except for Firewire-800 and a big graphics chip, both of which don't really fit in on an ultraportable anyway. Apple made huge strides with the 12" powerbook, taking it from a stripped-down underperforming ultraportable to a full-featured machine. and I'm praying that the rumors of its demise are false. Although I'd love a higher-resolution screen, a 13.3" size will completely ruin it)

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[benbritten]

Ok, fair enough, you make some good points, i picked the easy targets. However, when i buy a tool (like a computer) i shouldnt have to take a course that covers all the little things i CANT do with it.

how about the inconsistent user interface? that alone is enough to hate windows. Inconsistent use of the two buttons that windows users love so much. (note: i have a two-button with scroll wheel mouse, works like a dream on my mac) the right button is supposed to be 'properties' or somesuch, but is so inconsistently implemented that the user often has to right click on stuff just to see what 'might' be there.

dont get me started about all the 'wizards'.

and all the other little things that you notice once you use an OS that is mostly transparent to your productivity.

many many people have said it before: windows users put up with their operating system, they don't like it. (and when i say 'like' i dont mean fanatically adore, i mean that the tools you use should be pleasant and easy to use, and get out of your way.) I dont feel a sense of joy working on a mac, it just sits there and does what it is supposed to and doesnt frustrate me instantly like windows does.

(and i don't hate microsoft, i do hate windows however, and will never use it. for computer types, the OS is what you interact with EVERY day of your computing life. here is an analogy: burlap blankets would do a fine job of keeping you warm at night (and be less than half the price of your other blanket options), but why the hell would you pick something so terribly uncomfortable to use EVERY DAY? spend a bit more and you wont wake up itchy everymornign and might actually get a good night's sleep)

and frankly, i am not trying to convert you or refute your choice of windows. I am just saying that for me: my time is worth something. that is why i us a mac. you can do whatever you like. burlap is a very useful textile.

Re:Apple user interface?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also select the text to highlight it and make it readable

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Ben,

While you were here yacking it up on slashdot, I just placed a $50 million order with your competitor. He wrote it up on a Dell.

Big Wig

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[Queer Boy]

PowerPC Mac users have been able to overclock their ATi cards for a long time with ATIcelleratorII. The 9550 in my iBook is supposed to be the same as the 9600, only underclocked. I dunno how ATI tools work, but with ATIcellerator you can overclock both the GPU and the memory seperately.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[iamacat]

Well, you could try MacCinePaint and see if it has filters that you want. Or Aperture - from what I hear it's pretty fast when it does support what you want to do.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[mmkkbb]

Learn the difference between a press release and a report.

Oops, missed the byline :)

If you can't read critically, you shouldn't be commenting on /.

If you post shit like this, you shouldn't be posting on /., whiny.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[swissfondue]

cm'on: hook up a 30-inch screen to the laptop and you'll have realms of HD goodness.

Re:Apple user interface?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

My eyes must be really weird, then. Reading white-on-black text for any longer than a minute or so leaves afterimages, and my eyes start to hurt after about fifteen minutes, whereas I can read black on white on a computer screen all day long with no ill effects.

That is very odd. I can't think of a reason why that would be the case. One of the things I find interesting is that programmers usually end up with interfaces that have light text on a black background, even though most of them do not know the reason why this helps. Hopefully, screens that don't emit light are not that far off, so this will not be a problem in another 10 years. In any case we all have our quirks. I'm the only one in my working group that can see the refresh on a CRT set at 70Hz. My threshold seems to be around 75Hz. I end up having to ask everyone near me with CRTs to adjust the rate or catching it from the corner of my eye drives me batty.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Stamen]

I believe all the "Apple zealots" are complaining about is the gross exagerations someone makes (in every single Apple thread) that you can "get the same machine at half the price". Apple charges a premium for their hardware, exactly as BMW does; no argument. Wether you think it is worth it or not is another issue. Half as much is $1,400, not $2,100 (75% as much) to $2,900.

How thick and heavy is that Dell that is 75% to 103% cheaper than the MacBook Pro? (hint: 161% thicker)

Re:Apple user interface?

[Al Dimond]

Properly calibrated display? Something tells me a properly calibrated display won't have much to say about the small print at the bottom of the page. I quote from the stylesheet, ".sosumi {font-size: 9px; line-height: 140%; color: #4e4e4e;}". Font size specified in pixels? 9px on my 1600x1200, 19" CRT is positively tiny. Why not use points as the size unit (really, all fonts for the web should use points for font sizes; even if creating boxes in CSS that text must fit into, these boxes' size can be defined in terms of points. Maybe for some crazy corner cases using points is a good idea, but certainly not for full paragraphs of text)? And #4e4e4e? That's a pretty dark grey. Something tells me they wanted that fine print to be *fine*.

Now it looks like the color for main text is #a1a5a9, which is not quite so bad on paper. Maybe I do need to adjust my gamma. Yeah. But going back to their global stylesheet, where it looks like the main font is set, its size is "12px". Again with the pixel sizes.

So it doesn't look like Apple is going out of its way to create a good-looking web page. In fact, if the majority of PC users, as one of my uncle posts mentions, have their gamma set too low, Apple should probably use a color scheme that adapts to this, and looks fine both on correct and incorrect displays. After all, most computer users aren't going to blame their display when one website in a million is hard to read.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[drinkypoo]

No, it's been held back by a lack of Windows, which prevents people from running applications. It's not called fear, although a characterization like that is typical of an Apple fanboy. See, people buy computers (whether they be PCs or game consoles or handhelds) because those platforms have the software they want. That's #1. #2 is style, and that can be enough to sell computers when people don't know what software they want to run - hence the people who buy Macs because "they're easier to use" or other bullshit excuses.

It's not about fear, it's about the best tool for the job. Now, for some people, that tool is the system that can run both OSX and Windows. Of course, for most people, having one operating system is still better than two, and so they'll go with the cheaper option.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[dal20402]

I just upgraded from a 1.5GHz 12" to a 2.16GHz/7200 (i.e. the hottest config) MBP. Parent is right about the difference in temperature between 867MHz 12" models and later ones. My late 12" only got hot if I pegged the CPU for more than 5 minutes.

The MBP is hotter than my 1.5GHz 12" was. Just how much hotter depends more on ambient temperature than CPU load. In a cool 65 room or outside, it gets slightly warm to the touch. In 80 or hotter conditions, it gets pretty hot (but still not untouchable), especially underneath and at the metal strip immediately above the keyboard. But even at its worst it's cooler than an 867MHz 12".

I think Apple still has a way to go on power optimization with the MBP. I get about 3 hours no matter what I'm doing -- whether testing in Cinebench or writing /. posts. The machine is almost totally unwilling to shut down the HD. The only thing that makes a difference is lowering screen brightness. It's not like the 12" where I could stretch the battery to nearly 5 hours by launching all my apps and opening all my documents with the power connected so the HD would never spin up.

I loved my 12", but eventually I just couldn't take the 1024x768 postage stamp. And the MBP in this 'roided configuration is much, much faster.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[drinkypoo]

Most people have/want/can afford only one computer. My Thinkpad A21p (Announce date: 25 Sep 2000) has a 15" 1600x1200 TFT. We're talking about a five year old laptop here - granted, IBM was the leader in laptop display resolution... but all laptops should have high-resolution displays. High resolution is more important to LCDs than CRTs, because it improves their appearance when producing interpolated resolutions. Also, it is more worthwhile, because using subpixel rendering, really awe-inspiring resolutions can be achieved.

Re:Uhm. It's a MAC people!

[djdavetrouble]

Consoles are limited by serious shortcomings for "serious gamers".
It is NOT an oxymoron. There are those whose primary recreation
is computer games. You don't have to like it.
Your complete dismissal of pc's and mac's as a gaming platform
shows your lack of regard and respect for others who are not as you.
While the mac may not be the greatest gaming platform (argued ad infinitum here)
the top shelf games are available: world of warcraft, UT, Sims, etc.
I personally have played on consoles and have way more fun playing
games on a pc or mac platform. I don't play sports simulations though,
which seem to be huge on console platforms.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[drinkypoo]

This already exists. It's called a PDA, and you can get about 16 hours of runtime these days. Maybe only 8 if you're playing video, but that's not bad, and it's about twice what most laptops that claim to have "superior" battery life get. You can even get them with VGA resolution and both wifi and bluetooth these days.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[hcdejong]

waffle iron

So that's why I can never read those bloody faxes...

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[drinkypoo]

I don't see any reason why computer-mods wouldn't be covered under the same framework. Paint your case and the computer blows up? Their problem. Overclock your video card and it overheats and fries something? Your problem. Or are you saying that's "not fair"?

The difference between a car and a computer (in this case) is that the computer should be able to detect a dangerous condition and shut itself down - it's pretty easy to know at what temperature damage will occur. It's not so easy in a car; you can't tell at what precise point there's too much load because there are too many variables.

Every modern CPU that I'm aware of has overheat protection. I'd guess GPUs are doing the same thing by now, and if not, well, there's no excuse. Every major heat-generating chip should be doing this.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[brett720]

Firewire 800?
        Everything is moving to USB..but if you REALLY need it..$50.00 card
Illuminated Keyboard?
        If you REALLY REALLY need this Dell has an comparable price latop with an Illuminated keyboard..not much of a demand for this. Add $0
Motion Sensor?
        Useless addition for 99% of users.. Add $0
iSight?
        Similar cams/software are about $20.00 nowdays
Movie Editing Software?
        Im sure there will be a flame that it sucks..but WinXP does provide this. Plus why bundle it when there are so many choices out there. add $0
Music Editing Software?
        Same as above but add $25.00 to be fair.
X11 compatibility w/o dual-boot?
        Once again 99% of users have no need. Add $0
Mac OS X?
        I know this could start a flame of its own, but to many OS X is definitely not superior to WinXP. add $100 to upgrade the OS to professional to be fair.

Toss all those on there, and then come talk to me about price.
      I suppose to be fair...I will add the above mentioned $195...still way cheaper for a VERY comparable laptop. Not looking to continue the long standing flame war over this...but just wanted to show you that it actually does hold some truth...so I came to talk price.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[menace3society]

The point isn't really that the manufacturer should be liable if you do it, but that people (fanboys in particular) shouldn't complain so loudly if you want to. Yes, it might blow up your system. But that's really the risk you take overclocking stuff willy-nilly, isn't it?

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[benbritten]

Hehe, that would be really funny if i weren't a self-employed software developer on (you guessed it) macs. and yes, i have turned down lucrative offers to work on windows machines. Both porting of my own apps as well as simply coming to work for windows based dev houses. (having already done it for many years (as well as unix stuff (c,c++, perl, etc which i still do on occasion), i started using the free tools apple provides and have never looked back. )

At one point a few years ago, i finally made the decision to abandon windows, (much like abandoning shitty beer, or vodka that comes in a plastic bottle), and never partake in the windows experience ever again (because vodka from a plastic bottle will make me sick every time, no matter how small a shot). I told everyone who i used to help support (in that friend-who-fixes-your-computer kind of way) as nicely as possible that i would not be helping them anymore because i had sworn off windows. Every one of them, when they were ready for a new machine, bought a mac, and have similarly never looked back.
In my free time, on my mac with free tools, I re-wrote the main program that the company i worked for used (on windows machines) and started to use it exclusively to do the same tasks, but more efficiently. (this company is in the visual effects business) and eventually my mac based program became the preferred tool for everyone, and i am now a co-owner of the company, and am working on version 3 of my software app for them.
Since then i have been refusing software contracts on the basis of operating system, and my reputation in my small network has increased, and my clients are more discriminating and much easier to work with, and my contracts are more lucrative. (this sounds stupendously snobbish, and it kinda is. Windows crappiness has created a market of 'people unwilling to put up with windows', and that market often is willing to spend more to get better quality, and i service part of that market. windows crappiness has also created a similar market of 'people-unwilling-to-put-up-with-windows-but-are-w illing-to-build-a-better-OS' hence linux.)

So, while i don't make 50 million on a contract usually, i do make enough that i have plenty of free time to 'yak it up' here on slashdot without any fear or reprisal from myself (the boss).

so, keep your $50 million dollars worth of plastic-bottle-vodka, yeah, it will get you just as drunk as the good stuff, but the good stuff wont make you sick. i am going to go and have a grey goose martini with my mac-only pals.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[dal20402]

Up to 5 times faster for many operations, but substatially slower for legacy software & software that relies on altivec.

Uhh... no.

Before I sold my 12" 1.5GHz PB last week I did substantial side-by-side testing of the 12", my 2.16GHz MBP, and my dual 1.8 G5 tower. All have enough RAM that swapping wasn't a factor. Keep in mind Rosetta is very RAM-hungry.

Essentially, the results boiled down to the following:

-For native operations without vector processing, the MBP was between 10-60% faster than the dual G5 and between 2.5-4x faster than the PB.

-For native operations with vector processing such that AltiVec could be expected to be doing most of the work on the PPC machines, the MBP was about 20% slower than the dual G5 and nearly 2x faster than the PB.

-In Rosetta, performance varied wildly (presumably depending on the complexity of the code and the number of native functions it calls). But it was faster than the PB at least as often as it was slower, and it was sometimes as much as 30%-40% faster. Certain operations such as opening very complex PDFs in Acrobat 6 were substantially slower, but these were the exception. Rosetta performance was never faster than the dual G5 (duh).

Yes, but am I forced to pay the Apple Tax?

[expro]

Can I get bare-bones hardware to install Windows on, or do I have to pay the Apple Tax.

Just had to try it out: s/Windows/Apple/ s/Linux/Windows/

Re:Yes, but am I forced to pay the Apple Tax?

[nookieman]

Well, the license agreement for the OS supplied with a Mac allows you to sell/transfer the the license to another person/machine... big difference to MS, I must say...

Re:Yes, but am I forced to pay the Apple Tax?

[aristotle-dude]

You can say what you want about the MSFT tax on OEM's which is passed onto the customer but in this case, Apple makes the machine and is free do bundle the OS with their own hardware all they like similar to how the console makers bundle their own firmware with their machines.

When MSFT starts making their own machines, then you can get back to us about comparing the two companies.

About the price

[ChrisA90278]

About the price: These computers have "Pro" in the name. They are clearly targeted to "Profesionals" that means people that are being paid for their work. If you live in California, have a family, a house and two cars -- prety much the "normal" setup. then SOMEBODY, either your clients or you employer is paysing well over $100 per hour to have you sit at the keybord. So even if that keyboard costs $4,000 and has a three year lifetime the computer adds not even one percent to your cost. It's triveal when compared to the cost of the operator. The dual Xeon system I'm using costs about $10K. Big deal I'll use it to make 25 times that much back. And don't forget the tax deductions for capital expense. Again "Pro" means you can put this on a 3 year schedule so the real out of pocket cost is maybe only $2K. One the other hand if you buy a $3,000 computer to pay games, surf the web and watch DVDs at home it's a total waste of money. OK maybe you can afford to waste $3k? Lots of people can. Heck I bought a sailboat for 15x that amount. No way on Earth to justify a sailboat other then "I just like them."

Re:Uhm. It's a MAC people!

[d34thm0nk3y]

Serious gaming is an oxymoron.

If you want to game, get a PlayStation. If you need a computer to get work done, get a Mac.

If you want to run the latest virus, get Windows.

And if you want to hear excuses for why you shouldn't want some feature X, read an Apple thread.

Note on Dual Boot :: Think CAD/CAM

[tyrione]

If one needs to run ProE, Catia, AutoCAD, etc., they will want to dual boot since none of these OpenGL intensive applications have an OS X port and no the virtualization convenience is no substitute for native performance.

Re:Note on Dual Boot :: Think CAD/CAM

[gb506]

I think you should wait for the virtualization products to get out of beta before you make that statement. Parallels is pretty darn impressive even in non-optimized, beta form...

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to lose this irrational labelling of people as fanboys. It makes you sound 16.

Think through what you're saying, as well. You're saying, given the choice, without need to worry about compatibility with VB apps and such for work purposes (there's the 'fear' you think doesn't exist), that people would still choose a Windows machine. I think you're living in fantasyland.

Did Steve fuck your mom or something?

Macbook pricing scheme?

[TedJShultz]

So, has anyone else noticed this?

Pricing for the MacBook pro:

17", 2.16GHz, 1GB, 100GB 7200RPM (not to mention 8x superdrive and firewire 800): $2799

15.4", 2.16GHz, 1GB, 100GB 7200RPM (4x superdrive, firewire 400): $2899

Certainly makes me want to buy the 15.4" model now, let me tell you.

Oh, wait.

Re:Macbook pricing scheme?

[Morky]

Shit, you're right! Good call. Weird.

Speaking of battery life.

[shmlco]

Speaking of battery life. Apple finally put those specs on their product page.

• 15-inch MacBook Pro 60-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 4.5 hours of battery life(1)

• 17-inch MacBook Pro 68-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 5.5 hours of battery life(1)

Notice that the bigger notebook gets an extra hour's worth of power. Odd they made this choice, since on the PB line both the 15 and the 17 got about the same life per charge (about 5.5 hours).

Another artificial differentiation between it and its little brother? The 17 also has FW800 and the 8X SuperDrive, which were dropped from the 15" version.

Re:Uhm. It's a MAC people!

[Anonymous Coward]

So how does Apple manage to sell computers, when its made obvious again and again that they make a second-rate product?

The answer is that they aim at elitists that want to "think different." Apple have realised that if you appeal directly to the egos of these individuals, you can sell them just about any old thing.

Their marketing is such a triumph that the average mac-user will happily pay over 2 grand for an underpowered but very shiny toy, and still end up thinking that they are part of some cognitive elite.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[CastrTroy]

so basically what we need is something like a PDA only with a bigger screen and built in full size keyboard, And more space, somewhere around 10 gigs. oh, and a Battery the size of the average laptop battery. This product isn't being produced. Nowhere have I seen something like this, but this is exactly what i'm looking for in a portable device.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[MarkoNo5]

and my work time jumping through hoops to get shit done

You'd better spend some more money on your toilet. Mine just works.

Massive nomination of Dave for a Grammy

[Ohreally_factor]

but every ounce of space counts

In space, an ounce is weightless.

Turn up the volume!!

=)

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[Anonymous Coward]

Has "Whiney Mac Fanboy" become "Whiney Mac TrollBoy" ???

Prices on Ebay

[dr_skipper]

This works well for me - I was thinking of purchasing an ibook, and this just helps to de-value the older ibooks making it cheaper for me.. =)

Re:Apple user interface?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Properly calibrated display? Something tells me a properly calibrated display won't have much to say about the small print at the bottom of the page.

Interestingly, my monitor is set to the same resolution and I saw it just fine. In fact, I often see text that small for copyright notices and the like. One of the advantages of HTML is it is markup. Just set your browser to display text larger if your eyesight is not up to it.

So it doesn't look like Apple is going out of its way to create a good-looking web page. In fact, if the majority of PC users, as one of my uncle posts mentions, have their gamma set too low, Apple should probably use a color scheme that adapts to this, and looks fine both on correct and incorrect displays.

I don't care what your gamma is set to, unless it is truly awful you should be able to read the text just fine. Apple chose the right colors. They chose the same basic colors I use for editing source and for terminal windows. They chose they same colors I use when I make a Web page with readability as the prime concern. They chose the colors most research suggests is ideal (Sanders and Bernecker, 1990; Bernecker, et al., 1994). What colors would you prefer and why? Can you find some reputable usability test or research demonstrating that it is the ideal color combination for reading online?

There is one consideration. According to some research people with moderately severe to severe astigmatism benefit from direct lighting of text even more so that light text on a black background provides. Some research has shown people with sufficiently obfuscating astigmatism might have problems reading light grey on black text but be able to read black text on a white background on a monitor. Perhaps you should have your vision tested.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[drinkypoo]

Last I looked you could get teensy transmeta laptops with very good battery life. You can replace the hard drive with a solid state disk module. However, having a large screen based on current technology is going to drain your battery, period, because displays are subtractive instead of light-producing. When OLED comes into fruition I think you'll see more devices like the one you describe.

Re:Some notes - Free "Virtualization" solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Just my opinion, but I would hold off on buying the third-party virtualization solution by Parallels (or any other company charging money) on the basis of a free open-source solution for now (the Q project based on QEMU) and the likelihood of a free commercial solution in the near future (VMware competing with Microsoft).

One person's experience with Q/QEMU on the Intel-based Macintosh computer.

Features Vs. Price.

[jellomizer]

Apple normally does a good job at giving the best amount of features at the right price. It is about making an Excellent Laptop not an Uber one. How much more will a higher Resolution display cost, How many more people will be out of that price range. Can they keep that resolution and keep the brightness, if so how much more.
as for your 1920x1200 vs. 1600x1200 and only the additional 320 Pixels (Note 15 years ago 320x200 was normal resolution of a screen for a game) You know that area = L*W and the diagonal of the screen is Swrt(L^2+W^2). Now Power^h^h^h^h^hMacBook Pros tend to be wider then taller. So a 17" Macbook pro can be just as tall as your 15" Pc. But the display is wider by 320 Pixels (The same as 10 Average size icons right next to each other), In a spot that is less the 2 Inches (because the measurement is by the diagonal). So yes it is possible for a PC 17" to have more pixles then a MacBook, using the same density of pixels, by making its shape more optimal. That being said. There hasn't been much improvement in Resolutions for displays in the past 10 years. I can take a monitor I got 10 years ago and still run MacOS or Windows or Linux just as well as a new monitor (I may not need to hit it on the side for the Blue to appear)

Can you read?

[2nd Post!]

He says in his original post:

The answer is no: the reason why the drive didn't (and still doesn't) fit in the 15" MacBook Pro is because the wider trackpad mechanism Apple chose to use encroaches internally on the space needed for a 12mm drive by about 1/8" laterally. However, this is not the case on the 17" MacBook Pro.

The trackpad interferes with the 12mm drive but not with the 9mm drive. I bet the edge of the trackpad, by his description, rests slightly over the 9mm drive, but the 12mm drive has no such leeway. On a 17" MBP there is no need for overlapping the devices because the 17" MBP is that much bigger than a 15" MBP

Again, read the post. The trackpad lies on top of the space the 12mm DL DVD-RW drive would sit, so they used the 8mm DVD-RW drive instead in the 15" MBP.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[MustardMan]

What I read was pretty much the exact opposite of what you saw - but it was all just anecdotal stuff so could very well be wrong.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[pryonic]

You generally need to add syrup or the writing will fade after a while. And remember not to burn the waffle or again the text will be illegible.

Will It Be As BUGGY as the 17-inch MacBook Pro???

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, wonder if it will work as well as the 15"???

This Weeks What's Wrong With Macs! COPIED DIRECTLY From YOUR Helpe Site macfixit.com!

Special Report: Troubleshooting the MacBook Pro
Covering these topics:
  30 Cinema Display distortion
  Audio distortion/poor sound quality
  Battery problems: Shuts off when not connected to power, more
  Built-in Display distortion
  Dead MacBook Pro's-on-arrival units!!
  Downgraded SuperDrive relative to PowerBook G4
  ExpressCard issues
  FireWire 800 cards for ExpressCard/34 slot on the way
  High-pitched whining noises: Eliminating
  iSight not functioning properly
  Kernel panics upon waking up (Inability to wake from sleep)
  Lack of alternative power adapters
  Missing components
  Poor general network performance
  Printer issues: Not recognized, more
  Problems sharing the Internet connection
  Slow networking performance with VLANs; VOIP phones
  Wireless connectivity issues
  MacBook Pro (#15): Kernel panics upon waking up (Inability to wake from sleep); More on whining noise; Wireless connectivity issues; more
  MacBook Pro (#14): Inconsistent wireless connections with third-party routers; Problems operating from battery; more
  MacBook Pro (#13): Whining noises -- more fixes; AppleTalk printers not showing up over AirPort; more
  MacBook Pro (#12): Poor network performance for some
  MacBook Pro (#11): More on whining noises, fixes; Problems sharing Internet connection; more
  MacBook Pro (#11): Audio distortion; whining noises; screen flickering; more
  MacBook Pro (#10): High-pitched whine being emitted, possible fixes; More seemingly defective units
  MacBook Pro (#9): More units arrive DOA; More on sound quality
  MacBook Pro (#8): iSight not functioning properly; Screen artifacts; Sound quality/speaker issues; more
  MacBook Pro (#7): Notes from service manual; Poor sound quality; more
  MacBook Pro (#5): Notes from service manual; Poor sound quality; more
  MacBook Pro #4: FireWire 800 cards for ExpressCard/34 slot on the way
  MacBook Pro #3: Ship date; Lack of third-party adapters; Adding a FireWire 800 port; ExpressCard issues
  MacBook Pro (#2): SuperDrive apparently not dual-layer; S-Video out gone; No internal modem
  Apple releases MacBook Pro Core Duo: 4-5X faster than PowerBook G4 (yeah sure!, NOT what Benchmarks have shown!)

MacBook Pro (#12): Poor network performance for some
Monday, March 13 2006 @ 08:15 AM PST

Some users are reporting poor network performance from the MacBook Pro, an issue we are not experiencing in-house.

Note that we cover a broad range of Intel-based Mac networking issues in a separate series of articles, along with various workarounds that may also be applicable in the case of these MacBook Pro issues.

MacBook Pro - More on whining noises; Problems sharing Internet connection; and more PROBLEMS!

We continue to report on a distinct and irritating high-pitched noise being emitted by the MacBook Pro.

In some cases, whining sounds of this nature are related to the tied to screen brightness and caused by defective inverter boards. This was a common problem with the PowerBook G3 "Lombard" models, and the sound could sometimes be affected (or eliminated totally) by gently flexing the inverter board.

Turn on iSight Several readers have reported that turning on the MacBook Pro's built-in iSight eliminates the whining noise.

One reader writes:

"Hi, i have the same problem. When i turn on the webcam the noise disappears, but when the webcam turn off, the noise starts again."

The MacBook Pro ONLY SHIPPED IN February!!!

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[drinkypoo]

A computer actively running two operating systems has the complexity of both and the performance of neither. I know car analogies are bad but it's like having two small engines instead of one large engine in your car, with half of the electrical equipment connected to the alternator on one engine, and the other half hooked up to the other one. Sure, if one goes out you can limp along on the other one, but you won't have the functionality of all the electrical stuff - in this analogy, the electrical stuff is your software and the two engines/etc are the operating systems. Most people are better off with one system, because they only have one system to maintain. Granted, if it's down, you lose all functionality, but you're less likely to have a failure in the first place.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[Midnight Thunder]

Funny--I'm hearing people I wouldn't expect, long-time Wintel users, talking about buying one of the new Macs. It seems there is a lot of pent-up demand for Macs, which has been held back mainly by fear.

The other one I hear is: "Well wouldn't allowing Mac to run Windows be a killer to MacOS X?". In response I ask: "Why on Earth do you want to buy a Mac then!?". If I was planning to run Windows full time, then there is no need to pay the premium to Apple.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, prove to me this isn't true. Compare one of Clevo/Sager notebooks vs. a Macbook pro. Yes, I can enjoy a nice laptop with a great Nvidia card instead of an underclocked ATI card. Yes, the audio card on the Clevo's is newer than the Macbook Pro. I pretty much have the same or near the same, even better in some cases than a Macbook Pro for at least $500 less. This is the typical attitude of an Apple Fanboy who has no clue whatsoever what other laptops are on the market. Yes, there are even great notebooks that will run linux or freeBSD perfectly fine as well if you need a *n?x like notebook (Sager). With more notebooks pushing for the Duo chips, Macbook's are just like any other notebook out on the market, just expensive. Reminds me of Alienware. But you see, I don't want this to be a cock battle vs. an Apple Fanboy who has no clue, instead you should focus on the good points on the Macbook.

For example, it's a great Unix environment on a notebook that actually works without needing to spend time to configure anything the first time you open it and a good performer for a Unix environment in terms of hardware speed.

But basically what I'm trying to say, stop being a fanboy sheep and open your eyes to other possibilities, because not everyone wants to run OSX or buy an Apple, the same goes with other OS's.

Why not RF?!?

[Cyno01]

My ATI All In Wonder graphics card i got 2 years ago came with an RF remote and a USB reciever and its kinda nice to not have to point it at anything in particular. The biggest suprise is that it only runs on 2 AAAs i think and its still on the batteries it came with 2 years ago! Why aren't there more RF remotes on the market, especially in stuff like high end home theatre equiptment.

Not everyone wants a "business-only" laptop.

[StarKruzr]

Your argument regarding power consumption reduction is self-evident, no? Shouldn't it be also self-evident (as demonstrated by the way Apple engineered the design, and by how many, many other manufacturers engineer THEIR gaming laptop designs) that laptops are not necessarily only for work?

I'm sure they'll cater to your needs. But that machine will probably be the ICBM version of the iBook. Core Solo processor, integrated Intel graphics, probably quite small and light. And its battery will probably last forever.

Myself, I'm waiting for the 12" MBP Core Duo tablet with ATi graphics. I just hope they don't make me wait forever.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[dfghjk]

...or perhaps it was the fact that, until recently, macs had gawdawful slow processors in them. I certainly wouldn't characterize it has fear but that macs haven't been viable computing platforms until recently. First they fixed the pitiful OS, then added a real processor, then added windows support. Now they have something worth buying.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[Ffakr]

No, it's been held back by a lack of Windows, which prevents people from running applications.

I think you meant to say that the lack of Windows prevents people from running CERTAIN applications since I've never been want for any particular class of application on the Mac. There are, however, many niche industries (CAD for example) where Windows software options provide a massive platform advantage to PCs.
Saying people can't run applications.. or even implying that people can't run useful applications would have been a moronic statement on your part. In fact, I find that the Mac versions or alternatives to most common applications (video editing, photo management... ) are much nicer on the Mac.

It's not called fear, although a characterization like that is typical of an Apple fanboy.

Here, I'll fully disagree. People ARE affraid of the unknown. It's what makes so many of us sniveling little monkies. I've seen WAY too many people who have never ever used a Mac bash the Macintosh platform and Apple with lame and false 'evidence' to come to any conclusion other than they are affraid to leave their PC comefort zone.

See, people buy computers (whether they be PCs or game consoles or handhelds) because those platforms have the software they want. That's #1. #2 is style, and that can be enough to sell computers when people don't know what software they want to run - hence the people who buy Macs because "they're easier to use" or other bullshit excuses.

Again.. you're kind of full of crap. I agree that many people buy PCs because of specific software. Gaming is a huge example. Some niche industries (CAD comes to mind, the Law profession is very Windows and so are their software tools...). Yet another would be large corporations with custom Windows code that is required in the normal functioning.
That's not why average everyday people buy PCs though. They buy them because they are cheaper, because it's what they know (they've never seen a Mac) and because that's what they are told to buy when they talk to the 'computer person' in the family. Honestly, if you take someone without Mac-PC biases.. somone who isn't a techie.. they want the computer that they can use. They don't give two craps if it runs windows or if it runs OS X.
My Mom is getting into her computer more. I was going to get her a Mini and when I showed her one she REALLY wanted it. She had her first PC at the time. I chose, for purely financial reasons, to augment my spare parts and build her a cheap P4 2.66GHz box. She's having a terrible time with it.
I should have just spent more money and got her a mini. I have to show her the same things over and over. I update her spyware every time I'm there. Yesterday Virex found two portscanners only after the files were touched by Ad-Aware (and yes, Virex was updating every night even when she picked up the portscanners). Not to mention her biege box is 10x the size, uses 5x the power and it's easily 3x as loud.
Bottom line is, she wanted a Mac and she'd have been much happier with a Mac. She's a very average user. It has nothing to do with software because there are mac versions or counterparts for everything she uses (internet apps/web browsers, email, Skype, photo management (crappy software from her Camera, Office suite, iTunes.. )

Apple's biggest problem remains price. It's difficult to justify that extra few hundred dollars even though it costs you endless hours of hassle down the line. Time always seems cheaper than real paper dollars.
For most people it's not software. Average people actually do want pretty things that just work.. they just tend to look at the bottom line first. Apple needs to get the price down more and hammer in the ease of use message and we'll see Macs with 10% of the market sooner than you can call them 'Beleagured'.

ffakr.

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[dfghjk]

yes, in fact, it is, but the 20" display is intended to be viewed from further away so it's lower dpi is more excusable. A 1920x1200 17" display is a glorious thing. Hopefully Apple will invent it soon.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[schuster]

This is why I think that too many people are making more of bootcamp than it really is supposed to be. It seems to be that if Apple has access to the windows API, they'd be more interested in making it as easy as possible for developers to port their software to mac os x. Apple could also write APIs to make it easy for them to create a more mac-like interface and also to be able to integrate with the operating system in general. Booting back into windows would be a last-ditch solution. I also think that many users who want to switch know that it's going to cost them extra money to get all new software and if there's a mac version of the product that they use, they will just factor it into the cost of switching. Potential switchers need to hear more than just, "we may not have a mac version of the product you use now, but we do have this product and it's better blah blah blah". On the other hand, if there's a mac version of the software they use, they know it will be compatible with what they're currently using and they'll easily be able to factor it into the equation.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[Ffakr]

From the article:
and an all new system architecture that delivers up to five
times the performance of the PowerBook(R) G4
I wish Apple would stop doing this - this creates a misleading impression about the macbooks, it would be better phrased as:
Up to 5 times faster for many operations, but substatially slower for legacy software & software that relies on altivec.

Actually you're wrong.
We've compared 250MB Powerpoint presentations on a Core Duo 1.8 iMac vs. a 1.5 GHz Powerbook G4. The presentation author, who produces presentations of this size all the time and who is quite tuned to the performance of his notebook told us that Office 2004 running in emulation on the core Duo was faster than his powerbook. His powerbook had more memory than our iMac also. Granted the subsytems of the iMac are also much faster but Powerpoint loads the presentation into memory (in fact, the iMac almost ran out, PowerPoint was using nearly 700MB running a file that large in emulation).

The point is, YES, the CoreDuo is several times faster than the decrepit G4s. Even in applications that are not pervasively multi-threaded many PPC applications (All I've seen) run as fast or faster in emulation on a Core Duo then they do on a modern G4 machine. The worst case is, you old applications either won't run (no classic, and a subset of Carbon apps don't run).. or it will run as fast or slightly faster in emulation that it did natively on your old notebook.
Boo-friggin-hoo. How terrible, you app may run just as well in emulation and it will run 5x faster when you get your next 3rd party software upgrade.. not to mention that it's dual core and faster so it will always be more responsive in general.

The one thing Apple's failing at is not stressing enough that emulated apps require about twice the memory as native apps did on your old machine.

P.S. I should also mention that Rosetta dynamically recompiles binaries and caches that recompile so they get faster as you use your PPC apps. First launch is much slower than 2nd or 3rd launch for example.

ffakr.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[tgibbs]

A computer actively running two operating systems has the complexity of both and the performance of neither. I know car analogies are bad but it's like having two small engines instead of one large engine in your car, with half of the electrical equipment connected to the alternator on one engine, and the other half hooked up to the other one. Sure, if one goes out you can limp along on the other one, but you won't have the functionality of all the electrical stuff - in this analogy, the electrical stuff is your software and the two engines/etc are the operating systems. Most people are better off with one system, because they only have one system to maintain. Granted, if it's down, you lose all functionality, but you're less likely to have a failure in the first place.

So why are hybrid cars so popular?

Besides, a dual-boot computer is not trying to run both operating systems simultaneously, so your analogy doesn't apply. When it is running the Mac OS, the only thing Windows costs you is the space on your hard disk. And vice-versa, when you are running Windows, it is just like having a dedicated Windows machine. There is software (although not yet from Apple) that does let you run OS X and Windows simultaneously. There is definitely a performance cost to this, although even with the beta software it seems to be surprisingly minor.

But the people I'm talking about aren't interested in running two operating systems at once (although that is something that I might do myself). They simply want to have a fall-back option, so that in the event that they run into some kind of a problem with OS X, they can still run Windows and their old software.

So to get back to your car analogy, think of it not as a car with two engines, but as a car with a spare tire in the trunk. You may not ever use it, but you'll feel a lot more comfortable knowing that the spare is there if you ever need it.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Certainly not!

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[torpedo20]

Dell 24" LCD is even nicer ;) And, it's cheap, too. The default res. is 1920x1200.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[drinkypoo]

It would make more sense if I hadn't had Linux wipe out windows, and windows wipe out linux, on dual-boot PCs. And not when I was dicking with partitioning or creating filesystems, either. Since, I've learned how to use Unix on servers and Windows on desktops and not feel the lack of one on the other.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[wildsurf]

That's not to say that I don't drool over them a little, but I have one of the last Powerbook G4 models, so trying to upgrade now would get me a smack from the spouse. :)

Unless, say, she were to receive a nice little hand-me-down... ;-)

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[dfghjk]

no, it's 60% thicker, not 161%. Some additional points in Dell's favor to offset its extra size (in addition to the vastly superior display and graphics) are it's S-Video port, VGA connector, 6 USB ports, memory card reader, and real PC-Card slot. No, the Dell isn't as small as the Apple but it offers more for less money and it's more user-servicable. Try changing the hard drive in each and then say which is better. That's a real issue for me since neither offers a 160GB drive yet.

Speaking of tired arguments, how about the one that suggests that Apple is like BMW? As an owner of a BMW I'm not sure that's a good thing, but at least BMW does have real technical differentiation from it's competitors. Apple uses PC parts and puts them in a shiny box. If Dell is like a Chevy, then Apple isn't a BMW, it's a GMC. They're just like Chevy only with a fancy grill (and you pay more).

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[TheNetAvenger]

cm'on: hook up a 30-inch screen to the laptop and you'll have realms of HD goodness.


And that is going to speed up the GPU in the laptop how? I have a 10ft projection monitor also, it is beautiful and High Def, but that doesn't speed up my laptop GPU...

All I want is more from Apple, they use to know how to deliver the 'new' stuff, or at least meet the cutting edge.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[NMerriam]

Imagine the problems I might cause by actually writing software for my computer that "broke my machine or crippled its performance"! Surely I wouldn't deserve support.

Um, we're talking about overclocking here. I don't know of ANY computer manufacturer anywhere on Earth that will officially provide warranty repairs for damage done through overclocking.

Running things outside of spec may be exciting, and nobody is saying you have to stop, they're just pointing out that Apple isn't going to support it any more than Dell or HP or IBM or anyone else, so people should be aware of that before they go adjusting the GPU or memory speeds.

Calm down, Beavis.

Re:17" Monitor

[DAldredge]

That is 220.00 US more than my Gateway FPD2185w 1680x1050 panel...IOW it is a rip off.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[NMerriam]

Indeed, my girlfriend is fond of complaining about using my G5 desktop system because she's just more comfortable in Windows, etc. When she heard about Boot Camp, the first thing she said was that her next computer would probably be a Mac, which completely took me by surprise.

I think on some level she was afraid of letting herself like the Mac, knowing it would doom her to having two computers or not being able to run some programs. Now I catch her looking at the MacBook Pros and asking me if I've heard anything about when the regular MacBook systems will be released (by back to school season, I'm sure, honey!)

Re:17" Monitor

[Macrat]

That is 220.00 US more than my Gateway FPD2185w 1680x1050 panel...IOW it is a rip off.

Which of course is not a high rez 17" display like we are discussing.

Mod parent down! Poster is using common sense!

[Ohreally_factor]

Finally! Someone who actually buys equipment with the idea of using it to run a business/make money.

Let me ask you, Chris. Would you buy cheaper equipment if the only downside was spending too much time tweaking it and the occasional missed deadline? =)

Re:Mod parent down! Poster is using common sense!

[ChrisA90278]

I'm sure slashdot is not represetative. most people here ould think of a computer as an entertainment device and so $3K would seem expensive. For a normal bussines $3K is not expensive compared to the jack hammer and aircompressor someone I know bought and it's triveal compared to his Catapiler backhoe, trailer and dumptruck. A typical plumber bills at $100/hr to jackhammer a cement floor and replace a drainline. and that's dirt cheap when the restraunt kitchen is shut down with a plugged drain the owner will gladly pay double to have his floor dug up at night. Plumbers are not rich yuppies it's kind of the sterotype blue color job. Now for me. Yes and no. I had Solaris 10 on the computer but "holy s**t" talk about the time required to "fiddle" with it. Took half a day to figure out how to set up a "zone". I switched to Linux and now things are so much simpler. I used to suggest Mac OX for the desktop and Solaris in the server room. But Solaris 10 is gotten just to hard to admin. To much time. Linux is easy. So yes I just swapped out systems to redce the time spent messing with stuff. But both Solaris and Linux are free Open Sourse OSes So we didn't need to spend money.

Re:Mod parent down! Poster is using common sense!

[Ohreally_factor]

No, I fully understand. I work in the movie biz, which puts a very high premium on time.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[ShyGuy91284]

Thank you Mr. Troll, you just gave me the evidence I need to show my friend Macs aren't unreasonibly priced compared to Windows platforms (A bit more expensive, but a few hundred isn't terribly significant if you are already spending $2500).

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[Ohreally_factor]

A d800? Is that for the ultimate RPG geek?

Re:1680x1050? That sucks!

[TheKnightWhoSaysIt]

I have the Dell Inspiron 9200 with the 1920x1200 and it sucks! I've always been disappointed with the PB screen resolution and love 1920x1200 for work (can open 8 xterm's and work on routers/switches/computers all at the same time). However, the dot pitch is tiny, there is a frosted look to it and the color matching is TERRIBLE. While the PB has lower res, it is definitely higher quality.

Re:17" Monitor

[DAldredge]

Sorry - I should have said New Displays that were still supported by the OEM. Also implied what not paying an arm and a leg for them.

Plus THE ARE NOT 1680x1050 panels - they are 1600x1024, cost more than 21 LCD's of that resolution and have a slower response time and not as many inputs.

At least 2 years old

[SuperBanana]

Still? ExpressCard is a brand new standard

No- it's not. There have been products with Expresscard slots for over two years now.

It's a dead duck.

Re:At least 2 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, SuperBanana, this is USB calling. I want you to look up the history of the iMac computer and the, at the time, brand new USB standard. Well, not quite brand new. But brand new to the general computer user marketplace as a viable technology to use. And what made it ultimately viable? Again, please look up the history of iMac. Then you might understand the wisdom of Apple's move here today.

ExpressCard /34 was the right choice.

Low voltage Core Duos now available

[MojoStan]

The general consensus is that the 12" Macbook Pro will be released when Merom hits the market. With the heat problems the Macbook Pros have been having, a 12" wouldn't be viable at this time.

I wouldn't give up hope on a pre-Merom 12" MacBook Pro. The current 15" and 17" MacBook Pros use the "standard" Core Duo processors rated at 31W TDP. However, since at least late March, "low voltage" versions of Core Duo have been available. These versions are rated at 15W TDP. IBM uses them in their ultraportable Thinkpad X60s.

Here's some links if you want em':

• Intel Core Processor Number Details (includes Low Voltage Core Duos)
• Lenovo ThinkPad X60s review (March 24)
• First Look: Lenovo ThinkPad X60s (April 19)

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, Apple's not really competing with Dell as Dell's laptop's are made inexpensiveley. Dell can't be beat on value but Apple's laptops are really nicely made with excellent keyboards and very solid cases.

I'm assuming, like most Apple fanatics (not saying you're one), you're comparing Dell's inexpensive Inspiron notebooks from their "Home and Home Office" store to Apple's PowerBook/MacBook Pro notebooks. If you compared the more expensive Dell Latitude notebooks from their "Small Business" store and Apple's iBook notebooks, then your claim (Intel notebooks cheaply made, Apple notebooks solid) would look silly.

Most notebook makers offer cheap consumer models and more expensive higher-quality models. Apple iBook and PowerBook/MacBook Pro. Dell Inspiron and Latitude. Toshiba Sattellite and Tectra. Levono non-Thinkpads and Thinkpads.

Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is this going to cost 5000 McApples?

Re:Some notes - Free "Virtualization" solution

[daveschroeder]

Sure, Q/QEMU is great for open source software.

The only problem is, it doesn't support hardware (or even software) virtualization, so it's *very* slow. Akin to running Virtual PC on PowerPC, as your last link states.

Sure, it's free, and sure, it will work in a pinch.

But $40 for a commercially supported virtualization solution that fully supports Intel VT? Seems like that's not too much to ask.

As Q/QEMU matures on Intel-based Macs and Mac OS X in general, and if they add virtualization to the product (which is planned), it may be a worthwhile open source competitor to other virtualization solutions like Parallels Workstation and the forthcoming VMWare Workstation for Mac OS X (note though that VMWare does NOT give away their Workstation product - only the Player and lower end Server products, both of which are geared to drive sales for Workstation and the higher end Server line products, respectively).

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[rjstanford]

The difference between a car and a computer (in this case) is that the computer should be able to detect a dangerous condition and shut itself down - it's pretty easy to know at what temperature damage will occur. It's not so easy in a car; you can't tell at what precise point there's too much load because there are too many variables.

The thing is that the exact temperature is hard to determine. So the manufacturer figures out what a "reasonable" temperature is, and designs the system -- clocking various components down if necessary -- so that in a "worst case" scenario it won't be hit. This kind of overclocking overrides those very safeguards. Even if there were separate heat-related shutdown triggers, I'd be willing to bet that people would disable them. After all, from the grandparent post:

Imagine the problems I might cause by actually writing software for my computer that "broke my machine or crippled its performance"! Surely I wouldn't deserve support. Maybe we can modify the DMCA so that us madmen will be prevented from running whatever code we want on our machines.

So the manufacturer really can't win, can they? Anyway, you go on to mention:

Every modern CPU that I'm aware of has overheat protection. I'd guess GPUs are doing the same thing by now, and if not, well, there's no excuse. Every major heat-generating chip should be doing this.

Wonderful! So CPU overclockers can't overheat their systems. Except, well, it turns out that they can. Bit of a problem, that.

Re:Up to 5 times the performace of the PowerBook G

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the MagSafe is an invention (as well as a trademark) of Apple. They created it in such a way it works in both possible orientations (up or down). None of the food appliance predecessors do that. It is also specially adapted to the power requirements of a laptop computer. And it is much smaller than the similar, but distinctly different, plugs found on food appliances. Point me to another laptop computer that had a plug like this before Apple's and I will concede the point. Until then, you are wrong.

"Up to 5.5 hours"

[ynotds]

From the tech specs page linked in a comment above:

Battery and power

• 15-inch MacBook Pro
  • 60-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 4.5 hours of battery life(1)
• 17-inch MacBook Pro
  • 68-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 5.5 hours of battery life(1)

with the first of those aforementioned grey on black footnotes adding:(1) Battery life depends on configuration and use.

Re:"Up to 5.5 hours"

[toby]

When it comes to power - I still think they should have bought Transmeta. And Sun knows something the rest of the industry doesn't (yet).

Re:"Up to 5.5 hours"

[Anonymous Coward]

"And Sun knows something the rest of the industry doesn't (yet)."

Well, Sun's definetly got it right in terms of power saving without performance degredation in a heavily multithreaded task.

But Intel's got the stupid people convinced it's the mhz that matter...

And transmeta's totally screwed. They're strapping a translation engine on top of a risc core just like Intel is doing, but they can't pour the obscene amount of money Intel's poured in to make it fast in terms of last last last year's standards.

That is a great tip!

[CreateWindowEx]

I'd never heard of that one before--it makes things look like some weird Linux desktop scheme, and the colors on the close/minimize/zoom buttons are rather tripped out... but it does make everything pretty easy on the eyes... when I turn it back off on this black on white slashdot page it's like having someone walk in to your dark room and turn on a bank of fluorescent lights... ouch!

Now I just have to come up with a mnemonic for why it's on the "8" key... I guess ctrl-option-cmd+some other number just beeps, so I can find it again by trial and error.

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Invert reality.

This is a feature built into OS X. Try: Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+8

Re:Dell coupon codes... Dell is over $750 more!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I calculated the Dell out to $3,538 relative to the baseline 17-inch MacBook Pro. I figure to even approach Mac OS X, they would have to add the "Pro" version of Windows XP (so that accounts for the extra $149). Of course, you can't add the remote then (all of the Intel-based Macs come with a nice remote). So, I would peg the Dell machine at at least $750 more than the similarly equipped baseline Apple. I can't believe how Dell rips off their customers!! :-)

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[Anonymous Coward]

It would make more sense if I hadn't had Linux wipe out windows, and windows wipe out linux, on dual-boot PCs. And not when I was dicking with partitioning or creating filesystems, either.

Congratulations. You're incompetent. Why do you think your opinion matters?

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[Gentlewhisper]

iPod sales have dropped in half and every indication they will continue at that slower rate this year as the market is hitting saturation.

Don't worry, two facts for ya:

1) All iPods are Made in China.
2) Nobody I know ever buys Applecare extended warranty for their iPods.

Combine 1+2 = eternal profit!

Re:A Machine For Suckers With Too Much Cash

[hunterx11]

The record is pretty bad. In fact, if Apple continues to fail at this rate, pretty soon they'll bring down the whole economy with them.

Morons!

[Anonymous Coward]

They say the secret to designing something great is knowing who to steal from.

Apple designed a laptop, and stole the *power cable* from a deep fryer.

You idiots! If you're going to steal *one* feature from the "DeLonghi D650UX Cool Touch Deluxe Deep Fryer" for your laptop, why not steal the "stay-cool exterior"?

*sigh*

Please

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh.

Every time there is an Apple thread, someone comes out and says "wait PC's are cheaper!! and here is a comparison!!" and then some Apple fanatic comes back and refutes it and blah blah blah. And then somebody tries to be level-headed and explain that "my time is worth money. windows and linux take effort and blah blah blah".

Then everybody points and laughs at the guy who claims his time is worth money but he still spends the time to post on slashdot.

A few notes...

[totoanihilation]

335.89 vs 160.2 cubic inches
8.1 vs 6.8 lbs
3.5 vs 5.5 hours of runtime on a charge
No DVI?

Just a few off the top of my head... These things may mean nothing to you, but it does to a lot of people. Some of the laptops I see these days are barely luggable. How useful is a laptop, if in the morning you decide not to pack it because you want to travel light?

Black or white text?

[kybred]

So Apple is using the color scheme that is exactly the ideal, as recommended by numerous independent studies and researchers and as recommended by every design and usability manual I have ever read.

Can you cite a reference? I find that for me a light background with dark text is easier for me to read.

This seems to to agree with my observations (so I stopped looking :-)

From Visual Expert:

Probably, the optimal background would be a very light, desaturated blue. The light background produces high brightness contrast against dark letters. By toning down the white, the screen is less likely to act as a glare source. Finally, the use of some blue will produce aerial perspective and provide a bit of foreground-background separation.

Re:Black or white text?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Here is a good one:

Bernecker, C., Sanders, P. and Mitrick, R. (1994) Reflected luminance patterns in visual display units. Proceedings of the 1994 Conference of the Illuminating Engineering Society, 481-499.

Actually almost all the usability books I read recommend light grey on black for ease of reading. I've seen discussions of using blue for backgrounds and text as well as long running arguments decrying that for a variety of reasons. A very light grey on black, however, is the accepted standard from my reading.

watch out for a price reduction

[Scudsucker]

If you stay on the ball you might be able to get a retroactive price reduction on your Macbook. Right now, getting a 15" with a 2.16 ghz processor and a 120 gig hard drive actually COSTS MORE than the 17" that has those featuers standard, along with a much better dvd drive, the 17" screen and FW 800. So I imagine that a price cut must be forthcomming on the 15's so they aren't the runt of the litter.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's bigger, uglier, and has a bunch of useless ports built into the side. The Dell's "superior graphics" are a ATI x1400 vs. the Mac's obviously inferior x1600. You've got me convinced!

Re:Apple user interface?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you on this one and I second the motion! :-) I too was struck by the unreadability of that MacBook page. I looked from work (windoze) and it was horrible, so I looked at it at home on my 20 inch G5 iMac and it was still hard to read. I am a web developer though, so I tend to be more critical than most on topics like this. You can bet that the apple web developers are all in their 20s with eyes like eagles.

One little trick on the Safari is to set the preference to not display font sizes under 12 or 14 in the advanced tab. This will force web pages into larger sizes. It sometimes fluffs up/distorts the tables on some pages but at least they are readable.

If you are still itching to give Apple a piece of your mind try contacting their PR people. This could be considered a PR issue after all... Their email address is fairly easy to find on the site.

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

MacInTouch is full of info on the problematic side of Mac ownership that /. prefers to ignore...

Bollocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several HFS read/write utilities for Windows - MacDrive being only one.

Re:More likely... TowerMac, MacBook

[Anonymous Coward]

Tower: TowerMac (only one character off from PowerMac!)
All-in-ones: iMac
Minis: Mac mini
Laptop: MacBook Pro(high end) , MacBook (low end)

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Stamen]

You are correct, 60% thicker, I transposed that, the Dell is 161% of the Apple's thickness.

However, you aren't getting my point, you pay a lot more for size reduction and design (not appearance, but design). The Dell you picked isn't a good comparison; I can compare that Dell to a 13lb desktop replacement laptop with a full AMD 64 chip in it and claim the Dell is so slow and expensive; but that would be kind of silly.

I too own a BMW, because I don't mind paying extra for good design and service. However if you compare the parts of the BMW to the parts in a high quality Honda or Lexus, the BMW is overpriced for the parts you get. However, people buy a BMW or a Mac because of the design, overall product, and service, not because of the part list. Most people, like you it seems, simply compare part lists; which is totally fine and thus why most cars and computers are Hondas and Dells; and why we will all be working for Wal*Mart soon. That is why a Mac is like a BMW, it's a good comparison.

Just to clarify: the MacBook Pro does come with a VGA connector, the S-Video port is a $15 cable. ExpressCard > PCMCIA. Changing the HD isn't hard, it doesn't have a nice HD slot, but it's 1" thick, there isn't exactly space. 3 USB, 1 Firewire 400, and 1 Firewire 800 ports.

Macs are more expensive, no doubt, but they are not twice as much; that is ridiculous.

In the next Apple thread, I'm sure someone will claim a Dell is 1/10th the cost of a Mac.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[Shanep]

My Thinkpad A21p (Announce date: 25 Sep 2000) has a 15" 1600x1200 TFT. We're talking about a five year old laptop here - granted, IBM was the leader in laptop display resolution... but all laptops should have high-resolution displays.

Yes, I am pretty astounded that Apple did not go that little extra to 1920x1200 for the 17" MacBook Pro. This is Apple, the company known for being good for visual work and their top of the line notebook can't render 1:1 the full HDTV resolution of 1920x1080 on the built in screen? My VAIO can and plenty of other PC notebooks can.

I can't wait for 300dpi LCD's. OSX would be spectacular.

Three connections is two too many.

[argent]

What do you really need the docking port for though?

Even if I decide that I'm willing to put up with Apple's horrid mouse and keyboard (no, the mighty mouse is NOT a viable replacement for a real multi-button mouse, tried it and took it back), that still leaves power, video, network [1], firewire drive [2], PDA cradle [3], and cable lock [4].

Even if it was just power, video, and cable lock, that's two connections too many.

[1] gigabit switched ethernet versus 54M shared wireless... not even a challenge.
[2] even if I trusted Apple's USB drive support, it's still going to need its own connection... the speed of a shared USB port is the speed of the slowest device actively using it.
[3] Which is the device I don't want my hard drive to be sharing the root hub with.
[4] Apple's traditionally made the most stealable computers.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you talking about the Inspiron range? Those bricks aren't portable at all! They are all in one desktops should really be considered competition for the iMac rather than Macbook.

Plus, if you ever find yourself stranded on a deserted island and in need of something like a jet turbine to build a makeshift aircraft to fly back to civilization, you will be set with a few turbo fans from an Inspiron.

I feel like I should be performing a pre-flight checklist and requesting permission for take off when I fire up an Inspiron. My favourite part of using Inspirons though, is preparing to abandon aircraft.

And yet they do it for the iPod...

[argent]

What's wrong with this?

Doesn't lock the computer in place, you have to get a different one for each laptop (you can drop any Thinkpad in the building into my dock, and I can drop my Thinkpad in any dock in teh building), and it's less reliable than a single dedicated connector (still using the dock I got 3 laptops ago).

Apple's making a big deal about the fact that they've standardised the iPod dock layout and that's only *one* cable to keep track of... why not do the same thing for the 'books?

You've got a networked mouse and display?

[argent]

Personally I like the idea of the computer being a blind brick with only an ethernet port that you connect to from any X Terminal you want, but I didn't think Mac users would have much use for that concept. I'm kind of glad to see that changing... I guess with Apple's X11 people are realising that most applications don't need memory-speed access to the display. :)

What kind of idiot buys a 17" laptop

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Who the fuck buys those horribly huge (and horribly expensive) 17" laptops anyway? If Apple were smart, they'd have given smaller models priority. I find it ridiculous that Apple released their 17" models before the 13.3" models. I bet their old 12" iBooks sold 20-to-1 over their old 17" PowerBooks.

Re:What kind of idiot buys a 17" laptop

[Listen Up]

Who the fuck buys those horribly huge (and horribly expensive) 17" laptops anyway? If Apple were smart, they'd have given smaller models priority. I find it ridiculous that Apple released their 17" models before the 13.3" models. I bet their old 12" iBooks sold 20-to-1 over their old 17" PowerBooks.

You are the idiot. I own a 17" laptop and upgraded from both a 12" and 15" model. There are many reasons for this move:

1) Software development. Screen real estate is of maximum concern. Having a ton of programs, windows, menu bars overlapping each other makes program usage horrible. I also run software simulations and debug hardware. Having all of the necessary windows open at one time is not even possible on a 12" screen and is barely feasible on the 15" screen.

2) Video editing. Try doing this on a 12" model, it just doesn't happen. 1024x768 is a fucking joke.

3) Desktop replacement. I replaced two desktop computers with laptops in my home. Now, my wife and I can not only take our work with us any time we want, but we have a ton of free desk space that was previously taken up by large computer towers and CRTs. Not everyone uses a laptop for portable computing and a desktop for home computing. More and more people are using a laptop for both uses and it makes perfect sense to do so. Unless there is some unbelievable need for a desktop computer, I never plan on owning one again.

4) Watching movies. Watching movies on a 12" 1024x768 screen is a joke, especially if you attempt to watch any HD video. It is just feasible on the 15" screen.

5) Inadequate screen resolutions on smaller screens. If Apple came out with a 15" laptop with a 1680x1050 or 1900x1200 screen resolution I might consider it as well as the 17", but that is not the case, so that is not a consideration.

There are about 100 other reasons, but off the top of my head these are some of the most important ones to mention.

Re:Dell coupon codes from Ebay

[Listen Up]

As an owner of a BMW I'm not sure that's a good thing

I also own two BMW's, a 1997 BMW M3 and a 1998 BMW 528i to be exact, and I absolutely love them. They have given me absolutely zero problems and have been %100 fun since I purchased them. The M3 is the most fun of all. I participate in the M3 in a fair number of Autocross Solo II and track day events as well. I am also looking at purchasing a BMW motorcycle in the near future. I plan on owning BMW's forever as far as I'm concerned. What is your problem with BMW? Have you had a bad dealership experience? Are you having problems that are uncommon with most people?

As a great note, BMW is known for having the most advanced normally aspirated engines in the world. So to anyone who wants to drive one, check out your nearest BMW dealership, and beg to take out any M-class Bimmer (M3, M5, M Roadster).

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! Someone tell Linus Torvalds about this newsflash. He could make millions!!!

12" Powerbook not "Small"

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to many posters here, I don't feel that the 12" Powerbook is "Small". I find that the 12" screen and keyboard are more than adequate for use around the house, but the heavy aluminum case and pathetic battery life make the PB impractical for serious travel.

I recently acqired one of Sony's new T series Vaio laptops and it is great to take on the road. The screen resolution is much better than the 12" PB and about the same as my 21" Dell monitor at work. I would love to see Apple come out with something in the 11" widescreen form factor (~3 lbs, like the vaio). I also hope Apple also experiments with newer technologies like carbon fiber casing and LED backlight units, which are also featured in the newer vaios. I doubt Apple will ever produce such a machine, so I will likely stick with sony for my "travel" laptop (despite the lack of native OS X support), but I hope Apple's designers will at least get over their aluminum obsession. Besides looking nice and giving the machines an illusion of durability (looks nice in the store, but my PB is now respectably dented and scratched), it also conducts a huge amount of heat, while simultaneously attenuating the wireless signal.

Re:12" Powerbook not "Small"

[Jethro]

Well, we're saying that the PB12 is small compared to the other powerbooks. It is, after all, the smallest one.

I've got >3 hours out of my PB12's battery. Not an insane amount of time, but still pretty good. Granted, if I was trying to watch a DVD it'd die a lot faster.

The problem with a Sony Vaio is, well, it's not an Apple. I'm a UNIX person and yeah, I can run Linux/FreeBSD/Whatever on a Vaio, but OS X is UNIX and it JUST WORKS. Actually I take that back, it works BEAUTIFULLY.

Re:Deliberately slowed graphics card... heat issue

[podperson]

A PDA has a lousy screen, no keyboard, and dinky software. I can run FrameMaker, Photoshop 5, and HyperCard on the product I'm describing.

Incidentally, I have no idea why my original post was moderated "troll" -- offtopic, maybe. But troll?