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MacBook Pro Gets Santa Rosa Chipset, LED Screen
frdmfghtr writes "TechNewsWorld is reporting that Apple has updated the MacBook Pro line with the Santa Rosa chipset from Intel. In addition, Apple is also introducing mercury-free displays with some models. 'When Apple presented new editions of its MacBook line last month, the company excluded the latest Intel Centrino chips, dubbed "Santa Rosa," which had been released just days prior. The chips have found their way into Apple's new high-end MacBook Pro notebooks, which the company revealed Tuesday. Certain models use mercury-free displays, falling in line with the company's recent ecological promises.'"
Macbook Pro's have been out for over a year now, and after Intel's flaw with the Pentium FPU, they've gotten very good about formally verifying their processors. It's hard to call it first-gen hardware by now.
We've upped our standards. Up yours.
Apple didn't "surrender" to Greenpeace.
Apple simply issued a statement about its product environmental plans, among other things.
Numerous other vendors were "greener" by Greenpeace standards because they had a public "environmental plan", or even a "plan to have a plan", whereas Apple was silent on futures as it relates to future products, as it always is.
Perhaps Jobs thought it pragmatic to offer its plan publicly so that it would stop getting hammered by Greenpeace as having one of the worst environmental commitments in the industry, when in reality it has one of the best (sure, sure, cue the "but so-and-so is better/first/whatever than Apple is such-and-such category" comments). And besides, I thought it was actions, not lip service about possible future directions, that actually mattered?
But the bottom line is Apple didn't "surrender"; it just published what its already-existing environmental plans were. If you call that a "surrender", then, hey, wave the white flag, Apple.
Also, while Apple folks and other tech-savvy folks may know the Intel-based Macs run Windows, why does the news article not even mention that? ...bears repeating.
Oh, come on. Anyone even remotely considering buying a Mac can read all about its ability to run Windows programs on Apple's website. Given the fact that all new Macs have been able to do this for a year and a half now, it's not exactly news anymore. And it's not as if there has been a shortage of coverage of this ability, either. There's a difference between "bears repeating" and "repeating ad nauseam".
But saying that the laptop comes with Mac OS X, Safari, and iLife is important?
This is the single biggest factor in new Mac purchases at my institution, and many other settings.
Whether it comes with iDVD and GarageBand and iCal is not in the least.
And many, many people still don't fully understand that, yes, it really, really can run Windows. And yes, your Windows app will really, really work. Yes, even that one. Yes, really.
Wouldn't you agree that warrants at least a sentence alongside all the other drivel in the article?
So when can I get a 2-button trackpad? Come on, Apple, that's just one mouse button per core. I want a real button, not a clever software simulation of two buttons. Just humor me, I'm dying to buy one of these babies.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
It is not a bad choice. There is nothing wrong with the built-in Intel graphics (GMA950 etc) for 95% of uses. If you plan to play games such as World of Warcraft or Quake then you would want the dedicated ati graphics. It is only clueless whiny mac fanboys who have a hang up with the Intel graphics. I am sure someone can post a long list of benchmarks that show that the Intel graphics are slow, but they won't be able to show a list of how that actually effects the user. Unless you fire up WoW you aren't going to notice.
When I bought my MacBook (in January), I was a little wary of the idea of share video/system RAM, but it actually makes sense if you're not doing 3D work. Why carry around a bunch of RAM for your display if you're only going to render 2D windows with text and images? I've even played a few 3D games on it, and it performs acceptably, though has to work pretty hard and gets quite hot. Plugging in a 1680 x 1050 additional screen was no problem and it looks great for photos/videos.
Seriously, if you're a gamer, get a desktop; if you're a 3D artist, get a MacBook Pro; but if you're someone who wants a fully-featured laptop for $1500, just give up on your 'I have to have the pro level gear' attitude and get the black MacBook. You'll be glad you did.
For a lot of reasons, some of us like to have just one computer that can be used for everything. I'd rather have a macbook pro that can play games/do 3d work AND be useful as a mobile computer, than have a macbook that I have to sync up with a gaming PC at home and a desktop at work. To me, the bet thing about laptop is how much it simplifies things to have all my crap in one place. I'm willing to sacrifice a few frames per second for that.
The fact that a Mac comes with everything you need to edit movies and photos and turn the result into DVDs distinguishes it from every other computer, and hence is noteworthy.
Yes. And that's fine.
The fact that it can run Windows does not.
The fact that a *Mac* easily/natively/seamlessly runs Windows doesn't "distinguish" it from other computers, and that's exactly the point. And it does distinguish it from every other Mac for the over-two-decades before Intel-based Macs started shipping (horridly slow emulation aside, no matter how well it was done).
And as I said elsewhere, the fact that Macs can now run Windows is the single biggest reason people are buying Macs in many markets, especially education, research, and government, and there are still many people who don't understand that, Yes, Macs Really Can Run Windows.
It was at least worth a passing sentence in the article.
For me, the best bit is that they ditched ATI for nVidia. I was planning on getting a regular MacBook in order to avoid ATI, but now I can go with the Pro.
(ATI's drivers are teh suck, on OS X as well as Linux.)
((Opinions mine, not IBM's.))
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Thanks for your responses. I did a little price comparison between the base MBP and (roughly) equivalent HPs and Dells and both of them ended up being more expensive--~$400 and ~$200, respectively. Granted, those are being compared to prices with an educational discount (and the HP has some kind of 3 year warranty by default although I don't know how much it covers compared to AppleCare), but that discount isn't much ($200 tops). Even without that discount the MBP is pretty competitive (if not cheaper), especially considering I don't think either of the others had any type of 802.11n card and both were slightly heavier than the MBP.
It is a BIG surrender to have apple to disclose any future plans whatsoever.
People ironically love to bash their own advocates. (Greenpeace being indirect advocates for our wellbeing.) Y2K people are now discredited because the end of the world did not happen - but their actions helped funnel billions into preventing problems especially on mission critical systems. They won but get no glory.
The only good public recognition a whistle blower gets is after the disaster when everybody gets to hear them say "I told you so." Even then, that still creates a large amount of resentment or people upset they didn't push hard enough to convince us before the disaster.
We wouldn't know how bad or good apple was without somebody taking the effort. Greenpeace was doing their job and were not trying to get elected to office.
Mull over that one.
You SysAdmins who must have had to advocate preventive measures to the bosses in your career; and who also likely have to remind people when your plans saved them from "disaster."
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"The color spectrum that a given LED provides will necessarily be different than the spectrum that CCF backlights generate, and different from the spectra that the various CRT monitor phosphors generate."
...but not how wide it actually is. A backlight that determines gamut is a crappy backlight.
They will likely be, but not "necessarily" be. There's no requirement that makes it "necessary". CRTs work much different and shouldn't be included in the discussion.
"If a given portion of the spectrum is not present in the "white light" (using that term very loosely here) backlight, no amount of filtering by the LCD screen overlay can put it back. If this is not intuitive, imagine trying to create blue using only a pure-red LED backlight. (You can't do it - the backlight must have at least some blue)."
Yes, but LCD displays work using color filters and the "white light" does not need to have a particularly full spectrum. It only needs to offer what the filters wish to pass.
"So if, for example, the LED backlight has more green and red light available in its "white light" spectrum than a CCF backlight has, the LCD overlay so-illuminated can produce yellow tones (since red and green are the constituent primaries that make yellow) that a LCD illuminated with a CCF cannot. That gives the LED-illuminated LCD a wider gamut."
What do you mean by "more green and red"? If it has simply "more" then you are wrong. The gamut will be the same but the brightness will be different. In order for there to be differences in possible yellow tones there needs to be qualitative differences in the green and red itself.
"However, if both the LED-illuminated and the CCF-illuminated LCD overlays only filter light at a resolution of 8 bits per channel, they will both be able to display the same amount of information about color, but because the gamut of one is different from the gamut of the other, in many cases they will not be able to display the same colors."
Who says the gamut of one is different from the other? The LCD panels may be the same thus required spectra the same and the color balance of the light sources may be the same. In that case, even though the backlights are different and have different CRIs, the result will be a matching gamut.
"In general, an 8-bit display should in fact have a larger (but not necessarily wider) gamut than a 6-bit."
The color gamut is the range of color possible to achieve. The bit depth determines the quantization within that gamut. Your use of the confusing and similar term "larger" is not helping matters any. Most people will equate "larger" and "wider" (understandably) as meaning the same thing. You should not be creating confusion in an effort to eliminate it. Having more bits does not make a gamut "larger". What it does is provide smoother tonality.
"In an LCD display the spectrum of the backlight will determine how wide the gamut can be at its absolute maximum..."
"...if a color is not present in that spectrum, it cannot be filtered into existance by the LCD overlay."
but a metamer of it can. That's how tristimulus display works!!! Whether a given spectral line exists in a backlight has no impact on whether a given color exists in the resulting gamut. If what you say were true, we wouldn't be using LED OR CCFL for backlights and CRTs wouldn't work worth a shit!
"By the same token, the bit-depth-per-channel of the LCD overlay will determine how many individual color tones are in that gamut."
Finally you got something right. Bit depth determines tonality, not gamut "largeness".
"In reality, it's a lot more complicated than this, but this is the gist of it."
Yes it is, and you know just enough to be dangerous. What you offered isn't "the gist of it" at all.