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Apple Announces New MacBook, Pro, Air
Steve Jobs just got through announcing new MacBook lines in Cupertino. The MacBook, the Pro, and the Air all got revved. The old line of plastic-body MacBooks drops in price by $100, to $999. The new MacBooks have a metal body and multi-touch trackpad, just like the new Pros. The Pro features two NVidia graphics chips. Quoting Jobs: "With the 9400M, you get 5 hours of battery life, with the 9600M GT you get four hours of battery life. You choose." In summary: "We're building both [MacBook and Pro] in a whole new way. From a slab of aluminum to a notebook. New graphics. New trackpad, the best we've ever built. And LED-backlit displays that are far brighter, instant on, far more environmentally responsible." They are shipping today and should be in stores tomorrow. Oh, and one more thing: Steve's blood pressure is 110/70.
It's amazing how AAPL stock drops after an announcement.
Buy on rumor. sell on fact.
The Mini DisplayPort is downsized from the full sized DVI connector. The Mini DisplayPort can drive everything the big DVI can (30-inch displays).
You need to get over the fact that Apple, just like Linux, or Google will get a special treatment on Slashdot. These are products/brands that the typical slashdot reader are interested in. You will see that this "article", even if it is nothing more than a glorified press release, will get a large number of comments, justifying its place on the slashdot frontpage.
Unless you need Firewire, in which case you're up a creek sans paddle. Typical Apple, a couple steps forward, one step back, one step to the side. Never end up exactly where you want to be.
Is anyone's interest peaked by the new dual video cards? Especially with OpenCL possibly being the 'next big thing'. I'd be very interested in Photoshop CS4 benchmarks too.
Second, is this the next big competitive 'edge' (now that everything is dual core). Apple was one of the first companies to put dual processors in consumer products. I remember debating between a Dual 800 MHz or a Single 866 when I went to college and ended up spending the extra on the dual. I swore to myself then that I'd never go back to a single processor. Now everything is dual core, dual processor, quad core, etc.
Mr. Graphic Designer wants older matte screens because they supposedly reproduce colors better (the same reason they held onto CRTs well after LCDs debuted).
I'm Mr. Dabbles in Graphic Design Person. You need to remove the "supposedly" in your statement above, especially when it comes to CRTs vs LCDs. High end LCDs are almost as good as decent CRTs, mostly because LCDs significantly change color with viewing angle. When you're worried about graphic design or photography, getting the color right is really important, and even slight color shifts are unacceptable.
I'm also Mr. Professional Visual Neuroscientist Who Does Some Colorimetric Work. No serious colorimetric work is yet being done with LCDs for the very same reason: a green dot needs to be exactly the same green whether it's presented in the middle of the screen or at the edge. With CRTs that's the case. With LCDs, assuming the viewing position is the same, the viewing angle changes slightly between those two screen locations, and the color is altered.
I had cause to use a glossy screen laptop recently. Couldn't wait to get rid of it, as I was distracted by my own reflection, or a reflection of the things behind me, or the lights, or whatever else was at the right (or wrong?) angle. Until LCD screens get some really good antiglare coating, matte is the way to go.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
The Mini DisplayPort is downsized from the full sized DVI connector. The Mini DisplayPort can drive everything the big DVI can (30-inch displays).
...if you buy the $30 adapter for it.
Why?
I'm not trolling, honest question. Why are so many manufacturers going to glossy LCDs? Cheaper to build, what? 'Cause every end user I support hates the things. Except one, and he always likes to be different anyway.
What benefit, real or imagined, do hardware makers think/believe/want us to believe, is to be had from glossy screens?
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
Ok, so first it was 1 finger, then 2, then 3, and now finally 4. What's next, fisting?
(Yes, I know I am a terrible person, why do you ask?)
The glass trackpad *is* the buttons, and not like tapping to do a click.
It works in a similar way to the ipod wheel, the corners move down when you press it. Watch the video on the macbook page. I was afraid of that too, but it really is quite nice.
Do you understand that DisplayPort is capable of more than DVI? I believe it surpasses HDMI as well. Furthermore, /.-ers should be overjoyed at a connector that is royalty/license-free.
It was also JUST ANNOUNCED TODAY. Wait until it shows up on Monoprice.
Go ahead and buy a glossy screen. On the way home stop by the grocery store and pick up some steel wool. Rub the screen with the steel wool and Voila!! A beautiful matte screen.
Note: your results may vary.
I personally love my glossy screen and would never again consider a matte option.
For one, glossy screens are easier to clean. With laptops, it's somewhat inevitable that the screen will get fingerprints on it. With a matte screen, you need a specific wipe/spray to clean. My glossy display cleans easily with a damp paper towel. Glossy screens also showcase vibrant colors better than matte screens. This is probably why so many manufacturers are pushing glossy...under the right conditions, stuff just looks better on a glossy screen. But I would bet that Apple is moving to glossy in preparation for laptops where the screen is touch-sensitive (ala iPhone/iPod).
And having used one for the past year, the glare issue is really a red herring. I don't notice it. In fact I find the glossy screens more usable in sunlight conditions since they appear brighter than the matte. I actually find it really hard to believe your statement, "every end user I support hates the things" based on my experience. It's really hard to fathom that anyone who has actually used a glossy display for any serious amount of time wouldn't prefer it to a matte display.
And yet still costs more than those royalty/license-laden connectors... funny how that works.
Because speech != beer?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Wow, Apple is smart.
They stick with NVidia GPUs, but give you two: when the first stops working you can switch to the backup.
They're so on it.
Fortunately, they've also included an accelerometer into these new models, such that you can pick them up and tilt them around to move the mouse cursor where you want it. Clicking is easy, too - just drop the laptop.
Double-clicking is a bit harder, but with a mallet and a bit of practice you'll have it down.
Please clarify: you are arguing in favour of glossy screens, right?
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
and.... NOW the wikipedia article states that the Mini DisplayPort is a bi-product of Kraft Velveeta cheese.
Apple is overpriced.
No, they're not. As long as they're reaching their sales goals, their price is less than or equal to what it could be. For having such a high opinion of yourself and your financial habits, you suck at economics.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I thought that glossy screens were an absolutely awful idea when I first heard of them. But after seeing and using them for a while, I now find them to be a far better choice.
Remember, the difference between matte and glossy is now how much glare the screen reflects, just how sharply focused that glare is. With a glossy screen, if you're sitting at the wrong angle, you get a big bright unusable glare. But if you adjust that angle even very slightly, the glare goes away _completely_.
A matte screen, on the other hand, is the hedging approach. There's no single point at which the glare is really awful... and there's no point at which the glare goes away entirely. You're just averaging the glare over all possible angles.
Given how painless it is to nudge a laptop one way or the other by a couple of degrees, I'm now much happier with the option to have no glare whatsoever, rather than just constant not-too-terrible glare. It's a little weird actually seeing true black on a laptop screen in a lit room, but I assure you that it's refreshing.
Dented and flexed cases in the AL Powerbooks and Macbook Pros are a pretty well known problem. Drop it just right onto concrete or tile, even from a pretty short height, and you might find yourself with a big dent or an unusable optical drive. This is an unfortunate side effect of using such thin, stamped AL for the case.
This is a big reason they redesigned the case. The 3-D milling allows very precise placement of material, which should produce a stiffer case for the same weight. But also take a look at how they designed the case. The bottom half used to be a single "tub" of aluminum, with a separate piece for the "deck." Now the sides are attached to the deck, with a separate piece for the very bottom surface. This creates stronger corners, and an easily-replacable bottom surface if a dent does occur.
Also, take a look at where they put the optical bay. This is one of the weakest parts of the structure because it's a big hole in the sidewall. Again, the milling should allow them to thicken the border of the disc port a bit, to stiffen it up. And it's placed directly over the battery, which is one of the strongest and most solid parts of the computer.
I think the new design should be a lot more resistant to stupid dings and expensive fixes.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Where I work we have 45 Macs. Of those 35 people have now switched to plain jane Logitech LX optical mice because the Apple mouse is so spectacularly bad. People get wrist cramps having permanently hold the left finger away when right clicking, the shape of the mouse is painful for many of them over time, and to top it all, the little scroll ball invariably gunks up with finger sweat and dirt after a while and you can only clean it so many times before the ball wears away and no longer maintains contact to the little slide wheels inside the mouse.
The Apple mouse is a terrible product, and its bluetooth pendant is even worse. the battery life is so bad that most people who have ehm and use them every day have to replace the batteries about once a month. I switched long ago to a Logitech LX-7 wireless which has used the same set of batteries for about 8 months.
I like Apple's products, and even own a Mac Pro tower myself, but I get really tired of people praising every thing Apple does simply because it's Apple.
I work with several professional photographers as a consultant. I can assure you that glossy displays DO NOT work as well subjectively for most photographers and other artists using LCD displays. Some photographers still insist on using CRTs because of those subjective preferences.
You can bake the numbers all you want, but if the palette and contrast don't feel right for photographers - many of which started using Photoshop to work with Tango-scanned film images - they will not touch it. Consistency, not gimmicks, are key for these folks.
These are not gear queers running out to compare the specs on the newest whoosy-whatsit, but artists who are extremely picky about their equipment. Here's what they tell me they HATE about glossy displays:
-Extreme brightness on glossy displays = extreme contrast. It's harder to believe you're looking at a calibrated 2.2 gamma when your "superbrite" glossy LCD display has such a massive contrast ratio.
-Working in neutrally-painted, darkened rooms is optimal. When you turn these superbright LCDs down to achieve a reasonable brightness for a darkened room, the glare and reflections from the glossy panel are distracting. Turn it back up, and it takes you several seconds to a minute to see where you're going.
-The higher brightness leads to colors looking more saturated, which sells with consumers. Most pros I talk to HATE it. Photographers who rely on a muted palette and who work in color managed workflows can't tell what's going to roll out of their printer with displays like the iMac's glossy LED display - the colors seem too contrasty and saturated, so everything gets dialled down too far.
That's my experience. Pros hate these damned displays.
Glossy screens are just not acceptable for the calibration and perception standards
Oh, come on. You seriously maintain that you cannot calibrate the color output of a glossy display? Do you even know what the only physical difference between the two is?
Let me inform you, since you probably do not. There is literally no difference in any of the elements which significantly affect the spectrum of the emitted light. In a LCD display, those would be the backlight, the LCD subpixel intensity filters, and the color filter. All these components are 100% identical between a glossy and non glossy display. The one and only different component is that a matte display has a surface roughening treatment (or coating) on the outermost glass layer to provide some scattering.
Scattering does two things, one desirable and one undesirable. The desirable part is that it greatly reduces the intensity of reflections of other things in a room (especially light sources). It's hard to see a reflected image when the light is reflected in a ton of different directions by the rough surface.
The undesirable part is that it does the same thing to the image being displayed. And that's why people like glossy displays: the colors can be much more saturated (matte displays have a bit of a whiteout effect) and the display is brighter given identical backlights (scattering sends a lot of the light output off in random directions).
Something tells me that folks in the market to buy BOTH a Macbook Pro AND a 30" display are not going to bitch, moan, and stomp their feet when forced to buy a $100 adapter.