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Apple Intros 17" Unibody MBP, DRM-Free iTunes
Phil Schiller delivered the keynote at MacWorld, the first after the Steve Jobs era of keynotes. Here is Engadget's live blog. The big news, predicted by many rumor sites, was the introduction of the unibody 17" MacBook Pro. As rumored, the battery is not removable, but it's claimed to provide 8 hours of battery life (7 hours with the discrete graphics): "3x the charges and lifespan of the industry standard." $2,799, 2.66 GHz and 4 GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, shipping at the end of January. There is a battery exchange program, and there is an option for a matte display. The other big news is that iTunes is going DRM-free: 8M songs today, all 10+M by the end of March. Song pricing will be flexible, as the studios have been demanding; the lowest song price is $0.69. Apple also introduced the beta of a Google Docs-like service, iWork.com.
I was really hoping to see an updated Mac Mini.
--- Tao
Tiered Pricing.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
but I was really hoping they would finally update the MacMini.
blah, blah, blah...
Come on, it isn't that hard to make a user removeable battery. Just do it -- people want it. It is a freaking laptop!
I'm glad to see Apple stepping away from a massive release of new products every January. While it was exciting from a geek perspective, it was awfully timed. Introducing a slate of cool new gadgets just after Christmas was a marketing nightmare for Apple - hundreds of thousands of new iPod owners would be upset to learn that their new player was suddenly "last year's model," and many other Apple enthusiasts would simply put off their purchases until after the Christmas season in anticipation of "one more thing" in January. That can't have been good news for retailers who ramp up inventory in the months leading up to xmas. Now, Apple has more control over their release cycle. They can keep their products under wrap until they're ready to unveil them to the world, and can stagger releases for maximum coverage.
If people hadn't wined, would they still have done it?
An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
I simply cannot fathom why Apple keeps making these things without a number pad. If I'm going to lug around the weight of a 17" I feel like a proper keyboard with keypad is a must, especially since almost all of the other brands have no trouble fitting one in.
The weight on this thing is mighty impressive though, I'm not familiar with any 17" laptop that is only 6.6 lbs. Of course, I'm not sure if it's worth the trade-off of not having a removable battery.
Yeah... but those people who claimed $0.99 was too expensive and songs shouldn't cost more than $0.70 will need a new excuse.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Should have better video then 9600m for a $2700+ system come on other laptops have SLI at that price.
And $1200 to go from 4gb to 8gb?
I hope apple has a big Superbowl ad to show off the other new hardware.
You know, its pretty fashionable to argue these days that CEOs are just like everyone else, interchangeable parts that you can just get rid of. Steve Jobs isn't one of them, and I don't think Bill Gates was either, for that matter.
But, in the case of Steve Jobs, the dude could walk out onto a stage, show you a product, and you would think, wow, that's really brilliant.
Regardless of how Shiller is, he's not the guy that founded Apple, beat developers into the ground trying to make a product better. Sometimes took the company into the ground chasing after a vision but a lot of times made a mountain of money chasing after the same.
You can't get the same vision from somebody who runs as a company as you can get from the guy that founded it. Even for CEOs, its just a job, but for founders, its a vision, and I'm going to miss the Apple of Jobs old, even as I miss the Microsoft of Gates the Evil.
This is my sig.
Apple sold out.
The labels wanted tiered (or really, higher) pricing and a larger cut of revenue for anything downloaded via cellular; Apple wouldn't initially give in and they were too big & powerful for the labels to simply ignore. So the labels propped up Amazon's store by allowing them to sell everything DRM free and taking a smaller cut of revenue than from Apple, and refused Apple the same rights. This was to force Apple's hand; to either risk being driven out of business, or to "play" with the labels.
Apple could have taken the correct option and continued to hold out for fair treatment and reasonable pro-consumer policies. Instead they sold out. The iTunes Music Store is now just yet another front for the labels, controlled by the labels.
And all their other fronts (e.g. Amazon and WalMart) will quickly adopt the same policies now that the labels have no reason to continue offering them favorable terms.
Where do you7 get 2.50 from. .69, .99, 1.29
Probably based on download popularity. That's just a guess.
However you do accidentally make another point: People will continue to make shit up so they can whine.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One is that you do save some space by integrating the battery. There is a non trivial amount of extra material for making it removable since it had to be in it's own enclosure and such. So one could claim that is was done to either decrease size, or to increase capacity (by having larger cells).
The other is that this makes the device much more disposable. Apple is in the hardware market, they make their money on buying new gadgets. It would be best for them if people viewed the gadgets as disposable and simply tossed them after a few years.
It's great to see competition in the market for DRM-free music. Until now, the only DRM-free option with a comprehensive catalog was Amazon. I've been using Amazon for a while, and there are definitely some significant pros and cons:
It will be interesting to see if the advent of competition encourages both Apple and Amazon to improve.
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It is extremely important that Slashdot apprise us of every new product coming from Apple Corporation, in near-realtime fashion.
Please slashdot, tell us more about Steve Jobs' health, Apple Corporation mythology, and Mac purchasing opportunities!
Usually I'd agree with you but this news about DRM is pretty important because it completely changes the dynamic of the music industry in relation to the Internet considering iTunes recently surpassed Walmart in music sales. That is clearly stuff that matters and if you can't see that you're geek license should be revoked on your way out.
The lowest price is $0.69. You can bet that many will be well above $0.99 that they are now.
Meh, who cares? This isn't about Apple or Amazon. This is about the labels being dragged, kicking and screaming though they are, into the 21st century.
This was a fairly nice development. Let's not cloud it with pointless conspiracies.
BTW, Apple, by definition, can't "sell out". Thanks for playing though.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Perhaps not. I don't think they want any one online music store to have a big enough market share where the retailer can more or less dictate the terms and conditions of online music sales. By continuing to offer favorable terms to Amazon, WalMart*, and friends, they can potentially keep iTunes from having the monopoly they used to.
On the other hand, you're probably right.
I'm sure it won't force you to get a new computer. First of all, the new battery is supposed to last much, much longer, so it'll be more like 5 years before you're in the same boat. And if you still want to keep this machine 5 years from now, you can probably take it to a service location to have the battery changed, like Apple does with iPods.
E pluribus unum
They're ditching DRM. That's pro-consumer. What you're saying is that they are going to have to charge what the studios want to charge (ie, more). That's not anti-consumer enough to balance out the goodness factor of allowing people to actually play the music they buy on any device they own (which has kept me from using ITMS thus far).
I'm sorry you don't like higher prices. But you finally own what you buy. If you're still concerned about ITMS's prices, you really shouldn't have been using them in the first place as they've always been outrageously expensive.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Sold out? By offering tiered pricing? Really?
In the real world, everything has different prices depending on demand. The "Everything should be 99c" thing may simplify things, but it's hardly fair, either to the labels or to us. Apple was trying to force both the record labels and customers to do something completely ridiculous in the name of simplicity, and consider "The Birdie Song" to have the same value as "Bohemian Rhapsody".
I appreciate like most of Slashdot you have a hate-on for the labels, and therefore consider anything the labels want to do as wrong, but Apple was on the wrong side here.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Maybe, maybe not. Do you think the labels would want DRM-free music? Doubtful. My guess is that amazon only got the deal they did without DRM because Apple was doing so well and wouldn't play ball on the tiered pricing. What if the labels only could concede DRM-free music if Apple gave in on the tiered pricing? It's not an unequivocal victory but if I had to choose I'd much rather have tiered pricing and DRM-free music than DRM-ed music and non-tiered pricing. Now if they'd just let me get the songs off my ipod using iTunes and not having to resort to third party software I'll be happy.
I haven't bought a single song from the iTunes music store because of DRM, I might actually consider it now.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
The _highest_ price is $1.29, and they claim "more songs will be $0.69 than will be $1.29".
Either way with DRM free music the consumer benefits.
"Apple has pretty much always been a rip off"
Couldn't agree with you more.
They stated it can be charged 1000 times. That means if you use your laptop every day you will need a new one in 2.7 years.
No, that means if you *charge* your laptop battery every day you'll need one that often (I didn't check your math, but that's not my point). If you use your laptop as a desktop replacement, as many Apple owners seem to do (especially that big honkin' 17" we're talking about), it's probably plugged-in all the time, and I'm hoping that Apple made it not recharge the battery all the time it's plugged in, so it may last much, much longer than that. It depends on how you use it. Not that I'm defending the idea of a non-removable battery (I think it's completely asinine), but let's not go overboard.
I'm more a fan of the ThinkPad way of doing things - one big main battery, with a removable optical drive that you can replace with a second battery. Now *that's* giving a user options.
There are a number of words in your post that the average consumer will not recognize, nor care about: FLAC, AAC, OGG, RockBox, Amarok, Magnatune, etc.
Until the masses care, most capitalists will not.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Considering that recent stats. show that less than 10% of the full catalog make 90% of the sale volume, price those at 1.29, 70% at 0.99 and the remaining 20% at 0.69 just to show some goodwill, and everyone will pay an higher price.
You will pay more, unless you really are into those rather odd songs.. ;)
all you need to do to make a battery removeable is install some contacts (which would have to exist in some form or another anyways) and a latch mechanism
And an independent casing around the battery, which not only takes up space but impacts how the battery will dissipate heat.
And you don't have as much flexibility as to the overall shape of the battery or its location in the laptop.
Apple is not going to destroy their business model to protect your $200 monitor investment. They have 9.7 million people eager to buy macs that have tight hardware integration. The person determined to keep their five year old Nec Multisync LCD to save $200 is NOT the iMac target market!!!
Because with Apple the AirPort Express is your "dock", as most of what you're asking for can already be done wirelessly. Plug your speakers and your printer into your Express, and you're good to go the second you set your notebook down.
Use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. No wires. Do Time Machine backups to Time Capsule. No wires. Actual, physical wires are so... '80s.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Sure the tracks are going DRM free, but will iTunes still prevent me from copying music from my iPod to a new iTunes library? It's incredibly annoying to me that any time I move PCs or operating systems that I can't easily move songs off of my iPod. The tracks may be DRM free all the way through, but it still exists if I can't move my library as I see fit.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
there will likely be an "awesome" update around June which is when the original 2G customers contracts will expire.
Well for one, the battery compartment takes space. External shielding takes up space. Most of all, the battery has to be a certain shape to fit into and out of a laptop .
Take a look at any laptop battery. They can't be the footprint of the entire laptop because there would be no way to install it. They have to be brick shaped. By making the battery non-removable, the battery can be optimizied to take as much space internally as it needs. If you at the MacBook Air, you'd see that 2/3s of the internal space of the machine is battery. You can't do that with a removable battery.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
They stated it can be charged 1000 times. That means if you use your laptop every day you will need a new one in 2.7 years.
if you use it every day, including saturdays and sundays, FOR 8 HOURS A DAY, then in 2.7 years, the battery will be down to an 80% charge or 6.4 hours. Which is longer than your current 5 hour battery lasts.
I seriously doubt many users use a computer 7 days a week, soley on batteries for 8 hours a day!
finally you can replace the battery. There's just no simple pop-out mechanism. But unscrewing the case once in the life of a computer is not a big deal.
Additionally Apple care will cover the battery for 3 years-- that's not something you get on most warantee contracts.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
In the real world, everything has different prices depending on demand.
In the real world, products are both rivalrous and excludable. Downloaded music is neither.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"I don't see why anyone would pay the fee, just remove it yourself."
Let's say last week I bought the album "Nothing's Free", by "The Capitalists". I paid $9.99. I can buy it this week, for $9.99, and it will be playable on every device I own right out of the gate.
If I want that same freedom for my week-old purchase(assuming I'm a non-technical user), I have to pay $3.
It's a straight up cash grab on Apple's part. They're willing to stick it to the client base that already paid.
How does the fact that it is not removeable affect its shape by 40%?
Here's a hypothetical cross section:
Traditional Laptop:
Laptop Case - Battery Case - Battery Cells - Battery Case - Laptop Case
1mm + 1m + 3mm + 1mm + 1mm
MBP:
Latop Case - Battery Cells - Laptop Case
1mm + 3mm + 1mm
Overall thickness reduced by 2mm. The "Battery" part is reduced from 5mm to 3mm, saving 40%, by not having to give the battery a redundant plastic shell.
The only way I could see that happening is if the battery was the size of a watch battery. After all, all you need to do to make a battery removeable is install some contacts (which would have to exist in some form or another anyways) and a latch mechanism (which could be just a simple screw).
Not really a valid example. Comparing the can requirements of a 1 volt battery that delivers milliamps to a 10-14Volt 1-3amp battery. The much larger and more powerful battery needs more insulation and rigidity etc to prevent it from shorting out, catching fire, exploding, etc. In the MBP this is taken care of by the laptop case. In a removable battery, the battery has to have its own suitable enclosure.
Remember "40%" may seem like a lot, but we're talking about a laptop that's only a dozen mm thick. Removing a couple mm thickness from a single part is a BIG deal.
I just want to make the point that Bohemian Rhapsody should be free, considering it entered the moral public domain in 2003 (released in 1975, 28 year copyright term). It's high time our community codified our disdain for perpetual copyright by insisting on a moral public domain.
The Birdie Song (I had to look it up) was released in 1981, so we moral people should continue to pay for it (or better, not listen to it) until sometime later this year on the anniversary of the release date.
This can pretty much apply to all laptops in general. Most major manufacturers still gouge at a ridiculous level on increasing the RAM pre-installed in a laptop. Apple may be the leader of the pack in overpricing, but unfortunately, all of them do it to some extent.
I am not a *blank*, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
A trip I took recently that was just less than 1,000 miles "as the crow flies" took me over 8 hours of real time. And I'm sure I'm not the only person with a laptop who has experienced this.
You are not the only one. I routinely travel 16+ hours. However, I find it easier to find an outlet to do a quick recharge during a layover, than I would opening a 17" laptop on a plane, unless I was traveling business class (and how many companies do that routinely these days?). So, I find the concepts of "road warrior" and 17" laptop to be less than ideally compatible. See my previous post for more on that.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
Perhaps true road warriors might consider their options and 1) not purchase a 17" laptop which would be way too big to open on a plane, 2) consider that the rigors of travel add sufficient stress that the idea of doing more than 8 hours of actually productive work is lunacy, 3) a much cheaper video iPod would be a superior solution in the Mac stable for video/music entertainment if entertainment is the goal rather than work, or maybe 4) not purchase this device, and instead purchase any of the countless other devices in the world with a replaceable battery.
If we take Apple's claims at face value that they were faced with a design tradeoff between replaceable batteries and battery life, I suggest that most users would rather have the battery life than the replaceable battery. Perhaps there are exceptions to the rule. Perhaps our market economy will fulfill the needs of those exceptional people adequately. One can hope.
While the music itself is now DRM-free, it is still inaccessible to non Windows/Mac users. I realize that we Linux-only households are few and far between, but as a cross-platform version of iTunes already exists, why not make a version for Linux too?
While they're at it, could they just move the store entirely to the web, and let me access it with a normal browser since I don't need to 'activate' the downloaded music at all anymore?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Installing your own RAM doesn't void the warranty. (Unless you break your computer while doing it, in which case it does.)
Are you adequate?
Queen, through talent and hard work, created Bohemian Rhapsody. "The public" did nothing to contribute to this, aside from existing, which I suspect they'd do whether Queen made music or not.
What the public did was allow Queen to have exclusive rights to the song for a finite amount if time. If Queen was so intent on limiting others' use of the song, they should have kept it to themselves. It's not like the monopoly granted by copyright is somehow the natural state of things. The public exchanged copyright protection of the work for unfettered access to the work one it started "getting old". Bohemian Rhapsody is now effectively a part of our culture and Queen was payed an enormous sum of money and fame in exchange for it.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Ever used FireWire target disk mode?
Yes, I've used it before a few times... it's sad to see that aspect go. I'm not sure how new users are supposed to do user directory transfers to new systems now, I guess the idea is the Apple Store manages it for you? I've not had to do that yet so I don't know what they offer to make that happen.
I also agree that firewire performance is better for external devices (most of the drives I used were external firewire, and I have an external firewire drive for a Mac mini I use as an HTPC). But the difference for 99% of people is so marginal that it really doesn't matter than much, external USB is fast enough for consumer DV work.
Unfortunately Steve Jobs is not an engineer and his whole "make things shiny, then make them functional"
I think Apple is just quick to embrace market realities - and the reality is that even for camcorders, Firewire is on the outs. So like I said it will remain in pro models for higher end camcorders (although HDV is pushing FW400 for quality feeds so that's mostly 800) along with storage (though if you have a higher end system eSata is better if more cumbersome).
The mistake is thinking Apple considers fashion first, when the products are very much about a balance of functionality. Otherwise they would not remain popular against cheaper options.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley