Slashdot Mirror
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
What are people going to whine about now?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
but I was really hoping they would finally update the MacMini.
blah, blah, blah...
3x the charges and lifespan of the industry standard
This is a completely unfalsifiable statement. A Mac user wouldn't be caught dead with this model once the new 17.1" Macbook Pro comes out in six months. No one really knows how long any Apple product "could" last.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
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.
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!
THL phish sticks
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.
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.
Two semi-glaring points:
-What about TV show and movie purchases? What level of DRM can be expected there (I don't know level of DRM applies now, so feel free to call me a clod who's talking out of an orifice other than stdout ). The verbiage seems to very carefully mention "songs" only, no other iTunes available media.
-What about my current iTunes song library? Will the DRM magically disappear with my next update? Do I need to download my library again, (and thereby lose the totally pointless play count next to my songs? What will I do? That's how I keep score damnit!)
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Still, it's a step in the right direction, and I applaud the people over at Amazon (and everyone else selling music without DRM) for doing it first. Without that step, I'm willing to bet that Apple would have stayed with DRM on their music catalog. It looks like part of Defective By Design's Anti-DRM wishlist came true.
That said, Apple is also now charging if you want to get rid of your DRM (which means upgrading to 256 kbps tracks). From Apple.com:
Yes, just $0.30 per song to get rid of the crap that we forced on you in the first place. Awful.
In other news, I was getting my updates from MacRumorsLive.com, when their feed was cracked by 4Chan. The site crashed half-way through the keynote. Here are some screen caps for anyone interested:
http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned.jpg
http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned2.jpg
http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned3.jpg
I was drooling over the new 17" until I got to the non-removable battery part. On long trips I've always loved the ability to swap through multiple batteries. 8 hours (which surely means 6 real world hours) is very good, but it still falls short of two or three swaps. Probably not something most people care about, so perhaps a good business decision... but I'll be holding on to my old 17" until it croaks, I guess.
Well, with all Apple computers...it is best to buy them with minimal RAM, and put it in yourself from 3rd party purchase. Apple has pretty much always been a rip off when having them to upgrade the ram.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You mean, anyone could view the file listing of http://www.macrumorslive.com/admin/, where anyone could open the .passwd file with unencrypted passwords.
This article says you can do so for a fee http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1711 but when I tried for my two purchased albums, it did not work crapping out with some "product has changed" error message. It reportedly worked back when they first introduced DRM-free tracks, so maybe it is a temporary problem as things get retooled.
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.
I am not particularly concerned with the general idea of a non-removable battery. I know that by removing the extra two walls internally, they fit a bit more charge-storing mass inside the slim case. I know that the life span of this new material is able to hold more Amp-hours, which is welcome.
What concerns me is the "stays plugged in" case. Many people with this class of laptop leave the thing plugged in most of the time, but need the ability to untether just often enough to go on the road. I have had bad luck with batteries in the past, even with the best "smart charge" electronics, where the battery loses its peak capacity if it's left plugged into the DC wallwart 98% of the time. I don't discover the problem, of course, until just when I open the laptop in the airport, waiting for my departure flight.
[
Matte display, it makes it that much worthwhile to me. I hated reflective.
o_O
32G? Isn't last year's 3G-compatible iPhone good enough?
The CB App. What's your 20?
If you want to upgrade your old purchases to DRM-free status, though, you can pay the "upgrade" price.
I bought three albums on iTunes this past weekend. At least one of them is DRM-laden. Colour me unimpressed, but I'm not really surprised. I don't have rose-coloured glasses on when it comes to Apple. I sometimes use iTunes when it's 3:00 a.m. and I'm hankering for new music. I fire up the Bands Under the Radar podcast and poke around until something catches my fancy. They made it convenient, so I put up with the conversion process to other drm-free formats.
"It's also easy to upgrade your iTunes library to iTunes Plus. You don't have to buy the song or album again. Just pay the 30 per song upgrade price. (Music video upgrades are 60 and entire albums can be upgraded for 30 percent of the album price.)"
the lowest song price is $0.69
Still forty cents too high. Back when a single came on vinyl and cost a dollar, the manufacturing, warehousing, transportation, etc. gave them maybe a dime profit at most. Now they want a buck with no manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, or any other costs except profit.
Actually producing and recording the sucker was incredibly exoensive back then too. It's dirt cheap these days, but we're still paying the same inflated prices (well, not "we", I stopped buying RIAA drack back when Napster was illegal).
I blame cocaine, the shit makes people greedy. The labels' own greed is causing their downfall.
Free Martian Whores!
Every cell-phone from entry-level to smart phone has a removable battery, why is there this trend to prevent that?
My old iPaq didn't, and of course the iPhone doesn't.
I hereby dub it "the iBattery syndrome".
I'm glad my original Macbook Pro didn't have an iBattery, or else it would have been trashed when my battery swelled out of its case.
If the number of rated charge cycles isn't over 800, these things are going to die way too quickly.
The new MBP battery is rated for 1000 recharge cycles, or 5 yrs of typical use.
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.
My Libretto was rated for 8 hours with the fat battery pack, but I never got more than 5-6 hours. That was still enough to keep me from having to join the tethered geeks near the wall at conferences, but only because I had two batteries and could leave one charging in my room... then swap it out at the lunch break and before the evening sessions.
Not to mention that you don't want to risk a non-removable "iBattery" turning into something like this like my original Macbook Pro's did.
I'm all for tiered pricing schemes. Britney's "Womanizer" crap can sell for $1.29 all day long while I'm buying non-crap for $.69 and $.99
The WORST thing about the iTunes store is the Top-10 seller lists. I haven't seen a track on there in years that I'd buy. And since those will be the target of $1.29 tracks, good for them for bilking people with horrible musical tastes.
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
I can't believe I can't pick the songs I want to upgrade to iTunes plus ! All or nothing! I have tons of songs purchased on iTunes... when the previous label went DRM-free, I could choose which ones to upgrade and what not. This is not the case anymore, it's all or nothing, all upfront. I have LOTS of iTunes songs, so upgrading all would be VERY expensive. Some of them I listen continuously and they could user the higher bitrate, some other I never listen or are fine at 128k AAC. There's no other word: this SUCKS!
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.
Apple needs to look harder at the road warrior market. 17" is way too large for those folks (or should I say "us"?). 15" is borderline. We need matte display on smaller MBPs, not 17". Please don't tell me about properly designed workplace. When I am at my desk, I can connect to my real monitor. I need to use laptop screen when I am on the road, where I do not have control over ambient lighting. Reflective sucks, plain and simple, Apple fanboy protestations notwithstanding.
Best yet, design a 12" MBP with a video card supporting at least 1920x1200 external monitor and a field-replaceable hard drive. If you have to do 15", then make it something weird, like 1680x800, so that the monitor is wide but low, so it can be easily opened and used on a plane, where a lot of work is done. If you have no idea what I am talking about, please do not post "I have no idea what you're talking about" proving the obvious.
Replaceable battery would be nice, but I can live with a built-in if it is 8 hours, provided it can be quickly replaced (while you wait) at an Apple store by one of their techs.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
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.
Sure, some people can get the nonstop flight from LA to NYC, and survive on a single battery. But not everyone is that lucky. Many of us have to go through one or more layovers to get from where we work to where we are having a meeting. And as the airlines consolidate, and hubs lose their hub status, the layover will become more and more commonplace for travelers.
Add to that the lack of available wall outlets at so many airports - as well as the lack of any sort of outlet on most planes - and you'll see that it is not unusual for a single trip to require more than 8 hours of battery power.
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"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.
For those of us who WANT to use iTunes, that's not really a problem.
I'm on Linux, most of the time. But that's only part of the story...
My mother just bought a brand-new iPod. It doesn't work with the version of iTunes she has on her computer, and the new version of iTunes that will work requires XP (she's on 2K). So the choice is either pay for an XP upgrade, or buy her a new computer. Or, as a compromise, I've found an old computer and set up Linux and Amarok.
It's not going to be pleasant if she has to buy a song on iTunes, then transfer it over to this other box, then to her iPod.
I suppose what bothers me most about it is, how difficult is it, really, to set up a shopping cart for music? That's, what, a weekend of work? A week, maybe?
Most people can't hear the difference and don't want to take up the extra hard drive space for lossless encoding, then take the time to re-encode it when transferring to other devices.
Point is, not all devices will necessarily do AAC. For the ones that do, great, it'll probably sound good enough. For the rest, there's a generational loss.
And again, Amarok will do that transcoding for you, which means it takes none of your time, only CPU time while you sync.
The model I've seen work well is, both mp3 and Flac, and charge a little extra for the Flac. People who don't want to deal with it will buy mp3, and people who care about any format other than mp3 can do it themselves by buying Flac.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
Most of the news reports are not getting the complete picture. Apple have posted a dedicated battery page that talks about it in more detail. Here's the paragraph that expands on the 1000 charge info:
So it's not 1000 recharges and then throw it away!
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?
I followed the keynote from one of the Mac magazine's own web sites, vs. Engadget.
The problem with Engadget's blogging is, they just ignored parts they were personally uninterested in (software related items).
I don't think they even covered most of the talk about the new iWork '09 suite!
Actually, the new features they're putting in iLife '09 and iWork '09 I thought were the best parts of this keynote. (We already all knew a 17" Macbook Pro was coming, since they updated the 15" and were still selling the old model of the 17", right? Big deal... Only really "interesting" news was the non-replaceable but improved battery, and for some, the fact you can again order it with a matte screen, for $50 extra.)
iWork '09, among other things, finally becomes a serious contender for an MS Office alternative, because it fully supports "OLE" type capabilities. I can finally make a chart in "Numbers" and link it to a Pages doc or Keynote presentation, and have the chart change dynamically when I update figures in the spreadsheet. Without this functionality, it really was kind of "second class" as Office suites go.....
Like you I and others have pointed out that Apple is missing a market segment that wants a midrange Mac that's expandable and upgradeable. I'd love to be able to get a mid tower with 3 or 4 expansion slots and well as more hdd space for around US$1000. As it is though I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro when I need a more robust desktop, er under desk, PC I'll upgrade my old Linux tower.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
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
Newsflash. Macs run windows too now. When I bought a new PC last year I would have bought a Mac instead if there had been a decent mid tower.
Instead I handpicked my components for another PC. Nice mid tower (Antec Solo) dual core, 8800GT graphics. 500G HD. For not much more than a woefully underpowered mac mini.
I use my PC for a bit of everything. Media center duty with dual screens. Mini fails, can't drive dual screens, might have a hard time with some 1080p codecs as well. I also play some games. Newsflash, you can dual boot macs now.
I also added 2TB more internal HDs.
If there had been a mac with decent graphics and dual monitor support and full size internal HD, I would have bought one. But nothing like that existed, forcing me back to the PC even though, I was willing to try a MAC.
A mid tower or a mini with upgradable graphics and full size HD would be a great media center PC IMO. I am sure it would fit a lot of other peoples needs as well.
But instead Apple makes a line of laptops, but some don't have batteries (Imac) and some don't have batteries or a screen, or a keyboard (mini), but they all share laptop limitations.
They need to build at least one real desktop machine (and no the ridiculously priced pro doesn't count).
Music and film production suites frequently employ DSP chips, which are nestled cosily onto PCI cards. They are quite common in these industries.