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New Apple MacBook Pro Reviewed
adeelarshad82 writes "As fate would have it, an Intel chipset glitch delayed shipments of almost every laptop manufacturer, save one. Apple, which has typically been last in transitioning to new technology, is now among the first to launch laptops with Sandy Bridge. The Apple MacBook Pro (Thunderbolt) is the fastest laptop out there. Powered with a Quad-core Core i7 processor and AMD Radeon HD 6750M, the MacBook Pro has a lot of fire power to offer. Unfortunately though it is still a bit expensive and there is a lack of Thunderbolt devices to take advantage of the new interface."
It's bad news when TFS is a troll.
Caveat Utilitor
I can't imagine how Macbook shipments would be affected, given the flaw only affected SATA ports beyond the first two. Presuming that SATA devices linked through Thunderbolt don't count either.
It costs $2199 which for many means an additional $150 for the screen resolution it should have as default. Worse that $150 is the only way to get a non-glossy screen. So lets just say 2349 to get off the ground. Want a three year warranty? Considering your down 2349 its worth it to pay off the risk of that, but at 349 its 15% of the cost of the laptop.
Then you can go on with the extras beyond those two requirements. Sorry, in a day when you can buy a laptop for under 399 these premium laptops are absurd. I know you get what you pay for, but you really don't. The price difference stops somewhere well south of this things price point. This is like saying you need a Porsche for your commute because parking at Starbucks in a Chevy is so not your perceived status.
Don't get me wrong, I have an iMac, but I can at least see some of the value in its 27 inch screen. I can't find the value in their laptops. I know other companies make expensive laptops but damn, there are near equivalents for 90% of the apps most people will run for half this price let alone a quarter.
Amazing laptops in the range of workstation prices (looking at the real Mac Pros - the tower units).
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
..."Apple is rumored to have an exclusive on this technology until 2012."
*shakes head* So much for wide support. Lots more people buy Mac then they used to, but 8 times as many people still buy PCs. Peripheral vendors aren't stupid.
The most important question: Can you get one in black? Aluminum is getting a bit tired. :-)
I'm no Mac fanboy. I'd probably attract criticism for being a Mac hater. In any case, I think some negatives are just unfair.
TFS says that Light Peak doesn't have peripherals yet, and paints this as a negative on the MacBook Pro. Why do all reviewers feel a compulsion to make up shit if they can't think of anything negative? That's like some video game reviews I've seen, where they can' t find anything to complain about, so they take a star off because they just don't like the genre. That's a good reason to fire a reviewer, in my opinion.
Not hardly. A 2.2GHz, Intel Core i7-2720QM isn't close to as fast as the Core i7 960 in my laptop.
Did PCMAG say the CPU is an i7-720QM and then call it a 'sandy bridge' 2nd generation i7? Am I missing something here? I was pretty certain thats a 1st gen CPU..
And whose girlfriend has a race-to-the-bottom HP laptop, both of which are paperweights, I'm willing to pay a little more for my next laptop, one made by a company whose business model isn't razor-thin margins and cheap-as-possible components, and slipshod engineering. Go do a search of the laptop forums for "Dell Inspiron," a horrendously flawed design, and see the hate. Then go look at the customer satisfaction ratings for Macs.
My next lappy will be a Mac, and I can use Boot Camp when I need Windows.
There's a difference between cheap and value.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
A high-end-CPU laptop isn't a laptop, it's a portable desktop with a built-in UPS.
You can't deny the MBP is built to a high standard, thats just a dumb thing to say (unless you've never actually picked one up). Yes the components inside are the same, no the internals are not the sum of the unit. The thing is at the higher end, MBP is competitive in pricing, I recently spent a long time searching for my next laptop, and high end build quality was an important factor on my list. The reality I was faced with (as someone who has lived a lifetime of hating all things Apple) is that the MBP is generally a bit cheaper than its competitors if you factor in design and build quality.
Matching component for component is not a good measure, I don't want to pull out a thick plastic piece of junk every time I go to use my laptop. Call me fickle, but I don't care.
For me, one of the biggest letdowns of this new generation of Macbook Pros was the fact that the optical drive was still a necessity, there wasn't an option to swap out the optical drive with an SSD. Come on Apple, it's 2011, how many people actually use optical drives anymore, esp. on the go? External USB dvd burners are now a dime a dozen, there is no reason I need to carry one with me everywhere I go.
Monstar L
Bah, I can buy 3 decent laptops for the price of one of these.. by the time the first two die and I get the third, the third will be superior in specs in every way to this Mac Pro.
You're not buying a nice suit, it's perfectly ok for it to not last long -- technology advances too fast for you to hang on to the same piece of electronics for years and years.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Someone is a retard who can't tell the difference between a first and second-gen i7...
I was referring more to the build quality. How tight are the tolerances? How closely does the lid match the body? How much flex is there in the chassis? How much play in the hinge? Etc.
I have heard they get hot, so does my HP Thinkpad, it gets extremely hot (and also features a reasonably high build quality). Have you compared the temperature of you MBP to that of a high end Vaio, Dell Studio, or similarly positioned laptop?
The parts falling off my Inspiron were of the very highest quality.
so does my HP Thinkpad,
When did HP buy Lenovo?
Interesting how the thread topic has slipped. When the initial criticism, "Apple...has typically been last in transitioning to new technology" was pointed out to be not merely false, but flagrantly so (Apple not only has not been last, but in terms of transitioning, they have tended to lead the pack in abandoning old tech), those looking for some excuse to pick on Apple pretend that the question was whether whether Apple was first to use new technology.
"Are all Linux users as stupid as you? Mac OS X is in no way Linux because it doesn't use a Linux kernel."
Technically. But I wrote "for practical purposes". Do you even know what Posix-compliant means?
"Hysterical."
Do you mind explaining why you think that's hysterical? It's a very graphics-intensive program. Laugh all you like, but if I can play it as well or better in a VM on my MacBook than someone else can in their native OS, I call that a win for me.
My complaint with every Intel Mac I've purchased to date is they get too damn hot, even if you take matters into your own hands and spin the fans up to max. Then their video cards melt. I had three burn out in my last Mac Pro desktop. The current one is still hanging in there, but the exhaust is still pretty warm. I haven't had a Mac Pro laptop video card burn out, but the video card in my Mac Pro is also woefully underpowered. I also haven't experienced third degree penis burns, but I'm pretty sure that's because I put a book on my lap when using the laptop.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"Its not expensive, its just high quality" Cheap as possible components? You mean like Intel chips? Oh right.
Maybe because it is high quality? Check all the PC laptop equivalents, all the ones that are "cheeper" have noticeably poorer components, all the ones that are actually competitive are in the same price range or even higher.
There's a difference between cheap and value, and its a thousand dollars extra or so. You can get a high end windows PC with similar specs for around 1200 instead.
You mean a put-it-together-yourself PC Desktop? Sure, you can get great stuff for a low price. DIY PCs are awesome. Laptops on the otherhand... Apples Laptops are kinda the cream of the crop.
I've had my hands on plenty of MBP's and I cannot agree with any of your complaints, the touchpad is anything but crap, and how can you completely overlook the build quality of the case? I'll agree with one point: the keyboard quality is pretty crap, but then it is unfortunately of a higher standard than most these days.
Not really. OS X is little more than a GUI on top of BSD, which is Posix compliant. So OS X IS Linux, for all practical purposes. Therefore it runs approximately as fast as Linux on the same hardware, and can run the vast majority of programs designed for Linux. And a CD with the latest version 10.6 costs $29. Granted, it's not as cheap as Ubuntu (free), but it's hard to complain about the price.
OS X is not just a GUI on top of BSD. It's far more than that. Take a look at the developer sight for OS X, and have a poke around the internals of one of the other BSDs. There's code shared between the BSDs, but what you describe makes it sound as if OS X is just FreeBSD with a fancy window manager. BSD is not Linux. Windows NT was POSIX compliant, yet it does not follow that Windows NT is practically Linux.
By conflating BSD with Linux you're likely to be be lynched by both the BSD and the Linux camps. Start running!
-- Using the preview button since 2005
You see this is the problem, to many people this shit matters. I give a shit about this stuff, I really do, and I'll pay a few extra $$ to get it. But as I recently discovered, with the MBP I really don't have to, hence I consider it a good deal.
This is why angry /. geeks don't understand Apple, there are people out there who will pay a few extra dollars for external quality, you only have to look at premium consumer brand to recognise this. And for the record I don't like Apple, I don't like OSX, I absolutely hate the Apple superiority cult, but I respect their industrial design.
Whoops sorry, I mean HP Compaq ;) (Its a thinkpad clone).
Windows NT is basically a GUI on top of VMS and has a Posix sub-system, so they should all be the same speed as each other. This is the first time I've seen a Mac fan try to hitch OS X to Linux. Don't get your Mac dirty.
Wonderful anecdata. May I extrapolate? Apple stuff always fails before it should, and non-Apple stuff always works for ever.
bang goes my karma... again...
I think the GP meant that OS X and Linux have reasonably effective (opinions may differ on how effective) GUI sitting on top of a Unix or Unix-like system. All the Unix tools are there on the command line if wanted in both systems, but the GUI can be more useful to most folks because they can explore for things (like how to change network) rather than having to sit down and read a man page (because I'm sure that only the minority of people want to have that knowledge - most just want it to work).
bang goes my karma... again...
Apple made USB its standard mouse/keyboard bus before Windows even properly supported USB. (All Macs were shipping with USB in 1998 while WIndows 98 was the first Windows to give USB first class status.) It took until the early to mid 2000s for IBM compatibles to drop the ps/2 ports for mice and keyboards.
I'll pipe up here: we've recently transitioned from Latitude E65xx to HP Elitebook 8540p here at work. Our failure rate has gone from ~15 percent within 6 months to nearer 1% (have had a single machine DOA).
Now the big difference between the two machines that is immediately apparent is that the Elitebook's casing is FAR more solid with far less flex. I'd speculate that the chassis flexing about on the Latitudes may be doing horrible things to the PCB inside, and contributing to the massive failure rate we've seen on that model.
So yes, I personally "give a shit".
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
If thats an option for you, go right ahead. I know i am fairly inconvenienced when shitty hardware dies on me when I'm in Mali or Kazakhstan for business, or somewhere actually nice whilst on holiday. I deal with busted computers day in day out at work, for my own use I want something that is going to give me as little grief as possible and am willing to pay for it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Compare current hardware please. Any 10 year old hardware, Dell included was generally far more reliable than the built-to-maybe-live-to-warranty shit out there in the past 2-3 years. We've been getting 15-25% failure rate (within 6-12 months) on current Dell hardware purchased with the last 18 months.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Meanwhile my g3 toilet seat is still working, my g4 ibook is working, my 3rd gen ipod, my iphone 2g and 3g are working great. Then again, so is my inspiron 640m, my dimension 2400, my dell 2005fpw monitor.
You know what? Most of what I have still works, except for a couple hard drives. Maybe you just treat your purchases like crap?
Gone!
lol everquest - that explains a lot...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Does it mean it's meant to follow the POSIX specifications and thus not do stuff like forcing you to fork() and exec() when it cannot guarantee you that the libraries you are using are safe from async-signal-safe?
It can't guarantee your code can be forked even in a signal handler at any time. This is what POSIX demands. Trying to fork() without exec() is normal behaviour in the POSIX spectifications, however, if OS X cannot guarantee that the libraries in use are 'async-signal-safe', then this is not allowed and it crashes the thread, which in most cases will crash the application.
I mean, when it can't do something that is pretty standard in POSIX like forking correctly, how can you call it compliant to POSIX?
The certification OS X received is in my opinion void, because it doesn't really respect the specification, sadly the certification didn't have a testcase written for this as well as many other things I have discovered while porting POSIX applications to OS X.
I ask that you please stop decieving people with these marketing lies, I have wasted far too many hours dealing with OS X's lack of compliance, despite the marketing claims that it is. You're only tricking other developers who are not familiar with the platform to fall into the trap I did.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
There's no doubt in my mind that the MBP is actually a great value compared to premium laptops out there. It simply kicks the asses of Sony, Dell, HP, and Acert in almost every aspect that matters: Performance, Battery Life, and Form Factor.
I do think it's silly, however, to even begin to compare the $399 laptops with the MBP. Until Apple makes a $399 laptop that kicks the asses of the PC laptops, I don't want to hear how much better a $2200 laptop. It doesn't do any service to the people who just can't afford to drop a mortgage payment on a computer, but need one. I would never recommend to my less affluent friends that they should buy the MBP - that would just be insulting.
I know BSD is not Linux. As I already reminded someone else, I wrote "for practical purposes". Just about anything you can run on Linux you can run under OS X, although it may need a slight tweak here or there... more often than not it's simply a difference in location on the hard drive.
Windows NT did not have full Posix-compliance out of the box, although it did support most of the standard. But (and this is the big difference) that was supplied by a separate layer of code, it wasn't really integral to the OS.
I am aware that BSD and Linux are not the same things. My point was that from an end-user perspective, there are few easily-noticeable differences.
....you need not comment on how a Macbook sucks, bites, is stupid, is expensive, is impractical, etc., etc. If you've never had to live with a Mac for a substantial amount of time or somehow assume that a Macbook is overrated just because you own an iPod and you like Zune better, you are being lied to. Macbooks really are that awesome. I've owned one too many laptops and I can tell you that $1200 is more than worth it for these machines. I'm not being an elitist, I'm just speaking truth.
AFAIK, OpenVMS is the only version that is Posix-compliant, and that was an addition to the OS that came relatively recently (early 90s). But saying that they should all therefore be the same speed is a bit of a reach.
BSD and Linux do not share the same kernel, but they are more similar than they are different. Even the internal code is similar. You can't say the same thing about NT.
Comparing specifications is the only objective measure we have. Things like build quality and design are subjective, and while you may think they are objectively better that may be far from the truth, and is quite hard to prove.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Most people aren't dealing with the internals of the OS as you are. Regardless of whether you agree, OS X was certified to be Posix-compliant. Maybe they should have consulted you before they made that decision... but they made it.
The vast majority of end-users would never notice the difference. That was my point, not the technical details.
As a Mechanical engineering major, I find that comment completely ludicrous. In the field of engineering, build quality is absolutely a quantifiable metric, and specified right from the design stage to the manufacturing stage. Words like: 'tolerance', 'surface finish', 'material grade', 'rigidity', etc. are all build quality specifications.
USB, Firewire, EFI (Windows PC's still don't have it 5 years later), Unix, GUI animations/transparency, integrated desktop search, touchscreen mobile devices, DisplayPort, 802.11b, and last but not least, mice and the GUI.
Please give us an example of every ever being "last", and I mean dead-last, in adopting a technology, after the Dells and HPs of the world.
all the ones that are "cheeper" have noticeably poorer components, all the ones that are actually competitive are in the same price range or even higher.
Not true at all. HP makes damn sturdy laptops with the same or better hardware in them. You do have to pay more than 400-500 dollars but its no 2000 bucks like Apple.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Yes, we can determine build quality objectively be defining metrics and doing comparisons. You did not indicate that you did that, and simply said it was better in the sense that you liked it better. Many people consider Apple to sometimes be of much lower build quality, so until an actual comparison has been done your anecdotes are only a subjective preference.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I guess it's the most graphics intensive games after any of those bubble popping games or solitaire.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Mac's have always been more expensive than their pc counterparts that is a given.
I purchased my first mac a intel mac mini in 2006 as a freshmen in high school, sure the specs weren't the greatest, but for I needed to do it excelled in because of the os x optimization. Now Some mac fans say oh well their build quality is superior blah blah blah , I will give them that apple always has a great build quality , but other pc makers do as well such as Asus, some hp (envy), alienware,sager, lenevo( I think thats how its spelled). Overall if you're gaming pc is a better option , but if you're into media, web browsing and don't mind paying the apple premium I'd tell someone flip a coin , or go off looks.
I'll admit it-- you nailed us, right on dude.
And then we shall bomb your country and export democracy with our backyard-manufactured junk Apple computers. And take your oil. We're gonna bomb you until you bring us flowers. Haliburton all over your bitch. You might as well surrender right now, it's what the Republican Guard did.
Think of how a nice fresh coat of white phosphorous will make you look bright and shiny. And there's gonna be waterboarding. That's pretty much a given. Depleted uranium fertilizing your lawn.
You might as well just give up and start mailing us bulk fuel today. I prefer 87 octane, thx.
It's your own fault for being such a terrorist, really. You know Jack Bauer is right.
Yep-- I've owned a lot of cheap laptops, and laptops that weren't so cheap. My Fujitsus were made in Japan, and cost more than my 13" MBP... but surprisingly, the MBP is significantly better made out of superior materials.
Another thing people overlook in laptops is the display. The brightness, contrast ratio, black levels, and color gamut on the Apple LCDs is vastly superior to almost everything else out there. I've seen a Dell with a better screen, but Dell discontinued that screen option shortly after it was introduced. And it's like that for all the high-end PC notebook screen options I've seen on Anandtech -- you can't actually buy them. While the TN LCD isn't amazing compared to the better S-PVA and IPS panels on desktop monitors, it's almost unequaled among notebooks.
There's the little touches too, like the external LED battery check, the MagSafe power connector, backlit keyboard, glass touchpad, compact power supply, etc.
You get what you pay for. A $1200 MBP is a lot better than two $600 budget laptops.
According to Wikipedia the processor is:
In the 13" model and:
On the 15" and 17" models.
The article does say "Intel Core i7-720QM". I'm going to trust Wikipedia on this, since what the article says makes no sense and contradicts itself.
There's a difference between cheap and value.
Thats a false dichotomy. You dont need to spend $2000 to get a good laptop, nor does it have to have an apple logo on it.
Just because you got burned on dell and HPs cheapest crap, doesnt mean that they dont have better quality stuff, not to mention all the other vendors out there (Sony, Acer, Asus, MSI, etc). Some have very, VERY nice machines for around half what a mac book costs.
Since decent doesn't have a definition, it would be hard to argue that you are wrong. Can we safely assume that the color of the case is an important consideration since performance clearly isn't?
Buying as far behind the leading edge as you suggest is seldom good economics, unless you are paid minimum wage.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Yes, they are overdue for a redesign. In my case, support expires this year on my wife's late-2008 Macbook. I suggested upgrading but she has no interest. Her reason? The new Macbook looks almost exactly like her old Macbook. So her old computer still "feels" new.
This has gotta be bad for Apple. The lack of cosmetic design changes is going to cause a lot of their users to not-upgrade and stick to old hardware, which is also more likely to be running old versions of OS X. By not changing their unibody aluminum chassis, Apple's new hardware ends up competing against their old hardware.
... old hardware, which is also more likely to be running old versions of OS X ...
I am not sure. I suspect Mac users are far more likely to upgrade than PC users. Mac OS X is only US$30.
technology advances too fast for you to hang on to the same piece of electronics for years and years.
Technology might advance, but that doesn't mean needs do. For 80% of the people buying these things, the power of a laptop from 3 years ago is more than sufficient - a bit of document editing/spreadsheets, emails, internet, photos and the like and you're hardly likely to notice a change. From personal experience, many would prefer to have a laptop that doesn't break and goes along perfectly fine for 3 years rather than have to upgrade every 12 months.
(posted from my 2008 MacBook Pro)
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Neat the summary is a troll. Good Game.
You are confused about a lot of things, but thunderbolt in particular.
Thunderbolt has 2x10Gbps full duplex PCIE channels (40Gbps).
Some have also said that the Thunderbolt actually sends displayport data over discrete channels. I have no idea if this is true, and it does not really matter. It is faster no matter how you slice it.
P.S. I just realized you measure speed differently than the rest of the world. You believe the 330M is faster than the 6750M..
Link even one. People always make these claims, no one ever backs them up.
HP is the only one that even makes a comparable laptop and it is not half the price..
Now you are just clutching at straws, you said things like build quality and design are subjective, I'll give you design, but build quality is not. You can asses the build quality of an item without making measurements dude: does everything line up, what are the gaps like, consistent? small? Any casting dags or machine marks present?
The macbook pro is universally regarded as being built to a high standard compared to most laptops. I don't need to get out the micrometer to justify that claim.
Not really. OS X is little more than a GUI on top of BSD, which is Posix compliant. So OS X IS Linux, for all practical purposes.
So... haven't used Linux, right? oh, don't worry, I can tell.
And by the way... I can play Everquest in a VM on my MacBook Pro as well as most people can on their native PC, and I even get better a better graphics frame rate, at the same quality setting, than most of them do.
Oh-Em-Gee, your $2000 computer gets better framerates on a game than most people's $300 machines!? say it isn't so!
Those are just facts. Not "fanboi-ism."
Your choice of facts however stinks of "fanboi-ism".
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Isn't Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset the one with the controversial proprietary DRM built in?
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
input device that requires you to move arms/fingers less for the same speed and precision is always better.
No, it's always worse - it causes humans to use small muscles and tendons, and increases repetitive strain injury. This is the best feature of a single-click Apple mouse, no single-finger left and right clicks.
Always move the motion to the big muscles/tendons/ligaments to reduce injury.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
NT was absolutely POSIX compliant. The problem is that POSIX compliance is relatively useless in the real world.
Further, POSIX support was implemented in exactly the same way as win32 support. They were just as "integral" as each other.
I was shocked to see that Apple was shipping slow 5400 rpm drives on $2000+ computers. On a $500 beater, i understand the logic of cutting $10 off the build cost (and sacrificing 20% of the disk I/O performance) by using a 5400 rpm drive (vs a 7200) , but jesus Apple, you really must be trying to squeeze every last dollar for Jobs's coke habit these days to pull such a boner move.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Apple has two things that work against them with regards to a cool laptop:
1) It has to be quiet. They put real tight noise constraints on their hardware (Jobs is very fussy on this allegedly). Well that's find for a desktop where you can just stick in big ole' fans and turn them down, but not for a laptop. So the fans can't spin up as fast as you'd want to keep it cool (fans with slower top speeds are quieter over all, even when run at equal speed to another fan).
2) It has to look slick. Apple doesn't want the vent to be noticeable. You'll notice that on most high end PC laptops there is a big ole' vent or two on the side or back. The CPU and GPU have heat pipes that connect to the radiator and fan there. Nice and efficient, but Apple doesn't think it is pretty. They hide their vents. Fine, but it restricts airflow, you can't move the same volume of air as those large vents can.
The combination means that you have to run at higher temperatures. Given that the case is all metal (part of the cooling idea, not just a fashion statement) you'll get a lot of heat conducted along with those too high temperatures.
So sure, my MSI has a radiator on the side, and it makes a fair bit of noise when the fans spin all the way up (they'll shut off if it is cool enough though), however it stays nice n' cool even when heavily loaded.
It is a fanaticism with noise. Same shit with the inadequate cooling they have. 7200rpm drives make more noise. When I am surfing the web and the air temperature is cool (say below 70) the loudest thing in my laptop is the drive. You hear a whirring but it isn't the fan, it has shut off as convection alone is enough to cool it. However it has a 7200rpm drive and you can hear that.
Well that won't do for Apple, they are fussy about that. So they knock in a slow 5400 to make it quiet, never mind that it sucks at performance.
When you look at Apple's tech support it is really scattershot. Some things they jump right on, and force people in to before it is ready. USB is a great example. It was real early in the development cycle, peripherals were starting to appear but it was still ramping up. Apple forced it as the only solution and made everyone deal with it.
However other things, like the C2D in the Mac Mini, which is now one of your only options for a server, they lag behind. With the release of Sandy Bridge that is two full generations out of date.
Also note that just being early is not a good thing all the time, probably not very often. A good example would be gigabit Ethernet. Apple jumped on that pretty quick after chips were available. At the time it was damn near $250/chip in volume for the NIC stuff. That means a significant cost for the Mac Pros. Also there was nothing out that could use it hardly. A 4 port switch was over a grand. So most consumers paid extra for something they didn't use.
Well it was future proofing you say, they wouldn't need to get it later. Yes but that is fiscally a poor way to do things. The price only dropped and dropped and dropped. 3-5 years down the line, when they actually wanted it and had a network to support it, a card could be had for $50 or less. It would be cheaper to wait and get the card (even cheaper when you factor inflation) and have paid the $3ish dollars for the 100mbit built in NIC back in the day.
Being first for the sake of being first is not worthwhile. There are costs, that aren't always worth paying. Also as pointed out they are NOT always on the cutting edge, and will let some technologies languish. It is largely showmanship a "Well we have that and you don't," kind of thing. That isn't a useful thing to do. Much better to be pragmatic and adopt things when there's a reason.
Perhaps I didn't look hard enough, but the only HP laptops I can see that are comparable on the high end are the ENVY or Elitebooks and both of them can run up to $2000.
The reviewer doesn't even enlist the glossyness of the screen. If you look at reviews over at notebookcheck.net, you'll see this review is just 'lame'. A laptop is taken outside, how does it behave under conditions with a lot of light (even indoors)? Stuff a buyer would want to know.
Ok, maybe not a mac-user, but still.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
It really is true. Even as an absolute Thinkpad fan, I have to admit that Apple just produces the superior package for "Buy it, use it, forget it." types...
The only thing that's keeping me on Thinkpads is the fantastic keyboard + trackpoint combo (OK, the fact that Apple doesn't offer a convertible tablet, which is something I need, also helps)... and the fact that my desired screen size for non-tablets (high-res 13-14", preferably 13) doesn't seem to come in non-glossy on MBPs.
For any non-techie who can afford it... don't think I'd recommend anything other than a MacBook these days. Windows 7 has come a long way towards being usable, but even high-end Windows laptops have tons of quirky issues that need to be worked around - usually driver stuff :(... not to mention a new device usually requires a full wipe and reinstall anyway.
Not saying that the effort I put into my Thinkpads wasn't all worth it (hell, my girlfriend couldn't be happier with hers after I finished tuning it up a little), and the result is likely quite a bit better than an off-the-shelf MPB, but for someone who just wants to use the device they just bought, the experience with a MacBook would be much better.
The screen is a sticking point for me.
I want a 1920x1080 (or 1920x1200 or higher, but that seems like wishful thinking) screen, and I want it in a 15.6" or smaller form factor.
Apple won't give me that, so I won't go to apple. Otherwise I would.
I got a low-spec cheap-ass Dell for free to start my Computer Engineering course four years ago. It still works flawlessly, and I've dropped it and taken it apart many times. I've basically abused it as much as possible because it was free and still not managed to break it. Dells aren't as horribly bad quality as everyone makes them out to be and Macs aren't as indestructible as people say!
If you want comparable screen/CPU/graphics/etc then no, you wont get that for half the price.
You will get it for less - e.g. a 15.4" laptop with 1920x1080 resolution, mobile i7 CPU, nvidia graphics and a 7200rpm hard disk (which is your primary limiting factor in most uses, something Apple keep failing to realise) for under $1800 from Falcon Northwest, and I don't live in the US and it took me all of three minutes to find that.
But if you just want a well built laptop capable of handling most types of work or home use, you can get a very well made machine for half the price of an Apple. HP and Lenovo are used across the business world for very good reasons.
ASUS G73JW-A1, Gaming Notebook (Black) - Intel Core i7-740QM, 17.3" FHD 1920x1080 LED, 8GB RAM, 1TB (2x500GB) HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M 1.5GB, Blu-ray Combo Drive, 802.11bgn, Bluetooth, 2.0M Webcam, USB 3.0, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit w/ Gaming Backpack & Gaming Mouse
$1,599
'nuff said.
Frog
Usually, there's a practical or strategic reason for these things - even if you don't agree with that reason. Apple don't want to introduce Blu-ray because they're trying to ditch the optical drive anyway (...besides, the only place I want to watch 1080p movies is my living-room TV, and flash or external HD is better for backup).
However other things, like the C2D in the Mac Mini,
...which is there because of the spat between Intel and Nvidia meaning that there were no Nvidia chipsets for the Core i, and the Mini and 13" MacBook Pro didn't have space for a discrete graphics card . Apple decided that the C2D+Nvidia chipset combo was better all-round than first-gen i3 with Intel on-chip graphics.
Now that the 2nd-gen i3, with better on-chip graphics, is out, and its clear that there never will be Nvidia chipsets for Core i, expect the mini to be upgraded, eventually (it will probably have to wait in line behind iMac and Mac Pro).
Also, the sort of server use that Minis will see isn't exactly processor intensive: they're really for workgroups who need something better than a NAS or as an alterntative to a shared/virtual hosting acount.
As for USB3 - if Apple/Intel are going to get behind Thunderbolt then they're hardly going to support its prime competitor. If Mac users want something a bit faster than USB2 then they have Firewire 800 to tide them over until Thunderbolt devices (or Thunderbolt-to-eSata adaptors) start to appear.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I agree with most of what you say. One small thing to note though is that the MBP has an IPS screen, whereas the T420s has only a TN screen. The color accuracy is thus much better on a MBP.
(On the other hand, the 13" MBP has a glare screen; the 15" MBP has an expensive optional upgrade to non-glare; and the T420s has non-glare as standard.)
The MBP also allows for much larger hard disk. Curiously, the MBP and the T420s also share a shortcoming: no Blu-ray.
Woosh
A laptop dying and having to transfer data to a new one, restore from backups, or lose some recent work, costs me a minimum of a day of work. If it happens once a year, then the cheap laptops could be free, and would still cost me more than the MBP (or any other similarly priced laptop that kept working for a few years).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Funny
My current HP laptop (mid-2007) is lasting a lot more than my old (race-to-the-botton) laptop (bought in 2002 - 999€ at the time)
Granted, it was upgraded a couple of times, still
how long until
You could always split the difference and get something from Asus. I threw my 701 in the corner (by accident) and the case popped open a little. Snapped it shut and went on down the road. I've dropped lesser electronics like that before and THEY ASPLODE.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not really. OS X is little more than a GUI on top of BSD, which is Posix compliant. So OS X IS Linux, for all practical purposes.
try compiling a program of any complexity written on Linux on OSX and say that again. OSX, BSD, and Linux are all Unix (though not UNIX) but saying OS X is Linux is patently ridiculous and not at all true in theory or practice. You're trolling ridiculously.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The two extra cores play a vital role in multithreaded tasks ...
Do they mean like the way our second eyeball is plays a vital role in stereoscopic vision? Or like our second set of wisdom teeth plays a vital role in oral symmetry? Or like our second testicle plays a vital role in having two testicles?
Apple users seem to have different vitals than the rest of us.
I'd like to hold this flashy gadget up to my ear, to see how long it takes before the thunder arrives after the discharge of shiny coin.
10Gbps with a six month latency. Get them while they last.
Some Performance and Ultraportable have aluminum chassis. I bought a Dv3z a year and a half ago with aluminum chassis, OK battery life (not like the MBP though) and its very, very thin and light. Some of the Performance models have better video cards and most have better hard drives. The video cards are not direct x 11 compliant, but still better overall. None of them have the new Sandy Bridge processors so Apple beats them there. However, Apple will be selling those Macbook Pros for the same price for a year or more, well after other people have those processors in their new lines. The most cost effective time to buy Apple is after a refresh and you buy a refurb of a previous generation or you buy the new MBP right now. I probably am going to do so next refresh after they up their graphics performance. I was a bit disappointed by the 13 inch not having dedicated. I know its better in some things like Starcraft but still... I don't know how Apple optimized battery life like they do, but even I only get 6 hours on my Ultraportable.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
> one made by a company whose business model isn't razor-thin margins and cheap-as-possible components, and slipshod engineering
I'm sure the Chinese workers in Apple sweatshops appreciate the benefits of working for a company whose business model is so awesome. And by "Chinese workers" I mean those that did not commit suicide.
Work in peace with your fancy white machine, knowing that the guy who bolted the keyboard is now swimming in cash with potential earnings of up to 368$ a month (that surely will help him recover from its chemical poisoning).
lucm, indeed.
I'm guessing it's not Ash-Fox's code that's doing things that aren't POSIX compliant."While the fork() function is async-signal-safe, there is no way for an implementation to determine whether the fork handlers established by pthread_atfork() are async-signal-safe. The fork handlers may attempt to execute portions of the implementation that are not async-signal-safe, such as those that are protected by mutexes, leading to a deadlock condition. It is therefore undefined for the fork handlers to execute functions that are not async-signal-safe when fork() is called from a signal handler." It seems most likely that either one of Apple's core OS libraries is doing something undefined and unwise that breaks normal functionality, or their platform is just plain broken.
"Apple [...] has typically been last in transitioning to new technology"
That's a pretty bold claim. Apple has often been first transitioning to new technology, whether that was completely moving to USB or shipping the very first Nehalem Desktop computers. And now some of the first computers with Light Peak, but of course, as of now it counts as a disadvantage since there are no peripherals available. In the future people will still claim that Apple is the last to transition to new technology...
this sig is useless
I don't understand the point of this statement.
But it's not as clearly identified earlier.
Yes they would, see below.
You said for practical purposes, I gave a practical purpose where POSIX compliance is used and it failed. The applications that rely on this would crash regardless, so yes, users would notice.
How would I know this? I know this because users complained to me when one of my applications was crashing which was due to this exact problem.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Ding ding ding :)
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
An HP that is a Thinkpad clone? I doubt it very much. It's not a thinkpad clone unless it has a trackpoint, matte screen, quality keyboard, and high quality construction.
If you don't give a shit, you can use a shitty laptop, just like you are probably fine with a shitty car, a shitty ball point pen, a shitty flashlight, and a shitty TV.
To more discriminating users, it does matter.
Of passing interest, I bought an HP 2133 pretty close to the day it came out (long before they started shitifying the concept). It feels significantly more solid in almost every way than my Thinkpad X301 or any Macbooks I have handled in the store. On the other hand, I still use the X301 daily, but haven't turned on the 2133 in quite a while. Something about that horrible toy processor. But the hardware is absolutely first class.
Yeah, My processor is a Amd Neo X2 which is meant mainly for low power. Its still better than my 5 year old desktop processor.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I'm sure the Chinese workers in Apple sweatshops appreciate the benefits of working for a company whose business model is so awesome.
Compared to every other computer manufacturer... probably so. You can complain about exploitation of the third world by manufacturing if you'd like, but Apple is pretty much at the head of the class for making sure their suppliers are observing a reasonable level of human rights. You hear about abuses by Apple because unlike everyone else, Apple audits their suppliers and openly publishes the results. They just published their most recent report where they detail the problems they found and which companies they stopped doing business with and what they required other suppliers to do in order to avoid the same.
It's great to be concerned about problems with third world, but it is pretty counter productive if you don't educate yourself enough to know you're attacking Apple on the one criteria where they are clearly ahead of the rest of the industry and providing them with incentive to do worse. By all means if Apple were to stop publishing audits in order to slip below the radar like the other computer companies, you'd hear less and clearly be happier with them. It is people like you, with your superficial understanding and poor research who are pushing companies to less transparency and putting less pressure on third world manufacturing to improve working conditions. If you really want to help you should buy a Mac and write to all the other major computer companies and tell them you did so because they are not conducting and openly publishing regular audits of their suppliers with details of abuses and what was required to remediate those abuses and not openly publishing a list of the suppliers they dropped because of human rights abuses. But instead you'll do business with companies that do no such thing and whose abuses you don't hear about. Out of sight out of mind. A golf clap to you, jackass!
That's the best you can do? A user-replaceable part three years ago? Weak. My Dell E1705 mobo and vid card melted into the center of the earth.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
a Mac fanboy? You make no sense at all.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Not really. OS X is little more than a GUI on top of BSD, which is Posix compliant. So OS X IS Linux, for all practical purposes.
For your analogy to work, you have to ignore the technical details like Linux is not BSD and that OS X is not BSD. OS X uses components of BSD however, it uses a hybrid kernel based on Mach. I suggest you read more about Linux, BSD, and OS X before commenting further.
Therefore it runs approximately as fast as Linux on the same hardware, and can run the vast majority of programs designed for Linux. And a CD with the latest version 10.6 costs $29. Granted, it's not as cheap as Ubuntu (free), but it's hard to complain about the price.
Being based on Unix, many programs written for Linux can theoretically work. However, any programs have to be ported over. As for performance, the difference lies with optimization of hardware and software. Apple probably knows their hardware very well and can probably optimize it better.
Those are just facts. Not "fanboi-ism."
Please check your facts.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
discriminating
What a laugh. Enjoy your monster hdmi cable.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
My point was that you gave an opinion on build quality, but you are not backing that up with anything except your anecdotal opinion. If the MBP WAS universally regarded as having an above average build quality than you might have a point. As it is their is a great divide on the subject so you don't.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
It has all these things. If you saw it you would not dispute my claim. Screw it, ,a href=http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/321957-321957-64295-304455-306995-1847962-1849071-3245781.html>here is a liink. It is not up to the same build quality as a thinkpad, hence it being a "clone", but it has a trackpoint, matte screen, firm and solid keyboard, magnesium chassis with high quality build, and a fairly similar look and feel to a thinkpad.
To all repliers claiming that OP's laptop is not a laptop because it's CPU is too powerful, please meet the No True Scotsman logical fallacy:
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/no-true-scotsman/
The claim made in the summary is: "The Apple MacBook Pro (Thunderbolt) is the fastest laptop out there."
The summary is NOT, it is the fastest "true" laptop out there weighing X pounds or running at Y degrees.
Obligatory car analogy. Do most people who buy BMW's buy them because they will use the 0-60 times and handling abilities at the track or do they buy them as a status symbol? Probably status symbol. But that doesn't take away from the fact that for those who want an amazing handling RWD car with a good amount of power and are willing to pay, the BMW is a great fit.
Oh and, further supporting the analogy, BMW's aren't the fastest. They can be out-run by some of those powerful soccer mom SUV's. But try taking that SUV to a twisty road and you will know why people pay more for a BMW.
All computer manufacturers use a similar outsourced production method.
On the subject of Apple though, they pay higher wages per hour compared to everyone else (as in, the price Apple pays per hour worked by the sub contracted Chinese workers, that is passed onto them), and the rate of suicide in those plants (and I believe you're talking about the Foxconn plant, which is not an exclusively Apple construction factory - they make Dells, HPs, Xbox 360s, PS3s etc there also) is equal to or lower than the suicide rate in the general population.
Don't let any of that get in the way of a good Apple bash though.
I hear Fox News are hiring, btw. With your inability to look up facts, you're assured of the job.
> it is pretty counter productive if you don't educate yourself enough to know you're attacking Apple on the one criteria where they are clearly ahead of the rest of the industry
Obviously by "educating" you mean reading Apple's PR material, which dogmatically establish the company as "ahead of the rest of the industry" in all regards. A bit rich, but nothing those phonies will do can surprise me since I saw them using Einstein's photo on their "Think Different" posters... which was totally b-s as E=MC2 could never have been discovered by using Photoshop or any of the other 6 software available on a Mac (unless you also count the zillions of iPhone Apps, or as I cheerfully call them "half-baked Objective-C regurgitations of cross-platform web pages").
> If you really want to help you should buy a Mac and write to all the other major computer companies and tell them you did so because they are not conducting and openly publishing regular audits of their suppliers with details of abuses
You really made my day with this one. Yes, I should definitely buy overpriced white shiny vestiges of a 2008-ish fad from a monopoly-driven company that does not see its huge market capitalization as an incentive to pay its Chinese workers more than 51 cents an hour. That would be a bold and convincing statements that would definitely make all those non-industry leaders such as Dell or HP shake in their blood-soaked boots.
Now go cleanup the oily screen on your iPad because I think you don't see reality as it is (but be cautious while you clean your flash-challenged toy, you don't want to get chemical poisoning like those Chinese workers that are so lucky to work on Apple's assembly lines)
lucm, indeed.
I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would dick around with partitioning a boot drive for Boot Camp and booting back and forth between OSX and MS-OS, when VMware Fusion or even Parallels are cheap and excellent.
> Don't let any of that get in the way of a good Apple bash though.
No worries, I'll do my best, until everybody watching the "IBM is Big Brother" video realize which one of IBM or Apple is really a bunch of totalitarian buffoons.
> I hear Fox News are hiring, btw. With your inability to look up facts, you're assured of the job.
Of course Fox News is pure evil and/or plain stupid, just like everything you don't like or agree with. And since you don't agree with me, I'm definitely "one of them". Life is so simple when people are with us or against us (reminds me of a former President).
lucm, indeed.
Purchase price is only one factor. My macbook pro will cost less over a 2-3 year period. And you will still carry around a portable mouse because the 2 the thinkpad ships with are un-usable. The multi-touch trackpad on the Mac means you never see people with a macbook using and external mouse. 3 years down the track, I will sell the macbook to upgrade - I will re-coup the difference in purchase price on resale value. How long will it take you to migrate machines? I plug my new macbook in, it detects my old one on the network, asks me if I want to copy everything (including applications) an hour later the machine is IDENTICAL to my old one - settings, files, applications!! You will spend that long getting rid of IBM crapware before you even think of how you will copy all your old files and re-installing (finding DVD's or downloading files) all of your applications. And I don't pay the Windows tax and run a virus checker. How much time over the life of the machine will you waste starting/stopping windows? My macbook is usable and connected to the network by the time I open the lid. Your machine might cost less in purchase price. But I think my total cost of ownership will end up a LOT less.
As someone who's gone that route a long time ago - do it, you won't be sorry.
My girlfriend currently uses the MacBook Pro that I bought four and a half years ago. It starts showing its age and stuff like games requires low graphics settings to run, but it's still more than good enough for most things. And despite lots of travel and some considerable abuse, a slightly dented CD/DVD tray (meaning ejecting a disc sometimes takes 2 or 3 attempts) is the only hardware problem it's ever had.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That would be Intel. Both USB and Light Peak are Intel owned and developed technologies. Right now, current Intel motherboards support USB3 (the Sandy Bridge ones that they pulled off the market for a couple more weeks because of the flaw).
So why both of them? Because they are designed for different things and Intel doesn't want to fuck over consumers.
USB3 is good because it is USB compatible. All your existing devices work on the ports just fine. USB3 just makes extra speed available for devices that can handle the new standard. Also, it is high level and a fairly safe protocol. All requests go through the CPU so an errant device can't hurt the system all that much. It is also real cheap to implement on a client device for that reason, the logic for a slave USB device is very simplistic.
Light Peak is good because it is a PCIe bus extension. As such it is low latency and low impact on the system. It can almost be looked at as an external PCIe slot in terms of what it can do. That means it is much better suited for video, harddrives, and so on. However it is new and thus requires products to implement new support. Also it is extremely low level. This means a bit more complex logic on the client device but more importantly means security issues. A device will have Direct Memory Access, as all PCIe devices do, and thus be able to cause havoc if it misbehaves.
Intel understands that not every need is filled by the same solution and thus there can be a need for more than one kind of connector in the world. Also they understand that consumers want to be able to have compatibility with their old technology, while also getting support for new stuff.
It is Apple that seems to have the "We are going to tell you what it is and you'll like it," attitude.
So I imagine Intel will continue to support both Light Peak and USB until one is no longer useful. If Light Peak utterly fails to take off, they'll probably stop development and drop it. If it ends up becoming the be-all, end-all of computer connectivity they'll probably drop USB. If both continue to coexist, they probably continue to support both.
If that is a review then I am a toothbrush. I expect more from a review than a bunch of facts I can look up at Apple's own website, and some benchmarks.
-- Cheers!
I think you missed the sarcasm inherent in my post, aping the Apple-hate in your own in reverse .
The fact that you pointed out the "us or them" black or white distinction only makes it more amusing.
Pot, meet kettle.
I went from a Thinkpad (which I bought with SUSE preinstalled, and which now is used as a linux server and is still in great condition) to a Macbook Pro, and I had exactly the same concerns you did: keyboard & mouse nub, and glossy screen (I have a 13"). I don't care about the convertible tablet thing, but that's kind of an unusual requirement (and I didn't know you could get a Thinkpad that does that?)
I spent plenty of time trying them out in the store, and I was fairly used to the keyboard and OS X for light use as I frequently used the Mac computer lab while in grad school as it was conveniently located (I generally only used those computers to kill time). When I bought it, I still wasn't sure I would like not having those features I thought were so important on the Thinkpad, but thought the thing was so nice otherwise that it was worth it.
Well, within a couple days, my opinion totally changed about those Thinkpad features. They keyboard on the Macbook Pro is fantastic - it doesn't seem like it should be if you look at it, but it's almost perfect. The only thing I don't like is that the "fn" key is farthest to the left on the bottom row, rather than the control key - but it's like that on the Thinkpad too! Otherwise, the feel and usability of the keyboard is excellent. When I type on the Thinkpad now, I still consider it good compared to most keyboards these days, but not *as* good.
The mouse nub? The Macbook Pro touchpad is easily 100x more useful and easy to use (and the touchpad on the Thinkpad is essentially unusable, as with most non-Apple laptops). It's, again, fantastic - I have a mouse plugged in when I'm at my desk, but I only use it for really precise stuff in e.g. Photoshop (though most of my photo editing gets done with the touchpad - there are just a few photoshop things where it isn't easy to use).
The glossy screen? Not actually a problem. Yes, you will sometimes see some glare on the screen. You can usually just slightly tilt the screen to avoid it, but I will concede that there are times where it can get annoying. Generally, 99% of the time it's easy to avoid, though. And the increased brightness and contrast of the display more than makes up for it, anyway. It looks fantastic, and can be calibrated very well for accurate color and so on if that matters to you. The thinkpad screen is *horrid* - after getting it (you can't try those out in a store first, by the way) I found some threads in the Lenovo forums discussing how bad the screen was. A Lenovo representative was participating in the discussion to determine if it was something they should do something about.
I volunteered to send my laptop to him so he could see for himself (it seems like there should have been an easier way for him to look at one of the computers in question, but whatever). He then admitted that yes, the screen looks pretty awful. He got the repair guys to put in the screen from the other screen manufacturer they were using in exchange for me sending it in (which wasn't a valid warranty repair, shipping was at their expense, and I didn't need the machine urgently, so quite a win for me), but it was still really bad - only slightly improved. The threads in the forum died, and nothing ever came of it. They - and I guess most people who bought the laptops - didn't care.
Well, I care, and I know that if I buy an Apple laptop, it will have a fantastic screen.
Finally, the Thinkpad mostly runs Linux flawlessly, but I do a lot of photo editing and such, which isn't really a great experience in Linux. I was doing most of my stuff in an XP VM, which was really annoying (dual boot would have been fine probably, but that's annoying too as I usually had lots of stuff running in the background). So, OS X made a lot of sense, and after using it for a year and a half I now vastly prefer it over Linux (and especially over Windows). Just a great, great machine all around, and I foresee no reason why I'd ever prefer a Thinkpad over an MBP in the future.
I went from a Thinkpad (which I bought with SUSE preinstalled, and which now is used as a linux server and is still in great condition) to a Macbook Pro, and I had exactly the same concerns you did: keyboard & mouse nub, and glossy screen (I have a 13"). I don't care about the convertible tablet thing, but that's kind of an unusual requirement (and I didn't know you could get a Thinkpad that does that?)
Sure, they're pretty much the only serious option if you're in the market for a convertible tablet:
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/x-series-tablet
I spent plenty of time trying them out in the store, and I was fairly used to the keyboard and OS X for light use as I frequently used the Mac computer lab while in grad school as it was conveniently located (I generally only used those computers to kill time). When I bought it, I still wasn't sure I would like not having those features I thought were so important on the Thinkpad, but thought the thing was so nice otherwise that it was worth it.
Well, within a couple days, my opinion totally changed about those Thinkpad features. They keyboard on the Macbook Pro is fantastic - it doesn't seem like it should be if you look at it, but it's almost perfect. The only thing I don't like is that the "fn" key is farthest to the left on the bottom row, rather than the control key - but it's like that on the Thinkpad too! Otherwise, the feel and usability of the keyboard is excellent. When I type on the Thinkpad now, I still consider it good compared to most keyboards these days, but not *as* good.
Matter of preference, I suppose. The MacBooks and MacBookPros I've typed on (most of the MacBooks I've typed on were last-gen, and the MBP was the one that was just replaced) had decent keyboards, but still nothing compared to the compact shallow-travel clicky keyboards on an X series Thinkpad, or a R/T 6x/400/500 with an NMB keyboard...
There's also the matter of the butt-ugliness of the black chiclet keys on brushed metal, but I'm sure most people would disagree with me on that.
The mouse nub? The Macbook Pro touchpad is easily 100x more useful and easy to use (and the touchpad on the Thinkpad is essentially unusable, as with most non-Apple laptops). It's, again, fantastic - I have a mouse plugged in when I'm at my desk, but I only use it for really precise stuff in e.g. Photoshop (though most of my photo editing gets done with the touchpad - there are just a few photoshop things where it isn't easy to use).
Now that makes me feel like you were nowhere near as big a trackpoint fan as most Thinkpad users are. The beauty of the trackpoint is, essentially, that you never need to move your hands away from the keyboard. If you type a lot (I should think that most Slashdot users do :P), that's a fantastic feature that won't ever be outdone by the fanciest of multitouch gestures and ever larger trackpads.
A lesser, but still very important feature: Scrolling multiple windows is just so much more efficient with a trackpoint - take a two-paned text editor (Notepad++ in my case, love that little program), comparing two documents one another, and having to scroll each pane separately quite often... this is something I do daily. With the trackpoint, I keep my finger on the nipple, my thumb on the scroll button, and am able to scroll each pane with minimal effort. On a trackpad, it's much more complicated - not only to I have to take my fingers off of my home row, but I also need to lift my fingers between scrolls (trackpoint scrolling is continuous, hold the scroll button and push the trackpoint up, down, left or right, depending which way you want to scroll, and press harder or softer to control the scrolling speed), lift my fingers when switching between scrolling and moving the mouse pointer (to tell the system which of the two panes I want to scroll -
And what application is that? Is it something used by a large number of Mac users? If so, can you tell me: why did your app fail, when most other *nix apps can be compiled and run on the Mac? What did they do that you did not?
"It seems most likely that either one of Apple's core OS libraries is doing something undefined and unwise that breaks normal functionality, or their platform is just plain broken."
But again I have to ask: why is it that most *nix applications can be compiled and run just fine on the Mac? I don't discount that there may be a few relatively obscure things that don't work, but my point was, and remains, that most applications do run, just fine. They are not broken. MOST end users would never know the difference.
Get into a melee with a guild and you will see just how graphics-intensive it is. It may not have state-of-the-art shading and so on except at the highest settings, but it can and does sorely tax even the recent boards.
It is compliant with POSIX 1 only, which is pretty outdated by now.
Whoosh yourself. Saying that because NT has a Posix subsystem (and that was Posix-1 only), it should be about as fast as Linux or BSD, both of which are fundamentally posix-compliant from the bottom up (with a few obscure exceptions), IS a pretty big reach. The code base of BSD is very similar to that of Linux, that of NT is anything but.
An editor (and yes, I'm being elusive because you're rubbing me the wrong way).
A good chunk of users use it, yes.
This is a missleading question, most other *nix applications require modifications to work properly under OS X while they work fine on other Unix and Linux systems, see the extensive modifications done in darwin ports and mac ports. In fact, you will find some of the ported tools even ran into the exact same problem I mentioned. Yet even still, there are issues even now with the software packages due to the lack of POSIX compliance.
They didn't bite on Slashdot.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
it is pretty counter productive if you don't educate yourself enough to know you're attacking Apple on the one criteria where they are clearly ahead of the rest of the industry
Obviously by "educating" you mean reading Apple's PR material, which dogmatically establish the company as "ahead of the rest of the industry" in all regards.
No, I mean by noticing that they consistently publisher their supplier audits, unlike everyone else; we know that they've stopped doing business with suppliers over human rights violations, unlike everyone else; and we know that they have required specific changes at suppliers and compensation paid to mistreated workers, unlike everyone else. You pretty much have to be biased as hell to not see that their openness in this regard is way better than the mainstream and in fact better than any other company I know of. Would you are to cite a major electronics vendor you think is doing better?
That would be a bold and convincing statements that would definitely make all those non-industry leaders such as Dell or HP shake in their blood-soaked boots.
If you actually cared about the issue, yes, you should make such a statement because if enough people care and do the same, things will change. Instead you'll pretend you're not contributing to the problem and ignore your part in making things worse. So get off your high horse already, oh and go fuck yourself.
Thats what dell said. We've switched supplier and problem has gone away. The problem was with Latitude models: E6400, E6500, E6510. YMMV if you get different machines. These were sold as "high end" desktop replacement type models between 2008-2010 and have been no end of problems.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
> So get off your high horse already, oh and go fuck yourself.
Hugely impressing to see a self-professed humanitarian telling people to go f*ck themselves. You remind me of Jesus in the temple losing his shit with all those nasty merchants. (Had to be there, I guess).
This being said, I am not mad at you. I understand that after spending so much money on overpriced Apple sweatshop-built cancer machines it must be distressing to look at reality, so I would guess this whole fanatism and rudeness of yours is some kind of subconscious protection mechanism. Maybe you could buy a book on this topic (from the Apple Store of course, then Steve Jobs can cash in another 30% cut from Amazon that hopefully he will use to build more nets so his affordable Chinese workers stop dying when they jump in despair from the roof of his sweatshops).
lucm, indeed.