Yes. A lot longer than the day or two you seem to have. I've been wanting a docking station option for MacBook Pros since they were still called Powerbooks.
Look at this Overview of Thunderbolt [intel.com]. Think that someone won't implement a Docking Station (with a connector that doesn't fail after a few months, like the typical PC laptop's docking conns.) with an interface like that?
Idiotic hyperbole does not help your case. I've owned multiple laptops with docking connectors that have lasted years.
And cooler yet, your Desktop will be able to share all those same peripherals (do you really think this isn't going in all Macs?), as long as the total count is 6 devices or less (yes, I wish it were more, too!), and the total cable length is 100 meters or less.
I think you've missed the point of a docking station.
That's not fanboyism. That is fact.
Yes. Thunderbolt will be very useful. That doesn't change anything I said.
The Mac is per definition more secure, despite of your good points, as a user is not running with Admin privileges, the Mail and Web Applications don't auto execute incoming traffic etc.
So... Just like Windows, then ?
The only way to infiltrate a Mac, that I'm ware off, is via Buffer overflows.
Or convince the user to run something, like most Windows "exploits" do.
I assume you're referring to the myth that OS X has no keyboard shortcuts (I've heard this one plenty of times) and this just isn't true, pretty much everything has a keyboard shortcut and after using OS X for a while they feel a lot more "natural" than the Windows equivalents.
No, I'm referring to the fact that Windows has quick and easy access to all elements of the GUI via the keyboard, and OS X does not (even after enabling "Universal Access", it's still clumsy).
As for the hardware, I'm a huge fan of Apple's keyboards so I have to disagree with you there.
They used to be good. Indeed, they still have a nice feel. However, they lack features like unmodified keys for page up/down.
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.
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.
You're browsing through a bunch of PDFs, but you forgot your mouse at home. Does your trackpad allow you to scroll easily and switch between documents, or does it have that "sometimes works/sometimes doesn't" type of scroll field? Can it invoke other commands like switching webpages and navigating documents?
Someone trips over the powercord connected to your laptop. Does the powercord pull out clean from a magnetic connection, or does the intrepid tripper send your machine spiraling out of your lap?
These are the only two features that carry weight - and the first is ameliorated by the _vastly_ superior "keyboardability" of Windows and PC hardware, while the second by at least one example of my wife's MBP being pulled off the table despite having a MagSafe adapter.
Apple laptops are usable for years longer than most PC laptops. And by usable, I also mean useful. My 2005 Macbook is going strong.
A PC laptop from the same time cost 1/2 to 2/3 as much and is equally as powerful (though it may be slightly larger and heavier). There's no reason it couldn't have the same usable lifetime.
PCs are replaced more frequently because they don't cost as much. This is a perfectly rational response, given that the best time to buy a new computer is tomorrow.
USB was an obscure curiosity when Apple aggressively adopted it in the original Bondi blue iMac.
Ah, doublespeak, that sweet combination of the subtle and blatant.
For Apple: "aggressively adopted".
For the consumer: "having to purchase a whole $%*@ing array of new peripherals.
I clearly remember watching the market for USB peripherals be completely driven by demand from iMac (and then other Apple model) owners at a time when PC users stayed away from the technology because it was incompatible with all their PS2, serial and parallel port peripherals.
Your argument is nonsensical. PCs in that timeframe came with *both* USB and PS2/Serial/Parallel. "Incompatibility" was impossible, since either type of peripheral could be used (this is exactly what Apple *should* have done, though with ADB and USB).
This one I remember very well. Apple spearheaded the consumer wireless market with the introduction of the $299 Airport "UFO" wireless hub. I had wanted wireless for a while but couldn't afford it. The only other options were all so far above that first Airport price point that it was a shock to the market. The other thing Apple did to lead in consumer wireless was to make it an option in all their computers, especially in laptops, and then a standard option that you had to de-select and finally as an unremovable feature.
So they did exactly the same thing as PC vendors, then ?
Maybe so, but no sane PC user did back in those days. The floppy ruled the PC data storage and transfer world well past the point when Apple users had moved on to other technologies. It took forever for PC USB boot support to be common enough to supplant the ubiquitous PC admin's emergency boot floppy.
You're missing the point. The problem with Apple killing the floppy, was that they didn't *replace* it with anything. If those first iMacs had shipped with CD-RW drives, it would have been "innovative". Instead, it was just abusive cost-shifting to the consumer, who had to then go out and spend money not only on removable media, but also some device to use it with.
Exactly the same pattern was repeated years later with their adoption of proprietary display connectors on their laptops, which soon stopped coming with suitable adapters for the industry standard connectors.
Low end HPs still use Core 2 Duos. The Mac Mini is no longer even shipping with MacOSX and is now using iOS.
What ? Firstly, the Mac Mini comes with OS X. Heck, the Mac Mini is Apple's current substitute for an Xserve.
Secondly, the "low end HPs" that use Core 2 Duos, cost around half as much as a Mac Mini.
Apple always has newer GPUs and CPUs for the top of the line macbook pro and high end iMacs.
And by "newer" you mean "about a year behind cutting edge and 6 months behind other manufacturers", right ?
It is true after market 3rd parties make the stuff latter but that is because Apple desktops are workstations and are high end business users. They want quadros and not the cheap gaming cards that we use.
That might carry some weight if Apple actually used Quadros and such in their machines.
The low end is older but that is true for any manufacture. Name any manufacture that has more up to date laptops than Macbook pros?
The day they just released new machines ? This is a joke question, right ?
No, it's not a rumor. Apple has an exclusive deal with Intel for Thunderbolt until the full LightPeak standard is worked out, which is expected to take about a year.
"Other system makers are free to implement Thunderbolt on their systems as well, and we anticipate seeing some of those systems later this year and in early 2012."
Thunderbolt will appear on PC laptops as soon as the Sandy Bridge chipsets without SATA problems start shipping. Apple has the head start here because their machines don't have the eSATA port that is standard on most PC laptops today.
With quad core processors and tons of external bandwidth over Thunderbolt, these new MBPs are game changing for pro video, or will be once a couple of TB devices hit the market. For instance, TB is fast enough to hook up both a RAID capable of handling multiple 1080p video streams and a video interface capable of doing uncompressed HD output to a broadcast monitor. This makes these pretty much the first laptops ever (outside of crazy hack jobs, maybe) that can plausibly replace towers for working with uncompressed HD video formats. That's pretty handy.
If you're going to be chained to a RAID array, why would you use a laptop when an equivalent desktop is going to be around twice as fast ?
Speculation at the time was, as seemed logical, that this was basically a reflection of the fact that all the OEMs didn't want to hold up their laptop releases for something that basically only affected desktops and huge DTR beasts.
Most PC laptops these days have at least 3 SATA ports on them (internal HDD, internal optical, eSATA).
Seems pretty accurate to me. Most new technology (eg: CPUs, GPUs, memory types, etc) are on the market for months (at least) before Apple picks them up. They tend to keep older technology around for longer, as well (eg: Mac Mini still has a Core 2 Duo).
The rare counter-examples (eg: Firewire, Mini-DP) are rarely found outside of the Mac ecosystem.
That's before even going into the technology other vendors have that they stubbornly refuse to implement. Like, say, a docking station for their ostensibly "professional" laptops.
Just off the top of my head: Bread went from 5.6c/lb to about 60c/lb for the low quality stuff (10.7x increase). Hershey's chocolate went from 3c/oz to ~63c/oz (~21x). The daily edition of the New York Times went from 5c/issue to $2.00 (40x). Gold went from $20.67/oz to $1409.00/oz (~68.2x). A gallon of gasoline went from about 20 cents to $3.20 (16x). The Ford Model-T sold new for $550 in 1913, while the cheapest new car today is the Hyundai Accent, at around $10,700 (~19.5x).
You're missing the point. Raw numbers are irrelevant, you need to define them relative to some other number that *is* relevant.
What fraction of the median wage was a loaf of bread in 1913 ? What fraction is it today ? These are the kind of metrics that matter.
Your question is irrelevant. If a dollar bought 100 units of item X in 1913, but only 3 of that same item today, then the dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power. It's that simple.
So which good or service that someone earning a median income can only buy 1/100th of today as they could in 1913 ?
Well, that's the point of the CPI - it's an entire basket of such goods and services, smoothed by the variation in the contents. Are you disputing the CPI as invalid?
Er, no ?
You are asserting that a dollar only has 1/100th the value today as it did a century ago. That implied that someone of a proportionally similar income only has 1/100th the buying power today as they did in 1913.
So I'll ask again. What good or service costs - in proportion to individual wealth - 100x as much today as it did a century ago ?
No. I'm implying you're using ridiculous hyperbole.
What good or service, proportionate to individual wealth (ie: income + assets), and outside of short-term price bubbles, has seen a 100x increase in cost since 1913 ?
But, because it does have an inflationary policy, peoples' savings are continuously wiped out ('savings' being a feature, predominantly, of the less financially savvy).
Most people with and income stream sufficient that "saving" means something, are "financially savvy" enough to know you don't just leave the cash lying around under a mattress.
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Yes. A lot longer than the day or two you seem to have. I've been wanting a docking station option for MacBook Pros since they were still called Powerbooks.
Idiotic hyperbole does not help your case. I've owned multiple laptops with docking connectors that have lasted years.
I think you've missed the point of a docking station.
Yes. Thunderbolt will be very useful. That doesn't change anything I said.
Not so long as Apple's overall attitude to corporate IT is swinging between indifference and contempt, it couldn't.
So... Just like Windows, then ?
Or convince the user to run something, like most Windows "exploits" do.
No, I'm referring to the fact that Windows has quick and easy access to all elements of the GUI via the keyboard, and OS X does not (even after enabling "Universal Access", it's still clumsy).
They used to be good. Indeed, they still have a nice feel. However, they lack features like unmodified keys for page up/down.
A <$500 Dell Inspiron comes with eSATA.
I have a 3 year old Latitude with eSATA.
I'm pretty sure "most" is quite accurate.
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.
These are the only two features that carry weight - and the first is ameliorated by the _vastly_ superior "keyboardability" of Windows and PC hardware, while the second by at least one example of my wife's MBP being pulled off the table despite having a MagSafe adapter.
The rest I had on a Dell E4310 3 years ago.
Incidentally, it's the "carat" key.
A PC laptop from the same time cost 1/2 to 2/3 as much and is equally as powerful (though it may be slightly larger and heavier). There's no reason it couldn't have the same usable lifetime.
PCs are replaced more frequently because they don't cost as much. This is a perfectly rational response, given that the best time to buy a new computer is tomorrow.
Ah, doublespeak, that sweet combination of the subtle and blatant.
For Apple: "aggressively adopted".
For the consumer: "having to purchase a whole $%*@ing array of new peripherals.
Your argument is nonsensical. PCs in that timeframe came with *both* USB and PS2/Serial/Parallel. "Incompatibility" was impossible, since either type of peripheral could be used (this is exactly what Apple *should* have done, though with ADB and USB).
So they did exactly the same thing as PC vendors, then ?
You're missing the point. The problem with Apple killing the floppy, was that they didn't *replace* it with anything. If those first iMacs had shipped with CD-RW drives, it would have been "innovative". Instead, it was just abusive cost-shifting to the consumer, who had to then go out and spend money not only on removable media, but also some device to use it with.
Exactly the same pattern was repeated years later with their adoption of proprietary display connectors on their laptops, which soon stopped coming with suitable adapters for the industry standard connectors.
Wow.
What ? Firstly, the Mac Mini comes with OS X. Heck, the Mac Mini is Apple's current substitute for an Xserve.
Secondly, the "low end HPs" that use Core 2 Duos, cost around half as much as a Mac Mini.
And by "newer" you mean "about a year behind cutting edge and 6 months behind other manufacturers", right ?
That might carry some weight if Apple actually used Quadros and such in their machines.
The day they just released new machines ? This is a joke question, right ?
A <$500 Dell Inspiron comes with eSATA.
A lot more than there are "Thunderbolt" devices.
However, that's not the point. The point is that eSATA is essentially a standard feature on PC laptops, whereas it is not for Macs.
A PoS Dell Inspiron for <$500 comes with eSATA. About the only PC laptops today that *don't* come with eSATA are the dirt-cheap netbooks.
Not according to Intel, they don't.
"Other system makers are free to implement Thunderbolt on their systems as well, and we anticipate seeing some of those systems later this year and in early 2012."
Thunderbolt will appear on PC laptops as soon as the Sandy Bridge chipsets without SATA problems start shipping. Apple has the head start here because their machines don't have the eSATA port that is standard on most PC laptops today.
It might not be just costly, it might be impossible. I can't imagine there's a lot of board space left in a 12" laptop.
Basically, Apple is getting the jump on everyone else because they offer fewer features.
If you're going to be chained to a RAID array, why would you use a laptop when an equivalent desktop is going to be around twice as fast ?
Most PC laptops these days have at least 3 SATA ports on them (internal HDD, internal optical, eSATA).
Seems pretty accurate to me. Most new technology (eg: CPUs, GPUs, memory types, etc) are on the market for months (at least) before Apple picks them up. They tend to keep older technology around for longer, as well (eg: Mac Mini still has a Core 2 Duo).
The rare counter-examples (eg: Firewire, Mini-DP) are rarely found outside of the Mac ecosystem.
That's before even going into the technology other vendors have that they stubbornly refuse to implement. Like, say, a docking station for their ostensibly "professional" laptops.
Stratospheric cost and a lack of software.
As strange as it might sound, Apple made NeXT's products affordable.
You mean just like putting it all in a single directory ?
Slashdot is "left leaning" ?! Maybe if Reagan was your idea of the centre.
You're missing the point. Raw numbers are irrelevant, you need to define them relative to some other number that *is* relevant.
What fraction of the median wage was a loaf of bread in 1913 ? What fraction is it today ? These are the kind of metrics that matter.
So which good or service that someone earning a median income can only buy 1/100th of today as they could in 1913 ?
Er, no ?
You are asserting that a dollar only has 1/100th the value today as it did a century ago. That implied that someone of a proportionally similar income only has 1/100th the buying power today as they did in 1913.
So I'll ask again. What good or service costs - in proportion to individual wealth - 100x as much today as it did a century ago ?
No. I'm implying you're using ridiculous hyperbole.
What good or service, proportionate to individual wealth (ie: income + assets), and outside of short-term price bubbles, has seen a 100x increase in cost since 1913 ?
Most people with and income stream sufficient that "saving" means something, are "financially savvy" enough to know you don't just leave the cash lying around under a mattress.