Apple updates MacBook Pro line with next-gen CPU, GPU & Thunderbolt I/O - Page 2

The 6790 is old? LOLWTF?

Why do we need 3 different 13" inch models? I just don't get it. Do they sell bucket loads of 13" models and very few 15/17" models? Seems to me that the laptop range is all confused at the moment. Maybe the rumours of a complete redsign next year are true and we'll see the MB, MBA and MBP unified into one product line with an all new design. I hope so.

It is the same thing they did with yours cars MPG a few years ago, almost every car dropped by 2 - 8 MPG. It was to ensure the windows sticker better represented actual driving experience. If you truly get 7 hours on the MBP 17" with a quad core that is great... my Sony Vaio with quad got at best 1.5hrs.

Who said redesign? Who wanted a redesign? They kept the last design for five years.


What the frick makes you think that? Thunderbolt's twice as fast as USB and is a standard. No one will have USB drives when you can transfer at Thunderbolt speeds.

They don't they have 2. Unless you're counting the MacBook and MacBook Air, then there are 5 base models of Apple laptops at 13".

Each has very different segments they sell to. Yes, the 13 does sell more than the larger sizes. Its part of a basic economic model that less expensive items sell more units.

I think white MacBook wont last through the next upgrade. I think they will keep the current 13 design for the new $999 MacBook.

1- Battery life is UP
2-MacBookPro is 10x faster than an Air (therefore use more power)
3-Thunderbolt is FUCKIN AWESOME (i like the name too)
4- Pro has a lot of things Air does not (even some dumb ones, like an ODD)

The Macbook Pro 13", which most people thought was a puny upgrade, is actually very good. You gain +50% storage, double the CPU performance, increase in 33% the RAM speed, gain HD camera, gain Thunderbolt. Even the Intel HD 3000 gets as good as a 320M thanks to it being Turbo-able, and it shares +50% memory than the 320M (low shared memory is a problem for games)

And since most graphics usage Apple expects its users to do isn't games (though I will), the HD3000 and its superior GPU transcoding comparing to the 320M won't be an issue.

AnandTech's tests show it to be a bit (~3fps) slower in games than the 320M, but 1) I don't know whether it had Turbo [20% performance increase] on and 2) Future updates will probably fix this, as the gap is really small.

Have you seen how many USB sticks and drives there are in any given office?

If you are going to have USB ports then they should be the latest version... you really can't argue that Apple missed the boat on this one.

Firewire was faster than USB but I don't see Costco selling 5 different versions of a firewire drive.

An almost 30% drop in battery autonomy... Really?

Actually, you may not. Those pictures showed the MagSafe connector with with the new 5-pin arrangement for ThunderBolt and now we know that is not coming in this current iteration of MacBook's

Lets see USB isnt free, but its cheap, while FireWire licensing was expensive. Yet using a mDP port has no licensing fees at all. It might be slightly costlier since it lacks economy of scale for the port interface HW, but that is fractions of a penny.

Or are you arguing that the faster connection will fail because that is what happened to FiewWire compared to USB?

Again, Thunderbolt can do better than USB3.0, FireWire 3200 and 1000BASE-T Ethernet speeds whiles supporting their protocols. This doesnt change the future of cables and accessories but makes mDP for displays vastly more popular going forward. USB-IF dug their own grave.

Yes, a drop in the number stated, not in the usage achieved. If you had been paying attention youd have seen this was coming last year when Jobs stated it.

any guesses whether thunderbolt will support target disk mode? It does say it supports firewire with an adaptor...

And if Jobs shit on your bed you'd call it a pillow mint.

Maybe, but what if you are connecting two Macs over Thunderbolt? What protocol will it choose? How can you choose? Youre really better off letting TDM go as its old and dated and just using an external HDD, USB drive, TB drive, or SD card to boot into Mac OS X if need be.

I stand by the belief Apple is choosing where to upgrade and where to skimp in order to keep component costs low.

1- No USB 3
2- No Blu-Ray
3- No Expresscard slot except in 17" model.

yes Thunderbolt sounds good, and great that they added it. they can and could do more.

the new limitations on MBP's advancement are largely based on doing as much as they can, with as little cost as possible. Much like the ipad or iphone, the Mac Hardware is starting to get limited based on this.

Sorry, but I am starting to believe those who drink the Apple Koolaid are more lemmings than real nerds who care about quality and diversity.

Apple is starting to piss off alot of their core consumers and while it isn't evident now. it will be in several years. when all they are left with is a bunch of former windows noobs who switched. and many of the former Mac Elite and evangelists go Windows instead.

With the new actions of Apple to monetize ipad, iphone and more at 30% demanded royalties. The same treatment in the new Mac Software Store, Apple is starting to act like more of a monopoly than Microsoft ever did.

Facetime is ubiquitous on newer iOS devices. To make it ubiquitous on MacOS devices, too, would probably signal anti-trust complaints from the likes of Skype. Making it an optional app keeps them out of the anti-trust waters. Making it 99c means only those who actually want it will get it, and keep away accusors from claiming, "Waaaah... I didn't want Facetime, and it came on my Mac by default... wahhhhhh... !"

Not very impressed with this "upgrade." I have no use for "thunderbolt" until there are products that support it and I'm not keen on carrying around a bag full of adapters that cost $50 each.

Yes, the processor upgrade is nice but it's hardly worth spending another 1200 or more to get. I'll be waiting for the next upgrade. Hopefully that one is actually significant.

I did read what you said, and the difference is in your post. Apple provided the first version of iChat along with Mac OS X 10.2. With the upgrade to Jaguar (or the purchase of a new Mac with Jaguar) iChat was part of the OS and was included as part of that purchase price. Likewise, when iChat AV was released, it was part of Panther, and you had to upgrade to panther or buy a Mac running Panther to get it. FaceTime on the other hand is a standalone release that is coming out between major OS releases. Obviously when Lion comes out, Facetime will be built into it. And, it is already built into current gen iPhones and iPod Touch. Until that time, I don't think 99 cents is too much to ask. If this price bothers you so much, then wait for Lion.

Relieved I can skip this one. i5 is nice, but still stuck on 1200 x 800, the graphics "upgrade" is negligible (if it exists at all) and Thunderbolt is not ubiquitous enough yet to be an essential. The resolution is a deal-killer. The 13' Air has 1440 x 900, so why not the "Pro"? Don't feel so bad about sticking with my mid-2010 until next summer now, or even longer if there's a redesign coming. SSD prices should be somewhat reasonable by then, too.

(The 7 hour is probably is probably longer, though, as they're not making silly claims as much as they used to. I never get the advertised 10 "wireless-web". It's usually a little more than half that.)

I am arguing that if you are going to have USB ports they should be the latest version which is now 3 not 2. We will need to wait and see with Thunderbolt, if it is adopted by the PC manufactures then the devices will follow. Not sure if this is fair or not but Beta was better than VHS.

i wonder if they will put thunderbolt in the ipad 2 and that's the BIG news?

Damn!! My eyes are deceiving me. According to Apple's site pictures, the magSafe is a 5-pin connector. They were no fake pictures. Have you read about the patent about MagSafe+LightPeak? Since my MacBook has a 4-pin MagSafe I thought all have to be so... and seeing this 5-pin connector... well, I had my heart jump high in surprise!!

That's the worst fucking excuse for being stroked that I've ever heard. They are nickel and diming, plain and simple.

Compliance to Sarbannes Oxley sucks, but it's the US Gov't (and the EU) at work. Don't complain to Apple, complain to your gov't (I want free beer and ponies with every release). Given the at $1... I'm sure the SOX accounting is probably costing Apple more than giving FaceTime away.

I don't think that will be true. I find that Mini-DP is not the nicest of ports to plug into, especially on a regular basis and the 500MB/s limits of USB 3 is still a pretty decent speed. It would fill a 1TB drive in 8 minutes.

It's good that the Mini-DP port is so small as it means GPU makers like AMD can fit more ports onto a GPU but the USB plug is so standard now that to me it would have made more sense having a combined USB 3/LP port. I don't see the day we all use ThunderBolt mice (dongles I mean - bluetooth still sucks for mice) so we need both types of port anyway and they are the same height.


That is correct but that's really part of the problem too. People are essentially buying a GPU that is around the same but slightly slower than last year's model with less software support - NVidia GPUs always have better feature support and the 320M supports PhysX.

You notice that Apple only compares the graphics performance of the 15" with the last generation.

The previous gap between the 13" and 15" was 50% in terms of GPU. Now, if the 15" is 3x the 330M, then the 15" Macbook Pro is 450% faster than the 13" in terms of graphics. I expect the difference won't be that much in a lot of games - I'd rather see a test with a game made in the last 2-3 years - but still the gap between the 13" and 15" has widened quite a lot now but both called Pro machines. How can both be Pro machines and perform so differently?

Double the CPU performance is fine but let's not forget, they were previously using 2.5 year old CPUs before the upgrade. Overall, I'd say the new 13" is not a good value machine when other manufacturers sell a faster i5 along with a Geforce 540M for $300 less.

Well I for one am disappointed. No SSD boot? No antiglare 13"?

I really hope that Apple comes out with a mid-2011 MBP with Lion's launch (maybe keyboard buttons for new mission control, etc). And I hope that MBP is redesigned, has antiglare 13", and an SSD boot already!

Poor IT security if people are just bringing in their USB sticks.

Btw, they'll be USB2 sticks with cheap flash - 20MB/s at most. USB2 can handle them. MacBook Pro has 2 or 3 USB2 ports. Que Problemo?

If you *need* USB3, wait a month and someone will have a ThunderBolt -> USB3 adaptor (1 PCIe USB3 interface, one ThunderBolt chip, some ports, done).

Should do if the Mac itself has drivers for the Firewire controller within EFI.

It's simply a cabled tunnel for PCIe. I say 'simply' when it's clearly very complex and clever, but I believe that it is in many ways transparent to system operation - as all tunnels should be.

it looks like the iMac is being discounted in price I've had the 27" Quad Core in my cart to buy in the summer for some time and they changed the hardware and pricing. I only went to the cart to see if MobileMe was taken off and found my Memory was changed as well. Iwas gonna get the 2 slot 2x4 8GB for 400.00 i might go the extra 200.00 for the 16GB now. Couldn't do the 1,000.00 before.

Originally:

27"Quad Core

Memory
\t4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
\t8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM -] 4x2GB [Add $200.00]
\t8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $400.00]
\t16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB [Add $1,000.00

Now:

27"Quad Core

Memory
\t4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
\t8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $200.00]
\t16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB [Add $600.00]

You know, I usually get annoyed at all the negativity that gets thrown around in forums, but that's a damn funny comment. Points for originality....

As for the new units.... well, while everyone is bitching that it doesn't come with free ice cream, I think the processor bumps are not bad. Plus the memory bus got improved. While I admit that Thunderbolt is an open question, can you really complain about a 10GB data port with no licensing costs? This stuff has to start somewhere; do people not realize that?

Ultimately, I just don't know many people that are upgrading their laptops at the rate they update their smartphones.

Are there things I would have liked to have seen? Sure. A matte option on the 13" would have been nice. A higher resolution on the 13" screen would be nice as well. A faster processor... meh... that's what Turbo Boost is for.

Who really believes that this stuff is revolutionary anymore?

I have an early 13.3" aluminum MacBook...before it went pro.

This update is good for me. I can sell my machine and upgrade to a new 13.3" MacBook Pro. A good increase in overall performance.

I would have liked the new 13.3" models to have a dedicated GPU, but I think the Intel HD 3000 is probably a significant improvement over the nvidia.

One thing I don't understand is why people think Blu-ray is an "essential" on a MacBook. Physical media is dead...and if I really do find the need to have Blu-ray...I'll buy a dedicated player....

And you think a USB stick is going to perform differently in a USB3 port than in a USB2 port?

I am a consult and work at 3 - 5 different customers per year on average, in the last 10 years I have been at one place that blocks USB sticks from working..... poor security yes but also very common practice not to block them.

This is one of the dumbest and most ignorant statements I have seen repeated on this forum. THERE IS NOT ONE WORD IN THE ENTIRE SARBOX BILL THAT ADRESSES HOW YOU PRICE SOFTWARE. That is not the point of the law and for that matter there is nothing in GAAP or IFRS that would prevent Apple from giving facetime away. Nothing in SOX changed revenue recognition accounting and nothing in GAAP requires you to modify how you price products. It simply requires that you recognize revenue in a manner consistent with when you complete a sale and deliver the product. Free products have no revenue, hence no revenue recognition issues DUH!!!!!!! And for that matter there is no such thing as SOX accounting, moron. You have no clue what you are talking about, you have absolutely no knowlege of US law or accounting standards, SHUT THE F!#@ UP.

Yeah but the base 15" model is now $1800. I thought there was a cheaper model before that.

Oh, just for the kicks I built an Alienware m15x and pit it against a 15" MBP. Since there was no 4Gb option for the Alienware I put 8Gb on both of them. I went for the Alienware because like Apple they are a premium brand (although with different audiences)

MacBook Pro------------------------Alienware M15x
2.3GHz Intel Core i7------------------2.13 GHz Intel Core i7 (both with 8 megs of cache)
OS X Snow Leopard-------------------Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
8GB of DDR3 RAM 1333MHz------------8Gb of DDR3 RAM (doesn't specify but I'm sure it is 1333MHz as well)
500GB 7200rpm HD------------------500GB 7200rpm HD
AMD 6750 with 1GB of GDRR5 memory----ATI 5850 with 1024MB of memory (again, not specified [oh the irony!])
Backlit keyboard---------------------Seriously cool backlit keyboard. (nerdy, but awesome)
Wireless N, BT 2.1--------------------Wireless N, BT 2.1
Little things like MagSafe, Thunderbolt,----PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
aluminum casing, HD camera, Optical I/O,--HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH
fantabulous trackpad, FireWire.....--------UIOHHEIEHIEHEIHEIEHAHhahahahHAHAHAHAAH!

The Price $2650 against $2999

(and that's with Dell's "super savings")

So you pay an extra $350 for a colored keyboard backlight and a slightly faster GPU. Congratulations. Anything to say now, DaHarder?

Because of Thunderbolt that simply isnt going to happen. We may even see other ports start to go away, though I imagine the physical USB port will outlast the physical FireWire and Ethernet ports on Mac notebooks.

One think Apple could have done is to move all Ethernet, FireWire, USB, EC/34 and audio ports to Thunderbolt as an internal hub with different ports tied to them. This would have allowed for very fast speeds on those ports, including USB3.0; and likely the fastest real world USB3.0 data speeds under Thunderbolt.

This is not likely since it would likely slow their adoption of Thunderbolt so I suspect well see a Ethernet removed with the case shrinking and a second Thunderbolt port added as part of the same hub like with USB, as adoption increases. I think FireWire will be the next to go after Ethernet (or at the same time) since its a pretty tall port. I also suspect USB will be around on Mac notebooks for several years, at least, and that the 2nd Thunderbolt will be on the opposite side because the optical drive will be removed allowing for more room on the side for ports.

Symmetry and balance of Thunderbolt and USB ports on each side. I would expect only only MagSafe port, even if they include an optical cable it for connecting to an Apple Display as a single cable docking station.

Another one! Now is the time for the much-hated 13" to be put against the Alienware M11x!

The Alienware has W7 Ultimate, 1GHz i5 (strangely enough it doesn't seem to be quad), 4GB of DDR3 800MHz RAM, the 335M, 320GB 7200rpm HD, an external DVD burner, and bluetooth, priced at $1198

For the price of a MBP you get a much slower processor, slower memory, faster HD (strange considering this only improves loading times; 1333MHz RAM would be a better choice) and the obvious graphics superiority.

Pretty much balanced until you count in Thunderbolt, FireWire, the Trackpad, aluminum, HD camera, iLife...

No, but I can easily argue that they couldn't care less about the boat because they're taking a jet.


Licensing costs. Oh, but what's this? Thunderbolt is free! How. About. That.


Get that thing out of your cart and your finger off the buy button. You'll just have to reconfigure when the update (soon) comes along, anyway.

I have to say that this has turned out to be a disappointing offering especially for 'The New MacBook Pro'. There was the potential to bump the MBP into a leap above the MBA but what happened to a hybrid SSD/HDD (a missed opportunity for instant on), improved screen resolution + matte screen for the 13", 12 hour battery in place of the superdrive. Instead, we have a processor update (well that would have happened anyhow with Intel update cycles), an integrated processor with questionable ability. The drop in battery performance from 10 to 7 hours - I don't care how you jiggle the figures that's a 30% delta and a marketing boo boo. 5400 HDD as well!

Was this all about Thunderbolt? If so, Steve's birthday offering today doesn't look like the toys we might have got. All the best to Steve though - he's done great job in bringing Apple this far.

In the end, I was hoping to press the button and splash the cash today but I guess I sleep on it for another update! My wife will be pleased - she'll be able to get a new washing machine!!