Apple may surprise with late-2011 MacBook Pro refresh - Page 4

Well they think it works for them. In their desktop line the attitude is killing them. As for the iPhone that desire for a larger display is directly related to being an old fart. That certainly isn't a technical need unless you consider seeing text a technical need. I do so much like pinch to zoom though.

My first Mac was a Mac Plus which I dearly loved even with it's short comings. However Apple drove me away for years due to high prices and crappy OS. I got back into the fold with a early 2098 MBP, but followed the company withou fail before that. So I've seen everything, especially the boondoggles.

Interestingly I went matte on my MBP and have regretted it ever since. Frankly I can't fathom why people would desire such a screen. The difference in usability is astounding and not in favor of atte screens.

Actually I had considered Macs at around the time of the G4/G5 transition but it was an obvious joke of a machine. The only thing it had going for it was Alt-Vec and that like GPU computing is only of limited use. G5's integer performance was so bad it was enough to bring tears to ones eyes. Integer performance relates directly to a systems responsiveness and general performance.

The G5 is a perfect example of why one should not do business with IBM. As to air flow the G5 burnt up a lot of watts to get the performance levels it did. I don't think Apple had a chance in hell of making a quiet and reliable machine.

Drop in is what we want, it means Apple can bump the machines anytime they want.

I suspect we will see them. There is little in the rumor mills about a near term Ivy Bridge release. I wish there was an Ivy Bridge release around the corner as it might get me to fork over more money to Apple. Knowing what Ivy Bridge is I have to hold off.

The old fart comment made me laugh.



Would you elaborate on this? Is it an issue of visibility in outdoor lighting where a matte screen can go dark? Matte screen options can be of significant value. Graphics professionals have always preferred them. CRTs were glossy for years but many of the later higher end ones had screen coatings to dull reflections. Some people claim they're better even today. I switched to lcd displays around 2006 because mine was dying. Glossy screens are just truly annoying. Even in dim lighting the luminance from the display itself causes reflections. All I can think of is that anti glare tends to go dark when used outdoors.


They were terrible designs. Apple could have scrapped that idea and simply went with Intel back in 2003 rather than 2006. It's just another example of people having purchased what Apple presented to them. The G4 was behind to the point where it wasn't really feasible to stay with it, and suspicion of another switch didn't really build up until around 2005.


Well I did quote the drop in versions. Apple has never used one of the "extreme" versions in their laptop line and I haven't seen any low power variants of such models. I expect this relates to battery life. (Edited out a mistake here along with the rest rather than rewriting)


You mean updates or weird variants as I quote before? I really highly doubt we're going to see a modified version of one of their "extreme" processors. I haven't seen any evidence of a huge gain in performance, and it's a jump to a $1096 processor model. Its adoption overall seems to be fairly limited.

I like your thinking.

I guess I was thinking more in terms of the introduction. Maybe even some touch-screen capability, but I'm not convinced it's a good thing in a desktop machine. I'm surprised with something very new, very fresh, which makes magic gesture integrated into the desktop experience without giving tired arms. If I knew what I would scratch the itch that Apple.

Under the current definition of 'computer', it isn't. It's certainly not a bad thing once we get that paradigm shifted.

I see it being pretty possible on a desktop machine, yeah.

Though we're not talking about those. Multitouch will never work on a laptop, and giving it the form factor changes that allow multitouch to work on a desktop causes the need for the concept of a laptop to fall out of existence.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a point to which we have to pay attention going forward.

There are a lot of places proprietary touch screen systems are used today, such as point of sale systems. Bringing it to a desktop configuration would mean rethinking a lot of the ergonomics in any system designed for heavier use. Regarding laptops going away I don't think we'll see that even in the next decade. Tablets and phones would need to get to the point of fulfilling the previous role of laptops. In some ways that's happening already. It's just a matter of time.

Your statements are contradictory.



I can easily believe that Apple won't be selling any products under the MacBook name or any products that resemble modern laptops by December 31, 2019.

Easily. If I were an optimist, I'd say by December 31, 2016. But I'm not, as many know.

You think it'll turn over that fast? I've been wondering how they'll handle ports in IOS devices. There hasn't been a lot of push for anything like wireless usb. My statements aren't actually contradicting each other. If anything it's poorly written on my part due to morning fatigue (as in didn't sleep well). We are starting to see displacement in the market. It just depends on needs I suppose. They'd still need to find a way to work in ports and things if widespread adoption is the goal. Wireless standards have been around forever. There are wireless standards for usb and displayport protocols, yet they haven't really seen widespread adoption. It has to be difficult to incorporate things like usb or ethernet to such a device given the form factor, and at least in the case of ethernet I don't ever see it happening. Really the devices need some way to integrate with legacy technology because some of it won't go away for quite a while (sadly).

What I see you doing here is basing predictions solely on consumer trends. It comes down to how long before people can use a tablet to a level of efficiency that matches (or comes close) to what we've expected from laptops over the past few years. So are you thinking more like a larger tablet form factor with a virtualized keyboard? I can't imagine this would be as far as it goes. Creative industries right now seem to love the ipad. I could see art directors picking up a larger model if it became more like a laptop replacement. What do you think?

In case I sound too biased against the ipad, it's one of the few things Apple makes currently that I really really like as a whole (I like the iphone and the macbook pros too, I pretty much hate the rest). I think once the hardware is there we will start to see a "laptop replacement" kind of design from the ipad, but you don't seem to lend much credence to the number of technical hurdles there.

The point was not about glossy in general but about the displays in the earlier Macbooks that happened also to be glossy. They were horrible: color rendering, viewing angle, brightness, all horrible. Difference like day and night compared to the Macbook Pro's. I still keep this Macbook and I have first hand experience.

I will go so far as to say all matte screened computers are terrible. The matte surface does impact color, viewing angle and brightness relative to glass screens. It wasn't just Apple either, most laptops of he era had pretty terrible screens. I have some old Dells at work that are a perfect example.

Hmm that was more an issue of TN panels at the time to a degree. The macbook pro panels were still way better than those in the white macbook at the time. Now have you ever sat down in front of a really high end display? Lcd vs crt doesn't really matter in this regard. The sony artisan (crt with matched sensor) produced a much better image than a lot of displays do today even though it used fairly generic hardware. The CG211 (ips 21" lcd) came out around 2007. That was an amazing display. The CG243w is ok. It's just a bit difficult to calibrate. I wish they supported some of the newest sensors in colornavigator.

These are all desktop displays with matte coatings, and the color is superior to the glossy ones. The glossy stuff is just distracting. Really it's entirely possible to design an excellent matte display. Even toward the cheaper end you can find a lot of reasonably good options. The newer high res matte display options for the macbooks don't look that bad either, even if they are charging a premium on them. We've also seen ips panel options start to appear in laptops, and Apple seems to have gone this route on the iphone. You still don't get the quality of a higher end desktop display (laptops are constrained on space) but they're quite nice.

Would you trade your MBP 13 inch 2011 model for this new model in 2012? Thanks

My MBP is a 2008 with a 15" screen. In fact it is the early 2008 model before Unibody.

Given that you need to realize that I don't buy hardware to trade in the next year. So I'm not convinced that I would dump a one year old model. If I did the new units would have to have a compelling feature. Honestly I'd like to get to the point where I could go five years or longer without feeling significant pain.

This is why I would prefer to buy more performance than maybe I need at first blush. If you look at Mac OS/X updates being on two year cycles, I want hardware that would gracefully survive to of those release cycles.

There was a rush of rumors about a month ago on a series of speed bumped MBP's. Now the rumor mill seems to have gone silent. Has anyone heard/read/seen anything?

New model numbers are starting to appear.

so it'[s already October and I see no signs o any plan to release a newer (and better?) version of the macbook pro...

i wonder why?

The bumped machines are in the stores right now. Some of them got very nice updates beyond the slightly faster GPU.

Don't ask why Apple was so sneaky this time. It might have something to do with the factory closing in china. It is possible supplies are limited.