Apple rolls out new iMacs, Mac Book Pro, iLife '06 - Page 2

I don't like the name "MacBook Pro" at all. I could have lived with iBook pro or something, or better yet continue using PowerBook, but I'll live. I'd really like the higher configuration MacBook Pro, but I bought this 12" PowerBook seven months ago so it'll be a long while before I upgrade.

That's because it's a different aspect ratio screen, from a different manufacturer. They seem to be using the same screens as Dell et al now. This screen is 15.4" diagonal, the one in the PowerBook is 15.2" diagonal.


Because then you can use a third-party learning remote if you want to. That and the other reasons mentioned.

anybody think that these things might have tight availability when apple starts to ship? if so, might they go for over list price on ebay? (like the xbox 360 recently did)

Article about dual booting windows on the new Intel Macs:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10794396/from/RS.3/

no firewire 800 because if you notice the lack of it in the intel chipset world. They don't want things that compete with their own usb.

Ach, wish I had the 4x faster speed and the isight. <sigh> Oh well, I knew that would happen.

for those with Windows on their minds... keep in mind that the linux world has been doing this type of thing for ages, and with the bsd underpinnings, the ability to do this fairly easily on the new machines will most likely come in no time flat. It'll be interesting to see how that works out in the end... I know MS has been throwing stones at the Wine community for years (changing items and removing files which are in wine and not in windows etc.) No need to reinvent the wheel here, it'll come.

Well, anyone want to put together a small bluetooth remote for everyone that wanted one when we thought that it was coming our way at MWSF? I've let Griffin and Kensington know that we'd like one... we'll see if that flies.

So, in less than 2 months, my PB15" became out of date to the tune of 4x as slow.

Not for your PB backups?

yea baby yea.....this is the meat of the matter

It is gratifying to see a new Mac power(ful) Book. I don't mind the new name, but I like PowerBook. Perhaps there still can be a PowerBook, when the Merom cpu arrives. I suppose that may be wishful thinking. You have to wonder why there is the one FireWire port, and that it is FW 400, in stead of 800. The part of me that is hoping for a PowerBook yet says look, Apple has room for a FireWire 800 port, there is hope.

I am having a tough time thinking which one I want to get for business purposes, a capable new iMac, or the portable Apple Book Pro. Well, it is nice to have that to think about.

I'm not against the name. In fact, there's a lot in the name:

MacBook Pro

Implies Apple already has another product lined up: MacBook without the 'pro'. I wonder what'll be missing, aside from titanium casing? Maybe no dual-core? Maybe no cam?

BTW, rumor is these things have a 3 hour battery life w/the brightness all the way up.

I have a couple of big questions. Speculation is welcome:

1.) Is the IR for receiving only -- will we be able to use iSync with our infra-red cell phones? I know, most cells are bluetooth now, but it's a thought.

2.) Any thoughts on a 13" $1500 MacBook Pro or $1000 13" MacBook? Considering Apple already has two options on the 15" Pro, how likely does it seem that they'll introduce yet MORE options?

3.) What about the G4? Any speculation as to how long they'll be supported for? How about a price decline -- currently Apple's store still lists the 15" PowerBook at $1999. $1999 is a bit steep for a new laptop, and I don't think I need one quite as fast and certainly don't need the camera. Front Row would be nice, but I don't need a remote for a notebook... I won't lie - I've been desparate to Switch for a long time now and I am considering a 12" PowerBook (currently an 80gig G4 SuperDrive refurb from Apple for $1200). One wise friend suggested I try to wait out a little while longer and see if (a) prices of the G4s are lowered and specs are upped slightly (b) a 13" model of either MacBook or MacBook Pro is introduced or (c) refurbs of the MacBook Pro appear.

Any thoughts?

No, my FW HDD isn't big enough for backups. I use a network file server for storage and backup (which doesn't have RAID yet, but soon will).

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that the MacBooks aren't 2+Ghz

A lot of the other Windows Yonah based laptops out at CES last week were over 2Ghz.

Oh, and the usual 'The consumer iMac is faster than the Pro PowerBook/MacBook' - How dare they!

Anyway, looking forward to the benchmarks, particularly a Photoshop bake-off as then I can assess if it's worthwhile getting a new iMac and selling the old G5 or if the G5 is still faster for what I use it for.

Er, they're dual core. Effectively, they're 3+Ghz...

ok, so effectively that Asus laptop is effectively 4.66Ghz.

Don't be an ass.

By the way, all developers got an email today saying that they could trade in their first-generation Intel Developer Transition Kit hardware for a new iMac.

hmmm.. makes me wonder if Microsoft is going to make an Official Windows Version that can be installed on MacIntels.

The thinner MacBook (1" vs 1.1" 15" PBG4) might increase the demand on the cooling system such that they can't run a 2+ GHz chip, Asus will likely have a slightly thicker laptop. There may also be supply concerns. Or maybe Apple hates its users. Or they thought a 4x improvement enough and didn't want to release a 6x faster laptop to piss off the people that got suckered into the Nov. 2005 revision.

I'm hoping that the MacBook Pro is basically an intermediate transition computer just to get them out and shaken down while the rest of the 'Books get full-line update, because it appears to be for early-adopter and developer types, lots of pro apps need to be updated for the Universal binary, so pros that aren't developers or early adopters would probably want to wait anyway.

I wonder if maybe the lack of FW800 might actually be because of a lack of PCIe FW800 chips, when that chip is available it might be put on the next 15" and 17" laptop and roll out the complete line.

From a Developer Connection email, Apple is offering to exchange the development machine with an Intel iMac for free, so they can develop and test on a production system:

Microsoft has a special version of Windows for the new MacBooks, it's called Windows XP. It should install and run like any other system that is x86 based. Chances are if I bought one, I'd wipe the hard drive and just use Windows XP until more apps are native.

XP doesn't support EFI AFAIK.

Bluetooth is back in the box.. see here.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/whatsinside.html

DL disk's are readable but not burnable in this 'new" Superdrive.. This must be part of the plan to push the next media (BlueRay) when it comes out. Do many ppl. actually use DL disks (?). Too expensive for me + obvious absence of DL media players..


Apart from the obvious concerns you just got to hand it to Jobs and Apple.
There it is, a new PowerBook (OK sorry MacBook Pro). That was not foreseen until later in the year. Virtually no drop in sales. Plus, enough rabid MacHeads to keep the max possible production backdated for 6+ months. Plus - if you want a Intel Mac now you must pay the piper or wait 6+months for the (less profitable) iBook - absolute, undeniable genius.

Same thing for iMac - Not foreseen = No drop in sales b4 release.


Lack of Battery spec's are indeed suspicious to say the least.

It does on XP64. Unfortunately the iMacs/MacBooks aren't 64bit though.

Nobody's established it's EFI based though have they?

DL disk play in any DVD player. Most commercial movies are at Dual Layer otherwise the movie wouldn't fit.

The Powerbook had 8x Dual Layer writing. This one is Single layer only, 4x. Quite a step backwards.

The new iMac is 8x Dual Layer, like the old one.

It is EFI based according to the Dev docs... didn't realize that before... kinda surpised that Yohan wasn't 64bit tho... wasn't really following the development but it's kinda dissapointing.

MacMac or MacTower, but XServes will stay the same.

It's 32bit because it's based on the previous generation Pentium M 'Dothan' whereas the Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest chips due later this year are 64bit and based on the next generation architecture. I'm not sure how Intel gets away with calling both 'Core' since they are different architectures.

I've just noticed they've updated the dev docs too. EFI it is.

64-bit is the most misunderstood tech going.

I mean it makes NO sense to fret over 64-bit if your computer can't even install and recognize more than 4GB of RAM.

In a couple of years we'll have extremely large memory modules and we'll need that extra head room.

It's not just that.

IA64 has more registers and instructions. On AMD at least it's faster. On Intel, not. It's a cleaner architecture and it's the future. It'll be less of a hurdle for Apple to move from 32bit to 64bit Intel than Microsoft had but none-the-less we've another transition to go that might have been avoided.

On the new Macs, they boot using EFI. Only Windows XP 64bit edition supports EFI, not the 32bit version.

So, there are reasons why 64bit would be better other than just memory. They're not immediately important ones but we've extra issues to deal with at some point because of the choice Apple made.

Agreed. However without support for more than 4GB of RAM it's kind of hard to load HUGE datasets into large amounts of memory. Plus the CPU really has to be architected so that it doesn't have bottlenecks. It makes no sense to have double the lanes of traffic in one area funneling down to half the lanes later on down the pipe.

I had someone at work ask for XP 64-bit for a $599 Acer desktop thinking the 64-bit would be twice as fast. Wrong idea.

Er, in theory, it could come close. (In theory, communism works. In theory...)

Let me explain:

Two gravediggers should be able to dig a grave twice as fast as one, right?

Right?

What if only one fits in the grave? Then the other's just standing around doing nothing.

The effectiveness of the dual core system depends on the software. In software that isn't designed for it, I doubt the difference would be that great.

Windows notebooks use the same CPU's as Apple now. The Asus I mentioned uses a 2.33Ghz Core Duo. The fastest MacBook Pro is a 1.83Ghz Core Duo.

Explain how you think the Apple is faster. Try not to use gravediggers as an allegory as it's totally irrelevant and makes you look rather stupid.

My point was simply that there are slim and small Core Duo laptops announced at > 2Ghz, just not from Apple. This I find surprising. It wasn't intended as a Windows v Mac thing but I'd forgot that the zealotry jumps to the defence of Apple in times of strong RDF.

No one here can say absolutely why the MacBook is not using 2.33Ghz chip. Heat and space sound like a good reason.

If you really want to build the case that Apple just wants to rip its customers off, no one can debate that because none of us know.

Here's a link to the developer document that confirms they use EFI.

DL media players? What are they? Provided they work right, all DVD drives and players can read dual layer DVD discs.

I hadn't been paying attention, but I thought the cost of dual layer writable discs were down to $1-$2 each, in packs of five. That didn't seem too bad. I don't use dual layer writables, but I only rarely write DVDs and usually they only need to be single layer discs.

Did I say they're faster? Could you show me where I said the MacBook Pro is faster than the Asus?

With the gravediggers analogy, I was explaining something you seemed to object to (in calling me an ass), that dual core machines are a great great great deal faster than single core processors labelled with the same number next to 'Ghz'.

Makes me look stupid? Zealotry? Why are you being so aggressive about this? If you'd rather run with a PC, go with it. I personally am quite ready to give up my Windows/GNU Linux PC in favor of an OS X Mac. I may be able to get faster PCs than Macs, but after 10 years of Windows, I want out. Linux is nice, but I need an OS that works with the apps I use most often, all of which are commercial.

Having used a 1.33Ghz iBook w/512 Mb RAM running the same apps in OS X as my current Toshiba 2Ghz in Windows and having witnessed a low-spec Mac notebook outstrip a higher-spec PC notebook in terms of performance, I would like to point out one thing: don't confuse 'tech specs' with performance. As well as numbers, consider architecture and OS.

The Asus is smaller. 13.3" screen.


I'm not. I was simply wondering why they topped out at 1.83Ghz. The Asus is also quite horrible looking. I could have suggested Acer for a similarly sized 2+Ghz laptop but again, horrible looks, cheap plastic case. The point was, where's the 2Ghz? It can be done in small cases judging by other manufacturers laptops.

Lord, if everytime someone mentions a competing Intel based laptop from someone other than Apple as a comparison now, are we all going to get tetchy and defend Apple?

Of course it does. Your analogy was pointless. BOTH laptops have dual core processors so arguing two gravediggers are better than one, or only one can fit in a hole is pointless. Both laptops have the same issues.

The original poster claimed that the 1.83Ghz MacBook was effectively 3ghz+ which by the same reasoning the 2.33Ghz Asus is 4.66Ghz. Either way, since both are using the same technology, your analogy makes no sense.


I'm British. We call it humour.



That's great n'all but I got out of the Windows world 5 years ago as my main OSs so you're preaching to the converted here. I'd also point out that there's flaws in the architecture of all the main three OSs but you'll find that out soon enough.

Methinks Apple may be reserving the 2.33Ghz Core Duo chip for a yet-to-come 17" MacBook Pro, priced around $2,999 with lots of bells and whistles standard. If that's the case, they probably don't want to introduce and start taking pre-orders for such a beast until the other MacBook Pro's are shipping in quantities, as quantities of 2.33Ghz chips will surely be tighter than the chips we're already waiting until February for. That being said, the fact that $2,500 gets you a MacBook Pro with the processors other PC manufacturers use in their $2,000 products shows Apple will continue to play by their own rules regarding price and specs. If you want a 2.33Ghz Core Duo MacBook Pro, they're going to upsell you to a $3k 17" model that includes all kinds of other things to justify the cost, like more RAM, Hard Drive, USB Ports, etc.

I thought Yonah topped out at 2.16 GHz? Do you have a link to this 2.33 GHz Asus?

The laptops that cost $500 less generally have plastic cases, look ugly and weight more. If you compare Apple to other premium brand laptops they aren't really more expensive. Sometimes cheaper even.

eg.

IBM T60 - $2049 for a Core Duo 1.83Ghz with 60GB hard disk, crappy 1024x768 14" screen and 512MB RAM/Combo drive and get this - Intel Integrated graphics!

Even Dell's equivalent is $2300 once you add in all the features in the Mac and that gets you a behemoth of grey plastic.

I thought so too though a couple of places have mentioned it a while back in the Yonah roadmap.

Anyway - it's ugly, it's black, it's plastic, it's the ASUS R1F

http://ces.engadget.com/2006/01/10/a...-it-on-the-dl/

And here's some more, including a 12.1" white iBook style laptop with camera a core duo.

ASUS build some of Apple's laptops btw.

http://www.mobilewhack.com/reviews/a...echnology.html