I have the early 2011 15" 2.0GHz model and I don't see a problem with the cooling on my particular unit. I've only ever had the fans kick a fuss on two occasions: 1) MS Excel sent 1 core to 100% for 30mins and even then, the fans weren't that loud - and 2) MacPorts sent all 4 cores to 100% for 45mins when installing software - sounded like it was taking off but thats to be expected under such high load. Though under normal use its never went over 60˚C.
What do you consider "normal use"? I had my MBP shoot up to 185F with mail, safari and iChat open running a video chat. Normally, I have to run FCP-X or Handbrake to get the temps up that high. I even took it to the Apple store and all their tests found no problems. They still couldn't explain why, at identical temps and fan speeds, my mid '10 MBP is noticeably quieter. They claim the fans are the same size on my dual-core i5 MBP and the quad-core i7 MBP.
The biggest engineering constraint in notebooks is that long in the tooth ODD. You remove that, you not only get back a 5.5"x5.5"x13mm space, you also get port side space.
The ODD in the MacBook Pros is starboard side, not port.
What do you consider "normal use"? I had my MBP shoot up to 185F with mail, safari and iChat open running a video chat. Normally, I have to run FCP-X or Handbrake to get the temps up that high. I even took it to the Apple store and all their tests found no problems. They still couldn't explain why, at identical temps and fan speeds, my mid '10 MBP is noticeably quieter. They claim the fans are the same size on my dual-core i5 MBP and the quad-core i7 MBP.
Normal use for me us as follows:
Photoshop, Dreamweaver, iChat, Transmit, iCal, Mail (with 3 accounts), Safari (with GoogleMail and three Magento windows), LibreOffice Base, Terminal with various SSH sessions and Address Book. I may another Safari window with BBC Radio or iTunes.
Same thing every day, 5 days a week, 8 and a half hours a day from 8:30am to 5pm. Current CPU Temp is 54C - can't hear a peep from the fans.
EDIT: Also forgot the Windows XP virtual machine I use every now and then.
Photoshop, Dreamweaver, iChat, Transmit, iCal, Mail (with 3 accounts), Safari (with GoogleMail and three Magento windows), LibreOffice Base, Terminal with various SSH sessions and Address Book. I may another Safari window with BBC Radio or iTunes.
Same thing every day, 5 days a week, 8 and a half hours a day from 8:30am to 5pm. Current CPU Temp is 54C - can't hear a peep from the fans.
EDIT: Also forgot the Windows XP virtual machine I use every now and then.
Hmm. Right now I have Aperture, Safari (5 tabs including Gmail), Mail (2 accounts) & iChat (text chat) running and I'm around 43°C. The fans are idling at 2000RPM and that's all normal. The truth is, they'll stay there until the CPU and GPU really start to heat up. The problem for me is, anytime I run anything processor intensive, the thing switches to jet engine mode and in a quiet room (like my home office), it can be pretty distracting. This is my fourth MBP and the first time I've ever had one this noisy.
Hmm. Right now I have Aperture, Safari (5 tabs including Gmail), Mail (2 accounts) & iChat (text chat) running and I'm around 43°C. The fans are idling at 2000RPM and that's all normal. The truth is, they'll stay there until the CPU and GPU really start to heat up. The problem for me is, anytime I run anything processor intensive, the thing switches to jet engine mode and in a quiet room (like my home office), it can be pretty distracting. This is my fourth MBP and the first time I've ever had one this noisy.
My fans don't instantly switch to Jet Engine mode when I do something processor intensive. They'll slowly increase in speed as the temperature climbs, as it should. Actually, I've only had jet engine mode once when all 4 cores were 100% when installing something via MacPorts (so take off is expected in that case). Excel causing a single core to run at 100% just caused them to whir slightly.
My fans don't instantly switch to Jet Engine mode when I do something processor intensive. They'll slowly increase in speed as the temperature climbs, as it should. Actually, I've only had jet engine mode once when all 4 cores were 100% when installing something via MacPorts (so take off is expected in that case). Excel causing a single core to run at 100% just caused them to whir slightly.
Well, mine ramp up too (sorry if I wasn't clear on that). When I first got the laptop, I was installing Toast 11 and it did something similar with the CPU usage and next thing I know, the fans are whirring away at 6000+ RPM. Otherwise, it'll take a video encode to make them go crazy like that. Thanks for the feedback BTW.
People like you don't bring in enough profit for a huge company like Apple to care much about your desires. They are focused like a laser on the lowest common denominator mass market consumer these days, and they are making record profits.
Know what you mean, but this type of comment is becoming almost a "meme," or part of the "conventional wisdom" on Apple Forums, and is worth clarifying, because any following "therefore......" is bound to miss its mark.
Your second conclusion (record profits) is, of course, correct, however the first is mis-stated.
Apple is not "focused like a laser on the lowest common denominator mass market consumer these days." That's the low-margin, dubious-quality, corner-cutting niche left to the Dells, HPs and Acers et al. in the PC worlds and a raft of Droid cloners in the tablet and phone markets. Those are the companies at each others' throats all fighting to serve the majority of the people of my acquaintance, who, with little brand loyalty, only know they want a computer or smart phone ("for a good price"), and who once they have one, and the bare minimum of programs to do what they need, pretty much cease buying anything for the device until it dies.
Apple's true "laser-like focus" is rather on dominating the markets for the world's "aspirational" middle to upper middle and above consumers, prosumers (and kinda are/wanna-be/think they are prosumers and pros). This may be a somewhat smaller niche than the "LDC" group - but probably gives Apple a target of a billion and half to two billion potential customers. Who are also much more likely to keep adding programs, accessories, OS upgrades, etc. to their machines after they buy 'em.
And since this group has more money to spend, more education, more time to research their more major purchases, etc., they're more willing to factor quality, form factor and design, user experience, "ecosystems," ease of use, TCO, and so forth into their buying decisions. And to spend more for their machines - even though part of the cost includes a higher mark-up - than in the frantic, churning commodity markets.
So for one thing, THAT's a major reason Apple's making record profits.
In computers, that "90% of the $1000 and above market" is a particularly telling stat. Meanwhile, in the iPad world, errr, the tablet space, even if the Kindle Fire is about to catch on fire, it'll be by being sold as a low-margin to loss-leader "razor" that will pay off by helping Amazon sell Amazon.com "blades" (programs, content and general A.com shopping), not in and of itself.
So it's a key distinction. For one thing it also helps indicate whether Apple will totally abandon some of the "creative pros" and other true geek believers who sustained it through it darkest days. I conclude that since they're NOT focused on the bottom-feeding market, and with the prosumer and pro niches being somewhat indistinguishable, pro and pro-ish configs are likely to be with us for some time, as long as they can contribute meaningfully to the bottom line.
And give those who start off at the bottom rung of the Apple tree ladder plenty of rungs to grow up through.
And for as long as Apple can remain a company focused on a slowly growing, but still manageable number of SKU's, research efforts and not accumulate too many "buggy-whip" corners and departments within its structure.
And... ...that's their laser-like focus. And an important lens to look through when you're making predictions about "what's next" for the company's product lines.
I can't count how many times I've heard people say "I'd buy a MacBook Air if it had a 15" version" People like the weight and size of it.
As an owner of a 2011 MacBook Air 11"/Core i7, I find it to be a game changer.
Even though the fans kick up a whirlwind when I'm rendering video, the combination of insane battery life and extremely light weight are just amazing. When I'm taking notes during a meeting or writing, I often get 6-7 hours on a single charge. By refusing to install Java, Flash or any other plug ins, I consistently exceed Apple's rated battery life.
I now have an early 2008 17", a 2010 15" and a 2011 11" (alongside an assortment of Mac Mini's, iPad's, iPhone's and Mac Pro's), but what I really want to see is...
MacBook Air 17"
Ivy Bridge quad-core w/support for up to 32GB RAM
a killer (preferably nVidia) GPU that lets OpenCL soar
1920x1200 or higher resolution
Thunderbolt
512 GB SSD
2 USB ports that can be used to charge an iPad without booting and starting iTunes
iSight HD
2.1 audio
backlit keyboard
optical/digital mic/headphone jack
Bluetooth 4.0/802.11a/b/g/n
12 hour battery life
4 pounds or less
I've realized that...
1. I haven't used an optical drive in more than a year, and even that was to burn a mix CD for a friend to put on her iPod. Previously, I backed up my iTunes purchases to dual-layer DVD+R, but now that I can download them at will from iCloud...
2. A gigE port is nice, but AirDrop between Mac's is pretty good. I could live with a Thunderbolt-based gigE dongle (100mb is too slow for moving multi-gigabyte RED video files).
3. I've never used the ExpressCard port on my 17", though I often threatened to.
4. I only used FW800 for Time Machine. With iCloud, I have less to backup, and it's more convenient to backup wirelessly to my Mac Mini servers. When you don't need to back up your applications (Mac App Store) or your media (iCloud) and soon most of your documents (iCloud), were it not for the video and audio processing that I do, and the various VM's for running Windows and Linux-only tools, I could get by with a much smaller disk.
They COULD, "...add even more ports, a larger battery and even better CPUs and GPU...," but they will do the latter: "...orthey could make it thinner."
<rant omitted>
When you're done hyperventilating, remember these facts:
1. You can buy a Mac Pro with integrated optical drive and put any video card in it
2. You can buy a MacBook Pro with integrated optical drive and dedicated graphics chips
3. You can burn DVDs and Blu-Rays from external drives on any MacBook Air
4. You can author Blu-Ray discs on any Mac using Adobe Encore
Why? They just did it with their telephone products.
I would expect that this signals a new mainstream notebook line, more capable than the Air, less expensive than the Pro.
Since the very first days of Apple, at least when Steve was around, the idea was to have a concentration on a very few products. From the very first business plan drawn up, that was a guiding principle.
Why re-introduce a product in-between two totally fine lines? You've got the MBAir. You've got the MBPro. Expanding it makes no sense, Apple-wise, as far as I can tell. It's counter-intuitive.
If you want to make a better MBAir, or a more affordable MBPro, that makes sense. That I can understand.
Ever stopped to think you might be a tiny minority? When Apple dicthed the floppy drive there were several minorities that just *needed* to have that, too.
In case you don't know, Apple doesn't operate like an accounting-driven firm (and never has in its history), offering only mass-market products that sell in the highest numbers. If that were true, they would have axed the Apple TV long ago. But they're pursuing a vision, not just a mathematical business model.
There's nothing wrong with addressing a niche.
In its darkest days, when Macs claimed only 1.7% market share, Apple was addressing a niche.
Those of us forced to admit that after the dawn of Pentium PCs, Macs could no longer truthfully make the claim that they were faster than Windows PCs; when Mac quality control had grown so poor that 1 in 3 Macs were DOA and had to be returned for one that worked (I bought a Mac that was DOA and had to be exchanged twice ? "Third time's the charm"; when Mac OS crashed every 15 minutes; when extension conflicts beset the OS; We, "The Mac Faithful" continued to buy Macs (and often suffered ridicule) out of unwavering loyalty, sparing Apple "by the skin of its teeth" from going out of business or being sold to Oracle, Sun or IBM, where it would be subsumed out of existence and no longer be Apple.
I almost think Apple owes us. For, had we not barely sustained it with the small trickle of revenue that our unflagging "niche" supplied, Apple as we know it today would surely not exist ? or exist at all.
And your unsupported "guess" that the Pro market is a niche ? too small to allocate development, marketing, advertising and promotion dollars ? would seem to be refuted by the empirical evidence:
And if this niche is so small (not the definition of a niche, BTW), why does Adobe sell a Mac version of Creative Suite 5? (And Adobe is "controlled-leaking" tidbits about Mac CS6.)
Why do they market Mac Premier Pro? After Effects? Audition? Encore? Lightroom? Camera Raw? Dreamweaver? Contribute? Cold Fusion? Captivate? InDesign? InCopy? FrameMaker? Sound Booth? Editions? eLearning Suite 2.5?
Why does Autodesk make Mac AutoCAD? Maya? Alias? Alias Automotive? FBX? Sketchbook Pro? Smoke? Mudbox? mental ray?
Unity's Unity 3 Pro? Newtek's LightWave Pro 11? 3Play? TriCaster?
Cinema 4D? BodyPaint 3D?
Combustion 3?
Avid Media Composer 5.5? Mojo SDI? Pro Tools + Eleven Rack? Sibelius 7? Torq 2.0?
The Mac Pro is not selling because Apple has abandoned it. You can get a far more powerful graphics card in an iMac, but have just two cards to choose from for the Mac Pro. Every Mac now features SATA III 6G ? except the Mac Pro. Ditto Thunderbolt.
Its Industrial design hasn't changed since 2003.
When you choke off the blood supply to a product, you shouldn't be scratching your head when it dies. It's very simple.
You neglect a product, let it go "stale" and sales drop off?! WTF?
The Mac Pro will die as a direct consequence of its neglect of the product, and lack of promotion. Many people don't even know there's a Mac Pro; Apple's "promotion" is almost covert.
Quote:
Originally Posted by foljs
The MB Airs sell like hot cakes. People don't seem bothered by the lack of an optical drive at all. And why should they?
Must be those in the 72% prefer an integrated optical drive, hard drive, better technologies for faster performance and are willing to tolerate a slightly thicker notebook. (God forbid!)
(BTW, internal notebook optical drives are available in 9.5mm heights ? that's 0.374 inches)
The MacBook Pro is a whole 0.71 inches thicker than a MacBook Air ? that's less than one-quarter of one inch! (Oh, my!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by foljs
You pine for the days of "replacable batteries"? Ever stopped to think that in those days a MBP (or Powerbook) gave you like 2-3 hours battery time, and now it gives like 7 out of the box?
Yes, I have. But it's a non sequitur to suggest that detachable batteries would stand still in terms of battery life, and only internal batteries would increase in battery life. Detachable batteries would benefit from the advancements in battery life technologies just the same ? and, most importantly, would be THINNER!
Would you want your digital camera to have an enclosed, fixed capacity memory card and no slot if it made it.....thinner?
a killer (preferably nVidia) GPU that lets OpenCL soar
1920x1200 or higher resolution
Thunderbolt
512 GB SSD
2 USB ports that can be used to charge an iPad without booting and starting iTunes
iSight HD
2.1 audio
backlit keyboard
optical/digital mic/headphone jack
Bluetooth 4.0/802.11a/b/g/n
12 hour battery life
4 pounds or less
The 17" doesn't seem that popular these days. If they're going for the ultra thin thing, 32GB of ram may not be seen for 3-4 years on such a machine. Getting that much battery life with such a large display is also something that would take more than one refresh cycle.
There's only one thing that I find really silly. So many of you guys seem to think the discreet gpu model will make it into these ultra thin machines. Intel has been pushing their own integrated graphics here. Don't expect to see more than that. They have a really strict power budget when it comes to preventing such a thin machine from overheating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton
When you're done hyperventilating, remember these facts:
1. You can buy a Mac Pro with integrated optical drive and put any video card in it
2. You can buy a MacBook Pro with integrated optical drive and dedicated graphics chips
3. You can burn DVDs and Blu-Rays from external drives on any MacBook Air
4. You can author Blu-Ray discs on any Mac using Adobe Encore
Optical drives may soon be a thing of the past on macs completely. Even with the mac pro its gpu range is fairly limited. It may only be two to three years before macbook pros only come with integrated graphics. Intel seems to be pushing this model. Mobile gpus in a conservative tdp aren't that powerful anyway.
When you're done hyperventilating, remember these facts:
1. You can buy a Mac Pro with integrated optical drive and put any video card in it
2. You can buy a MacBook Pro with integrated optical drive and dedicated graphics chips
3. You can burn DVDs and Blu-Rays from external drives on any MacBook Air
4. You can author Blu-Ray discs on any Mac using Adobe Encore
0. Don't mistake passion for insulting characterizations. (Please.)
1. So, according to these "facts," I can put ANY GPU card in it? Besides the overcrowded TWO graphics card options, I can slip any graphics card in there without an unsanctioned "hack" that would surely meet with compatibility/stability issues, or even prevent the installation of a future version of Mac OS X that does a preinstall-hardware check? Does Apple's unique use of some of a graphics card's contact points matter? Or Apple's requirement for a non-standard firmware flash memory size?
And I can insert a second card (or up to four) and take advantage of nVidia's SLI or AMD/ATi's CrossFireX parallel GPU processing power, (crying out for OpenCL and GPGPU, BTW)?
3. Which really contributes positively to the MacBook Air's "footprint" and desk real estate ? than would an integrated 9.5mm tall integrated optical burner.
4. No native Blu-ray support. Why can't I create a "Burn" folder or use "Disk Utility" to write data to a blank Blu-ray disc? Windows has had this capability "baked in" for awhile now.
Why can't I burn an iMovie to a Blu-ray disc? Or in the abandoned iDVD?
And, yes, you will be able to resort to third-party solutions for Blu-ray until Apple adds code to [Mac] OS X that thwarts Blu-ray support. (They've done it before! Secret APIs which left ISVs wondering why they couldn't get their apps to do things Apple apps could do ? until Apple got BUSTED! and had to fess up.
There is no justifiable reason for not availing Mac customers a BTO option for an integrated optical burner ? let alone a Blu-ray burner.
The 17" doesn't seem that popular these days. If they're going for the ultra thin thing, 32GB of ram may not be seen for 3-4 years on such a machine. Getting that much battery life with such a large display is also something that would take more than one refresh cycle.
There's only one thing that I find really silly. So many of you guys seem to think the discreet gpu model will make it into these ultra thin machines. Intel has been pushing their own integrated graphics here. Don't expect to see more than that. They have a really strict power budget when it comes to preventing such a thin machine from overheating.
Optical drives may soon be a thing of the past on macs completely. Even with the mac pro its gpu range is fairly limited. It may only be two to three years before macbook pros only come with integrated graphics. Intel seems to be pushing this model. Mobile gpus in a conservative tdp aren't that powerful anyway.
No optical drive on my iMac would be a deal killer for me (I'd hold onto my 2010 for a long time). No optical drive on a MacBook? Great. Save the weight and gimme room. I don't see the optical drive leaving the iMac anytime soon- they aren't hurting for space- particularly @ 27".
Like USB was promising until Apple used it and then the PC bandwagon was suddenly spilling over with PC makers FINALLY adopting USB after Intel had long since ratified it and shopped it around to every PC maker for two years (with not a single taker).
Quote:
Originally Posted by foljs
Hmm. You understand the contradiction of accusing Apple of "stopping all research" and then mentioning Apple+Intel's own Thunderbolt, the nicest new I/O port spec to come out for PCs lately.
No, I don't understand, because that's not what I said. Apple wants all research into OPTICAL STORAGE TECHNOLOGY outlawed, not "all research."
And the systematic disappearance of integrated optical drives in Macs is a subset of a larger effort: to kill the physical, optical format in every incarnation by undermining its support. Optical drive-less Macs is a pretty good means.
Apple's external SuperDrive is a placating, perfunctory offering that will get yanked as soon as things settle down. Apple wants all software and all content to be delivered wirelessly and exist digitally – AND, naturally, be bought from the iTunes Store only.
Quote:
Originally Posted by foljs
Let's face it, you are just a lover of clunky, bulky, laptops, better served with an Alienware monstrocity!
I don't "face" false, supercilious sarcasm. Yeah, that's right, I really do want a clunky, bulky laptop thicker than a hard cover copy of "War and Peace," and the size of a suitcase. And I want it to weigh more than a box of mail order frozen meat.
My (you would think) innocuous point is that the MacBook is thin enough already, and if this pointless, manic, obsessive, never-ending pursuit of ever-thinness means jettisoning a more powerful CPU, graphics hardware, RAM space, storage space, battery life, expandability, and, yes, an integrated optical burner (BTO, if necessary), then "form" has truly overtaken "function," and I'm not willing to accept those compromises all in the interest of still further thinness.
Reason needs to enter the equation. Is that too much to ask? Is that "unreasonable"?
Doubtful on better CPUs and GPUs. As a owner of the current 2011 MacBook Pro, it's pretty obvious that the cooling system wasn't designed for 45W TDP CPUs, and a thinner enclosure won't help that problem. If anything, I expect then to lower the TDP with a cooler chip and focus on battery life. I hope they hake the 1680x1050 res screen standard.
Ivy Bridge = more power, better GPU, lower TDP, and longer battery life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nvidia2008
Bingo. It'll be sweet. 15" MacBook "Air Pro". I imagine they'll drop the 13" MacBook Pro and just have:
11" MacBook Air
13" MacBook Air
15" MacBook Pro (thin)
17" MacBook Pro (normal)
This looks about right. But when the 11" and 13" Airs get Ivy Bridge, they'll be as powerful as today's MacBook Pros. The distinction between the two product lines seems as if it will diminish. If this is right, I wonder if the new line-up will be called simply MacBooks?
The answer may lie in whether the 17" model is replaced with a new thinner version. If it is, then the dual line will probably be retained. If not, and Apple just offers 11", 13" and 15" models, then expect a single line-up.
To release a 15" MacBook Air without Ivy Bridge is probably pointless.
Comments
I have the early 2011 15" 2.0GHz model and I don't see a problem with the cooling on my particular unit. I've only ever had the fans kick a fuss on two occasions: 1) MS Excel sent 1 core to 100% for 30mins and even then, the fans weren't that loud - and 2) MacPorts sent all 4 cores to 100% for 45mins when installing software - sounded like it was taking off but thats to be expected under such high load. Though under normal use its never went over 60˚C.
What do you consider "normal use"? I had my MBP shoot up to 185F with mail, safari and iChat open running a video chat. Normally, I have to run FCP-X or Handbrake to get the temps up that high. I even took it to the Apple store and all their tests found no problems. They still couldn't explain why, at identical temps and fan speeds, my mid '10 MBP is noticeably quieter. They claim the fans are the same size on my dual-core i5 MBP and the quad-core i7 MBP.
The biggest engineering constraint in notebooks is that long in the tooth ODD. You remove that, you not only get back a 5.5"x5.5"x13mm space, you also get port side space.
The ODD in the MacBook Pros is starboard side, not port.
.tsooJ
What do you consider "normal use"? I had my MBP shoot up to 185F with mail, safari and iChat open running a video chat. Normally, I have to run FCP-X or Handbrake to get the temps up that high. I even took it to the Apple store and all their tests found no problems. They still couldn't explain why, at identical temps and fan speeds, my mid '10 MBP is noticeably quieter. They claim the fans are the same size on my dual-core i5 MBP and the quad-core i7 MBP.
Normal use for me us as follows:
Photoshop, Dreamweaver, iChat, Transmit, iCal, Mail (with 3 accounts), Safari (with GoogleMail and three Magento windows), LibreOffice Base, Terminal with various SSH sessions and Address Book. I may another Safari window with BBC Radio or iTunes.
Same thing every day, 5 days a week, 8 and a half hours a day from 8:30am to 5pm. Current CPU Temp is 54C - can't hear a peep from the fans.
EDIT: Also forgot the Windows XP virtual machine I use every now and then.
Normal use for me us as follows:
Photoshop, Dreamweaver, iChat, Transmit, iCal, Mail (with 3 accounts), Safari (with GoogleMail and three Magento windows), LibreOffice Base, Terminal with various SSH sessions and Address Book. I may another Safari window with BBC Radio or iTunes.
Same thing every day, 5 days a week, 8 and a half hours a day from 8:30am to 5pm. Current CPU Temp is 54C - can't hear a peep from the fans.
EDIT: Also forgot the Windows XP virtual machine I use every now and then.
Hmm. Right now I have Aperture, Safari (5 tabs including Gmail), Mail (2 accounts) & iChat (text chat) running and I'm around 43°C. The fans are idling at 2000RPM and that's all normal. The truth is, they'll stay there until the CPU and GPU really start to heat up. The problem for me is, anytime I run anything processor intensive, the thing switches to jet engine mode and in a quiet room (like my home office), it can be pretty distracting. This is my fourth MBP and the first time I've ever had one this noisy.
Hmm. Right now I have Aperture, Safari (5 tabs including Gmail), Mail (2 accounts) & iChat (text chat) running and I'm around 43°C. The fans are idling at 2000RPM and that's all normal. The truth is, they'll stay there until the CPU and GPU really start to heat up. The problem for me is, anytime I run anything processor intensive, the thing switches to jet engine mode and in a quiet room (like my home office), it can be pretty distracting. This is my fourth MBP and the first time I've ever had one this noisy.
My fans don't instantly switch to Jet Engine mode when I do something processor intensive. They'll slowly increase in speed as the temperature climbs, as it should. Actually, I've only had jet engine mode once when all 4 cores were 100% when installing something via MacPorts (so take off is expected in that case). Excel causing a single core to run at 100% just caused them to whir slightly.
My fans don't instantly switch to Jet Engine mode when I do something processor intensive. They'll slowly increase in speed as the temperature climbs, as it should. Actually, I've only had jet engine mode once when all 4 cores were 100% when installing something via MacPorts (so take off is expected in that case). Excel causing a single core to run at 100% just caused them to whir slightly.
Well, mine ramp up too (sorry if I wasn't clear on that). When I first got the laptop, I was installing Toast 11 and it did something similar with the CPU usage and next thing I know, the fans are whirring away at 6000+ RPM. Otherwise, it'll take a video encode to make them go crazy like that. Thanks for the feedback BTW.
People like you don't bring in enough profit for a huge company like Apple to care much about your desires. They are focused like a laser on the lowest common denominator mass market consumer these days, and they are making record profits.
Know what you mean, but this type of comment is becoming almost a "meme," or part of the "conventional wisdom" on Apple Forums, and is worth clarifying, because any following "therefore......" is bound to miss its mark.
Your second conclusion (record profits) is, of course, correct, however the first is mis-stated.
Apple is not "focused like a laser on the lowest common denominator mass market consumer these days." That's the low-margin, dubious-quality, corner-cutting niche left to the Dells, HPs and Acers et al. in the PC worlds and a raft of Droid cloners in the tablet and phone markets. Those are the companies at each others' throats all fighting to serve the majority of the people of my acquaintance, who, with little brand loyalty, only know they want a computer or smart phone ("for a good price"), and who once they have one, and the bare minimum of programs to do what they need, pretty much cease buying anything for the device until it dies.
Apple's true "laser-like focus" is rather on dominating the markets for the world's "aspirational" middle to upper middle and above consumers, prosumers (and kinda are/wanna-be/think they are prosumers and pros). This may be a somewhat smaller niche than the "LDC" group - but probably gives Apple a target of a billion and half to two billion potential customers. Who are also much more likely to keep adding programs, accessories, OS upgrades, etc. to their machines after they buy 'em.
And since this group has more money to spend, more education, more time to research their more major purchases, etc., they're more willing to factor quality, form factor and design, user experience, "ecosystems," ease of use, TCO, and so forth into their buying decisions. And to spend more for their machines - even though part of the cost includes a higher mark-up - than in the frantic, churning commodity markets.
So for one thing, THAT's a major reason Apple's making record profits.
In computers, that "90% of the $1000 and above market" is a particularly telling stat. Meanwhile, in the iPad world, errr, the tablet space, even if the Kindle Fire is about to catch on fire, it'll be by being sold as a low-margin to loss-leader "razor" that will pay off by helping Amazon sell Amazon.com "blades" (programs, content and general A.com shopping), not in and of itself.
So it's a key distinction. For one thing it also helps indicate whether Apple will totally abandon some of the "creative pros" and other true geek believers who sustained it through it darkest days. I conclude that since they're NOT focused on the bottom-feeding market, and with the prosumer and pro niches being somewhat indistinguishable, pro and pro-ish configs are likely to be with us for some time, as long as they can contribute meaningfully to the bottom line.
And give those who start off at the bottom rung of the Apple tree ladder plenty of rungs to grow up through.
And for as long as Apple can remain a company focused on a slowly growing, but still manageable number of SKU's, research efforts and not accumulate too many "buggy-whip" corners and departments within its structure.
And... ...that's their laser-like focus. And an important lens to look through when you're making predictions about "what's next" for the company's product lines.
I can't count how many times I've heard people say "I'd buy a MacBook Air if it had a 15" version" People like the weight and size of it.
As an owner of a 2011 MacBook Air 11"/Core i7, I find it to be a game changer.
Even though the fans kick up a whirlwind when I'm rendering video, the combination of insane battery life and extremely light weight are just amazing. When I'm taking notes during a meeting or writing, I often get 6-7 hours on a single charge. By refusing to install Java, Flash or any other plug ins, I consistently exceed Apple's rated battery life.
I now have an early 2008 17", a 2010 15" and a 2011 11" (alongside an assortment of Mac Mini's, iPad's, iPhone's and Mac Pro's), but what I really want to see is...
MacBook Air 17"
Ivy Bridge quad-core w/support for up to 32GB RAM
a killer (preferably nVidia) GPU that lets OpenCL soar
1920x1200 or higher resolution
Thunderbolt
512 GB SSD
2 USB ports that can be used to charge an iPad without booting and starting iTunes
iSight HD
2.1 audio
backlit keyboard
optical/digital mic/headphone jack
Bluetooth 4.0/802.11a/b/g/n
12 hour battery life
4 pounds or less
I've realized that...
1. I haven't used an optical drive in more than a year, and even that was to burn a mix CD for a friend to put on her iPod. Previously, I backed up my iTunes purchases to dual-layer DVD+R, but now that I can download them at will from iCloud...
2. A gigE port is nice, but AirDrop between Mac's is pretty good. I could live with a Thunderbolt-based gigE dongle (100mb is too slow for moving multi-gigabyte RED video files).
3. I've never used the ExpressCard port on my 17", though I often threatened to.
4. I only used FW800 for Time Machine. With iCloud, I have less to backup, and it's more convenient to backup wirelessly to my Mac Mini servers. When you don't need to back up your applications (Mac App Store) or your media (iCloud) and soon most of your documents (iCloud), were it not for the video and audio processing that I do, and the various VM's for running Windows and Linux-only tools, I could get by with a much smaller disk.
They COULD, "...add even more ports, a larger battery and even better CPUs and GPU...," but they will do the latter: "...or they could make it thinner."
<rant omitted>
When you're done hyperventilating, remember these facts:
1. You can buy a Mac Pro with integrated optical drive and put any video card in it
2. You can buy a MacBook Pro with integrated optical drive and dedicated graphics chips
3. You can burn DVDs and Blu-Rays from external drives on any MacBook Air
4. You can author Blu-Ray discs on any Mac using Adobe Encore
1. You can buy a Mac Pro with integrated optical drive and put any video card in it
Not just any card will work in OS X. The rest of your points are great. And you can author Blu-ray with Final Cut Pro, too.
Why? They just did it with their telephone products.
I would expect that this signals a new mainstream notebook line, more capable than the Air, less expensive than the Pro.
Since the very first days of Apple, at least when Steve was around, the idea was to have a concentration on a very few products. From the very first business plan drawn up, that was a guiding principle.
Why re-introduce a product in-between two totally fine lines? You've got the MBAir. You've got the MBPro. Expanding it makes no sense, Apple-wise, as far as I can tell. It's counter-intuitive.
If you want to make a better MBAir, or a more affordable MBPro, that makes sense. That I can understand.
If you want to make a better MBAir, or a more affordable MBPro, that makes sense. That I can understand.
Yeah... Possibly it will then just be the 17" that maintains the MacBook Pro line for all those who want to be the very "elite".
MacBook Air 11", 13" and 15" "for the rest of us".
Apple portable line... sorted for 2012.
Ever stopped to think you might be a tiny minority? When Apple dicthed the floppy drive there were several minorities that just *needed* to have that, too.
In case you don't know, Apple doesn't operate like an accounting-driven firm (and never has in its history), offering only mass-market products that sell in the highest numbers. If that were true, they would have axed the Apple TV long ago. But they're pursuing a vision, not just a mathematical business model.
There's nothing wrong with addressing a niche.
In its darkest days, when Macs claimed only 1.7% market share, Apple was addressing a niche.
Those of us forced to admit that after the dawn of Pentium PCs, Macs could no longer truthfully make the claim that they were faster than Windows PCs; when Mac quality control had grown so poor that 1 in 3 Macs were DOA and had to be returned for one that worked (I bought a Mac that was DOA and had to be exchanged twice ? "Third time's the charm"; when Mac OS crashed every 15 minutes; when extension conflicts beset the OS; We, "The Mac Faithful" continued to buy Macs (and often suffered ridicule) out of unwavering loyalty, sparing Apple "by the skin of its teeth" from going out of business or being sold to Oracle, Sun or IBM, where it would be subsumed out of existence and no longer be Apple.
I almost think Apple owes us. For, had we not barely sustained it with the small trickle of revenue that our unflagging "niche" supplied, Apple as we know it today would surely not exist ? or exist at all.
And your unsupported "guess" that the Pro market is a niche ? too small to allocate development, marketing, advertising and promotion dollars ? would seem to be refuted by the empirical evidence:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10465202-37.html <? a must read
http://www.maclife.com/article/featu..._final_cut_pro
http://www.macworld.com/article/1322...8/02/coen.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10465202-37.html
http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/09/0...o-final-cut-x/
http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/in-action/arrahman/
http://www.macworld.com/article/146932/2010/03/apple_final_cut.html
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/09/l...inux-november/
http://diglloyd.com/ <? Photography Professional on axing the Mac Pro
http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/...ative-pros.ars
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...-concerned.ars
And if this niche is so small (not the definition of a niche, BTW), why does Adobe sell a Mac version of Creative Suite 5? (And Adobe is "controlled-leaking" tidbits about Mac CS6.)
Why do they market Mac Premier Pro? After Effects? Audition? Encore? Lightroom? Camera Raw? Dreamweaver? Contribute? Cold Fusion? Captivate? InDesign? InCopy? FrameMaker? Sound Booth? Editions? eLearning Suite 2.5?
Why does Autodesk make Mac AutoCAD? Maya? Alias? Alias Automotive? FBX? Sketchbook Pro? Smoke? Mudbox? mental ray?
Unity's Unity 3 Pro? Newtek's LightWave Pro 11? 3Play? TriCaster?
Cinema 4D? BodyPaint 3D?
Combustion 3?
Avid Media Composer 5.5? Mojo SDI? Pro Tools + Eleven Rack? Sibelius 7? Torq 2.0?
The Mac Pro is not selling because Apple has abandoned it. You can get a far more powerful graphics card in an iMac, but have just two cards to choose from for the Mac Pro. Every Mac now features SATA III 6G ? except the Mac Pro. Ditto Thunderbolt.
Its Industrial design hasn't changed since 2003.
When you choke off the blood supply to a product, you shouldn't be scratching your head when it dies. It's very simple.
You neglect a product, let it go "stale" and sales drop off?! WTF?
The Mac Pro will die as a direct consequence of its neglect of the product, and lack of promotion. Many people don't even know there's a Mac Pro; Apple's "promotion" is almost covert.
The MB Airs sell like hot cakes. People don't seem bothered by the lack of an optical drive at all. And why should they?
That's why the account for only 28% of Mac notebook sales.
Must be those in the 72% prefer an integrated optical drive, hard drive, better technologies for faster performance and are willing to tolerate a slightly thicker notebook. (God forbid!)
(BTW, internal notebook optical drives are available in 9.5mm heights ? that's 0.374 inches)
The MacBook Pro is a whole 0.71 inches thicker than a MacBook Air ? that's less than one-quarter of one inch! (Oh, my!)
You pine for the days of "replacable batteries"? Ever stopped to think that in those days a MBP (or Powerbook) gave you like 2-3 hours battery time, and now it gives like 7 out of the box?
Yes, I have. But it's a non sequitur to suggest that detachable batteries would stand still in terms of battery life, and only internal batteries would increase in battery life. Detachable batteries would benefit from the advancements in battery life technologies just the same ? and, most importantly, would be THINNER!
Would you want your digital camera to have an enclosed, fixed capacity memory card and no slot if it made it.....thinner?
MacBook Air 17"
Ivy Bridge quad-core w/support for up to 32GB RAM
a killer (preferably nVidia) GPU that lets OpenCL soar
1920x1200 or higher resolution
Thunderbolt
512 GB SSD
2 USB ports that can be used to charge an iPad without booting and starting iTunes
iSight HD
2.1 audio
backlit keyboard
optical/digital mic/headphone jack
Bluetooth 4.0/802.11a/b/g/n
12 hour battery life
4 pounds or less
The 17" doesn't seem that popular these days. If they're going for the ultra thin thing, 32GB of ram may not be seen for 3-4 years on such a machine. Getting that much battery life with such a large display is also something that would take more than one refresh cycle.
There's only one thing that I find really silly. So many of you guys seem to think the discreet gpu model will make it into these ultra thin machines. Intel has been pushing their own integrated graphics here. Don't expect to see more than that. They have a really strict power budget when it comes to preventing such a thin machine from overheating.
When you're done hyperventilating, remember these facts:
1. You can buy a Mac Pro with integrated optical drive and put any video card in it
2. You can buy a MacBook Pro with integrated optical drive and dedicated graphics chips
3. You can burn DVDs and Blu-Rays from external drives on any MacBook Air
4. You can author Blu-Ray discs on any Mac using Adobe Encore
Optical drives may soon be a thing of the past on macs completely. Even with the mac pro its gpu range is fairly limited. It may only be two to three years before macbook pros only come with integrated graphics. Intel seems to be pushing this model. Mobile gpus in a conservative tdp aren't that powerful anyway.
When you're done hyperventilating, remember these facts:
1. You can buy a Mac Pro with integrated optical drive and put any video card in it
2. You can buy a MacBook Pro with integrated optical drive and dedicated graphics chips
3. You can burn DVDs and Blu-Rays from external drives on any MacBook Air
4. You can author Blu-Ray discs on any Mac using Adobe Encore
0. Don't mistake passion for insulting characterizations. (Please.)
1. So, according to these "facts," I can put ANY GPU card in it? Besides the overcrowded TWO graphics card options, I can slip any graphics card in there without an unsanctioned "hack" that would surely meet with compatibility/stability issues, or even prevent the installation of a future version of Mac OS X that does a preinstall-hardware check? Does Apple's unique use of some of a graphics card's contact points matter? Or Apple's requirement for a non-standard firmware flash memory size?
And I can insert a second card (or up to four) and take advantage of nVidia's SLI or AMD/ATi's CrossFireX parallel GPU processing power, (crying out for OpenCL and GPGPU, BTW)?
See: "The Problem of Apple" section
3. Which really contributes positively to the MacBook Air's "footprint" and desk real estate ? than would an integrated 9.5mm tall integrated optical burner.
4. No native Blu-ray support. Why can't I create a "Burn" folder or use "Disk Utility" to write data to a blank Blu-ray disc? Windows has had this capability "baked in" for awhile now.
Why can't I burn an iMovie to a Blu-ray disc? Or in the abandoned iDVD?
And, yes, you will be able to resort to third-party solutions for Blu-ray until Apple adds code to [Mac] OS X that thwarts Blu-ray support. (They've done it before! Secret APIs which left ISVs wondering why they couldn't get their apps to do things Apple apps could do ? until Apple got BUSTED! and had to fess up.
There is no justifiable reason for not availing Mac customers a BTO option for an integrated optical burner ? let alone a Blu-ray burner.
There is no justifiable reason for not availing Mac customers a BTO option for an integrated optical burner ? let alone a Blu-ray burner.
You not being able to think of one or refusing to accept one doesn't mean there isn't.
The 17" doesn't seem that popular these days. If they're going for the ultra thin thing, 32GB of ram may not be seen for 3-4 years on such a machine. Getting that much battery life with such a large display is also something that would take more than one refresh cycle.
There's only one thing that I find really silly. So many of you guys seem to think the discreet gpu model will make it into these ultra thin machines. Intel has been pushing their own integrated graphics here. Don't expect to see more than that. They have a really strict power budget when it comes to preventing such a thin machine from overheating.
Optical drives may soon be a thing of the past on macs completely. Even with the mac pro its gpu range is fairly limited. It may only be two to three years before macbook pros only come with integrated graphics. Intel seems to be pushing this model. Mobile gpus in a conservative tdp aren't that powerful anyway.
No optical drive on my iMac would be a deal killer for me (I'd hold onto my 2010 for a long time). No optical drive on a MacBook? Great. Save the weight and gimme room. I don't see the optical drive leaving the iMac anytime soon- they aren't hurting for space- particularly @ 27".
Yeah, veeeeery promissing.
Like USB was promising until Apple used it and then the PC bandwagon was suddenly spilling over with PC makers FINALLY adopting USB after Intel had long since ratified it and shopped it around to every PC maker for two years (with not a single taker).
Hmm. You understand the contradiction of accusing Apple of "stopping all research" and then mentioning Apple+Intel's own Thunderbolt, the nicest new I/O port spec to come out for PCs lately.
No, I don't understand, because that's not what I said. Apple wants all research into OPTICAL STORAGE TECHNOLOGY outlawed, not "all research."
And the systematic disappearance of integrated optical drives in Macs is a subset of a larger effort: to kill the physical, optical format in every incarnation by undermining its support. Optical drive-less Macs is a pretty good means.
Apple's external SuperDrive is a placating, perfunctory offering that will get yanked as soon as things settle down. Apple wants all software and all content to be delivered wirelessly and exist digitally – AND, naturally, be bought from the iTunes Store only.
Let's face it, you are just a lover of clunky, bulky, laptops, better served with an Alienware monstrocity!
I don't "face" false, supercilious sarcasm. Yeah, that's right, I really do want a clunky, bulky laptop thicker than a hard cover copy of "War and Peace," and the size of a suitcase. And I want it to weigh more than a box of mail order frozen meat.
My (you would think) innocuous point is that the MacBook is thin enough already, and if this pointless, manic, obsessive, never-ending pursuit of ever-thinness means jettisoning a more powerful CPU, graphics hardware, RAM space, storage space, battery life, expandability, and, yes, an integrated optical burner (BTO, if necessary), then "form" has truly overtaken "function," and I'm not willing to accept those compromises all in the interest of still further thinness.
Reason needs to enter the equation. Is that too much to ask? Is that "unreasonable"?
Doubtful on better CPUs and GPUs. As a owner of the current 2011 MacBook Pro, it's pretty obvious that the cooling system wasn't designed for 45W TDP CPUs, and a thinner enclosure won't help that problem. If anything, I expect then to lower the TDP with a cooler chip and focus on battery life. I hope they hake the 1680x1050 res screen standard.
Ivy Bridge = more power, better GPU, lower TDP, and longer battery life.
Bingo. It'll be sweet. 15" MacBook "Air Pro". I imagine they'll drop the 13" MacBook Pro and just have:
11" MacBook Air
13" MacBook Air
15" MacBook Pro (thin)
17" MacBook Pro (normal)
This looks about right. But when the 11" and 13" Airs get Ivy Bridge, they'll be as powerful as today's MacBook Pros. The distinction between the two product lines seems as if it will diminish. If this is right, I wonder if the new line-up will be called simply MacBooks?
The answer may lie in whether the 17" model is replaced with a new thinner version. If it is, then the dual line will probably be retained. If not, and Apple just offers 11", 13" and 15" models, then expect a single line-up.
To release a 15" MacBook Air without Ivy Bridge is probably pointless.