yeah, I'm thinking of getting a firewire 800 external and using that as a complimentary/backup. ram prices a joke as ever better to get crucial or someone like that. but crucial fix prices depending on where you've been surfing so...kingston? corsair?
prices of the machines have actually fallen though, compared to the last rev.
Hopefully it isn't really a 4-6 week delay for the 160-7200 drive on the 15". There is no delay if you configure that option on the 17". I'm wondering if the orders came in quick on the 15" and they raised the wait, or was it like that right when it was released?
With Apple coming out with the MBPs today (as expected), is the iMac now the mostly likely model to get attention at WWDC next week?
I've got my fingers crossed for Apple TV -- TA DA! the plasma version! -- but it's probably early yet for that one with Apple TV still just a toddler. (Or is this the direction the iMac is headed?)
Also, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see Apple announce a ship date for Leopard that's a bit earlier than they've previously indicated.
I was thinking the same. Here in the UK it's a £300 difference inc VAT. The extra 40GB upgrade costs £50inc. If you're not running large dual monitors then there's little point in paying the extra £300.
I'm a little dissapointed that laptop hard disk sizes hasn't progressed as fast as it might this past year. 120GB isn't a lot these days. There's 200/250GB drives at Apple but they're 4200rpm. Hitachi/Tosh/Samsung have 5400rpm drives out now.
Maybe I'll put the £300 to a NAS/Mini/Drobo.
Seagate 2.5, 160 gig Hard Disk (7200) is cheap and on the market
Any idea why selecting a glossy display knocks down the price $150?? And it's $135 off if combined with the education price, resulting in a crazy discount:
I am very curious about this as well. I guess you should order now while the promotional "discount" is available.
The glossy display would still have the LED behind it, I would hope. This might be reason for a price discrepancy. You can always call or chat with the Apple Store sales team. . . .
but i still abhor the placement of the hard drive. this is a pro laptop, make it so it is at minimum easy to change out like 99% of the others out there. One shouldn't have to remove .everything. just to change the HD.
Hear! Hear! (Or is it Here! Here!) And what's even more amazingly idiotic is that the cheaper consumer laptop you can just pop it right out. But Apple has always been more about design/look then usefulness.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gostan
In fact, I placed my order at for a 2.4 15 incher at 9:02 AM (edt) this morning with expedited shipping. It is expected to ship between June 6 -8 and to be delivered between June 8-13.
Any idea why selecting a glossy display knocks down the price $150?? And it's $135 off if combined with the education price, resulting in a crazy discount:
Sadly, it looks like once you go to check out the correct (higher) price is listed on the confirmation page.
cheeky f*ckers...they've wacked in two 1Gb Ram modules rather than one 2Gb module. so any upgrade to 4Gb will mean ditching those 1Gb's...great. bit of a waste huh.
One 2GB module would be more expensive than 2 1GB modules plus it'd probably be slower as well as pairing up modules usually leads to faster RAM access.
A quick look at crucial puts 2GB modules at £135 and 1GB at £27.
Apple charge £480 here for upgrading to 4GB (2x2GB). Crucial charge £270 plus you can probably eBay your stock 2GB for £40-50.
So now we've got the MacBooks, MacBook Pros all set, and iPhone set for later this month, so what will we see at WWDC: iMacs!!! Why would they go this long without an upgrade to the iMac if it was just going to be a boring incremental bump? They would've done that now as welll... no?
I imagine a new Leopard UI and Apple asking/helping developers to get cracking on coding for a lot of Core Animation/MultiTouch goodness.
Timing would be perfect, would it not?
Only problem would be that the new iMacs would be announced 3-4 months in advance (if they need Leopard for all the cool stuff). Apple would either have to launch Leopard early or give some sort of coupon for those who purchase the new iMac to get Leopard discounted later and let them use MultiTouch in Tiger (sparingly, I would imagine) in the meantime. I think this is why it was a tough call to delay Leopard - a WWDC launch of new iMacs and Leopard would have been perfect.
Agree! 20% more battery life significant. Sony's 2.33 SZ only gets up to 4 hours and its smaller.
I wonder how much of the improvement is down to LED screens and how much is Santa Rosa's improved power handling. The Sony at 2.33 will be on the old pre-SR chipset.
Hardware decoding of H264, VC-1 (don't know if the X1600 did this). 50% faster in benchmarks than the X1600.
Yes, the x1600 does do this. I'm hoping that Apple will update QuickTime in Leopard to support offloading of H.264 to the GPU on all their hardware that supports it.
I perhaps should have been more specific. It does help accelerate all of that. But it does not compltely off-load VC1 from the CPU. It only helps. It does, however, completely offload h264 from the CPU.
It's an awesome chip though. Bought a 8500 for my Vista MCE and it's doing a great job as video output with HDCP via a DVI -> HDMI adapter.
Comments
prices of the machines have actually fallen though, compared to the last rev.
and no freakin' free iPods in the UK...?!!
I've got my fingers crossed for Apple TV -- TA DA! the plasma version! -- but it's probably early yet for that one with Apple TV still just a toddler. (Or is this the direction the iMac is headed?)
Also, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see Apple announce a ship date for Leopard that's a bit earlier than they've previously indicated.
Thoughts on WWDC?
I was thinking the same. Here in the UK it's a £300 difference inc VAT. The extra 40GB upgrade costs £50inc. If you're not running large dual monitors then there's little point in paying the extra £300.
I'm a little dissapointed that laptop hard disk sizes hasn't progressed as fast as it might this past year. 120GB isn't a lot these days. There's 200/250GB drives at Apple but they're 4200rpm. Hitachi/Tosh/Samsung have 5400rpm drives out now.
Maybe I'll put the £300 to a NAS/Mini/Drobo.
Seagate 2.5, 160 gig Hard Disk (7200) is cheap and on the market
Correction:
The 8600 does not offload VC-1. It's wired for h264 decoding only.
Is that specific to the Mac model or the chip model? Nvidia say it does all these:
"Hardware Decode Acceleration: Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies."
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8M_fbs.html
Any idea why selecting a glossy display knocks down the price $150?? And it's $135 off if combined with the education price, resulting in a crazy discount:
I am very curious about this as well. I guess you should order now while the promotional "discount" is available.
The glossy display would still have the LED behind it, I would hope. This might be reason for a price discrepancy. You can always call or chat with the Apple Store sales team. . . .
i like the specs...
but i still abhor the placement of the hard drive. this is a pro laptop, make it so it is at minimum easy to change out like 99% of the others out there. One shouldn't have to remove .everything. just to change the HD.
Hear! Hear! (Or is it Here! Here!) And what's even more amazingly idiotic is that the cheaper consumer laptop you can just pop it right out. But Apple has always been more about design/look then usefulness.
In fact, I placed my order at for a 2.4 15 incher at 9:02 AM (edt) this morning with expedited shipping. It is expected to ship between June 6 -8 and to be delivered between June 8-13.
I'm sorry, but that's expediated shipping???
Any idea why selecting a glossy display knocks down the price $150?? And it's $135 off if combined with the education price, resulting in a crazy discount:
Sadly, it looks like once you go to check out the correct (higher) price is listed on the confirmation page.
cheeky f*ckers...they've wacked in two 1Gb Ram modules rather than one 2Gb module. so any upgrade to 4Gb will mean ditching those 1Gb's...great. bit of a waste huh.
One 2GB module would be more expensive than 2 1GB modules plus it'd probably be slower as well as pairing up modules usually leads to faster RAM access.
A quick look at crucial puts 2GB modules at £135 and 1GB at £27.
Apple charge £480 here for upgrading to 4GB (2x2GB). Crucial charge £270 plus you can probably eBay your stock 2GB for £40-50.
Sadly, it looks like once you go to check out the correct (higher) price is listed on the confirmation page.
oh darn....
Top of the line 15.4" specs, old/new:
2.33 GHz to 2.4 GHz
667 MHz FSB to 800 MHz
3GB RAM max to 4GB
120GB HD to 160GB (160GB 7200 rpm option!)
6x SuperDrive to 8x
Radeon X1600 to GeForce 8600M GT (great upgrade!)
CCFL backlight to LED
5.6 lbs. to 5.4 (3.2 oz. lighter!)
5 hr. max batt life to 6 hrs.
Very good upgrade!
Agree! 20% more battery life significant. Sony's 2.33 SZ only gets up to 4 hours and its smaller.
So now we've got the MacBooks, MacBook Pros all set, and iPhone set for later this month, so what will we see at WWDC: iMacs!!! Why would they go this long without an upgrade to the iMac if it was just going to be a boring incremental bump? They would've done that now as welll... no?
iMac upgrade suspicions + Leopard coverage + secret features + Developer's Conference = Stellar Advancements
I imagine a new Leopard UI and Apple asking/helping developers to get cracking on coding for a lot of Core Animation/MultiTouch goodness.
Timing would be perfect, would it not?
Only problem would be that the new iMacs would be announced 3-4 months in advance (if they need Leopard for all the cool stuff). Apple would either have to launch Leopard early or give some sort of coupon for those who purchase the new iMac to get Leopard discounted later and let them use MultiTouch in Tiger (sparingly, I would imagine) in the meantime. I think this is why it was a tough call to delay Leopard - a WWDC launch of new iMacs and Leopard would have been perfect.
Agree! 20% more battery life significant. Sony's 2.33 SZ only gets up to 4 hours and its smaller.
I wonder how much of the improvement is down to LED screens and how much is Santa Rosa's improved power handling. The Sony at 2.33 will be on the old pre-SR chipset.
Yep. Why not just add a quarter inch of height and a couple of ounces and voila?
Is that why the MacBook is thicker and heavier than the MacBook Pro?
Hardware decoding of H264, VC-1 (don't know if the X1600 did this). 50% faster in benchmarks than the X1600.
Yes, the x1600 does do this. I'm hoping that Apple will update QuickTime in Leopard to support offloading of H.264 to the GPU on all their hardware that supports it.
HP Shuns Turbo Memory
Nice upgrade overall. I love the higher base ram and 86xx series GPU. The 2k 15" MBP sounds like the best deal to me.
Hear! Hear! (Or is it Here! Here!)
Hear! Hear!
Is that specific to the Mac model or the chip model? Nvidia say it does all these:
"Hardware Decode Acceleration: Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies."
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8M_fbs.html
I perhaps should have been more specific. It does help accelerate all of that. But it does not compltely off-load VC1 from the CPU. It only helps. It does, however, completely offload h264 from the CPU.
It's an awesome chip though. Bought a 8500 for my Vista MCE and it's doing a great job as video output with HDCP via a DVI -> HDMI adapter.