why should each laptop have an optical drive and all these ports when they can all share storage and an optical drive wirelessly off the same hub? By building excess ports and optical drives into each laptop is just creating a redundance or oversupply of technology. When you take your laptop to a friend's place...just jump on their wireless network to access things such as hard drives and optical drives...why weigh the computer down with these?
But looking at society, you can see people are moving away from family lifestyles towards more promiscuous, singles lifestyles. There is very little redundancy for most people and having to do everything wirelessly adds unnecessary headache as well as security risks. WEP encryption, which is a standard can be cracked within minutes and you want all data to be transferred this way.
Even in a family setting, how would it make sense for someone downstairs to access a remote optical drive that is upstairs?
Quote:
Originally Posted by s.metcalf
With this in mind it occurs to me that there are some very intelligent people at Apple that have correctly predicted (and caused) a future trend in laptop computers, but like their early rejection of the floppy disk that so many people critisised, they are perhaps just too far ahead of the times for people to realise why this is going to be the start of a trend. There will still be a market for the "all-in one" portable and desktop, but it's possible that even the iMac could go along this route. Only time will tell...
The floppy was different. It was bad technology that had no longevity. Optical discs are reliable, convenient and cheap. It will be a few years before flash can replace Blu-Ray when 4GB flash costs about the same as 25GB Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray prices should drop much more quickly.
I personally favor hard drives but I still regularly use my optical drives and it would just cause unnecessary problems if they were made wireless.
Generally I'd be in favor of externalizing components but I'm also well aware of reliability issues with wireless connections so I couldn't rely on it for critical work.
Sorry I can't resist putting my oar in, even though I'm not really a big Air fan (yet)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
But looking at society, you can see people are moving away from family lifestyles towards more promiscuous, singles lifestyles.
I still think this is very much the minority. Why do you think PC sales have become so cheap, with all software being developed for family's photos and music etc in mind? Family lifestyle is definitely the big seller.
Quote:
There is very little redundancy for most people and having to do everything wirelessly adds unnecessary headache as well as security risks. WEP encryption, which is a standard can be cracked within minutes and you want all data to be transferred this way.
Nobody in their right mind should use WEP these days. WPA-PSK is the way to go. And like it or not, wireless networks are the future. Apple know this and are embracing it completely.
Quote:
Even in a family setting, how would it make sense for someone downstairs to access a remote optical drive that is upstairs?
Why not? I live in a family home and my long-term plan is to have a NAS media server in the loft/attic. If we were burgled, chances are it wouldn't be found. Having said that I'd have everything backing up to a drive in another location. My NAS will be connected over Mains Ethernet, and the Airport in the lounge will also be connected in that manner. This will cut down on wireless traffic.
Quote:
I personally favor hard drives but I still regularly use my optical drives and it would just cause unnecessary problems if they were made wireless.
My main use for an optical drive is to back up old files I use very infrequently, such as old downloads etc. I'd miss having an optical drive, but I only really use it on the server machine. Once storage becomes even more massive than it already is, with off-site backup facilities, optical drives WILL become a thing of the past. Not for years yet, but you can already see it happening - Blockbuster vs Netflix/iTunes.
Quote:
Generally I'd be in favor of externalizing components but I'm also well aware of reliability issues with wireless connections so I couldn't rely on it for critical work.
How are wireless networks unreliable? Are you in need of a critical throughput between devices? You can still use wires until wireless networks become as reliable...
Really, because every benchmark I've seen puts the GMA X3100 at a good 25-40% better than the GMA 950.
Really try the Open GL test, the old macboos used to spin that logo really fast, now its as slow as mollasses. Not to long ago there were stories (many) that you could use a Macbook for motion, now you cannot. Games, teee hee, don't make me laugh. They still think the Pro market makes up a large portion. NOT.
Their marketing is so skewed.
The newer Macbooks are slower, period. Overall benchmark OLD MACBOOK vs NEW MACBOOK..old w/Leopard 187%, new 76%.
d/l xbench and see for yourself. Then go to barefeats and look up the old scores if you don't believe me.
The advent of Xbench 1.3 and Cinebench 10 make comparison with the original MacBook difficult, since that computer was benchmarked using prior versions of those applications.
In other words, the old benchmarks cannot be applied to the new ones because they were run on a different version of Xbench.
And if you need further evidence, check this review from MacWorld which shows improvements in Quake 4 and UT2004 framerates:
Quote:
Though still far from being a gamer?s dream machine, the new MacBooks use Intel?s GMA X3100 graphics with 144MB of RAM allocated from the system?s main memory. Previous models had the Intel GMA 950 with just 64MB of shared memory. Our game benchmark results show the benefit of the new X3100, with the new black 2.2GHz MacBook able to display 37-percent more frames than the 2.16GHz MacBook from the last generation when playing Unreal Tournament 2004. Unfortunately, that?s still about one-third the amount of frames per second a 2.2GHz MacBook Pro can display, but it?s still a decent performance boost. In newer games, like Quake 4, the results still show improvement, but at our 1,024-by-768, high-quality settings, none of the MacBooks could be considered playable.
Are you honestly trying to tell us that the GMA 950 performs better than the GMA X3100?
In addition to the "Santa Rosa" chipset, the newest MacBook sports the GMA X3100 integrated graphics chip. It's superior to the GMA 950 used in previous models of MacBook in that it supports hardware transform and lighting. It also supports vertex and pixel shader model 3.0 at 32 bit floating point per vector. And don't forget Anisotropic filtering of up to 16 samples.
Comments
why should each laptop have an optical drive and all these ports when they can all share storage and an optical drive wirelessly off the same hub? By building excess ports and optical drives into each laptop is just creating a redundance or oversupply of technology. When you take your laptop to a friend's place...just jump on their wireless network to access things such as hard drives and optical drives...why weigh the computer down with these?
But looking at society, you can see people are moving away from family lifestyles towards more promiscuous, singles lifestyles. There is very little redundancy for most people and having to do everything wirelessly adds unnecessary headache as well as security risks. WEP encryption, which is a standard can be cracked within minutes and you want all data to be transferred this way.
Even in a family setting, how would it make sense for someone downstairs to access a remote optical drive that is upstairs?
With this in mind it occurs to me that there are some very intelligent people at Apple that have correctly predicted (and caused) a future trend in laptop computers, but like their early rejection of the floppy disk that so many people critisised, they are perhaps just too far ahead of the times for people to realise why this is going to be the start of a trend. There will still be a market for the "all-in one" portable and desktop, but it's possible that even the iMac could go along this route. Only time will tell...
The floppy was different. It was bad technology that had no longevity. Optical discs are reliable, convenient and cheap. It will be a few years before flash can replace Blu-Ray when 4GB flash costs about the same as 25GB Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray prices should drop much more quickly.
I personally favor hard drives but I still regularly use my optical drives and it would just cause unnecessary problems if they were made wireless.
Generally I'd be in favor of externalizing components but I'm also well aware of reliability issues with wireless connections so I couldn't rely on it for critical work.
But looking at society, you can see people are moving away from family lifestyles towards more promiscuous, singles lifestyles.
I still think this is very much the minority. Why do you think PC sales have become so cheap, with all software being developed for family's photos and music etc in mind? Family lifestyle is definitely the big seller.
There is very little redundancy for most people and having to do everything wirelessly adds unnecessary headache as well as security risks. WEP encryption, which is a standard can be cracked within minutes and you want all data to be transferred this way.
Nobody in their right mind should use WEP these days. WPA-PSK is the way to go. And like it or not, wireless networks are the future. Apple know this and are embracing it completely.
Even in a family setting, how would it make sense for someone downstairs to access a remote optical drive that is upstairs?
Why not? I live in a family home and my long-term plan is to have a NAS media server in the loft/attic. If we were burgled, chances are it wouldn't be found. Having said that I'd have everything backing up to a drive in another location. My NAS will be connected over Mains Ethernet, and the Airport in the lounge will also be connected in that manner. This will cut down on wireless traffic.
I personally favor hard drives but I still regularly use my optical drives and it would just cause unnecessary problems if they were made wireless.
My main use for an optical drive is to back up old files I use very infrequently, such as old downloads etc. I'd miss having an optical drive, but I only really use it on the server machine. Once storage becomes even more massive than it already is, with off-site backup facilities, optical drives WILL become a thing of the past. Not for years yet, but you can already see it happening - Blockbuster vs Netflix/iTunes.
Generally I'd be in favor of externalizing components but I'm also well aware of reliability issues with wireless connections so I couldn't rely on it for critical work.
How are wireless networks unreliable? Are you in need of a critical throughput between devices? You can still use wires until wireless networks become as reliable...
Really, because every benchmark I've seen puts the GMA X3100 at a good 25-40% better than the GMA 950.
Really try the Open GL test, the old macboos used to spin that logo really fast, now its as slow as mollasses. Not to long ago there were stories (many) that you could use a Macbook for motion, now you cannot. Games, teee hee, don't make me laugh. They still think the Pro market makes up a large portion. NOT.
Their marketing is so skewed.
The newer Macbooks are slower, period. Overall benchmark OLD MACBOOK vs NEW MACBOOK..old w/Leopard 187%, new 76%.
d/l xbench and see for yourself. Then go to barefeats and look up the old scores if you don't believe me.
go to barefeats and look up the old scores if you don't believe me.
I'm having trouble seeing anything on Barefeats which compares old MacBooks with new... Can you post us a link please?
From a review on ArsTechnica:
The advent of Xbench 1.3 and Cinebench 10 make comparison with the original MacBook difficult, since that computer was benchmarked using prior versions of those applications.
In other words, the old benchmarks cannot be applied to the new ones because they were run on a different version of Xbench.
And if you need further evidence, check this review from MacWorld which shows improvements in Quake 4 and UT2004 framerates:
Though still far from being a gamer?s dream machine, the new MacBooks use Intel?s GMA X3100 graphics with 144MB of RAM allocated from the system?s main memory. Previous models had the Intel GMA 950 with just 64MB of shared memory. Our game benchmark results show the benefit of the new X3100, with the new black 2.2GHz MacBook able to display 37-percent more frames than the 2.16GHz MacBook from the last generation when playing Unreal Tournament 2004. Unfortunately, that?s still about one-third the amount of frames per second a 2.2GHz MacBook Pro can display, but it?s still a decent performance boost. In newer games, like Quake 4, the results still show improvement, but at our 1,024-by-768, high-quality settings, none of the MacBooks could be considered playable.
Are you honestly trying to tell us that the GMA 950 performs better than the GMA X3100?
What about this review from barefeats:
In addition to the "Santa Rosa" chipset, the newest MacBook sports the GMA X3100 integrated graphics chip. It's superior to the GMA 950 used in previous models of MacBook in that it supports hardware transform and lighting. It also supports vertex and pixel shader model 3.0 at 32 bit floating point per vector. And don't forget Anisotropic filtering of up to 16 samples.