plugging an audio jack into a laptop is a BAD idea in my experience. anything you can do with a digital audio in can be done better and more safely with usb, very cheaply, these days
Worked great for me. More safely? What do you think the audio in does, explode when you plug in an audio cable?
Not sure if I understand: you say that if you use the now unique audio port as input, you have to redirect the output elsewhere. Why then use the built-in speakers and not a USB headphones set?
Hmmh, that is possible...
I guess I'd be called "old school" since my audio inputs (and mic) and headphones and speakers all use the 1/8" mini plugs and jacks. I haven't gotten around to getting any usb audio devices... some day no doubt.
Worked great for me. More safely? What do you think the audio in does, explode when you plug in an audio cable?
I assume he means with less risk of buzzing or other audio problems. Built in analog in is virtually always going to be inferior to using an external box, it's just a question of whether built in is good enough for a particular user.
so funny. when FW was dropped, Apple Insider wrote articles saying "consumers don't use firewire anyway", "apple removed it because we don't need it?
That hasn?t changed. Consumers don?t use Firewire nearly as much as they use or need the other port options. Plus, only the chicken heads claiming the sky was falling thought FW was going away, instead of just FW400.
Quote:
and FW is back, and "now you can get the mac experience of target disk mode again"
TDM is overrated as it reruires 2 Macs and a FW-to-FW cable that people probably don?t have. I find it much easier to simply boot off an external drive when there are problems with my internal HDD. Just down the option key and choose the USB boot drive I put on my Time Machine drive. Always with me, always waiting.
And clicking on the link, I see the Line6 also has USB output, so even without digital audio in, you can still send the signal digitally to the laptop. You'd have to hook up using a different cable, but no loss of quality in this situation.
With all due respect, you don't have a clue what you are talking about. The USB in that Line 6 box (my main "effects pedals" and "amp") is complete shit. Great amp modeling, crap USB interface.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
That FW interface does have spdif, so yet another way he could bring in his guitar digitally. And you should be able to use multiple interfaces simultaneously with Logic (even mixing FW and USB), you just need to go into the Audio Midi Setup app and combine the two as a virtual aggregate device.
Couldn't you do that on this new machine by connecting the USB output of the line6 to the laptop? No FW needed.
Again, you don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about. Your lack of experience is obvious. USB in a high-IO or high-CPU utilization scenario is complete and utter crap. Come back and talk to me after you try recording a live session on a laptop over a USB interface.
As long as sneaker net lives, there will be a market for a cheap storage device that allows for one use. $0.04 for a disk that I can burn and give someone VS a ~$20 flash chip that I would want back? no contest.
BluRay media is not $0.04 each. Almost everyone I know has a USB flash drive and when they need something I either email it to them, use iDisk, or copy it to their flash drive. I haven't used my DVD drive for copying data months now.
That hasn?t changed. Consumers don?t use Firewire nearly as much as they use or need the other port options. Plus, only the chicken heads claiming the sky was falling thought FW was going away, instead of just FW400.
TDM is overrated as it reruires 2 Macs and a FW-to-FW cable that people probably don?t have. I find it much easier to simply boot off an external drive when there are problems with my internal HDD. Just down the option key and choose the USB boot drive I put on my Time Machine drive. Always with me, always waiting.
Seems your able to create a boot drive off a SD card using Disk Utility.
The new 2TB SD standard uses a M$ exFAT file structure, since the new SD card is the same as older ones in size and shape/pins. Only difference is speed and larger storage..
Remains to be seen if file structure can be changed to HFS+ and if the speed is there hardware to match.
2TB on a SD card, bootable or a clone of a hard drive would be extremely valuable for laptop owners on the go.
The DVD drive is on the right, the ports are on the left. The space isn't an issue because of the DVD drive, the battery and hard drive is probably whats taking the space.
The battery and the hard drive? Dude, all laptops can't get rid of these two. But guess what? The ThinkPad team could fit the a audio input and a audio output, PCMCIA Slot, SD slot, a telephone jack (totally useless for most users), 3 USBs, one FW, VGA connector, and 1Gb LAN on the x61, which is a 12" ultraportable laptop developed TWO YEARS AGO, by getting rid of the DVD drive.
Again, based on my own speculation, I think DVD drive is the obstacle for putting more ports.
My guess on why Apple has so much trouble fitting the ports.
1. It's likely that the DVD burner is taking a huge chunk of the side area. I really suggest that Apple to give a second option of removing the DVD burner and replace it with ExpressCard and digital audio input or whatsoever. Most users barely use the DVD player on the road, so getting rid of this dead weight makes sense.
2. Steve Jobs insists that no ports can be built in the front because of his aesthetic concern. This is just my wild guess, but entirely possible.
1) I wonder if SDHC cards or the new SDXC standard introduce this year allow for any HW encryption that could protect OS X in the future if Apple went to SD cards for OS installs. I have stated previously that USB flash drives would be great as they are very fast and are very ?green' as they take up very little room.
The cards are still price prohibitive when directly compared to the cost of a SL-DVD or DL-DVD, but is the price difference enough to make it an issue for Apple in the future. After all, this is Apple, the company that gone after more expensive over cheaper many times to push a standard.
Now, if you include the cost of the DVD drive itself to the price of the DVD the SD card OS X installer is no longer price prohibitive and now affords Apple a great deal more room in the case and an entire side for which to add ports on the right side.
2) The argument that some people make that Apple could add ports anywhere is weak. Of course they could ad it anywhere, but we have to look at it from the company?s perspective. I don?t expect a fancy Japanese steakhouse to put in a drive through window, but they could. The new MacBooks show that Apple will only use a certain part of the case for ports. If not for the moving of the Kensington lock to the opposite side now that the latch mechanism lock is no longer needed and the removable of the stand-alone line-in jack there would have been no room for FW800 or the Sd card slot.
If you look at the pics you see that the last port in the line stops right where it did before; right before the battery. Apple could have made the battery smaller so that more ports on the left side could be fitted or even had it stick out of the center of the trackpad. The former isn?t Apple and latter is just hyperbole for hyperbole sake.
If the the optical drive goes away int he next revision. For those that need one Apple make one for $99 and other vendors make them for a lot less. For those that don?t you get so many more options, as do their engineers now that the largest single component and side real-estate hog is gone. I think Blu-ray is probably a no go, but I?d at least like to see OS support for HDCP for those who buy their own players. The cost of the new 9.5mm drives are just too high to justify. If Apple dropped EC/34 because 1% used it then BRDs seem like an impossibility unless the prices come down.
I'm sitting here wondering why people keep posting examples of how they use analog audio in, as if they can't do that any more with the loss of optical audio in. Even though the distinction has been pointed out. Several times.
With all due respect, you don't have a clue what you are talking about. The USB in that Line 6 box (my main "effects pedals" and "amp") is complete shit. Great amp modeling, crap USB interface.
Gotta love comments that start out "With all due respect" then go straight into complete jerkoff mode.
I was pointing out that that box has USB audio. Which it does. I'm not sure how you expected me to know how well that one specific piece of gear performs, and I imagine there's probably a way to make that point and correct me without going straight to insults.
And really, if Line6 put a crappy USB port on their box, shouldn't you be pissed at THEM and not me? What specifically is wrong with their USB implementation more specifically than being "complete shit"? I'd be curious to hear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John.B
Again, you don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about. Your lack of experience is obvious. USB in a high-IO or high-CPU utilization scenario is complete and utter crap. Come back and talk to me after you try recording a live session on a laptop over a USB interface.
I don't, do I? Way to make assumptions, sherlock - in fact I have been making my living doing audio recording for over a decade. Nice try though. And yeah, in fact, I have recorded a live session on a laptop with USB interface and it has worked fine every time for me.
Of course USB isn't as robust as firewire for audio recording. But we are talking about a situation where you need to pass ONE STEREO track of audio (you did say you're only bringing guitar on the road and leaving the rest plugged together in the studio, right?), and USB absolutely can handle that no problem. Or do you really think bringing in one guitar is a "high-IO" situation? Again, if Line6 screwed up their USB interface, then your beef is with them, in general for that sort of thing USB is just fine.
I'm not even sure what exactly you're disputing with the last bit of my post you quoted.
Are you saying your audio interface doesn't have SPDIF? (it does)
Are you saying that Audio Midi Setup doesn't allow creating aggregate devices? Or that you can't do it mixing USB and firewire?
Quote:
Originally Posted by John.B
Fanboys suck...
Pointing out that the Line6 has USB somehow makes me a "fanboy"? Would that be a USB fanboy? Or a Line6 fanboy? Or just an apple fanboy (because of course when your Line6 box doesn't work, it's Apple's fault, right)? And if you really want the full effect, it should be "fanboi".
Seriously, I'm not sure why you're so angry. We're just talking about recording a guitar to a laptop, it's not life or death. Or at least vent your anger where it should go, at some Line6 message board, they are the guys who sold you a piece of gear that doesn't work properly.
The battery and the hard drive? Dude, all laptops can't get rid of these two. But guess what? The ThinkPad team could fit the a audio input and a audio output, PCMCIA Slot, SD slot, a telephone jack (totally useless for most users), 3 USBs, one FW, VGA connector, and 1Gb LAN on the x61, which is a 12" ultraportable laptop developed TWO YEARS AGO, by getting rid of the DVD drive.
Again, based on my own speculation, I think DVD drive is the obstacle for putting more ports.
OK, my point was that the DVD drive isn't impeding on the ports because its on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COMPUTER!!
Here's a picture -
Hard drive and battery across the front, where the palmrest and trackpad is, DVD on the left and ports on the right of the picture. On the side of the case where the ports are, the ports run from the back edge and stop 2/3rds of the way along. so there are no ports where the battery is.
I still dont know how a drive on one side of the machine can stop ports being added to the other side. Tthe X61 probably has all those ports because its half an inch bigger at the thick end of its wedge shape, that gives you quite a bit more room in laptop packaging terms.
I agree with others about the potential removal of the optical drive now that SD cards can conceivably take their place. OTOH, optical media is so ubiquitous that it's hard to see the chain of events that would allow this to move forward in a big way. People really do watch movies on their laptop and the DVD is by far the dominant means of movie distribution. Digital downloads have not made a big dent in that stat.
An interesting development would be if a DVD player manufacturer were to put an SD slot on a DVD player. Now all of a sudden you have a dual-media player, capable of HD, right in the middle of someone's living room. Nothing would cause panic in Sony's HQ faster than this. And because you don't need dedicated burning and playback equipment for SD, you avoid rerunning the BD vs HD-DVD war. Would this be the event that gives a wholesale replacement of optical drives with SD some real traction, assuming movie distribution via SD takes hold?
OK, my point was that the DVD drive isn't impeding on the ports because its on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COMPUTER!!
Here's a picture -
[picture deleted by mechengit]
Hard drive and battery across the front, where the palmrest and trackpad is, DVD on the left and ports on the right of the picture. On the side of the case where the ports are, the ports run from the back edge and stop 2/3rds of the way along. so there are no ports where the battery is.
I still dont know how a drive on one side of the machine can stop ports being added to the other side. Tthe X61 probably has all those ports because its half an inch bigger at the thick end of its wedge shape, that gives you quite a bit more room in laptop packaging terms.
My point is simple... get rid of the DVD drive and there you can AT LEAST fit an ExpressCard on the DVD drive side. As I said earlier, most people don't really need DVD drive on the road, especially for those ultraportable users. That is why I think Apple should provide a second option of ExpressCard. Although, that will bring more logistics and management challenges for Apple.
Other technical challenges which I overlooked are the insistence on keeping the whole battery to be within the case and the insistence of leaving the back for screen hedge and ventilation. And to be honest, I don't really see how these two insistence benefit the users other than for the sake of aesthetic concerns.
Using the entire back for ventilation has never been proven to have a better cooling results than those of other competitors that vent the heat otherwise. If Apple is willing to drop this philosophy, they can potentially move the motherboard to the front and the battery to the back. That will create more ports on the front. (Then, Steve Jobs probably don't want to see holes on the front.) Moving the battery to the back can potentially make more room for the ports because you can extrude the battery out of the case while bringing the choice of swapping different batteries without tearing the case apart. That also means users can make their own trade-off between weight and battery-life. (Then again, Steve Jobs probably don't want to see something "sticking out" from the case.)
I agree with others about the potential removal of the optical drive now that SD cards can conceivably take their place. OTOH, optical media is so ubiquitous that it's hard to see the chain of events that would allow this to move forward in a big way. People really do watch movies on their laptop and the DVD is by far the dominant means of movie distribution. Digital downloads have not made a big dent in that stat.
An interesting development would be if a DVD player manufacturer were to put an SD slot on a DVD player. Now all of a sudden you have a dual-media player, capable of HD, right in the middle of someone's living room. Nothing would cause panic in Sony's HQ faster than this. And because you don't need dedicated burning and playback equipment for SD, you avoid rerunning the BD vs HD-DVD war. Would this be the event that gives a wholesale replacement of optical drives with SD some real traction, assuming movie distribution via SD takes hold?
There are plenty of examples in personal computing where we?ve chosen to transition from one tech to another. Apple has been at the forefront of many of these changes. Some are backwards compatible with the previous tech, like DVI for mDP, but others just require a complete dropping like PCMCIA for ExpressCard, and floppy for optical drives.
All the examples given were still possible with external options. Of course, people don?t want to lose the optical drive just so they can fork over $99 for an optical drive that they can carry with their notebook. We have to remember that Apple has yet to support Blu-ray in any capacity (except for being in consortium from a decade back), is pushing their digital downloads so hard that you can now rent and buy movies over your iPod Touch and iPhone, and the benefit of default optical media for notebook computer is no longer a hard fast requirement.
For home entertainment systems Blu-ray is the future format. But for a personal computer there are just too many limitations that affect its viability.
Hard drive and battery across the front, where the palmrest and trackpad is, DVD on the left and ports on the right of the picture. On the side of the case where the ports are, the ports run from the back edge and stop 2/3rds of the way along. so there are no ports where the battery is.
I still dont know how a drive on one side of the machine can stop ports being added to the other side. Tthe X61 probably has all those ports because its half an inch bigger at the thick end of its wedge shape, that gives you quite a bit more room in laptop packaging terms.
I had to read your post a few times to understand your argument. I think you are stating that the optical drive doesn?t affect the ability for Apple to add ports. If so, then I disagree. Two-thirds of the right side with the optical drive slot could be used from more ports.
I agree with others about the potential removal of the optical drive now that SD cards can conceivably take their place. OTOH, optical media is so ubiquitous that it's hard to see the chain of events that would allow this to move forward in a big way. People really do watch movies on their laptop and the DVD is by far the dominant means of movie distribution. Digital downloads have not made a big dent in that stat.
An interesting development would be if a DVD player manufacturer were to put an SD slot on a DVD player. Now all of a sudden you have a dual-media player, capable of HD, right in the middle of someone's living room. Nothing would cause panic in Sony's HQ faster than this. And because you don't need dedicated burning and playback equipment for SD, you avoid rerunning the BD vs HD-DVD war. Would this be the event that gives a wholesale replacement of optical drives with SD some real traction, assuming movie distribution via SD takes hold?
My take is it makes more sense to have optical drive on bigger laptops such as the 15" MacBook Pro. It also makes sense to have optical drive on a 13" MacBook Pro if the users really need it, even though I haven't seen any Macbook users that actually utilize the optical drive on the road.
It doesn't really make sense to build optical drive on ultraportable laptops because now ultraportable has a smaller screen, which is not suitable for watching video especially ON THE ROAD. It also isn't suitable for burning discs ON THE ROAD because the optical drive is a battery hog and you really need to bring a cord if you're going to use it ON THE ROAD, which breaks the purpose of an ultraportable. Not to mention the potential lack of computing power (especially in power saving mode ON THE ROAD) to edit video before burning into a disc.
My take is it makes more sense to have optical drive on bigger laptops such as the 15" MacBook Pro. It also makes sense to have optical drive on a 13" MacBook Pro if the users really need it, even though I haven't seen any Macbook users that actually utilize the optical drive on the road.
I have the "original" 13" Unibody Macbook, and for me, the biggest limiting factor was the hard drive. I, as many other users have commented, found the optical drive to be a waste of space. Luckily, adding a second hard drive in place of the optical drive a lot more doable than adding needed ports.
I picked up an "OptiBay" kit from MCE, and installed two 500GB HDs in that little MacBook. Now, with a terabyte of space I have room to spare.
There really is a lot of space to be freed up inside of that computer by removing the optical drive. Although I am probably not typical of a "normal" consumer, optical media is definitely dead to me. I would love to see Apple do something innovative with that space and give the people what they want.
I think Apple is experiencing an interesting point in its evolution right now, as it has become increasingly appealing to the mainstream because of the reputation that the company gained among its early cult followers. Now, in an effort to cater to that growing mainstream market, it is making compromises that cut against what many of the "old-school" Mac users really want.
Hopefully Steve and crew will get it figured out and be able to please most of the people most of the time!
Comments
plugging an audio jack into a laptop is a BAD idea in my experience. anything you can do with a digital audio in can be done better and more safely with usb, very cheaply, these days
Worked great for me. More safely? What do you think the audio in does, explode when you plug in an audio cable?
Not sure if I understand: you say that if you use the now unique audio port as input, you have to redirect the output elsewhere. Why then use the built-in speakers and not a USB headphones set?
Hmmh, that is possible...
I guess I'd be called "old school" since my audio inputs (and mic) and headphones and speakers all use the 1/8" mini plugs and jacks. I haven't gotten around to getting any usb audio devices... some day no doubt.
Worked great for me. More safely? What do you think the audio in does, explode when you plug in an audio cable?
I assume he means with less risk of buzzing or other audio problems. Built in analog in is virtually always going to be inferior to using an external box, it's just a question of whether built in is good enough for a particular user.
so funny. when FW was dropped, Apple Insider wrote articles saying "consumers don't use firewire anyway", "apple removed it because we don't need it?
That hasn?t changed. Consumers don?t use Firewire nearly as much as they use or need the other port options. Plus, only the chicken heads claiming the sky was falling thought FW was going away, instead of just FW400.
and FW is back, and "now you can get the mac experience of target disk mode again"
TDM is overrated as it reruires 2 Macs and a FW-to-FW cable that people probably don?t have. I find it much easier to simply boot off an external drive when there are problems with my internal HDD. Just down the option key and choose the USB boot drive I put on my Time Machine drive. Always with me, always waiting.
And clicking on the link, I see the Line6 also has USB output, so even without digital audio in, you can still send the signal digitally to the laptop. You'd have to hook up using a different cable, but no loss of quality in this situation.
With all due respect, you don't have a clue what you are talking about. The USB in that Line 6 box (my main "effects pedals" and "amp") is complete shit. Great amp modeling, crap USB interface.
That FW interface does have spdif, so yet another way he could bring in his guitar digitally. And you should be able to use multiple interfaces simultaneously with Logic (even mixing FW and USB), you just need to go into the Audio Midi Setup app and combine the two as a virtual aggregate device.
Couldn't you do that on this new machine by connecting the USB output of the line6 to the laptop? No FW needed.
Again, you don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about. Your lack of experience is obvious. USB in a high-IO or high-CPU utilization scenario is complete and utter crap. Come back and talk to me after you try recording a live session on a laptop over a USB interface.
Fanboys suck...
As long as sneaker net lives, there will be a market for a cheap storage device that allows for one use. $0.04 for a disk that I can burn and give someone VS a ~$20 flash chip that I would want back? no contest.
BluRay media is not $0.04 each. Almost everyone I know has a USB flash drive and when they need something I either email it to them, use iDisk, or copy it to their flash drive. I haven't used my DVD drive for copying data months now.
That hasn?t changed. Consumers don?t use Firewire nearly as much as they use or need the other port options. Plus, only the chicken heads claiming the sky was falling thought FW was going away, instead of just FW400.
TDM is overrated as it reruires 2 Macs and a FW-to-FW cable that people probably don?t have. I find it much easier to simply boot off an external drive when there are problems with my internal HDD. Just down the option key and choose the USB boot drive I put on my Time Machine drive. Always with me, always waiting.
Its overrated until you have to use it.
Seems your able to create a boot drive off a SD card using Disk Utility.
The new 2TB SD standard uses a M$ exFAT file structure, since the new SD card is the same as older ones in size and shape/pins. Only difference is speed and larger storage..
Remains to be seen if file structure can be changed to HFS+ and if the speed is there hardware to match.
2TB on a SD card, bootable or a clone of a hard drive would be extremely valuable for laptop owners on the go.
The DVD drive is on the right, the ports are on the left. The space isn't an issue because of the DVD drive, the battery and hard drive is probably whats taking the space.
The battery and the hard drive? Dude, all laptops can't get rid of these two. But guess what? The ThinkPad team could fit the a audio input and a audio output, PCMCIA Slot, SD slot, a telephone jack (totally useless for most users), 3 USBs, one FW, VGA connector, and 1Gb LAN on the x61, which is a 12" ultraportable laptop developed TWO YEARS AGO, by getting rid of the DVD drive.
Again, based on my own speculation, I think DVD drive is the obstacle for putting more ports.
My guess on why Apple has so much trouble fitting the ports.
1. It's likely that the DVD burner is taking a huge chunk of the side area. I really suggest that Apple to give a second option of removing the DVD burner and replace it with ExpressCard and digital audio input or whatsoever. Most users barely use the DVD player on the road, so getting rid of this dead weight makes sense.
2. Steve Jobs insists that no ports can be built in the front because of his aesthetic concern. This is just my wild guess, but entirely possible.
1) I wonder if SDHC cards or the new SDXC standard introduce this year allow for any HW encryption that could protect OS X in the future if Apple went to SD cards for OS installs. I have stated previously that USB flash drives would be great as they are very fast and are very ?green' as they take up very little room.
The cards are still price prohibitive when directly compared to the cost of a SL-DVD or DL-DVD, but is the price difference enough to make it an issue for Apple in the future. After all, this is Apple, the company that gone after more expensive over cheaper many times to push a standard.
Now, if you include the cost of the DVD drive itself to the price of the DVD the SD card OS X installer is no longer price prohibitive and now affords Apple a great deal more room in the case and an entire side for which to add ports on the right side.
2) The argument that some people make that Apple could add ports anywhere is weak. Of course they could ad it anywhere, but we have to look at it from the company?s perspective. I don?t expect a fancy Japanese steakhouse to put in a drive through window, but they could. The new MacBooks show that Apple will only use a certain part of the case for ports. If not for the moving of the Kensington lock to the opposite side now that the latch mechanism lock is no longer needed and the removable of the stand-alone line-in jack there would have been no room for FW800 or the Sd card slot.
If you look at the pics you see that the last port in the line stops right where it did before; right before the battery. Apple could have made the battery smaller so that more ports on the left side could be fitted or even had it stick out of the center of the trackpad. The former isn?t Apple and latter is just hyperbole for hyperbole sake.
If the the optical drive goes away int he next revision. For those that need one Apple make one for $99 and other vendors make them for a lot less. For those that don?t you get so many more options, as do their engineers now that the largest single component and side real-estate hog is gone. I think Blu-ray is probably a no go, but I?d at least like to see OS support for HDCP for those who buy their own players. The cost of the new 9.5mm drives are just too high to justify. If Apple dropped EC/34 because 1% used it then BRDs seem like an impossibility unless the prices come down.
With all due respect, you don't have a clue what you are talking about. The USB in that Line 6 box (my main "effects pedals" and "amp") is complete shit. Great amp modeling, crap USB interface.
Gotta love comments that start out "With all due respect" then go straight into complete jerkoff mode.
I was pointing out that that box has USB audio. Which it does. I'm not sure how you expected me to know how well that one specific piece of gear performs, and I imagine there's probably a way to make that point and correct me without going straight to insults.
And really, if Line6 put a crappy USB port on their box, shouldn't you be pissed at THEM and not me? What specifically is wrong with their USB implementation more specifically than being "complete shit"? I'd be curious to hear.
Again, you don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about. Your lack of experience is obvious. USB in a high-IO or high-CPU utilization scenario is complete and utter crap. Come back and talk to me after you try recording a live session on a laptop over a USB interface.
I don't, do I? Way to make assumptions, sherlock - in fact I have been making my living doing audio recording for over a decade. Nice try though. And yeah, in fact, I have recorded a live session on a laptop with USB interface and it has worked fine every time for me.
Of course USB isn't as robust as firewire for audio recording. But we are talking about a situation where you need to pass ONE STEREO track of audio (you did say you're only bringing guitar on the road and leaving the rest plugged together in the studio, right?), and USB absolutely can handle that no problem. Or do you really think bringing in one guitar is a "high-IO" situation? Again, if Line6 screwed up their USB interface, then your beef is with them, in general for that sort of thing USB is just fine.
I'm not even sure what exactly you're disputing with the last bit of my post you quoted.
Are you saying your audio interface doesn't have SPDIF? (it does)
Are you saying that Audio Midi Setup doesn't allow creating aggregate devices? Or that you can't do it mixing USB and firewire?
Fanboys suck...
Pointing out that the Line6 has USB somehow makes me a "fanboy"? Would that be a USB fanboy? Or a Line6 fanboy? Or just an apple fanboy (because of course when your Line6 box doesn't work, it's Apple's fault, right)? And if you really want the full effect, it should be "fanboi".
Seriously, I'm not sure why you're so angry. We're just talking about recording a guitar to a laptop, it's not life or death. Or at least vent your anger where it should go, at some Line6 message board, they are the guys who sold you a piece of gear that doesn't work properly.
Take a deep breath. It's OK.
Feel better now?
The battery and the hard drive? Dude, all laptops can't get rid of these two. But guess what? The ThinkPad team could fit the a audio input and a audio output, PCMCIA Slot, SD slot, a telephone jack (totally useless for most users), 3 USBs, one FW, VGA connector, and 1Gb LAN on the x61, which is a 12" ultraportable laptop developed TWO YEARS AGO, by getting rid of the DVD drive.
Again, based on my own speculation, I think DVD drive is the obstacle for putting more ports.
OK, my point was that the DVD drive isn't impeding on the ports because its on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COMPUTER!!
Here's a picture -
Hard drive and battery across the front, where the palmrest and trackpad is, DVD on the left and ports on the right of the picture. On the side of the case where the ports are, the ports run from the back edge and stop 2/3rds of the way along. so there are no ports where the battery is.
I still dont know how a drive on one side of the machine can stop ports being added to the other side. Tthe X61 probably has all those ports because its half an inch bigger at the thick end of its wedge shape, that gives you quite a bit more room in laptop packaging terms.
An interesting development would be if a DVD player manufacturer were to put an SD slot on a DVD player. Now all of a sudden you have a dual-media player, capable of HD, right in the middle of someone's living room. Nothing would cause panic in Sony's HQ faster than this. And because you don't need dedicated burning and playback equipment for SD, you avoid rerunning the BD vs HD-DVD war. Would this be the event that gives a wholesale replacement of optical drives with SD some real traction, assuming movie distribution via SD takes hold?
OK, my point was that the DVD drive isn't impeding on the ports because its on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COMPUTER!!
Here's a picture -
[picture deleted by mechengit]
Hard drive and battery across the front, where the palmrest and trackpad is, DVD on the left and ports on the right of the picture. On the side of the case where the ports are, the ports run from the back edge and stop 2/3rds of the way along. so there are no ports where the battery is.
I still dont know how a drive on one side of the machine can stop ports being added to the other side. Tthe X61 probably has all those ports because its half an inch bigger at the thick end of its wedge shape, that gives you quite a bit more room in laptop packaging terms.
My point is simple... get rid of the DVD drive and there you can AT LEAST fit an ExpressCard on the DVD drive side. As I said earlier, most people don't really need DVD drive on the road, especially for those ultraportable users. That is why I think Apple should provide a second option of ExpressCard. Although, that will bring more logistics and management challenges for Apple.
Other technical challenges which I overlooked are the insistence on keeping the whole battery to be within the case and the insistence of leaving the back for screen hedge and ventilation. And to be honest, I don't really see how these two insistence benefit the users other than for the sake of aesthetic concerns.
Using the entire back for ventilation has never been proven to have a better cooling results than those of other competitors that vent the heat otherwise. If Apple is willing to drop this philosophy, they can potentially move the motherboard to the front and the battery to the back. That will create more ports on the front. (Then, Steve Jobs probably don't want to see holes on the front.) Moving the battery to the back can potentially make more room for the ports because you can extrude the battery out of the case while bringing the choice of swapping different batteries without tearing the case apart. That also means users can make their own trade-off between weight and battery-life. (Then again, Steve Jobs probably don't want to see something "sticking out" from the case.)
I agree with others about the potential removal of the optical drive now that SD cards can conceivably take their place. OTOH, optical media is so ubiquitous that it's hard to see the chain of events that would allow this to move forward in a big way. People really do watch movies on their laptop and the DVD is by far the dominant means of movie distribution. Digital downloads have not made a big dent in that stat.
An interesting development would be if a DVD player manufacturer were to put an SD slot on a DVD player. Now all of a sudden you have a dual-media player, capable of HD, right in the middle of someone's living room. Nothing would cause panic in Sony's HQ faster than this. And because you don't need dedicated burning and playback equipment for SD, you avoid rerunning the BD vs HD-DVD war. Would this be the event that gives a wholesale replacement of optical drives with SD some real traction, assuming movie distribution via SD takes hold?
There are plenty of examples in personal computing where we?ve chosen to transition from one tech to another. Apple has been at the forefront of many of these changes. Some are backwards compatible with the previous tech, like DVI for mDP, but others just require a complete dropping like PCMCIA for ExpressCard, and floppy for optical drives.
All the examples given were still possible with external options. Of course, people don?t want to lose the optical drive just so they can fork over $99 for an optical drive that they can carry with their notebook. We have to remember that Apple has yet to support Blu-ray in any capacity (except for being in consortium from a decade back), is pushing their digital downloads so hard that you can now rent and buy movies over your iPod Touch and iPhone, and the benefit of default optical media for notebook computer is no longer a hard fast requirement.
For home entertainment systems Blu-ray is the future format. But for a personal computer there are just too many limitations that affect its viability.
OK, my point was that the DVD drive isn't impeding on the ports because its on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COMPUTER!!
Here's a picture -
image: ]http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/06/6-10-09mbp.jpg
Hard drive and battery across the front, where the palmrest and trackpad is, DVD on the left and ports on the right of the picture. On the side of the case where the ports are, the ports run from the back edge and stop 2/3rds of the way along. so there are no ports where the battery is.
I still dont know how a drive on one side of the machine can stop ports being added to the other side. Tthe X61 probably has all those ports because its half an inch bigger at the thick end of its wedge shape, that gives you quite a bit more room in laptop packaging terms.
I had to read your post a few times to understand your argument. I think you are stating that the optical drive doesn?t affect the ability for Apple to add ports. If so, then I disagree. Two-thirds of the right side with the optical drive slot could be used from more ports.
I agree with others about the potential removal of the optical drive now that SD cards can conceivably take their place. OTOH, optical media is so ubiquitous that it's hard to see the chain of events that would allow this to move forward in a big way. People really do watch movies on their laptop and the DVD is by far the dominant means of movie distribution. Digital downloads have not made a big dent in that stat.
An interesting development would be if a DVD player manufacturer were to put an SD slot on a DVD player. Now all of a sudden you have a dual-media player, capable of HD, right in the middle of someone's living room. Nothing would cause panic in Sony's HQ faster than this. And because you don't need dedicated burning and playback equipment for SD, you avoid rerunning the BD vs HD-DVD war. Would this be the event that gives a wholesale replacement of optical drives with SD some real traction, assuming movie distribution via SD takes hold?
My take is it makes more sense to have optical drive on bigger laptops such as the 15" MacBook Pro. It also makes sense to have optical drive on a 13" MacBook Pro if the users really need it, even though I haven't seen any Macbook users that actually utilize the optical drive on the road.
It doesn't really make sense to build optical drive on ultraportable laptops because now ultraportable has a smaller screen, which is not suitable for watching video especially ON THE ROAD. It also isn't suitable for burning discs ON THE ROAD because the optical drive is a battery hog and you really need to bring a cord if you're going to use it ON THE ROAD, which breaks the purpose of an ultraportable. Not to mention the potential lack of computing power (especially in power saving mode ON THE ROAD) to edit video before burning into a disc.
My take is it makes more sense to have optical drive on bigger laptops such as the 15" MacBook Pro. It also makes sense to have optical drive on a 13" MacBook Pro if the users really need it, even though I haven't seen any Macbook users that actually utilize the optical drive on the road.
I have the "original" 13" Unibody Macbook, and for me, the biggest limiting factor was the hard drive. I, as many other users have commented, found the optical drive to be a waste of space. Luckily, adding a second hard drive in place of the optical drive a lot more doable than adding needed ports.
I picked up an "OptiBay" kit from MCE, and installed two 500GB HDs in that little MacBook. Now, with a terabyte of space I have room to spare.
There really is a lot of space to be freed up inside of that computer by removing the optical drive. Although I am probably not typical of a "normal" consumer, optical media is definitely dead to me. I would love to see Apple do something innovative with that space and give the people what they want.
I think Apple is experiencing an interesting point in its evolution right now, as it has become increasingly appealing to the mainstream because of the reputation that the company gained among its early cult followers. Now, in an effort to cater to that growing mainstream market, it is making compromises that cut against what many of the "old-school" Mac users really want.
Hopefully Steve and crew will get it figured out and be able to please most of the people most of the time!