y'know, not having BluRay I hadn't even thought of this angle. Of all the things people have mentioned, this one makes the most sense.
Still, what is the added cost of a BluRay read and write drive in a notebook? I honestly don't know, but it has got to be up there. $200? $250? More?
How many people have a large library of BluRay titles? 2%? 1% Less?
Seems to me that for now, downloading HD content from iTunes would be more cost effective even if you would have to duplicate a few titles...
Perhaps. But you're not following history. The cost will drop and eventually there will be little or no cost premium over DVD. That's probably 2 years away. Do you want a computer you buy this year to be obsolete in 2 years simply because you were unwilling to pay the $200 premium for BR today?
And the number having a large library of titles isn't relevant. The number who will have a large number of BR titles in two years is what matters - again, unless you're willing to throw out the computer you buy today next year.
Even if BR is a $500 premium, it's a reasonable option in a $3 K computer. I'd pay it and I know lots of people who would. Even if you don't have BR movies today, it guarantees you a much longer life. And I would argue that the percentage of people who can afford a $3 K computer who have at least one BR disk is significant even today.
If I buy a Hi Def DVD, I'm not gonna wait until I'm flying someplace to watch it on my laptop. And if I've bought one and recently watched it on a HD TV, I'm not gonna pack it in my carry-on baggage so I can watch it again while I'm flying.
It's just my personal choice, of course, but I'd rather not pay for someone to shoehorn a Blu-Ray player/burner into a laptop when I can download a whole bunch of movies from iTunes and not have to carry anything besides the computer to watch them. Granted, the onscreen display of a downloaded film may not be as incredible as an HD disc, but I've yet to sit in an airplane for long where the visual quality of a movie on a laptop was what made my flight uncomfortable.
One minute we're wanting laptops that take up less space, and then next we're talking about schlepping a bunch of movies around the planet along with the computer. In my travel experience, I didn't so much want more movies to watch, but more legroom. And instead of taking HD discs to play on the flight, I'll be packing an extra set of underwear and socks for when I'm back on the ground and they've lost my luggage.
You seem to be unable to comprehend that different people have different needs.
SOME people want the thinnest, lightest laptop they can get (often business travelers). OTOH, some people want a full featured laptop. And believe it or not, some people actually carry DVDs with them. When I travel with my daughter, we almost always have half a dozen DVDs in my case - even movies that she's seen repeatedly before.
With a name like Gatesbasher I would hardly think you are one to take even remotely serious in calling up one for not being positive.
I have and do say things positive about Apple all the time having used Apple for 9 years. Sorry if anything I've said struck a chord in you. Ease up on the Apple Kool-Aid my friend, you're much too sensitive.
OK, I'll start the ball rolling by chewing Apple a new one: how's that?
I am really upset at the obvious path they have mapped out to kill off optical media on all their equipment; the MacBook Air is just the thin end of the wedge. They sit around all day at Cupertino and think everybody in the world has the same kind of broadband access that they do; they think anybody can just buy a new Mac and start downloading movies and TV from iTunes and will never want to buy physical media again. They declared the CD dead years ago, now the DVD is dead, and according to all the Kool-Aid-drinking tech geeks, Blu-Ray is dead on arrival. Some of us have been waiting 25 years for this moment: True HDTVs available at high, but no longer insane prices, and a way to buy content in a quality that puts movie theaters to shame. Now if Apple has its way, the only access to HD content will be online, at 720p, and severely compressed, because they've unilaterally decided that "Nobody can tell the difference."
They've already created a generation of tin-eared barbarians who have never even heard the kind of sound quality that was entry-level 35 years ago, and can stand to listen to 128 kbps ice-pick-in-the-ear "music" without clapping their hands over their ears and screaming: "Please God, make it stop!" By the time the infrastructure exists for the whole country to enjoy their wireless utopia, 20 to 50 years from now, a couple of more generations will have grown up unable to "tell the difference" between 1080p uncompressed and 720p butchered beyond recognition; why should they, they never bought TVs that could show them the difference, because they can't download it, and Blu-Ray tanked. They're already content to pay hundreds of dollars for "Home Theater Systems" with 9% Total Harmonic Distortion. 9%!JESUS WEPT! 30 years ago, 0.1% was absolutely rock-bottom for anything other than the vilest sort of consumer crap. I don't even want to imagine what 128 kbps with 9% THD sounds like!
Apple isn't the only culprit in this by any means, but they're leading the way in many of these areas, and if their vision prevails, this is what will happen. Of course, by the time their vision is fully realized, I'll be dead (fortunately.) (Oh, yeah, according to Steve Jobs "Nobody reads anymore" either, so I guess the publishing industry needs to shut down as well.)
Maybe this will show how much of an Apple Kool-Aid drinker I am.
Why do you want BluRay on your laptop? Will you be able to see that much difference in video playback on a 15 inch screen? Ir is it that you frequently find youself needing to burn 40 GB of data to a disk when you are at Starbucks?
Sorry for being flip, but I don't see the point of salivating over this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrjoec123
It's one of those features that sounds great on paper but doesn't amount to much in the real world. Like Safari on the Apple TV, or Flash on the iPhone. Everyone wants it, but if they had it, the experience wouldn't match the expectation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GQB
Well put. Kinda like people who want HD on iPhones.
As it seems to have escaped all your attentions, Computers are used by professionals in the Film/photography/music business, not just for downloading from iTunes in Starbucks, so a Blu Ray drive for backups is of huge benefit.
DVD has been too small for years to be used for that purpose. I'm not buying a new laptop until writable BluRay is onboard.
As it seems to have escaped all your attentions, Computers are used by professionals in the Film/photography/music business, not just for downloading from iTunes in Starbucks, so a Blu Ray drive for backups is of huge benefit.
DVD has been too small for years to be used for that purpose. I'm not buying a new laptop until writable BluRay is onboard.
it seems to me if you're doing processor intensive work, time is best spent on a mac pro.. i haven't met many (creative) professionals who use a laptop primarily as their main design computer.
it seems to me if you're doing processor intensive work, time is best spent on a mac pro.. i haven't met many (creative) professionals who use a laptop primarily as their main design computer.
That's rapidly changing.
As portable Macs and PCs become more powerful, storage as inexpensive, and software as sophisticated as it has ever been, portability offers a new cost/performance advantage to film and television producers.
A catalyst for the above is this year's election season. Indeed, the availability of highly portable OB (outside broadcast) editing platforms makes it easier and more timely for news organizations to create a slick piece in the field, rather than sending footage back to the studio for editing.
The cost of pro-sumer and professional HD equipment (e.g. video cameras) has dropped significantly. And the production value is so good, it makes news, documentary and independent film productions look just as professional as traditional methods.
The company I work for is at the forefront of this change. We're able to put together a fairly sophisticated HD editing workstation on one or two portable carts, with a high-end MBP as the NLE (typically running Final Cut Pro).
The lack of a Blu Ray drive is the very reason I will wait for the redesign. The MacBook Pro will be my first Mac. I am looking for a solution for editing and burning HD content from my HD camcorder. Within the next few years, most camcorders will be High Definition and people will be looking for solutions for editing and burning.
The lack of a Blu Ray drive is the very reason I will wait for the redesign. The MacBook Pro will be my first Mac. I am looking for a solution for editing and burning HD content from my HD camcorder. Within the next few years, most camcorders will be High Definition and people will be looking for solutions for editing and burning.
Then get a 3rd-party BD burner from one of various vendors.
You seem to be unable to comprehend that different people have different needs.
How about you re-read my post, where I explicitly say, "it's just my personal choice..., etc." before you go climbing all over my ass with an absurd public comment like that.
If what you meant to say is, "I don't really give a shit what your thoughts are, Zanshin, my habits include packing Blu-Ray DVDs and $3500 computers when I take my kids places," then say that. Don't disguise your own inability to accept that I PERSONALLY don't want the added cost making Blu-Ray a "standard feature" by saying that I can't comprehend other's needs.
I've deployed Mac laptops since the PowerBook 140 was the big deal, for engineers, accountants, HR teams, construction managers, CFOs, IT staff and communication creatives. I've been taking the computing needs of others into consideration to justify new Mac purchases probably longer than you've been able to reproduce.
I would suggest that instead of replaying videos for your spawn while traveling to keep them quiet, you read to them, but apparently that's still a bit beyond your own skill set.
Then get a 3rd-party BD burner from one of various vendors.
I'd agree with that -- it's usually a lot cheaper than trying to fit one into a laptop where you never seem to use it enough to justify the extra cost, and it makes replacing the burner with whatever format is current (or typically more desirable, a faster burning device) a whole lot easier.
It doesn't solve a user's need or desire to carry discs and play them in transit, but if it's personally developed content, one might always just choose to playback from the HDD.
it seems to me if you're doing processor intensive work, time is best spent on a mac pro.. i haven't met many (creative) professionals who use a laptop primarily as their main design computer.
I'm currently using a MBP 2.33GHz for creative work: PShop, Indesign, etc. It's pretty adequate for the tasks I use (industrial B2B marketing communication), but my file sizes are typically in the sub-100mb category. It gets a bit bogged down on >350mb .PSD files, even with maxed 3GB memory and a FW800 drive for scratch disk.
For backups, I go with HDs all the way. With 500gb SATA drives for well under $100 USD, it's cost effective. If I'm really paranoid, I make double copies to different drives. There are lots of good solutions to use hot-swap HDDs, and the read/write speed is a whole lot faster than burning any optical media.
I don't believe user-burned Blu-Ray discs have stood the test of time yet to qualify as a good back-up selection. Heck, it's only relatively recent news (in the last few years) that we've become aware of the danger of marker pens on optical media surfaces causing data integrity issues over time.
A good 120-200gb 2.5" HD in a FW/eSATA /USB2 case is very portable, voluminous, and cost effective compared to an untested drive that hasn't got enough market penetration to make your backups usable anywhere. A Blu-Ray disc backup is only good in a functioning Blu-Ray drive. The world is full of computers with USB and FW ports to connect to.
That's understandable, however in the realm of graphic design studios, a laptop is quite impractical, unless you're a freelancer. I work at a studio decorated in Mac Pros, with dual monitors on an xServe. For the fast paced, deadline hungry clients we deal with, the power a Mac Pro has, is much more reliable than a notebook. Of course, I am purchasing a MBP for my home freelance work, but there, I'm hooking it up to a Cinema display when I work.
So my point: Towers are powerful and good for office professionals, Notebooks are powerful and good for on the go professionals.
@ zanshin:
That's cool. My old Mac Mini was more reliable than some of classmate's Macbook Pro's, but I'm still breaking down and getting one. At home I back up over an Airport Extreme connected to a 2TB HDD. I don't think I would have a use for Blu-ray. I watch movies, sure, but I think the fact that a hundred digital movies takes up as much space as your hard drive, and a hundred Blu-ray Discs take up a whole shelf. So, I agree, plug a drive in, back it up, store it away, update the files; it's much easier than waiting for a disc to burn.
Then get a 3rd-party BD burner from one of various vendors.
It's an option I'll consider. I would prefer an integrated one. Blu Ray players will become commonplace in the near future and disks seem ideal, not for archiving, but for sharing media. They are coming, whether you want them or not.
It's an option I'll consider. I would prefer an integrated one. Blu Ray players will become commonplace in the near future and disks seem ideal, not for archiving, but for sharing media. They are coming, whether you want them or not.
If you are a stationary user a Mac Pro may be a better fit for you. You could then have a internal BD burner. You still couldn't play store bought BD movies with the HDCP limitations, but you mention that as a need anyway.
As for commonplace, I don't agree with that. There are very players out there compared to other optical players, and per capita for the US and EU is still very low. As for BD burners, i don't even know think that has a 1% marketshare by any measure.
I'd like to see future machines forego optical drives after this next case revision. Ideally, I'd like to happen with the next case revision, but that may be too soon, at least psychologically, for most. The optical drive, while inexpensive, take up a lot of room that could be used to reduce size and weight and add a larger battery and make for less difficult build. I think 2010 would be a good time for Apple to begin this industry shift.
I think this is a very astute observation. But isn't there already a machine that fits this description: the Apple MacBook Air. When it was launched, everyone said where the hell is the DVD drive, but now with iTunes making movies so easily available, who needs it?
The only reason I can think of having a DVD drive with a MacBook Air is to load software. But shouldn't the likes of Microsfot think about providing software on media other than DVDs? How about a USB memory stick containing Office 2008?
So maybe it is time to say goodbye to the DVD drive. I would just ask Apple to replace it with additional USB ports.
If the MacBook Air is the blueprint for future computers, All it really needs is an SSD drive that has 250 Gb of space. I'll get one as soon as it offers 128 Gbs.
I have almost no knowledge to new hardware so please forgive me if my question is stupid. I wonder how big the difference will be between this rumored "Montevina Centrino 2 platform" and the recently upgraded "Penryn processors" in the "Santa Rosa mobile platform"? I am flying to China around the end of June and I plan to buy a new MacBook. I wonder if the rumor one will be available at that time. Thanks for advance!
I have almost no knowledge to new hardware so please forgive me if my question is stupid. I wonder how big the difference will be between this rumored "Montevina Centrino 2 platform" and the recently upgraded "Penryn processors" in the "Santa Rosa mobile platform"? I am flying to China around the end of June and I plan to buy a new MacBook. I wonder if the rumor one will be available at that time. Thanks for advance!
I wouldn't hold my breath for the end of June.
It is hard to say what the performance differences will be. Some will know theoretical numbers, but those don't always tell you the real world results.
But none of that matters, as I see it. If you need your computer for the trip as your post implies, I would be very wary of buying a revision A product just before the journey--you might not have time to discover the reliability issues of this particular build beforehand and if something did go wrong, you might have a hell of a time repairing/replacing your computer while traveling. Just my 2¢.
That's understandable, however in the realm of graphic design studios, a laptop is quite impractical, unless you're a freelancer. I work at a studio decorated in Mac Pros, with dual monitors on an xServe. For the fast paced, deadline hungry clients we deal with, the power a Mac Pro has, is much more reliable than a notebook. Of course, I am purchasing a MBP for my home freelance work, but there, I'm hooking it up to a Cinema display when I work.
So my point: Towers are powerful and good for office professionals, Notebooks are powerful and good for on the go professionals.
I'm getting antsy over waiting to buy a new Mac Pro for my home studio. I both freelance and work full-time, but provide my own Mac and software to my day job to spare them the cost of buying a single Mac in a room full of PCs. So the MBP works well for that. I've got three aging G5s that used to seem pretty quick until I got into the Intel-based Mac laptop.
However, I just got a new Sony tapeless HDV camcorder, and want the muscle a multi-cored, multi-processor tower offers for FCP. The MBP lets me pop the 8gb Sony media card into the ExpressCard 34 slot and copy video files without digitizing tape, but I want a tower for actual editing and rendering HD video.
In a "perfect" world, I would have a couple of everything Apple offers, although I fear new "Enema" displays will never arrive. I bought a 23" Al a while back when they were still god-awful expensive, and have watched it turn pink over time. This year I bent over backwards trying to convince myself an Apple 30" display would be the right way to go (since the MBP will drive it), but in the end gave in to the quality of a 24" EIZO CG241W. Its form-factor is so ugly it makes a Dell LCD display look sleek (like a military truck compared to a sports coupe), but the screen image is awesome. It should be -- it cost way more than my MBP!
Comments
y'know, not having BluRay I hadn't even thought of this angle. Of all the things people have mentioned, this one makes the most sense.
Still, what is the added cost of a BluRay read and write drive in a notebook? I honestly don't know, but it has got to be up there. $200? $250? More?
How many people have a large library of BluRay titles? 2%? 1% Less?
Seems to me that for now, downloading HD content from iTunes would be more cost effective even if you would have to duplicate a few titles...
Perhaps. But you're not following history. The cost will drop and eventually there will be little or no cost premium over DVD. That's probably 2 years away. Do you want a computer you buy this year to be obsolete in 2 years simply because you were unwilling to pay the $200 premium for BR today?
And the number having a large library of titles isn't relevant. The number who will have a large number of BR titles in two years is what matters - again, unless you're willing to throw out the computer you buy today next year.
Even if BR is a $500 premium, it's a reasonable option in a $3 K computer. I'd pay it and I know lots of people who would. Even if you don't have BR movies today, it guarantees you a much longer life. And I would argue that the percentage of people who can afford a $3 K computer who have at least one BR disk is significant even today.
If I buy a Hi Def DVD, I'm not gonna wait until I'm flying someplace to watch it on my laptop. And if I've bought one and recently watched it on a HD TV, I'm not gonna pack it in my carry-on baggage so I can watch it again while I'm flying.
It's just my personal choice, of course, but I'd rather not pay for someone to shoehorn a Blu-Ray player/burner into a laptop when I can download a whole bunch of movies from iTunes and not have to carry anything besides the computer to watch them. Granted, the onscreen display of a downloaded film may not be as incredible as an HD disc, but I've yet to sit in an airplane for long where the visual quality of a movie on a laptop was what made my flight uncomfortable.
One minute we're wanting laptops that take up less space, and then next we're talking about schlepping a bunch of movies around the planet along with the computer. In my travel experience, I didn't so much want more movies to watch, but more legroom. And instead of taking HD discs to play on the flight, I'll be packing an extra set of underwear and socks for when I'm back on the ground and they've lost my luggage.
You seem to be unable to comprehend that different people have different needs.
SOME people want the thinnest, lightest laptop they can get (often business travelers). OTOH, some people want a full featured laptop. And believe it or not, some people actually carry DVDs with them. When I travel with my daughter, we almost always have half a dozen DVDs in my case - even movies that she's seen repeatedly before.
With a name like Gatesbasher I would hardly think you are one to take even remotely serious in calling up one for not being positive.
I have and do say things positive about Apple all the time having used Apple for 9 years. Sorry if anything I've said struck a chord in you. Ease up on the Apple Kool-Aid my friend, you're much too sensitive.
OK, I'll start the ball rolling by chewing Apple a new one: how's that?
I am really upset at the obvious path they have mapped out to kill off optical media on all their equipment; the MacBook Air is just the thin end of the wedge. They sit around all day at Cupertino and think everybody in the world has the same kind of broadband access that they do; they think anybody can just buy a new Mac and start downloading movies and TV from iTunes and will never want to buy physical media again. They declared the CD dead years ago, now the DVD is dead, and according to all the Kool-Aid-drinking tech geeks, Blu-Ray is dead on arrival. Some of us have been waiting 25 years for this moment: True HDTVs available at high, but no longer insane prices, and a way to buy content in a quality that puts movie theaters to shame. Now if Apple has its way, the only access to HD content will be online, at 720p, and severely compressed, because they've unilaterally decided that "Nobody can tell the difference."
They've already created a generation of tin-eared barbarians who have never even heard the kind of sound quality that was entry-level 35 years ago, and can stand to listen to 128 kbps ice-pick-in-the-ear "music" without clapping their hands over their ears and screaming: "Please God, make it stop!" By the time the infrastructure exists for the whole country to enjoy their wireless utopia, 20 to 50 years from now, a couple of more generations will have grown up unable to "tell the difference" between 1080p uncompressed and 720p butchered beyond recognition; why should they, they never bought TVs that could show them the difference, because they can't download it, and Blu-Ray tanked. They're already content to pay hundreds of dollars for "Home Theater Systems" with 9% Total Harmonic Distortion. 9%! JESUS WEPT! 30 years ago, 0.1% was absolutely rock-bottom for anything other than the vilest sort of consumer crap. I don't even want to imagine what 128 kbps with 9% THD sounds like!
Apple isn't the only culprit in this by any means, but they're leading the way in many of these areas, and if their vision prevails, this is what will happen. Of course, by the time their vision is fully realized, I'll be dead (fortunately.) (Oh, yeah, according to Steve Jobs "Nobody reads anymore" either, so I guess the publishing industry needs to shut down as well.)
Maybe this will show how much of an Apple Kool-Aid drinker I am.
Why do you want BluRay on your laptop? Will you be able to see that much difference in video playback on a 15 inch screen? Ir is it that you frequently find youself needing to burn 40 GB of data to a disk when you are at Starbucks?
Sorry for being flip, but I don't see the point of salivating over this.
It's one of those features that sounds great on paper but doesn't amount to much in the real world. Like Safari on the Apple TV, or Flash on the iPhone. Everyone wants it, but if they had it, the experience wouldn't match the expectation.
Well put. Kinda like people who want HD on iPhones.
As it seems to have escaped all your attentions, Computers are used by professionals in the Film/photography/music business, not just for downloading from iTunes in Starbucks, so a Blu Ray drive for backups is of huge benefit.
DVD has been too small for years to be used for that purpose. I'm not buying a new laptop until writable BluRay is onboard.
As it seems to have escaped all your attentions, Computers are used by professionals in the Film/photography/music business, not just for downloading from iTunes in Starbucks, so a Blu Ray drive for backups is of huge benefit.
DVD has been too small for years to be used for that purpose. I'm not buying a new laptop until writable BluRay is onboard.
it seems to me if you're doing processor intensive work, time is best spent on a mac pro.. i haven't met many (creative) professionals who use a laptop primarily as their main design computer.
it seems to me if you're doing processor intensive work, time is best spent on a mac pro.. i haven't met many (creative) professionals who use a laptop primarily as their main design computer.
That's rapidly changing.
As portable Macs and PCs become more powerful, storage as inexpensive, and software as sophisticated as it has ever been, portability offers a new cost/performance advantage to film and television producers.
A catalyst for the above is this year's election season. Indeed, the availability of highly portable OB (outside broadcast) editing platforms makes it easier and more timely for news organizations to create a slick piece in the field, rather than sending footage back to the studio for editing.
The cost of pro-sumer and professional HD equipment (e.g. video cameras) has dropped significantly. And the production value is so good, it makes news, documentary and independent film productions look just as professional as traditional methods.
The company I work for is at the forefront of this change. We're able to put together a fairly sophisticated HD editing workstation on one or two portable carts, with a high-end MBP as the NLE (typically running Final Cut Pro).
If you'd like to learn more, check out industry rags like Digital Content Producer (http://www.digitalcontentproducer.com).
YipYipYipee
The lack of a Blu Ray drive is the very reason I will wait for the redesign. The MacBook Pro will be my first Mac. I am looking for a solution for editing and burning HD content from my HD camcorder. Within the next few years, most camcorders will be High Definition and people will be looking for solutions for editing and burning.
Then get a 3rd-party BD burner from one of various vendors.
You seem to be unable to comprehend that different people have different needs.
How about you re-read my post, where I explicitly say, "it's just my personal choice..., etc." before you go climbing all over my ass with an absurd public comment like that.
If what you meant to say is, "I don't really give a shit what your thoughts are, Zanshin, my habits include packing Blu-Ray DVDs and $3500 computers when I take my kids places," then say that. Don't disguise your own inability to accept that I PERSONALLY don't want the added cost making Blu-Ray a "standard feature" by saying that I can't comprehend other's needs.
I've deployed Mac laptops since the PowerBook 140 was the big deal, for engineers, accountants, HR teams, construction managers, CFOs, IT staff and communication creatives. I've been taking the computing needs of others into consideration to justify new Mac purchases probably longer than you've been able to reproduce.
I would suggest that instead of replaying videos for your spawn while traveling to keep them quiet, you read to them, but apparently that's still a bit beyond your own skill set.
Then get a 3rd-party BD burner from one of various vendors.
I'd agree with that -- it's usually a lot cheaper than trying to fit one into a laptop where you never seem to use it enough to justify the extra cost, and it makes replacing the burner with whatever format is current (or typically more desirable, a faster burning device) a whole lot easier.
It doesn't solve a user's need or desire to carry discs and play them in transit, but if it's personally developed content, one might always just choose to playback from the HDD.
it seems to me if you're doing processor intensive work, time is best spent on a mac pro.. i haven't met many (creative) professionals who use a laptop primarily as their main design computer.
I'm currently using a MBP 2.33GHz for creative work: PShop, Indesign, etc. It's pretty adequate for the tasks I use (industrial B2B marketing communication), but my file sizes are typically in the sub-100mb category. It gets a bit bogged down on >350mb .PSD files, even with maxed 3GB memory and a FW800 drive for scratch disk.
For backups, I go with HDs all the way. With 500gb SATA drives for well under $100 USD, it's cost effective. If I'm really paranoid, I make double copies to different drives. There are lots of good solutions to use hot-swap HDDs, and the read/write speed is a whole lot faster than burning any optical media.
I don't believe user-burned Blu-Ray discs have stood the test of time yet to qualify as a good back-up selection. Heck, it's only relatively recent news (in the last few years) that we've become aware of the danger of marker pens on optical media surfaces causing data integrity issues over time.
A good 120-200gb 2.5" HD in a FW/eSATA /USB2 case is very portable, voluminous, and cost effective compared to an untested drive that hasn't got enough market penetration to make your backups usable anywhere. A Blu-Ray disc backup is only good in a functioning Blu-Ray drive. The world is full of computers with USB and FW ports to connect to.
That's understandable, however in the realm of graphic design studios, a laptop is quite impractical, unless you're a freelancer. I work at a studio decorated in Mac Pros, with dual monitors on an xServe. For the fast paced, deadline hungry clients we deal with, the power a Mac Pro has, is much more reliable than a notebook. Of course, I am purchasing a MBP for my home freelance work, but there, I'm hooking it up to a Cinema display when I work.
So my point: Towers are powerful and good for office professionals, Notebooks are powerful and good for on the go professionals.
@ zanshin:
That's cool. My old Mac Mini was more reliable than some of classmate's Macbook Pro's, but I'm still breaking down and getting one. At home I back up over an Airport Extreme connected to a 2TB HDD. I don't think I would have a use for Blu-ray. I watch movies, sure, but I think the fact that a hundred digital movies takes up as much space as your hard drive, and a hundred Blu-ray Discs take up a whole shelf. So, I agree, plug a drive in, back it up, store it away, update the files; it's much easier than waiting for a disc to burn.
Then get a 3rd-party BD burner from one of various vendors.
It's an option I'll consider. I would prefer an integrated one. Blu Ray players will become commonplace in the near future and disks seem ideal, not for archiving, but for sharing media. They are coming, whether you want them or not.
It's an option I'll consider. I would prefer an integrated one. Blu Ray players will become commonplace in the near future and disks seem ideal, not for archiving, but for sharing media. They are coming, whether you want them or not.
If you are a stationary user a Mac Pro may be a better fit for you. You could then have a internal BD burner. You still couldn't play store bought BD movies with the HDCP limitations, but you mention that as a need anyway.
As for commonplace, I don't agree with that. There are very players out there compared to other optical players, and per capita for the US and EU is still very low. As for BD burners, i don't even know think that has a 1% marketshare by any measure.
I'd like to see future machines forego optical drives after this next case revision. Ideally, I'd like to happen with the next case revision, but that may be too soon, at least psychologically, for most. The optical drive, while inexpensive, take up a lot of room that could be used to reduce size and weight and add a larger battery and make for less difficult build. I think 2010 would be a good time for Apple to begin this industry shift.
I think this is a very astute observation. But isn't there already a machine that fits this description: the Apple MacBook Air. When it was launched, everyone said where the hell is the DVD drive, but now with iTunes making movies so easily available, who needs it?
The only reason I can think of having a DVD drive with a MacBook Air is to load software. But shouldn't the likes of Microsfot think about providing software on media other than DVDs? How about a USB memory stick containing Office 2008?
So maybe it is time to say goodbye to the DVD drive. I would just ask Apple to replace it with additional USB ports.
If the MacBook Air is the blueprint for future computers, All it really needs is an SSD drive that has 250 Gb of space. I'll get one as soon as it offers 128 Gbs.
Good Fucking Game, I Just Bought My Penryn, And This Is The Shit They Bring Us Buyers? An Update 4 Months Later?
Yeah, let's stop all progress so you can go on indefinitely saying you have the latest & greatest MBP
I have almost no knowledge to new hardware so please forgive me if my question is stupid. I wonder how big the difference will be between this rumored "Montevina Centrino 2 platform" and the recently upgraded "Penryn processors" in the "Santa Rosa mobile platform"? I am flying to China around the end of June and I plan to buy a new MacBook. I wonder if the rumor one will be available at that time. Thanks for advance!
I wouldn't hold my breath for the end of June.
It is hard to say what the performance differences will be. Some will know theoretical numbers, but those don't always tell you the real world results.
But none of that matters, as I see it. If you need your computer for the trip as your post implies, I would be very wary of buying a revision A product just before the journey--you might not have time to discover the reliability issues of this particular build beforehand and if something did go wrong, you might have a hell of a time repairing/replacing your computer while traveling. Just my 2¢.
@ YipYipYipee:
That's understandable, however in the realm of graphic design studios, a laptop is quite impractical, unless you're a freelancer. I work at a studio decorated in Mac Pros, with dual monitors on an xServe. For the fast paced, deadline hungry clients we deal with, the power a Mac Pro has, is much more reliable than a notebook. Of course, I am purchasing a MBP for my home freelance work, but there, I'm hooking it up to a Cinema display when I work.
So my point: Towers are powerful and good for office professionals, Notebooks are powerful and good for on the go professionals.
I'm getting antsy over waiting to buy a new Mac Pro for my home studio. I both freelance and work full-time, but provide my own Mac and software to my day job to spare them the cost of buying a single Mac in a room full of PCs. So the MBP works well for that. I've got three aging G5s that used to seem pretty quick until I got into the Intel-based Mac laptop.
However, I just got a new Sony tapeless HDV camcorder, and want the muscle a multi-cored, multi-processor tower offers for FCP. The MBP lets me pop the 8gb Sony media card into the ExpressCard 34 slot and copy video files without digitizing tape, but I want a tower for actual editing and rendering HD video.
In a "perfect" world, I would have a couple of everything Apple offers, although I fear new "Enema" displays will never arrive. I bought a 23" Al a while back when they were still god-awful expensive, and have watched it turn pink over time. This year I bent over backwards trying to convince myself an Apple 30" display would be the right way to go (since the MBP will drive it), but in the end gave in to the quality of a 24" EIZO CG241W. Its form-factor is so ugly it makes a Dell LCD display look sleek (like a military truck compared to a sports coupe), but the screen image is awesome. It should be -- it cost way more than my MBP!