No one has whined about 24-bit color monitors yet, so I'll do it. Uh ... will any new MacBooks have true 24-bit color support, or is this a pipe dream?
This is exactly what I expected for the MB and MBP - aluminum design for the MB (white plastic is clearly being phased out at Apple, except for networking equipment and cables & cords), and both MB & MBP taking some design cues from the flat-out gorgeous MBA ...though, as AI reports, obviously more modest than the MBA is able to achieve.
Man, aluminum MBs (with MT trackpads and backlit keyboards?) starting at $1099 in time for the educational season are just going to sell like hotcakes.
I have a 17" Macbook Pro that I bought in December of 2006. It has never gotten so hot that it burnt itself and its battery life was actually better than any other laptop I have ever owned and I've used a lot of laptops. As my standards inevitably have gotten higher as time progresses, its still a decent machine. When the new MBP's came out, I bought a new one mainly because I don't like having machines in my house more than a year old.
My new MBP does run much cooler and it does have significantly better battery life. It's best quality is the screen. That LED screen is bright, crisp and has a great resolution.
Now I did find that the new MBP is much better at playing 1080p video better than my older MBP. Other than that, they basically run the same. I actually left my old MBP at my parents house just so I have a Mac to use when I visit.
Mmm, might have to get me one of these to replace my last generation 12" iBook which has served me awesomely well. Will wait and see what summer brings. Mighty tempted by an upgraded Mac Mini + decent monitor combination too.
Looks like Apple is pulling out all the stops indeed! Besides, they really need a design overhaul on pretty much everything! The whole rounded-rectilinear schtick isn't quite working for me.
They could extend some of their computer lines to accommodate for a wider range of users. I, for one, would like to see a "Prosumer Mac" (perhaps in the form of an "iMac Pro" or something similar). It does not quite make enough sense just to have only three laptops, two desktops, and one workstation in your arsenal and expect it to run the whole gamut. The average PC maker usually has several of each kind, especially of the tower variety.
I hope they lose the open button on the new MBP. The Mag Latch system works great and gives the overall design a cleaner look.
I also wouldn't mind, if the lose they cheese grater look as well and replace it with a more subtle look.
Would love if it were slightly lighter as wel since I carry it around with me all the time. Blu-Ray would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.
At least someone here agrees. The MacBook Pro has a timeless look, definitely not dated. Any redesign is only to satisfy superficial desires for something that looks "new."
One of the great dangers of the rapid pace of technological improvement is that it can become linked with the vagaries of style. The chief insulator against style, though, is quality and thoughtful design, which I think the white enclosures embody; they at least must be said to present the best side of the sleek Jobsian aesthetic to the world. Subjecting it to such dismissive derision because someone's sense of style has moved on shows a profound disrespect for lasting quality. I'd hate to think what you'd say about an SE/30.
Looks like Apple is pulling out all the stops indeed! Besides, they really need a design overhaul on pretty much everything! The whole rounded-rectilinear schtick isn't quite working for me.
They could extend some of their computer lines to accommodate for a wider range of users. I, for one, would like to see a "Prosumer Mac" (perhaps in the form of an "iMac Pro" or something similar). It does not quite make enough sense just to have only three laptops, two desktops, and one workstation in your arsenal and expect it to run the whole gamut. The average PC maker usually has several of each kind, especially of the tower variety.
Apple is not your garden variety computer builder and never will be. I don't know if you've been a Mac owner for long, maybe you are, but if your not. Don't hold your breath if you want Apple to be the next Dell.
Apple has always been about doing a few things very well and not do everything but poorly.
Yeah, burn marks. There were these dark smudges around the edge of my keyboard; I thought it was grime so I tried to scrape it off, and when I did the paint came right off the machine (it had been cooked right off). I use it maybe 3 hours a day.
If they were burn marks, you would have gone to the hospital for having burned hands and sued Apple for lots of money. What's more likely is that oil from your hands and dirt accumulated there and stuck, and then you scraped too aggressively. I don't doubt the paint came off due to excess heat, but I doubt there are actual burn marks.
No one has whined about 24-bit color monitors yet, so I'll do it. Uh ... will any new MacBooks have true 24-bit color support, or is this a pipe dream?
If you mean 8-bit per channel displays without temporal dithering, then yes, it's a pipe dream. No laptops have that.
Although I've still yet to see someone answer this:
8-bit displays fool the eye into seeing more than 266 colours that it actually can only display (255 red, 255 blue, 255 green, plus black) because the RGB elements are so close together. Your display can not display the color yellow, only red + green close together. We're perfectly happy with this limitation though - Apple's displays, CRTs, etc. advertise 16.7 million colours but really only display 766 colours.
Temporal dithering works by rapidly changing from, for example, one shade of red to another very quickly to fool your eye into seeing a shade of red in between.
So why is one form of fooling your eye (close proximity of red, green, and blue elements) ok, but temporal dithering is not?
So... though the Montevina refresh may arrive anytime between WWDC in June and Q3 (July-September), depending on volume availability, is it a practical certainty that the MBs/MBPs will be refreshed design-wise?
I ask because I will be getting a MacBook Pro for university in September, and a friend of mine will be getting a MacBook in the summertime but will wait longer if I were to tell him the redesign is coming.
The average PC maker usually has several of each kind, especially of the tower variety.
Good god! Thats the reason why apple is NOT an average PC maker. Focus on a few and do em right. Multiple Mac Pro's? LEts just focus on ONE that is fast enough to make me want to give up my MBP. There sure as hell arent any out right now...
I agree! No other laptop manufacturer has come close to the awesome design and performance of the Macbook Pro. We may see a big difference in the Macbook's going to a colored aluminum like the newer iPods but the Macbook Pro should stay relatively the same just a little sleeker with new features! I can't see APPL taking too big of a detour you know the Macbook Air does resemble the Macbook Pro for a reason. It's sexy and sex sells.
Is the current white MacBook anti-scratch? If yes, I would rather go for it in the near future before they refresh. I like the white enclosure
The current MacBooks are not scratch resistant but if you treat it alright it does not get scratched very much. I have a MacBook that is almost a year old and it has almost no scratch marks on it. Although whenever I carry it around I have it in a sleeve that protects it quite well. I can only see some scratches on mine if I get light to reflect off it.
Well, seems like every Apple product gets an upgrade this year.
I, for one, would be terribly disappointed if they didn't. Even though the furious upgrade cycle of the recent past seems to have slowed down (3 year old machines are still in front line use) failure to update regularly and significantly upgrade periodically can bite any company.
Apple knows that the notebooks are where they're making all their gains just now so those have to remain the freshest products in the lineup. The MacBook never really did interest me in its current form so I hope it gets a new look a la the Air my wife dreams of.
On the desktop side Apple's machines look fairly stale and the company really doesn't seem to care. Perhaps rightly they believe the desktop computer is a dying breed. The Mini's role as a media center is one Apple never intended. They would rather you get an AppleTV and buy all your content through the iTunes store than use BitTorrent and a Mini. Businesses who buy offices full of minis to hide under desks or in tiny corners are already leasing them on fixed terms and don't need regular upgrades to entice an upgrade cycle. Thus the Mini is the neglected runt of the litter.
The iMac, once the poster child of the new Apple, is also languishing as switchers opt for notebooks or look in vain for something in Apple's lineup that begins to compare with today's PC tower bundles. Double the processing power, triple the RAM, double the HD, more ports, larger displays, etc. can all be had for less than the entry level iMac.
Another issue that affects most of Apple's lineup is the growing prevalence of mini DVD based camcorders. The MacPro is the only Apple product capable of reading those discs because Steve Jobs steadfastly refuses to accept that slot loading optical drives aren't perfect.
I, for one, will always see the most value in a desktop system. I want a large desk with room for a large display and speakers, ergonomically placed input devices, room for printers, scanners, external drives and a MIDI keyboard. I don't want to be constantly unplugging and re-plugging all the peripherals. If I need to move data between home and work I have USB flash drives, external HDs, Leopard screen sharing and VPN. If I really need to have my work environment at home my employer will provide me with a notebook computer.
I know I'm a dinosaur. Everything is supposed to be wireless. I'm supposed to network wirelessly, print wirelessly, back up wirelessly, even KB and mouse wirelessly. I'm supposed to sell or give away my old hardware instead of accumulating 4 external FireWire drives and 2 USB drives. I'll probably go to my grave hoping Apple releases a consumer priced mini tower. C'est la vie.
At least someone here agrees. The MacBook Pro has a timeless look, definitely not dated. Any redesign is only to satisfy superficial desires for something that looks "new."
Precisely.
And you have to wonder if the same need to reinvent things has affected the design of Leopard. I like Time Machine, but it seems every week I discover some little annoyance with Leopard. I bounce back and forth between a work iMac (Tiger) and my personal MB (Leopard) and sometimes forget the OS-specific way to navigate from the dock to a file or folder. (Hold down the mouse key ... oh, no, wait! I just click once this time!)
As for heat dissipation, I carry two postcard-sized notepads in my laptop bag, and the MB rests on these, so as to provide for more heat dissipation. At home I use, on each end, two VHS videos.
The current design, however beautiful, is not completely perfect.
The button on the front for example. It might look look like a nice touch but woman, especially the ones with the long finger nails (I know they should just cut them off) find it rather clumsy, I my self (no I don't have long finger nails and no I don't cross-dress in my free time ) find it awkward as well. The Mag Latch is much better. Again it would give the machine a much cleaner look, on the front as well as on the latch it self and it's easier to operate.
Than their is the case of the bottom case starting to bend outward. This is a problem I've seen countless times. It might not annoy you, but it annoys the hell out of me. Because I don't pay 2199 euro ($3500) for a flawed design. The design of the MBA is much better in this regard. Because it's topcase goes all the way to the bottom. So any imperfections would be hidden on the bottom, where I don't see them.
Oh yeah and the speaker grills are just awful I never liked those at all. It would make it a much more appealing design if they would loose those things.
Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy with my second MBP, a 2,6 Ghz 15" with a 200Gb 7200RPM HD. But if they were to change the things I mentioned above I would trade mine in, in a heart beat.
Comments
Man, aluminum MBs (with MT trackpads and backlit keyboards?) starting at $1099 in time for the educational season are just going to sell like hotcakes.
My new MBP does run much cooler and it does have significantly better battery life. It's best quality is the screen. That LED screen is bright, crisp and has a great resolution.
Now I did find that the new MBP is much better at playing 1080p video better than my older MBP. Other than that, they basically run the same. I actually left my old MBP at my parents house just so I have a Mac to use when I visit.
They could extend some of their computer lines to accommodate for a wider range of users. I, for one, would like to see a "Prosumer Mac" (perhaps in the form of an "iMac Pro" or something similar). It does not quite make enough sense just to have only three laptops, two desktops, and one workstation in your arsenal and expect it to run the whole gamut. The average PC maker usually has several of each kind, especially of the tower variety.
I also wouldn't mind, if the lose they cheese grater look as well and replace it with a more subtle look.
Would love if it were slightly lighter as wel since I carry it around with me all the time. Blu-Ray would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Why mess with perfection?
At least someone here agrees. The MacBook Pro has a timeless look, definitely not dated. Any redesign is only to satisfy superficial desires for something that looks "new."
Firewire 800 on all and if possible Firewire 3200.
esata would be better.
Keith
Looks like Apple is pulling out all the stops indeed!
They could extend some of their computer lines to accommodate for a wider range of users. I, for one, would like to see a "Prosumer Mac" (perhaps in the form of an "iMac Pro" or something similar). It does not quite make enough sense just to have only three laptops, two desktops, and one workstation in your arsenal and expect it to run the whole gamut. The average PC maker usually has several of each kind, especially of the tower variety.
Apple is not your garden variety computer builder and never will be. I don't know if you've been a Mac owner for long, maybe you are, but if your not. Don't hold your breath if you want Apple to be the next Dell.
Apple has always been about doing a few things very well and not do everything but poorly.
Yeah, burn marks. There were these dark smudges around the edge of my keyboard; I thought it was grime so I tried to scrape it off, and when I did the paint came right off the machine (it had been cooked right off). I use it maybe 3 hours a day.
If they were burn marks, you would have gone to the hospital for having burned hands and sued Apple for lots of money. What's more likely is that oil from your hands and dirt accumulated there and stuck, and then you scraped too aggressively. I don't doubt the paint came off due to excess heat, but I doubt there are actual burn marks.
No one has whined about 24-bit color monitors yet, so I'll do it. Uh ... will any new MacBooks have true 24-bit color support, or is this a pipe dream?
If you mean 8-bit per channel displays without temporal dithering, then yes, it's a pipe dream. No laptops have that.
Although I've still yet to see someone answer this:
8-bit displays fool the eye into seeing more than 266 colours that it actually can only display (255 red, 255 blue, 255 green, plus black) because the RGB elements are so close together. Your display can not display the color yellow, only red + green close together. We're perfectly happy with this limitation though - Apple's displays, CRTs, etc. advertise 16.7 million colours but really only display 766 colours.
Temporal dithering works by rapidly changing from, for example, one shade of red to another very quickly to fool your eye into seeing a shade of red in between.
So why is one form of fooling your eye (close proximity of red, green, and blue elements) ok, but temporal dithering is not?
Can someone answer this?
I ask because I will be getting a MacBook Pro for university in September, and a friend of mine will be getting a MacBook in the summertime but will wait longer if I were to tell him the redesign is coming.
The average PC maker usually has several of each kind, especially of the tower variety.
Good god! Thats the reason why apple is NOT an average PC maker. Focus on a few and do em right. Multiple Mac Pro's? LEts just focus on ONE that is fast enough to make me want to give up my MBP. There sure as hell arent any out right now...
Why mess with perfection?
I agree! No other laptop manufacturer has come close to the awesome design and performance of the Macbook Pro. We may see a big difference in the Macbook's going to a colored aluminum like the newer iPods but the Macbook Pro should stay relatively the same just a little sleeker with new features! I can't see APPL taking too big of a detour you know the Macbook Air does resemble the Macbook Pro for a reason. It's sexy and sex sells.
Is the current white MacBook anti-scratch? If yes, I would rather go for it in the near future before they refresh. I like the white enclosure
The current MacBooks are not scratch resistant but if you treat it alright it does not get scratched very much. I have a MacBook that is almost a year old and it has almost no scratch marks on it. Although whenever I carry it around I have it in a sleeve that protects it quite well. I can only see some scratches on mine if I get light to reflect off it.
Well, seems like every Apple product gets an upgrade this year.
I, for one, would be terribly disappointed if they didn't. Even though the furious upgrade cycle of the recent past seems to have slowed down (3 year old machines are still in front line use) failure to update regularly and significantly upgrade periodically can bite any company.
Apple knows that the notebooks are where they're making all their gains just now so those have to remain the freshest products in the lineup. The MacBook never really did interest me in its current form so I hope it gets a new look a la the Air my wife dreams of.
On the desktop side Apple's machines look fairly stale and the company really doesn't seem to care. Perhaps rightly they believe the desktop computer is a dying breed. The Mini's role as a media center is one Apple never intended. They would rather you get an AppleTV and buy all your content through the iTunes store than use BitTorrent and a Mini. Businesses who buy offices full of minis to hide under desks or in tiny corners are already leasing them on fixed terms and don't need regular upgrades to entice an upgrade cycle. Thus the Mini is the neglected runt of the litter.
The iMac, once the poster child of the new Apple, is also languishing as switchers opt for notebooks or look in vain for something in Apple's lineup that begins to compare with today's PC tower bundles. Double the processing power, triple the RAM, double the HD, more ports, larger displays, etc. can all be had for less than the entry level iMac.
Another issue that affects most of Apple's lineup is the growing prevalence of mini DVD based camcorders. The MacPro is the only Apple product capable of reading those discs because Steve Jobs steadfastly refuses to accept that slot loading optical drives aren't perfect.
I, for one, will always see the most value in a desktop system. I want a large desk with room for a large display and speakers, ergonomically placed input devices, room for printers, scanners, external drives and a MIDI keyboard. I don't want to be constantly unplugging and re-plugging all the peripherals. If I need to move data between home and work I have USB flash drives, external HDs, Leopard screen sharing and VPN. If I really need to have my work environment at home my employer will provide me with a notebook computer.
I know I'm a dinosaur. Everything is supposed to be wireless. I'm supposed to network wirelessly, print wirelessly, back up wirelessly, even KB and mouse wirelessly. I'm supposed to sell or give away my old hardware instead of accumulating 4 external FireWire drives and 2 USB drives. I'll probably go to my grave hoping Apple releases a consumer priced mini tower. C'est la vie.
At least someone here agrees. The MacBook Pro has a timeless look, definitely not dated. Any redesign is only to satisfy superficial desires for something that looks "new."
Precisely.
And you have to wonder if the same need to reinvent things has affected the design of Leopard. I like Time Machine, but it seems every week I discover some little annoyance with Leopard. I bounce back and forth between a work iMac (Tiger) and my personal MB (Leopard) and sometimes forget the OS-specific way to navigate from the dock to a file or folder. (Hold down the mouse key ... oh, no, wait! I just click once this time!)
As for heat dissipation, I carry two postcard-sized notepads in my laptop bag, and the MB rests on these, so as to provide for more heat dissipation. At home I use, on each end, two VHS videos.
Why mess with perfection?
Because perfection does not exist.
The current design, however beautiful, is not completely perfect.
The button on the front for example. It might look look like a nice touch but woman, especially the ones with the long finger nails (I know they should just cut them off) find it rather clumsy, I my self (no I don't have long finger nails and no I don't cross-dress in my free time
Than their is the case of the bottom case starting to bend outward. This is a problem I've seen countless times. It might not annoy you, but it annoys the hell out of me. Because I don't pay 2199 euro ($3500) for a flawed design. The design of the MBA is much better in this regard. Because it's topcase goes all the way to the bottom. So any imperfections would be hidden on the bottom, where I don't see them.
Oh yeah and the speaker grills are just awful I never liked those at all. It would make it a much more appealing design if they would loose those things.
Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy with my second MBP, a 2,6 Ghz 15" with a 200Gb 7200RPM HD. But if they were to change the things I mentioned above I would trade mine in, in a heart beat.