Piper Jaffray says new MacBooks could be priced from $899

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  • Reply 101 of 146
    matt_smatt_s Posts: 300member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by backtomac View Post


    Wouldn't you prefer a Blue Ray burner?



    Oh yeah, and every videographer I know. Two things tho:



    1. Must be in a Pro tower. Laptops just don't have enough storage capacity or horsepower. The last full length HD documentary I did wouldn't even fit on a 300 GB drive. I had to stripe 2 500GB drives so I'd have plenty of swap space.



    2. Please let there be 3rd party burningware because iDVD sucks big time.



    I could generate so much more business and cut vendor costs if I had a Blu-Ray burner in my studio's Intel Mac Pro.



    But don't hold your breath, man. It would be a huge moral victory if Apple just caught up to the rest of the world in DVD burning!
  • Reply 102 of 146
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by matt_s View Post


    2. Please let there be 3rd party burningware because iDVD sucks big time.!



    Toast Titanium lets you burn files as data to BR, but I don't know of any other apps.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by matt_s View Post


    Apple just caught up to the rest of the world in DVD burning!



    Even their notebook DVD burners are/were slower than even cheap laptops because of the svelte HW they use. What can expect from a 9.5mm BRD when it finally does arrive; 1x burning?
  • Reply 103 of 146
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    And how much does the drive cost? How much would Apple charge for a 12.7mm drive? Or do you think Apple would make their cases thicker and use a tray-loading drive so they can offer a $500 12.7mm tray-loading drive like in the Sony that was recently linked to in one of these posts.



    If you next argument is that you only have to buy the drive once, then you need to consider how the price of this overly expensive, slow reading, slower burning drive that will inevitably create some failed discs thereby wasting $8 a pop, be better than using a 2.5" HDD, which is faster to read, faster to burn, cheaper and smaller than a BRD and easier to transport than a bunch of BR discs.



    The CF cards are expensive, but they are fast, small, and use little power. Blu-ray can't compete with that so CF has its place. Blu-ray has it's place, too, but the stats show that it's a poor option for most needs. Again, I think Apple should fully support it in their OS and apps for the few people to use with an external BRD, but making it internal when optical drives are being less-and-less used is not forward thinking by any means.



    1) Do you think that Apple has silenced Panasonic so they can be the only ones getting the 9.5mm drives they announced back in 12/2007?



    2) Do you think Apple will thicken there notebooks just so they can add BRDs as an option that far exceeds the expense of most other OEMs.



    3) Do you think that Apple will move to tray-loading drives to lessen the BRD cost?



    4) Do you think that a $500+ option for a 12.7mm BRD is going to be popular?





    Why not a tray loading BD drive? If it makes the machine thicker and heavier so be it. If you want thin get the MBA. If you don't need a BD burner then get the MB. See how adding a BD drive actually makes the notebook lines make sense?



    The MBP is a pro machine.



    And the roughly $150 price difference between a CF card and BD recordable disk would easily pay for a BD drive ion the life span of a notebook. Burn 10 disks vs. a CF card and the drive is paid for.
  • Reply 104 of 146
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by backtomac View Post


    Why not a tray loading BD drive? If it makes the machine thicker and heavier so be it. If you want thin get the MBA. If you don't need a BD burner then get the MB. See how adding a BD drive actually makes the notebook lines make sense?



    Consider this, the last 15" and 17" PowerBooks that came out were capable of DL-DVD burning, yet when the first 15" MBPs hit the scene they were only capable of SL-DVD burning. Remember, this is when flash was excessively expensive for small capacities and HDD storage was more expensive than equivalent DVDs, yet Apple still released the new 15" MBPs with a SL-DVD burner because a 9.5mm DL-DVD burner didn't yet exist. It wasn't until the 2nd revamping after the initial release that a DL-DVD burner was released.



    So if Apple didn't make the case thicker and heavier back when DVD media was actually cheaper than HDD storage, and cloud storage and significant flash storage capacity were still fantasy, yet they decided to take a step back for nearly a year to offer their most popular Pro machine without DL-DVD burning, then why do you think they will increase their cases now, go to a tray-loading drive, and add significant cost to their machines in an economic depression for an internal optical option that will benefit very few of their consumer base. These all seems to go against any business training I have had and everything I know (or think I know) about Apple's modus operandi.



    PS: Why not just get an external BRD? It'll be read/burn faster than any slimmed down one for a Mac and I don't see why 95%* of all Mac users should have to get a larger Mac notebook to satisfy a small majority.



    [size]* I'm being generous with thinking that 5% would get an internal BRD.[/size]



    Quote:

    The MBP is a pro machine.



    Which is why I would like them to support it via software and offer 3rd-party external drives for sale on their site.



    Quote:

    And the roughly $150 price difference between a CF card and BD recordable disk would easily pay for a BD drive ion the life span of a notebook. Burn 10 disks vs. a CF card and the drive is paid for.



    That doesn't include the cost of a BRD, or account for the read/write speed. Matt_s already pointed out that he used CF over SD because of the speed, and SD is still considerably faster than BRD are, much less any thinned down, slot-loading version Apple would use.
  • Reply 105 of 146
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by matt_s View Post


    I carry 40 or 50 large capacity CF cards. Used to haul hard drives around but man, that's a back-breaker, and they are easily subject to damage if dropped. As clumsy as I am, this usually led to loss of source video.



    What camera and format are you using? Panasonic and Sony have prosumer cameras that record to PC cards. Which are essentially SD cards RAID together.



    Quote:

    Most videographers I know don't use HDD's any longer, and SD cards are too slow to record video in real time. A lot of equipment is out there to support CF, and most pro camcorders have CF slots.



    What part of the video industry do you work in? Where I work. If the work flow is recording straight to data. The production generally is using either P2 cards, hard drives, or a RAID the size of a mini refrigerator.



    Quote:

    This is one reason why I've been lobbying unsuccessfully for a number of years with Apple to integrate a CF card reader into MacBooks and MacBook Pros. One less thing to schlep around...



    With Panasonic's P2 and Sony's SxS PC cards you plug right into the notebooks expansion slot. P2 uses the older PCMCIA, which of course only plugs into PowerBook. Sony SxS plugs directly into the newer Express card slot used on the MBP.
  • Reply 106 of 146
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by matt_s View Post


    2. Please let there be 3rd party burningware because iDVD sucks big time.



    Toast Titanium is much better. iDVD wasn't really made for this type of work.



    Quote:

    I could generate so much more business and cut vendor costs if I had a Blu-Ray burner in my studio's Intel Mac Pro.



    You should be able to put a BD burner in your Mac Pro. Why couldn't you?



    Quote:

    But don't hold your breath, man. It would be a huge moral victory if Apple just caught up to the rest of the world in DVD burning!



    The Pioneer DVD burner that came with my old G5 was excellent for its time.
  • Reply 107 of 146
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by matt_s View Post


    This is one reason why I've been lobbying unsuccessfully for a number of years with Apple to integrate a CF card reader into MacBooks and MacBook Pros. One less thing to schlep around...



    This is cheaper than I would have imagined for an EC/34 card and it's much of an inconvenience, unless your EC/34 is already being used elsewhere.
  • Reply 108 of 146
    matt_smatt_s Posts: 300member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Toast Titanium lets you burn files as data to BR, but I don't know of any other apps.





    Even their notebook DVD burners are/were slower than even cheap laptops because of the svelte HW they use. What can expect from a 9.5mm BRD when it finally does arrive; 1x burning?



    Toast is marginally better than iDVD - even for HD DVDs - and that's not saying much, because iDVD is the absolute worst DVD burningware on the market.



    Regarding notebooks, it doesn't matter, no one in their right mind wants a Blu-Ray burner in a notebook. Why this is even being discussed here obviously points out that no one posting here understands what it takes to actually burn a Blu-Ray DVD.



    Put it in a tower, so you can have 250GB - 1 TB of storage & swap plus a monster processor that crunches video like the Cracken crunches sailors :-) You can't do that on an itty bitty MacBook or MBP.
  • Reply 109 of 146
    matt_smatt_s Posts: 300member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    This is cheaper than I would have imagined for an EC/34 card and it's much of an inconvenience, unless your EC/34 is already being used elsewhere.



    Thanks but I use a MacBook because I need to pull the 300 GB drive out several times a month and add it to an external 1394b tower. I then plunk a clone right back in and head out.



    The MBP delivers nothing I need. Few if any do video production on an Apple laptop anymore because Apple has totally ignored iDVD for years. Plus, FCP & that whole suite is so damned black and dark, no one can see the controls any longer.



    So, I bring stuff back to the studio and we usually use Win machines (Avid Xpress) to do final cuts and production. If there was a decent Blu-Ray burner & software for the MacPro, I'd much prefer to do it there. However, I'd still use Xpress, it's just better than FinalCut.
  • Reply 110 of 146
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by matt_s View Post


    Thanks but I use a MacBook because I need to pull the 300 GB drive out several times a month and add it to an external 1394b tower. I then plunk a clone right back in and head out.



    The MBP delivers nothing I need. Few if any do video production on an Apple laptop anymore because Apple has totally ignored iDVD for years. Plus, FCP & that whole suite is so damned black and dark, no one can see the controls any longer.



    So, I bring stuff back to the studio and we usually use Win machines (Avid Xpress) to do final cuts and production. If there was a decent Blu-Ray burner & software for the MacPro, I'd much prefer to do it there. However, I'd still use Xpress, it's just better than FinalCut.



    Where do you work? Nearly everyone I know in production work uses a MBP. iDVD isn't the only option for DVD authoring. It isn't intended to be used for professional DVD authoring at all.



    I work in New York and Los Angeles. Outside of high end production work, most everyone I know uses FCP.
  • Reply 111 of 146
    How is the MCE, FastMac BluRay drives for Mac Pro? Just wondering...



    Also, for MacBook Pro, etc, how is the Lacie D2 BluRay burner?
  • Reply 112 of 146
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by matt_s View Post


    Oh yeah, and every videographer I know. Two things tho:



    1. Must be in a Pro tower. Laptops just don't have enough storage capacity or horsepower. The last full length HD documentary I did wouldn't even fit on a 300 GB drive. I had to stripe 2 500GB drives so I'd have plenty of swap space.



    2. Please let there be 3rd party burningware because iDVD sucks big time.



    I could generate so much more business and cut vendor costs if I had a Blu-Ray burner in my studio's Intel Mac Pro.



    But don't hold your breath, man. It would be a huge moral victory if Apple just caught up to the rest of the world in DVD burning!



    +++



    An actual pro user has spoken and would like a BD burner. I still imagine there are many users who would find a BD burner in a laptop very useful.



    As for iDVD, at least there is toast.
  • Reply 113 of 146
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by backtomac View Post


    I still imagine there are many users who would find a BD burner in a laptop very useful.



    And I'm sure many users would love a DVR, card reader, and every other unnecessary component in their computer as well. Fortunately, Apple's steering the ship.



    It should be pretty obvious by now that Apple plans to kill off optical media entirely (at least in the consumer space). Their most durable, sexy, futuristic new Mac is...the MacBook Air, which drops an internal SuperDrive altogether for digital distribution over WiFi. It makes WAY more sense in the consumer space to do this and offer a sleek, reasonably priced external SuperDrive, so the laptop is as light and small as possible for general use - internet browsing, picture viewing, instant messaging, listening to music in iTunes, writing text documents - while allowing the user to connect a SuperDrive for occasional CD burning/importing, and disconnect it for when they're out and about.



    When was the last time you were at the library or a coffee shop and said to yourself "well, time to import all those CDs" or "gotta get to burning all these CDs to back up my digital library." Who does that? Now replace CD with BD.



    Dropping the internal disc drive on the MacBook (and down the line, the MacBook Pro) could also lower the upfront cost. SuperDrives will still ship with Apple's desktop computers, but more and more, the difference between laptop and desktop computers in terms of cost, features, and performance will shrink until Apple inevitably kills the desktop computer as well.
  • Reply 114 of 146
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post


    Where do you work? Nearly everyone I know in production work uses a MBP. iDVD isn't the only option for DVD authoring. It isn't intended to be used for professional DVD authoring at all.



    I work in New York and Los Angeles. Outside of high end production work, most everyone I know uses FCP.



    I was going to say that. DVD Studio Pro is much better for authoring. idvd doesn't even come into the picture. When you have subtitles, complex menu systems, DVD Studio Pro is a very good piece of software. I'm not sure about HD authoring support though as we film 720p and target target DVD but it's still way better than idvd.



    If it's the actual burning of the disc directly from these packages, I'd say save to an image first every time anyway. It's much more reliable. Then you can burn in whatever app that supports image burning.



    Slot-loading Blu-Ray drives right now are about 2x, which would take about 50 minutes to burn a single layer Blu-Ray. It is pretty slow but this is just where drives are right now and they are expensive.



    A BTO Blu-Ray drive would be good but I can't see the MBP getting it before the Mac Pro. If that is the case then it won't be in the MBP until the next revision, possibly some time next year. I think with a firewire 800 port, being able to buy a 3rd party 6-8x drive is enough right now.



    Right now, Apple can sell new processors and new enclosures. Next refresh, they can sell Blu-Ray with a CPU bump.
  • Reply 115 of 146
    rokkenrokken Posts: 236member
    I have to agree with wobegon. For the average consumers, it is really the least feature to use the internal disc drive. I would really welcome an option to not include the internal disc drive to get the MacBook much lighter and thinner, and of course, cheaper. I started wondering that $899 entry MacBook is the one I am talking about.
  • Reply 116 of 146
    Nice post. Had a very enthusiastic customer who was asking about BluRay burning. I couldn't give him a good answer until now. One of the difficult issues though is still the lack of Blu Ray *playback* on an OS X Mac... But that could be another thread in and of itself.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    I was going to say that. DVD Studio Pro is much better for authoring. idvd doesn't even come into the picture. When you have subtitles, complex menu systems, DVD Studio Pro is a very good piece of software. I'm not sure about HD authoring support though as we film 720p and target target DVD but it's still way better than idvd.



    If it's the actual burning of the disc directly from these packages, I'd say save to an image first every time anyway. It's much more reliable. Then you can burn in whatever app that supports image burning.



    Slot-loading Blu-Ray drives right now are about 2x, which would take about 50 minutes to burn a single layer Blu-Ray. It is pretty slow but this is just where drives are right now and they are expensive.



    A BTO Blu-Ray drive would be good but I can't see the MBP getting it before the Mac Pro. If that is the case then it won't be in the MBP until the next revision, possibly some time next year. I think with a firewire 800 port, being able to buy a 3rd party 6-8x drive is enough right now.



    Right now, Apple can sell new processors and new enclosures. Next refresh, they can sell Blu-Ray with a CPU bump.



  • Reply 117 of 146
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wobegon View Post


    Fortunately, Apple's steering the ship.



    It should be pretty obvious by now that Apple plans to kill off optical media entirely (at least in the consumer space). Their most durable, sexy, futuristic new Mac is...the MacBook Air, which drops an internal SuperDrive altogether for digital distribution over WiFi. It makes WAY more sense in the consumer space to do this and offer a sleek, reasonably priced external SuperDrive, so the laptop is as light and small as possible for general use - internet browsing, picture viewing, instant messaging, listening to music in iTunes, writing text documents - while allowing the user to connect a SuperDrive for occasional CD burning/importing, and disconnect it for when they're out and about.



    When was the last time you were at the library or a coffee shop and said to yourself "well, time to import all those CDs" or "gotta get to burning all these CDs to back up my digital library." Who does that? Now replace CD with BD.



    Apple isn't steering the ship anymore... ISPs have hijacked it, at least in the States.
    • Comcast is capping downloads at 250 GB/month across the Comcast system.

    • Time Warner Cable is testing caps in Beaumont, TX (the "Golden Triangle" area) of 5-40 GB/month, with $1/GB overage.

    • Frontier Communications (a mainly rural phone company) now has a strict 5 GB/month cap on their DSL.

    • In the case of Comcast and Time Warner, this is probably being done to encourage subscribers to use their on-demand services.

    To put it into perspective: My last iTunes download (a 20-minute HD episode of NBC-TV's "The Office") was a whopping 680 MB, plus an additional 200 MB for the SD copy. And I've read that Apple TV HD movies are about 4-5 GB in size, and they're 720p as well. Now imagine that Apple sells 1080p (Blu-Ray quality) movies via the iTunes Store. The movies would probably be somewhere between 8-10 GB in size (plus another 1-1.5 GB for the SD copy for your iPod). If Apple did this, and you have Comcast, you would probably eat up your cap by buying fifteen movies plus your normal Internet usage. For Time Warner Cable users on the normal Road Runner Select plan being tested in Beaumont, they would probably have to pay overage after one movie. And Frontier DSL users? Forget about using it.



    "But FiOS and WiMax will save the day!" Forget about it... Verizon can't build fiber everywhere, and WiMax will die on the vine in favor of LTE (which every telecom except Sprint prefers).



    Is Steve Jobs a visionary? Yes. But he isn't dumb. Until the ISPs here sort things out, either through regulation, incentives, or something else, Blu-Ray is fast becoming the only viable option for distribution of HD movies. We will see Blu-Ray (mainly BD read-only drives) in a bunch of MacBooks on 10/14 for this and competitive reasons... just you watch.
  • Reply 118 of 146
    cameronjcameronj Posts: 2,357member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iNtel iNside View Post


    Apple isn't steering the ship anymore... ISPs have hijacked it, at least in the States.



    While those limits are in place, you must see that the number of people who will try to download more from iTunes than 250 GB is very few. Plus, as time goes by and competition does its thing, those limitations will be made higher, and although Verizon can't go into every neighborhood their impact will move things along.



    The bottom line is that Blu Ray is marginally useful today (for almost everyone) and will become less-so with each passing year. While Apple may include it as an option, it will remain a niche option in the niche computer maker's lineup.
  • Reply 119 of 146
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iNtel iNside View Post


    Apple isn't steering the ship anymore... ISPs have hijacked it, at least in the States.
    • Comcast is capping downloads at 250 GB/month across the Comcast system.

    • Time Warner Cable is testing caps in Beaumont, TX (the "Golden Triangle" area) of 5-40 GB/month, with $1/GB overage.

    • Frontier Communications (a mainly rural phone company) now has a strict 5 GB/month cap on their DSL.

    • In the case of Comcast and Time Warner, this is probably being done to encourage subscribers to use their on-demand services.




    250GB per month!? Oh the humanity! I'm absolutely not arguing that download caps are good or ok (especially when the ISPs either advertise "unlimited" access and then cap downloads, or simply hide this info from users entirely), but they certainly aren't having any major impact on the average computer user and won't for a while yet. Reread the list of average computer user tasks: internet browsing, picture viewing, instant messaging, listening to music in iTunes, writing text documents.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iNtel iNside View Post


    To put it into perspective: My last iTunes download (a 20-minute HD episode of NBC-TV's "The Office") was a whopping 680 MB, plus an additional 200 MB for the SD copy. And I've read that Apple TV HD movies are about 4-5 GB in size, and they're 720p as well. Now imagine that Apple sells 1080p (Blu-Ray quality) movies via the iTunes Store. The movies would probably be somewhere between 8-10 GB in size (plus another 1-1.5 GB for the SD copy for your iPod). If Apple did this, and you have Comcast, you would probably eat up your cap by buying fifteen movies plus your normal Internet usage. For Time Warner Cable users on the normal Road Runner Select plan being tested in Beaumont, they would probably have to pay overage after one movie. And Frontier DSL users? Forget about using it.



    Ok, and what does this have to do with laptop users? You think they're going to download an 8GB 1080p HD movie (let alone the 720p HD iTunes movies that actually exist) to watch on their little 13"-15" MacBook or MacBook Pro!? What would be the point? SD looks great on these screens, that is, if most people actually watched movies on their laptops. Many people have and use a DVD player and TV for watching movies. Few have Apple TVs and HDTVs, let alone +40" HDTVs that would really show the benefits of HD iTunes movies and TV shows.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iNtel iNside View Post


    "But FiOS and WiMax will save the day!" Forget about it... Verizon can't build fiber everywhere, and WiMax will die on the vine in favor of LTE (which every telecom except Sprint prefers).



    Verizon obviously can't outfit the entire U.S. (let alone the world) with fiber, but regional broadband companies can deliver fiber to the door, as they're doing in my mid-sized Midwestern town, albeit slowly. I'm not very familiar with WiMax, but I do know Apple has a healthy share of the 802.11n/g WiFi router market with its AirPort Extreme, which they could leverage to make wireless access far more widespread by providing a private, encrypted access address for the owner, and a public access address for anyone to tap into for free or as a small charge. That's smart ubiquitous WiFi. Daniel Eran Dilger of RoughlyDrafted Magazine is the originator of this scheme, which you can read here; it's continued in a second article, here.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iNtel iNside View Post


    Is Steve Jobs a visionary? Yes. But he isn't dumb. Until the ISPs here sort things out, either through regulation, incentives, or something else, Blu-Ray is fast becoming the only viable option for distribution of HD movies. We will see Blu-Ray (mainly BD read-only drives) in a bunch of MacBooks on 10/14 for this and competitive reasons... just you watch.



    Our discussion was on BD burning, for backing up and/or sharing content, not as a licensed movie format competing against digital download stores. Let's get back on topic.
  • Reply 120 of 146
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wobegon View Post


    250GB per month!? Oh the humanity! I'm absolutely not arguing that download caps are good or ok (especially when the ISPs either advertise "unlimited" access and then cap downloads, or simply hide this info from users entirely), but they certainly aren't having any major impact on the average computer user and won't for a while yet. Reread the list of average computer user tasks: internet browsing, picture viewing, instant messaging, listening to music in iTunes, writing text documents.









    Our discussion was on BD burning, for backing up and/or sharing content, not as a licensed movie format competing against digital download stores. Let's get back on topic.



    You can't have it both ways.



    Bandwidth caps ARE an issue if you want to distribute HD via the cloud.



    Sure its not an issue for downloading music, browsing the internet and checking email. But that's not what we are talking about and you are arguing that cloud distribution of HD content is the 'future'.



    It may be but someone is going to have to resolve the issues of bandwidth caps and availability of *fast* broadband. 1 meg down and 512k up, 'broadband' service ain't gonna cut it in your cloud computing world.
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