Sigh. With Apple screwing the pooch with no FireWire on the 'luminum models, looks like my new machine, if I bother to get one, is going to be the old white plastic model.
Well, at least it has FireWire. \
...
The good news is that for those who need FW and want an inexpensive Mac, refurbished units have dropped substantially in price.
Well, I was quite right after all. The 2.4 MHz MacBook is charged € 1,250 tax excluded (1,500 € with sales tax). That means a 1.28 exchange rate, which is pretty close the 1.35 actual rate. Besides, I can get the educational discount, so it's gonna be an extra € 100 off for me.
This machine is perfect for developement and editing. I don't care about Firewire. I don't care about BlueRay. I do care about video output and CPU speed, obviously. From 2 to 2.4 GHz, that's a 20 % increase, and if I can reduce the compiling time by that amount, it's great. No to speak about intensive CPU applications like simulation, 3D design or GIS stuff.
The only drawback I see is the nasty 5400 rpm drive. I think I'll change it for a 7200. That should improve both compiling time and database performance.
Well, it is also a matter of not giving any penny to Bill and its fellows…
Apple did not invent Firewire. Sony did. Apple were an early adopter, but they still have to pay Sony royalties to use it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnqh
Among the existing Macbook users, how many use Firewire? 1%? (I don't).
If Firewire costs $10, does it make sense to include it in the Macbook when 99% users don't use it?
Yes, about 1% of existing MacBook users have ever plugged anything into their Firewire port. However, 50% of Mac buyers come from the PC world. That percentage is higher for MacBook buyers. So, probably under 0.5% of new MacBook buyers have ever used Firewire and only a (probably large) fraction of that <0.5% own Firewire peripherals.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MiMac
How much would it have cost Apple to include a FireWire port on the MacBook? $3-$5 at the very most per unit? I'd have given 'em an extra $30 for it.
Apple probably have to pay about that to Sony just for licensing. Add to that the cost of components, manufacturing, development, testing, weight, battery life, etc. and the benefits just don't justify the costs.
I realize that's inconvenient for owners of Firewire peripherals. Firewire lost against USB in the market. It was clear about ten years ago when Intel dropped their plans to include Firewire as a standard chipset feature when the licensing negotiations with Sony broke down. Anyone who bought Firewire devices after that should have known that, eventually, they would be obsolete. Life goes on.
Apple did not invent Firewire. Sony did. Apple were an early adopter, but they still have to pay Sony royalties to use it.
You sure? From Wikipedia:
FireWire is Apple Inc.'s name for the IEEE 1394 High Speed Serial Bus. It was initiated by Apple and developed by the IEEE P1394 Working Group, largely driven by contributions from Apple, although major contributions were also made by engineers from Texas Instruments, Sony, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and INMOS/SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics).
I also seem to recall reading somewhere a couple of years back that Apple was collecting royalties, albeit small, from other companies that used FW in their products.
I believe the old white MacBook is still being offered only because Apple have a lot of components in the pipeline. I expect it to be discontinued by MWSF. We should then see a version of the new MacBook at $999 or $1099. I'm not sure how Apple could reconfigure the new MacBook to cut costs by $200 or $300. Dropping the internal optical drive would be the obvious first step. Cutting back to 1GB of RAM would not save enough money to be worthwhile. Anyone know when Intel's next CPU price cut is due?
I believe the old white MacBook is still being offered only because Apple have a lot of components in the pipeline. I expect it to be discontinued by MWSF. We should then see a version of the new MacBook at $999 or $1099.
Prices will go down but not so fast. Give it one revision (at least six months from now) and after that we will see.
I realize that's inconvenient for owners of Firewire peripherals. Firewire lost against USB in the market. It was clear about ten years ago when Intel dropped their plans to include Firewire as a standard chipset feature when the licensing negotiations with Sony broke down. Anyone who bought Firewire devices after that should have known that, eventually, they would be obsolete. Life goes on.
Unfortunately it's not quite that simple. Firewire beats USB hands down on the Mac, because USB is incredibly slow and inefficient on the Mac compared to the PC. If they are truly going to ditch Firewire in Macs altogether, they're going to have to sort out the Mac USB problem... Otherwise all PC switchers are going to do is moan about how much better their old PC handled USB peripherals.
With just days to go before Apple announces the results of its fourth fiscal quarter, new data from market research firm Gartner has the Mac maker snagging a near 10 percent share of the US PC market for the three month period ending September, with its unit shipments growing more than six times the industry average.
...
Apple's gains come in spite of market forces working against it, Gartner says. The average selling price of a PC has continued to drop in part thanks to netbooks, which often sell for under $500 and accounted for as much as five percent of the US market; Apple hasn't involved itself in this arena. Moreover, this attempt to consciously lower prices isn't thought to have had the intended effect.
"Despite the back to school sales season, the U.S. home market did not see its typical seasonal spike during the quarter," Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa says. "The continued decline of the average selling price... did not stimulate sales as much at the vendors had hoped."
MacBooks are seen as having largely bucked this trend by appealing to education and home users, which are currently less reactive to a weak market than businesses.
This article explains Apple's target demographics for the Macbook: home and education users (aka students). FW likely plays a small part for most students given they have later versions of iPods, and take a lot of thier photos and movies with their phones or webcams for youtube.
For the fledgling movie maker the bar is now set by the $2699 MSRP Canon 5D Mark II. 1080p @ 30fps although you are limited to 12 minute scenes. From a digital SLR.
The damn thing compares with the Z1E and XLH1 favorably. And the ISO numbers are freaking impressive. The primary downsides are no 24p mode and a 4GB clip limit.
There are HD camcorders and regular camcorders with USB2 output. Yes, it's annoying if you already have a lot of FW devices but if you're a student heading off to college with a current iPod, DS or PSP and phone it FEAKING DOESN'T MATTER.
And there is your target demographic that has not yet been affected by the economic downturn. Not being able to play WoW has likely affected more MB purchases than the availability (or lack thereof) of a FW port.
And for every music pro that believes Apple threw them under the bus there's probably another pro out there going "Cool...I can drive a 30" ACD for photoshop without buying a freaking MBP now".
Unfortunately it's not quite that simple. Firewire beats USB hands down on the Mac, because USB is incredibly slow and inefficient on the Mac compared to the PC. If they are truly going to ditch Firewire in Macs altogether, they're going to have to sort out the Mac USB problem... Otherwise all PC switchers are going to do is moan about how much better their old PC handled USB peripherals.
As noted above, Seagate claims that Apple improved their USB2 transfer rates in Leopard which is why their Maxtor HDD with FW400/USB2 was even up in the speed tests. Now the drive itself isn't a speedster but many of the portable drives are not.
To be fair they did actually drop the price of the MacBook to $999 from $1099 and included a Superdrive as standard (about time, it was embarrassing to still have combo-drives in the low end laptops). So in actual fact, MacBooks got cheaper today.
Yes and I think there is a critical point here. That Apple's products require longer R&D than most and were not designed to go live in an economic crash. They cannot drop their prices as it would set a bad precedent for years to come. These were designed to be premium products against a background of cheap PCs.
So they have dropped the price of a SuperDrive macbook and have kept open a manufacturing line that they probably intended to close. The white macbook is reducing their margin and is only there so that people can buy a macbook in these bad times.
As noted above, Seagate claims that Apple improved their USB2 transfer rates in Leopard which is why their Maxtor HDD with FW400/USB2 was even up in the speed tests. Now the drive itself isn't a speedster but many of the portable drives are not.
And GigE is faster than FW400.
That's good to know. I guess I am just clinging on to Firewire. It is a bit of a shame though... Firewire did the job of both USB and Ethernet in a nice, fast, hot-swappable interface. Not only that but most Firewire devices are self-powered, unlike USB.
It's not I'm sad to say goodbye to Firewire as much as I dislike the alternative. I just wish USB wasn't so sh*t!
As noted above, Seagate claims that Apple improved their USB2 transfer rates in Leopard which is why their Maxtor HDD with FW400/USB2 was even up in the speed tests. Now the drive itself isn't a speedster but many of the portable drives are not.
And GigE is faster than FW400.
I'm quite puzzled by hearing the Mac OS X USB drivers are inefficient. After all, there are a lot of OpenSource drivers for USB out here, and I am pretty confident that Linux or FreeBSD drivers feature more than reasonable performances. I don't think porting this code to Darwin/MacOS is beyond the abilities of Apple software engineers. I am perfectly satisfied with NetBSD USB drivers, which recently added the isochronous transfer mode, and I am pretty confident that those can be imported almost directly on MacOS. That's the beauty of the BSD licence.
I'm quite puzzled by hearing the Mac OS X USB drivers are inefficient.
I don't really know what to say. I have tried USB keys on MBs and on PC laptops. Guess what... under Windows they transfer data like 2-3 times faster than under Leopard. Because of that I thought that the MB had USB1 ports but no, it is USB2.
I am still confused over all this. I do not play games on the computer, basically just word processing and Internet.
You are the market Apple seems to be missing. The lowest end MacBook (white) is all you will need, and even then it will be more powerful than you need.
Quote:
Is the new 2.0 MacBook noticeably faster than the previous white?
The speed of the white MacBook they are still selling sits between the new two in terms of speed. However what with the improvements to chipset, extra memory et al the new MacBook probably outperforms the older white model.
Quote:
Is it 1/2 pound lighter?
According to the specs in The Store, yes.
Quote:
Besides the trackpad, is there any other major gain?
much faster graphics, but you will probably not notice this unless you are playing games or running photo manipulation software (iPhoto, Photoshop). One "minor" omission is Firewire. But that's probably not a worry for you?
I don't really know what to say. I have tried USB keys on MBs and on PC laptops. Guess what... under Windows they transfer data like 2-3 times faster than under Leopard. Because of that I thought that the MB had USB1 ports but no, it is USB2.
I have not tried USB hard disks though.
My main gripe is the USB handshaking vs Firewire. Firewire feels ten times more responsive and you see file transfers updating much much faster (like SCSI devices used to be). USB feels like sending information via WiFi. It was never designed for fast, sustained transfer rates, unlike Firewire.
I am still confused over all this. I do not play games on the computer, basically just word processing and Internet.
Is the new 2.0 MacBook noticeably faster than the previous white?
Is it 1/2 pound lighter?
Besides the trackpad, is there any other major gain?
Thanks !
The speed difference (CPU-wise) must be small. But other than that, the new machines are quite nice: better overall construction and screen (on paper at least), lighter, new trackpad, illuminated keyboard in the high end, much faster graphics subsystem (claims about 5x faster).
I don't really know what to say. I have tried USB keys on MBs and on PC laptops. Guess what... under Windows they transfer data like 2-3 times faster than under Leopard. Because of that I thought that the MB had USB1 ports but no, it is USB2.
I have not tried USB hard disks though.
Errr... There are two problems here. The first is the raw output on the USB bus. The second is the way the OS handles the file system used on the USB key.
Eg: I have a USB key divided in two partitions. One is MSDOS, the other is FFS, the native format of *BSD. Well, I can write the same file 5 to 10x faster on a FFS-formated key than on a DOS32-formated one. The clue here is not the raw transfer rate, which is basically the same, but the software operations to write down the associated metadata (repertory information, data location, etc.). Obviously the code handling MSDOS and NTFS has never been optimized under NetBSD, because it is not meant to serve as an everyday basis but just for occasional transfers, and there is no use to lose time and energy on that. On Windows, the situation is totally different.
Yet, I do agree there are some problems on MacOS X USB drivers.
Last Thursday I was attending a conference featuring the (at least in France and Canada) widely known astrophysician Hubert Reeves. He owns a Mac Book Air. I wanted to get a copy of his slideshow on my USB key. Impossible. The transfer started, but never ended (it hanged on a "5 sec remaining" message and never went on). We had to use a foreign ftp server to do this. Bummer.
I will install NetBSD together with MacOS on the MacBook I ordered this morning (btw: 8 days delay here in France) and try to do comparative benchmarks.
I will install NetBSD together with MacOS on the MacBook I ordered this morning (btw: 8 days delay here in France) and try to do comparative benchmarks.
Interesting. You can probably start a new thread with this if you can add USB performance results under Windows too.
How are you going to install and use NetBSD? Through VMware maybe?
I work in a pro audio business selling recording equipment (mics, monitors, software, interfaces etc.) and not including a firewire port will have a very serious impact on the type of equipment I sell.
We sell a lot of firewire audio interfaces and the Macbook will no longer be a choice for that customer. It's not always super high-end interfaces either (for the inevitable "shrug-off" argument that these will be "high-end customers" who can just simply afford to buy a Pro)- a lot of them are $200-$300 interfaces.
The most bizarre part of it is that Apple trumpets it's "close relation" with a company called Apogee for audio interfaces. Apogee only makes firewire interfaces (and pci-e technically). I'm just really shocked by this move.
We often find ourselves selling someone on the idea of buying a Macbook as their first introduction to a Mac (without spending a ton of money) and getting Logic Studio and an Apogee interface. Knowing that I'm going to have to try to convince this type of customer to now spend $2000 just to get firewire is just plain nuts...
Quote:
Originally Posted by desides
What is wrong with this community? Apple hit a home run with these models, in particular giving you guys almost everything on your long-running wish lists, and your reaction is to crack up? Absolutely amazing.
It's impossible to reply to every single post, so I'd like instead to address the more popular complaints being made.
FireWire: I truly do not understand the outrage of the removal of FireWire. Has anyone paid attention to the FireWire peripheral market? Doubtful, because it barely exists. FireWire is, to put it generously, a near-dead standard. It was never widely adopted in the first place. USB soundly won the war in a manner reminiscent of VHS' triumph over Betamax. But, okay, there are people who own FireWire-based devices, such as external hard drives and video cameras. If FireWire is an absolute necessity, the solution to your problem is obvious:
if you would have read my post two pages ago and above quote you would know that people who work with audio can't buy a hub. it just wouldn't work.
everybody here just dismisses the use for firewire because external HD work with USB and that FW-cameras are on their way out, but seriously: you can post links to HD cameras that use USB or audio interfaces who do (that are crap) all you want, but it all comes down to the same thing:
either you use your old interfaces/cameras and buy a 2000 euro macBook, or:
you buy a 1200 macBook and replace all of the above for easily more that 1000 euro's
either way you are out of a lot of extra money that really shouldn't have been like that
Quote:
Originally Posted by PB
While I generally agree with you, there is one point where Apple really has shot its own foot: Firewire. And no, a dual hub is not a solution; the fuss is partly only about peripherals. It is also about Target Disk mode and Migration Assistant. You kiss bye-bye these two (they don't work through USB), or you use probably the wireless alternative (there must be something like that, no?) armed with much patience and luck so that your wireless router does not crash in the middle of data transfer, since typically this is going to take hours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mcarling
Yes, about 1% of existing MacBook users have ever plugged anything into their Firewire port. However, 50% of Mac buyers come from the PC world. That percentage is higher for MacBook buyers. So, probably under 0.5% of new MacBook buyers have ever used Firewire and only a (probably large) fraction of that <0.5% own Firewire peripherals.
I realize that's inconvenient for owners of Firewire peripherals. Firewire lost against USB in the market. It was clear about ten years ago when Intel dropped their plans to include Firewire as a standard chipset feature when the licensing negotiations with Sony broke down. Anyone who bought Firewire devices after that should have known that, eventually, they would be obsolete. Life goes on.
right: so according to you 0.5% of new mac buyers will own FW peripherals, eventhough I question that number, you are also forgetting about mac owners who were waiting to upgrade.
say that makes somewhere between 1-4% of macBook users.
this article about the air states there are 1.433 million portable Macs sold per quarter, that's roughly 6.million portables per year.
1-4% of that is 60-thousand to 240-thousand new macBook users that need a firewire port each year!!!!
firewire might have lost in the external drive department, but for (semi)pro audio and (semi)pro video equipment it is even more a standard than it was.
and with consumers wanting to buy pro products more that they would need it, just for the name (hello macBook "pro"), I'd say that there really is a substantial need for a sub $1500 FW laptop from apple.
Comments
Sigh. With Apple screwing the pooch with no FireWire on the 'luminum models, looks like my new machine, if I bother to get one, is going to be the old white plastic model.
Well, at least it has FireWire.
...
The good news is that for those who need FW and want an inexpensive Mac, refurbished units have dropped substantially in price.
This machine is perfect for developement and editing. I don't care about Firewire. I don't care about BlueRay. I do care about video output and CPU speed, obviously. From 2 to 2.4 GHz, that's a 20 % increase, and if I can reduce the compiling time by that amount, it's great. No to speak about intensive CPU applications like simulation, 3D design or GIS stuff.
The only drawback I see is the nasty 5400 rpm drive. I think I'll change it for a 7200. That should improve both compiling time and database performance.
Well, it is also a matter of not giving any penny to Bill and its fellows…
Among the existing Macbook users, how many use Firewire? 1%? (I don't).
If Firewire costs $10, does it make sense to include it in the Macbook when 99% users don't use it?
Yes, about 1% of existing MacBook users have ever plugged anything into their Firewire port. However, 50% of Mac buyers come from the PC world. That percentage is higher for MacBook buyers. So, probably under 0.5% of new MacBook buyers have ever used Firewire and only a (probably large) fraction of that <0.5% own Firewire peripherals.
How much would it have cost Apple to include a FireWire port on the MacBook? $3-$5 at the very most per unit? I'd have given 'em an extra $30 for it.
Apple probably have to pay about that to Sony just for licensing. Add to that the cost of components, manufacturing, development, testing, weight, battery life, etc. and the benefits just don't justify the costs.
I realize that's inconvenient for owners of Firewire peripherals. Firewire lost against USB in the market. It was clear about ten years ago when Intel dropped their plans to include Firewire as a standard chipset feature when the licensing negotiations with Sony broke down. Anyone who bought Firewire devices after that should have known that, eventually, they would be obsolete. Life goes on.
Apple did not invent Firewire. Sony did. Apple were an early adopter, but they still have to pay Sony royalties to use it.
You sure? From Wikipedia:
FireWire is Apple Inc.'s name for the IEEE 1394 High Speed Serial Bus. It was initiated by Apple and developed by the IEEE P1394 Working Group, largely driven by contributions from Apple, although major contributions were also made by engineers from Texas Instruments, Sony, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and INMOS/SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics).
I also seem to recall reading somewhere a couple of years back that Apple was collecting royalties, albeit small, from other companies that used FW in their products.
-
I believe the old white MacBook is still being offered only because Apple have a lot of components in the pipeline. I expect it to be discontinued by MWSF. We should then see a version of the new MacBook at $999 or $1099.
Prices will go down but not so fast. Give it one revision (at least six months from now) and after that we will see.
I realize that's inconvenient for owners of Firewire peripherals. Firewire lost against USB in the market. It was clear about ten years ago when Intel dropped their plans to include Firewire as a standard chipset feature when the licensing negotiations with Sony broke down. Anyone who bought Firewire devices after that should have known that, eventually, they would be obsolete. Life goes on.
Unfortunately it's not quite that simple. Firewire beats USB hands down on the Mac, because USB is incredibly slow and inefficient on the Mac compared to the PC. If they are truly going to ditch Firewire in Macs altogether, they're going to have to sort out the Mac USB problem... Otherwise all PC switchers are going to do is moan about how much better their old PC handled USB peripherals.
With just days to go before Apple announces the results of its fourth fiscal quarter, new data from market research firm Gartner has the Mac maker snagging a near 10 percent share of the US PC market for the three month period ending September, with its unit shipments growing more than six times the industry average.
...
Apple's gains come in spite of market forces working against it, Gartner says. The average selling price of a PC has continued to drop in part thanks to netbooks, which often sell for under $500 and accounted for as much as five percent of the US market; Apple hasn't involved itself in this arena. Moreover, this attempt to consciously lower prices isn't thought to have had the intended effect.
"Despite the back to school sales season, the U.S. home market did not see its typical seasonal spike during the quarter," Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa says. "The continued decline of the average selling price... did not stimulate sales as much at the vendors had hoped."
MacBooks are seen as having largely bucked this trend by appealing to education and home users, which are currently less reactive to a weak market than businesses.
This article explains Apple's target demographics for the Macbook: home and education users (aka students). FW likely plays a small part for most students given they have later versions of iPods, and take a lot of thier photos and movies with their phones or webcams for youtube.
For the fledgling movie maker the bar is now set by the $2699 MSRP Canon 5D Mark II. 1080p @ 30fps although you are limited to 12 minute scenes. From a digital SLR.
http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/...-our-industry/
Data interface? USB2.
The damn thing compares with the Z1E and XLH1 favorably. And the ISO numbers are freaking impressive. The primary downsides are no 24p mode and a 4GB clip limit.
There are HD camcorders and regular camcorders with USB2 output. Yes, it's annoying if you already have a lot of FW devices but if you're a student heading off to college with a current iPod, DS or PSP and phone it FEAKING DOESN'T MATTER.
And there is your target demographic that has not yet been affected by the economic downturn. Not being able to play WoW has likely affected more MB purchases than the availability (or lack thereof) of a FW port.
And for every music pro that believes Apple threw them under the bus there's probably another pro out there going "Cool...I can drive a 30" ACD for photoshop without buying a freaking MBP now".
Unfortunately it's not quite that simple. Firewire beats USB hands down on the Mac, because USB is incredibly slow and inefficient on the Mac compared to the PC. If they are truly going to ditch Firewire in Macs altogether, they're going to have to sort out the Mac USB problem... Otherwise all PC switchers are going to do is moan about how much better their old PC handled USB peripherals.
As noted above, Seagate claims that Apple improved their USB2 transfer rates in Leopard which is why their Maxtor HDD with FW400/USB2 was even up in the speed tests. Now the drive itself isn't a speedster but many of the portable drives are not.
And GigE is faster than FW400.
To be fair they did actually drop the price of the MacBook to $999 from $1099 and included a Superdrive as standard (about time, it was embarrassing to still have combo-drives in the low end laptops). So in actual fact, MacBooks got cheaper today.
Yes and I think there is a critical point here. That Apple's products require longer R&D than most and were not designed to go live in an economic crash. They cannot drop their prices as it would set a bad precedent for years to come. These were designed to be premium products against a background of cheap PCs.
So they have dropped the price of a SuperDrive macbook and have kept open a manufacturing line that they probably intended to close. The white macbook is reducing their margin and is only there so that people can buy a macbook in these bad times.
As noted above, Seagate claims that Apple improved their USB2 transfer rates in Leopard which is why their Maxtor HDD with FW400/USB2 was even up in the speed tests. Now the drive itself isn't a speedster but many of the portable drives are not.
And GigE is faster than FW400.
That's good to know. I guess I am just clinging on to Firewire. It is a bit of a shame though... Firewire did the job of both USB and Ethernet in a nice, fast, hot-swappable interface. Not only that but most Firewire devices are self-powered, unlike USB.
It's not I'm sad to say goodbye to Firewire as much as I dislike the alternative. I just wish USB wasn't so sh*t!
As noted above, Seagate claims that Apple improved their USB2 transfer rates in Leopard which is why their Maxtor HDD with FW400/USB2 was even up in the speed tests. Now the drive itself isn't a speedster but many of the portable drives are not.
And GigE is faster than FW400.
I'm quite puzzled by hearing the Mac OS X USB drivers are inefficient. After all, there are a lot of OpenSource drivers for USB out here, and I am pretty confident that Linux or FreeBSD drivers feature more than reasonable performances. I don't think porting this code to Darwin/MacOS is beyond the abilities of Apple software engineers. I am perfectly satisfied with NetBSD USB drivers, which recently added the isochronous transfer mode, and I am pretty confident that those can be imported almost directly on MacOS. That's the beauty of the BSD licence.
Is the new 2.0 MacBook noticeably faster than the previous white?
Is it 1/2 pound lighter?
Besides the trackpad, is there any other major gain?
Thanks !
I'm quite puzzled by hearing the Mac OS X USB drivers are inefficient.
I don't really know what to say. I have tried USB keys on MBs and on PC laptops. Guess what... under Windows they transfer data like 2-3 times faster than under Leopard. Because of that I thought that the MB had USB1 ports but no, it is USB2.
I have not tried USB hard disks though.
I am still confused over all this. I do not play games on the computer, basically just word processing and Internet.
You are the market Apple seems to be missing. The lowest end MacBook (white) is all you will need, and even then it will be more powerful than you need.
Is the new 2.0 MacBook noticeably faster than the previous white?
The speed of the white MacBook they are still selling sits between the new two in terms of speed. However what with the improvements to chipset, extra memory et al the new MacBook probably outperforms the older white model.
Is it 1/2 pound lighter?
According to the specs in The Store, yes.
Besides the trackpad, is there any other major gain?
much faster graphics, but you will probably not notice this unless you are playing games or running photo manipulation software (iPhoto, Photoshop). One "minor" omission is Firewire. But that's probably not a worry for you?
I don't really know what to say. I have tried USB keys on MBs and on PC laptops. Guess what... under Windows they transfer data like 2-3 times faster than under Leopard. Because of that I thought that the MB had USB1 ports but no, it is USB2.
I have not tried USB hard disks though.
My main gripe is the USB handshaking vs Firewire. Firewire feels ten times more responsive and you see file transfers updating much much faster (like SCSI devices used to be). USB feels like sending information via WiFi. It was never designed for fast, sustained transfer rates, unlike Firewire.
I am still confused over all this. I do not play games on the computer, basically just word processing and Internet.
Is the new 2.0 MacBook noticeably faster than the previous white?
Is it 1/2 pound lighter?
Besides the trackpad, is there any other major gain?
Thanks !
The speed difference (CPU-wise) must be small. But other than that, the new machines are quite nice: better overall construction and screen (on paper at least), lighter, new trackpad, illuminated keyboard in the high end, much faster graphics subsystem (claims about 5x faster).
I don't really know what to say. I have tried USB keys on MBs and on PC laptops. Guess what... under Windows they transfer data like 2-3 times faster than under Leopard. Because of that I thought that the MB had USB1 ports but no, it is USB2.
I have not tried USB hard disks though.
Errr... There are two problems here. The first is the raw output on the USB bus. The second is the way the OS handles the file system used on the USB key.
Eg: I have a USB key divided in two partitions. One is MSDOS, the other is FFS, the native format of *BSD. Well, I can write the same file 5 to 10x faster on a FFS-formated key than on a DOS32-formated one. The clue here is not the raw transfer rate, which is basically the same, but the software operations to write down the associated metadata (repertory information, data location, etc.). Obviously the code handling MSDOS and NTFS has never been optimized under NetBSD, because it is not meant to serve as an everyday basis but just for occasional transfers, and there is no use to lose time and energy on that. On Windows, the situation is totally different.
Yet, I do agree there are some problems on MacOS X USB drivers.
Last Thursday I was attending a conference featuring the (at least in France and Canada) widely known astrophysician Hubert Reeves. He owns a Mac Book Air. I wanted to get a copy of his slideshow on my USB key. Impossible. The transfer started, but never ended (it hanged on a "5 sec remaining" message and never went on). We had to use a foreign ftp server to do this. Bummer.
I will install NetBSD together with MacOS on the MacBook I ordered this morning (btw: 8 days delay here in France) and try to do comparative benchmarks.
I will install NetBSD together with MacOS on the MacBook I ordered this morning (btw: 8 days delay here in France) and try to do comparative benchmarks.
Interesting. You can probably start a new thread with this if you can add USB performance results under Windows too.
How are you going to install and use NetBSD? Through VMware maybe?
I work in a pro audio business selling recording equipment (mics, monitors, software, interfaces etc.) and not including a firewire port will have a very serious impact on the type of equipment I sell.
We sell a lot of firewire audio interfaces and the Macbook will no longer be a choice for that customer. It's not always super high-end interfaces either (for the inevitable "shrug-off" argument that these will be "high-end customers" who can just simply afford to buy a Pro)- a lot of them are $200-$300 interfaces.
The most bizarre part of it is that Apple trumpets it's "close relation" with a company called Apogee for audio interfaces. Apogee only makes firewire interfaces (and pci-e technically). I'm just really shocked by this move.
We often find ourselves selling someone on the idea of buying a Macbook as their first introduction to a Mac (without spending a ton of money) and getting Logic Studio and an Apogee interface. Knowing that I'm going to have to try to convince this type of customer to now spend $2000 just to get firewire is just plain nuts...
What is wrong with this community? Apple hit a home run with these models, in particular giving you guys almost everything on your long-running wish lists, and your reaction is to crack up? Absolutely amazing.
It's impossible to reply to every single post, so I'd like instead to address the more popular complaints being made.
FireWire: I truly do not understand the outrage of the removal of FireWire. Has anyone paid attention to the FireWire peripheral market? Doubtful, because it barely exists. FireWire is, to put it generously, a near-dead standard. It was never widely adopted in the first place. USB soundly won the war in a manner reminiscent of VHS' triumph over Betamax. But, okay, there are people who own FireWire-based devices, such as external hard drives and video cameras. If FireWire is an absolute necessity, the solution to your problem is obvious:
Buy a dual FireWire/USB hub.
if you would have read my post two pages ago and above quote you would know that people who work with audio can't buy a hub. it just wouldn't work.
everybody here just dismisses the use for firewire because external HD work with USB and that FW-cameras are on their way out, but seriously: you can post links to HD cameras that use USB or audio interfaces who do (that are crap) all you want, but it all comes down to the same thing:
either you use your old interfaces/cameras and buy a 2000 euro macBook, or:
you buy a 1200 macBook and replace all of the above for easily more that 1000 euro's
either way you are out of a lot of extra money that really shouldn't have been like that
While I generally agree with you, there is one point where Apple really has shot its own foot: Firewire. And no, a dual hub is not a solution; the fuss is partly only about peripherals. It is also about Target Disk mode and Migration Assistant. You kiss bye-bye these two (they don't work through USB), or you use probably the wireless alternative (there must be something like that, no?) armed with much patience and luck so that your wireless router does not crash in the middle of data transfer, since typically this is going to take hours.
Yes, about 1% of existing MacBook users have ever plugged anything into their Firewire port. However, 50% of Mac buyers come from the PC world. That percentage is higher for MacBook buyers. So, probably under 0.5% of new MacBook buyers have ever used Firewire and only a (probably large) fraction of that <0.5% own Firewire peripherals.
I realize that's inconvenient for owners of Firewire peripherals. Firewire lost against USB in the market. It was clear about ten years ago when Intel dropped their plans to include Firewire as a standard chipset feature when the licensing negotiations with Sony broke down. Anyone who bought Firewire devices after that should have known that, eventually, they would be obsolete. Life goes on.
right: so according to you 0.5% of new mac buyers will own FW peripherals, eventhough I question that number, you are also forgetting about mac owners who were waiting to upgrade.
say that makes somewhere between 1-4% of macBook users.
this article about the air states there are 1.433 million portable Macs sold per quarter, that's roughly 6.million portables per year.
1-4% of that is 60-thousand to 240-thousand new macBook users that need a firewire port each year!!!!
firewire might have lost in the external drive department, but for (semi)pro audio and (semi)pro video equipment it is even more a standard than it was.
and with consumers wanting to buy pro products more that they would need it, just for the name (hello macBook "pro"), I'd say that there really is a substantial need for a sub $1500 FW laptop from apple.