A blu-ray player option in a notebook is pointless without a HDMI port so you could connect it to a high resolution tv/display. Since the MBPs don't have that either I doubt they will ever get a blu-ray option.
While by no means an ideal viewing scenario, is it too much to ask that a $2,200 laptop be able to read the discs people have been buying since 2006, as opposed to being restricted to 14 year old optical technology?
If you want to playback Blue Ray, buy a Blue Ray player. You don't need a $2,200 laptop for that. The new MBP's are real working horses, I would hate to have them cluttered with all kind of entertainment electronics. That's actually what I love about apple. They have Pro products, which are really built for Pro users, and without all this superfluous junkware, they can keep their laptops slim and affordable.
Has anybody done performance reviews between the 2.2 GHz and the BTO 2.3 GHz option? I've been searching the web, but can't find any direct comparisons. Just trying to figure out if the extra $250 is a good investment for 0.1 bump in speed and 2MB increase L3 cache. Is the Turbo Boost upper limit any higher on the 2.3 GHz chip?
i would love to be able to connect an ipad to a mac via thunderport. When plugged in the ipad could be charged, used as a secondary display and be in disk mode for syncing with itunes.
I'm waiting for the updates to the 13" MacBook Air with a comparable Sandy Bridge processor and the Thunderbolt port.
We'll most likely see an upgraded MacBook Air before June with Sandy Bridge, Thunderbolt and AMD graphics. Though I believe Apple will restrict the faster Core i7 and AMD Radeon 6750M for the MBP 15"/17" models and opt for the Core i5 and AMD Radeon 6490M for the MacBook Air. This would then faze out the MacBook Pro 13" model.
Don't expect MacBook Airs to get Thunderbolt. They don't even backlit keyboards currently.
I never understood the obsession with backlit keyboards (some people refusing to buy a laptop because of that). I turn mine off completely, since it's such a gimmick and it loudly advertises "I can't touch type".
Seriously, take some time (about 6 months half hour to hour a day of practice in the evening before sleep) and learn to touch type and reap the benefits for the rest of your life.
You did see the size of the chip required for TB, right? That may never happen.
That's the chip for the motherboard controller. Does anyone know what sort of chip is needed for devices on the bus? That chip could be a much smaller, less complex chip. Has anybody seen this chips yet?
I am hoping that we see the device chip in an Ifixit teardown -- say, early this Saturday.
MacBook Pro 15" should have an HDMI port. Thy should be done.
Why downgrade? You do know that a DisplayPort is better.. it even can even run higher resolutions than HDMI is capable of. Its only like $15 for a little adapter so you can plug it into HDMI.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rbonner
The comment about the enhanced graphics coming on when an external monitor is plugged in explains a ton. My unit was plugged into my 27" Apple display, and the fan ran all the time, which is why it went back.
Your fan always runs all the time.. the fans never turn off. They just change speed. They idle at 2000 rpm and get faster if it gets hotter. I can turn on my AMD GPU, watch some videos, and my fans are still at 2000 rpm... it will get loud if I push the machine really hard and it gets hot though. But even at max RPM its still not annoying in any way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kpluck
A blu-ray player option in a notebook is pointless without a HDMI port so you could connect it to a high resolution tv/display. Since the MBPs don't have that either I doubt they will ever get a blu-ray option.
-kpluck
you can do HDMI fine on the machines... why does everyone think you need a lower end port when you have a better one that s cheap adapter can let you downgrade it for yourself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario
I never understood the obsession with backlit keyboards (some people refusing to buy a laptop because of that). I turn mine off completely, since it's such a gimmick and it loudly advertises "I can't touch type".
Seriously, take some time (about 6 months half hour to hour a day of practice in the evening before sleep) and learn to touch type and reap the benefits for the rest of your life.
I can touch type fine... I can actually type very very fast... but I'm not always sitting just writing letters or typing up long wordy documents, or replying to posts... sometimes I like to see the keyboard, it saves a ton of time. I absolutely love the backlit keyboard, and I wouldn't buy another machine without a decent one.
To me the differences aren't justified. CPUMark claims a 1% difference.
Thanks for the links. Oh, but your math is off, from their results it's a 4% difference. Still of questionable value when you are adding at 10-15% premium.
I'll still be curious to see direct comparisons using actual systems on real-world tasks. After reading the descriptions of the tests in the links above, it does not appear their tests would include the performance of Turbo Boost since most of their tests seem to saturate all 4 cores in the CPU.
If the 2.3 GHz processor also includes higher Turbo Boost speeds for non-parallelized tasks, that would help better justify the price increase. Apple's online store seems to imply that the faster processor has a higher Turbo Boost speed when it says, "You can upgrade the processor in your MacBook Pro to the 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, featuring 8MB L3 cache and Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.40GHz." But they don't say anywhere was the limit is for the 2.2 GHz processor.
While Intel isn't as good at graphics as NVIDIA, Intel's SATA disk controller performance is significantly better than that of NVIDIA's; the new models also now support 6Gbps SATA 3.0 for the first time, so the fact that the new MacBook Pros use Intel's chipsets again means that disk performance is improved, particularly when using a Solid State Drive. Note that only the hard drive supports SATA 3; the optical drive is still connected to a 3GBps SATA 2.0 interface.
So - I've just picked up the fully-loaded 15" and want to add a SSD. OWC has an awesome looking kit with a 120gb SSD and bracket for under $300. Keeping in mind that the optical drive is connected to a slower port, I assume this means I should move the traditional hard drive into the optical drive bay (and its slower connector) and then install the SSD into the traditional drive back to take advantage of its faster connector? Seems to me that having a 5400 RPM drive installed in a SATA 3 port is a bit of a waste...
I would be buying a brand new MBP 15" Matte screen, loaded memory, if:
1- it could play Blu-Ray
2- Blu - Ray output could go out via lightnight bolt to HDMI cable.
it is frustrating being an apple consumer, they seem to like to decide what they will allow their consumers to do, instead of letting us decide on our own options.
I would be buying a brand new MBP 15" Matte screen, loaded memory, if:
1- it could play Blu-Ray
2- Blu - Ray output could go out via lightnight bolt to HDMI cable.
it is frustrating being an apple consumer, they seem to like to decide what they will allow their consumers to do, instead of letting us decide on our own options.
hmm... maybe a sony Vaio will hit the spot.
What an asinine comment. "Lightnight bolt?? Really? You?re making a argument that Apple decides what options they will offer to their consumers when every company does that. Just because you don?t like the options doesn?t make it wrong. I just looked on Dell?s site, and there is no option for ½? notebook with 3 Blu-ray drives and 128 terabytes of storage for $300. Those assholes!
So - I've just picked up the fully-loaded 15" and want to add a SSD. OWC has an awesome looking kit with a 120gb SSD and bracket for under $300. Keeping in mind that the optical drive is connected to a slower port, I assume this means I should move the traditional hard drive into the optical drive bay (and its slower connector) and then install the SSD into the traditional drive back to take advantage of its faster connector? Seems to me that having a 5400 RPM drive installed in a SATA 3 port is a bit of a waste...
Yes, I will do the same and put a spare 7k2 HD in the bracket. . I went with BTO Apple SSD, though, because it is the only drive that is currently supported by Snow Leopard's TRIM (added in the custom 10.6.6 SL running on the new MBPs) and, for now, Lion betas.
I will later replace my MBP's Apple-branded SSD by a C300 or a Vertex 3. Even without TRIM, they are far far superior to the the rather low-end Apple SSD (custom Hitachi ?).
But :
1- Prices are too high for now on SATA III SSDs
2- I am waiting to see if an official support of third party SSDs by Apple is coming : I read people had problems with their C300 because of a conflict with the way Sudden Motion Sensor (although it is of any use only of platter-based HDs) was managed by OS X. If OS X's TRIM could manage third party SSDs in a few months, it would be all the better?
I would be buying a brand new MBP 15" Matte screen, loaded memory, if:
1- it could play Blu-Ray
Given that OS X can not only play Blu-ray disks but that installing your own Blu-ray drive in a MacBook Pro would be cheaper than any BTO option that Apple would offer...
Quote:
hmm... maybe a sony Vaio will hit the spot.
Enjoy 50% less battery under normal conditions and two hours of battery playing Blu-ray for whatever reason.
Apple SHOULD offer the option of blu on the iMac and the Mac Pro.
The notebooks need to get their ODDs stripped off once and for all. (No, I will never stop saying that )
You can put your own drives in a desktop. I've had a BD-RE/HD DVD-ROM drive for years. I use it to rip HD DVDs to iTunes and I did it with a Blu-ray disk, as well.
Comments
OS X has no Bluray playback capabilities and most likely never will.
And that's nothing but intentional silliness on the part of apple. They could provide it if they wanted, they just choose not to.
(cue sycophants parroting "bag of hurt" sound byte...)
A blu-ray player option in a notebook is pointless without a HDMI port so you could connect it to a high resolution tv/display. Since the MBPs don't have that either I doubt they will ever get a blu-ray option.
-kpluck
Got $13?
http://www.amazon.com/Menotek-Displa...9689980&sr=8-4
While by no means an ideal viewing scenario, is it too much to ask that a $2,200 laptop be able to read the discs people have been buying since 2006, as opposed to being restricted to 14 year old optical technology?
If you want to playback Blue Ray, buy a Blue Ray player. You don't need a $2,200 laptop for that. The new MBP's are real working horses, I would hate to have them cluttered with all kind of entertainment electronics. That's actually what I love about apple. They have Pro products, which are really built for Pro users, and without all this superfluous junkware, they can keep their laptops slim and affordable.
What i really don't get is why apple has not updated their slow disk drive to at least make them be able to run at 32x or faster.
Do they even exist for the drive sizes they need? How reliable are they? How many decibels are they when running at full tilt?
And that's nothing but intentional silliness on the part of apple. They could provide it if they wanted, they just choose not to.
You don?t think there is a purpose to their reasoning? That?s just a frivolous absurdity that somehow got overlooked?
Do they even exist for the drive sizes they need? How reliable are they? How many decibels are they when running at full tilt?
You insert a slightly inbalanced CD once and it's cooked.
Has anybody done performance reviews between the 2.2 GHz and the BTO 2.3 GHz option? I've been searching the web, but can't find any direct comparisons. Just trying to figure out if the extra $250 is a good investment for 0.1 bump in speed and 2MB increase L3 cache. Is the Turbo Boost upper limit any higher on the 2.3 GHz chip?
This, NO ONE has done a comparison yet except:
2.2 - 7526
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?...QM+%40+2.20GHz
2.3 - 7860
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?...QM+%40+2.30GHz
To me the differences aren't justified. CPUMark claims a 1% difference.
i would love to be able to connect an ipad to a mac via thunderport. When plugged in the ipad could be charged, used as a secondary display and be in disk mode for syncing with itunes.
+++
.
I'm waiting for the updates to the 13" MacBook Air with a comparable Sandy Bridge processor and the Thunderbolt port.
We'll most likely see an upgraded MacBook Air before June with Sandy Bridge, Thunderbolt and AMD graphics. Though I believe Apple will restrict the faster Core i7 and AMD Radeon 6750M for the MBP 15"/17" models and opt for the Core i5 and AMD Radeon 6490M for the MacBook Air. This would then faze out the MacBook Pro 13" model.
Don't expect MacBook Airs to get Thunderbolt. They don't even backlit keyboards currently.
I never understood the obsession with backlit keyboards (some people refusing to buy a laptop because of that). I turn mine off completely, since it's such a gimmick and it loudly advertises "I can't touch type".
Seriously, take some time (about 6 months half hour to hour a day of practice in the evening before sleep) and learn to touch type and reap the benefits for the rest of your life.
Here's an excellent and free online course:
http://www.typing-lessons.org/
You did see the size of the chip required for TB, right? That may never happen.
That's the chip for the motherboard controller. Does anyone know what sort of chip is needed for devices on the bus? That chip could be a much smaller, less complex chip. Has anybody seen this chips yet?
I am hoping that we see the device chip in an Ifixit teardown -- say, early this Saturday.
.
MacBook Pro 15" should have an HDMI port. Thy should be done.
Why downgrade? You do know that a DisplayPort is better.. it even can even run higher resolutions than HDMI is capable of. Its only like $15 for a little adapter so you can plug it into HDMI.
The comment about the enhanced graphics coming on when an external monitor is plugged in explains a ton. My unit was plugged into my 27" Apple display, and the fan ran all the time, which is why it went back.
Your fan always runs all the time.. the fans never turn off. They just change speed. They idle at 2000 rpm and get faster if it gets hotter. I can turn on my AMD GPU, watch some videos, and my fans are still at 2000 rpm... it will get loud if I push the machine really hard and it gets hot though. But even at max RPM its still not annoying in any way.
A blu-ray player option in a notebook is pointless without a HDMI port so you could connect it to a high resolution tv/display. Since the MBPs don't have that either I doubt they will ever get a blu-ray option.
-kpluck
you can do HDMI fine on the machines... why does everyone think you need a lower end port when you have a better one that s cheap adapter can let you downgrade it for yourself.
I never understood the obsession with backlit keyboards (some people refusing to buy a laptop because of that). I turn mine off completely, since it's such a gimmick and it loudly advertises "I can't touch type".
Seriously, take some time (about 6 months half hour to hour a day of practice in the evening before sleep) and learn to touch type and reap the benefits for the rest of your life.
I can touch type fine... I can actually type very very fast... but I'm not always sitting just writing letters or typing up long wordy documents, or replying to posts... sometimes I like to see the keyboard, it saves a ton of time. I absolutely love the backlit keyboard, and I wouldn't buy another machine without a decent one.
what has a fish to do with a strawberry cake?
Mmmm, strawberry fish cake...
This, NO ONE has done a comparison yet except:
2.2 - 7526
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?...QM+%40+2.20GHz
2.3 - 7860
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?...QM+%40+2.30GHz
To me the differences aren't justified. CPUMark claims a 1% difference.
Thanks for the links. Oh, but your math is off, from their results it's a 4% difference. Still of questionable value when you are adding at 10-15% premium.
I'll still be curious to see direct comparisons using actual systems on real-world tasks. After reading the descriptions of the tests in the links above, it does not appear their tests would include the performance of Turbo Boost since most of their tests seem to saturate all 4 cores in the CPU.
If the 2.3 GHz processor also includes higher Turbo Boost speeds for non-parallelized tasks, that would help better justify the price increase. Apple's online store seems to imply that the faster processor has a higher Turbo Boost speed when it says, "You can upgrade the processor in your MacBook Pro to the 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, featuring 8MB L3 cache and Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.40GHz." But they don't say anywhere was the limit is for the 2.2 GHz processor.
While Intel isn't as good at graphics as NVIDIA, Intel's SATA disk controller performance is significantly better than that of NVIDIA's; the new models also now support 6Gbps SATA 3.0 for the first time, so the fact that the new MacBook Pros use Intel's chipsets again means that disk performance is improved, particularly when using a Solid State Drive. Note that only the hard drive supports SATA 3; the optical drive is still connected to a 3GBps SATA 2.0 interface.
So - I've just picked up the fully-loaded 15" and want to add a SSD. OWC has an awesome looking kit with a 120gb SSD and bracket for under $300. Keeping in mind that the optical drive is connected to a slower port, I assume this means I should move the traditional hard drive into the optical drive bay (and its slower connector) and then install the SSD into the traditional drive back to take advantage of its faster connector? Seems to me that having a 5400 RPM drive installed in a SATA 3 port is a bit of a waste...
1- it could play Blu-Ray
2- Blu - Ray output could go out via lightnight bolt to HDMI cable.
it is frustrating being an apple consumer, they seem to like to decide what they will allow their consumers to do, instead of letting us decide on our own options.
hmm... maybe a sony Vaio will hit the spot.
I would be buying a brand new MBP 15" Matte screen, loaded memory, if:
1- it could play Blu-Ray
2- Blu - Ray output could go out via lightnight bolt to HDMI cable.
it is frustrating being an apple consumer, they seem to like to decide what they will allow their consumers to do, instead of letting us decide on our own options.
hmm... maybe a sony Vaio will hit the spot.
What an asinine comment. "Lightnight bolt?? Really? You?re making a argument that Apple decides what options they will offer to their consumers when every company does that. Just because you don?t like the options doesn?t make it wrong. I just looked on Dell?s site, and there is no option for ½? notebook with 3 Blu-ray drives and 128 terabytes of storage for $300. Those assholes!
So - I've just picked up the fully-loaded 15" and want to add a SSD. OWC has an awesome looking kit with a 120gb SSD and bracket for under $300. Keeping in mind that the optical drive is connected to a slower port, I assume this means I should move the traditional hard drive into the optical drive bay (and its slower connector) and then install the SSD into the traditional drive back to take advantage of its faster connector? Seems to me that having a 5400 RPM drive installed in a SATA 3 port is a bit of a waste...
Yes, I will do the same and put a spare 7k2 HD in the bracket. . I went with BTO Apple SSD, though, because it is the only drive that is currently supported by Snow Leopard's TRIM (added in the custom 10.6.6 SL running on the new MBPs) and, for now, Lion betas.
I will later replace my MBP's Apple-branded SSD by a C300 or a Vertex 3. Even without TRIM, they are far far superior to the the rather low-end Apple SSD (custom Hitachi ?).
But :
1- Prices are too high for now on SATA III SSDs
2- I am waiting to see if an official support of third party SSDs by Apple is coming : I read people had problems with their C300 because of a conflict with the way Sudden Motion Sensor (although it is of any use only of platter-based HDs) was managed by OS X. If OS X's TRIM could manage third party SSDs in a few months, it would be all the better?
I would be buying a brand new MBP 15" Matte screen, loaded memory, if:
1- it could play Blu-Ray
Given that OS X can not only play Blu-ray disks but that installing your own Blu-ray drive in a MacBook Pro would be cheaper than any BTO option that Apple would offer...
hmm... maybe a sony Vaio will hit the spot.
Enjoy 50% less battery under normal conditions and two hours of battery playing Blu-ray for whatever reason.
Apple SHOULD offer the option of blu on the iMac and the Mac Pro.
The notebooks need to get their ODDs stripped off once and for all. (No, I will never stop saying that
Come on. Blu-ray isn't useless... ON A DESKTOP
Apple SHOULD offer the option of blu on the iMac and the Mac Pro.
The notebooks need to get their ODDs stripped off once and for all. (No, I will never stop saying that
You can put your own drives in a desktop. I've had a BD-RE/HD DVD-ROM drive for years. I use it to rip HD DVDs to iTunes and I did it with a Blu-ray disk, as well.