Whoa, that's weird. I got the same exact shipment time.... I hope it's coming across the pacific.
yeah, I hadn't had any update for awhile, though actually, as I was typing this, I checked my fedex, and it arrived in anchorage. est. nov 2, 10:30 am, hopefully it'll maybe be late wednesday
CBA, how long have you been looking at Apple products? The high end always has a little "juice" premium. You can't just add up what you think the "cost" of the added features is and get the price of the high-end machine. People who want the top of the line will pay a little more and Apple knows it. Hell, people paid $150 for the color black!
And after I saw Russ' BlackBook the other night when he and Neutral were down to visit, I would pay the extra money also. You have to see it to understand it. That thing is sweet.
Since my wife has the white one and I have the black one I frequently find myself using her laptop when I am too lazy to go pick mine up and hers is closer and I have to say the matte coating on the Blackbook is much nicer than the white Macbooks coating, in my opinion. $150 is steep, but for the larger hard drive and nicer matte finish it is worth it.
I want to pick one of these up in the future for school, but it would be nice if there were a couple other minor things changed. Maybe a minor price reduction, a little less for the apple care plan (I know that the laptops are more prone to problems than the iMac and Mac Pro, but still, it seems a little steep; although worth it in the long run. Also, if I'm going to be spending that much on a laptop, it better be cool enough to be on my lap. There just minor things, and if they don't happen I'll probably still pick 1 up in the next update.
An interesting story from Macfixit. About the 3GB memory limit. That says Apple is being truthful that the chipset can only address 3GB of RAM and that everyone else is being deceptive and misleading customers to buy expensive 4GB that cannot be fully addressed.
For crying out loud... this is standard industry practice and it's been there for years. The chipset can address full 4 GB.
It starts to get more complicated when you get to the OS and application level, but you need to be familiar with x86 virtual memory management to get all the nuances.
The point is, your virtual address space is 32-bit, that's 4 GB. As far as individual applications are concerned, the operating system splits that into two chunks. One (around 3 GB) is individual to each process, this is the application memory that corresponds to different chunks of physical memory, swap, shared libraries on disk etc.
The other (usually approx. 1 GB, depends on OS) is mapped more or less directly to the specific part of the system memory. This part contains kernel code (system calls), data, and various other structures. This is not directly accessible by the applications.
Enter Direct Memory Access, or DMA for short. In order to achieve acceptable performance, most IO operations on recent machines (think > 1996) are done using Memory-Mapped IO. The hardware maps the chip's (IDE / SATA controller, video card) internal registers and memory into the virtual address space. This is not per-process, this must be directly mapped to the 'kernel' part of the address space, i.e. this 1 GB mentioned before, therefore rendering the same amount of memory unaddressable by the kernel due to the architecture's (and not the chipset's) limitations. There are various pieces that fall into that category, the video card being probably the most conspicuous since you have to map all of it's memory into the address space, therefore if you have a 512 MB card, the most you can get of your RAM is 3.5 GB. That's also why they put 8 MB video cards in servers.
Now, the actual amount reserved for devices varies and depends on the BIOS design. BIOS designers are more likely to screw things up than not, I've seen 4 GB workstations that could only use around 3-3.2 GB, and I've seen others that could use 3.7 GB.
In other words, this limitation is architectural and all x86 systems, regardless of the chipset used, will not be able to use (as opposed to address) the full 4 GB. This is the hidden cost of the Intel Transition (though I admit, I have no idea on how this is done on PPC). Meanwhile, all manufacturers will claim 4 GB support for their chipsets, which as you see is not all that incorrect.
The other point is, until recently, the only people who bought 4 GB systems were those who actually knew a thing or two about them and most of them were fully aware of that limitation. However, this is not common knowledge and I think the marketing departments are only now starting to adjust the specs.
Last note: this applies to 32-bit x86, in 64-bit the principle is the same, but the address space is much larger so the problem will not resurface for the next couple of years.
Last note: this applies to 32-bit x86, in 64-bit the principle is the same, but the address space is much larger so the problem will not resurface for the next couple of years.
Try the next couple decades - there is no way that we will jump from 2^32 to 2^64 memory sizes in two years, even with moore's law. That is 4 billion times as much memory as we have now.
PC people usually don't assign any value to Apple's software. So it makes it difficult to come up with an equivalent package. What they do include, if anything, is a patchwork of trial software, or crippled versions that have to be upgraded.
Rarely does any of that stuff work well together, and sometimes doesn't work at all.
I went to visit my father this weekend, and he and his wife have a $499 Dell special that they got just to surf the internet. I spent a few hours doing all manner of pain-in-the-ass tasks for them: cleaning up and defragging the hard drive, unistalling all of the stupid toolbars they had picked up in IE somehow, upgrading the OS + the virus, spam, sypware protection. All the things that two people who are well educated but don't know and don't care to know about computers may not think to do. It took a heathy chunck of time. Factor that into the cost comparison, and I'll take my Mac any day o' the week.
I went to visit my father this weekend, and he and his wife have a $499 Dell special that they got just to surf the internet. I spent a few hours doing all manner of pain-in-the-ass tasks for them: cleaning up and defragging the hard drive, unistalling all of the stupid toolbars they had picked up in IE somehow, upgrading the OS + the virus, spam, sypware protection. All the things that two people who are well educated but don't know and don't care to know about computers may not think to do. It took a heathy chunck of time. Factor that into the cost comparison, and I'll take my Mac any day o' the week.
Hear hear, I'm doing the exact same thing with my friends and family. Can't wait for my new Macbook Pro 15" 2.33 GHz with 160 HD Should arrive on the 13'Th at the latest, but sure hoping for Friday the 10'Th... Don't have any special plans for that weekend...
Hear hear, I'm doing the exact same thing with my friends and family. Can't wait for my new Macbook Pro 15" 2.33 GHz with 160 HD Should arrive on the 13'Th at the latest, but sure hoping for Friday the 10'Th... Don't have any special plans for that weekend...
I have one with the exact same config under my desk... can't wait to get out of here, go home, and play!
I just find it amusing when a few PC users claim to have no anti-virus, or spyware software. They then claim to have never picked up a virus, trojan horse, or spyware, even though they are on the internet fairly often.
I don't believe it. Studies have shown that a PC is infected within 20 minutes of being on the internet, even if it isn't going anywhere other then the home page.
I want to pick one of these up in the future for school, but it would be nice if there were a couple other minor things changed. Maybe a minor price reduction, a little less for the apple care plan (I know that the laptops are more prone to problems than the iMac and Mac Pro, but still, it seems a little steep; although worth it in the long run. Also, if I'm going to be spending that much on a laptop, it better be cool enough to be on my lap. There just minor things, and if they don't happen I'll probably still pick 1 up in the next update.
I think they should give them away for free. Then everyone could get one.
Not to be a jerk, but get real dude. Powerbooks were $5000 7 years ago. My Pismo G3 500 cost $3500 in 2000. My Powerbook G4 was about the same as the current models, with half the hard drive, 1/4h the raphics, a shitty processor (when compared) a quarter the memory, a single layer 1X superdrive, etc. The value as compared to even two years ago is amazing. If you can't afford it at $2299 (ed price...that's what I paid w/o upgrdades), you can't afford it at all. Again, no offense. I just think you're being unreasonably picky.
For crying out loud... this is standard industry practice and it's been there for years. The chipset can address full 4 GB.
Last note: this applies to 32-bit x86, in 64-bit the principle is the same, but the address space is much larger so the problem will not resurface for the next couple of years.
So, would this mean that this type of restriction shouldn't exist when Leopard is utilized? Would Leopard be able to use the full 4GB since the address space is larger?
I just find it amusing when a few PC users claim to have no anti-virus, or spyware software. They then claim to have never picked up a virus, trojan horse, or spyware, even though they are on the internet fairly often.
I don't believe it. Studies have shown that a PC is infected within 20 minutes of being on the internet, even if it isn't going anywhere other then the home page.
Even firewalls don't protect against everything.
My PC is behind a wireless router here at home. So it is never "on" the internet directly.
My PC is behind a wireless router here at home. So it is never "on" the internet directly.
That helps a lot but that's still not total protection. If you click over to a site with malware, your browser will request malware because that's what is called for in the web page. If there's an unpatched bug in image rendering and your browser requests that image, then you are still screwed. If you get an email that exploits the flaws of your email program, sometimes even mousing over a link can get it to request crap. There are a lot of jerks out there that want to 'bot your computer for their ends and they can get very crafty.
That helps a lot but that's still not total protection. If you click over to a site with malware, your browser will request malware because that's what is called for in the web page. If there's an unpatched bug in image rendering and your browser requests that image, then you are still screwed. If you get an email that exploits the flaws of your email program, sometimes even mousing over a link can get it to request crap. There are a lot of jerks out there that want to 'bot your computer for their ends and they can get very crafty.
I've got a Windows box alongside my Mac, and the former hasn't been infected with malware to the best of my knowledge (and yes, I periodically scan it to be safe) despite leaving AV, anti-spyware, etc. off. Because I use a router and avoid using IE or Outlook and am sufficiently skeptical about spam and other links, I don't put myself in those dangerous positions to start with.
I think they should give them away for free. Then everyone could get one.
Not to be a jerk, but get real dude. Powerbooks were $5000 7 years ago. My Pismo G3 500 cost $3500 in 2000. My Powerbook G4 was about the same as the current models, with half the hard drive, 1/4h the raphics, a shitty processor (when compared) a quarter the memory, a single layer 1X superdrive, etc. The value as compared to even two years ago is amazing. If you can't afford it at $2299 (ed price...that's what I paid w/o upgrdades), you can't afford it at all. Again, no offense. I just think you're being unreasonably picky.
notice I said small things that would be nice if they were changed. I didn't say if these arent changed, I'm not going to buy one. I'll probabaly pick 1 up even if nothing is changed. Only thing I really care about is no "mooing' and hopefully no heat issues. Yeah technology is getting more and more down. I remember back in 99 or 2000 my computer cost me $3000 and the tower is literally over 2 feet tall. The mac mini is about 1/15th the size and probably 3 times as powerful.
So, would this mean that this type of restriction shouldn't exist when Leopard is utilized? Would Leopard be able to use the full 4GB since the address space is larger?
Comments
Whoa, that's weird. I got the same exact shipment time.... I hope it's coming across the pacific.
yeah, I hadn't had any update for awhile, though actually, as I was typing this, I checked my fedex, and it arrived in anchorage. est. nov 2, 10:30 am, hopefully it'll maybe be late wednesday
CBA, how long have you been looking at Apple products? The high end always has a little "juice" premium. You can't just add up what you think the "cost" of the added features is and get the price of the high-end machine. People who want the top of the line will pay a little more and Apple knows it. Hell, people paid $150 for the color black!
Guilty as charged.
Guilty as charged.
And after I saw Russ' BlackBook the other night when he and Neutral were down to visit, I would pay the extra money also. You have to see it to understand it. That thing is sweet.
An interesting story from Macfixit. About the 3GB memory limit. That says Apple is being truthful that the chipset can only address 3GB of RAM and that everyone else is being deceptive and misleading customers to buy expensive 4GB that cannot be fully addressed.
For crying out loud... this is standard industry practice and it's been there for years. The chipset can address full 4 GB.
It starts to get more complicated when you get to the OS and application level, but you need to be familiar with x86 virtual memory management to get all the nuances.
The point is, your virtual address space is 32-bit, that's 4 GB. As far as individual applications are concerned, the operating system splits that into two chunks. One (around 3 GB) is individual to each process, this is the application memory that corresponds to different chunks of physical memory, swap, shared libraries on disk etc.
The other (usually approx. 1 GB, depends on OS) is mapped more or less directly to the specific part of the system memory. This part contains kernel code (system calls), data, and various other structures. This is not directly accessible by the applications.
Enter Direct Memory Access, or DMA for short. In order to achieve acceptable performance, most IO operations on recent machines (think > 1996) are done using Memory-Mapped IO. The hardware maps the chip's (IDE / SATA controller, video card) internal registers and memory into the virtual address space. This is not per-process, this must be directly mapped to the 'kernel' part of the address space, i.e. this 1 GB mentioned before, therefore rendering the same amount of memory unaddressable by the kernel due to the architecture's (and not the chipset's) limitations. There are various pieces that fall into that category, the video card being probably the most conspicuous since you have to map all of it's memory into the address space, therefore if you have a 512 MB card, the most you can get of your RAM is 3.5 GB. That's also why they put 8 MB video cards in servers.
Now, the actual amount reserved for devices varies and depends on the BIOS design. BIOS designers are more likely to screw things up than not, I've seen 4 GB workstations that could only use around 3-3.2 GB, and I've seen others that could use 3.7 GB.
In other words, this limitation is architectural and all x86 systems, regardless of the chipset used, will not be able to use (as opposed to address) the full 4 GB. This is the hidden cost of the Intel Transition (though I admit, I have no idea on how this is done on PPC). Meanwhile, all manufacturers will claim 4 GB support for their chipsets, which as you see is not all that incorrect.
The other point is, until recently, the only people who bought 4 GB systems were those who actually knew a thing or two about them and most of them were fully aware of that limitation. However, this is not common knowledge and I think the marketing departments are only now starting to adjust the specs.
Last note: this applies to 32-bit x86, in 64-bit the principle is the same, but the address space is much larger so the problem will not resurface for the next couple of years.
Last note: this applies to 32-bit x86, in 64-bit the principle is the same, but the address space is much larger so the problem will not resurface for the next couple of years.
Try the next couple decades - there is no way that we will jump from 2^32 to 2^64 memory sizes in two years, even with moore's law. That is 4 billion times as much memory as we have now.
PC people usually don't assign any value to Apple's software. So it makes it difficult to come up with an equivalent package. What they do include, if anything, is a patchwork of trial software, or crippled versions that have to be upgraded.
Rarely does any of that stuff work well together, and sometimes doesn't work at all.
I went to visit my father this weekend, and he and his wife have a $499 Dell special that they got just to surf the internet. I spent a few hours doing all manner of pain-in-the-ass tasks for them: cleaning up and defragging the hard drive, unistalling all of the stupid toolbars they had picked up in IE somehow, upgrading the OS + the virus, spam, sypware protection. All the things that two people who are well educated but don't know and don't care to know about computers may not think to do. It took a heathy chunck of time. Factor that into the cost comparison, and I'll take my Mac any day o' the week.
I went to visit my father this weekend, and he and his wife have a $499 Dell special that they got just to surf the internet. I spent a few hours doing all manner of pain-in-the-ass tasks for them: cleaning up and defragging the hard drive, unistalling all of the stupid toolbars they had picked up in IE somehow, upgrading the OS + the virus, spam, sypware protection. All the things that two people who are well educated but don't know and don't care to know about computers may not think to do. It took a heathy chunck of time. Factor that into the cost comparison, and I'll take my Mac any day o' the week.
Hear hear, I'm doing the exact same thing with my friends and family. Can't wait for my new Macbook Pro 15" 2.33 GHz with 160 HD
Hear hear, I'm doing the exact same thing with my friends and family. Can't wait for my new Macbook Pro 15" 2.33 GHz with 160 HD
I have one with the exact same config under my desk... can't wait to get out of here, go home, and play!
I don't believe it. Studies have shown that a PC is infected within 20 minutes of being on the internet, even if it isn't going anywhere other then the home page.
Even firewalls don't protect against everything.
I want to pick one of these up in the future for school, but it would be nice if there were a couple other minor things changed. Maybe a minor price reduction, a little less for the apple care plan (I know that the laptops are more prone to problems than the iMac and Mac Pro, but still, it seems a little steep; although worth it in the long run. Also, if I'm going to be spending that much on a laptop, it better be cool enough to be on my lap. There just minor things, and if they don't happen I'll probably still pick 1 up in the next update.
I think they should give them away for free. Then everyone could get one.
Not to be a jerk, but get real dude. Powerbooks were $5000 7 years ago. My Pismo G3 500 cost $3500 in 2000. My Powerbook G4 was about the same as the current models, with half the hard drive, 1/4h the raphics, a shitty processor (when compared) a quarter the memory, a single layer 1X superdrive, etc. The value as compared to even two years ago is amazing. If you can't afford it at $2299 (ed price...that's what I paid w/o upgrdades), you can't afford it at all. Again, no offense. I just think you're being unreasonably picky.
For crying out loud... this is standard industry practice and it's been there for years. The chipset can address full 4 GB.
Last note: this applies to 32-bit x86, in 64-bit the principle is the same, but the address space is much larger so the problem will not resurface for the next couple of years.
So, would this mean that this type of restriction shouldn't exist when Leopard is utilized? Would Leopard be able to use the full 4GB since the address space is larger?
I just find it amusing when a few PC users claim to have no anti-virus, or spyware software. They then claim to have never picked up a virus, trojan horse, or spyware, even though they are on the internet fairly often.
I don't believe it. Studies have shown that a PC is infected within 20 minutes of being on the internet, even if it isn't going anywhere other then the home page.
Even firewalls don't protect against everything.
My PC is behind a wireless router here at home. So it is never "on" the internet directly.
Steve
My PC is behind a wireless router here at home. So it is never "on" the internet directly.
That helps a lot but that's still not total protection. If you click over to a site with malware, your browser will request malware because that's what is called for in the web page. If there's an unpatched bug in image rendering and your browser requests that image, then you are still screwed. If you get an email that exploits the flaws of your email program, sometimes even mousing over a link can get it to request crap. There are a lot of jerks out there that want to 'bot your computer for their ends and they can get very crafty.
That helps a lot but that's still not total protection. If you click over to a site with malware, your browser will request malware because that's what is called for in the web page. If there's an unpatched bug in image rendering and your browser requests that image, then you are still screwed. If you get an email that exploits the flaws of your email program, sometimes even mousing over a link can get it to request crap. There are a lot of jerks out there that want to 'bot your computer for their ends and they can get very crafty.
I've got a Windows box alongside my Mac, and the former hasn't been infected with malware to the best of my knowledge (and yes, I periodically scan it to be safe) despite leaving AV, anti-spyware, etc. off. Because I use a router and avoid using IE or Outlook and am sufficiently skeptical about spam and other links, I don't put myself in those dangerous positions to start with.
I think they should give them away for free. Then everyone could get one.
Not to be a jerk, but get real dude. Powerbooks were $5000 7 years ago. My Pismo G3 500 cost $3500 in 2000. My Powerbook G4 was about the same as the current models, with half the hard drive, 1/4h the raphics, a shitty processor (when compared) a quarter the memory, a single layer 1X superdrive, etc. The value as compared to even two years ago is amazing. If you can't afford it at $2299 (ed price...that's what I paid w/o upgrdades), you can't afford it at all. Again, no offense. I just think you're being unreasonably picky.
notice I said small things that would be nice if they were changed. I didn't say if these arent changed, I'm not going to buy one. I'll probabaly pick 1 up even if nothing is changed. Only thing I really care about is no "mooing' and hopefully no heat issues. Yeah technology is getting more and more down. I remember back in 99 or 2000 my computer cost me $3000 and the tower is literally over 2 feet tall. The mac mini is about 1/15th the size and probably 3 times as powerful.
Someone's already claiming to have a maxxed out (all options upgraded) 2.33 17" MBP on Ebay.
Is this even possible? Has anyone gotten their MBP delivered already?
So, would this mean that this type of restriction shouldn't exist when Leopard is utilized? Would Leopard be able to use the full 4GB since the address space is larger?
In a nutshell, yes.