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MacBook Pro Supplies Tightening Ahead of Potential Refresh

ravenvii said:
The current MacBook Pro 13" is pretty out-of-date.

(I know, I know, the Nvidia card, but a discrete graphics card should not be an issue in the 13")
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It still performs better than any VAIO/HP/Dell/Compaq notebook I have owned and some of those desktops too. I am looking to go MBA on the next refresh.
 
Slurpy2k8 said:
This is what I can see Apple doing, and what I personally believe they should do.

- Drop the price of the 13' air to $999, and the 11' to $899
- Rename Macbook Air to Macbook
- Discontinue the white macbook.

[...]
All we need are some slight pricing adjustments to make the white Macbook irrelevant.
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I agree with dropping the MacBook, but I don't see it happening any time soon. The MacBook is $300 cheaper than the 13" MBA, and has worse specs. A comparable replacement would cost much more than the $999 entry, and I'd like the entry price to be cheaper than $999.

Imagine if all of the new college students whose only pause is the ~$899 price of buying a MacBook had a cheaper alternative.

I also think Apple should preserve "Mac" and "MacBook" as words that describe their computers, and aren't the model names themselves. (E.G. there's an iMac and MacPro, but IMO appropriately no "Mac", yet there's a MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, and also a MacBook). So I'm not in favor of renaming the MBA if Apple were to drop the MacBook.

-=|Mgkwho
 
So why do we actually think they're going out of stock? Most models seem to be available at amazon....
 
On an international base:
Some online stores here in Belgium don't have any high-end 15" or 17" MBP's in stock anymore. Other Premium Resellers still have all MBP's in stock, though again the 15-17" are marked as "2 weeks stock".
In the Netherlands it seems like a different story, someone reported that mostly 13" MBP's seem to be out of stock.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Amazon Germany: all mbp's are in stock. So only very bad rumors?!? Tz tz
 
I bought my first ever Mac, a 2010 Macbook Pro 15", in April 2010. This will be a bittersweet refresh for me, as my model is no longer the newest--Whaaahhh!! It was nice having the cutting edge for a while, but things are always advancing and everyone knows they do a refresh at this time of year, so... ;)

There is no way I'll upgrade again this year, no matter how amazing the refresh may be. I will definitely be gobbling down the details as they roll out though! The only thing that could even conceivably make me think of upgrading would be a blu-ray drive option (no, i'm not holding my breath).

Maybe in 2012...

As for this year's iphone or ipod refresh... Apple, my money is waiting!
 
fl89 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Amazon Germany: all mbp's are in stock. So only very bad rumors?!? Tz tz
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yes... I was afraid of this, I almost bought a 15" MBP monday, but decided to wait a little while longer. We may be a bit premature on getting our hopes up. i have the money and will be ready to buy as soon as they come out...can't wait till June though so it better be here before then.;)
 
Adidas Addict said:
Half their customer base? Are you sure you don't mean a handful of people on this website?
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No, I actually mean half of its customer base. There are a lot of people that would like the 13" Pro to not just be an over-glorified non-Pro MacBook, because that's basically what it is right now. Roughly half of the people who buy that thing buy it for its looks, the other half because they want something better than the white MacBook, and currently it can barely be considered as such.

aurichie said:
The 11" Air maybe a joke in your opinion. But many tech experts love it, even hardcore Windows users love the hardware. :)
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People too superficial to realize that it is a neutered computer will surely love it just as they love their purse dogs. You can't tell me that for a faster computer, the 11" MacBook Air is a better buy over the white MacBook.



aurichie said:
The 11" MacBook Air is perfect on price (you ignore it because you think it's a joke, but it's just your opinion). Many in education are recommending the 11" MBA to their students. I heard one teacher on a podcast last week saying their two recommended purchases are the MacBook Air and the iPod Touch or iPhone because it has the camera.
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So is the white MacBook (at the same freakin' price), and guess what? It's faster!!! I'll bet said teacher isn't the one who makes the tech purchases; I'll also bet she falls into the "superficial buyer" category of Apple customer.


aurichie said:
People were buying them because they thought they needed a powerful machine that could go on the road with them when necessary. But it turns out all that CPU power is unnecessary for many of us. The MacBook Air is more than adequate when coupled with SSD and 4gb RAM. I have seen many, many comments from owners of 15"/17" MacBook Pros saying they won't buy another one because the MacBook Air does what they need.
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13" I'll grant you. 11" I won't. 1.4GHz is too slow to do anything serious, I'm sorry.

aurichie said:
We'll see. MacBook Airs have been selling like hot cakes by all accounts since the 2010 models were introduced.
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Oh sure. That's part of my argument as to why Apple will discontinue the 13" Pro.

aurichie said:
Of course as long as there is a viable business around selling MacBook Pros then Apple will continue the product line. The question is how much longer will customers want bulky, expensive 15" / 17" laptops once they have experienced the portability of products like the MacBook Air? I'm not expecting the MBP to go away anytime soon. But it will become an increasingly niche product that fewer and fewer customers buy when faced with alternatives like the MBA and iPad.
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Doubtful, more people still want a full-featured computer. Just trust me on this one. I deal with computer shoppers on a regular basis in my line of work.


DeViAnThans3 said:
I just red an interesting point regarding this news of tightening supplies. It seems unlogical that the "cheaper" resellers (Amazon, BestBuy etc)would run short on supplies, while usually it's Apple's online store or Premium Resellers who are running out first.

I've no idea how valid this point may be, but didn't found it here yet, and found it intersting enough to share.
If this is true, it makes it less probable that a refresh is imminent within the next 2-6 weeks. Either way, my hopes are still up ;)
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I'm not readying my savings until I see the Best Buy lists. We're gearing up for it, but we still have a little while longer yet.

fpnc said:
Just stream something from Netflix, Amazon, or Apple's own iTunes Store, DVDs aren't really that useful anymore. In any case, why would your girlfriend have a DVD and no means to watch it at her home? As for the rest, pretty simple, how about a USB thumb drive or an SD card? Much smaller, more rugged, naturally R/W, potentially much faster for access and way faster than CD/DVD +/-RW, and holds significantly more than a CD or DVD, and just like the thumb drive that Apple now ships for system restores on the MacBook Airs.

This is if we want to watch a movie in a room that isn't the common room; this happens at least once a week, mind you. And no, I'm not ripping every DVD I own on the optical drive I don't have in the machine, thanks.

fpnc said:
As I said, if you need an optical drive just get one, no real reason to penalize everyone with the inclusion of a large and mostly unused optical drive just because you want to install Office or Final Cut (something you typically do once or twice during the entire lifetime of your computer). Besides that, as I mentioned earlier, if Apple begins to remove optical drives from the MacBook Pros the software companies are going to be pretty much forced to go to online distribution. Either that, or if worse comes to worst, they will just ship on flash-memory-based media (again, like Apple does for the system restores on the MacBook Airs).
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Who said anything about it being a penalty? Frankly, it's more of a penalty of inconvenience to have to carry around an external ODD. Also, excluding the few people here, the amount of people pushing for the removal of the optical drive are in the vast MINORITY. You don't cite practical reasons as to why the ODD will be gone within the next three refreshes, whereas I'm citing nothing but practical reasons as to why it won't.

fpnc said:
Purchase or rental? I don't see that those terms make a difference when it comes to software. Technically, you really don't purchase software or movies, you may "own" the physical media but you merely have a limited license for the content. In any case, your argument doesn't negate the convenience and cost savings that you get with internet-based delivery. Furthermore, with software you eventually end up transferring the content to your computer's hard drive which generally isn't the case for movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Let's face it if you HAD to transfer a movie from a DVD before you could use it wouldn't you consider the DVD a mere transfer medium, one that might be considered a kind of nuisance to store and maintain -- other than for backup? So, if the content (movie or software) was always available online, safe and secure wouldn't that be a good alternative? And why do you exclude the example of downloadable music versus audio CDs -- was it because it didn't support your argument?
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Music makes more sense to be computer centric. Movies don't...yet. Plus you can burn a music CD whereas you can't with a movie. Also, you're telling me that they will first remove the optical drive which'll force the Internet based alternatives? What sense does that make? And what if my internet connection is spotty? You keep dodging that point because it doesn't fit YOUR argument.

fpnc said:
If you strip out the optical drive and do away with the NVIDIA chip set then you could probably afford a mid-range discrete GPU with only a minor increase in price (I've already proposed that a Sandy Bridge-based 13" MacBook Pro with a discrete GPU might increase in cost by $100). This also neatly eliminates your main justification for elimination of the 13" MacBook Pro -- that being that it isn't "pro" enough and is too close in features to the existing white MacBook. Frankly, I don't think that the white MacBook is ever going to be redesigned again -- it will stay with the Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA integrated graphics until it is discontinued within the next year. That means that there is plenty of room for a really "pro" 13" MacBook between the current low-end at $999 and the cheapest 15" MacBook Pro at $1799. That price range doesn't seem to be a "fairy tale" to me.
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They're not going to kill the optical drive in the next couple of refreshes so your above point is pretty much moot to begin with. Were it likely, sure, that'd give Apple a means of differentiating the 13" Pro from the other two 13" machines. But that's not even remotely likely. This is why I should've just dismissed your point to begin with.

fpnc said:
Even more battery life isn't better? I think you're overreaching for a justification.
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You're entire argument start to finish does just that.

fpnc said:
Besides that, if they don't go for a larger battery then they can just go for a smaller and more light-weight system, more ports, more features, or all three. There are lots of things they could do with the space that is currently being used by the optical drive. I will admit, though, that one problem with the MacBook Airs is their limited battery life and that does make the white MacBook an attractive offer for those who need longer battery life.
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Better battery life WITH an optical drive. Unless you really need that thin of a computer in which case, why aren't you just sticking with an Air anyway?

ckyaz said:
Do you think they would change the design of the Macbook pro this time around? The current design is amazing, but im starting to feel that it looks slightly outdated.
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Nope.

devilcm3 said:
aluminium based macbooks are more durable than the plastic counterparts and
they don't look like coming out from a coal mine after 1+ year of usage , current macbook whites are prone to dirt , and yes its plastic.
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Aluminum dents, plastic dings Aluminum may be the stronger material, but it's not the most durable at all.


devilcm3 said:
and you can't buy a macbook white + 256GB SSD for the price less than $1199
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You can buy a refurbished white MacBook and put in a 2.5" 256GB SSD for less than that amount, you just can't do so from Apple.

devilcm3 said:
third is that , i don't think many consumers are ready to accept SSD as their main storage mainly because of the cost per GB .
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And that's fair. I'm certainly not ready for it yet.

altecXP said:
If they keep the C2D in the 13in I hope it's at least the 2.66 and they get rid of the 2.4.
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or at least just a single 2.53 config.
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Eidorian said:
Do you have benchmarks?
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Sure do. No viruses, no blue screens of death, no driver issues, no Explorer Outlook conflicts, no wireless issues, no anti-virus software causing network conflicts, no IIS issues, should I go on? I have almost twenty years worth of PC and Windows issues to list and zero issues since I went to Mac in 2009. ;)
 
Just to confirm, I work as a marketer for a reseller that is supplied by Ingram Micro and all 15" and 17" are being refreshed - no definite ETA or specs known. Yummy.
 
nfable said:
Just to confirm, I work as a marketer for a reseller that is supplied by Ingram Micro and all 15" and 17" are being refreshed - no definite ETA or specs known. Yummy.
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AWESOME!!! the sooner the better.

Just noticed BB's 17" i5 mbp are backordered 1-2 weeks :D
 
nfable said:
Just to confirm, I work as a marketer for a reseller that is supplied by Ingram Micro and all 15" and 17" are being refreshed - no definite ETA or specs known. Yummy.
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Word on the 13"? I work for a reseller that is also supplied by Ingram Micro. Where on their site did you find this all out?

lifeguard90 said:
they will be here before march
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Not necessarily, though more likely than not.
 
linux2mac said:
Sure do. No viruses, no blue screens of death, no driver issues, no Explorer Outlook conflicts, no wireless issues, no anti-virus software causing network conflicts, no IIS issues, should I go on? I have almost twenty years worth of PC and Windows issues to list and zero issues since I went to Mac in 2009. ;)
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Sadly nothing I can replicate.
 
nfable said:
Just to confirm, I work as a marketer for a reseller that is supplied by Ingram Micro and all 15" and 17" are being refreshed - no definite ETA or specs known. Yummy.
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Knowing this, and with your knowledgement and experience in your job.
Wich are your feelings?
Do you think it will be in february or early march?
Do you discard april?
 
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