A. if things are more common or standardized it doesn't necessarily mean they are better. The wedge shape design is there just to fool people in to thinking they have a thin computer. And it also doesn't mean you get better cooling. What's a true professional laptop anyway. You have to be a Windows user to be a true professional now don't make me laugh.
The wedge shape is to fool people into thinking they're getting a thin computer? HAH. Thats the silliest thing I've heard all day.
First of all, it allows for better cooling. PCs have proper intakes and outputs for airflow and for the fan to circulate air throughout the system.
Second, its more ergonomic. How many keyboards out there, including Apples own, tilt up as it goes back? Same with notebook PCs.
A "true professional" laptop is actually built to take abuse. Won't scratch, dent, bend, or warp from heat like the MacBook Pro. They have multitudes of ports, USB ports, eSATA, memory card readers, HDMI outputs, workstation quality GPUs (not mid-low range GPUs like in the MacBook Pro). They're basically built to last, not built to last the length of the warranty like the MacBook Pro. Those from HP and Dell generally come with 3 years of on-site service standard as well.
The MacBook Pro is just a glorified and horribly overpriced consumer notebook with a "Pro" moniker thrown on to get people to think they're buying something thats better than it really is.
B. A tray loading optical drive isn't necessarily better. I've seen my share of busted tray's. And why would you want it to be user replaceable.
Hah, why would I want it to be user replaceable? Because its just that! If the unit is out of warranty, I can spend $50 and loosen a screw and swap it out myself. I don't have to pay anywhere from $150 up to $200 just for the DRIVE new and then either rip the ENTIRE SYSTEM apart or pay someone another $50-$100 in labor to put it in for me. With a use replaceable tray loader it can be replaced for $50 and less than 2 minutes of your time with no major surgery required for the computer itself.
Plus it means upgradeability as well. Look at my HP for instance. It shipped with a DVD writer. There are now standard height blu-ray readers and writers on the market. For less than the cost of a replacement SuperDrive for my MacBook I can upgrade my HP's drive to blu-ray! And keep that old one and throw it in an external case.
C. Finger print readers can be very easily fooled. So trust me on this one, if the mythbusters can do it you can too. So that means they aren't secure at all.
Fingerprint readers aren't for security, they're for convenience. When I'm on my HP, every site I go to that requires me to log-in.. well, I just swipe my index finger and its done for me. But on my Mac I have to type in my username and password every time.
Also, lets say you have multiple users on your computer. Let's say you have 4. On a Windows system with a fingerprint reader, when you're brought to the log-in screen after a fresh boot (or just waking it up), you have a little logo that says "swap finger to login" or you can click and enter your password like normal. So instead of each person having to login with their password each and every time, they swipe their finger and they're in faster. Then their passwords for every website and all of that they go to is stored and they just swipe their finger.
As I said, convenience.
D. What is up with memory card readers. Use the cable that came with your camera. If it wasn't supplied with your camera, return it and buy a proper camera. Oh and don't be fooled by usb 2.0 on camera's. It comes in two versions hi-speed and full-speed.
http://www.everythingusb.com/usb2/faq.htm
I use my cable on my nikon D40 and it is just as fast as if I were to use a card reader.
Card readers are for convenience. I can pop out the card and have it in the reader in less than 1/4 the time it takes to plug the USB cable into the computer, plug it into the camera, turn the camera on, wait for it to connect to the computer, etc. Plus I don't have to worry about any messy wires getting all of the place.
Don't even get me started on how slow iPhoto is to import pictures.
E. The thing with dedicated graphics is that a very large percentage of standard consumers doesn't need dedicated graphics. Besides there aren't that many applications that truly use a graphics card anyway, games being the only acception and some stuff like FCP and Aperture.
On OS X there are not that many applications that use dedicated graphics. On Windows, however, there is one VERY important feature that many Apple fans either choose to ignore or are completely ignorant to.
That would be system wide hardware acceleration for video playback. In Windows, any software that plays video can have full access to the GPU. With dedicated GPUs from the last several generations, and with the current ATI and nVidia GPUs (only partially with the joke that is the X4500), you get FULL bitstream decoding for nearly every video format out there. You get decoding, deblocking, hardware deinterlacing, hardware upscaling, hardware color correction. Basically, EVERYTHING is done via the GPU. As a result, those new $600 HP dv5z notebooks can play blu-ray video at full bitrate and resolution. The difference in video quality between my Mac and HP with a GeForce is stunning. The difference in DVD playback between the two is as staggering as the difference between fuzzy analog TV and crystal clear broadcast HD sports.
It also takes load off of the CPU. My HP plays DVDs and the CPU use hovers around 2% of 1 core. On my Mac? Around 25% of 1 core. GPUs can do all of that work on DVDs in reduced power states. This consumes less power than Apple's approach, produces less heat, and produces much better video quality.
OS X does not have any kind of hardware acceleration for video playback.
F. And yes the MBP needs to be that thin. I carry my MBP with me on a daily basis. Fat PC laptops just are to damn big. And yes they get hot so what.
So what? Are you Steve Jobs in disguise? Its completely unacceptable when almost the entire notebook case is well over 40c because of improper cooling.
Its unacceptable that CPUs in the MacBook are running only a few degrees below their breaking point because Apple wants to be "cool and thin".
I carry my HP around on a daily basis too. It weighs a whole half pound more than a MacBook Pro. Big deal.
This point continues on after your next comment:
At least they don't start to huff and puff like PC laptops do. My nephew has a 17" toshiba laptop a Satellite Pro. Not a bad computer at all. And it has this giant ventilation grill at the back and on the sides. But when he does ordinary things the thing takes off. Now he doesn't mind the noise it makes. But I would have thrown the thing out of the window a longtime ago. My MBP is on all the time. When I'm at home I run apps like visualhub to convert video's to Apple Tv format. I sleep roughly 2 meters away from the damn thing and it is quiet no huffing and puffing. The only time when the fans start turning is when I play games. And that's because those fools at NVIDIA and ATI don't get that GPU's should be more power efficient and shouldn't produce so much damn heat.
Hey, I'll take that little bit of extra fan noise. Heres a real world example:
My Mac gets around 3.5 hours of real world battery life with the screen set to 50% brightness, wifi on, browsing. Anything below 50% is essentially unusable.
My HP also gets around 3.5 hours of real world battery life with the screen set to the lowest (though equal in terms of brightness to the Mac), wifi on, browsing, etc.
Even though the MacBook runs "quiet" (and I will admit, its dead quiet), it gets HOT. After half an hour of browsing sites with Flash or even watching a DVD, it gets too uncomfortable to use. My HP? I can sit through an entire movie and it won't feel warm at all and all you hear is the soft hum of a fan.
When I'm encoding video, the CPU on the MacBook peaks at 85c and hovers around 83c. On the HP? Around 62c and the case isn't even warm to the touch.
On the topic of ATI and nVidia, the GeForce in my HP peaks at 64c while gaming for hours on end on a warm night.
I'll take that extra little bit of thickness, or the soft hum of a fan, or even an extra half pound, if it means I can actually USE the system as portable without having to worry about my own fertility, my own comfort, or worrying about the overall lifespan of the system being affected by the high temperatures the poor case designs force the components to endure.
Right now my MacBook is idling at 60c. All I have open is Firefox (no flash) and Yahoo Messenger.
G. If you like PC laptops so much stick with those, nobody is forcing you t use a Mac.
I do. I have essentially switched back to Windows. The funny thing is, I had a friend who was an avid Mac user and switched to Windows a few years ago. When I got my Mac she told me I'd switch back to Windows. I didn't believe her. Yet it happened.
I have a Mac because I bought into the Apple lies/hype. Now I regret but I'm stuck with it. I haven't sold it yet because it would be hard to swallow the $500-$600 loss I would have to suffer by selling it.
OSX (Macs), iTunes (iPod, iPhones), iLife is all to support the sales of their hardware. Steve hooks us on the software so he can sell us the combo drive loaded macbooks while we bitch about the BD loaded, SSD totting, carbon fiber covered Sony Vaio Z's kicking Johnny Ive's white plastic macbooks a$$.
I broke out of the eco-system
All I need from Apple is my iPod and my iPhone. I certainly don't need OS X because it doesn't do all of what I need it to do.
And I'm certainly (no longer, already fooled me once! can't fool me again) not going to spend $1299, $1400+ after taxes, on a 13.3" system with integrated graphics.
I would be a happy Mac owner, however, if the MacBook had at least a GeForce 8400M GS in it. Then the Mac COULD do everything I need it to do and I would just have to skip the extra features. But Intel graphics that NEVER live up to performance promises and specs? No more. I made the mistake once, never again.
I wouldn't jump all over the Z just yet.
13.1" screen (Kind of explains the large drop from the MBP's weight, although I agree it's got the clear weight advantage on the MB)
You cannot get the HDD "in addition" to a SSD (I think you meant either/or but I'm just clarifying.)
"Hight performance discrete GPU" as you put it is a total joke of a 9300M GS, featuring a laughable 64-bit memory interface along with a poor 1500 point score in 3Dmark 06 (The current 8600M GT posts double that; see
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...GS.9452.0.html and
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...GT.3986.0.html for comparison)
Still leaps and bounds better than anything in the MacBook.
Any dedicated GPU from the 8400M GS and up is going to walk all over Intel's offerings no matter what Intel says.
Plus dedicated GPUs do wonders for video playback.
In Windows at least, no affect in OS X since its all software based.
I still don't get why you want a Blu-ray drive in a MBP, let alone a MB. It consumes battery power like no tomorrow (Don't listen to Sony's 6 hour claim, that's only due to the weak 9300M GS they put in it), you won't have the ability to take advantage of the increased resolution unless you go to the 17" MBP (at which point is ceases to be a notebook and turns into a desktop replacement, trust me I tried lugging one of those around and I've come to the conclusion that 15" is enough for me at least), further totaling your battery life, and if your response is I"ll hook it up to an external at home" then you have the option of just buying a stand alone or one to stick into your desktop.
Having blu-ray in your laptop gives you the capability of just having that ONE machine do everything. It can be your high definition entertainment system at home, it can give you HD movies in a hotel room on the road (yes you'll see the benefit over DVD even when blu-ray is downsampled). It gives you everything you need in one place.
In a world where Apple is REMOVING optical drives I would be suprised if they made such a design change. I'm not trying to say you can't or shouldn't have the option, but I fail to see the need.
Thanks to Apple removing the optical drive, everyone else is making smaller and smaller optical drives fit in smaller and smaller computers. Pretty soon the MacBook Air will essentially have to ship with one if Apple doesn't want it to be seen as a very expensive accessory and more of a computer you actually want to use.
