Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Prepping for Notebook Refresh?

About that BluRay thing...

I've tried to play an HD-DVD-file (just copied the folders to hard drive) on a current 24" iMac. The video is nowhere near watchable. Even with VLC Player the framerate is flaky, maybe playing 2 seconds straight fluently and then going back to a frame every few seconds... No a BluRay drive would be pretty pointless because you couldn't actually watch the video.

OSX seriously needs to taek advantage of the GPU for video playback. I think Snow Leopard is going in this direction, so we might se BluRay-Equiped Macs once Snow Leopard is out. I for one would love a superdrive that burns BluRay once the prive of the blanc discs is affordable.
 
My G4 Titanium Powerbook finally died after 6 years. Awaiting a 15" Macbook in black without having to pay for the top of the line MB just to get black when I don't need all the other bells and whistles.
 
CWallace said:
I just don't see a 17" display being the optimal way to watch a 1080p film, personally.
Click to expand...

I don't understand why people get hung up on this. Have you never connected an external display to your Mac ?

Pretty much every HD display (LCD, Plasma, projector, whatever) you'll ever see has a DVI or HDMI in.
 
Beric said:
Wow, what a post. You make me want to buy a PC.

My MB gets SO hot. It's 60 degrees Celsius, and I'm right now just using Safari (no Flash), Yahoo Messenger, and iTunes. You're so right about the shape of the computer. I don't really need a super-thin or a super-light computer. My MB heats up to almost 100 degrees Celsius during games, and the fans are still running top notch an hour after.

The MB's lack of a dedicated graphics card (even just an average one), not even having a superdrive as standard, and having such a high price, is just unacceptable. I'm currently very dissatisfied with my MB for its performance in games. I was looking at a MBP, and then realized I could get a HP that was equal in specs to a MBP for half the price.

Apple so under-delivers and overcharges, I never thought I'd say it, but I am seriously considering a PC. I'm willing to live with Vista, in exchange for twice the features for the price of a MBP.
Click to expand...

i think what apple should do is make a macbook geek
thats twice as thick as the current MBP and just goes for specs
because thats the problem with macs - they cant compete with pc products that just go for specs - and some people dont need a slick and thin, quiet laptop - they would prefer better specs for cheap
 
Hey newbie to the forums but was wondering ive been waiting for a year to get my first Apple. and i really want the blackbook because it fits my needs and runs final cut pro, and CS3. But my question is, should i just get a blackbook now and dont worry about the update because it looks like the feb update all over again.:confused:
 
mosx said:
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...
Click to expand...

I'm not repeating this entire post because everyone can read it (or not) for themselves. Mosx - although your statements are mostly factually and technically correct, they miss the one indisputable point that has impacted this 24 year former DOS/Windows/Vista user - the MacBook does not act like someone poured a can of STP into it after two weeks.

You know exactly what I mean...and this includes the formerly "best" Vista Business notebook, the Sony Vaio VGN 430 (2gb ram; 320gb HD; DVD writer); within two weeks of using the system, it begins to take forever to load and shut down; processes and programs slow down to unacceptable performance levels; and random shut downs or restarts are a daily occurrence. 100+ days into the conversion to a Santa Rosa black MacBook, not a single restart, shuts down and starts up in seconds, and not ONE random system shut down or restart. And who really needs the start button anyway...I unplug my desktop monitor-firewire HD-ethernet, close the screen, go home, open, and it connects to my home wireless and all my programs are back on the notebook screen...and the reverse works when I get back to work.

Why am I telling you all this - because a notebook is more than the simple total of a list of features; it is the integration and experience it delivers. From a 1986 Toshiba 1100 plus to the Sony Vaio Vistabeast, none of them compare to the simple MacBook.

Now, sorry to have partially hijacked this thread, but I just had to correct a few misconceptions - including the wedge shape - check your review archives and you'll see the earliest user of the wedge shape, Sony, did it for profile and design reasons - to look slimmer than Toshiba, Dell and HP, and secondarily for thermal reasons.
 
MrCrowbar said:
About that BluRay thing...

I've tried to play an HD-DVD-file (just copied the folders to hard drive) on a current 24" iMac. The video is nowhere near watchable. Even with VLC Player the framerate is flaky, maybe playing 2 seconds straight fluently and then going back to a frame every few seconds... No a BluRay drive would be pretty pointless because you couldn't actually watch the video.

OSX seriously needs to taek advantage of the GPU for video playback. I think Snow Leopard is going in this direction, so we might se BluRay-Equiped Macs once Snow Leopard is out. I for one would love a superdrive that burns BluRay once the prive of the blanc discs is affordable.
Click to expand...
I think that is more to do with VLC than anything else. Since I have tried BluRay movies on my PC before with hardware acceleration turned off and it seemed perfectly watchable to me.

I have a AMD 3800X2 (running at 2Ghz) and was using PowerDVD.
 
splintah said:
i think what apple should do is make a macbook geek
thats twice as thick as the current MBP and just goes for specs
because thats the problem with macs - they cant compete with pc products that just go for specs - and some people dont need a slick and thin, quiet laptop - they would prefer better specs for cheap
Click to expand...

Exactly.

I WANT to be able to buy a MBP that gives me the specs I need, for a reasonable price. I don't care so much about size. In fact, I don't want a small size, because with it comes heat. I care about the specs and the price. I want to have one laptop, that can do everything in OS X, but then switch to Windows and play the latest games at screaming speeds. At this point, it looks like I'll have to keep my Macbook for everything non-gaming, and buy an additional Notebook PC (I'll be running Windows for games anyway) that trumps the MBP for half its price.
 
katewes said:
I HATE black keyboards. I want a large Apple illuminated logo, rather than a small dotted design seen in the supposed leaked-designs. Therefore, I am really glad that I recently bought the top-of-the-line 15" MBP.

Some of Apple's recent "improvements" have been just for the sake of change, and have not been good. e.g. the removal of matte screens from the iMac. Apple sometimes is more conscious of style, rather than caring about the practical needs of some users.

I'm camping with the current MBP design because I love it.

The thought of black keyboards makes me puke.
Click to expand...

They are fine if they are design right.

and what is it with people;e and the "dotted logos" Its just part of a new LED logo and they haven't gotten the cover on it yet. It only makes sence. I seriously dobut apple will go back to a 70s style era on their laptops

MrCrowbar said:
About that BluRay thing...

I've tried to play an HD-DVD-file (just copied the folders to hard drive) on a current 24" iMac. The video is nowhere near watchable. Even with VLC Player the framerate is flaky, maybe playing 2 seconds straight fluently and then going back to a frame every few seconds... No a BluRay drive would be pretty pointless because you couldn't actually watch the video.

OSX seriously needs to taek advantage of the GPU for video playback. I think Snow Leopard is going in this direction, so we might se BluRay-Equiped Macs once Snow Leopard is out. I for one would love a superdrive that burns BluRay once the prive of the blanc discs is affordable.
Click to expand...

Well I have a felling since blu- ray is such a huge leap forward, we may see it be anouced at Mac World 2009 in January.

CWallace said:
It really should not be surprising that Sony VAIOs have Blu-Ray since Sony invented the technology and want to push it out.

I just don't see a 17" display being the optimal way to watch a 1080p film, personally. And for data backup, an external 2.5" HDD is so much cheaper and more convenient since it can be used with any PC with a USB port. Not to mention if you are really serious about optical media as backup medium, you want DVD-RAM or HD DVD-RAM since those are the only two formats with built-in error correction and they're fully flexible for reading and writing.
Click to expand...

Its not. 16" or a 18" is more the way to go. Acer along with sony now both have a 16 and 18" models. Both are in a 16:9 formatt, both in 1080p. PEople complain that it will mess up their menu bar or dock or something. Apple knows what they are doing. You can change the resolution's on the macs to like 800x600 or 600x400 and yet that makes things huge, wouldnt that ruin things?

cromwell64 said:
I would say it is quite the opposite. I see tons of people freaking out that blue ray is not standard on the macbook or macbook pro.
Click to expand...

I havent seen anyone "freaking" out. May be one person, but not everyone. I'm not. I care more about a revamp of the laptops now, then blu-ray in january
 
drsmithy said:
I don't understand why people get hung up on this. Have you never connected an external display to your Mac ?

Pretty much every HD display (LCD, Plasma, projector, whatever) you'll ever see has a DVI or HDMI in.
Click to expand...

So why not just buy a standalone Blu-Ray drive? Or actually save money and buy a PS3? Even if you never play a game on it, it's about the best Blu-Ray drive out there at the moment.

I can put 1080p content on my Dell 2408FPW, but it doesn't look nearly as nice as putting it on my 35" Toshiba CRT and I expect will look even better on my incoming 46" Sony BRAVIA XBR LCD.
 
digitalbiker said:
Actually I don't really compare(the Sony VAIO Z Series) to a MBP but I think it destroys the MBA.
Click to expand...

Well the MBA came out before the Sony Z Series did so the Z Series is taking advantage of technology the MBA did not have. And in this market, four-tenths of a pound may not seem like much, but it is. And then you have the aesthetic design of the MBA which is superior to the Z because it does not have to make room for things like a second HDD bay or an integrated optical drive.

Since Steve came back, Apple has always walked to the beat of a different drummer. It was no longer about matching a Windows PC hardware-feature for hardware-feature. It was about elegance in both design and execution as it related to both hardware and software. It's to computers what Bang & Olufsen are to home electronics.

And the best thing of all, it's not just style over substance. Macintosh hardware is still plenty good, even if it does not match Windows PCs feature for feature or EIS to EIS. And after 30 years of Windows and one year of OS X, I find OS X to be much more elegant and capable.

Windows PCs fight it out in a crowded market with thousands of players, big and small. They need to have everything just to "keep up with the Jonses", much less try and stand-out from the crowd. Margins are low and they need to move significant amount of product to generate significant revenues.

Apple plays in it's own private sandbox. It needs to be unique enough to keep ten million or so people a year buying their product at price points that generate billions in profits. They have a formula most Windows PC companies would kill for and they have no incentive to mess around with it when it is doing so bloody well for them.
 
CWallace said:
So why not just buy a standalone Blu-Ray drive? Or actually save money and buy a PS3? Even if you never play a game on it, it's about the best Blu-Ray drive out there at the moment.

I can put 1080p content on my Dell 2408FPW, but it doesn't look nearly as nice as putting it on my 35" Toshiba CRT and I expect will look even better on my incoming 46" Sony BRAVIA XBR LCD.
Click to expand...

why a PS3? why not an actual blu-ray player. there you get a lot more features and no wasted money on gaming whitch you wont ever use
 
For the "update" game.

Minor improvements like quicker processor may come unannounced. Anything major like a revamp of the design of the MBP would be announced with a press event. These things are planned and invites are send out 1 or 2 weeks earlier. If those invites are send, usually you would know about it.

So maybe a speed bump, but nothing more.
 
.Chris said:
why a PS3? why not an actual blu-ray player. there you get a lot more features and no wasted money on gaming whitch you wont ever use
Click to expand...

Actually, reviews imply the PS3 is the better (and cheaper) Blu-Ray player since Sony keeps improving the firmware and software on it much more actively then their standalone players.
 
Yeah... you know I agree with the member who posted the very long post on the last page. The ONLY reason I buy macs is because of the OS. Sure they look good, but I'd MUCH rather have a more powerful laptop and spend less money for it. The last thing I want to do is attract more admirers ;).

Why doesn't Apple incorporate the features common on other PCs? Is it impossible to achieve their 'style' with so many ports?

Ugh... regardless, I'm waiting for the MBP refresh.
 
CWallace said:
Well the MBA came out before the Sony Z Series did so the Z Series is taking advantage of technology the MBA did not have. And in this market, four-tenths of a pound may not seem like much, but it is. And then you have the aesthetic design of the MBA which is superior to the Z because it does not have to make room for things like a
Click to expand...

Well I am hoping that Apple steps up and updates the Air to where it is more competitive with the Sony.

As far as aesthetics. It is all in the eye of the beholder. I think that there are a lot of people who think that the Vaio Z is stunning and there are a lot of people who think the Air looks like crap.

6 oz is not significant for portability. A typical Air traveller will have to carry more than 6 oz in adapters, portable battery extenders, and usb drives to match the built-in functionality of the Vaio Z.

I would love to see Apple step up and blow away Sony with a great update to the MBA. But somehow I doubt that they will.
 
Anyone know when a regular PC & Windows will ever support EFI? I'm sure a lot of hardware available for PCs won't be available for Macs until PCs come w/ EFI and Windows supports it.
 
guzhogi said:
Anyone know when a regular PC & Windows will ever support EFI? I'm sure a lot of hardware available for PCs won't be available for Macs until PCs come w/ EFI and Windows supports it.
Click to expand...

Vista supports EFI right now. I expect more machines will move to EFI-only since apps like rEFIt (?) will allow non-EFI-aware OS' to run.

I have read on this forum that it is actually Apple that has "crippled" EFI on their hardware to make it more difficult to run non-OS X operating systems that support EFI.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back