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Apple Prepping for Notebook Refresh?
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plus in no particular order aluminium casing, 15.4" LED display, 250 GB stock, better speakers, firewire 800, ExpressCard/34 slot ambient light sensor, longer battery life (slightly), dual link DVI supporting up to 2560x1600… pretty good deal if you ask me
.Got a friend who is looking into picking up a MacBook. Think I'll tell him to wait a bit and see if he wants the new updates if they happen soon.
Does someone dare to pick a date when this "refresh" will happen. it's that I'm going to America from 12 august till 1 septemebr and i want to buy a macbook there, seeing that the dollar is so cheap
The MacBook Pro's design has stayed very similar for 5.5 years.
Its design is a derivative of the MacBook Pro's (except for the keyboard).
How about:
- The MacBook Pro looking like a fat MacBook Air.
- The MacBook drawing off the iMac with a black screen bezel and black bottom (like how the iMac's back is black).
I never realized you couldn't BTO the hard drive of the MacBook Pro.
- The name
- Larger screen size
- Higher screen resolution
- Faster processors
- 7200 RPM HD option
- **GRAPHICS CARD**
- More ports (although Firewire 800 may come to the MacBook)
- ExpressCard slot
- Speakers
- Backlit keyboard
Is that enough?
Dear Apple,
Listen to Clayne.
thanks,
Me
drsmithy said:
I love these arguments.
And ... can you name an AFFORDABLE and AVAILABLE TO ALL CONSUMERS product with Windows NT and 32 CPUs from 1996?
Apple is designing products with these capabilities which are affordable, portable, and available to the masses. You can hang onto your 32 CPU Windows NT server if you wish.
plus in no particular order aluminium casing, 15.4" LED display, 250 GB stock, better speakers, firewire 800, ExpressCard/34 slot ambient light sensor, longer battery life (slightly), dual link DVI supporting up to 2560x1600 pretty good deal if you ask me
The bolded statements are debatable.
I love these arguments.
And ... can you name an AFFORDABLE and AVAILABLE TO ALL CONSUMERS product with Windows NT and 32 CPUs from 1996?
Apple is designing products with these capabilities which are affordable, portable, and available to the masses. You can hang onto your 32 CPU Windows NT server if you wish.
What you are doing is trying to change the argument. The point is not that in 1996 a computer with 32 cpus was prohibitively expensive. That has absolutely nothing to do with this. The point is that other operating systems have been able to take advantage of multiple cpus and multiple cores for years. This is an area where Apple is having to catch up with the rest of the field.
Well, clearly, it's not much of a catch up game if Windows couldn't capitalize on a decade's worth of a head start. Apple's not far behind, if behind at all.
How is this relevant to the actual point that Windows and Linux have been being developed and optimised for high-processor count machines (ie: "Grand Central") for a decade or more ?
Apple is designing products with these capabilities which are affordable, portable, and available to the masses. You can hang onto your 32 CPU Windows NT server if you wish.
No, Apple is - as usual - late to the party with products that are "affordable, portable and available to the masses" in this arena. Complete quad-core PCs cost less than a mid-range Mac Mini. There are even quad-core PC laptops on the market already (albeit using desktop CPUs).
Huh ?
The improvements in OS X 10.5 has put it at about Windows XP- (maybe 2003-) era SMP capabilities. Vista (and Server 2008) are a generation ahead.
Of course, the main limiting factor in multi-CPU performance is the applications, not the OS - and no amount of OS trickery can make single-threaded programs multithreaded, or parallelise serial problems.
You said the software was out there to utilize 32 CPUs long before now, but it doesn't seem like that forethought on Windows' part helped them out until much later... i.e. a few years ago. And even then, the most they seem to be doing with multi-CPU technology is reserved for a few high-end applications and power saving by shutting down a CPU core...
I've had multi-CPU workstations since 2000, and used multi-CPU servers since before then. First time I used a quad-CPU Windows machine was in 1996.
You seem to be confusing the recent explosion of multicore CPUs with multiprocessing in general, or even in commodity hardware.
Such a low-level part of the OS isn't exactly something that makes it into TV advertisements, nor something that is obvious to most end users.
Like I said, all the people who think "Grand Central" is going to be some sort of pixie dust that makes their Macs faster than anything else, are in for a great deal of disappointment.
I'll grant you that. Though outside of servers and corporate settings, where would this have any sort of impact?
Anywhere you want to use multiprocessing? Microsoft and Linux people have been looking at this problem for a very long time, so they have a lot of ideas on how to deal with it.
a) somehow, I think a graphics card is a pretty big jump for the low-end of the product line...
b) if they're ditching an optical drive, I'm buying a macbook right now...
c) blu-ray sucks up more battery life. better to rip the disc to the hard drive and play it from there. *mock gasp* oh but wait, wasn't that what Montevina/Centrino 2 was meant for? to watch a full-length HD-encoded video on one battery charge?
b) if they're ditching an optical drive, I'm buying a macbook right now...
c) blu-ray sucks up more battery life. better to rip the disc to the hard drive and play it from there. *mock gasp* oh but wait, wasn't that what Montevina/Centrino 2 was meant for? to watch a full-length HD-encoded video on one battery charge?
The difference between integrated, low-end, and midrange GPUs is like single-core, dual-core, and quad-core CPUs.
That's all good and dandy, except Montevina was also released with a potential for upgrading from the X3100 graphics chipset to the X4500, a supposedly 3X performance improvement. Tell me ol' Stevie won't just opt for better integrated over trying to redesign the Macbook to accomodate a graphics card.