Apple Quietly Updates Entry-Level White MacBook

[mosx]

After reading his above post, I don't know if I want to try to go around and around again. Maybe later. It made me laugh though.

I do have one thing to say to mosx: Your small sphere of reality is not indicative of the entire world.

Classic cop-out. Say the post made you laugh then try to belittle the person.

If you think I'm wrong then you need to venture outside of the Mac-related forums and into the PC related forums of the world.

I have a PC and a Mac, with an external hard drive which has both USB2 (Oxford chipset) and FW400. On both platforms, USB 2 is slower than Firewire for large data transfers. In my professional industry experience I have found this to be the case as well.

I have a PC and a Mac, I had a Mac with Firewire and my PC still has Firewire. The Mac running Windows and the PC both have equal transfer speeds when comparing Firewire and USB 2.0. It's only in OS X where USB is slower. Again, there are benchmarks you can google and find this out for yourself. Not just the synthetic benchmarks that have been posted either.

Glare? or am i mistaken.

As another poster said, if you're using your computer at that angle then you have other problems I'm sitting directly in front of my MacBook with CFL lights directly behind me on the ceiling and guess what? No glare

 

[butterfly0fdoom]

If that's the only difference you can point out between a Macbook Pro and a Macbook, I'd recommend you seek further product training. Sorry to sound mean.

And I'd suggest you stop taking one example as being completely literal and the extent of my knowledge. Giving customers every single difference in one take just confuses them further. FireWire's confusing enough, most people don't even understand (and some care even less so about) the difference between discrete and integrated graphics cards (leeches become a good analogy tool). You're not mean, you're just rude.

 

[butterfly0fdoom]

As also discussed in the FW thread, that explanation is a red herring. There is absolutely no reason a FW port couldn't have been included if that had been part of the design criteria from the start. The reason FW was left off of the new Macbook is to force more buyers onto the higher-margin MBP.

That's only the case for the smaller part of the population that uses/needs FireWire. For the most part, it's a non-issue. Even gadget blogs acknowledged this fact (being that FireWire is irrelevant to the masses), despite gadget blogs being far from the most concrete source of truth. The lack of FireWire on a machine geared to the typical consumer can actually be considered a design consideration. There's nothing funnier than people trying to stick their USB drives into the FireWire port (I've done that on the blind accidentally a couple of times with my mostly unused FireWire port, actually).

 

[PCMacUser]

I have a PC and a Mac, I had a Mac with Firewire and my PC still has Firewire. The Mac running Windows and the PC both have equal transfer speeds when comparing Firewire and USB 2.0. It's only in OS X where USB is slower. Again, there are benchmarks you can google and find this out for yourself. Not just the synthetic benchmarks that have been posted either.

Look, I don't know what Internet you're doing your research on, but my Internet says the opposite. Even Wikipedia's article, for goodness sakes, says that FW400 is faster than USB2 for external drives.

They cite these sources:

Source 1

Excerpt:

Although the USB 2.0 is speedier than the FireWire, the latter beats it when used in high-speed storage devices.

Source 2

Excerpt:

Though USB 2.0 is rated at a higher throughput speed, FireWire delivered faster performance on external hard drives when connected to a desktop.

Source 3

Excerpt:

Despite USB 2.0's 80 Kbps speed advantage over FireWire, our testing showed that the additional overhead of USB 2.0 made it slower than FireWire. For high-bandwidth devices such as external hard drives, the difference was as high as 70 percent.

Source 4

Excerpt:

Question: Which is faster Hi-Speed USB 2.0 or FireWire?
Answer: In sustained throughput FireWire is faster than USB 2.0.

Read Test:

* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0

Write Test:

* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0

My own searches reveal more of the same results, not to mention my own extensive real life usage. I'm not sure what's wrong with your Internet, but I'd recommend rebooting it and searching again.

You're not mean, you're just rude.

That's totally uncalled for. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but normally the first thing someone would say when asked the difference between a MB and an MBP would be "the MBP has a bigger screen and faster performance". Not some ramblings about Firewire that will confuse the average person.

 

[iEdd]

I find it ironic that "FireWire is dead" for your basic consumer that surfs the web, emails and pirates music, yet in the music industry where it's made, FireWire is the top option.

 

[gkarris]

Wow, I was wondering when this was going to turn into a FW vs USB 2.0 thread...

Interestingly enough, the brand spanking new Dell Latitude E6400 we just started getting at work has a FW port on it...

Dell can put it in - why can't Apple keep it?

I can see taking it out - as long as you have a card slot where you can put it in as an option.

I'm hearing that USB 3.0 is supposed to blow away FW, which could be the reason why Apple has done away with it on its MacBooks... as far as people with FW devices, you're SOL...

At least the White MacBook still has it. I was suprised, I thought they would have gotten rid of it when they updated it to the nVidia graphics board.

 

[ihabime]

They cite these sources:
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source 4

Puny hu-man, The MOSX has no need for sources. Wikipedia is but a drop compared to the vast ocean of The MOSX's knowledge. The tiny tubes of the internet are nothing against the expansive sky of The MOSX's experience. The MOSX knows all, The MOSX sees all, The MOSX is the alpha and omega. Tremble in awe before The MOSX's multi-quoting skills.

 

[butterfly0fdoom]

That's totally uncalled for. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but normally the first thing someone would say when asked the difference between a MB and an MBP would be "the MBP has a bigger screen and faster performance". Not some ramblings about Firewire that will confuse the average person.

Yes, because the average consumer can't visually confirm for themselves that the MacBook and MacBook Pro have different sized screens. As for performance, the only difference is for gamers and people that do movie editing. Which most typical consumers don't do. Most people want a computer for note-taking and Facebook. FireWire has a higher potential to be a deal-breaker than faster performance does. "Faster performance" is met with the "whatever" face, "larger screen" is met with the "Thank You Captain Obvious" facial expression.

 

[Eric S.]

That's only the case for the smaller part of the population that uses/needs FireWire. For the most part, it's a non-issue. Even gadget blogs acknowledged this fact (being that FireWire is irrelevant to the masses), despite gadget blogs being far from the most concrete source of truth. The lack of FireWire on a machine geared to the typical consumer can actually be considered a design consideration. There's nothing funnier than people trying to stick their USB drives into the FireWire port (I've done that on the blind accidentally a couple of times with my mostly unused FireWire port, actually).

Funny how this "design consideration" never applied to any other Mac, either laptop or desktop, made in the last eight years, during which time Apple has been evangelizing the advantages of FireWire for the consumer.

 

[butterfly0fdoom]

Funny how this "design consideration" never applied to any other Mac, either laptop or desktop, made in the last eight years, during which time Apple has been evangelizing the advantages of FireWire for the consumer.

For the last two years, I haven't heard of Apple evangelizing the advantages of FireWire. Rather, the removal of FireWire synching in the iPods (and the later removal of FireWire charging) was probably a good signal that Apple had changed their minds on the matter. At any rate, despite Apple's efforts to promote FireWire, USB won out in the end. Apple clearly has conceded.

 

[Bubba Satori]

industrial design is about compromises.

Form should never trump functionality. It's happening all to often with Apple computers.

 

[mswebersd]

Sorry to break up the sh*t fight, but...
does anyone know when this release will end up in Best Buy? I have $200 in gift certificates there, and I finally have a reason to use them.

Thanks!

 

[mosx]

Look, I don't know what Internet you're doing your research on, but my Internet says the opposite. Even Wikipedia's article, for goodness sakes, says that FW400 is faster than USB2 for external drives.

They cite these sources:

Source 1

Excerpt:



Source 2

Excerpt:



Source 3

Excerpt:



Source 4

Excerpt:



My own searches reveal more of the same results, not to mention my own extensive real life usage. I'm not sure what's wrong with your Internet, but I'd recommend rebooting it and searching again.

Okay, so you're good at finding articles that are all from 2002 and 2003, and one from a store that gives no details.

I particularly like the TechTV one "CPU use on our Pentium 4 1.3GHz was..."

Even better, other tests, synthetic benchmarks, were performed on a Celeron overclocked to 850MHz running on Windows 98

So do you have anything MODERN? Anything that isn't almost 3/4 of a decade old?

I mean, come on. Those tests were all talking about read and write speeds at around 6-8MB/sec on Firewire and USB 2.0. Well below what modern systems are capable of. Not even cheap USB flash drives are that slow.

 

[iEdd]

So do you have anything MODERN?

Do you have anything at all?

 

[Eric S.]

For the last two years, I haven't heard of Apple evangelizing the advantages of FireWire.

For the last two years Apple has mostly neglected its computer products entirely while focusing on iPhones and iPods.

Rather, the removal of FireWire synching in the iPods (and the later removal of FireWire charging) was probably a good signal that Apple had changed their minds on the matter.

For iPods to dominate the music player market they need to operate with Windows systems, which generally lack Firewire.

At any rate, despite Apple's efforts to promote FireWire, USB won out in the end. Apple clearly has conceded.

Well, we'll see if the products rumored to be coming soon - iMacs, Mac Pro, and mini (maybe) - drop it.

 

[PeterQC]

...

Is this one ok for you? Was posted this summer. They do not post what computer they use, only that this is a Windows XP machine.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9973894-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave

I also found another post from this summer about DDR3 RAM. I don't know much about motherboard, but that's the most recent link I could find.

It is French through. In resume, they see no significant gains, around 2% and that the DDR3-1066 CL7 was very similar to the performance of DDR2-800 CL4, while the DDR3-1066 CL9 would be slightly slower . The only place where they found real boost were during gaming (<5%) and compressing files (<4%).

I'm neither agreeing with you on the ram, I don't know enough about hardware anyway. Just adding what I found about DDR3 Ram. Is the CL# about latency?

http://www.tt-hardware.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=11717

 

[SkyBell]

Okay, so you're good at finding articles that are all from 2002 and 2003, and one from a store that gives no details.

I particularly like the TechTV one "CPU use on our Pentium 4 1.3GHz was..."

Even better, other tests, synthetic benchmarks, were performed on a Celeron overclocked to 850MHz running on Windows 98

So do you have anything MODERN? Anything that isn't almost 3/4 of a decade old?

I mean, come on. Those tests were all talking about read and write speeds at around 6-8MB/sec on Firewire and USB 2.0. Well below what modern systems are capable of. Not even cheap USB flash drives are that slow.

Why can't people just admit when they're wrong instead of trying to turn the argument around on the other person?

Despite enough proof to satisfy nearly anyone, You still claim USB 2 is faster then FW at file transfers. Everyone on this forum will disagree, as will nearly every source on the internet. You've effectively been proven wrong, and yet you continue to try and hold your now discredited position on the matter. Give up already.

As far as screen glare goes, realize that just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean other people don't experience it. Lighting conditions vary from person to person obviously, but you blatantly ignore that and claim it doesn't happen anyway.

 

[angemon89]

Now all it needs is a matte LED display and this would be my PERFECT laptop.

 

[PCMacUser]

Okay, so you're good at finding articles that are all from 2002 and 2003, and one from a store that gives no details.

So do you have anything MODERN? Anything that isn't almost 3/4 of a decade old?

No, I don't have anything newer. You know why? Because this argument finished about 3/4 of a decade ago. Firewire wins, get over it.

 

[Chappers]

If USB is faster than Firewire - provide some proof. Provide links - we are all waiting

 

[weckart]

Apple ships with 667MHz DDR2
And having a notebook with a Santa Rosa chipset (800MHz FSB) and DDR2 800, I can tell you from experience that upgrading from DDR2 667 to DDR2 800 brought absolutely NO bandwidth increases according to Sandra and other bandwidth benchmarks.

Why did you waste money upgrading the ram to DDR2 800? SR was discussed to death, here on Macrumors, way before Apple released its incomplete version of it minus the Intel wifi card. One thing that was well known about it was the the FSB would be increased to 800MHz but the memory bus would be locked at 667MHz. Any faster ram would consequently be clocked down. Why did you even bother running benchmarks? Did you think Intel was lying?

You had to wait for Montevina to derive any benefit from DDR2 800 or faster ram.

 

[butterfly0fdoom]

For the last two years Apple has mostly neglected its computer products entirely while focusing on iPhones and iPods.

Maybe prior to August that would be the case, but now it's just the desktops being neglected and at this point in time, mini aside, it's Apple waiting on Intel to supply the chips.

For iPods to dominate the music player market they need to operate with Windows systems, which generally lack Firewire.

The iPod mini dominated the market and came with both USB and FireWire cables. There was no need for Apple to remove FireWire. But they did. The removal of FireWire and iPods dominating the market have no correlation.

Well, we'll see if the products rumored to be coming soon - iMacs, Mac Pro, and mini (maybe) - drop it.

The iMac and the Mac Pro wouldn't lose FireWire; the MacBook Pro still has it. As for the mini, I doubt the mini would lose FireWire unless Apple decides to make the mini the size of the Apple TV; there would be no space issues, therefore there would be absolutely no logical reason for FireWire's removal.

 

[iEdd]

The iPod mini dominated the market and came with both USB and FireWire cables. There was no need for Apple to remove FireWire. But they did. The removal of FireWire and iPods dominating the market have no correlation.

The first iPods were FireWire only, then the dock connector came in with USB support. FireWire was removed to save on costs and size/weight as USB was more common, this helped dominate the market as availability increased.

 

[mosx]

I don't have time to reply to everything, so I'll just reply to this one

Why can't people just admit when they're wrong instead of trying to turn the argument around on the other person?

Despite enough proof to satisfy nearly anyone, You still claim USB 2 is faster then FW at file transfers. Everyone on this forum will disagree, as will nearly every source on the internet. You've effectively been proven wrong, and yet you continue to try and hold your now discredited position on the matter. Give up already.

As far as screen glare goes, realize that just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean other people don't experience it. Lighting conditions vary from person to person obviously, but you blatantly ignore that and claim it doesn't happen anyway.

Too much of the "proof" provided here is in the form of linking to articles that are nearly half as old as you are. Information that old is, in the technology world, ancient history.

The newer links provided went to stories that reviewed chipsets that are now 3 or so generations old. Again, ancient history in the technology world and completely irrelevant.

I see one person here posted a link to a cnet article. Knowledgeable people generally view cnet as the three stooges of technology reviews, not knowing a damn thing about what they're talking about.

Everything I say can be backed up by personal experience. Any single person here who owns an Intel Mac can install Windows natively via Boot Camp and experience the differences in speed over USB and Firewire compared to OS X themselves.

As for screen glare, again, it does not exist. People on this forum have a tendency to blow things out of proportion and make up things that aren't true. I can't even begin to count how many falsehoods regarding Windows I've had to smack down in the time I've been posting here.

The funny thing is that when people are provided with the truth on this forum, they ask for proof. I remember people saying ridiculous things about DVD playback on OS X. They didn't believe me that OS X had no hardware acceleration for video in the way Windows does. Tell them to install Windows and see for themselves and they shut up and back off.

As for the RAM speed, nobody has provided any modern real evidence to counter what I've said. I have two systems here that DO run DDR3 1066 and another that runs DDR2 667 with similar processors and the speed difference is dramatic. But as I said, I'm not about to make and post a video just because a handful of people on a forum do not know what they're talking about an insist on their opinion that the plastic MacBook is a better buy than the unibody when that couldn't be any further from the truth.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

B
My claims are backed by REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE not synthetic benchmarks. And I'm not certainly not going to make and post a video for a couple of people on a forum who don't know what they're talking about and are just trying to justify their belief that the weaker unit is the better unit.

...

If audio professionals are relying on Apple notebooks and OS X to make music, then they fail at their jobs.

All your posts indicate your disdain for the Mac. Your sole purpose on these forums are to get a rise out of Mac users. You constantly indicate your preference for the Windows platform (which begs the question WHY you would be on MAC forums) and make false claims about professionals such as the above (Logic Pro is used by MANY professional musicians and the past several version are ONLY available for the Mac. Thus your latter statement there is not only false, it's pure BS and indicates your true purpose here which is clearly TROLLING. Frankly, you are clearly and without a doubt a TROLL. IMO, you should have been banned a long time ago. Why don't you go read a Windows forum if that's your interest? Or is you interest solely in trying to 'educate' dumb Mac users? Again, that would be TROLLING.

Puny hu-man, The MOSX has no need for sources. Wikipedia is but a drop compared to the vast ocean of The MOSX's knowledge. The tiny tubes of the internet are nothing against the expansive sky of The MOSX's experience. The MOSX knows all, The MOSX sees all, The MOSX is the alpha and omega. Tremble in awe before The MOSX's multi-quoting skills.

LOL. That's about it too. He's also clearly never heard of or used FW800 or he'd know that no USB 2.0 connection is going to come even CLOSE to it in performance. And until USB 3.0 comes out, Firewire 800 is still king (eSata is only useful for hard drive connections).

Why can't people just admit when they're wrong instead of trying to turn the argument around on the other person?

Because he's a troll. It's not about being right or wrong. It's about irritating Mac users to get his jollies. This is plainly obvious reading any number of his posts ANYWHERE on these forums where he consistently indicates he long since abandoned any Mac use and is 100% behind Windows. Any normal (non troll) person would leave Mac forums when their interest in Macs had gone away, but he sticks around because he gets a kick out of trying to belittle and otherwise grate on the nerves of Mac users who will take his bait. I'm surprised the moderators didn't ban his IP long ago. He is the worst sort of troll.

I still own and use a PC with both Windows and Linux on it and anyone who has read my posts knows I'm NOT a fan of Apple the company or much of their hardware (which is overpriced and underpowered) but I do like OS X and many of Apple's gadgets like the iPod Touch and AppleTV for streaming my media libraries around the house and what not. So believe me when I say he's a troll it's not because I'm some blind Apple fanatic...far from it.