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Apple Quietly Updates Entry-Level White MacBook

nick9191 said:
Aluminium advantages:
Thinner, lighter, faster memory, nicer screen, bigger hard drive, glass trackpad, longer battery life (by 30 mins), Mini DisplayPort, more environmentally friendly.

White advantages:
Sexier (in my opinion), more durable, Firewire, glossy but not mirror glossy, $300.
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More Durable ???? Can't say I agree with that observation
 
jav6454 said:
I think that by now Intel should have already broken the 3.0 GHz barrier. I mean, the last processors to reach those speeds were the Pentium 4's which almost reached 4 GHz.

Intel should really look into faster CPUs now that the FSB bottleneck is over in the new Nehalem architecture. I mean, its almost 2010 and we are still playing with 2.0 GHz CPUs? What the hell, we should have 2.8 GHz as a minimum now a days.
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While CPU clock speeds seem to have stabilised around 2-3GHz, the modern CPUs are far more efficient than previous ones at similar clock speeds. Add to that the increased FSB speeds, they are capable of much higher performance than their clock speed suggests. While the NetBurst Pentium 4's did get to around 4GHz, they were bested by Intel's Core architecture CPUs clocked around 2GHz. It's a bit of a nightmare for consumers, it was always easy to pick a CPU based on clock speed, today it's not as easy. CPUs are going to continue along the multi-core path with small increases in clock speed, I dont think we'll be seeing 3GHz+ in consumer laptops just now.
 
yeah i screwed up. ;D

****. i cant see MB Unibody getting a Firewire port... :)
i really cant.


haha, i actually had 2,4ghz in my old P4 single core which i bought almost a decade ago. :)

now i have only 2.53 x 2 in my laptop :p :p

maybe the problem lies elsewhere? crappy inefficient programming...
 
dotheDVDeed said:
Strange they didn't update the mini-DVI port to a mini-Display Port so they could also sell me a LED Cinema Display.
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That is so true.... they left out Mini DP, it shouldn't have been that hard to put that on there, would it?
 
wonderbread57 said:
I am really fighting the urge to flame you like I have not flamed for over a decade. MAYBE we get to 3ghz in 5 or 6 years???? Have you noticed at all the rate at which cpu rate has been increasing for the past 20 years? Laptops are only about 6-12 months behind desktops. In one year 3ghz will be common or a equivalent efficiency cpu for mobile. In 2-3 years there will be 4-12 core cpus for mobile. Inf 5-6 years?? I don't know, laptops run on water with optical circuitry??? And what's with the pink, are you a girl.
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My guess comes from the fact that we really are hitting a serious roadblock in processor technology.

Take my iBook G4. 1.33 GHz. It's four years old, and less then 1 GHz behind this updated MB.

Now why is this? For one thing, it's getting harder to keep bumping up clock speed with the current technology we have. Too much heat. In the future there will be a solution I'm sure. But things have been slowing down a little bit lately as far as clock speed goes.

Second, people are figuring out that higher clock speed does not necessarily mean better performance, so chip companies have less of an incentive to bump those speeds up.

Hope I cleared that up for you.
 
Slash X said:
More Durable ???? Can't say I agree with that observation
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Plastic is certainly more durable.

Just as an example, look at how many threads there are of people denting their new Macbooks. Plastic Macbooks do not dent. Aluminium is also a very soft metal.

That, combined with an extremely fragile glass screen makes for an extremely fragile computer.
 
CoreyMac said:
$300 more and you get.....

** DDR3 Memory
** 160GB HD
** Glass Multitouch Trackpad
** Glass LED Backlit Display
** Louder Stereo Speaker (Whitebook is Mono)
** 0.95" Thin Unibody
** 4.5lbs
** Black keys / casing that won't turn yellow like the whitebook

......To me thats worth the $300. Some intangibles there.
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But you loose
** Easy access to memory. unibody machines require taking the entire bottom panel off.
** Firewire
** Target disk mode. Could possibly return in the future using USB2 transfer cables.

As for the hard drive, with $110 500GB 2.5" drives at newegg, 120GB or 160GB doesn't matter as the hard drive would be upgraded shortly after anyhow.

Honestly, unless aesthetics or the backlit keyboard in the 2.4ghz model are your main selling points, I don't see much of a reason to choose the unibody Macbooks.
 
Wasnt this updated at the same time as the unibody's came out?

If so whats the chances of those being updated (very soon) to increase the gap in specs again?
 
Why doesn't Apple quietly update the specs of the 15" MacBook Pro to introduce (or re-introduce) the matte/antiglare screen, as they did for the 17" new MacBook Pro.
 
IMO Apple should have called the Aluminum MacBook the 13.3" MacBook Pro. Give it a better screen and voila you still have the MacBook entry line and then for those that need a bit more you can have the Pro.
 
Blame Apple, not Intel

jav6454 said:
I think that by now Intel should have already broken the 3.0 GHz barrier. I mean, the last processors to reach those speeds were the Pentium 4's which almost reached 4 GHz.

Intel should really look into faster CPUs now that the FSB bottleneck is over in the new Nehalem architecture. I mean, its almost 2010 and we are still playing with 2.0 GHz CPUs? What the hell, we should have 2.8 GHz as a minimum now a days.
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Intel sells Core 2 Duo Mobile chips to 2.93 GHz - Apple just doesn't use them. http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=26548

Core 2 Extreme Mobile up to 3.06 GHz - this one can be found in the fastest Imac. http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=34520
 
wonderbread57 said:
I am really fighting the urge to flame you like I have not flamed for over a decade. MAYBE we get to 3ghz in 5 or 6 years???? Have you noticed at all the rate at which cpu rate has been increasing for the past 20 years? Laptops are only about 6-12 months behind desktops. In one year 3ghz will be common or a equivalent efficiency cpu for mobile. In 2-3 years there will be 4-12 core cpus for mobile. Inf 5-6 years?? I don't know, laptops run on water with optical circuitry??? And what's with the pink, are you a girl.
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Completely untrue.

3ghz laptops have been around for years. The 3ghz Pentium 4 mobile chip for example.

http://laptops.bizrate.com/laptopcomputers/hp-3-ghz-pentium-4-laptop--pid360698703/

Theres a relatively inexpensive laptop circa 2005/6.

Clock speeds are reducing in favour of multiple cores.

3ghz will not be common in a year in mobile chips because we will have moved to 4 core mobile chips, with a slower clock speed.
 
ronniebellie said:
There's just one problem with the plastic case. It keeps cracking. Two of mine have cracked three times in the same place. Here's a report.
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They changed the case design to address this problem a while ago; friends and family with newer, plastic MacBooks don't have that can crack like that (I do though! :mad: )
 
ihabime said:
wow that's a pretty big update. I wonder if they're planning on dropping the price of the unibodies, because 300 bucks seems a lot for ddr3 and the glass trackpad.
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Yeah, but that glass trackpad is AMAZING. My jaw dropped when I saw this and was eager to order, only to realize that multi-finger clicks, huge number of gestures etc alone make the $300 worth it. Yeah, I'll probly go with the aluminum when the back to school specials are up and 10.6 is on. Hopefully they'll have a deal on the touch again this year to pair with it and hopefully nehelem is out before back to school (though that would just be a stretch).

Considering how much the scroll gestures have changed my life on my 2 year old C2D macbook, these will just own me.
 
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