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Apple Releases New MacBooks

Eidorian said:
How many times have I mentioned the Geforce 7300? It's more then enough for casual gaming and a big step over the GMA 950.
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The thing that has been frustrating me about this thread (it isn't coming from you) is that many people are associating the desire that many of us have for SR as a desire for a gaming machine. This is totally off base as gaming isn't something I'm concerned about at all. Rather SR has many features that make it very attractive to portable PC users.

Now the enhanced GPU performance is very important as the 950 series simply was a step backwards in the MB line. Reasonable GPU performance is something that people are concerned about. The unfortunate thing that I'm getting here is that people think that the desire for that X3100 in SR is to support gaming, when no one here frustrated with it missing in this update even has mentioned gaming on the X3100.
Let's throw in even more synthetic benchmarking.

Entry Level 3D capable GPU for an entry level Mac laptop.

It has hardware shaders though...
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The x3100 is a minimal GPU to support MS Vista.
Who said the GMA X3100 was a gaming GPU?
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I'm not sure who started this crap but we have about 20 people taking every mention of people desire to see SR in the MB update as a desire to game on the machine. What I'm trying to get across is that the the SR platform has many advantages even for a low end laptop.

Maybe people here don't understand Intel's chip sets. The same family can have one hub with built in graphics and another can have support for an external video card without the GPU. A laptop can have the same base chip set just that one uses the internal GU and another uses a PCI GPU.

Dave
 
Get a grip...

I am as excited as anyone when Apple releases new gear. However, It amazes me when some of you react like such crybabies just because Apple did not give you just what you wanted. Anyone out there complaining about a lack of Santa Rosa chips really just doesn't get the value of owning and using Apple: The OS. Sure, Apple's gear is years ahead of the competition in aesthetics and quality, but often trailing in chip power. This has been the only thing going for PC's for two decades. What PC's have always lacked, besides the previously mentioned design and quality aspects, is the best OS in the business.

Your choice: a faster chip (by a small percentage, at that) running a mediocre OS, or a slightly slower chip running MAC OS X.
 
wizard said:
You best look in the mirror as for the most part that is all this is a 160MHz update....
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More importantly than the speed difference, the 2GHz CPU that's now standard has the 4MB L2 cache vs. the 2MB of the 1.8MHz cpu.

Some users will see a noticeable performance boost because of the larger L2 cache. I would, simply because I frequently use app's that ultilize CPU-intensive signal-processing algorithms to generate/synthesize sound waves. With the larger L2 cache, those algorithms will execute more quickly, with fewer processor stalls associated with fetching instructions and data from memory (RAM).

I don't need a high-end 3D graphics card. However, I do need raw CPU power and can make good use of anything (such as larger cache) that will increase the flow rate of data through the system bus. Even a small performance gain in that regard is a good thing. And, under a true 64-bit OS, using a well written 64-bit app, the performance gain from having a larger L2 cache is even more noticeable.
 
Tara Davis said:
Everybody who has called this a "160 MHz upgrade" has revealed themselves to be UTTERLY CLUELESS about the difference between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo CPUs. You can safely ignore everything those people have to say forever.

They moved up a generation in CPU chipset.
They moved up a generation in wireless networking.
They bumped up the RAM and hard drive space.
They kept the same price.

That, my friends, is a SOLID incremental update to what was already a very nice line of consumer laptops.

Anyone who says otherwise is a pointless troll.
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Apple did not move up a generation in CPU chipset.
--Same chipset.
--Same Gen 1 Merom chip, only with higher frequency.

Apple did not move up a generation in wireless networking.
--Beginning with Apple's use of Core 2 Duos, Apple has been using 802.11n. It is now only official and you don't have to buy the firmware update for two dollars.

Only the low end model received a bump in RAM from 512 MB to 1GB. All of the other models already had 1GB standard.

Increase in hard drive space is nice.

All in all, an incremental update with little to speak of except to say, 'It's a nice gesture to tide us over until Leopard.'

I agree these laptops are nice, but I am not excited about the update either.

PS--I am no troll.
 
MacPhilosopher said:
I am as excited as anyone when Apple releases new gear. However, It amazes me when some of you react like such crybabies just because Apple did not give you just what you wanted. Anyone out there complaining about a lack of Santa Rosa chips really just doesn't get the value of owning and using Apple: The OS. Sure, Apple's gear is years ahead of the competition in aesthetics and quality, but often trailing in chip power. This has been the only thing going for PC's for two decades. What PC's have always lacked, besides the previously mentioned design and quality aspects, is the best OS in the business.

Your choice: a faster chip (by a small percentage, at that) running a mediocre OS, or a slightly slower chip running MAC OS X.
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Wow, that's amazing. I don't see Apple pushing a Pentium Dual-Core 2080 on its hardware anywhere. Apple's tagline is "Faster Speeds". The processor boost seems to be the selling point for Apple. It's just 166.66 MHz for a slim gain in overall performance. The problem with the MacBook is not the processor. It's already overkill for an entry level machine. The problem is the video card. Adding a dedicated video card would have been cheaper then ramping up the speeds. (Unless Apple got a killer deal to sell off older Merom chips.)

wizard said:
The thing that has been frustrating me about this thread (it isn't coming from you) is that many people are associating the desire that many of us have for SR as a desire for a gaming machine. This is totally off base as gaming isn't something I'm concerned about at all. Rather SR has many features that make it very attractive to portable PC users.

Now the enhanced GPU performance is very important as the 950 series simply was a step backwards in the MB line. Reasonable GPU performance is something that people are concerned about. The unfortunate thing that I'm getting here is that people think that the desire for that X3100 in SR is to support gaming, when no one here frustrated with it missing in this update even has mentioned gaming on the X3100.

The x3100 is a minimal GPU to support MS Vista.


I'm not sure who started this crap but we have about 20 people taking every mention of people desire to see SR in the MB update as a desire to game on the machine. What I'm trying to get across is that the the SR platform has many advantages even for a low end laptop.

Maybe people here don't understand Intel's chip sets. The same family can have one hub with built in graphics and another can have support for an external video card without the GPU. A laptop can have the same base chip set just that one uses the internal GU and another uses a PCI GPU.

Dave
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I just wanted to provide entry level 3D support for casual gaming. It seems that once someone mentioned Santa Rosa posters related it to gaming somehow. The GMA X3100 is a much better entry level integrated graphics solution over the GMA 950. A low end ATi or nVidia solution would have worked out fine as well.

Nowhere did I say that the MacBook was a hardcore gaming machine, needed to be, or that Santa Rosa would make it so.

localoid said:
More importantly than the speed difference, the 2GHz CPU that's now standard has the 4MB L2 cache vs. the 2MB of the 1.8MHz cpu.

Some users will see a noticeable performance boost because of the larger L2 cache. I would, simply because I frequently use app's that ultilize CPU-intensive signal-processing algorithms to generate/synthesize sound waves. With the larger L2 cache, those algorithms will execute more quickly, with fewer processor stalls associated with fetching instructions and data from memory (RAM).

I don't need a high-end 3D graphics card. However, I do need raw CPU power and can make good use of anything (such as larger cache) that will increase the flow rate of data through the system bus. Even a small performance gain in that regard is a good thing. And, under a true 64-bit OS, using a well written 64-bit app, the performance gain from having a larger L2 cache is even more noticeable.
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8-10% more performance. I'm sure those seconds add up since you're running jobs at 100% 24/7.

Cache is on-board so the system bus wouldn't be involved until you need more data or run out of space. Then you're on the bus to the RAM, hard drive, or waiting for the user.
 
Val-kyrie said:
I have followed the arguments from both of you through 20 pages--that is my limit for tonight--and I will only say one thing. Regardless of whether you call the MB entry level or not, it is difficult for me to convince other people to invest a minimum of $1200 (I always recommend a DVD burner) for a portable computer.
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It is hard for me to imagine anybody thinking of the MB as entry level. As you note it is very expensive for what you get.
It would be nice if Apple offered a sub-$1000 laptop. I have been 'evangelizing' my family and friends for three years now and only the problems with Windows security and the nightmare called Vista have made them rethink their upcoming computer choice. It is hard for them and many other people with limited resources to cough up such a large sum of money for a computer, when there are other cheaper options.
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This is one of the reasons I run Linux on my PC's. I was hoping that Apples previous releases of Intel hardware where demonstrating that Apple as a company gets it as far as hardware and value goes. Frankly this MB release shows clearly that Apple has regressed to its G4 mentality. That has disappointed me deeply. So I have to think seriously about other hardware and a Linux install.
And if I am going to convince them to buy, I want it to be as future proof as possible because it will probably have to last them 5 years. (Yes I live in an impoverished area in the BFE.)
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I'm sorry I'm not familiar with the BFE, where is it?

As far as future proof I'm not sure much security there is possible out to 5 years. If I was to look for a machine to run Linux I'd go for a completely Intel based machine as the best current bet. A SR based machine with an X3100 would be the best bet there, though you may be on the bleeding edge for X drivers.
That is my disappointment with the GMA 950 and my desire for the X3000/3100 and the latter's DX 10 compliance.
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Exactly!! I feel we think pretty much alike here. The lack of anything remotely like a reasonable update of the MB takes it out of the running for many of us.

Dave
 
Eidorian said:
...8-10% more performance. I'm sure those seconds add up since you're running jobs at 100% 24/7.

Cache is on-board so the system bus wouldn't be involved until you need more data or run out of space. Then you're on the bus to the RAM, hard drive, or waiting for the user.
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No. You don't understand. It's not a matter of "a few seconds" worth of time saved. It's a matter of being able to playback 64 channels sound vs. being able to only playback maybe 50 channels of sound. If your musical composition requires 64 "tracks" of instruments, then you simply can't do it in "real time." There is no "I need to save a few seconds to my time" problem. It's a problem of it whether or not you're able to render it "live" and in real time.
 
localoid said:
No. You don't understand. It's not a matter of "a few seconds" worth of time saved. It's a matter of being able to playback 64 channels sound vs. being able to only playback maybe 50 channels of sound. If your musical composition requires 64 "tracks" of instruments, then you simply can't do it in "real time." There is no "a few seconds saved" problem. It's a problem of it whether or not you're able to render it "live" and in real time.
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Ah audio work in real time. You've beaten it to death.

I'd be more worried about external sources on the MacBook then.
 
Apple's biggest mistake in moving to Intel chips

All the above posts are in my opinion Apple's biggest mistake in moving to Intel chips. When they were using power pc processors they could always fall back on claiming that the g4's and g5's didn't directly compare with intels and amd's in terms of the numbers. But now that we use the same chips, and much of the same hardware every little number gets nuanced out of control and forums fill with people obsessing over meaningless (give or take) megahertz. Get over it. Apple is selling the Apple package. Not a cheap pc. So why compare it to a cheap pc that throws features at you but in the real world doesn't satisfy it's customers. Just my piece. And just hang around your updates will come.
 
rydewnd2 said:
All the above posts are in my opinion Apple's biggest mistake in moving to Intel chips. When they were using power pc processors they could always fall back on claiming that the g4's and g5's didn't directly compare with intels and amd's in terms of the numbers. But now that we use the same chips, and much of the same hardware every little number gets nuanced out of control and forums fill with people obsessing over meaningless (give or take) megahertz. Get over it. Apple is selling the Apple package. Not a cheap pc. So why compare it to a cheap pc that throws features at you but in the real world doesn't satisfy it's customers. Just my piece. And just hang around your updates will come.
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When did we say the MacBook was being compared to a cheap PC? It's more up to spec now in RAM and drive space on the base model with comparable laptops but the CPU is overkill for being the consumer Mac laptop. What Apple needs to do is make it more well rounded and work on the GPU just a little bit.

The new loveable speed isn't worth making the front page at Apple.
 
Eidorian said:
When did we say the MacBook was being compared to a cheap PC? It's more up to spec now in RAM and drive space on the base model with comparable laptops but the CPU is overkill for being the consumer Mac laptop. What Apple needs to do is make it more well rounded and work on the GPU just a little bit.

The new loveable speed isn't worth making the front page at Apple.
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Did you consider that perhaps a few weeks at wwdc will reveal a thoroughly updated macbook pro that will make the macbook fall back nicely into it's "consumer laptop position. And many of the earlier posts compared the macbook to 500 dollar pc laptops. I have not the energy to leaf through again and quote them.
 
How can any update be a bad thing? If Apple waited for the next best technology before updating, things would never be updated. Just be happy with what you've got!!
 
Eidorian said:
Ah audio work in real time. You've beaten it to death.

I'd be more worried about external sources on the MacBook then.
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You still don't get it. The CPU needs of digital signal processing isn't from "playing back" a (pre-record) stream of data from your hard drive. The CPU needs are a result of algorithms that generate the (processed) sound in real-time. To move this synthesized data through the system bus, the larger the cache, the quicker data can be moved, which means more more tracks are possible.

Worry more about external sources? Yeah, that's for certain. Nobody that does any serious work with sound is going to use the internal sound system on any Mac.
 
localoid said:
You still don't get it. The CPU needs of digital signal processing isn't from "playing back" a (pre-record) stream of data from your hard drive. The CPU needs are a result of algorithms that generate the (processed) sound in real-time. To move this synthesized data through the system bus, the larger the cache, the quicker data can be moved, which means more more tracks are possible.

Worry more about external sources? Yeah, that's for certain. Nobody that does any serious work with sound is going to use the internal sound system on any Mac.
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I still fail to see how 2 more MB of L2 cache is going to make a remarkable improvement. You'd be better served by getting as much data into RAM (e.g. lots of RAM) and removing the bottleneck of the hard drive.
 
MacPhilosopher said:
I am as excited as anyone when Apple releases new gear. However, It amazes me when some of you react like such crybabies just because Apple did not give you just what you wanted.
Click to expand...
When you do business with somebody do you not have expectations with respect to performance? Apple left a lot of people with the impression that they where going to remain competitive with Intel hardware.

Remember one of the reasons for the switch to Intel processor was that Apple didn't want to be behind the curve all the time performance wise. Especially with the G4 line in laptops. Apple started out really well with their Intel machines but it now looks like the G4 disease has gripped them again. Only this time the problem is apple not the supplier.
Anyone out there complaining about a lack of Santa Rosa chips really just doesn't get the value of owning and using Apple: The OS. Sure, Apple's gear is years ahead of the competition in aesthetics and quality, but often trailing in chip power.
Click to expand...
historically that has been the result of PPC going no where. The transition to Intel was sold to us as a way to eliminate the performance issue. Now we have this terrible regression that is a MB update. Frankly Apple might as well go back to using the G4 if they can't do any better.

As to the OS, yes it is dandy and frankly is the primary reason I was interested in Apple again. The problem is that there are alternatives that are not MS based. So do you put up with a similar OS (Linux) that maybe comes up short in a few places and save a few dollars in hardware costs. Or in this case spend the same amount of money and get a more feature rich machine.
This has been the only thing going for PC's for two decades. What PC's have always lacked, besides the previously mentioned design and quality aspects, is the best OS in the business.
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Well the OS situation is being taken care of. As far as quality and design the PC world wins hands down their. There is just so many places to get hardware from in a huge number of forms that Apple just doesn't have a chance of offering everything that is possible in PC land.
Your choice: a faster chip (by a small percentage, at that) running a mediocre OS, or a slightly slower chip running MAC OS X.
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Again we have people missing the bigger picture. SR gives you a pretty big boost over the current 950 in the laptops when its internal X3100 is used. That is just one component of its advantages. You also have video decode acceleration. You have enhanced power management. You also have feature that likely wouldn't be used in a MB.

Maybe you can accept this release of the MB after Apple has stated that one of the reasons to go to Intel was to offer a competitive laptop. In this price range the MB isn't. Frankly I look at it like dealing with a business that always offers up on time deliveries and then fails each an every time you use their services. After a while you say what the hell and look for other business partners.

Dave
 
OHMG less quoting unfeasibly large portions of text NEXT TUESDAY

In a rumour site situation small is best - 'snap' 'snap' 'snap', a few stats here, a few dates there and the much missed elevator shot of undisclosed apple products (with worlds worst camera).

Yeah, yeah i know technology moves on but the intel chips just don't the 'rumour mongering' architecture of the PPC chip.. fact! (you can quote me on that)

Its almost June :)
 
Being someone that purchased the middle macbook a month and a half ago, I would have been very upset if the NEW macbooks came with Santa Jose and backlit LSD monitors....or whatever the hell you people are talking about.

:)
 
Ha Ha Ha

Apple have made a muck-up on their website. If you to go the UK online store and look at the specs when you go to configure the different models. The 2.0GHz model says it comes with a SuperDrive. Whereas the 2.1GHz model only comes with a combo drive. All those who have ordered one and it comes with a combo drive and not a super-drive should complain to apple under the goods description act.

:D

:apple:
 
starnox said:
Ha Ha Ha

Apple have made a muck-up on their website. If you to go the UK online store and look at the specs when you go to configure the different models. The 2.0GHz model says it comes with a SuperDrive. Whereas the 2.1GHz model only comes with a combo drive. All those who have ordered one and it comes with a combo drive and not a super-drive should complain to apple under the goods description act.

:D

:apple:
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Yes, I just checked it out... you're right! :D
 
Marx55 said:
This thread got probably the RECORD of replies ever. APPLE, ARE YOU LISTENING?
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I doubt if there is anything on this thread to worry Apple, just a handful of nerds whining because it hasn't got the latest gizmos :rolleyes:

Most potential MacBook customers are going to walk into the store, look at the specs and see

1 Faster processor
2 Bigger hard drive
3 More RAM
4 £50 cheaper

They wont have a clue what Santa Rosa is and probably wont even know the differences between integrated graphics and a dedicated video card.

They will see that it now has better specs for less money though!
 
I did read the first 11 pages yesterday on my cellphone, but could not reply, so I apologise if these comments have been made in advance as I only have 5 mins to make this post so no time to read more...

1. Isn't the new MacBook lighter at 5.5 lbs / 2.3kg as I am sure it was 2.7kg before or something similar, unless they are leaving the battery out, but the full spec page does not say that.

2. Why are so many people wining about this update? I was looking to buy a cheap (ie. bottom model) MacBook and now I would get a larger hard drive, double the RAM and a faster processor for £50 less in the UK... Now I would say that is a solid update, and I have a DVD writer on my iMac and I haven't used it since I purchased the iMac so yes a combo might be pennies more, but no everyone needs one, especially in a laptop... BTW a Mac isn't a PC!
 
Eidorian said:
I still fail to see how 2 more MB of L2 cache is going to make a remarkable improvement. You'd be better served by getting as much data into RAM (e.g. lots of RAM) and removing the bottleneck of the hard drive.
Click to expand...

You just not grasping how digital audio works, and what's required of it. RAM can't do floating point math... but CPUs can.
 
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