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Apple Sweeps Consumer Reports' Laptop Recommendations

Beric said:
I would suggest that the Macbook is powerful enough for most consumers. However, I wouldn't mind an BTO option for a 9600M. That's the real problem. Not enough options.
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You forget that you can't just BTO anything into any notebook design.

The Macbook apparently isn't designed to handle the heat and power supply requirements of a discrete GPU.
The MBP's design can't handle quadcores or top-of-the range GPUs.

Before you cry "omg what a crappy design", think again.
The machines could never keep their form factors and weights if they had to include power hungry and hotplate BTO options.

If you think that the form factor or weight is largely irrelevant, you might be looking at the wrong product FOR YOU. Other people care about these things, and they have their reasons, right?
 
mytdave said:
Both Apple and M$ have it wrong. M$ is talking out their a** because Windows generally stinks, and all the PCs run Windows. The other problem M$ has is many of the "affordable" laptops they praise in their commercials are low end crap. You simply can't build a 14-16" laptop for $600-800 and not have it be a piece of junk.

Now Apple on the other hand is stupid and foolish not to have 2 laptop lines - a consumer line and a pro line so they'd have 2 models of each screen size providing an 'affordable' line for consumers and a 'beefy' line for business/professionals/power-users. Apple could produce a decent 15" laptop in the $1600 range instead of the minimum entry point being $2500. Some people simply don't need the highest horsepower (CPU/GPU) or all the bells and whistles - they just need a 15" screen. If Apple would have been smart about this, there would have been nothing remotely legitimate for M$ to complain about providing no bite to the commercials.

Both companies have some issues, M$ blowing smoke, and Apple being stubborn dorks. So come on guys, get real and knock off the nonsense. Hopefully most consumers can see past the crap from both camps. :mad:
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I wouldn't mind a MBP being cheaper but anybody would take that offer. If you feel that way you can always get a used MBP for that price. They are as pristine as the new ones. The only thing is that it doesn't come in a fancy box.
 
Beric said:
Right, same here. I love forums. I've made hundreds of posts here discussing iPod touches, and yet I'm not buying one until September.
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You're the kind of user that I was to see there more often.
 
Eidorian said:
The all-in-one is a cute concept but I've found it tough to have your display permanently afixed to your hardware. I would have loved to get iMacs for my department but my superiors are terrified at sending the entire machine back for repairs.

The Mac mini is easy to swap but very lacking for its price. There's no onsite repairs either.
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Interesting to hear an opinion on the Apple desktop lineup from a business perspective. Would you have had a hard time getting hypothetical upgradeable Apple towers for your department?
 
Beric said:
But aren't macs supposed to be the premier choice for professional work, with photos, graphics, and video? You underestimate the usefulness and flexibility of a portable workstation.
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MBPs were NEVER intented to be 3D workstations or gamer machines. And these are pretty much the only areas where you NEED a fast GPU. As fast as it gets.

Jeez, when do people finally realise that the GPU is pretty irrelevant for Photoshop and Final Cut Pro?

Only recently this has started to become a topic (OpenCL etc). Not that this makes the GPU relevant at the moment, because there are no mainstream applications yet. There will be the time when applications rely more on GPUs and that's when Apple HAS to put faster ones in their laptops. Until then ...


Oh, and the 9600M isn't that bad.
 
Speedy2 said:
MBPs were NEVER intented to be 3D workstations or gamer machines. And these are pretty much the only areas where you NEED a fast GPU. As fast as it gets.

Jeez, when do people finally realise that the GPU is pretty irrelevant for Photoshop and Final Cut Pro?

Only recently this has started to become a topic (OpenCL etc). Not that this makes the GPU relevant at the moment, because there are no mainstream applications yet. There will be the time when applications rely more on GPUs and that's when Apple HAS to put faster ones in their laptops. Until then ...


Oh, and the 9600M isn't that bad.
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And what's your opinion on quad-core in the MBP's, out of interest?
 
Beric said:
Interesting to hear an opinion on the Apple desktop lineup from a business perspective. Would you have had a hard time getting hypothetical upgradeable Apple towers for your department?
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Not at all considering we're using Mac minis to replace 5-7 year old Power Macs.
 
Evan_11 said:
There's no doubt that Mac users love their computers more than PC users. PC users buy a computer to use. Mac users buy a computer first to love and then to use. As a Mac user I know this first hand. Therefore we tend to forgive their "issues" a little more than PC users.
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:rolleyes:
 
Even considering the heat restrictions, the MacBook Pro could have higher-resolution displays on the 15", faster CPUs all around, and more customization options.

Speedy2 said:
If you think that the form factor or weight is largely irrelevant, you might be looking at the wrong product FOR YOU. Other people care about these things, and they have their reasons, right?
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How about people who care for performance, they have their reasons, right?

Speedy2 said:
MBPs were NEVER intented to be 3D workstations or gamer machines. And these are pretty much the only areas where you NEED a fast GPU. As fast as it gets.

Jeez, when do people finally realise that the GPU is pretty irrelevant for Photoshop and Final Cut Pro?
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The MacBook Pro isn't the best in CPU either…
 
xhambonex said:
I have no problems. I wouldn't say I do crazy intensive stuff. But I do build 3D models and renderings quite frequently. My MBP has handled all of Autodesks major 3D modeling software and other rendering programs with no real problems other than this thing gets hot.

It's not as fast as a MacPro, but I can carry it around.
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I'm not saying it's impossible to do CAD / 3D modelling on a MBP. It highly depends on the complexity of your models and your patience :)

If you want a true CAD workhorse, there's no way around a Quadro or Fire GL chip since ATI and Nvidia have deactived several important CAD features in their mainstream GPUs.
 
Speedy2 said:
I'm not saying it's impossible to do CAD / 3D modelling on a MBP. It highly depends on the complexity of your models and your patience :)

If you want a true CAD workhorse, there's no way around a Quadro or Fire GL chip since ATI and Nvidia have deactived several important CAD features in their mainstream GPUs.
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My MBP worked just fine with Autodesk Inventor 2008. The models weren't complex, but it worked.
 
iMacmatician said:
Even considering the heat restrictions, the MacBook Pro could have higher-resolution displays on the 15", faster CPUs all around, and more customization options.
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What makes you think you can just flip in a faster CPU and NOT need an appropriate cooling system? If you have ideas how to achieve that, you might wanna try and work for Intel or AMD.

Afair they use one of the fastest available mobile dual core CPUs already. (2.93Ghz)

The MBP has it's drawbacks, the CPU isn't among them if you compare it with the competition.

You are spot-on tho with the 15" resolution...
 
Beric said:
Wow. Are the computing power requirements for a business really down that much these days?
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In a normal business environment (not dealing with video editing or stuff like that) it would pretty hard to find a computer that couldnt do word documents, spreadsheets, and some emailing.

There is nothing taxing about that kind of work for a computer.
 
Redmond can make all the ads the want ... they can't dispute the fact that Apple MacBooks smoked the very same Windows PCs featured in Microsoft's recent ads. :cool:
 
Beric said:
Wow. Are the computing power requirements for a business really down that much these days?
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Down?
A Mac Mini is surprisingly fast for its form factor.
The requirements for standard business clients have always been very low in average. I wonder why that surprises you? The majority of people only use text processing, spreadsheets, the odd custom stoneage application, and a screensaver that maxes out GPU and CPU :)
 
NT1440 said:
In a normal business environment (not dealing with video editing or stuff like that) it would pretty hard to find a computer that couldnt do word documents, spreadsheets, and some emailing.

There is nothing taxing about that kind of work for a computer.
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Plenty of basic office software doesn't even need more than 1 GHz. I know that tax software still reads 233 MHz or a PowerPC G3.
 
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