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Apple Sweeps Consumer Reports' Laptop Recommendations
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up until they see what they cost.
Best in a category is meaningless if people flinch at the price, let alone when they can see the other guy's laptops for half the price.
Really, every time I have tried to sell someone on buying a mac they see the price and say "no thanks". It doesn't matter if some magazine says they are better... the fact is the pricing stinks.
Criticism is fine, most of us don't think Apple is perfect and we don't have any objection to a healthy debate. If Apple make a crappy decision (the current NiN debacle to name but one), I'm glad to see it discussed.
But I can see a distinct difference between you and, for example, our friend BMWfanboy.
Anyway, anyone ever notice when Apple releases spins news that's not really news, not larger or has high impact that it normally precedes some anti Apple or bad apple press??? Yahoo main page reporting iPhone no longer #1. Wow talk about perfect timing if you want better products, refresh and non crippeware from apple.
iPhone loses #1 spot, win7 looks like it will be accepted by IT, runs fast on old hardware, palm pre coming, flash glory and all (btw flash look great, check out MLB.com HD flash stream, awesome), msft only has to worry about win 7, bad economy, msft commercials, millions of customers coming in 2 yr contract fir iPhone, possible touch devices for win 7, mobile 6.5 looks like osx, apple iPods sales going flat.
Geeeeh. I don't think apple can afford the high premium margins anymore.
Anyway, note this happening rather take notice of press proceeding something like a consumer satisfaction story. Interesting.
iPhone loses #1 spot, win7 looks like it will be accepted by IT, runs fast on old hardware, palm pre coming, flash glory and all (btw flash look great, check out MLB.com HD flash stream, awesome), msft only has to worry about win 7, bad economy, msft commercials, millions of customers coming in 2 yr contract fir iPhone, possible touch devices for win 7, mobile 6.5 looks like osx, apple iPods sales going flat.
Geeeeh. I don't think apple can afford the high premium margins anymore.
Anyway, note this happening rather take notice of press proceeding something like a consumer satisfaction story. Interesting.
I can bash apple with the best if them, mainly due to price, especially that the pro tower could have been built using non server chips , i7 and non ecc and sell fir $1499. That said I am amazed at how many plug INS I get in logic. The bottle neck is the FireWire 800 drive. Should look into a data card sine the he is esata or invest in 7200 or 10000 fir the MacBook pro.
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)
The MBP has dedicated graphics memory and an express card slot. Not to mention, better RAM.
iMacmatician said:
The MBP has dedicated graphics memory and an express card slot. Not to mention, better RAM.
True which is was MacBooks were #1 for audio and you could run motion and aperture. Then apple killid of the FireWire. Stupid choice. Only dine to keep pros buying pro line macs. Hoping all theses events iPhone slipping, palm ore , win 7, iphone cintracts expiribg, forces them to stop worrying about pro users using a mini or MacBook or better yet , i7 mid range.
Curious as I never looked at mini and have a girgiuse brand new up 24" hdmi glossy screen and MacBook on how a tricked out mini performs first in auido logic and plug INS and Second, video. Thx.
Amen and they over roast the coffee taking out all the caffine. Duncan doughnuts rulez.
Not sure about him but Duncan d has a coffee only line. A regular is coffee sugar and light whipping cream no sissynhalf n half. You want black, you say regular no sugar no cream. In and out in 5. Starbucks in the other hand, while both have lines, you have to wait and wait for the non fat latte, caffine free, soy milknpinhead you want to smack but you need your over roasted burnt coffee as it's the closest to your work. Seattles best has a green bean coffee. So light it taste likentea but with a huge kick. Like some apple fans, starbucks drinkers are clueless and think because it taste stronger it has more caffine. Whippits is what I like to call them. Then repent 5 minutes later in the car. Smile.
Absolutely agree. There are people who have never owned an Apple product nor who have any intention of buying one who frequent this site. Since it's clearly labelled 'MacRumors' one can only assume they're here to troll.
However, I find the uber Apple fanboys equally annoying - the ones who constantly bash everything Microsoft does or who can't take any criticism of Apple. It's unnecessary, usually based on ignorant prejudice and, frankly, a bit childish.
Fortunately the majority of posters are sensible enough to not fall into either of these extremes.
inhabe a 24" glossy monitor with hdmi plays he well and max os looks awesome so you're wrongn there. All majornn monitors now have hdmi, some with tv tuners and are not gimics.get with the program. Outside if applebtv therebis anworld of he content and computer uses with network.
Disagree. I know plenty of people that want a well built, well designed, reliable laptop and will pay a little more for it.
Besides, it isn't initial cost that gets you. It's total cost of ownership. Like a lot of schools, my son's school hands out laptops to 6th graders. The district was really proud of this program and really touted the fact that these laptops were very inexpensive. They're HPs, and frankly they're terrible - they got what they paid for. Now I watch him pretty closely when he uses this at home (I assume they do the same thing at school). His first laptop simply stopped working on it's own - the IT guys think it may have overheated and fried a chip but I can tell you that didn't happen while he was using it at home. It probably happened on the bus ride home because it didn't sleep properly when he closed the lid and school and packed it up to bring it home. He got a replacement, and a few months later he accidentally tripped over his power cord and snapped off the power prong. So now it's useless unless someone else charges his battery for him. But hey, they were cheap right?
Neither of these things would have happened if the school had bought Macs for the kids. I've never had a mac laptop that didn't sleep properly when closing the lid. I'm sure it's happened to somebody, but never to me. And with the mag-safe adapter the little power cord incident would've been averted as well. In addition, the virus that took out half the school's laptops would never have been a problem, and I assure you that with the build quality difference you would get an additional 1-2 years at least out of these laptops just because they aren't plastic pieces of junk.
I've had this conversation with at least a dozen people who asked me for purchasing advice. The cost isn't just what you pay to take it home. It's also what you pay to keep it running. That's a story that tells pretty well, and that's one of the things that Consumer Reports is pretty good at picking up on.
Can youbshownme hiw to do this. I work with celebs and music. Maybe we can deal. peaceIndeed. This whole debate has been going on for hours. I had the Forum Spy running in the background whilst sculpting in Zbrush working a new model. (On a 2008 MBP I might add.. who says they aren't capable of doing 3D on a professional level??)
During the several hours they went at it, writing dozens upon dozens of posts trying to discredit Apple on it's pricing, it's defects, etc. I nearly got the model done and ready for sending off to the client. The money I'll have made from those hours spent sculpting (rather than forum trolling) easily covers the "Apple-tax" they always bring up. But best of all, I had fun doing the work and will have something positive to show for it. (A One-Up for my portfolio). One has to wonder if their exertions will have been equally rewarding...
Me too. Given the choice between something that really just works, over something you need to tweak and fuss and uninstall, and rant and rave before it works, I'll choose the former. A friend of mine is about to take the plunge into mobile computing and would appreciate this report.
Wow... I wonder why the positive stories about Apple always turn into a trollapalooza. The blurb generates an overwhelming positive response (right now 152+ vs 17-), yet the comments seem to be mostly from over caffeinated bashers. Here's an idea... if your budget for a laptop is $499, or your only willing to spend $299 for your monitor... go buy something else. Please. Now. Quietly. And then shut up about it already.
There are so many comments, that I am wondering what kind of cottage industry exists for folks to write their dire tales of woe. I wonder if some of these folks are not just shilling for the non-apple companies, in some guerilla anti-pr effort.
You folks have no IDEA of what "expensive" is apparently. Not so many years ago one had to pay over $700 for a 40mb (yes megabyte) Hard drive. I myself once paid over $10,000 for 128 mb of ram. Overpriced? Maybe, but that was what it cost to buy the "horsepower" needed to work professionally. The cost has continued to spiral downward, and the power and speed has increased exponentially. I for one, am thankful for that fact.
Apple has always been at the bleeding edge, and sometimes they are quick to jettison technologies, much earlier than other folks even begin to consider that as an option. Don't like it? Buy a previous gen version that still has whatever widget you are being deprived of.
Speaking of monitors, I bought a MUCH superior non-apple monitor to run on an aging g4 legacy machine. Specwise and pricewise it looked like it blew any Apple offering away, but frankly it pretty much is inferior to my OLD apple studio monitor, which was crisp to the day it died. Whereas my old screen calibrated easily and was always dead-bang-on for my pre-press imaging... my new "superior" monitor never, ever, could be brought into an acceptable range of what passed for "calibration". Futhermore the angle of view changed the screen so radically the notion of calibration was a joke.
It was better in one regard, and that would be the TV tuner that was built into it. I mostly use it as a TV these days, yet despite it's HD specs, the screen is vastly inferior to my regular LCD TV. Sometimes a cheaper price has nothing to do with a better value. Period.
Apple products make me more productive every single day, and I make my living with them. They are not perfect, and I do have a list of things that could be made better.... but if your only prerequisite is based on price, then you have no idea what real value is.
Real value is a machine where the operating system, the hardware, and much of the software is designed to work seamlessly together, and does.
Me too. Given the choice between something that really just works, over something you need to tweak and fuss and uninstall, and rant and rave before it works, I'll choose the former. A friend of mine is about to take the plunge into mobile computing and would appreciate this report.
I bought a Macbook yesterday (not based on this report, it's my 3rd Mac) and I love it! My last Mac was an iBook G4 running Panther so there are loads of new toys to play with on OSX Leopard!
I briefly considered buying a Windows laptop but the only ones I liked were Sony ones, and at that price range I'd rather have OSX. I even work for Sony so would have got a good discount on a laptop, but I simply wanted OSX because of how nice it is to use. Oh and the multi-touch pad, it was the first time I used one yesterday and was blown away by it (I've installed the Firefox beta with the multitouch functionality too, which works better than Safari!).
I love the Macbook so much, and don't regret buying it for 1 second. Awesome machine
I like the Macbook, but could not buy the current one due to its lack of Firewire.
If the Macbook came with Firewire 800, a multi-media card reader built in (I dislike having to use a USB adapter - it kind of negates the point of macs being easy), blu-ray support and an even higher resolution screen in a 13" package and for me the Macbook would be perfect.
For now, I'm sticking with my WhiteBook.
If the Macbook came with Firewire 800, a multi-media card reader built in (I dislike having to use a USB adapter - it kind of negates the point of macs being easy), blu-ray support and an even higher resolution screen in a 13" package and for me the Macbook would be perfect.
For now, I'm sticking with my WhiteBook.
"Steve Jobs: We're better than you are! We have better stuff.
Buying public: You don't get it, Steve. If we can't afford it, that doesn't matter."
I don't think it's a good idea to make Mac ownership a free pass for being critical of Apple.
Nor is it one to start needless arguments.