How exactly was this refresh an upgrade?

[wrightc23]

I feel like I'm being forced into buying the Air because of the screen resolution on the MBP. I have a custom built i7 920 desktop at home with an ATI 5870, 6gb ram, blu-ray reader, etc. I need a portable laptop for school/work. Battery life and screen resolution were highest on my list. With no option to even upgrade from the base 1280x800, I find myself looking at the air regardless of the weak processor.

I was in the Apple store today thinking exactly the same, somewhere between the MBA and MBP 13" is the perfect ultraportable.

Screen resolution on the MBP, 1440x900 from the MBA thank you etc. Backlit keybord from the MBP etc... i5 from the MBP, 128 or 256gb SSD from the MBA.

 

[thegreatdivorce]

Bro, Dank Bro, bro. When you have time, can you upload some videos of the battery life of your i5 13"er? You're the only one I know who has hands-on experience with it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[skiltrip]

I think it's a pretty sweet upgrade across the board. Though I don't like the missing $1999 price point for a mid level 15".

I did not expect to see quads. Not at all. Heck, even the upper end 13" is now as powerful as last gens top tier i7.

I'm glad I was able to sell my 2010 13" a week or two ago. But I bought an iMac i7 to replace it. I needed my quad. But the new upper tier 13" looks like it could be a handy 2nd computer once it hits the refurb store for $1300 or less.

 

[mike 2011]

So for me, the average user, what's the better bang for my buck, the base 13" MBP or the 128 GB 11" Air??

 

[chrono1081]

Has Apple used one of those memory erase things from Men In Black to confuse the entire world?

They "upgraded" these new MacBook Pros with a better processor and....

-Worse graphics card (13")
-Same low resolution (1280x800)
-Same HDD (70Gb difference is a joke)
-Same SuperDrive
-Worse battery life (Stricter tests aren't going to change things by 3 hours, this battery doesn't last as long)
-Thunderpants "HIGH SPEED I/O" which won't even be used until a few months done the line

And the worst crime of all: CHARGING THE SAME PRICE AS LAST GENERATION!

Is this is a joke? Why would ANYONE purchase this thing? This may have been the worst refresh of all time. Seriously. I had $1500 saved up in my account ready to pull the trigger and Apple failed so hard I'm considering boycotting their products. I guess this is what happens when you spend 90% of your resources building iToys. Apple is behind in everything they do. There are better computers out there for the price. There are better phones out there for the price.

So why on Earth would I want to buy this computer? A slightly better processor isn't worth a "downgrade" in every other area. I'd love for this "refresh" to blow up in Apple's face so they can eat crow and come out with a real MacBook "pro" in 6 months. I want an apology from Apple.

dnkbro

Its obvious you don't really know much about computers so I will say it here:

First, Hardware bumps do not equal performance gains. Really. It depends on the software that is running on the OS and the OS itself. If you are a hardware chaser go to Windows.

Second: Same superdrive. Yes, there is not much you can do to something that is already at its peak. What are you complaining about?

Third: Same HDD? No, its larger. Theres no way around that. 70GB difference a joke? Maybe to you but to some its a great upgrade. Would you rather it be smaller?

Fourth: You have no idea how battery life tests work if you think "stricter tests" doesn't mean "3 hours". Please go run some tests yourself. Change your screen brightness, keep wifi on, etc. You will see there are HUGE ramifications when you change these things and run a battery test.

Fifth: Its funny how you cry about Thunderbolt being added when nothing is using it yet. I'm also sure you would be crying if it was already out and Apple didn't put it in their laptops yet.

Sixth: Boycot apple products. No one cares but you. Your "Apple is behind in everything they do" statement shows you know nothing about the electronics industry. How many companies have been able to produce and iPad or Macbook air at the speed and pricepoints those things go for? None. How many companies can match the Mac Pro spec for spec and still be cheaper? At the time of the release, None (not sure about now since our company already did its purchasing). So talk about being "behind" all you want, your wrong. Just look how many companies copy apple when they release something new.

I'm so sick of these troll threads on Macrumors.

 

[Davichi]

It's obvious that op was expecting.

1. 13 MBP with 1440X900 resolution
2. 256GB SSD standard
3. No optical Drive
4. Some sort of Nvidia or ATI dedicated graphic card.
5. 8GB Ram (notice how he says ram is same. It's not. It's faster, but he says it's same and get over it. really...)

6. And pay nothing more than 1499 dollars.

 

[McGiord]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxkdmL3iMCY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

[splashnader]

Well for people who do not upgrade every single time there is a refresh to MBP line, this is a substantial upgrade. Especially if you are going from a late 2008 model that had C2D processors, smaller hard drives, and less battery life, not to mention this refresh is night and day better over the graphic card in the standard config 2008 models. But yes it's not going to knock the socks off of people that upgrade every 6-8 months for no reason.

 

[iamnotanumber]

haha. these poor people crying because apple didnt cave to impossible demands.
Ill be buying the base 13" because
a) the processor is a mega improvement.
b)the gpu is the same
c)the ram is faster

This bad boy should whizz when im using 4 decks in traktor pro or a ****ton of samples in ableton, and should have no problem mixing videos with the VJ software.

 

[leman]

So for me, the average user, what's the better bang for my buck, the base 13" MBP or the 128 GB 11" Air??

It depends. If you mainly do word processing / office work and travel a lot, the portability and better screen estate of air would be great. If you rely on processing-heavy tasks, the MBP's CPU would be about twice as fast. For gaming they would be about equal.

 

[jamesryanbell]

Has Apple used one of those memory erase things from Men In Black to confuse the entire world?

They "upgraded" these new MacBook Pros with a better processor and....

-Worse graphics card (13")
-Same low resolution (1280x800)
-Same HDD (70Gb difference is a joke)
-Same SuperDrive
-Worse battery life (Stricter tests aren't going to change things by 3 hours, this battery doesn't last as long)
-Thunderpants "HIGH SPEED I/O" which won't even be used until a few months done the line

And the worst crime of all: CHARGING THE SAME PRICE AS LAST GENERATION!

Is this is a joke? Why would ANYONE purchase this thing? This may have been the worst refresh of all time. Seriously. I had $1500 saved up in my account ready to pull the trigger and Apple failed so hard I'm considering boycotting their products. I guess this is what happens when you spend 90% of your resources building iToys. Apple is behind in everything they do. There are better computers out there for the price. There are better phones out there for the price.

So why on Earth would I want to buy this computer? A slightly better processor isn't worth a "downgrade" in every other area. I'd love for this "refresh" to blow up in Apple's face so they can eat crow and come out with a real MacBook "pro" in 6 months. I want an apology from Apple.

dnkbro

They'll sell just fine. Watch and see.

 

[Jenko]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

As a first time purchaser of MBP last year, 15" 2010 i7 arrandale high red screen I can honestly say I have no regrets with my purchase last year. I can understand peoplesexcitement but for my needs and what I can see I do not need to upgrade my machine suits me fine. I can seehow itwould suit someone in a high end computerindustry. The only thing I would like would be the thunderbolt connector,but I can live without it and o look forward to an upgrade in about probably 3 to 4 years. For me there is no doubt apples MBP and iphone4 are a great tool for my life.

 

[Jenko]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

As a first time purchaser of MBP last year, 15" 2010 i7 arrandale high red screen I can honestly say I have no regrets with my purchase last year. I can understand peoplesexcitement but for my needs and what I can see I do not need to upgrade my machine suits me fine. I can seehow itwould suit someone in a high end computerindustry. The only thing I would like would be the thunderbolt connector,but I can live without it and o look forward to an upgrade in about probably 3 to 4 years. For me there is no doubt apples MBP and iphone4 are a great tool for my life.

 

[dnkbro]

Its obvious you don't really know much about computers so I will say it here:

First, Hardware bumps do not equal performance gains. Really. It depends on the software that is running on the OS and the OS itself. If you are a hardware chaser go to Windows.

Right. When Intel releases new cpu's that are clocked higher and have bigger cache sizes, that does not translate to performance gains in tasks such as video processing, video encoding, etc. Similarly, Nvidia and ATi releasing newer video cards do not actually increase performance. 😎

Second: Same superdrive. Yes, there is not much you can do to something that is already at its peak. What are you complaining about?

Why not get rid of it and replace it with a SSD (or at least give users the option to do this in a BTO configuration)?

Third: Same HDD? No, its larger. Theres no way around that. 70GB difference a joke? Maybe to you but to some its a great upgrade. Would you rather it be smaller?

They could have switched over to SSD like they did on the Air. Remember the "Next Generation of MacBooks?" "BUH-BUH, ITS TOO EXPENSIVE FOR THAT. APPLE NEEDS TO LOOK AT THEIR BOTTOM LINE!"

Fourth: You have no idea how battery life tests work if you think "stricter tests" doesn't mean "3 hours". Please go run some tests yourself. Change your screen brightness, keep wifi on, etc. You will see there are HUGE ramifications when you change these things and run a battery test.

The battery will last less than the 2010 model. Just a matter of time for benchmarks to prove this.

Fifth: Its funny how you cry about Thunderbolt being added when nothing is using it yet. I'm also sure you would be crying if it was already out and Apple didn't put it in their laptops yet.

I could honestly care less about it. The fact that Apple is trying to market it when there is nothing out for it is pathetic.

Sixth: Boycot apple products. No one cares but you. Your "Apple is behind in everything they do" statement shows you know nothing about the electronics industry. How many companies have been able to produce and iPad or Macbook air at the speed and pricepoints those things go for? None. How many companies can match the Mac Pro spec for spec and still be cheaper? At the time of the release, None (not sure about now since our company already did its purchasing). So talk about being "behind" all you want, your wrong. Just look how many companies copy apple when they release something new.

I would think Apple cares as I'm not the only one that feels this way. Match the Mac Pro spec by spec and still be cheaper? The PC I built spanks Mac Pros and I paid probably 2-3x less than I would had I bought a Mac Pro. The only difference is I'm running Windows 7 and not OSX (although I could run Snow Leopard via Hackintosh but I'm too lazy to do that).

I'm so sick of these troll threads on Macrumors.

I'm sick of fanboys that will not admit wrong.

 

[Demosthenes X]

This thread is ridiculous. If Apple had left the 13" Pro using Core2Duo, then the OP would have posted the same thread whining about how this wasn't an upgrade because the CPU is still based on 2006 architecture.

I'd have loved to see Apple ditch the ODD and give the MBP better battery life and discrete graphics to match the new processors. But then people like the OP would whine about that decision.

You can't please everyone... but I don't know why people insisting on whining and pretending Apple should somehow magically offer a machine that suits everyone's needs exactly. 🙄

 

[73CortinaV8]

Has Apple used one of those memory erase things from Men In Black to confuse the entire world?

They "upgraded" these new MacBook Pros with a better processor and....

-Worse graphics card (13")
-Same low resolution (1280x800)
-Same HDD (70Gb difference is a joke)
-Same SuperDrive
-Worse battery life (Stricter tests aren't going to change things by 3 hours, this battery doesn't last as long)
-Thunderpants "HIGH SPEED I/O" which won't even be used until a few months done the line

And the worst crime of all: CHARGING THE SAME PRICE AS LAST GENERATION!

Is this is a joke? Why would ANYONE purchase this thing? This may have been the worst refresh of all time. Seriously. I had $1500 saved up in my account ready to pull the trigger and Apple failed so hard I'm considering boycotting their products. I guess this is what happens when you spend 90% of your resources building iToys. Apple is behind in everything they do. There are better computers out there for the price. There are better phones out there for the price.

So why on Earth would I want to buy this computer? A slightly better processor isn't worth a "downgrade" in every other area. I'd love for this "refresh" to blow up in Apple's face so they can eat crow and come out with a real MacBook "pro" in 6 months. I want an apology from Apple.

dnkbro

the thing is, I think rumors got out of control.

apple had no special event for this.

peoples imaginations ran wild, and then when reality set in, people were disappointed.

I'm sure some of the rumors that didn't pan out were still true, it's just they haven't gotten to market with it yet. (e.g. liquid metal)

 

[dnkbro]

This thread is ridiculous. If Apple had left the 13" Pro using Core2Duo, then the OP would have posted the same thread whining about how this wasn't an upgrade because the CPU is still based on 2006 architecture.

I'd have loved to see Apple ditch the ODD and give the MBP better battery life and discrete graphics to match the new processors. But then people like the OP would whine about that decision.

You can't please everyone... but I don't know why people insisting on whining and pretending Apple should somehow magically offer a machine that suits everyone's needs exactly. 🙄

If they would have ditched the ODD and gave it better battery life and discrete graphics I would have been typing this message on one as we speak. C2D is '09 technology, but I'd much rather deal with that and get a bump in all other areas (screen resolution, battery life, no odd, discrete graphics) than to get a faster processor and no other improvements.

 

[NewSc2]

If you need all those upgrades just get the 15". It's not like it's that much bigger... only like 1.5" x 0.75" larger.

 

[dnkbro]

If you need all those upgrades just get the 15". It's not like it's that much bigger... only like 1.5" x 0.75" larger.

I want portability, I really want a 13" notebook.

 

[KPOM]

Why not get rid of it and replace it with a SSD (or at least give users the option to do this in a BTO configuration)?

Because they offer the SSD in a BTO option in the same sizes as the 13" MacBook Air (plus 512GB).

I could honestly care less about it. The fact that Apple is trying to market it when there is nothing out for it is pathetic.

What are they supposed to do, put it in there but say "we put this thing in there, but it doesn't do anything yet, so don't think of it as a new feature"? Unless they market it, peripheral makers won't support it.

This was a product refresh, not a complete redesign. The MacBook Air Rev D got its own event because it was a major redesign (albeit from a "technical spec" perspective it was less of a leap forward than today's update). This was a refresh that didn't get its own event, and was intended primarily to keep the line up to date until a more thorough redesign, which is probably coming next year. That's probably when we'll see some more radical changes like dropping the optical drive.

The Core i5 and available i7 are big updates for the 13", and undoubtedly many people will be happy with the new 13" model.

 

[DarwinOSX]

Would you like some cheese with your whine?

Has Apple used one of those memory erase things from Men In Black to confuse the entire world?

They "upgraded" these new MacBook Pros with a better processor and....

-Worse graphics card (13")
-Same low resolution (1280x800)
-Same HDD (70Gb difference is a joke)
-Same SuperDrive
-Worse battery life (Stricter tests aren't going to change things by 3 hours, this battery doesn't last as long)
-Thunderpants "HIGH SPEED I/O" which won't even be used until a few months done the line

And the worst crime of all: CHARGING THE SAME PRICE AS LAST GENERATION!

Is this is a joke? Why would ANYONE purchase this thing? This may have been the worst refresh of all time. Seriously. I had $1500 saved up in my account ready to pull the trigger and Apple failed so hard I'm considering boycotting their products. I guess this is what happens when you spend 90% of your resources building iToys. Apple is behind in everything they do. There are better computers out there for the price. There are better phones out there for the price.

So why on Earth would I want to buy this computer? A slightly better processor isn't worth a "downgrade" in every other area. I'd love for this "refresh" to blow up in Apple's face so they can eat crow and come out with a real MacBook "pro" in 6 months. I want an apology from Apple.

dnkbro

 

[Jiten]

I was actually expecting a i3 but Apple put a i5 instead. I think its a decent upgrade for those who need the power. SSDs can be added later and I think I will withhold judgement until actual review sites post benchmark of the GPU. The only beef I have is the screen resolution.

 

[Nobita]

I just want to point out that although the plastic MacBook is not upgraded, apple nownquote it's battery life to be just 7 hours, down from previous 10 hours.

I say the battery is not downgraded. It's still the same but apple is downplay ing it now. If you want 12-15 hours battery then maybe you'd want to wait another few years.

Reading all your rants in this thread, I think you will be much happier with an 13" Air. I personally don't care much about sandy bridge or thunderbolt for now...

 

[dnkbro]

I just want to point out that although the plastic MacBook is not upgraded, apple nownquote it's battery life to be just 7 hours, down from previous 10 hours.

I say the battery is not downgraded. It's still the same but apple is downplay ing it now. If you want 12-15 hours battery then maybe you'd want to wait another few years.

Reading all your rants in this thread, I think you will be much happier with an 13" Air. I personally don't care much about sandy bridge or thunderbolt for now...

I think I'm going to go with the Air and then wait for the next redesign of the MBP. I'm just really disappointed.

 

[Jiten]

It's obvious that op was expecting.

1. 13 MBP with 1440X900 resolution
2. 256GB SSD standard
3. No optical Drive
4. Some sort of Nvidia or ATI dedicated graphic card.
5. 8GB Ram (notice how he says ram is same. It's not. It's faster, but he says it's same and get over it. really...)

6. And pay nothing more than 1499 dollars.

It was obvious that the OP believed the speculative hype a little to much.