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Intel to Ship Dual-Core Sandy Bridge CPUs on February 20th

-=XX=-Nephilim said:
Frankly I think you are just bored...

Someone who is buying PRO machine (like MBP for example) for near £2000 isn't buying it to browse the net or to do text editing!

I am video, audio and graphic professional who requires as much 'horse power' as possible in a portable computer and for near £2000 I would expect quad core CPU and very close to the top of the range mobile GPU. This, of course, could be BTO option - I am fine with that :)
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That's all you had to say mate, I was genuinely curious as to what you needed that grunt for.

I just think Apple will make the quad chip an optional extra or reserve it for the top-end Pro models. Apple are only interested in money so it would be unthinkable for them to include it as standard across the board.

I just have a feeling that the new MBP's will be cheaper than the current models, but quad-core CPU's and higher capacity SSD's will be expensive CTO options.

Still, I'd have thought you could spec a decent machine for £2k!
 
I think something interesting will happen with the 13". Might be the perfect computer for me. :)

It would seem that we would see these released in March then, giving credence to the rumors of a March 11 availability of the new ones.
 
My C2D MacBook Pro will serve well through i3's and such. (Specially with SSD)

I'll wait for a true quad-core mobile chips in a 13" form :)
 
Woodcrest64 said:
Hoping for Sata III and SSD + HDD options. Light peak Or USB 3.0 would be icing on the cake :)

However I have feeling it's just going to be a CPU and graphics update...
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I feel the same way. I wonder if this update will be a major one as it now seems Apple is doing yearly updates of the MBP line. I wonder if it will have an optical drive.
 
mdgm said:
I agree. A faster CPU would be great. I'd seriously consider getting my third Mini if it's a decent upgrade though I may wait a while longer.

That would be nice, but with the 2010 mini you can easily upgrade the RAM yourself. I expect this will be the same on the 2011 mini. So if I intend to upgrade the RAM myself, in some ways I'd prefer them to keep the RAM at 2GB and add value in other areas of the hardware.
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True.

Just want the mini to arrive already. I need one now. Me me me. Hurry up Cook, Jobs has promised me one by end of Feb - don't let me down!
 
-=XX=-Nephilim said:
Frankly I think you are just bored...

Someone who is buying PRO machine (like MBP for example) for near £2000 isn't buying it to browse the net or to do text editing!

I am video, audio and graphic professional who requires as much 'horse power' as possible in a portable computer and for near £2000 I would expect quad core CPU and very close to the top of the range mobile GPU. This, of course, could be BTO option - I am fine with that :)

PS:

By the way, we are just about to witness dual-core CPUs of up to 2.0Ghz on each being implemented into mobile phones! http://www.droid-life.com/2011/02/07/ti-looks-to-transform-mobile-devices-with-multi-core-omap-5/

That is not exactly too far from my current 2007 MBP - hence my previous statement 'quad core or naut!'
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Keep in mind that you won't get anywhere near the performance of a Core Duo out of a dual core ARM configuration. In terms of instructions per second, the Intel CPU is going at a much faster rate because it executes more instructions per clock cycle, has waaaay more memory bandwidth, bigger caches, etc.

ARM advertises up to 10,000 MIPS for a dual core Arm Cortex A9 at 2.0GHz, while a 2.96GHz dual core Intel system from 2006 performs at 27,000 MIPS. That's nearly twice the number of instructions per clock cycle. Recent additions such as SMT further raise the IPC of dual core Intel systems.
 
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ThomasJL said:
Precisely. There are many professional users out there who need the power of a quad-core processor as well as the portability of a laptop, and such users do not worry about battery life because their laptops will be plugged in most of the time.

Unfortunately, Apple has a very large non-professional customer base who prefer that Apple laptops be fashion accessories by remaining thin and sleek looking. Such users care more about form factor than functionality. It's a shame that Apple designs their products to satisfy those customers instead of their professional customers.
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Dearest pro.

I would love to have a Mac Book Pro with a Nvidia Quadro card so that I can run SolidWorks with abandon, and I'm sure that most PS users would find this a welcome accelerator. I would gladly trade a quad core i7 (eight threads) for a dual core (four threads) as a tradeoff. But obviously, my pro needs differ from yours, and mine are better covered with a Mac Pro anyway.

That said, I tire of you and other pro's that are constantly denigrating Apple buyers that may find thin and sleek quite utilitarian, you know, like journalists in world hotspots.
 
ThomasJL said:
Apple has a very large non-professional customer base who prefer that Apple laptops be fashion accessories by remaining thin and sleek looking. Such users care more about form factor than functionality. It's a shame that Apple designs their products to satisfy those customers instead of their professional customers.
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Yeah, yeah, so what you're implying is that Apple, and in fact everyone else, should base their entire lives around satisfying you and only you, cos no-one of any significance could possibly want something different from what you want or need something different from what you need...
 
ThomasJL said:
Unfortunately, Apple has a very large non-professional customer base who prefer that Apple laptops be fashion accessories by remaining thin and sleek looking. Such users care more about form factor than functionality. It's a shame that Apple designs their products to satisfy those customers instead of their professional customers.
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Exactly. The current mini proves your point. Instead of making the 2009 wider and slightly higher so a desktop hard drive and better video card could be used they made it thinner. Really, a unibody desktop? Who really cares about a thinner desktop computer? It isn't all that great of a computer but I guess someone at Apple thinks it looks cool. Sad.
 
jmw1480 said:
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)

So the million dollar question is, as always: when should I buy? I’m currently have a Quicksilver G4 desktop and PowerBook G4 laptop, so anything new is going to be amazing. I'm planning on replacing the desktop first, tentatively with the next iMac. But I'm not opposed to a MBP if it'll get the bigger / better update.

So are their multiple SB chip possibilities? Dual? Quad? What exactly is "high-end" and "end-user"? Is the difference going to be major? And with the next series of chips rumored to be so quick to follow, what's that jump going to look like?

I know you can end up waiting forever for the next best thing, but this is looking like a more volatile year than normal.
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It's a funny situation we are in theses days ... current (and previous generation) computers are more than enough for 99% of the users - still we always want the latest and greatest. I used to be able to justify new computer purchases because the current one was to slow for whatever I was doing - theses days they are just fast and it really doesn't matter if I have the latest generation or the one before. For you it seems that G4 did the trick for a long long time. I still love to have the latest technology but I'm having a harder time to justify it. The only major update I need is a big fat SSD which is still to expensive - I have in one of my smaller MacBooks a 256SSD and it is amazing, better than any other upgrade - unfortunately I need >500GB on my main machine. I decided to sit all the new upgrades out until >500 becomes for affordable - all the other upgrades are nice and cool to have, but won't make a huge difference for me. Since you are on G4 - you could get the next update (SSD if smaller one is ok, or upgrade the drive once available)

Bottom line: I think the biggest improvements for most users will be once SSD is standard and affordable, other improvements are nice but not required. The harddrive is the biggest bottleneck in current computers and all other upgrades feel only marginal compared to SSD improvements.
 
What's a "High End" Laptop

I am confused. Paragraph two says, "The first Sandy Bridge processors to ship were quad-core chips, mainly for high-end laptops".

Paragraph three says, "The Dual-Core chips are likely upgrades for the existing MacBook Pro line ....".

Apple and everybody else has always promoted the Macbook Pro line as "high end" laptops. So shouldn't at least some of them be getting the quad-core CPU's?
 
I'm not asking for much!!!!

Just give me the current 13" MBP unibody design with a higher resolution screen (equal to or greater than 13" MBA) and at least an i3 processor!!!! I've got cash money and will order ASAP!!
 
I might only get a new MBP this year if they upgrade the CPU to Sandy Bridge. I like to dream that the computers will get the quad-core.. I hope it's someday a reality. :cool:
 
scottsjack said:
Who really cares about a thinner desktop computer? It isn't all that great of a computer but I guess someone at Apple thinks it looks cool. Sad.
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__________________________________________________

Hey Apple here's Jony Ive's replacement! Now we can all go happily back to ugly beige boxes with cables spewing all over the place, puffing and growling like old steam-tractors.... Design? pfft! This kid knows no-one cares about that.. smart kid!
 
I hear a lot of people say they want an SSD drive and others, who have already got one in their machine, say it's the best upgrade possible.

I just want to say I'm one of those who have put an SSD drive into my Mac Book Pro (2 in actual fact - one in the normal place and one where the DVD drive used to be). I can't tell you how this has transformed it.

I can't see myself needing an upgrade for a very very long time (I also have a Mac Pro though for when I need a lot of core grunt). My point being, if you don't need core grunt then just put SSD's into your current machine!! If you do need core grunt (in a laptop) then not much point in upgrading from duel core to duel core!!

My biggest fear now is loosing my MBP.

Edit: forgot to mention, my MBP is the old non unibody type - and it's not slow!
 
lloyd709 said:
I hear a lot of people say they want an SSD drive and others, who have already got one in their machine, say it's the best upgrade possible.

I just want to say I'm one of those who have put an SSD drive into my Mac Book Pro (2 in actual fact - one in the normal place and one where the DVD drive used to be). I can't tell you how this has transformed it.

I can't see myself needing an upgrade for a very very long time (I also have a Mac Pro though for when I need a lot of core grunt). My point being, if you don't need core grunt then just put SSD's into your current machine!! If you do need core grunt (in a laptop) then not much point in upgrading from duel core to duel core!!

My biggest fear now is loosing my MBP.
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My worries with them upgrading to standard SSD's, is that I really don't want the price to raise, and if it does, by not much. Also, I would need at least the same drive capacity ((500GB)).
 
Intel integrated GPU on MBP? No thanks. Intel sucks balls with GPU.

SSD in MBP? We will see. Current MBP have 250GB storage as base model. So, they will be able to replace them with Flash memory? No. It would be too expensive.

Future of mac is without optical drive and no hard drive. Yes, but it's the future, not so soon.

I doubt SSD will be included in MBP as standard yet.

13 MBP cannot get slimmed down unless it loses optical drive and hard drive. Then, it's not MBP anymore, is it? It's another high end MBA.
 
aaps59 said:
My worries with them upgrading to standard SSD's, is that I really don't want the price to raise, and if it does, by not much. Also, I would need at least the same drive capacity ((500GB)).
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Last price that I saw for a 500 GB SSD drive was over £900, somewhere between a complete basic MB and MBP. And I bet it doesn't come cheaper as part of a MBP, probably the opposite. A 1 TB hard drive costs about the same as 64 GB SSD.
 
aaps59 said:
My worries with them upgrading to standard SSD's, is that I really don't want the price to raise, and if it does, by not much. Also, I would need at least the same drive capacity ((500GB)).
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with the build quality of dell/hp these days as well the battery life with sandy bridge SSD is the only thing apple has to do to maintain prices.

dell/hp build quality and support is not as good as a MBP but i can buy a nice wintel laptop for $600 or $700. if it breaks i'll buy a new one every year and will still be ahead price wise than buying a 15" MBP and applecare.

i like iphones and ipads but the computers are way too expensive
 
BC2009 said:
So, just trying to make a short list of what we can expect from Apple this year....

1) MacBook Pro Update (Sandy Bridge)
2) iPad 2
3) Lion
4) iWork '11
5) iPhone-5 / iOS 5
6) iMac Update?
7) Quad-Core MBP with Ivy Bridge?
8) Improved MobileMe
9) Other Data Center Surprises
10) New iPods

Anything I am missing?
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iPhone5
 
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