For anyone that is an Apple person heed my own personal advice. I also work at Best Buy as an Apple sales rep. If you have a MacBook Pro and it does what it needs to do - save your money. Why?
- No increase in screen resolution
- Lower batter life
- True i7 Quadcore is nice - but, from the HHD supplied from a data/CPU retrieveal standpoint it's moot.
- Thunderbolt (previously known as LightsPeak) has two immediate flaws - lack of devices (for right now) to utilize it - and there's 10 watts of power available on the bus, up slightly from FireWire's 8 watts. Yes it is 12x faster, but it will be around a year before you see any worthwhile reason to use it. Now, keep in mind however, that Thunderbolt is very impressive. Just not worth buying a MacBook Pro just for that - right now. Whats even more fustrating is that its intergrated with the mini display port. So if you want to use future devices...you will need a spliter to utilize it with mutiple devices. - No physical change (meaning the "major revision" that most wait for)
- Higher prices than 2010 models
Now, if you don't own a Mac and want to buy one you have two choices - buy, the ones now when they get discounted or opt for the new ones. The new ones aren't shabby at all - but, price for price - I would get the current model if the prices are good. I currently own the MBP Core i7 2.66ghz 15" model. I see no real immediate reason for me to trade my MacBook Pro and pay over 500+ for a difference I may not even notice. The GPU upgrade is better than the one currently in the MacBook Pro lineup right now... I have the GeForce Nvdia 330M GT vs the new AMD 6750M. It does have more internal GPU ram however, but for the most part buying again/trading on that alone shouldn't justify the price hike. So what would I do as a consumer? Wait. Let the the new I/O interface be a proven standard first (Thunderbolt) and see what devices come out to actually be worth the price of admission and for that major MacBook Pro revision (meaning body styling and etc). Typically, the major revisions are every three years. So if you can hold off with the current Macs you got untill 2012 - wait.
Now, I know people who argue my points - again, I'm taking it from a realistic approach at adopting every time Apple does something. I could easily jump up and trade up. However, for those that still have a MacBook Pro and it does everything you need it to do and does it well - save your money for the actual revision of the MBP. By then the new I/O will have been given time to hopefully establish itself as an industry standard amongst other things...and better resolution perhaps? Just my 2 cents.
- No increase in screen resolution
- Lower batter life
- True i7 Quadcore is nice - but, from the HHD supplied from a data/CPU retrieveal standpoint it's moot.
- Thunderbolt (previously known as LightsPeak) has two immediate flaws - lack of devices (for right now) to utilize it - and there's 10 watts of power available on the bus, up slightly from FireWire's 8 watts. Yes it is 12x faster, but it will be around a year before you see any worthwhile reason to use it. Now, keep in mind however, that Thunderbolt is very impressive. Just not worth buying a MacBook Pro just for that - right now. Whats even more fustrating is that its intergrated with the mini display port. So if you want to use future devices...you will need a spliter to utilize it with mutiple devices. - No physical change (meaning the "major revision" that most wait for)
- Higher prices than 2010 models
Now, if you don't own a Mac and want to buy one you have two choices - buy, the ones now when they get discounted or opt for the new ones. The new ones aren't shabby at all - but, price for price - I would get the current model if the prices are good. I currently own the MBP Core i7 2.66ghz 15" model. I see no real immediate reason for me to trade my MacBook Pro and pay over 500+ for a difference I may not even notice. The GPU upgrade is better than the one currently in the MacBook Pro lineup right now... I have the GeForce Nvdia 330M GT vs the new AMD 6750M. It does have more internal GPU ram however, but for the most part buying again/trading on that alone shouldn't justify the price hike. So what would I do as a consumer? Wait. Let the the new I/O interface be a proven standard first (Thunderbolt) and see what devices come out to actually be worth the price of admission and for that major MacBook Pro revision (meaning body styling and etc). Typically, the major revisions are every three years. So if you can hold off with the current Macs you got untill 2012 - wait.
Now, I know people who argue my points - again, I'm taking it from a realistic approach at adopting every time Apple does something. I could easily jump up and trade up. However, for those that still have a MacBook Pro and it does everything you need it to do and does it well - save your money for the actual revision of the MBP. By then the new I/O will have been given time to hopefully establish itself as an industry standard amongst other things...and better resolution perhaps? Just my 2 cents.