Thermal/power constraints. They'd have run too hot and reduced battery life significantly. Macbook Pros run hot enough as it is. It'd be nice to have them, but Apple aims for a certain tradeoff between overall speed and portability. They don't want to make brickbooks.
Gee, where were you six months ago when Apple put 2x6 core Xeons in the Mac Pro? Furthermore, Intel doesn't even MAKE a 12 core Xeon. 8 is the highest they go. Since Apple isn't using AMD, it's kind of impossible to use 12 core chips. A 2x6 core is a friggin' monstrosity as it is.
You fail yet again. Apple's consumer-grade Macs use SO-DIMMs. SO-DIMMs only go up to DDR3 1600 speeds, but those are pretty rare. DDR3 1333 is the feasible top end, which the iMac currently uses. The same goes for ECC RAM in the Mac Pro. It only goes up to 1333mhz right now.
And Apple has already given their reasons as to why they aren't going with BluRay.
Which is still very slow to catch on. I'd wager that Apple is banking on Light Peak sometime this year to overtake USB3 and adapters will fill the void until then. Time will tell.
I can agree with this much. I would like eSATA on some Macs. eSATAp really hasn't caught on, though.
Utterly friggin' useless on anything but a Mac Pro, and there are add-in cards for that. The ONLY time SATA3 is even worth it is when you're either using top-end SSDs or RAID arrays on a port multiplier. None of that applies to consumer Macs.
It would be nice, but is this really a huge selling point? It's kinda pointless for video chatting in the first place as SD gets garbled enough as it is.
Right, because this is a huge leap and consumers are just clambering for it, aren't they?
Right, because this has really caught on...except that it hasn't. I don't think I've ever seen it used beyond some very niche products.
So Apple should get on video cards the moment they come out? Radeon 6000 series support is actually in 10.6.6 minus a framebuffer. It's coming soon. I can agree somewhat with this point, but I don't expect Apple to stuff a GTX 580 into the Mac Pros the day the card launches. The certainly took their sweet time with the Radeon 5000 series. If rumblings are to be believed, Apple may finally be coming around to this now that Steam is on OS X and Valve is kicking Apple in the butt to get on the ball already. Still, people don't exactly buy Macs for their 3D gaming performance.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd love to see BluRay in Macs. In a way, Apple is dropping the ball, but I can also see where Steve is coming from. Sony has turned BluRay licensing into a labyrinthine mess. I think Jobs is banking on BluRay not picking up much (and growth has been slow, although with players finally getting cheap enough, it might pick up more, but BluRay movies at B&M stores are still too expensive) and is instead hoping people will buy/rent HD movies online. You don't necessary need to stream your movies. He has competing ideas. Time will tell if it pans out. I wish we could get both.
Maybe they figured it would be pointless to stick USB3 on Macs for about a year before going to Light Peak and letting people use inexpensive LP -> USB3 adapters at that point. It's another thing that would be nice, but isn't a serious dealbreaker as USB3 adoption has been pretty sluggish. USB2 was around for far too long and the USB3 B connector differences aren't helping adoption, either.
I seem to remember Apple updating it to 1.3MP years ago, but that may have just been overall capability, not what is actually utilized. However, FaceTime is still SD video regardless of the camera being used. I'd like to see better iSight capabilities in regard to what you can do with it locally, but I'm not really shedding tears on whether or not I can get HD on video chat. It's like compressing and HD video into SD and 720p variants, but you still try to keep the bitrates really low. The 720p has higher resolution, but it still looks like ass. You don't get nearly as much benefit as you'd think.
It doesn't take that long to get a stable system. As I said, mine is just as stable as my genuine Macs, and the only time I invested was installing the OS.
Also, the TonyMac guys have overclocked SNB to 6.31 GHz.
I'll note that Sandy Bridge benchmark was running in 32-bit, whereas the old i7 (which I have) needs to be at 64-bit to get about that score.
If only you were even close to right. They encourage people to buy OS X (I did, though I had a copy long before I had a hackintosh) and they don't allow posts about how to steal OS X. So try again, and next time think before you post.
Regardless of how fast it is ... I still can't get over the name..
I'll note that Sandy Bridge benchmark was running in 32-bit, whereas the old i7 (which I have) needs to be at 64-bit to get about that score.
That, and Geekbench isn't the most reliable test of speed. You should take a look at some benchmarks of actual applications and games to see the improvement.
pr5owner: Your argument seems to consist solely of "I"m right, and you're wrong" and "top dollar/low performance." Fortunately for the rest of us, specs aren't everything, and most of what you stated is outright trash. The 6870 is actually slower than the 5870, and the 6970 is very recent.
As far as WiDi goes, you say "Pretty much all new laptops" but you offer no proof. Proof, please.
If only you were even close to right. They encourage people to buy OS X (I did, though I had a copy long before I had a hackintosh) and they don't allow posts about how to steal OS X. So try again, and next time think before you post.
The prices on high-end Mac Pros (as in dual CPU) are actually fairly competitive with other OEMs. Xeons aren't cheap. You won't find the 8 core Xeons in anything but MASSIVE workstations or servers. They don't even fit socket 1366. They're for a market even higher end than the Mac Pro and the price is insane.
You completely and utterly missed the point. Laptops won't go higher than 1333mhz on the RAM unless you're getting a seriously souped-up one with 1600mhz (which is beyond spec for Intel chipsets), and those are rare. Furthermore, ECC doesn't go beyond 1333mhz. Did you somehow miss that? The iMac is also using laptop RAM. And to say that 1066mhz isn't "DDR3 speed" is just plain retarded as, you know, tons of DDR3 runs at that speed. 2.1ghz+ DDR3 is ludicrously expensive, goes outside of spec for any Intel chipset out there, and you'll see virtually no difference in performance over 1800mhz anyway. Apple's not interested in feeding people with minidick computer syndrome. If you want to piss money into something that will give you virtually no benefit then go build a PC. Apple doesn't give a crap.
Yes, they did. Try doing some reading.
No, not every new notebook, netbook, and motherboard has USB3. In fact, there are barely ANY netbooks that currently have it and most laptops don't have it, either. I'm looking at a new Alienware $1500 laptop right now that doesn't even have USB3. You can talk about boards on Newegg until you're blue in the face, but you know what? The vast majority of consumers don't build their own boxes. They buy OEMs, and OEMs have been pretty sluggish in picking it up as well. I'm also getting less than 700 products on Newegg when punching in "USB3". Way to pull a number out of your ass. Come back when you can get your facts straight instead of making **** up, kiddo.
That's nice. How many external drives use it?
And I'm sure people are really eager to put a 64GB drive in. The thing is, there are very few laptops that support SATA 3, which means that you could put these SSDs in a Mac Pro, a Mac Mini, or an iMac. The latter two are out for the VAST majority of people as it voids the warranty to replace those drives without taking them to a shop and it's a pain in the ass to do it yourself on both models. The Mac Pro can take a PCIe card for it.
Nice rebuttal. Come back when you actually have a point to make.
And the advantages are...?
And barely anyone is using it or even cares. Come back when this is actually a selling point to more than a few small niche markets.
Once again, you have zero point to make and just hide behind this yet again. I'd hardly call a 5750 or 5870 "low end performance". Low end performance is Intel integrated graphics.
This argument completely falls apart when you check the price on a 5870 and find that it's more like $270 these days.
The 6870 came out months before the 6970, which only became available a few weeks ago, and in poor volumes.
And WiDi is still a nothing market.