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MacBook and MacBook Pro Unpacking, Disassembly and First Impressions

Where is the semi-gloss screen, not flat like the matte, something with a bit of shine but less than the glossy? Curse Apple :)

Wait for benchmarks, reviews, fault reports, workarounds/adapters, to see/test in store ... Don't like it -> keep existing computer, buy old generation, wait for Rev B (end of January 2009?), buy another brand ...

It seems daft not to offer matte. What is the cost saving?

Why not MB with Firewire but without backlit keyboard? The new MBPs have larger screens, two GPUs, more ports - including express, backlit keyboard etc.

Cheers,
OW
 
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Austrailia, England? Seriously? :confused:

Were the heck are the Laptops for those of us in the Midwest (Minnesota specifically). Every store I have called hasn't received them yet!

Thanks Apple! :(


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Is there any chance that we can get this thread back on topic and stop the bitching and moaning and let people who are actually buying new MacBooks post their first impression?

Seriously, this is getting very old. :mad:
 
isaacc7 said:
The premium may not be worth it. The new MB would be great, if it had a firewire port. A windows machine has its drawbacks, but cost isn't one of them. For many people, the advantages of the design (still not sold on the new one BTW, they look fugly to me, and I worry about the usability of the no button trackpad) are not worth the cost. Add to that the lack of functionality (no firewire means my audio stuff won't work) and it becomes a deal breaker. I can do what I want on a windows or linux machine, apple has to udderstand that I'm not a captive consumer.

Isaac
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Well the premium must be worth to the people who keep Apple's sales growing faster than the PC market.
 
LC475 said:
...

but what's the deal with the black frame around the screen on both laptops AND the Apple displays. This is horrible for graphics and photography work. You need a neutral (white or gray) frame that doesn't compete with the images you are looking at.

Very disappointing Apple.
Click to expand...

Can you explain how black is less neutral than white or gray?
The monitor I use at work is a black widescreen monitor, and I have never noticed the edge of the monitor/screen conflicting with the images on the screen.

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean...
 
Detektiv-Pinky said:
This pretty much reminds me of the old Communist times here in Germany. Where you would sign up to buy a car 8 years in advance and when the day came you picked up whatever they had been delivered... (and no arguing with the personnel, you would actually hand them over little favours to keep them listening to you!)

It seems to me, that Apple has become such a totalitarian cult that even their followers actually sound like some of the former party officials. They simply can not fail, because everything they do is right!
http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/dokumente/JahreDesAufbausInOstUndWest_liedtextSEDLied/index.html
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Comparing Apple to the Nazis. :rolleyes:
 
Adjei said:
Comparing Apple to the Nazis. :rolleyes:
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Wrong! Please read again:

Maybe I should have made it more clear: East-Germany! (The former German 'Democratic' Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany)
A closed centrally-planned economy based on self-printed money. Having money was not the problem - trying to spend it on something sensible was. Also familiar: absolutely no consumer-choice! Take it or leave it! Sounds familiar?
 
I’ve been in the market for a new laptop for several months, but waited for this release. Here is how I see this:

Pros: innovative aluminum case design, innovative trackpad, slightly better performance

Cons: Ultra-glossy screen, fat bezel, no FW400, no Blu-ray option, slightly better performance

I was really looking forward to switching from PC to Apple and thought it would be an easy choice once the new lineup came out. Now that it has, it looks like the switch won’t happen for me this year. Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple products and was really looking forward to one of the new laptops, but I just can’t justify the premium price with these shortcomings.
 
parapup said:
Reasons not to upgrade are plenty -

1) No improvement in battery life whatsoever
2) No to little improvement in graphics performance
3) No change in screen resolution
4) Reduction in number of available ports (given that the prev gens were already thin on ports and the new ones have one side completely unused - this sure is an odd design choice.)
5) New investment required for your DVI display (sure it may not be much to some but still it is an added headache for no perceived benefit)
6) NVidia chipsets are not proven reliable at least yet - they are new and Nvidia has said it is possible they will find problems - this is even more serious since Intel chipsets are very reliable
7) The dual graphics card feature offers little (my 8600M MBP has already got simlilar performance and rated as 5hr battery life) and requires a logout to switch display
Click to expand...

8) The new MBPs are actually heavier than the older models.
 
electricfiddle said:
Hello all... I am new here. Today I filed a complaint with Apple's Consumer Relations Division. I feel I have a merited reason being that I am an Audio professional. I DO have a Mac Pro "tower" but like editing and mixing on a Macbook when I travel. A lot of audio applications require a FW400 device to be attached while in use which makes wonder what Apple is thinking...
THE RESPONSE: The response I recieved was in conversation with Apple tech support was, "I am actaully not sure what Apple was thinking, I just found out yesterday myself. I don't understand because we use it for troubleshooting and diagnostics ourselves..." So even the people at APPLE are not happy...
The person with Apple's Consumer Relation's division said if Apple gets enough viable complaints they may change the design of the products... Posting on this forum may do very little good, that's why WE must file with Apple's Consumer Relations Division which you can speak with my calling the main number and requesting to file a complaint with Apple's Consumer Relation's division...
I like Apple, I think they are a great company, I think they make good products... I mean, I have an Apple Logo on my car!! BUT many of US are AUDIO and VISUAL professional who need products with Firewire 400!
I intend no harm to Apple and want them to succeed in their endeavors... But this was a very poor decision that MANY of us will agree on...
:apple:
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Thanks, and will do.
 
ok, keep in mind I am coming off of an iBook G4 running Tiger...

2.0ghz/3 Mb L2 cache/1066FSB LED backlit aluminum Macbook with 2gb DDR3, and 160gb hd

trackpad is unbelievable. it doesn't feel any different from current mb/mbp pads. the whole trackpad depresses as you know, but it depresses much more at the bottom, which reduces accidental clicking. in fact, if you close your eyes and pretend there's a button there, you will not notice a difference. you can assign the bottom right corner of the trackpad to act as a right click (pressing in the bottom right corner with about an inch radius will bring up right click menu whereas pressing left from that will be a normal primary click). obviously where the button would be is still trackable. This cleared up my concern about click and drag or highlighting text as you can still hold with your thumb and move things around with your index finger. This all works even with tap and gestures enabled (yes, if you don't like tap/gestures, it acts like a regular trackpad). the button quality is very responsive (about equal to old mb/mbp buttons). As far as tap/gestures, it is as good as advertised. 1 finger tap and track, two finger for scroll and rightclick (tap), 3 finger for navigating (previous/forward pages in safari for example) and four finger for expose and app switching; also has pinch/expand and rotating and has a full screen zoom while holding control and two-finger scrolling.

keyboard has an identical feel to previous mb/mba's. mine is not backlit which sucks but the screen is bright enough to get over that. and really, i don't look at the keyboard when i type. Enclosure is completely solid. it's something that you're just going to have to feel. Screen pops on when opened.

Glare: if you have a glossy screen already, you will certainly appreciate the LED backlight. It significantly reduces glare. buttttt. if you're one of those matte only fanatics, then it is what it is - a glossy screen. I have no problems eliminating glare just by adjusting my screen. I am typing this outside just to assure you.

others: it's very thin and light but still solid. just go to apple store and play around with one even if you're not buying.

I do not have any use yet for FW or displayport so can't comment on that.

hope i didn't miss anything. but let me know if i did. i will not test for waterproofability.
 
Snide said:
8) The new MBPs are actually heavier than the older models.
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Yep. Looks like Apple's caught the Vista bug - people will start asking for a downgrade option soon! ;)

Another disadvantage would be that people can no longer have a matte screen - but I suppose that depends on who you ask. But anyway result is even less choice.

I am slowly losing any and all hope that some day we could actually see things improving for the consumer buying Apple products (they always have improved for Apple).
 
Performance

I'm stunned by the number of people saying that there is too little performance improvements, and some are complaining about the even "slower" middle-ranged macbook compared to the entry-level one.

Did you really read the specifications ?

Sure the CPU-Frequency isn't really better, but what does this mean? Not that much! These new Laptops have the newest chipsets, with 1066 FSB and DDR3 memory, compared to the old ones with 800FSB and 667MHz DDR2. That is a real improvement!

Just to give an image: there is no need for an 400 hp engine if you don't have the tyres to get the power on the road ...

And the graphics ... I've been following threads here for almost a year now, and since the very first day here, there were people complaining about the lousy graphics in the macbook, well, there is some nice stuff now, and still people keep complaining...

I agree that the romours before the event gave way to dreams what apple might have done ... and apple didn't really live up to them, but all in all, those new mbs are just nice. I would buy one if I had the money :rolleyes:

Personnally I would have loved an orange mb, just in the style of the new iPods ...
 
Shubidua said:
I'm stunned by the number of people saying that there is too little performance improvements, and some are complaining about the even "slower" middle-ranged macbook compared to the entry-level one.

Did you really read the specifications ?

Sure the CPU-Frequency isn't really better, but what does this mean? Not that much! These new Laptops have the newest chipsets, with 1066 FSB and DDR3 memory, compared to the old ones with 800FSB and 667MHz DDR2. That is a real improvement!

Just to give an image: there is no need for an 400 hp engine if you don't have the tyres to get the power on the road ...
Click to expand...
The problem being that the front side bus and memory weren't the primary bottlenecks on the previous models. It's still raw clock speed on the mobile platform.
 
Shubidua said:
How can you check where the bottleneck is ?
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I'd rather not dig up 1066 vs. 1333 MHz Front Side Bus scaling and DDR2 vs. DDR3 off of TomsHardware and Anandtech but the improvements from the increase in them is marginal. (5% for the FSB on some tasks)

I'm at work so please research yourself.
 
I purchased a MacBook Pro 2.8GHz yesterday after the keynote. I, by no stretch of the imagination, have any kind of love for the new design, but if I have to wait another 5 years for a redesign that equates to 5 more years on my PowerBook G4... not gonna happen. So I pulled the trigger.

My question of the day is, do the pro series computers have IR? I don't see it in any of the specs. Strange since they make a point of listing Front Row as one of the pre-installed applications. Anyone know anything about this?
 
RRRize said:
I purchased a MacBook Pro 2.8GHz yesterday after the keynote. I, by no stretch of the imagination, have any kind of love for the new design, but if I have to wait another 5 years for a redesign that equates to 5 more years on my PowerBook G4... not gonna happen. So I pulled the trigger.

My question of the day is, do the pro series computers have IR? I don't see it in any of the specs. Strange since they make a point of listing Front Row as one of the pre-installed applications. Anyone know anything about this?
Click to expand...

That's what the black line on the front is, on the right side. The sleep light is 'invisible' to the left of that black line.
 
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