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MacBook Pro 2011 predictions

I bet for:

· 2 cores Sandy Bridge proccessors.
· 4 gigabytes of ram - expandables to 8 gigabytes but soldered onto logic board
· Nvidia 425m gt with 512mb - and 1024 mb in higher models
· Two hard drives:
- One SDD blade type hard drive for the system (64-128gb)
- One HDD (500 - 1000 gb) for storage.
· Display resolutions of 1920 x 1200 pixels in 15" and 2048 x 1536 in 17"
without the crappy glossy crystal.
· No optical bay
· Much more thinner in the front but not in the back.
· Maybe made of liquid metal as alluinium is so fragile to impacts.
· USB 3.0
· Sim card slot for 4g
· Redesigned power adapter
 
Todzilla said:
That is good that they have good taste, but that's not the user the device is designed for.

Anyone can play on a Gibson Les Paul if they can afford it. I mean, all you need to do is buy it. That doesn't mean that the American-made Gibson Les Paul guitars were made with beginners in mind, even if it is what beginners want.

Also, depending on the field of study, a Macbook Pro may be an edge.

You don't have to use one for professional reasons, of course. But it is designed with the professional in mind.
Click to expand...

Consider a MacbookPro a Gibson..
and a standard Macbook an Epiphone..

They're practically the same deal for low-end users. But for some reason, begginers tend to squeeze out the money to buy a Les Paul studio for $1.7k then an Epi. for $800 or something.

It kinda bugs me though when beginners get brand new shiny Les Pauls, while I had to start off with a fake strat.
I guess you get the same feeling with computers..
 
Todzilla said:
That is good that they have good taste, but that's not the user the device is designed for.

Anyone can play on a Gibson Les Paul if they can afford it. I mean, all you need to do is buy it. That doesn't mean that the American-made Gibson Les Paul guitars were made with beginners in mind, even if it is what beginners want.

Also, depending on the field of study, a Macbook Pro may be an edge.

You don't have to use one for professional reasons, of course. But it is designed with the professional in mind.
Click to expand...

Where is USB 3.0? eSATA? Blu-Ray? Professional grade GPUs? High-end CPUs (i.e. quads)? IPS displays? Don't let the three letters make your mind. If MBP was a real pro machine, it should have way more BTO options. Sure, pros can use it but I wouldn't say it's designed purely for pro usage.
 
Hellhammer said:
Where is USB 3.0? eSATA? Blu-Ray? Professional grade GPUs? High-end CPUs (i.e. quads)? IPS displays? Don't let the three letters make your mind. If MBP was a real pro machine, it should have way more BTO options. Sure, pros can use it but I wouldn't say it's designed purely for pro usage.
Click to expand...

There was a joke here in Holland about a guy that was going to wait for the next iPad, because he thought that the current one still had too many features...

W.r.t. IPS I agree.
W.r.t. CPU and GPU: mostly. Everybody wants speed. But I mainly want a portable machine that does not make a lot of noise. It should be fast enough, but it does not have to be faster than that (I mainly need it to compile stuff).
W.r.t. USB 3, eSata: mwah. Less is more. All these ugly holes that have wires sticking out that you have to be careful not to trip over and that you have to disconnect whenever you want to move somewhere else.
W.r.t. Blu-Ray: for what professional use on the road?

I know, I know, it depends on the kind of work you do. But please keep in mind that it makes no sense to say that a brush is not professional because it no use for hitting nails in the wall.
 
K42 said:
There was a joke here in Holland about a guy that was going to wait for the next iPad, because he thought that the current one still had too many features...

W.r.t. IPS I agree.
W.r.t. CPU and GPU: mostly. Everybody wants speed. But I mainly want a portable machine that does not make a lot of noise. It should be fast enough, but it does not have to be faster than that (I mainly need it to compile stuff).
W.r.t. USB 3, eSata: mwah. Less is more. All these ugly holes that have wires sticking out that you have to be careful not to trip over and that you have to disconnect whenever you want to move somewhere else.
W.r.t. Blu-Ray: for what professional use on the road?

I know, I know, it depends on the kind of work you do. But please keep in mind that it makes no sense to say that a brush is not professional because it no use for hitting nails in the wall.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean those have to be made a standard. A true pro computer is as customizable as possible. It must provide something for everyone. An audio pro won't need an IPS display but would definitely appreciate the extra CPU power he can get, while a photographer would appreciate the better display more than the fastest CPU on the planet. A photographer may be fine with USB 2.0 but someone who works with video would like the option to have eSATA or USB 3.0 as video takes awful amount of space so external storage is a must.

I'm not saying those are the only pro categories but those three seem to be pretty popular. If Apple really cared about pro users and MBP was solely aimed at pro market, it would have to offer much, much more customization.
 
CmdrLaForge said:
Anyone knows how the iMac shows his 2 drives? Like one big? Or just 2 drives?

I wouldn 't like to handle two drives
Click to expand...

2 of course. what if you want to format your OS drive? if it were like 1 big drive you would have to format both, and now you can keep your stuff in the big drive and use the other just for the OS and programs.
 
orfeas0 said:
2 of course. what if you want to format your OS drive? if it were like 1 big drive you would have to format both, and now you can keep your stuff in the big drive and use the other just for the OS and programs.
Click to expand...

You know it or you guess, because sure that is my guess as well, justr want to know. Could be a RAID.
 
CmdrLaForge said:
Anyone knows how the iMac shows his 2 drives? Like one big? Or just 2 drives?

I wouldn 't like to handle two drives
Click to expand...

It's two separate drives. Z68 chipset will introduce SSD caching but what it really is, is still a mystery. Sure Apple could use JBOD or RAID 0 but they have more downsides than pros (JBOD wouldn't let you choose what is in SSD and what's in HD and RAID 0 would only give you 512GB).
 
15' MacBook Pro 2011

Intel® Core™ Quad i7-840QM processor (1.86GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.20GHz 8MB L3 Cache

NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 425M GPU (1GB VRAM)

1920x1080 Display



:)
 
Hellhammer said:
It's two separate drives. Z68 chipset will introduce SSD caching but what it really is, is still a mystery. Sure Apple could use JBOD or RAID 0 but they have more downsides than pros (JBOD wouldn't let you choose what is in SSD and what's in HD and RAID 0 would only give you 512GB).
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks. Two separate drives is not that great. E.g. if you install Logic STUDIO it doesn' let you select for all the extra content where it should go.
 
orfeas0 said:
well that i can find easily, but i meant what do you use it for? is it to use 2 hard drives as 1 or?
Click to expand...

RAID 0 lets you combine two or more drives into one array. If you got e.g. 3x500GB, the size of the array would be 1.5TB. The size of the array is dependent on the size of the smallest drive so 250GB and 500GB would give you an array of 500GB. RAID 0 theoretically gives you n times better bandwidth/performance (n being the number of the drives) but the downside is that the reliability is also n worse as if one of the drives in the array fails, all data is lost.

RAID 1 offers mirroring. If you got e.g. 3x500GB again, you would have an array of 500GB but every time you write something to that array, the data is written to all three drives. It offers more reliability as if one of the drives fail, you will still have the data in n-1 drives (again, n is the amount of drives you started with. When one fails, you still have the data in the others). It theoretically gives n times better read performance as data can be read from n amount of sources.

Of course, there are plenty of more RAIDs like RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 1+0, RAID 0+1... But RAID 0 and RAID 1 are the most popular ones as they require no dedicated RAID controller. See Wikipedia for more info
 
Anybody know why 16GB of Ram wouldn't be possible? There's another brand with a laptop out there that can go 16GB of Ram and it's out since a while now.
 
MBX said:
Anybody know why 16GB of Ram wouldn't be possible? There's another brand with a laptop out there that can go 16GB of Ram and it's out since a while now.
Click to expand...

According to Intel, only 8GB is supported by the CPUs. Even if they supported 16GB, MBPs only have two RAM slots and 8GB modules don't really exist yet
 
Hellhammer said:
I didn't mean those have to be made a standard. A true pro computer is as customizable as possible. It must provide something for everyone. An audio pro won't need an IPS display but would definitely appreciate the extra CPU power he can get, while a photographer would appreciate the better display more than the fastest CPU on the planet. A photographer may be fine with USB 2.0 but someone who works with video would like the option to have eSATA or USB 3.0 as video takes awful amount of space so external storage is a must.

I'm not saying those are the only pro categories but those three seem to be pretty popular. If Apple really cared about pro users and MBP was solely aimed at pro market, it would have to offer much, much more customization.
Click to expand...

I do not think that a true pro computer should offer something for everyone.

But actually, Apple does try to offer something for many. Not by offering a lot of customization, nor by keeping every port imaginable. They try to find a balanced package.

Yes, they attract professionals who want to show off and look smart. That too is part of business. Image.

Apparently this is alright, otherwise we would not be looking forward so much to their next offerings.

Professionals who really have different needs should not complain about Apple not caring about them. Or say that their machines are not meant for professionals. They should simply look somewhere else.
 
Hellhammer said:
According to Intel, only 8GB is supported by the CPUs. Even if they supported 16GB, MBPs only have two RAM slots and 8GB modules don't really exist yet
Click to expand...

Is that 8GB limit also true for Sandy Bridge? Seems a bit low for a new architecture.

Apple could fit in 4 slots, in principle.

Just in case you ask: I would love to run multiple VM's simultaneously.
 
K42 said:
Is that 8GB limit also true for Sandy Bridge? Seems a bit low for a new architecture.

Apple could fit in 4 slots, in principle.

Just in case you ask: I would love to run multiple VM's simultaneously.
Click to expand...

Nah, some of the desktop replacement models have 3-4 slots for up to 16 (if not 32) GB of RAM. Maybe you should lok at one of those. Sandy Bridge QM with 16 GB RAM will be quite amazing for multiple VMs.

I hope the MBP can crack 10,000 in 3dmark06 without OC. For the games I run, that would be perfect.
 
K42 said:
I do not think that a true pro computer should offer something for everyone.
Click to expand...

you must be confused on what pro means? hellhammer is exactly right. i really like the suggestion for more inputs, a measly 2 or 3 usb 2.0 is not enough. pro usually means that it is versatile (look at hp elitebook or dell precision). mbp is not very versatile but it does have a professional design and construction.
 
13"

Same unibody
i5 Dual-core Sandy Bridge CPU
256mb discrete GPU
Either 128gb (or something around that) SSD or 320gb HDD

Same battery - the battery boost of SB will cancel out the increased battery drain of discrete GPU.
 
DudeMartin said:
13"

Same unibody
i5 Dual-core Sandy Bridge CPU
256mb discrete GPU
Either 128gb (or something around that) SSD or 320gb HDD

Same battery - the battery boost of SB will cancel out the increased battery drain of discrete GPU.
Click to expand...

thats pretty goood, i hope they have 512mb standard for the GPU though. it wouldnt really add any tdp
 
bossmanjunior said:
you must be confused on what pro means? hellhammer is exactly right. i really like the suggestion for more inputs, a measly 2 or 3 usb 2.0 is not enough. pro usually means that it is versatile (look at hp elitebook or dell precision). mbp is not very versatile but it does have a professional design and construction.
Click to expand...

I do not see Apple suddenly offering a lot of customization options.

So, if I must be confused, then Apple must be confused too, as well as all the professionals that buy their laptops...

Well, let's call it a day and let's go buy an HP or a Dell now.
 
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