MacBook Pro is incredible

[Diatribe]

Yep. Chalk up another feature.

Suzerain just pointed me to it in the other thread. http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/design.html

Sudden Motion Sensor
MacBook Pro protects your data if it detects a fall, by parking the hard drive head during fast changes in orientation.

So it isn't gone. At least some relief.

 

[Diatribe]

Here

Thanks to you too. 🙂

 

[cal6n]

Thanks to you too. 🙂

No worries. I'll actually be turning SMS off. It gets in the way of real time video, especially in a bass-heavy club.

I think it's an awesome piece of kit and I can't wait to get my hands on it, on or before 15th Feb!

😎

It's a VJ's wet dream: fast processor, fast RAM, fast GFX. The Ali case has proven itself to be REALLY durable over the past 2 years for me and I'm damn glad Apple haven't changed the form factor for the sake of it. Pity about firewire 800 but meh. There'll be an express 34 FW 800 card if you need it. Pity about s-video but there's an adaptor.

To anyone who really maxes their book(s) capabilities, this is FANTASTIC, for the rest who are moaning about the finish, modem etc I say this: "whatever"

Some people could fall into a sack full of nipples and come out sucking their thumb!

 

[madmax_2069]

give it time and apple will ditch support for the new G4's and G5's that you paid about 2 grand for with OS X to try to force you into buying a intelMac. they did it to there older systems capable of running tiger just fine, i know cause i tryed tiger on this beige AIO in my sig and ran way faster than jag did but i uninstalled it cause it was having mounting problems with the optical drive so i went back to jag and everything works great. I wont buy a intelMac till it proves its self

 

[Diatribe]

No worries. I'll actually be turning SMS off. It gets in the way of real time video, especially in a bass-heavy club.

I think it's an awesome piece of kit and I can't wait to get my hands on it, on or before 15th Feb!

😎

It's a VJ's wet dream: fast processor, fast RAM, fast GFX. The Ali case has proven itself to be REALLY durable over the past 2 years for me and I'm damn glad Apple haven't changed the form factor for the sake of it. Pity about firewire 800 but meh. There'll be an express 34 FW 800 card if you need it. Pity about s-video but there's an adaptor.

To anyone who really maxes their book(s) capabilities, this is FANTASTIC, for the rest who are moaning about the finish, modem etc I say this: "whatever"

Some people could fall into a sack full of nipples and come out sucking their thumb!

Yeah, you're right it is not too shabby of an update. There are however four things that worry me:

1. battery life
2. slower super drive
3. no express 34 cards as of yet
4. I have a lot of plug-ins that might not work with Rosetta... think iTunes visualizer, mail plug-ins... some of them have to be re-written and plug-in writers are usually not as fast as app writers.

Anyway, to all the people beta testing Intel systems for the rest of us... thanks. 😀

 

[cal6n]

Yeah, you're right it is not too shabby of an update. There are however four things that worry me:

1. battery life

I'm cool with the current G4 life and, according to Ars technica, this one's about the same.

2. slower super drive

Good point. I hadn't noticed. (That's how important it is to me!) I can see that as a backward step, though.

3. no express 34 cards as of yet

I doubt they'll be long.

4. I have a lot of plug-ins that might not work with Rosetta... think iTunes visualizer, mail plug-ins... some of them have to be re-written and plug-in writers are usually not as fast as app writers.

It'll take a while but it'll sort itself out. For example, I doubt G-Force will hang about as they've been cross-platform for a while now.

Anyway, to all the people beta testing Intel systems for the rest of us... thanks. 😀

You're welcome!

 

[-Escher-]

I'm happy for those who will be out there picking up these new Macbooks. I am SLIGHTLY regretful for buying my current PPC Powerbook, I know it will pass...I hope. 😀

Regardless, more power is always a good thing. Here's to the future. *cheers*

THIS IS A MATURE AND REALISTIC POINT OF VIEW!!

You guys shouldn't be afraid of feeling regret or slightly unhappy by having an "old" PB...

AGAIN: The complainers should feel proud for being an apple lover! Steve Jobs had guts and wisdom to do what he is doing and frankly: He's been flawless!!! You should be happy and proud!!! He's just release an awesome and competitive machine with several new features!! C'ammon guys: PB is gone!!!! They released a "new" machine with the same processor last year and people happily bought it!!! Now you have a powerful machine fully loaded with new features and people complains!!!!

THE MACTEL SYNDROME:

Basic diagnosis: People under 40 yo owning an apple machine that has just been obsolete and can't cope with that. They start having neurotic and illusion thoughts and feelings against the new machines. They try to destroy them to bring comfort and the false feeling that their old PB is better. In addition, some patient starts comparing the new apples with PCs using the same processor by feeling challenged and threatened.
Treatment: Time...Lets give them some time and listen their thoughts and feelings...

 

[CanadaRAM]

can you please find me an example of when apple released a computer that is quadruple the speed of its predecessor and available for the same price?

hell, even twice the speed?

-cody

Can you find me an example of when Apple's speed claims made at product launch were ever verified by independent, real world application testing... and were not selectively chosen so that they are true only in very narrow and artificial comparisons?

Will it be faster. Possibly. Will it be 4 x or even 2 x faster on existing OSX programs under Rosetta? Not a chance.

Will it be 2 x faster on programs rewritten to take full advantage of the new architecture? Possibly. In come cases. Doing some functions.

Keep in mind that real world performance is not about raw CPU horsepower, clock speeds, memory bandwidth, etc. It has to be the sum of ALL of the functions of the machine that the program is using, and the speed is generally limited by the slowest function.

Foe example: The SATA hard drive may be a small improvement in bandwidth over the previous PATA hard drive, but it's still a 5400 RPM drive. So every program that heavily uses temp files or scratch files, or does disk i/o on large data sets, is going to be bound by the performance of the drive, and the dual Intel cores are going to be sitting around for a few thousand clock cycles doing nothing while a disk operation takes place. So in those types of operations, I would be surprised to see any more than a 10% improvement.

 

[adk]

A lot of people are complaining about how they look the same as the Powerbooks. Am I the only one who thinks that apple did this on purpose? I think they left the designs the same intentionally to try to reinforce the fact that it's still a mac, just a different brain.

 

[pyrex]

it does have the option for a 100gb 7200 rpm drive, so that should make some difference.

 

[freeny]

The main criticism I have is the loss of a firewire port. It makes it impossible to edit unless I get a hub...

It still has a firewire port. just no firewire 800.

 

[faintember]

It still has a firewire port. just no firewire 800.

But the recent PPC PB had two firewire ports (400 and 800) Why couldnt they give us two FW 400 ports? Beats me...

 

[Bubbasteve]

You will always find negative people with negative thoughts.
They will NEVER be happy or satisfied with anything.

Welcome, MacBook 😀

Very true... personally I think the Macbook Pro is a great initial step into it's relationship with intel... I read a number of previous posts and I couldn't help but laugh... then I came across ortuno2k's comment and I think he summed it all up quite well.

 

[simplyguitarded]

Guys, am I the only one who noticed a new port in the macbook other than the power and the expresscard? Did anyone else notice that they put in an optical audio (S/PDIF) port on it? This is huge news to us music recorders out there. Firewire 800 would be nice, but this is way cooler.

 

[faintember]

Guys, am I the only one who noticed a new port in the macbook other than the power and the expresscard? Did anyone else notice that they put in an optical audio (S/PDIF) port on it? This is huge news to us music recorders out there. Firewire 800 would be nice, but this is way cooler.

That has been on the more recent PB for a while, IIRC. Besides, most everyone i know (including me*) uses FW rather than SPDIF.

*But i do not record often, mainly i work with computer playback/electroacoustic music.

 

[-Escher-]

Can you add FW 800 😀 😉

Oh yeah!!! You do!!

http://www.xterasys.com/e94b.htm

 

[-Escher-]

But the recent PPC PB had two firewire ports (400 and 800) Why couldnt they give us two FW 400 ports? Beats me...

well..the same answer...here it is!

http://www.xterasys.com/e94b.htm

 

[kalisphoenix]

I just read an interesting article. It was written in 1999 by the owner of a Power Mac 9600, who served as a financial guinea pig as he tried to upgrade his PPC to compete with the (then-new) Power Mac G3. The complaints weren't new -- I'd heard them aimed at the "colorful" G3 machines before... fewer PCI slots, "useless" Firewire, fewer ADB ports, expensive RAM, et cetera... but in this context, they were particularly interesting to me.

 

[bousozoku]

I have some thoughts on the MacBook, and reading this thread has crystalised them to a degree.

This is an interim offering from Apple, it's a way of live beta testing a new product without having to force an entirely new design into production.

It will allow Apple to run it's transition to x86 in the public domain on a small user base.

It gives Steve something "wow" to show off and stops the bleating about the lack of new PowerBooks, plus it's 6 months earlier than the company were forecasting.

It is, as someone has already pointed out, a placeholder and I'm sure that a new line of laptops with a redesigned form factor will be forthcoming this year.

I won't invest in 1st gen hardware after a particularly crappy experience with the 17" PowerBook, but I will replace my existing 'Book when a 17" Intel machine is available and the software I need to run is in UB format.

This is a good move on Apple's part, but I think the iMac is the more impressive machine.

I already have mentioned elsewhere about the original PowerBook G3 being an example of why the MacBook Pro should be there. It's a proving ground, as you say, that happens in the public domain.

I still don't see a drawback to the MBP, other than the name. It's about the same size and weight and the performance is much better for native software.

It's even as thin as the Titanium PowerBook was, which brings it down just that .1 inch.

I guess it's just that the cup is half empty instead of half full. How often do we hear of people complaining about things they'll never buy? Too often. Let them complain. This was a great first effort by Apple.

 

[ariechel]

Look right the are comparing the top end model with the basic Powerbook, thats how it comes upto 4x faster - And if Intel are so good, why are they stilll selling PowerBook G4's and why havent they created a PowerMac with an Intel Chip, I know why because Intel is awful.

Though I cannot comfirm which configurations of MacBook Pro and Powerbook were being compared, I think there are two things to keep in mind:

1. Always take benchmark data with a grain of salt. The degree to which the benchmark test is optimized to the system plays a huge role. What is being tested is also important. Apple certainly chose the most favorable benchmark test for their purposes.

2. The MacBook Pro will only run 4-5 (or whatever) times faster than the Powerbook with applications that do not require Rosetta translation. Since many applications are not universal yet, the performance gains will not be (fully) realized.

That having been said, the MacBook Pro will undoubtedly be significantly faster with universal binary applications.

 

[petej]

well..the same answer...here it is!

http://www.xterasys.com/e94b.htm

Looks remarkably like an expresscard/54 and not an expresscard/34

http://www.expresscard.org/images/dimensions.jpg

A 54 won't fit into a 34 slot

Yet another confusing new standard

 

[MacTruck]

Looks remarkably like an expresscard/54 and not an expresscard/34

A 54 won't fit into a 34 slot

Yet another confusing new standard

Yep, its damn confusing and stupid thing to move away from pcmcia.

Expresscard slot is the lamest stupidest idea ever. What the heck were they thinking? PCMCIA has been around for over 10 yrs. There are millions of cards available. What the heck would I do with the 10 different cards I already own? Stupid stupid stupid.


MacBook... not so incredible.

 

[-Escher-]

Looks remarkably like an expresscard/54 and not an expresscard/34

http://www.expresscard.org/images/dimensions.jpg

A 54 won't fit into a 34 slot

Yet another confusing new standard

You're right!!
I still believe they'll be releasing a bunch of apps...
I still thinking that the remote control can be sticked into this slot like PCs remote controls!!

 

[jadekitty24]

I think the Macbook looks incredible. What's with all the complaints about how it looks like a Powerbook? Is something wrong with that? In my opinion, the Powerbook is the sexiest laptop I've ever seen-I'll never forget the first time I saw one. I also think for what it is, the price is ok. A little high for me, but not ungodly outrageous. This is something big that Apple has done and more is yet to come I'm sure.

 

[Sunrunner]

Two things I'm dissapointed about:

No DL SD drive?
No information on battery life

I don't care for the dial-up modem, haven't used one in 6 years.
Don't care much for the FW 800; never used it.

I just returned my 3 week old PB to Amazon, and will probably let the hype pass and might wait until they release a Rev B.

Well now that youve returned your old one, how about you go back to Amazon and buy the new one. People who endlessly wait on the fence wor an update are just doing themselves a disfavor.