MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt, ATI/AMD Graphics?

Will there even be such things as a Thunderbolt key? Is it possible and does it even make sense if the transfer rate is 10GBs... u would fill the 32GB USB key in 3 sec...

It's 10 gigabits. Not 10 gigabytes. I made the same mistake. Multiply any transfer times that are in your head by 8 and you'll be good.
 
Newbie Questions:
Compared to the Mac 13" model with the rumored model, is the new model better, similar, or worse?
 
I have a theory whats going to happen with MBPs..

they are retiring the white macbook and are relabelling the 13'' MBP with no dedicated graphics card as Macbook, that can only explain the lower res screen and IGP (may be they will sell it for 899 or 949.. little lesser than lowend air)

MBP will only contain 15 and 17 inchers with updated specs..

That's a good theory. And, if you want something between the 13" (relabeled) MBP and the 15" then the 13" MacBook Air could fill that gap?
 
Bolt is not a Pixar movie.......Try Again

- Lightning McQueen's "BOLT" in PIXAR's "CARS".

- PIXAR's movie "BOLT" is about a fast dog.

- Steve Jobs bought and was CEO of PIXAR until it was sold to Disney.

- Steve Jobs has long been known to have been inspired by Walt Disney.

- Steve Jobs is now the largest shareholder of Disney stock.

It's the famous 6 degrees of Steve Jobs... and by 6, I mean 5.

Apple is buying Disney to give PIXAR back to Steve Jobs and have everything come full circle. [Intel's just one of many pawns in Steve's game of life].

"All your base are belong to SJ!!!"

Happy Birthday Steve! ;)
 
Here is what I HOPE they will later do with the whole notebook/macbook lineup. (I'm talking 2012)

1. Remove the heavy, large 17" model. Give the 15" a 1920x1200 screen.
2. Give the 11.6" Air a 1440x900 16:10 screen and the 13.3" Air/Pro a 1680x1050 screen.
3. Remove the white macbook.
4. Have a 11.6 and 13.3" Macbook Air.
5. Have a 13.3" and 15.4" Macbook Pro.
6. Remove CD drives to make more room for more POWER!!!
7. Give all models an antiglare option.
8. Macbook air backlit keyboards!
8. Liquidmetal, liquidmetal, LIQUIDMETAL!!!

Just my 2 cents. I know this seems a little unrealistic and I know some people who like the 17" MBP, but I can guarantee you apple will introduce a 1920x1200 15" MBP around 2012.
 
I'm not too sure about that.
Firewire would be 1 word, four syllables. Fi-re-wi-re, or if you have a kiwi accent you'd probably pronounce it as fi-ya-wi-ya. Just like we say plaaant and fush n chups. ;)
Thunderbolt would be 1 word 3 syllables thun-der-bolt. ;)

Huh? thun-der-bolt-cable. 4 syllables.
It's funny, I've never been undecided concerning the amount of syllables in a word before! Fire and wire both seem to be a bit ambiguous, but I reckon I'd side with one syllable each. I mean, it's just fire-wire. In any case, at least wire was in the name. Now it's Thunderbolt cable.

On another note, could we possibly argue about anything more useless? haha
 
Here is what I HOPE they will later do with the whole notebook/macbook lineup. (I'm talking 2012)

1. Remove the heavy, large 17" model. Give the 15" a 1920x1200 screen.
2. Give the 11.6" Air a 1440x900 16:10 screen and the 13.3" Air/Pro a 1680x1050 screen.
3. Remove the white macbook.
4. Have a 11.6 and 13.3" Macbook Air.
5. Have a 13.3" and 15.4" Macbook Pro.
6. Remove CD drives to make more room for more POWER!!!
7. Give all models an antiglare option.
8. Macbook air backlit keyboards!
8. Liquidmetal, liquidmetal, LIQUIDMETAL!!!

Just my 2 cents. I know this seems a little unrealistic and I know some people who like the 17" MBP, but I can guarantee you apple will introduce a 1920x1200 15" MBP around 2012.

you crazy man... using 1440x900 at 11.6'' can make your eyes hurt..
 
Absolutely!

Apple currently uses 23W GPU's in their MBP's. That means they would've used a 525M if they stuck with NVIDIA. Now they are going to be using a 6830M(24W) which kicks the complete snot out of the 525M.

I wouldn't put it past Apple to continue their usual practice of putting low end and often previous generation graphics into their "pro" machines. I will be pleasantly surprised if a chip like the 6830 finds its way into a MacBook Pro.

If Apple does get serious about GPUs maybe someone will finally start writing software that uses OpenCL.
 
Bolt is not a Pixar movie.......Try Again

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh...

Lighten up.

Here, fixed: "- Disney's 2008 movie "BOLT" is about a fast dog."

My point wasn't who made the movie Bolt, rather SJ's tie-ins to everything.
 
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Rumor: Quad core i7's for 15/17 inch models. 6950m graphics.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036888693


This user posted the same thing on MacRumors (MBP Forum). The post, however, disappeared why he was offline - I checked his profile. It was not moved to wasteland, and it was not merged with another thread. Is it possible MacRumors got a cease and desist?

I'd call the guy a troll - but he has been a member here for a few years and on HardForum for over 5. A quick look at his posts and I don't think he seems like the troll type. The specs sound ridiculous - but I think they could be possible if Apple removes the optical drives on the 15/17, uses the new battery technology, and increases airflow.

Thoughts?
 
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monstermac77 said:
USB is a good name, has a nice flow to it, USB key, USB cable, mini-USB... can you imagine asking someone if they have a Thunderbolt key, cable, mini-thunderbolt?

Just replace "Thunderbolt" with "TB". I prefer Light Peak as well, but I don't think words really have that much of an inherent flow to them. I think it's all about repeating them and hearing them that makes them flow. Just say "Thunderbolt" a thousand times out loud tonight and by the morning it'll "flow" better than USB!

My new macbook has tuberculosis! :(
 
I have a theory whats going to happen with MBPs..

they are retiring the white macbook and are relabelling the 13'' MBP with no dedicated graphics card as Macbook, that can only explain the lower res screen and IGP (may be they will sell it for 899 or 949.. little lesser than lowend air)

MBP will only contain 15 and 17 inchers with updated specs..

This.
 
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monstermac77 said:
USB is a good name, has a nice flow to it, USB key, USB cable, mini-USB... can you imagine asking someone if they have a Thunderbolt key, cable, mini-thunderbolt?

Just replace "Thunderbolt" with "TB". I prefer Light Peak as well, but I don't think words really have that much of an inherent flow to them. I think it's all about repeating them and hearing them that makes them flow. Just say "Thunderbolt" a thousand times out loud tonight and by the morning it'll "flow" better than USB!

"hey, my new laptop has TB!"

Uh, keep it away from me lol.
 
Who would have thought that the MBA would be better for gaming than the unrealeased 13" MBP.
Also faster in opening apps, booting, surfing and office :rolleyes:

I seriously think the 13" MBP should be renamed "Aluminium Macbook" or something like that. It really doesn't live up to the "pro" tag.
 
you crazy man... using 1440x900 at 11.6'' can make your eyes hurt..

Resolution independency! Sony have a 1920x1080 13.1" VAIO Z laptop. If you have resolution independency you can have the screen real estate of a 1600x900 screen with absolute clarity and sharpness of the full 1920x1080 display. A win win situation. Easy on your eyes in more than 1 way...
I sit quite close to my 13" macbook air (1440x900) and can see almost every pixel. a 1680x1050 screen would be, in marketing terms, a 'retina display' at a certain distance from the screen. I wouldn't be surprised to see 1920x1200 11" screens popping up in the near future, especially in Macbooks, Vaios and maybe Lenovo's.

I'm disappointed with apple though. I expected resolution independency when leopard was first released in 2008. We almost have lion now!
 
Rumor: Quad core i7's for 15/17 inch models. 6950m graphics.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036888693


This user posted the same thing on MacRumors (MBP Forum). The post, however, disappeared why he was offline - I checked his profile. It was not moved to wasteland, and it was not merged with another thread. Is it possible MacRumors got a cease and desist?

I'd call the guy a troll - but he has been a member here for a few years and on HardForum for over 5. A quick look at his posts and I don't think he seems like the troll type. The specs sound ridiculous - but I think they could be possible if Apple removes the optical drives on the 15/17, uses the new battery technology, and increases airflow.

Thoughts?

If this turns out to be true, I would be very surprised, don't know if positively or negatively though... I want that SSD drive for the OS and no SuperDrive!

And weren't the quad-sandy bridge recalled because of the flaw?
 
I have a theory whats going to happen with MBPs..

they are retiring the white macbook and are relabelling the 13'' MBP with no dedicated graphics card as Macbook, that can only explain the lower res screen and IGP (may be they will sell it for 899 or 949.. little lesser than lowend air)

MBP will only contain 15 and 17 inchers with updated specs..

It has already been confirmed that the leaked 13" with the Sandy Bridge integrated graphics is called a MacBook Pro. Check this post. Altho the pic is not showing up for me atm, but it has the new MBP box with Thunderbolt and all. :p

I for one won't be upgrading my 2010 13" MBP to these. I'll most likely go with the 15" one next time I upgrade as I'm disappointed with how "Pro" the 13" is.

Edit: Also, I can't see them dropping the white plastic MacBook, the chix dig it and some other people too. It's a simple computer for simple people kinda. For people who'd use the SuperDrive the Air isn't the best option so I do think it's nice to have a very basic model in the lineup even if I'd personally never buy one.

Edit2: Quote the post and paste the link to a new browser tab if you can't see the pic.
 
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Yes, it is cheaper and more energy efficient in terms of absolute values, but in terms of relative price to performance and watts consumed to performance, Nvidia blows AMD GPUs out of the water (the GF110 vs the 69xx). And by "keep up with Nvidia's top cards", what you really mean is that the highest end card is about 20-35% slower on all benchmarks compared to Nvidia's top card. If that's "keeping up" in your book, then by all means, keep drinking the koolaid.

AMD is 20-35% worse on all benchmarks, like these two?

http://hardocp.com/images/articles/1292337625zR9jST7GBp_5_2.gif
http://hardocp.com/images/articles/1292337625zR9jST7GBp_3_2.gif

If you're going to use a quantifier like "all," then you really shouldn't have the card you're trashing actually come out on top "ever."

The 6970 is also selling for $360 on Newegg, vs the 580gtx selling for $500. Even if your 20-35% values were true, that's 38% greater cost for about 27.5% performance boost. Yeah, that's really "blowing out of the water."

Oh, and on the [H]'s tests, full load for the 6970 is 428w vs the 516w of the GTX. That, again, is 20% greater power consumed, and it still loses on some games.

Wait, what koolaid are you drinking again?
 
Wow, AMD GPUs? I guess Apple really doesn't want me as a customer again :rolleyes:

AMD makes great CPUs, especially when "bang for the buck" is taken into account. But they inherited ATI's TERRIBLE driver support. It's not as bad as Intel's driver support, but its not anywhere near as good as nvidia's.

See, this is why Apple needs to adopt that foreign concept known as "choice". Give customers the choice of GPUs and even CPUs.

Even though I just said bad things about AMD driver support, a Mac mini with a Phenom II X4 and Radeon 6650M would be significantly faster than the current one. Quite doable too. Look at the Dell Zino HD. Problem? Would take a nice chunk out of that 30%+ margin Apple likes.

The benchmarks for the igp of sandybridge is right around 320m's performance.

First people complain about the last generation 13 inch mbps not using nehalems and sticking to core2duo to use 320m, and now they're complaining about not using 320m for using a much more competent cpu? Hard to please people.

Apple is basically the only company that purposely leaves dedicated GPUs out of their sub-15" systems. They have all sorts of excuses as for why they leave dedicated GPUs out, and none of them are even the slightest bit true. If other manufacturers can squeeze mid and high end GPUs into small form factors then Apple would be able to as well. However, Apple's number one priority is profit margin. Customer satisfaction falls well below.

Also, as I said in another thread, why is it okay for Apple to release a product that isn't even as fast as something from 2 years ago and still charge more than anyone else for it?

Having a Core i5 paired with something that performs worse than a GeForce 320M is as unbalanced as pairing a 600 horse power engine with a Ford Pinto transmission.

If you're going to use a quantifier like "all," then you really shouldn't have the card you're trashing actually come out on top "ever."

The 6970 is also selling for $360 on Newegg, vs the 580gtx selling for $500. Even if your 20-35% values were true, that's 38% greater cost for about 27.5% performance boost. Yeah, that's really "blowing out of the water."

Oh, and on the [H]'s tests, full load for the 6970 is 428w vs the 516w of the GTX. That, again, is 20% greater power consumed, and it still loses on some games.

Wait, what koolaid are you drinking again?

Having seen how nvidia's drivers can dramatically improve the performance of a product, I'd put my money on the nvidia product being improved through driver updates in the near future.

ATI/AMD still can't write drivers to save their lives. AMD does make good main CPUs though.
 
Rumor: Quad core i7's for 15/17 inch models. 6950m graphics.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036888693


This user posted the same thing on MacRumors (MBP Forum). The post, however, disappeared why he was offline - I checked his profile. It was not moved to wasteland, and it was not merged with another thread. Is it possible MacRumors got a cease and desist?

I'd call the guy a troll - but he has been a member here for a few years and on HardForum for over 5. A quick look at his posts and I don't think he seems like the troll type. The specs sound ridiculous - but I think they could be possible if Apple removes the optical drives on the 15/17, uses the new battery technology, and increases airflow.

Thoughts?
i was wondering where his thread went, who knows?
 
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