Thanks Apple, for the three year old Graphics Chip...

[drjsway]

And because every Apple laptop in the world uses a single shared battery which they reach out to over the open air, the existence of a higher-powered laptop with shorter battery life would instantly destroy the potential for him to have longer battery life.

And that is why, until the unibody macbook pro showed up, not a single photographer or film producer ever bought a macbook pro, right?

Oh, wait. Wrong. Those people have been using Mac laptops since they were called "powerbooks" and you were lucky to get three hours of battery life out of them fresh out of the box. Your entire argument was just revealed to be, not just wrong, but breathtakingly stupid, because your whole point is to argue that it is absolutely impossible for Apple to have sold any of the millions of laptops they sold into that market in the previous twenty years.

But again, none of that has any influence on anything. The high-end and developer markets are markets Apple has clearly pushed for. They've said they are interested in these markets. They've provided features and functionality which the film people are never even going to see or comprehend, let alone use.

As you say, they will for the most part make what they want. They are not necessarily any more driven by what "creative types" want than they are by what the rest of us want; they're mostly driven by what Steve Jobs wants.

Your first paragraph made no sense (or at least I didn't understand it.)

Before the unibodies, MacBooks had replaceable batteries. However, every professional would prefer a extra long nonremovable battery than carry around many short removable ones.

You are not talking about high end markets at all. You are talking about the gamer market. Since most gamers use boot camp anyway, why would Apple target a market that promotes the use of Windows?

 

[ModernDemagogue]

If there are so few Mac gamers, why is WoW out for Mac? They'd have to be selling hundreds of thousands of copies to justify that... Oh, I guess they are. So are a bunch of other MMOs.

If the question is "how many gamers are there on Mac, and are they a market", and my choices are "Some Guy On The Internet" vs. "Valve and Blizzard"... I'm gonna bet that Valve and Blizzard have a clue.

(And yes, I have a Steam account, and I'm looking forward to being able to get stuff on Mac. I haven't used that account in probably 3 years... Because I got sick of dealing with Windows.)

You're taking something he says and misrepresenting it. He's not saying there aren't Mac gamers, he's saying there aren't high end mac gamers who care about native resolution, 90 fps, and all the particle effects turned on — which is all thats relevant when talking about whether or not Apple is missing a huge market by not having a higher graphics option. There are lots of Mac gamers, but they use iMacs and MacBooks and iPhones and iPads — if Valve didn't port steam they'd find themselves in 2 years having no choice but to go through the App store and let apple take the 30% markup.

It's a realization that the Apple market is increasing enormously, and they either come to the party or get left behind.

This isn't about whether Apple needs a different product to allow people to play games sufficiently.

I feel like im discussing this with people who have no basis in logic.

 

[Pressure]

If there are so few Mac gamers, why is WoW out for Mac? They'd have to be selling hundreds of thousands of copies to justify that... Oh, I guess they are. So are a bunch of other MMOs.

If the question is "how many gamers are there on Mac, and are they a market", and my choices are "Some Guy On The Internet" vs. "Valve and Blizzard"... I'm gonna bet that Valve and Blizzard have a clue.

(And yes, I have a Steam account, and I'm looking forward to being able to get stuff on Mac. I haven't used that account in probably 3 years... Because I got sick of dealing with Windows.)

Blizzard is an oddball case since all their games since 1994 have been released in universal binary for both Mac OSX and Windows support. Which is great, if only more companies made universal binary games instead of crappy Cider ports.

 

[lilo777]

Your first paragraph made no sense (or at least I didn't understand it.)

Before the unibodies, MacBooks had replaceable batteries. However, every professional would prefer a extra long nonremovable battery than carry around many short removable ones.

You are not talking about high end markets at all. You are talking about the gamer market. Since most gamers use boot camp anyway, why would Apple target a market that promotes the use of Windows?

What do you think professionals do? Run around with laptops? Unless you are a salesmen, you do not really need a long battery life. It's one (maximum two) hour meeting - and back to your office. Those people that you see using MBPs in the parks, they are students browsing internet, they are not professionals. And they would be better off with Sony VAIO X which has 14 hours battery life.

 

[therealseebs]

Your first paragraph made no sense (or at least I didn't understand it.)

The claim made was that, because a laptop without all-day battery life was "COMPLETELY WORTHLESS" to one specific market segment, it is absolutely wrong, crazy, and stupid to suggest that Apple might ever willingly create a model with a shorter battery life.

The only way that could possibly be true is if there were some way in which all Macs had to have exactly the same battery life, so it would be impossible for them to sell all-day battery-life macs to some people, and shorter battery-life, more powerful, macs to other people.

Presumably because they would, in this strange other universe where that argument made any sense at all, all be working from a single shared battery so they'd all run out of power at once.

Otherwise that argument makes no sense.

Before the unibodies, MacBooks had replaceable batteries. However, every professional would prefer a extra long nonremovable battery than carry around many short removable ones.

Probably, but many, many, many professionals would be fine with a shorter battery life in exchange for better functionality. Think about the fact that the 330M is in there at all. Why? It's not for people running FCP or Aperture, those would run fine on anything, because they're not doing a lot of the kind of rendering that a GPU is needed for to begin with.

You are not talking about high end markets at all. You are talking about the gamer market.

Short of supercomputers, there is no higher-end market anymore. Video games are expanding to fill available hardware capacity. Everything else caps out when you're getting whatever it is done.

But, that said, there are other people (CAD users, for instance) who care about better graphics hardware than Apple's shipping in laptops, too.

Since most gamers use boot camp anyway, why would Apple target a market that promotes the use of Windows?

I don't know that "most" gamers use boot camp. I've only ever used it to run NetBSD on a Mini.

Certainly, when I'm thinking about playing games on my new MBP, what comes to mind is not "boot camp", but "Steam and WoW". Since Valve has decided to add native Mac support, that's a ton of games for me right there. The other stuff I play, mostly from Good Old Games, isn't performance-sensitive anyway -- I can play it on an atom netbook, too.

As to why Apple would target that market... Because it's millions of users who are willing to spend $2k and up on a "gaming notebook". Look at the pricing of gaming notebooks compared to the pricing of the highest end work-oriented notebooks. Look how much overpriced they are relative to their components. And then tell me that Apple can't possibly want a market full of people who are willing to pay higher markups than Apple normally charges on their hardware. And, to boot, a market about to have Valve games available on Mac, and most of whom are REALLY sick of having to deal with sixteen kerjillion* layers of anti-malware, anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software in order to play games for a full week without getting keylogged and hacked.

[*] Slight exaggeration for humorous effect. Many users are able to get by with as little as two firewalls, two anti-virus programs, two anti-spyware programs, and monthly reinstalls from scratch.

 

[therealseebs]

Blizzard is an oddball case since all their games since 1994 have been released in universal binary for both Mac OSX and Windows support. Which is great, if only more companies made universal binary games instead of crappy Cider ports.

Yeah. More companies like Valve. Sure would be great if they had announced that they were bringing Steam to the Mac and all their future games would be out on Mac. Natively. Not using Cider.

... Oh, that already happened.

Sure would be cool if Apple were ready to sell those people a laptop that could handle those games, huh.

 

[Jarcrew]

You're taking something he says and misrepresenting it. He's not saying there aren't Mac gamers, he's saying there aren't high end mac gamers who care about native resolution, 90 fps, and all the particle effects turned on — which is all thats relevant when talking about whether or not Apple is missing a huge market by not having a higher graphics option.

I didn't say there are no "high end" Mac gamers, that's absurd. First you think there could be as few as 4,000 gamers in the US - which, even if we assume you meant PC gamers exclusively, is a figure so absurdly low that it wouldn't have been correct twenty years ago either - and then came this:

if Valve didn't port steam they'd find themselves in 2 years having no choice but to go through the App store and let apple take the 30% markup.

So you think that, within the next two years, Apple will initiate a Mac app store through which developers will be forced to go? If that's what you think will happen, what difference does Steam make now? Eventually, we'll have to get Steam through Apple anyway, so that point sucks.

It's a realization that the Apple market is increasing enormously, and they either come to the party or get left behind.

This isn't about whether Apple needs a different product to allow people to play games sufficiently.

I feel like im discussing this with people who have no basis in logic.

Your logic isn't exactly bulletproof dude, you've made some mad assertions over the last few pages.

 

[Michael CM1]

What do you think professionals do? Run around with laptops? Unless you are a salesmen, you do not really need a long battery life. It's one (maximum two) hour meeting - and back to your office. Those people that you see using MBPs in the parks, they are students browsing internet, they are not professionals. And they would be better off with Sony VAIO X which has 14 hours battery life.

Ever worked as a journalist? You can't just plug in a power cord in everywhere you go. I had to cover a football game from the stands a couple of years ago and learned the insanity of a battery defect. I was fine for the game, then it all of a sudden went dead at a McDonald's with WiFi. Luckily I could plug in there, but what if I had still been at the stadium without access to the press box? That's not as unlikely as you think.

Also, think of scientists doing stuff in the middle of nowhere. Sure, you can tote a generator, but you'd rather not.

Those are just two examples. Many other people would also rather not lug around the charger. This is a $1,200 computer, so a lot of people need to just deal with it. If you want more advanced stuff, bump it up.

 

[Jarcrew]

If there are so few Mac gamers, why is WoW out for Mac? They'd have to be selling hundreds of thousands of copies to justify that... Oh, I guess they are. So are a bunch of other MMOs.

If the question is "how many gamers are there on Mac, and are they a market", and my choices are "Some Guy On The Internet" vs. "Valve and Blizzard"... I'm gonna bet that Valve and Blizzard have a clue.

(And yes, I have a Steam account, and I'm looking forward to being able to get stuff on Mac. I haven't used that account in probably 3 years... Because I got sick of dealing with Windows.)

I never said there wasn't any Mac gamers. I'd say there's proportionally fewer than there is on the Windows platform due to the latter's propensity for supporting gamers better than Apple can, but I never said there wasn't many Mac gamers - there's plenty. Call of Duty 4 sold like hotcakes on every platform it was on, Mac included.

 

[therealseebs]

Those are just two examples. Many other people would also rather not lug around the charger. This is a $1,200 computer, so a lot of people need to just deal with it. If you want more advanced stuff, bump it up.

Uh.

As-specced, $4,006.

And it's still got a mediocre GPU.

That's sort of the point; there simply isn't a bump up to be had -- they don't make anything faster.

 

[Gomff]

Strictly speaking, "could care less" is nearly always precisely true -- it is almost always the case that you could care less. Since this is so incredibly obvious, stating it invokes the Gricean Maxims and implies to the reader that there was some doubt as to whether or not you could care less. Since normally there wouldn't be (anything you can be bothered to put into words presumably has some significance), this becomes "damning with faint praise" and is indeed an idiomatically correct way to indicate unconcern.

It's like saying "I guess it wouldn't kill me." Since normally people don't die very much, saying that you think something wouldn't kill you implies that you consider it very unpleasant.

Sorry but I disagree. Normally I'd be worried about derailing a thread but since this one is sh*t anyway, I couldn't care less. (Can you see what I did there?)

So, when you say "I couldn't care less" or indeed "I could care less" but mean it in the same sense, you are literally saying "It's not possible for me to care less about this". Whether it is almost always the case that you could care less is (a) immeasurable and (b) irrelevant as you are deliberately stating the opposite.

If you were to apply the same illogical grammar to "I guess it wouldn't kill me" you'd be saying "I guess it would kill me" which again means the opposite.

I accept that in the US the expression has embedded and is no longer questioned, but grammatically it's the opposite of it's intended meaning.

 

[therealseebs]

I never said there wasn't any Mac gamers. I'd say there's proportionally fewer than there is on the Windows platform due to the latter's propensity for supporting gamers better than Apple can, but I never said there wasn't many Mac gamers - there's plenty. Call of Duty 4 sold like hotcakes on every platform it was on, Mac included.

Right.

So that'd be a good market for Apple to pursue, since it's a market full of people with disposable income who are willing to pay a markup for expensive hardware.

 

[Pressure]

Yeah. More companies like Valve. Sure would be great if they had announced that they were bringing Steam to the Mac and all their future games would be out on Mac. Natively. Not using Cider.

... Oh, that already happened.

Sure would be cool if Apple were ready to sell those people a laptop that could handle those games, huh.

Yes, I do realize Valve announced Steam was to become available for Mac OSX. Doesn't mean every game in Steam becomes available for Mac OSX though.

 

[Merakko]

Obviously, I do.



Right.

And since no one but about 95% of the population plays games, obviously, this is a non-issue as long as Apple's committed to keeping a 5% market share, right?



This is the kind of idiocy that gives Apple users a bad name.

Consoles can't play the games I'm interested in, for the most part.

But here's the thing. Why are you so purposefully committed to being a jerk to anyone who likes things that you don't? Why is your ego tied up in Apple's products being flawless, and anyone who doesn't like them being worthless people whose money Apple should never want to begin with?

What's wrong with liking Apple for the things they do well, without having to pretend that they don't ever screw anything up?

I like Apple's stuff, for the most part, but I really wish they cared more about the high-end market. They don't. They're not going to. It's unlikely to change. But, it sorta screws me, because I really like their environment in many ways, but I want to be able to play games on my computer.

5% is enough, maybe a little to much.

 

[ModernDemagogue]

Dude — Look at who the post you quoted was responding to, that was to the other guy.

I'm pretty sure I had your back...

I didn't say there are no "high end" Mac gamers, that's absurd. First you think there could be as few as 4,000 gamers in the US - which, even if we assume you meant PC gamers exclusively, is a figure so absurdly low that it wouldn't have been correct twenty years ago either - and then came this:



So you think that, within the next two years, Apple will initiate a Mac app store through which developers will be forced to go? If that's what you think will happen, what difference does Steam make now? Eventually, we'll have to get Steam through Apple anyway, so that point sucks.



Your logic isn't exactly bulletproof dude, you've made some mad assertions over the last few pages.

 

[drjsway]

1. Most creative professionals are not sitting at a desk all day. It's not just journalists and scientists. There are millions of photographers out there.
2. Not all companies have to target all market segments. Porsche doesn't have a pickup truck, a van, an hybrid, or a microcar like the Smart. They don't cater to 99% of people and they do fine.
3. Jobs has said himself that he wants OSX to ideally have 10% of the marketshare. BS or not, he says he doesn't want more.
4. Different computers are good for different purposes. The MacBook Pro is not the best for gaming. Therefore, if I were gamer, I'd get a different computer (like the Envy 15). If I prefer OSX, I would have to consider what's more important to me. There's compromises with everything.

 

[ModernDemagogue]

I went along with your post up to this point, when you pulled 50,000 out of thin air.

There's probably that many people, if not many more, just playing Counter Strike right now. There are millions of Steam accounts, one of which is mine, and I'm sure I'm not the only Steam account holder here.

I'm not saying Apple should or ever will cater to gamers, nor should gamers expect Apple to provide for them, but I hope Apple have a better grasp of the numbers than you do.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the percentage of people who then care about things that would require a higher end gfx card than these. That is a very minor subset of the number of gamers in general.

Yes, I made them number up, but I'd wager only 50k of those steam accounts would both consider using a mac, and be unsatisfied with the current offerings... that's my logic... speculative sure, totally off base? Probably not

 

[PAC88]

What do you think professionals do? Run around with laptops? Unless you are a salesmen, you do not really need a long battery life. It's one (maximum two) hour meeting - and back to your office. Those people that you see using MBPs in the parks, they are students browsing internet, they are not professionals. And they would be better off with Sony VAIO X which has 14 hours battery life.

that's funny you know exactly how everyone uses their notebooks.. haha

what about photographers who bring gear on location or sit on a train for hours. people do have different lifestyles and work methods.

 

[KingYaba]

Fire sale at nVidia and it isn't Fermi.

LOL

 

[panzer06]

I didn't call you silly. I called the thread silly. Stop personalizing neuter remarks about a subject of discussion rather than an individual. You're emotionally charging something that isn't emotional.

Second, if there are such studios; name them. I haven't been to any.

And I don't mean Unix/Linux workstations for Flames etc... I mean any place that uses Windows.

TV network back end operations are NOT creative, that's distribution / operations. Not the same.

Finally, I at no point said Apple does not care about the general public. I in fact emphasized they cared about two sets; creators and consumers, and honestly they've over-cared for consumers with the iPad release which delayed the MBPs til now. So I don't see what you're criticizing me for, we're not talking about low end MacBooks and your comments regarding that just further support my argument and pretty much everything I've said, especially the Apple split between creator/consumer. You've pretty much failed to point out anywhere specifically where I'm wrong... If you want to make an argument that their popularity is based on ease of use, I can accept that that goes into into it, but in essence that's not a huge part of Apple's larger brand identity. Walking away from the Mac vs PC campaign is evidence of this departure, but I must point out their campaign was at its fundamental universal base, about being cool, and not about ease of use / capability reliability, these were propositional benefits, not the overarching brand motif.

Anyway, this is more academic. Yes, they target the masses; yes they do it with their Macbooks iPhones iPads, I said this previously. They are able to do this effectively because of their creative class and trendsetter dominance. Therefore in their professional products they focus on keeping that set happy, even if it means neglecting super techy gadget geeks or embedded hardware engineers.

That is what Apple is. I see no reason to bitch about a graphics card on a laptop that doesn't have the guns to really let loose in 3d to begin with.

And elitist puffery? Please, I've kept this pretty merit based and logical. I've seen pundits make better insults about Obama and elitism. Nothing wrong with being elite — and I fail to see where I'm puffing. Argue with points, not rhetoric.

Saying the entire thread is silly implies the the thread and those who bother to post in it (commenting negatively about the lackluster MBP GPU offerings) are silly to even mention such lackluster GPU parts. It may be pointless (since Apple will not change) but silly, no.

For me this paragraph derailed any point you were trying to make.

"Apple doesn't want people like you using their laptops and promoting their brand. They want trend setters, they want the creative class. They want people who wear Elie Tahari jackets and sit in hotel lounges and coffee shops tapping away on MacBooks — both in real life, and on the big screen. The creative class sets the standard for what the consumer class wants. By having the creative class on lock down, they create icons of cool who use Apple products; whether in music videos, tv shows, etc... and this makes people want to go out and buy iPhones, and iPads, and buy their media using iTunes."

To me this sort of attitude is the definition of elitist thought. I can agree on Apple wanting to create and maintain a certain look, feel and vibe for their products. Helps justify the premium price but in my experience there's more to the Apple buying decision process than trying to look cool.

Even saying TV networks and studios like Turner or Cartoon Network don't do anything creative feels elitist in of itself. The activities performed are not strictly operational tasks bereft of any creativity.

Alas, as you say much of this is academic. In many ways I agree this past two days have been an exercise in futility but perhaps a cathartic one.

The tone of your missive rubbed me the wrong way and my reaction is thus. You are of course free to express you opinion in any manner you wish. Tis indeed a free country.

Cheers,

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Good thing I did not wait out for these MBPs. Those new cards aren't the best but they are certainly capable but why Apple doesn't even include 1GB of dedicated memory is beyond me. I bought a Toshiba with the same card (but 1GB) and it's decent but not the best for gaming.

I just wish I had seen this laptop before though...

MSi GX640 from Amazon with Core i5, 15" (1680 x1050), ATI 5850 with 1GB memory for 1099 with a 3 year warranty.

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GX640-098US-15-6-Inch-Laptop/dp/B0036OR9DI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=pc&qid=1271184812&sr=1-1

Thanks for posting that link... I've been reading all about the GX640 since seeing your post and it is a really fantastic machine and an unreal deal for the money. I bought the last one that Amazon had, will have it tomorrow for $3.99 shipping thanks to Prime! The thing is going to absolutely fly with the i5 and ATI 5850 with GDDR5. Since selling my Mac Pro and downsizing to a 21.5" iMac, my gaming capabilities have dropped considerably. This will more than fill the bill (the posts and discussions I've been reading on notebook review seem to agree that even high end games like Crysis run beautifully on the GX640 with all settings maxed out!)

I'll post back here with my impressions once I get it for anyone interested. From what I've read on Insanely Mac the 5850 will be a no go for a bit until Apple starts offering the 5xxx series (possibly June) as stand alone cards or in iMacs so the hackintosh route won't be available right off the bat... but that will come.

Thanks again!

 

[drjsway]

According to NPR, 63% of US are gamers. Of those, most play consoles. Only 3% of Modern Warfare sales came from PC sales. Of PC gamers, only 30% are "enthusiasts" who care about specs.

30% of 3% of 63% = around .5%. Don't assume the world revolves around your interests.

 

[panzer06]

According to NPR, 63% of US are gamers. Of those, most play consoles. Only 3% of Modern Warfare sales came from PC sales. Of PC gamers, only 30% are "enthusiasts" who care about specs.

30% of 3% of 63% = around .5%. Don't assume the world revolves around your interests.

You are basing you entire argument on the sales of one cross platform game? There are many PC only games and the people that play them represent a much higher number, however, I assume your point is Apple is not concerned about the high end PC gamer. I agree and therefore those of us who want higher specs most likely will get no satisfaction anytime soon.

Cheers,

 

[Garrus]

You do know that the average human eye can see 24-26 fps? So anything over 32fps is already too much and you will NOT notice it.

It need 24-30 fps minimum to look fluid
Eyes can see fps drop below 60 fps (frame rate of a game that continuously go from over 60 to 40 for example will be apparent)
But eyes can see up to 200 fps and maybe more in some scenario (scientist tested many times flash that last 1/200 sec in complete darkness to see if people would see it and most of them where able to see the flash, i didnt worked as well in a well lit room where they turned off the light for 1/200 sec).

 

[therealseebs]

5% is enough, maybe a little to much.

They've said in the past they'd like more like 10%.

Seems to me, though, that if you want to make money in a small part of the market, it might make sense to go after the highest-margin markets.