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The MBP brand has been tarnished.
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It doesn't "crap" all over anything. That 625MB/s is instantaneous transfer speed, and it involve the CPU for each short block of data. Firewire and eStata are both buss type systems and the computer gets to start and transfer, and gets notified when it's done. For synchronous transfers (like streaming audio or video), you need buss type transfers. Async stuff, where you can tolerate an unspecified delay between blocks (even within blocks) USB is OK for.
All that said, FW and eSata may die, but it won't be because USB x.y is superior. It is cheaper, but more CPU intensive, and has lower throughput for a given spec. speed.
Eddie O
Here it is guys, now he and his sister will be happy. Jesus man, your like the poster child for... I can't even say it, but it's nauseating.
There's the ticket. You'll be 99.998% exclusive with that thing.Here it is guys, now he and his sister will be happy. Jesus man, your like the poster child for... I can't even say it, but it's nauseating.
I googled "exclusive" but all I got was this booze belt for $89.99:
Well I think it's great that elitist snobs like yourself are getting their just desserts. The proletariat are just getting better machines at lower prices.
QFT. Claiming that the "brand has been ruined" is disgusting elitism of the highest order. Stop defining yourself by what your computer is called, and just appreciate that these are damn good computers. I don't give a damn what my machine is called, as long as it does its job.
I agree with this. Macs are just tools. Great tools but nothing else. If the OP wants exclusivity then own something that we plebs can't normally buy like a expensive gold jewelry, a rare work of art or a big fancy house - you know something with actual value. If you think you are special because you bought a high-end Mac then you just fell into Apple's marketing.
Sorry, first time I've noticed this thread.
The world of computing has moved on greatly in 5 years, and Apple are simply moving along as well.
In the days of Powerbook G4 and iBook G4, notebooks were generally expensive. This was across the industry. So what Apple did, was to address the two market segments, consumer and Pro, differently. The consumer market was driven by a lower ticket price, but the iBook still kept Apple's trademark quality design and OS. The Powerbook was aimed at professional who needed decent computing power on the move.
Todays hardware is generally cheaper. All PC brands now have average selling price for notebooks which is half that of 5 years ago.
What has also changed significantly in 5 years is Apple's market share. Now they have a much greater market share, they are producing on a much larger scale. It makes a lot of sense for manufacturing to keep as many components the same in as many products as possible.
Finally, with the general market for consumers very much heading in the netbook range at the moment, the original iBook / MacBook strategy for the consumer market was flawed.
So what is Apple doing? Well, it is changing the definition of Pro to encompass high end consumer products while the MacBook is the budget consumer product. It is also addressing a requirement in the professional market for smaller, lighter machines for easier travelling (if you don't want to shell oput for an Air).
I also expect any 'take' of Apple on the netbook, even if it is a tablet form, to sit within the MacBook brand. I also suspect that their move into developing their own silicon will reduce in even cheaper MacBooks, bringing back that price differential.
Personnally, I did see it as strange that the 13 inch and 15 inch were very similar, but different brands. By putting back Firewire, adding the illuminated keyboard and same upgrade options, does make the 13 inch a Pro machine.
If you do want to continue to £4k plus for a notebook, may I suggest the 3.06 GHz processor, with 8 Gb of memory and a 256 Gb SSD drive.
Phil
I think the OP makes a good point in the original post. The lines have been blurred between MB and MBP. Apple's laptop line is probably the weakest it has ever been since the Intel transition.
Oh Boo Hoo it's a smart move by Apple is so many accounts.
1.) It gets people who are new to Mac a price which really allows them to put their foot through the door to see if it is worth getting a machine in the 17" range for 3000$.
2.) It allows the middle class to really have something that's affordable on a great product.
3.) Not everyone is looking for something that is strictly at the 17" MBP range. To me the 13" MBP is much more portable. Besides I'm going to be using it for school when I get into my design class.
The End.
1.) It gets people who are new to Mac a price which really allows them to put their foot through the door to see if it is worth getting a machine in the 17" range for 3000$.
2.) It allows the middle class to really have something that's affordable on a great product.
3.) Not everyone is looking for something that is strictly at the 17" MBP range. To me the 13" MBP is much more portable. Besides I'm going to be using it for school when I get into my design class.
The End.
How badly we all want to be a pro... How badly we all want to differentiate ourselves from the others.. Pathetic topic!
In my experience, the real "pro's" don't care about what kind of label there is on their tools, and they don't talk about being a pro. Those who do are wannabe pro's
With best regards,
Bas
In my experience, the real "pro's" don't care about what kind of label there is on their tools, and they don't talk about being a pro. Those who do are wannabe pro's
With best regards,
Bas
Lack of High-End Apple Notebooks
I'm sure the OP is not really on about 'tarnished' names.
What's truly the issue is the lack of a high-end Apple notebook.
In 1998 I bought a then high-end 292MHz (woohoo!) Wallstreet PowerBook G3 for the amazing sum of $5,600, which with inflation in today's money would roughly be $7,350.
Now that was a price for which you could expect a top notch 'Pro' machine!
Is there even anything like it available today? No.
Even a fully speced 17" MBP is 'just' $4,499. A far cry from $7,000+!
womble2k2 hit the nail on the head. The world moved on.
Is there even a market for a $7,000 notebook today?
HP, Dell, Lenovo they all offer so called mobile workstations which can indeed be speced up to $7,000 or even $8,000 with 16GB of RAM, quad-core Nehalem CPUs, dual HDs, Blu-ray drives and even dual LCDs.
But these machines use desktop components, have poor battery life, are huge and weigh a lot.
So the real questions are:
- Is there a market for an expensive, high-end notebook from Apple?
Some will argue that even HP, Dell and Lenovo have a hard time these days selling their mobile workstations with Windows still being a much bigger market.
- Is Apple interested in pursuing that market segment?
In recent years Apple moved away from 'Pro' towards more focus on consumer markets.
The answer to this question is probably no.
- What value could Apple add to such a machine?
Design and OSX might not be enough.
Apple would need to offer something HP, Dell or Lenovo wouldn't in order to make this product successful.
A mobile workstation with still 8 hour battery life might be a first idea.
I would probably be one of the very few 'crazy' ones gladly spending $7,500 on a truly high-end Apple notebook that would last me 4-5 years. Just as I have done in 1998.
But for such a price I expect all the bells and whistles: quad-core CPU, up to 16GB RAM, SATA and HDMI ports, dual HD, Blu-ray drive and perhaps even an OLED screen (although that'd probably be $3,000 extra).
But who else would be willing to spend that much money?
The world moved on.
And Apple won't build such a system for a few hundred sales.
Although ironically with the unibody manufacturing process Apple could in theory offer build-to-order designs in a much vaster range, including the enclosure. Like e.g. a 17" MBP built 1/2" thicker making room for 2 batteries, 2 HDs, quad-core CPU, dual GPU and twice as much RAM...
I'm sure the OP is not really on about 'tarnished' names.
What's truly the issue is the lack of a high-end Apple notebook.
In 1998 I bought a then high-end 292MHz (woohoo!) Wallstreet PowerBook G3 for the amazing sum of $5,600, which with inflation in today's money would roughly be $7,350.
Now that was a price for which you could expect a top notch 'Pro' machine!
Is there even anything like it available today? No.
Even a fully speced 17" MBP is 'just' $4,499. A far cry from $7,000+!
womble2k2 hit the nail on the head. The world moved on.
Is there even a market for a $7,000 notebook today?
HP, Dell, Lenovo they all offer so called mobile workstations which can indeed be speced up to $7,000 or even $8,000 with 16GB of RAM, quad-core Nehalem CPUs, dual HDs, Blu-ray drives and even dual LCDs.
But these machines use desktop components, have poor battery life, are huge and weigh a lot.
So the real questions are:
- Is there a market for an expensive, high-end notebook from Apple?
Some will argue that even HP, Dell and Lenovo have a hard time these days selling their mobile workstations with Windows still being a much bigger market.
- Is Apple interested in pursuing that market segment?
In recent years Apple moved away from 'Pro' towards more focus on consumer markets.
The answer to this question is probably no.
- What value could Apple add to such a machine?
Design and OSX might not be enough.
Apple would need to offer something HP, Dell or Lenovo wouldn't in order to make this product successful.
A mobile workstation with still 8 hour battery life might be a first idea.
I would probably be one of the very few 'crazy' ones gladly spending $7,500 on a truly high-end Apple notebook that would last me 4-5 years. Just as I have done in 1998.
But for such a price I expect all the bells and whistles: quad-core CPU, up to 16GB RAM, SATA and HDMI ports, dual HD, Blu-ray drive and perhaps even an OLED screen (although that'd probably be $3,000 extra).
But who else would be willing to spend that much money?
The world moved on.
And Apple won't build such a system for a few hundred sales.
Although ironically with the unibody manufacturing process Apple could in theory offer build-to-order designs in a much vaster range, including the enclosure. Like e.g. a 17" MBP built 1/2" thicker making room for 2 batteries, 2 HDs, quad-core CPU, dual GPU and twice as much RAM...
Close, but I'd prefer;
15.75" 1920x1200 matte OLED display. [smaller screen bezel, but slightly larger screen]
Titanium and carbon-fiber enclosure. [agree with this, and Apple do hold a patent for achieving it]
Quad GPU - SLI together, plus a separate GPU embedded in the chipset. Three config options;
- Long battery life: Use the embedded GPU for graphics, other GPU's off.
- Mid battery life: Use the embedded GPU but keep Quad GPU's on line for OpenCL functions.
- Power use: Quad SLI GPU for extreme graphics plus embedded GPU for OpenCL use.
Take the highest spec CPU possible and apply a small overclock when in Power use, or underclock in Long battery life use.
Keyboard mechanism from the classic MBP, but with metallic individually CNC machined keys.
4 x USB3, with Apple supplying in line converters for eSata and Firewire 800.
SD and CompactFlash memory card readers build in. [To be flush with the case when inserted]
802.11n, Bluetooth 3.0, 3G HSDPA (3.5G) and Ultra Wide Band (UWB)
Included video adapters and remote.
1 x optical drive to include BluRay Read and Write.
Even more battery power, in the region of 11500 mAh, maybe use some of the new technologies to hide a thin layer of batteries behind the screen.
The operating system to be run from ultra high speed embedded flash memory.
8 Gb of DDR3 1600 (12800 MB/s) wth 8-8-8 timings
2 Gb of GDDR5 memory for the Quad GPU. When the embedded GPU is in use, this memory to act as a high speed cache of main memory.
512 Gb of the fastest SSD technology available on a 6 Gbit/s interface.
Now that would be one hell of a price tag!!
well, with technolog moving so fast you better have a replacable logic board in there or 6 month later you're sitting on an 8000 dollar notebook that has a slower GPU and a Slower CPU and a smaller slower SSD than the $2000 entry level MBP.
It could be argued that OS X makes every Mac a Pro. As what Pro's really want is reliability and no system crashed. I switched to Mac 3.5 years ago after the frustration of Windows crashing, becoming corrupt, etc. The final straw was when I installed an updated Nokia cable driver (?!?), my machine became unstable and unbootable. Not even a recovery installation of Windows restored the system. I had to spend two days starting from scratch, installing the OS and applications again, restoring my data files, putting all settings back to how I liked them (the windows backup program didn't do settings recovery!).
In the 3.5 years of OS X use, I've never experienced a crash. [Except for MS Office 2004, which cleared after 3 MS updates].
Given that OS X is built on a Unix foundation, Unix is a very Pro OS. I look at it as OS X giving Unix a user friendly, easy to use interface.
That's got me thinking. the iPhone and iPod Touch run OS X. Should they also be Pro devices, or would the OP see the iPhone as the Pro and the Touch as the consumer?
The only pain in my IT world is that my employer still uses MS Windows based machines. That is enough stress in my life, so I'm glad that Apple have a wide range of notebook products covering a wide price spectrum from a Macbook at $999 (£749) to a fully specced 17" MBP at £4,499 (£3,400). I can therefore choose the product that meets my requirements at a price I can afford. It saves me having to buy a PC! (Yes Microsoft, I am that cool!!).
Phil
*sigh* I for one see this as a good thing. I have a MBP Santa Rosa and I love the computer and I for one think apple's new lower prices really change them for the better as a company. Now they can get there message across to the world saying hey we can do that too instead of businesses just overlooking the apple option. Apple has the new ability to target new audiences who in turn will either continue buying and tell there friends. This is a good thing, now everyone can enjoy one of our favorite os's without selling our homes and living in a box.
I totally agree with you here. The 15" and 17" MBP currently are pretty solid computers, especially the 17". I think that is the only strong point. The low end 15" and the 13" offer just about nothing for the "Pro" line that it is under. I would prefer Apple marketing the 13" and low end 15" as the MacBook (like the iBook in 2 sizes), get rid of the white poly, and make the 15" and 17" the Pro. Now...where is the 12"
I beg to differ opinion. I think the "pro" label is not about specs, but about performance and reliability.
I agree: bigger screen size, more space inside to help with cooling and increase overclocking potential.