This is great news for 1 a was thinking white Macbooks were being killed off this year. Wondering for some time now what a new Mac mini update will bring. Hoping mini's get refreshed with an i5 at the least.
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Those Were Mac Mini and White MacBook Part Numbers, Not Mac Pros
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I'm very interested to see what they do with this price point...I don't think they can justify the $999 price tag now that 10.7 Server is only a $50 add-on.
I would love for them to keep there...but only with an i7 and an SSD...doubtful at best though.
The main point why I don't buy the standard MacBook is the boring design. Do you think, there is a possibility that apple applies the upcoming re-design of the MBPs to the 'normal' MacBook aswell? Quite unlikely, isn't it?
Well, if they would at least make a step forward away from the boring, cheesy white plastic. Ugh.
Greetings
Well, if they would at least make a step forward away from the boring, cheesy white plastic. Ugh.
Greetings
Every time I look into a Mac Mini and spec it to the way I like it, I get close to an iMac.
So, looking forward what options this one will have.
These things change over time though. I'm one of those who never uses the optical drive. A few years ago this might have been rare, but I think for more and more people the lack of an optical drive doesn't matter at all. In a few more update cycles, those who really need one will have an external USB drive lying around. (Just as some people still require this.)
So the world doesn't revolve around me yet, but I'm pretty sure it's getting there
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These things change over time though. I'm one of those who never uses the optical drive. A few years ago this might have been rare, but I think for more and more people the lack of an optical drive doesn't matter at all. In a few more update cycles, those who really need one will have an external USB drive lying around. (Just as some people still require this.)
So the world doesn't revolve around me yet, but I'm pretty sure it's getting there
this is true. The only reason i ever use my optical drive is to burn CD's for friends LOL
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Hmm, may want to lay off on the personal insults and re-read. I never said that the Air can serve as the primary notebook for everyone. I was simply correcting a poster who was speaking in absolutes claiming that the Air could be no one's primary machine (11-inch that is).
To run FCPX??
I'm wondering if Apple will persist with top end Mac Pros, or move towards are more budget friendly versions, seems that if they are killing their professional software slowly, why then deliver top end hardware. Just a thought
I didn't really mean to imply that NOBODY is using it that way, but point taken. I was mainly just responding to the other poster who asked why anybody would buy the MB when the 11" MBA is available for the same price. Maybe there are more people than I think using exclusively the 11", but I think the vast majority would find the screen too small to use for many hours at a time.
No, Apple done this in the past, and they they realized that they simply created a macbook pro 13", so the next year, they officialy made a 13" macbook aluminium a "Pro".
And to each its own, I believe the white macbook is beautiful, and in fact, I think the alumium design of Air/Pro is "ugh"
However, I do believe that the white macbook makes no sense in the current line. Apple could simply lower the MBP to 1000, and get rid of teh white one.
Entry level?
I though that the whole point of the first MacBook was to give an entry level route into the Apple ecosystem. Originally, the Air - currently the joint lowest-priced laptop Apple make - was an expensive niche product (if I remember correctly, it was in the region of £1500 with a relatively medium spec?) although of late it has become a little more affordable, in more consumer-friendly configuations, and now starts at under £900 (although this is currently the same price as the standard MacBook!!).
If Apple were to knock the price of the standard MacBook to, say (deep breath) £599, maybe even £499 as a loss leader, in usable specification, it could make some headway into stealing sales in the mid-range PC laptop market and introduce more people to the wonders of OS X with the hope that they may upgrade in the short- to Medium-term.
Back in the day, when I bought my first Mac Mini (which was a standard 1.33GHz G4 (and there was a 1.25GHz model under that) with a keyboard and a mouse thrown in), it cost me £399 ALL IN! The current Mini (albeit far more advanced in spec) now weighs in at an ENTRY LEVEL price of over £600! And when you add a keyboard and mouse to that you're looking at an extra £50 or so... more if you opt for the Apple real Mcoy.
So obviously Apple don't see the low-cost desktop market as viable - I can see that as a Mac is all about the experience and should be protected from the notion that it's just another competitor in the £300 box market - but I think that with a reasonably-spec'd, affordable laptop, they'd make a killing! Just my opinion...
I though that the whole point of the first MacBook was to give an entry level route into the Apple ecosystem. Originally, the Air - currently the joint lowest-priced laptop Apple make - was an expensive niche product (if I remember correctly, it was in the region of £1500 with a relatively medium spec?) although of late it has become a little more affordable, in more consumer-friendly configuations, and now starts at under £900 (although this is currently the same price as the standard MacBook!!).
If Apple were to knock the price of the standard MacBook to, say (deep breath) £599, maybe even £499 as a loss leader, in usable specification, it could make some headway into stealing sales in the mid-range PC laptop market and introduce more people to the wonders of OS X with the hope that they may upgrade in the short- to Medium-term.
Back in the day, when I bought my first Mac Mini (which was a standard 1.33GHz G4 (and there was a 1.25GHz model under that) with a keyboard and a mouse thrown in), it cost me £399 ALL IN! The current Mini (albeit far more advanced in spec) now weighs in at an ENTRY LEVEL price of over £600! And when you add a keyboard and mouse to that you're looking at an extra £50 or so... more if you opt for the Apple real Mcoy.
So obviously Apple don't see the low-cost desktop market as viable - I can see that as a Mac is all about the experience and should be protected from the notion that it's just another competitor in the £300 box market - but I think that with a reasonably-spec'd, affordable laptop, they'd make a killing! Just my opinion...
Actually they just killed what "pro" meant by doing that. Just a markerting stunt. The last real "pro" that was that size was the Powerbook G4 12" a real "pro", the new 13" pros are just overglorrifed macbooks in comparrison.
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I really don't think Apple will ever be a loss leader in hardware. It just doesn't fit their current business model at all. Hardware is where they make their money. They charge premium and keep those nice fat margins.
But lets travel down that road, what advantage is there for them? The people who buy at the price are not going to be loyal to the company because to them it's just a cheap laptop. Nothing more, nothing less. Without loyalty there is no benefit to Apple to be throwing money out the window for them. I'm sure down inside you know apple would never do that, and I'm sure you were just saying for arguments sake.
I don't care what they do with the Mini as long as they lower the price back to $499
I want to see
i5 Dual Core CPU
4GB RAM
500 GB HD
X3000 Graphics
I want to see
i5 Dual Core CPU
4GB RAM
500 GB HD
X3000 Graphics
WHOAH! Either you are doing HD video editing all day long or you should try to clean up your system ;-) That combination is nothing to sneeze at - even today!
In theory you could still update, however:
--> Make the boot drive a RAID-0 (Striping) out of two SSD's.
--> Replace your Raptor data drive with a RAID1+0 (fill all 4 HD bays with a drive, pair every two of them to a RAID-1 (MIRROR) and stripe the created pairs into one RAID-0 (STRIPING) for speed). This should easily outperform your single Raptor while providing more storage at the same time. If you put Raptors or even SSD's into those 4 bays, it will become even faster.
And if you want to really max it all out, get yourself 4 adapters (2x 2,5" HD's in one 3,5" frame), populate them with 2,5" drives (RAID-1 over both 2,5" drives in each 3,5" bay) and create a RAID-0 over all 4 bays... Doing so could even bring you to a hardware limit of the MP 1,1 speedwise, though i'm not sure about that.
--> Get a better graphic card. The 8800GT was good at its time, but it's a little old by now. You could try to get a Radeon 5870, which could be a significant improvement (depending on what you do with your MP) - and yes, it can be used in the very first MP generation (needs a Rom flash - see http://forum.netkas.org/index.php - sub forum "Rom things"), though it is eventually limited by PCIe 1.0 in the first MP (look it up here to get an idea about how much: http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g3.html).
Hard to say whether any further upgrade would be worth it instead of going to an all-new MP. Especially as the problem may well be related to the now comparably slow Ram interface in your MP. To give you an idea of your system, check out this geekbench overview by Primatelabs.
Your system is shy of 5800 points. In order to really "feel" an improvement, the rule of thumb demands twice the performance, so you would need at least ~12.000 points, which roughly equals the latest high-end iMac @3.4GHz (it only has a few MP's above it in the referenced table, all sporting 8 cores or more).
Actually i'm basically sitting in the same boat with a similar setup (MP1,1 with 2,66GHz, 12GB, 4870+7300, SSD bootdevice). However - except for video transcoding i can't find any real issue where the machine would limit my work noticably, so unless there'll be a new MP with a significantly improved price/performance ratio or really nice new features (i.e. smaller case, internal RAID-5, better connectivity or something i don't think of right now) i think i can hold out comfortably another year or two...
To a point. OK, it's pretty obvious that they wouldn't sell at a loss, but they CAN make it a competitive product. After all, they already cater for the mid- and upper-range markets. After all, if the laptops go for the same price (as they do at the moment), which would you go for - a white Macbook or a Macbook Air? The only thing that would sell the white one to me would be screen size. Performance-wise, it's a no-brainer - Air wins every time.
I think that if someone were to be THAT interested in getting into the Mac, they would not only have the cost of the machine to consider, they'd be looking (in the main) at a considerable cost in software to run on it - they will INVEST in the machine, making it more of a wrench to switch back to a PC when the time comes to upgrade.
I just think that a 'reasonably' priced laptop (and you can't deny that the current Core 2 Duo machine is WAAAAAAAAAAY, almost insultingly, overpriced!) would see more people make the jump. The new one is obviously going to be a quantum leap forward in spec, but it can't be any more expensive than it is at present as it would then cost than the Air.
I just think that "to some extent", a less costly way of attracting those unsure as to whether to go for the switch or not, ought to be at least a consideration. If carefully done, I don't think it would cheapen the brand...
Haha dream on. Any idea what that will cost :-o And especially with the extra Apple tax. I don't think we will see that option soon(for an affordable price). A server edition with a 750GB HDD and a relative small SSD (60 till 120GB) would be more realistic '-)
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I'm a little disappointed, but not at all surprised.
My gut reaction that a Mac Pro update, however much we want one, is not all that high a priority for Apple. And as already been pointed out, the next-gen workstation/server CPUs don't seem to be available yet, unless Apple is getting happy-happy from Intel WAY ahead and under the radar. If Apple drops new Mac Pros with Lion, I WILL be surprised. But they're almost certainly going get teh shiny on the consumer pitched MacBooks, Airs, and Minis first.
But the last Mac Pro update was a year and a half waiting, and pretty "meh" by most opinions. I don't think that Apple is really all that interested in the professional user market. When the new Mac Pros drop, whether it's later this summer, fall... or next year, I don't expect much more than thunderbolt, and a CPU and Graphics Card bump... and glossy display - no change there. Based on all indications and Apple's past behavior and apparent disinterest, I'm not holding my breath for eSATA, USB 3, Cutting edge Graphics Cards or other desired high-end tech. Blu-ray? Oh, DO dream on.
Your mileage may vary.
My gut reaction that a Mac Pro update, however much we want one, is not all that high a priority for Apple. And as already been pointed out, the next-gen workstation/server CPUs don't seem to be available yet, unless Apple is getting happy-happy from Intel WAY ahead and under the radar. If Apple drops new Mac Pros with Lion, I WILL be surprised. But they're almost certainly going get teh shiny on the consumer pitched MacBooks, Airs, and Minis first.
But the last Mac Pro update was a year and a half waiting, and pretty "meh" by most opinions. I don't think that Apple is really all that interested in the professional user market. When the new Mac Pros drop, whether it's later this summer, fall... or next year, I don't expect much more than thunderbolt, and a CPU and Graphics Card bump... and glossy display - no change there. Based on all indications and Apple's past behavior and apparent disinterest, I'm not holding my breath for eSATA, USB 3, Cutting edge Graphics Cards or other desired high-end tech. Blu-ray? Oh, DO dream on.
Your mileage may vary.
lol ok 2 things number 1, what the lemon are you talking about? number 2, Mac Minis are not high end macs...