What is coming to MacBookPro land???

[agentphish]

I will start by saying I am a graphic designer who is 25, been at it for a while, but only now graduating in May from school. I already have a job at an advertising & marketing firm and I def. use the hell out of my machines every day.

So my dad has approached me with this idea...

He wants me to give my mom my 2 year old PB g4 15 in w/ 2gb of ram for xmas. She has never used a mac before and is an illustrator. She has been doing it for 35 years. It's time for her to go digital. (at least some).

She currently uses a PC that I built for her with spare parts I had around. about a year and a half ago. She hates it. She hates windows, it confuses her (go figure).

He wants to "help me buy" or "buy me" a macbook pro. He has said both of those things, so i'm not sure of his exact idea. Today he asked me if there was anything that would make this "not a good time to buy a macbook pro?" as in if there are any upcoming upgrades on the machines in the near future.

Thats my question i guess. How long, if at all, should I wait to take him up on this. He was thinking xmas time, but I don't know that there would be another revision on MBP's by then.

I have heard of a new intel mobile processor coming that is mfg. on smaller process, but thats not till 2008, this won't wait that long.

I decided to post here to ask the experts. Thanks and let the advice fly!

 

[dukebound85]

well it wasnt too long ago they were updated (31 days ago to be exact from the buyers guide). depends on when you need it though.

at any rate you would notice a difference in performance


me for example am a senior in mech engineering and the last revision of the macbook is working awesome for me if that gives you any sort of guideline. with you being in graphic design, id say the mbp is a great choice

 

[c-Row]

If you feel like you need multiple virtual desktops and an interesting backup solution, you might want to wait until early 2007 to get your MBP with the new Mac OSX pre-installed instead of picking up a separate copy afterwards. That's what I do with my iMac.

 

[tuartboy]

If you feel like you need multiple virtual desktops and an interesting backup solution, you might want to wait until early 2007 to get your MBP with the new Mac OSX pre-installed instead of picking up a separate copy afterwards. That's what I do with my iMac.

Those are some nice features, but not worth waiting for IMHO. If you need virtual desktops, use desktop manager or Virtue. Been around for a long time on OS X. Backup can be handled by iBackup or Deja Vu or any of the others. Not as intuitively as Time Machine for certain, but functional.

Leopard will be cool, but you can get the student discount and it's not worth waiting another 3 months just to save $60 or so. The MBPs won't be rev'd for a while so I think you should just buy now, use and enjoy it.

Software can always be upgraded...

 

[iñaki'sonMac'87]

If I were you, I should buy TODAY due to the "Balck Friday" discount in the apple stores, there must be some juicy discounts that may appeal you, guess it could be very profitable...

 

[Boxer]

After reading all of the comments of people who have purchased one lately, I would hold off. I have heard lots of horror stories. And with all of the hoopla about the firmware update, and that messing up more machines, I would stay away. I am going to update my machine, becuase it is breaking more than it is working, but not until after the new year. That should give them enough time to work out some kinks and bugs.

 

[agentphish]

I will wait as long as I can.

Frankly I don't care about time machine, i think its going to eat massive amounts of hard disk space that I don't want to give. Unless they've come up with some crazy new compression scheme.

 

[lord patton]

Leopard is one thing to wait for, iLife '07 is another. No one knows when the former will be released, but the latter is sure to come at MWSF early january. I'd at least wait for that.

 

[taliz]

I wouldn't be surprised if they update the GFX at about the time leopard gets out, since its been the same for a year soon and there is both a X1800 and now a X1900 out.
I recently ordered the 2.16 MBP, but then I don't really care much about the graphics, I wont play games anyways.

 

[revisionA]

my wait is because...

I like the new specs on macbook pros but i am waiting for spring 2007. My thinking is waiting 18 months after something is the shiznit, grab the current top dog and keep it a year and a half.

A powerbook running osx and max ram is a good little machine. There are many styles of working within UB or pre-UB programs to get your investment out of it.

Is the macbook series up to par? Seems like a 98% whereas we were used to 99%. The previous generations had various quirks, just like any all in one system will. Each version seems better and I want them when they really do get 5 hours of battery life. I want them when they can handle 64 tracks of audio with mad plugins across the board.

My next apple will kick ass. Or I will keep waiting. Just how much it needs to is based on how much $2400 feels like when I look at them. I wasnt impressed with them coming and going about FW800 for example.

You can get one right now. It wont be updated for at least a few months. And if you are worried about quality get applecare. I havent got it and I am just over 1 year old and no problems other than a noisy fan if I play WoW too long and the system needs to cool.

 

[FFTT]

IF... you can hold off and not disappoint your mom, I'd wait for Leopard and iLife '07 and for Adobe to get their act together on CS3 universal binary.

Unless something changes at WWDC in January, most likely you'll be waiting until March-April .
Hopefully, Apple will at least announce the release date for Leopard at WWDC so you'll know more.

If your mom doesn't have one already, buy her a Wacom tablet to go with your PowerBook.

Or....

Just buy her a 20" iMac C2D with 2GB RAM and worry about your update when the time comes.