macbook pro

heh, looks like someone hacked apple's site. or did they?

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

*continues to stare in wonder at the Intel logo*

Here's my thoughts on the subject (long article): http://www.bansheestudios.com/blog/14Jan06.php

Apple have opted for the second rate option yet again... :( It's a shame as the OS is quite nice.

Speaking as someone who's departmental budget often gets encroached upon by other departments when they (a) destroy the pins on their laptop power socket (3x this year = £600), or (b) knacker the entire machine by having it yanked off a table when someone trips over the power cord (2x this year = £1100) ....

... it is the attention to detail by Apple - such as the MagSafe magnetic power connector - that makes them such desirable objects. Apple really know how to design with style.

Frankly, I assume designing the MagSafe power connector became a priority after all the shenanigans with the Powerbook power connector. I haven't had any problems with mine, and I've had it for a couple years, but because I'm a techy person I subconsciously take care of it better. The power connectors for Powerbooks are fragile and other people routinely break theirs. For example, the architecture department where I recently started working has 5 Powerbooks for me to take care of; the first thing I had to do was order new power adapters, because they were all broken, and in exactly the same way (ie. the base of the plug that goes into the computer was torn.)

Which shows how even when something is totally wrong it can still lead to genuine progress. The new Apple laptops are ok machines with the exception of not having enough RAM to keep a single processor core occupied...

I do think that the styling has gone down hill since the G3's though, their newer laptops all look like they came out of an Ikea catalogue.

I dont expect you to agree though as at work it's a strait divide with all the boys liking the new ones; and all the girls preffering the G3 design...

That's a good point. I was about to protest that I much prefer the newer designs, but I have noticed it's a gendered opinion. For example, most people describe the brushed metal look of the G5s to be slickly industrial. Looking like the engine block of a muscle car is a positive thing with guys, but a negative trait among women.

Still, the fact that one can even debate the design says a lot. I prefer interestingly designed PCs too; why are so many computer companies aggressively ugly?

I liked the plain white iBook.

whaaaaa? 4x faster than the G4??? Surely apple jests. That or all those years where they talked about how much faster the motorola chips were over the intel chips was an outright lie.

They still make those, and will probably continue to make those after switching to Intel chips. They had to rename the PowerBooks however because the name refers to the PowerPC chip inside.

as far as the 4.5x integer performance and 5.2x floating point performance.

Most PC enthusiasts knew that the PC's CPU's were faster all along. One of the reasons for all those heated debates the last couple of years. I expect that apple still rigged their benchmarks somewhat, as always. Just this time in favour of intel.

One thing Apple sure knows how to do is style.

That MagSafe power connector seems rather useful.

"Illuminated Keyboard
Where else can you find a backlit keyboard? MacBook Pro also has a built-in ambient light sensor that adjusts the brightness of both the keyboard and display for optimal visibility."

Sounds useful also in dark areas at night while your programming!

"Sudden Motion Sensor
MacBook Pro protects your data if it detects a fall, by parking the hard drive head during fast changes in orientation."

Yet another good feature!

Wow, sounds really good actually.

In several of the european countries they were forced to retract their 'fastest personal computer' advertising statements some years back because this was deemed patently untrue.

For the last couple of years apple has been struggling to keep up with the x86 pack, performance wise. Despite earlier promises by IBM (The main designer/manufacturer of the PPC CPU's used by Apple), the chip design simply didn't scale up nearly as high as anticipated, leading to delay after delay with new models, and the reason the promised G5 powerbook never materialized. The main reason Apple is switching to the x86 chip now is because it *is* significantly faster than the powerPC models.

That said, so far the latest dual-core Intel chips have been a major disappointment compared with AMD's dual-core line -- AMD dual cores beats intel offerings considerably on performance, power usage, heat produced AND pricing. I have a feeling that Apple could have done better by picking AMD instead, although Intel has the broader name recognition going for it of course.

But hey, any potential future switch from Intel to AMD should be pretty minor compared to the PPC -> x86 infrastructure change.

Well I think the Apple's were faster pre-Athon days. Not positive but my Mac Mini is really pretty fast. Mostly my experience with Mac leaves a little to be desired and I prefer PC's. I do like the OS and the tight design but mostly it's more efficient to use a PC.

Smart. Switch to Intel right when people start realizing that AMD is better...

Nice looking notebook, though. Apple makes good notebooks... I've been looking at notebook computers lately, and the only ones with any degree of portability are either Apple or $2000. (Compared with around $1200 for the ones with excessively big screens that are acceptable for the intended use)

Choosing Intel over AMD should hardly come as a suprised to Mac owners. For years they've been getting ATI cards as standard instead of nVidia.

I notice that the latest speed claims from Apple still ommit any mention of any kind of 3d mark.

int and float calculations may well be faster on the Apple now compared to earlier Apples, and certainly a lower base clock speed has been stiffling Apple for years. These make very little difference to speed. AMD stopped quoting clock speeds a long time ago, speed is more to do with instruction sets and all that other gibberish.

As for the dual core CPU they've standardised on, the new Apples are the slowest dual core machines you will ever witness... The reason is the second core is still unuseable in the Macs as shipped, unless you run two very tiny programs: OSX is nice but it's using almost all of the 512mb RAM that the machines ship with, meaing your shinny new fast CPU's spend most of their time waiting on the Memory Management Unit to finish dealing with the hard disk.

Great design. Terrible spec.

While you do raise a good point with the choice of ATI and Intl over AMD and nVidia Banshee, I think that you're talking nonsence on Memory.

Right now on a 512 mb mac mini, Mac Os 10.4.4, adium, safari, dashboard and Memory Stick running: 71% of my memory is Free or Inactive.

EDIT Miss-read your post, so mine was a load of rubbish.

Edit: replied to rubbish ;)

My point (when not talking rubbish :)) is that 512mb is barely enough to run 1 appllication under OSX. Even using InDesign I hit the pagefile the moment I load up a document with a few pictures in it, 512mb is barely enough for 1 application/processor - so what's the point of two?

Almost all of the Apple Mac's I deal with (I work with them) are spending a significant portion of the day moving pagefiles about, if my customers would invest just £100 or so on doubling/quadrupling their ram then their fancy expensive G5's would outperform my bric-a-brac decade old 1gb RAM equipped G3 Dalmation iMac at home - which currently they do not.

I can put any of Apples latest offerings next to a G3 and make the G3 run daily use applications faster, simply by giving it 1gb/2gb of RAM. 512mb just isn't enough, especially for dual core.

Heck, we nearly lost the latest Mars rovers because they didn't have enough RAM ;)

I was using a dual G5 desktop the other day, and found the whole experience a little slugish compared to the PC.

It's just little things that aren't as snappy and drawing of web pages being slower even compared to my older system my wife now uses.