“Today Apple announced the MacBook Pro. It has quite a few changes compared to the previous PowerBook. For one, it uses an Intel Core Duo (formally known as Yonah) chip. This is a dual core processor and no, unlike what Steve Jobs stated, this does not have two processors. This will help a lot with responsiveness. I’ve been dreaming of a dual core laptop for quite a while. However, the realization of my dream coupled with the changes seen makes me cry“, writes Unsanity. UPDATE: Windows XP won’t run on the new Intel Macs because of EFI. Vista is supposed to work though.
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“I can barely understand the iSight for professional users”
Well the majority of people buying em aren’t all Pro’s, they are students becoming pro’s, etc.
Also video conferencing is allegedly a business driven application. Perhaps Apple’s vision for video conferencing is one where you no longer need a conference room at both ends.
Maybe they see it as something done right at your desk. It’s a logical extension and therefore makes the camera consistent with such a vision. Provide every pro user with out of the box video conferencing capabilities and they might just use it.
Those are some good observations. Perhaps the new laptop isn’t quite all Apple claims it is.
Hardly good you should say.
the loss of 60 pixels… big deal, now video conferencing on the road is possible.
loss of S-video? umm, I use VGA/DVI out and I buy the dongels for my video port adapter. very flexible and I get what I need. Buy a flipping s-video dongle for 20 bucks.
How is the power consumption bad? I get way more performance.
This is just the ratings of a person who thinks a G4 CPU is the best thing since sliced bread… it is not, it was old and crufty.
FW800…. well MAYBE, but as Eugenia has said, FW800 is not port compatible with FW400 thus backward compatibility is gone and it was on its way out anyway.
Oh, (since I cannot edit anymore)
Who gives a flip about Dual layer burning? Blue-Ray will be out for Optical drives in 6 months and all things DVD will be obsolete for data.
I don’t think apple will touch blue-ray or HD-DVD with a 10 foot pole unless there is a standard chosen. Apple happily stayed out of the DVD wars until DVD-R became more prominent… now look at all the people stuck with DVD-RAM because they did not wait. it is an early adopter dilemma, but I think that apple will go with whichever format has the widest market penetration
I don’t think apple will touch blue-ray or HD-DVD with a 10 foot pole unless there is a standard chosen. Apple happily stayed out of the DVD wars until DVD-R became more prominent…
Are you joking? Apple shipped many early G4 desktops with DVD-RAM. Later they held on to just DVD-R for a long time while the majority of PCs came with +/- drives.
Apple is going with Blu-ray (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/10blu-ray.html), though I’m sure they will probably support both…
Apple is going with Blu-ray (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/10blu-ray.html), though I’m sure they will probably support both…
“now look at all the people stuck with DVD-RAM because they did not wait.
LOL!
You’re joking, right?
Stuck?? I’m happier with my RAM drive than with my multi burner, as it gets used everyday. Why would you want to use discs that require “burning” when you can use RAM carts that just work like removable storage….
Stuck?? I’m happier with my RAM drive than with my multi burner, as it gets used everyday. Why would you want to use discs that require “burning” when you can use RAM carts that just work like removable storage….
Maybe because they are compatible with jack crap.
I don’t think apple will touch blue-ray or HD-DVD with a 10 foot pole unless there is a standard chosen. Apple happily stayed out of the DVD wars until DVD-R became more prominent… now look at all the people stuck with DVD-RAM because they did not wait. it is an early adopter dilemma, but I think that apple will go with whichever format has the widest market penetration
DVD-R is NOT more prominent. DVD+Rs are at this point. ALl burners now support +R and have for a while now. More media is being sold in the +R format.
It will be years before Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will make DVD obsolete.
Most software is still distributed on CD!
Obsolete meaning why use it for storage?
DL disks are no better than SL dvds, the only plus is the capacity, but that will get blown away by BR and HDDVD…. so why bother with it.
the loss of 60 pixels… big deal
For me this is a big deal.
Where I work, when we first went to LCD’s, we went to ones which were the equvalent of a .297 pitch.
Before that I had a lovely .25 pitch Sony Trinitron apteture grille monitor. Razor crisp.
I felt I like I was looking at everything through a frikkin screen door. I could see the individual pixels on the monitor in front of me. I hated it.
And you bet your butt that when I went to buy an LCD for use at home, it had the smallest pixel pitch and fastest response that I could find on the market at that time (2001). (BTW, Formac 17″)
If I’m paying for a Pro-level premium product, I want a pro-level premium display in it and to see that Apple has raised the pixel pitch means they’re using a cheaper LCD.
grrrr.
I want a pro-level premium display in it and to see that Apple has raised the pixel pitch means they’re using a cheaper LCD.
Cheer up! It also means you probably won’t get THOSE LINES on your screen any more.
Cheer up! It also means you probably won’t get THOSE LINES on your screen any more.
Those lines, as in the two horizontal lines you see in an aperture grille monitor that has been running for awhile? If so, he wouldn’t seen THOSE lines in an LCD anyway, since they only appear in aperture grille CRTs.
dude, a loss of 60 pixels in screen size does not mean the DPI will shrink.
dude, a loss of 60 pixels in screen size does not mean the DPI will shrink.
But dude, there’s a chance it might shrink. And if that day comes, boy, well, I don’t even want to consider the consequences…
The new portable ICBMs (Intel-chip based Macs, also iCBM) require more power than their previous iterations. they have a 60-watt-hour battery compared to the old PowerBook’s 50-watt-hour battery. They also have 85 watt AC adapters compared to the old 65 watt AC adapters. Imaginary Watt per Performance Arbitrary Unit my butt.
Better performance per watt does not necessarily mean that the CPU consumes less power. But you get a lot more performance with little increase in power consumption.
The Front Row remote I don’t get at all. The MacBook Pro is a portable machine, having a remote with a portable machine just seems redundant in some way. And easily lost.
The MacBook Pro is good enough to use as a desktop replacement. So, why not?
I would’ve agreed with the original poster, prior to actually watching a DVD in a Bed and Breakfast (through there TV). I wish I had a remote, I did.
And video conferencing is for the pros and hobbyists alike.
Jb
Edited 2006-01-11 19:44
Indeed, we often use the laptop hooked up to the TV for viewing. A remote would be very cool for that.
Why do people get hung up on “consumer” features in a “pro” laptop. I use my laptop for everything, work AND fun. As long as the “consumer” features don’t reduce the performance of the pro features I’m happy to have them as well.
>However, the loss of AltiVec is a HUGE problem
> which Apple didn’t show in their test.
As with every architecture transition, it will take some years to take full advantage of the new CPU’s special instruction set. OSX for Intels is a new product, and I am sure it is not fully optimized to use these special instructions, as Apple has done for the G4’s Altivec.
But I am sure it will eventually happen. It’s just a software issue, not hardware one.
OSX for Intels is a new product,
Well according to Steve it’s a 3 year old product, so it should be mature by now.
Wouldn’t a laptop with two processors require have heating and power issues?
Isn’t this why dual core is popular? 2 cores on 1 little circut board.
And the rant about the power supply beating him up sounds a little over the top for me.
As for Apple rushing it, I think if they dragged their feet with this architecture jump it would probably fail. Get new hardware out now so the developers can really start backing their system so by the time the entire apple line is intel one won’t need to worry about apps.
Buying an intel mac now and having to wait for application support requires an adventurous sort. They will get by w/o all the bells and whistles but I bet future models will be what the apple fanatics expect.
As with every architecture transition, it will take some years to take full advantage of the new CPU’s special instruction set.
The real problem happens when the period between major architecture changes is shorter than the period it takes to support all of the features of the old architecture.
This doesn’t happen because — in general– new CPUs are instruction compatible with the older ones. Apple does not have to support the latest supa-dupa instruction set, even SSE2/3 would be good enough to get the kind of advantage Altivec has on G4s.
>However, the loss of AltiVec is a HUGE problem which Apple didn’t show >in their test.
Yonah (Core Duo) has SSE3. I believe Apple’s site on the Intel transition talks about translating your AltiVec code to SSE3.
I’m sure Apple will come out w/ “round two” by summer. Hopefully they’ll improve them model and answer some of these questions.
It sounds to me that Apple wanted to release it earlier than advertised to whet people’s appetites, then they can judge people’s attitudes and opinions. That way, when the “main event” occurs at the original time frame, they can knock people’s socks off with all the improvements.
I just can’t believe that the MacBook is the same price as the old Powerbook. I was going to buy a Powerbook but might as well get a MacBook (though I’ll wait for v2.0).
well… why would you think it would be cheaper? They are not using an old Pentium-M or a P4, they are using a Core Duo which is top of the line.
I didn’t think the new Mactel computers would be cheaper. I thought Apple would drop the price on the older G4 PowerBooks to get rid of inventory.
I know other people were thinking the new Mactel’s would be cheaper because they are using “cheaper” Intel CPU’s, but common practice is to drop the price on old tech and charge premo prices on the new stuff.
“However, the realization of my dream coupled with the changes seen makes me cry”, and then he looked at the price and unstoppable weeping ensued.
I’m counting on the successor to the G4 iBook remaining around the same price as before. Same thing with the mini. In fact I’m still hopeful that the price will go down on those at least by a little.
It’s unfortunate Apple doesn’t also have fairly competitively priced 17″ LCD’s too, I havn’t seen too many monitors in stores that go nicely with Macs.
Obligatory link to “The Joy Of Tech”, who of course have done another brilliant cartoon about the reactions to the new macbook : http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00899/
There’s a reaction not covered in the comic.
iSights are used for business meetings. I am a graphics professional and use an iSight numerous times daily on my desktop. When I was trying to do that portable, it was a pain in the ass to hook up the iSight, cable, mounting bracket, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if ALL macs came with iSights now – typing to talk is finally getting phased out!
The remote is a great idea too. The agency I work at, we use a powerbook G4 17″ when we want to do presentations at other locations. Right now we a bluetooth keyboard to advance, etc. If the remote can be used for other things (i.e. Keynote, Powerpoint, etc.) then it will be very useful!
Not trolling, but why can’t you just use a phone? I have this question at my work; video phones are on everyone’s desk but no one can answer my question as to why it’s necessary to see the person you’re calling. Especially when it’s someone in the same building.
The only time I can kinda understand it is for large group calls when you need to see who’s talking.
I can see the point of the remote for presentations though. It’s the same type of thing companies have been selling for a while except now it’s included w/ the computer. And since it’s made by Apple, you know it will work w/ your system and not cause problems.
Well, it could be because of the fact, that many unconcious messages are sent trough facial expressions. Messages which are lost in non-visual communication forms.
That is something I’d like to know – can you use the remote with Keynote now?
typing to talk is finally getting phased out!
Is not. Maybe you only talk to one person at a time via the net. I talk to many. With typing&reading, I can lead many conversations at the same time. With video, I could only lead one conversation at a time.
Typing&reading also costs _much_ less bandwidth. I can do it from a speeding train via GPRS. No chance for a video chat.
You are right, I can hold numerous conversations at once while typing, And yes, it does take alot less bandwidth. I think that typing is suitable for some situations and cameras are more suitable for others.
The scenario I think of most is when trying to explain ideas, show concepts, its a hell of alot easier to pop on the iSight than to scan a sketch and email it or a photograph, etc.
Also, at least around here, the speed of PEOPLE on the internet is almost crawling at times. I have dealt with people recently that don’t even use email, and if they do, they have the skill set of a small child. Anyone can talk face to face – that is just human nature
I just want one, all the features are a step ahead of me anyways. The Macbooks looks built better than my HP.
not being able to dual boot with windows until vista is kind of a bummer at least it looks like linux and solaris support EFI booting.
-BDH
You might not need dualbooting.
if microsoft is smart (and I hope they are) they already have virtual PC in testing for the intel macs. This means that you COULD run windows in VPC with a smaller performance hit (when compared to emulation).
I sincerely hope that they have VPC coming out soon!
I’ve been digging around in Microsofts Knowledge Base and it looks like WinXP 64 for supports EFI as well. I wonder if MS has something, but just doesn’t put it on the normal install disk.
Something to play around with.
Windows XP 64 is for Itanium. Windows XP/2003 x64 (that’s AMD64) doesn’t support EFI.
Edited 2006-01-12 00:23
QUOTE :The Front Row remote I don’t get at all. The MacBook Pro is a portable machine, having a remote with a portable machine just seems redundant in some way. And easily lost.
– this person has obviously not been on the road doing presentations. You need a remote to be able to do an effective presentation and to not be tethered to the laptop. Yes – other solutions exist, but why not utilize the apple remote? Front Row is just *one* of its functions. Keynote work with the remote now – and other apps can be rewritten to take advantage of this feature.
QUOTE :The Front Row remote I don’t get at all. The MacBook Pro is a portable machine, having a remote with a portable machine just seems redundant in some way. And easily lost.
– this person has obviously not been on the road doing presentations. You need a remote to be able to do an effective presentation and to not be tethered to the laptop. Yes – other solutions exist, but why not utilize the apple remote? Front Row is just *one* of its functions. Keynote work with the remote now – and other apps can be rewritten to take advantage of this feature.
And let’s not forget: when you are on the road you often sleep on hotels. When you do that, you might want to watch some DVD, listen to some music. Then the remote comes out handy!
I have been trying to tell you all that MS and Apple are going to join forces to knock out linux… They will be offering a mult boot OS for a discounted price so you get the best of both worlds…. Vista and OS# will be the one two punch for linux…
could happen….
as an admin of both windows and linux.
i don’t think there is any master plan, per say….
as much of the market evloving, and changing. i dont think windows is going anywhere, and i think apple will gain some ground and then level off as will linux.
-Nex6
I have been trying to tell you all…
How is that working for ya? Arrested any GPL violators lately? Written any tickets? Don’t answer if it will blow your cover…
No need to wait for Vista to come out. No need to offer any discounted OSes either. Since XP doesn’t support booting from EFI you could just install Linux/*BSD/Solaris and use a bootloader to bypass any BIOS/EFI issues. That way you have Windows, all your old applications (if you need applications), and some options that may occur to you during the period of lucidity that happens after the infections clear out of your system.
Now, you may ask yourself, “XP64 supports EFI doesn’t it?”
And you may ask yourself, “If Schiller thinks that XP64 won’t boot, Is this really my lovely computer?”
And you may ask yourself, “Could monkeys really fly out of my serial port?” Could happen. What are the odds?
No need to wait for Vista to come out. No need to offer any discounted OSes either. Since XP doesn’t support booting from EFI you could just install Linux/*BSD/Solaris and use a bootloader to bypass any BIOS/EFI issues. That way you have Windows, all your old applications (if you need applications), and some options that may occur to you during the period of lucidity that happens after the infections clear out of your system.
This won’t likely work since the loader is still built with the PC/AT BIOS in mind. The only versions of Windows built for EFI (besides Vista) run on the Itanium. EFI support will not be backported to 32-bit versions of XP. This shouldn’t be a big issue as around the time people get their new Macs, they should also be able to get CTPs of Vista Beta 2. There’s also the previously mentioned possibility of using Virtual PC or some other similar technology.
Since XP doesn’t support booting from EFI you could just install Linux/*BSD/Solaris and use a bootloader to bypass any BIOS/EFI issues.
This won’t likely work since the loader is still built with the PC/AT BIOS in mind.
What BIOS functions does XP still use? And how difficult would it be to add some kind of BIOS-on-EFI emulation layer to grub or lilo?
NT bootloader uses them to load kernel from disk. This is unrelated to grub as grub doesn’t boot windows, It only has option to daisy call NT bootloader.
This won’t likely work since the loader is still built with the PC/AT BIOS in mind.
GRUB works with EFI.
The only versions of Windows built for EFI (besides Vista) run on the Itanium. EFI support will not be backported to 32-bit versions of XP.
GRUB loads Windows.
There’s also the previously mentioned possibility of using Virtual PC or some other similar technology.
I like that a whole lot better than dual booting.
“They will be offering a mult boot OS for a discounted price so you get the best of both worlds”
It is quite conceivable. Not that it will make much difference to Linux, because Linux is not a designer brand, so the competition is minimal. The few who care will just run Linux on macs.
Apple is a designer brand. We are essentially talking designer brand marketing. It is a bit like Ralph Lauren moving out from polo shirts into suits, soap and shoes. The trick is to increase the number of people who can use the designer item for their usual purposes instead of the non-designer item.
The problem with OS X is that there are lots of people who cannot or will not use it. But, the same designer item with Windows in it, that they could and would use.
Apple is, after all, a hardware company. Give them a weapon for increased hardware sales, sooner or later they will use it. Intel could well be it.
The author of that blog post is clueless, for the most part. Had he done any reading and thinking, he would have discovered the following points:
1. Performance per Watt measures how much performance you get per watt of power expended. It’s not an absolute measure of power consumption as the author seems to think. The Core Duo processor consumes more power than a G4, but at the same time, its performance is drastically higher per watt than the G4. It’s like saying “Laptop hard drives cost $1.50/GB, while desktop hard drives cost $0.60/GB — that means a laptop hard drive is more expensive than a desktop hard drive.” Well no, because I could be buying a 500 GB desktop hard drive, and I’ll pay a hell of a lot more than for any one laptop hard drive. X per Y measurements don’t reveal the absolute Y unless they get an absolute X measurement. It’s simple math.
2. S-Video output — sure, it would be useful to have an S-Video right on the laptop, but my iBook doesn’t have such a thing either. It has an all-purpose video-out port that you buy adapters for. The iBook ships with a VGA adapter, but you also have the option of purchasing composite and S-Video adapters. I’m sure the same will be possible with the MacBook. Modem? For the off-chance that anyone will be using a modem in a hotel room, buy a USB modem. They’re small and cheap. And Firewire 800? Firewire 800 is responsible for its own death by not being backwards-compatible plug-wise with Firewire 400. I have yet to see a Firewire 800 device in wide use anywhere. Such is life. I would have liked to see two Firewire 400 ports on the MacBook though.
3. The DPI hasn’t changed as far as I know, because the screen is physically a bit narrower. It was necessary to make this change in order to incorporate the iSight camera up top.
4. Total cop-out on Apple’s part, yeah, but the explanation I’ve heard is that no drive manufacturers out there have a 8x DL-capable DVD-RW drive in the form factor that Apple required for the MacBook (remember, it is a bit thinner).
5. I see nothing wrong with the addition of nifty features like a remote and webcam. There has been more than one occassion where I wish I could fast-forward through a movie, or skip a song playing on my iBook while I was not physically at the machine.
6. Yeah, I would wait until people can benchmark these machines themselves. Both Apple and Intel have been responsible with fudging of numbers before (G5 anyone?). However, the loss of AltiVec is not a big deal, as SSE2/SSE3 are viable replacements. Apple has a guide on “converting” AltiVec-optimized code into SSE3-optimized code, or something of the sort.
Am I the only person who wouldn’t mind a three-inch tall somewhat heavier luggable-type laptop, with far more features? Something that could be moved fairly easily? This drive towards ‘thin’ sometimes confuses me.
A friend of mine has an absolutely tiny 12″ screen Sony UM30 thingy that’s like half an inch tall closed such that I think it only has headphone jacks, two USB-1 ports, and ethernet. Whatever it is, it’s so tiny it has to have external EVERYTHING. The keys retract onto their base so the lid can close.
My current laptop’s battery is so dead I can’t really use it as a portable anyway…
Any numbers on the MacBook battery life vs a PowerBook? I’m quite pleased with my iBooks battery life, and I’ve not heard many glowing reviews about PC notebooks.
So I’m curious about that (and this is where the “85 watt” powersupply but in the article rings a bit louder).
What are the odds of Linux/BSD running on MacBooks ? Does Linux/BSD support EFI ? I would love to dual boot Mac0S with Linux/BSD.
Tejas Kokje
Edited 2006-01-12 05:28
What are the odds of Linux/BSD running on MacBooks ? Does Linux/BSD support EFI ? I would love to dual boot Mac0S with Linux/BSD.
– Wait for VirtualPC.
Then, you can run anything on it: Linux, Windows, BSD, Solaris!
But, what I really hope for is that APPLE starts to appreciate the idea of VirtualMac. That way developers could run beta version of new Apple OS’s, without damaging any personal data.
I don’t know about the *BSDs but yes Linux supports booting from EFI. Here at work I have an HP dual itanium2 machine that boots from EFI both Windows 2003 Server ia64 and RedHat RHEL AS 3.0 ia64.
If you’d bothered to do a google search you would see that people are working on linux EFI support. Not sure about current status as there isn’t much hardware out there that uses it yet.
I’m fairly sure linux will work on these new laptops. Any kind of DRM scheme is a check for the software to know it’s ok to run on the hardware, not for the hardware to refuse the software, unless I’m fairly mistaken.
Wait, the new Macs are 32 bit? Good grief, Apple spent all that time and money getting 64-bit systems and now they’ve gone to dual-core 32-bit processors? That either means 64-bit isn’t so great, or Apple was desperate
Actually they didn’t do much work at all on 64-bit. The only 64-bit machines they sold were the iMacs, PowerMacs and XServes: the iBook, PowerBook and MacMini were all 32-bit. Further, most of the OS, particularly in user-space, was 32-bit as well, with the exception of memory addressing and a fast math library.
There’s a very good reason for this. Fundamentally, the home user doesn’t need 64-bit, which only pays off for high-end maths or apps that need gigabytes of memory like cinema-quality video editing and enterprise level databases.
The only machine you’d use for that kind of stuff is a PowerMac or an XServe, and it’s fully expected that by the end of the year (the given time frame) the 64-bit Intel “Conroe” chip will become available and will be used to build these computers.
See this page on Intel’s upcoming chips for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Next_Generation_Microarchitectur…
Or the correct answer, which is: the majority of OS X wasn’t 64-bit clean anyway. 64-bit apps on a 32-bit kernel might work on PowerPC, but doesn’t work on amd64. To run 32-bit apps and 64-bit apps concurrently, you need a 64-bit kernel.
Aah, so it was just hoopla and marketing.
60 pixels * 1440? That is how many pixels is lost.
NT bootloader uses them to load kernel from disk.
And the kernel itself doesn’t require it?
This is unrelated to grub as grub doesn’t boot windows, It only has option to daisy call NT bootloader.
True enough, but grub could install interrupts emulating the necessary BIOS functions before invoking the NT loader.
I don’t know about the *BSDs but yes Linux supports booting from EFI. Here at work I have an HP dual itanium2 machine
As you say, the support is for Itanium. It probably still has to be ported to x86, and it certainly still has to be properly tested because so far there were no systems to do that.
The new Intel Macbooks use more power, produce more heat, have less features and are simply not faster at all? There’s a shock. Power per…….what?!
I think it was clear, for whatever reason, that they weren’t going to get as much power out of their new x86 architecture over the old Power as they though they were.