Apple today announced that it will begin shipping the new 15-inch MacBook Pro this week with faster processors than previously announced. The $2500 model now includes a 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo processor, up from the previously announced 1.83GHz, and will begin shipping this week. The $2000 model now includes a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor, up from the previously announced 1.67GHz, and will begin shipping next week. In addition, customers may now upgrade to a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processor as a build-to-order option on the Apple Online Store. Note: Expect a review of the MacBook Pro on OSNews.com soon.
Cool stuff. 2 ghz seems to be mighty fast as shown in Anandtech benchmarks.
I was over at the MacNN forums where this was being discussed, and some of the spoiled children there were already whining that they wouldn’t have the “top of the line” anymore unless they ordered the $300 USD .16 GHz upgrade.. Waaaah. Baby want to cry?
So what if you won’t have the top of the line? Does 160 MHz really matter? Absolutely not. Some were already cancelling their orders and shelling out another $300 for the stupid 160 MHz. Some people …
You know what they say about money and brains.
To a lot of people that use their computers to make money, 160 mhz can bring in more than $300 in the long run. Let’s take your argument to the logical extreme. Say you have a 1 ghz powerbook. Is ir really worth $2499 to upgrade to a 2 ghz macbook pro? Many people would say yes. At that point, $300 more is not that much unless it is out of your budget range.
BTW people with money are usually the ones with the brains.
PS. Please stop whining about people on other forums. This is OSNews, not MacNN.
$300 is 12% of the total cost of an entire 2.0 GHz MacBook. 12% more for 160 MHz extra performance? It just doesn’t add up.
The $300, when applied to the hard drive or RAM, would be a much, much wiser long-term investment.
The people with money are usually the ones who could use a bit more brain — at least it seems that way in American culture.
Yeah but, you live in Canada. And unless you have some as of yet unknown source of American culture apart from music, shows and the likes you get on your cable, you just have no idea what you’re talking about.
Unless, of course, you consider The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy to be pinnacles of a culture. Which, judging from the generalizations you are so keen to make, might just be the case.
Yeah but, you live in Canada. And unless you have some as of yet unknown source of American culture
Canada suddenly moved to Asia?
Edited 2006-02-15 12:12
No, but Canada didn’t suddenly become the 51st state in The American Union.
By ‘America’, I meant ‘The United States of America’. Clear, now?
It’s a dual core processor so you get more than 160 MHz extra performance. I personally wouldn’t get it myself though since I don’t need it and I usually go for the most bang for buck deals.
For somebody doing math to try and prove your point, you really don’t go far enough.
It’s 12% more for 8% better performance, and as you know, costs do not scale linearly relative to cpu speed (once you get near the top, it curves downwards (price/performance), and eventually flattens then curves downwards completely.
Still, a 4% discrepancy between what you are paying for and what you are getting *really* isn’t that bad. Maybe you aren’t the target of the “high end” MBs. For some people, that extra 160mhz*2 makes a difference. Load up a few dozen plugins in Logic without using distributed processing and see what happens. Or fire up FCP and tap your fingers while rendering some effects. I don’t know about your time, but mine is worth 100+ an hour. The extra 8% of speed makes a big difference to me. Let me slap some more math into this post, since you seem to be so fond of it.
8% speedup (assuming mhz increases == direct performance increases) would mean:
60 minute job would now take 55 minutes.
120 minute job would now take 110 minutes.
Well, how many days a week do you work? I put in 7, but let’s go with the traditional 5. Now, lets say you are a professional video editor. The ones I know generally have about 2-3 hours of downtime while the machine is rendering this or that, every day. so 10 to 15 minutes a day would be reclaimed by that 8% speedup. Going with the low end, 10 minutes – every week you would save 50 minutes. Now, let’s say you have a really nice job and get 8 weeks vacation. That leaves 44 weeks of 50 minutes per week that could be saved by that 8% speedup. That’s 2200 minutes, or 36 1/3 hours, or – for somebody in a decent position – 3,666$ worth of time. Shoot, if you only made 10 bucks an hour, you’d have saved 366$ by spending the 300.
Lesson to be learned? Don’t tell people their ideas/choices are stupid when you don’t grasp the entire situation. I also don’t appreciate your two comments at the end, they are simply inflamitory. I have money, but I don’t consider myself “lacking” in the brain department – I may not be Einstein, but I’m not stupid either. I also really don’t see how “American culture” as you put it has anything to do with money/brain correlations. I’ve met stupid rich people in nearly every country I’ve lived in. I’ve also met extremely intelligent people barely surviving. Russia, Romania, Italy, America – you name it – these people will exist. I will tell you something that might help you in your persuit of happiness. The people who succeed in life are generally the ones who can interface with people the best. It has nothing to do with intelligence (well, very little) – it’s all people-skills (networking and so forth – making sure you know the right people, and being able to interact with them), and pure luck (right place right time.)
You can’t do anything to help with the luck part of the equation, but avoiding such inflamitory comments will in general get you a heck of a lot further. Or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m one of those dumb rich guys in America. Yea, I think I’ll enjoy laying at the beach here in Hawaii with my laptop, while everybody is slaving away at work, smiling even knowing how I “could use a bit more brain”. Generalizations suck.
“You know what they say about money and brains.”
You never have enough of either?
I guess since they aren’t even really coming close thus far, increasing the processor speeds might help them start to get close to their speed claims.
You a troll?
… They’re not coming close thus far… close to what? Apple’s claims? Believe me: Benchmarks are *always* flawed. But I guess you just remember some test about the iMac G5 and the iMac Core Duo. But we’re talking PowerBook *G4* and MacBook Pro here.
I can’t help but wonder Apple’s reasoning for the free upgrade. Whilst it could be out of their desire to help their consumers, that seems a little overly-generous to me.
I guess either this was always planned as a nice little marketing story (although the press release didn’t make much of it so I don’t think so), or they were just getting worried about the price difference between this and a certain Dell laptop with a rebate coupon.
Oh, and as a poster above noted, some people seem desperate just to have the “top of the line.” Do you reckon Apple caught onto this philosophy and released this upgrade accordingy?
Perhaps Intel wasn’t going to be making enough of the 1.67’s to make it worthwhile. You know, Intel may have told Apple – look, it’s about the same price and we’d like to stop rolling out the 1.67’s in favor of faster cores.
That happens a lot, where a manufacturer can’t fill their order with a chip, so they move to the next one up.
You got to give credit for Apple PR-staff. I mean think first they announce MacBook Pro models but not with fastest processors around and now that dust have lowered little they announce that they are bringing “new” models, which all competitors had already released. For a small company Apple can make lot more noise than Dell or HP, learn it people.
When someone confirms that you can duel boot OSX and Windows I’ll buy. Until then I’m saving my money. I love OS X but there just aren’t enough good games, but if I could run windows on my Mac…
“but if I could run windows on my Mac…”
You’d end up with an Apple-branded PC. And that would… well, quite frankly… SUCK! Pay more for a “nice looking PC” that is just as prone to Windows bugs, spyware, viruses, and Trojan Horses as the next PC.
A Mac that runs Windows natively (like a standard PC) is NOT a Mac. It’s just an Apple PC. As long as there is some translation layer between the Mac and Windows (i.e. it doesn’t run windows 100% natively, even if Windows does run at native speed, since the Mac is based on an Intel processor), that will be acceptable to me. But if I can pop in a Windows CD and install Windows just like I can on my regular PC, I will consider the Mac Era over with and never buy another one.
You missed the point 😐 I, like a large number of people are poised with a few grand in our hand waiting for Macbooks to run windowsXP. _Not_ because we want to run Windows, but because we want OSX – but not have to have 2 PCs to maintain our legacy apps (and games).
Some people also have no option but to use Windows for their work, they want Macbooks because they can use OSX for daily things and their own personal stuff, and use Windows just for work. Also having two OS’s on one laptop will muchly ease the transition of switching to OSX only, without the pain of having to boot two different machines.
And stop babbling on about “A Mac is this, A Mac is not this” I couldn’t undertsand a word of your post. A Mac is a life / work machine, nothing more.
Wow, if Apple had bothered to ship units with BIOS compatibility you’d suddenly not buy one. That really seems like a rational thought process to you? I guess when Vista ships all of those “Macs” will morph into “Apple PCs.”
Who thinks, “I won’t buy this product unless you make it less capable?” It just boggles the mind.
I wonder if this is goingto happen quite a lot now Apple are with intel. We all know how quickly they like to upgrade their chips. Will Macs now have a ‘PC lifespan’?
What about its battery life?
http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/01/qod_macbook_pro_and_batt…
Edited 2006-02-15 12:15
Aside: Can’t resist chiming in on the intelligence/money thing. There are plenty of low-paying academic and teaching jobs filled with smart people. Not to mention various enterprising entrepreneurs making next to nothing in order to get their ideas off the ground.
I feel like getting too deep into the math here is dangerous, because there are so many variables and one can probably come up with a calculation to support either opinion.
My reluctance to spend a lot of money for a small speed increase is longer-term. In a year or two, the 10%ish difference between current MacBook Pro models will be eclipsed by more significant gains as the product line is updated. Falling back on some math after all: If I expect my laptop to last 4 years and I buy the top-of-the line, that’s $700 per year. If I buy the bottom-of-the-line, I can spend the same amount per year and replace it in 3 instead of 4. My guess is that’s going to be better for at least my perceived productivity.
That said, it’s not that simple because between the lowest and mid-range models are also differences in graphics card and drive capacity. That’s the decision I’m looking at now and it’s a toughie.