Apple Announces New MacBook, Pro, Air 774
Steve Jobs just got through announcing new MacBook lines in Cupertino. The MacBook, the Pro, and the Air all got revved. The old line of plastic-body MacBooks drops in price by $100, to $999. The new MacBooks have a metal body and multi-touch trackpad, just like the new Pros. The Pro features two NVidia graphics chips. Quoting Jobs: "With the 9400M, you get 5 hours of battery life, with the 9600M GT you get four hours of battery life. You choose." In summary: "We're building both [MacBook and Pro] in a whole new way. From a slab of aluminum to a notebook. New graphics. New trackpad, the best we've ever built. And LED-backlit displays that are far brighter, instant on, far more environmentally responsible." They are shipping today and should be in stores tomorrow. Oh, and one more thing: Steve's blood pressure is 110/70.
Refurb Price Drops! (Score:3, Insightful)
Woot. I've been looking to get an upgrade to my MBP (1st gen). This means all the 'old' stock is going to get dropped into the refurb store or sold cheaply through other channels.
First post? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how AAPL stock drops after an announcement.
Buy on rumor. sell on fact.
Re:First post? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No 3g? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have ExpressCard, use it.
Re:Uneven coverage? (Score:5, Insightful)
glass touchpad? (Score:3, Insightful)
is a glass touchpad that much better?
I ahve an iphone but the only plus I see is that i can see an LCD through it...
Fingers (Score:2, Insightful)
And the entire trackpad is the button. It gives you more area on the trackpad and keeps you from hunting for that button. You can get multi-button support from software. And we've added some new four-finger gestures that are really nice.
I have a nice 2 finger gesture in response to that.
ugh (Score:3, Insightful)
Failtastic in so many ways:
Tilt. Tilt. Tilt. Tilt. (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, my next OS X Notebook is probably going to be a Thinkpad.
I'll Pay Apple what they want for OS X, I'll buy a Mac Mini and not use it if that's what it takes to make my idiot conscience shut the **** up, but I've had it with Apple's passive-aggressive relationship with multi-button mice.
Re:Glossy only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple question: do you think Apple is marketing the new Macbooks for Mr. Joe Collegestudent or Mr. Professional Visual Neuroscientist Who Does Some Colorimetric Work?
Apple spends 9/10 of their time marketing. Always hasl. Mr. Professional Visual Neuroscientist Who Does Some Colorimetric Work arguably won't get the laptop marketed for its Word processing and gaming use.
Re:Uneven coverage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Glossy only? (Score:1, Insightful)
They seem brighter due ambient reflection. Brighter = Better to a lot of people. Same with music. Louder = Better.
Argh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well there went my hope that they'd finally offer us two-buttons.
*sighs*
There is nothing I hate more than having to use a trackpad as a click-button. You try to move the cursor and open up half a dozen links accidentally.
I nearly sent back my Dell until we found drivers that let me turn that feature off. :(
Steve...YOUR A TWIT!!!
Re:But all glossy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tilt. Tilt. Tilt. Tilt. (Score:2, Insightful)
The current trackpad already supports multiple finger taps, and it so doesn't cut it for me. Tap-to-click-in-the-wrong-place is already not working for me, on any laptop, but at least I haven't been forced to use it.
Re:No firewire on the MacBook (non-Pro) (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm wondering about the rational behind that decision. After all, isn't the ability to use iMovie to make your own home movies a big selling point for the consumer level Macs?
Without a firewire interface, iMovie (and by extension iDVD) seems like it would be useless.
Re:First post? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, I was going to post that ... but to add a little more, it is the difference between "investing", and "speculating." Short selling is "speculating" ... buying low is "investing."
Have you ever heard someone call Warren Buffet a speculator?
He's an investor.
Re:But all glossy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, /.-ers should be overjoyed at a connector that is royalty/license-free.
And yet still costs more than those royalty/license-laden connectors... funny how that works.
Re:But all glossy... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was also JUST ANNOUNCED TODAY. Wait until it shows up on Monoprice.
Re:Want! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uneven coverage? (Score:5, Insightful)
If that other notebook doesn't run Windows then yes.
the EeeePC, Dell9, and many other netbooks with Linux options made it to the front page.
It is only Windows notebooks that get ignored because they are frankly all the same.
Apple has come up with some interesting things like their power adapter and now this case.
Re:13" MP (Score:3, Insightful)
Most external drives are firewire (if they have USB too, the firewire performance is still far better).
Really? In my experience, most new external drives are either USB-only or USB+FW(maybe +eSATA).
Re:But all glossy... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet still costs more than those royalty/license-laden connectors... funny how that works.
Because speech != beer?
Re:is there some kind of film you can apply? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause I prefer using a Mac? I like OS X. I'm a perfectly capable *nix user, so I like having it available to me, in addition to a nice simple GUI.
Re:Release timing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Boring (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Argh... (Score:5, Insightful)
But it can tell which finger applied the pressure, and tell the difference between a left and a right click.
No it can't. It can tell which fingers are touching it. But it cannot tell the difference between pressing with your right finger or your left finger if both fingers are in contact. To perform a right click with the Mighty Mouse you have to lift up with your left finger and click with the right.
This, in a word, sucks.
Hopefully the MacBook trackpads are better. Sounds like they are. But the Mighty Mouse is just utterly horrible.
Re:ugh (Score:3, Insightful)
Unlike DVI, it's present on every projector I've ever gotten to use,.
Re:Argh... (Score:4, Insightful)
... To perform a right click with the Mighty Mouse you have to lift up with your left finger and click with the right.
This, in a word, sucks.
Have you used one for more than a minute or two? You'd be surprised how quickly you adapt to it; it's just another muscle-memory thing. When I'm using a more traditional two-button mouse, I find it quaint that it has actual physical buttons, and that the scroll button/wheel is only two directional.
Hopefully the MacBook trackpads are better. Sounds like they are.
I'll bet the physical feel is pretty damn good. I'm still amazed at how well multi-touch works on an iPhone screen, and I'm guessing the glass mouse will be very similar.
Re:Want! (Score:3, Insightful)
holy cow, where are you using it, a rockslide???
I have a 17-inch MacBook Pro, I don't have a normal laptop case just a backpack and a neoprene sleeve and I've got no dents. I've taken it:
It's been all over the place and plenty of times packed in the back of the car with a ton of other gear and I have no problems, whatever you are doing must be well beyond the normal usage of a laptop. I suspect you'll have the same dent/damage problems with whatever laptop you buy, you are aparently somewhat abusive of your computers.
Re:is there some kind of film you can apply? (Score:5, Insightful)
Preferring OS X is relevant because if you want to buy a laptop with OS X, you're now stuck with a glossy screen.
You can't buy and connect any screen you want without serious modifications to the laptop. Adding an external display is not the point; it's a portable computer.
Re:Want! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Want! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Their marketing department is on drugs (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the 802.11n standard is a matter of details now. All current wireless chipsets are technically capable of it, but may not implement it identically. Once the standard gets formalized, a firmware update should be enough to give you full compatibilty with other n-compliant devices. So it's more like "n-capable" in a "Vista-capable" way than really n-compliant. I guess the marketing guys got tired of waiting for the standard...
Steve...YOUR A TWIT!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well there went my hope that they'd finally offer us two-buttons.
*sighs*
There is nothing I hate more than having to use a trackpad as a click-button. You try to move the cursor and open up half a dozen links accidentally.
I nearly sent back my Dell until we found drivers that let me turn that feature off. :(
Steve...YOUR A TWIT!!!
Is anyone else actually looking forward to the day that Steve Jobs retires? Every computer Apple now makes either looks like a hunk of metal and glass or a cheese grater; its brutalist architecture for the PC, and it's just as ugly on computers as it is on buildings.
It's also painfully obvious that he doesn't give a rat-fuck about what end users want; note the number of mouse buttons on the new laptops.
Jobs built, and then re-built, this company into what it is, but I'm tired of all the computer models being his personal art project. You can expect excellence in design from Apple without this depressing, Bauhaus case design that Apple seems addicted to now. We're getting German worker housing in a PC, and paying a premium for it. Apple computers used to be beautiful and original. I love my eMac... it's instantly recognizable as an Apple with its white plastic and round curves. Now all of Apple's computers are dark, gun-metal slabs. I seriously wonder if Jobs and Ive spend all their time shooting heroin and listening to Goth music in the dark now.
Consumers may love it. Pros won't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Phil: You offset the reflection by the brightness, and consumers love it.
That's great, but people who actually have to *work* for a while on their machines will probably hate it.
I thoroughly hate it, so thoroughly that it was a complete dealbreaker for me on the MacBook and MacBook Air, so thoroughly that I very nearly hate Phil personally for that statement, so thoroughly that despite everything else I love about Apple products, if I can only get them with a glossy screen, I might not bother.
One of the great things about a notebook is you can turn it however you want!
That's true if the environment you're working in doesn't have any constraints on which way you're sitting, which is often not the case. And I don't want to spend time futzing around with avoiding glare. I have other things to do with this machine I've bought.
Re:One word: RIPOFF. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's YOUR opinion, but I'd argue it's quite one-sided and flawed too.
First off, you're upset that they dropped the price of a big selling notebook (older style white Macbook) by $100? Yeah, it's not "new tech", but it's a proven design people bought millions of already. And today, it's $100 cheaper than yesterday. If you follow typical Apple product life-cycles, it's likely it's going away within the next 6-9 months anyway. They like to do this with popular products, rather than immediately dropping them. (Remember the eMac, or the PowerMac G4 towers when they became the last system still capable of running MacOS 9.x natively?)
As for that Gateway laptop you're talking about? Does it have a mag-safe adapter on it? How about a backlit keyboard? When you lock one with a Kensington security cable, does it also lock the battery and hard drive compartments? How's the support from old Gateway these days? (I can still visit one of a couple local Apple stores in town, but "Gateway Country" stores didn't fare so well.....) And obviously, it lacks OS X too.
Buy what you like, but personally, I'm more inclined to say the real "ripoff" are these sub-standard quality laptops Toshiba, Gateway, Dell, HP and others keep cranking out. I have no problem paying more for quality, and I think with Apple, it's generally there. (Claiming OS X is simply "cutesy graphics and a slick UI" sells it pretty short too, but I'm not even going to get started on that.)
Re:Smart people. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I think he was just being coolly anti-establishment, and blanketly stating that Apple's products are overpriced. To that, I assert that the market is willing to bear the price, so they must be correctly priced regardless of his opinion on the matter.
I'm typing this on an Eee PC. Apple could go out of business tomorrow and it wouldn't affect me one bit. Still, I think their pricing is between them and their customers, and right now everyone seems to be happy.
Re:is there some kind of film you can apply? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But all glossy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Glossy only? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple spends 9/10 of their time marketing.
Yeah right, they only spend 1/10th of their time developing a whole Operating System, designing computers and developing new techniques for manufacturing them, designing iPods and iPhones, running a music store, writing professional and consumer video editing and DVD authoring software.
You, sir, are full of shit. If that were the case, the marketing department would dwarf the rest of Apple. But it doesn't, of course.
Re:But all glossy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee its funny that they keep changing the "mini" display adapter for every laptop.
mini-vga - ibook
mini-dvi - macbook (previous generations)
micro-dvi - macbook air
mini-displayport - current generation macbook and macbook pro
Now the adapters that I bought for previous laptops are incompatible with the new one. To get basic connectivity you have to buy both the vga and dvi adapters (since the dvi is missing a pin it cannot work with additional DVI-to-VGA adapters). Why do I need to spend $60 extra for every laptop, merely cause Apple cannot even standarize on its own adapters?
More importantly, goodbye FIREWIRE on the MB. (Score:3, Insightful)
How the hell does this make any sense?
The whole POINT of Macs has been, in part, to enable Average Joe to do digital content creation. To let ordinary people do extraordinary things, with pictures, video, music, etc. Now you take the best-selling Mac ever and remove its ability to import video?
What the hell are they thinking?
Re:Definitely a known problem--hence the redesign (Score:3, Insightful)
Or the result of a new manufacturing process that wasn't commercially available or viable when the original was designed.
Re:OK, I give, where is the 1K premium from Pro (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a professional artist and animator, and my only screen is my several-year-old 15" G4 Powerbook. I'd like to have an external screen to hook it up to but I can't afford one right now. At the current day gig I have a big-ass tower Mac with two monitors, and honestly it makes my neck hurt.
There are tons of people whose pro machine is a laptop. Especially freelancers: you can throw it and the tablet in your bag and go out to the café when 'working at home' becomes 'slacking' too often.
Re:guess how many mouse buttons it has (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm cool with the no mouse buttons -Well, they really made a big button with a trackpad on top of it- but drag and droppers will suffer this. Dragging and dropping using just the trackpad is a mayor pain.
Lots of fixed positions besides desks. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're computing from a fixed seating position you're probably sitting at a desk.
If you're sitting at a desk, it might be your desk, at which you could do all of those things, but it might not. It might be at the office you're visiting.
It might not be a desk. It might be a seat on a plane or train, sunlight coming in from a nearby window you don't control (and boy, if there's any setting in which you have almost no room to maneuver, it's on a plane in coach. And yet the Mac Book Air? Glossy only from day one.)
It might be the one of a small set of seats available to you at a conference room, or a lecture hall.
It might be a park bench, it might be on the couch in the living room facing the TV where you're sitting to be with your SO or family while they're watching it, and you're trying to work, but the sunset through the window behind the couch is causing a problem.
If you bought a laptop, the whole point is that you'd like to be able to move it around and use it anywhere. The constraints arbitrarily added by the glare off a glossy screen make it more difficult.
Re:Glossy only? Agreed! (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider it your warning that you need to change your surroundings before continuing your work ... not a reason to get a different display.
and here I was thinking people bought laptops so they could work anywhere they wanted
Re:HDMI DisplayPort (Score:2, Insightful)
HDMI has limited resolution compared to DisplayPort making it the inferior spec.
This is a VHS/Betamax argument - its irrelevant what the spec is or does - its what the market dictates...and its strongly hinting HDMI with a baseball bat.
Re:Is the new case going to be more durable? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Glossy only? (Score:3, Insightful)
The last point is probably the trickiest to understand. If you want an easy-to-imagine analogy, think about trying to look at an image through clear glass vs. translucent frosted glass. It's not exactly right, but hey, it's just an analogy. When you have a matte finish, it scatters the ambient light, which is exactly what keeps it from being "glossy". You don't see a clear reflection of your desk lamp because the light from your desk lamp is being scattered in a bunch of different directions. The matte finish also causes the light from the display itself (the image being displayed) to scatter a bit, too. Because of this, glossy screens can get deeper blacks more vivid colors.
So really there are upsides and downsides.
Re:meh (Score:4, Insightful)
* I've got MBP 17" now. I like it. They are dropping that size.
No they're not.
* I don't like having to carry yet another kind of custom one-use rat tail to put my laptop on someone else's cheap VGA-style projector.
This hasn't changed.
* I do wish my MBP had heat sensors on the graphics system; the processor sensors are sometimes midrange while the graphics head is starting to exhibit heat-induced artifacts.
It does.
* I do wish they'd fix the runaway-syslogd problem in Leopard. I have read all the howtos and forum lists, nothing but a 15min cronjob to kill it is helping.
* I do wish they'd fix the too-many-hd-resets problem in Leopard, if I leave the machine on overnight with little disk activity, my drive will reset itself to a state it won't spin up again. Everything RAM-resident runs, but more and more processes go zombie when the disk doesn't spin up.
Never experienced or seen either of these myself.
* I don't like the new "partial tapered" (their term) or "puffy" (my term) lid.
* I don't like the black bezel inside the lid. Match the whole case.
* I hate the fugly new keyboards that feel and look like IBM PCjr chicklet.
* I don't care if it's magnetic or a button to pop the lid.
* I don't care if there's a slot visible on the front.
Then screw you, jack. Go buy a Dell. Or better yet: Don't replace what you have, and donate a couple thousand bucks to a charity instead.
You know what I don't like? Sugarless gum. And those new-fangled behind-the-head earphones. I also don't like tiny toy dogs. And open-toed shoes. And I hate vinyl records. And I hate it when the cat drinks from the toilet. Furthermore, I hate other people's personal preferences, and the way they spew them onto public forums like they have any qualitative value whatsoever.
Re:But all glossy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Glossy only? (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess for about the same reason that Porsche doesn't have a car that is in the $25K range, it simply is not the market they are aiming at.
There are plenty of computers/cars out there catering to the lower end market.
Re:Definitely a known problem--hence the redesign (Score:3, Insightful)
Only in that every single thing, ever, is flawed.
Re:But all glossy... (Score:3, Insightful)
because they make the big bucks by nickle and dimeing you to death...