Want To Know About the New Apple MacBook Pro?

An anonymous reader writes to tell us about an extremely helpful user who is answering questions from all comers about the new MacBook Pro. "A few days ago, a user by the name 'bcavanau' posted on the macrumors.com forums that he had just picked up a new MacBook Pro. Forum members started asking him about features, specifications, and benchmarks. He was happy to oblige, posting responses to everyone's questions. Eventually the forum thread got out of hand, and he set up a website devoted to answering the questions. If you have a question that hasn't already been answered, email him at the address on the site. He is responding daily and sometimes within minutes. This guy is dedicated. Thanks 'bcavanau', you get two thumbs up." The link to the site is cached via the Coral Content Distribution Network.

Re:Why?

[Ant P.]

I think you're full of shit, and for the record I use neither MacOS nor Windows.

It's a shame

[drsmithy]

That the MBP doesn't have:

* An option for a 7200rpm hard disk (except the "aircraft carrier" model
* A option for a faster video card
* Higher screen resolution
* A docking station
* A 12"-ish variant

Personally I consider these significant omissions for a machine touted as being a top-of-the-line "Professional" laptop.

On the flipside, it's *great* to see Apple throwing in 2G RAM standard, except in the bottom-end model.

On the wishlist, I'd _love_ to see a laptop that can drive two external screens.

(I'll probably still get work to buy me one, though, then I can get my OS X fix on someone else's tab.)

Re:It's a shame

[dal20402]

Don't worry too much about the 7200rpm drive for now. I have one in my first generation MBP, and wouldn't get it if I were buying today.

The density of the 160GB 5400rpm model, which wasn't available in quantity when the first generation MBP came out, is high enough that performance is really, really close to the 100GB 7200rpm models. My MBP averages about 44MB/s write flat-out... the Seagate 5400.3, according to this [linuxhardware.org], will do over 41. Read speeds are similarly close. If you're really pushing the disk subsystem so hard that you'll notice that difference, do yourself a favor and use the new FW800 port.

When Seagate finally ships its 160GB 7200.2 results may be different. I'm buying one of those for my existing MBP as soon as they ship.

I second the request for 1680x1050. (1920x1200 would just be too much on 15.4".) The faster video cards would probably cause heat issues; all the laptops available with them are thicker and heavier.

For the 12" the MacBook, unlike what we're used to with iBooks, is a legitimate performer unless you need 3D graphics. I'd like an even smaller model, and the option for discrete graphics in the black MB.

What I really want can't be provided by Apple... a fast 320GB notebook drive. That would change my life.

Why isn't it smaller?

[weave]

I have a 667 Mhz 12" G4 Powerbook that I adore and have been using for four years now. It goes with me everywhere, I can open it (barely) on a tray table in a coach seat on a plane, it works well on a bus, train, etc. It goes everywhere with me -- cause it is a decent size and works well. I don't need/want 15" and the 13.3" macbooks are still too big for what I want. :(

I was just at a "Sony Style" Store today and their smaller Vaio notebooks look real sweet. Just increase the DPI of the resolution and it cram into a smaller form factor please. Not all of us are blind.

I hate Apple's new laptop attitude that "pro" means huge.

Hats o' gold, thanks to your friends at /.

[mactari]

Eventually the forum thread got out of hand, and he set up a website devoted to answering the questions. If you have a question that hasn't already been answered, email him at the address on the site. He is responding daily and sometimes within minutes. This guy is dedicated.

And thanks to slashdot, maybe those Google Ads he's added to his answers will bring him a few bucks he wouldn't have made on the "out of hand" macrumors forum.

Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with cashing in -- macrumors' forum isn't exactly ad-free either -- but I'm not real sure how making your own website to answer questions makes slashdot. If he'd taken it apart, upgraded the processor, or found out that there's something inside we hadn't heard of, well, telling us about that is possibly post worthy. Right now, this story is just hardware.slashdot.org-as-billboard.

One of the incredible bits of insight from the site:
Q: What can you tell me about the battery?
A: Not a whole lot. Made in China (what isn't), Model # A1175, Li-ion.

Wow.

Save yourself some time, and skip directly to pictures of Sudan [googlesyndication.com] or Christian Wife Pictures [googlesyndication.com]. Not joking.

Re:It's a shame

[Jeff DeMaagd]

What I really want can't be provided by Apple... a fast 320GB notebook drive. That would change my life.

There is something for that:
http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ [mcetech.com]

What it does is move the optical drive to be an external drive and put another notebook hard drive inside. So if you have 2x 160GB drives, you have 320GB right there. I think kicking out the optical drive is a good compromise. The number of occasions that I use one is dwindling quite a bit. Even for movies, I can use an external at home to import it and it's on the hard drive for later use.

Re:WUXGA

[iljitschvanbeijnum]

"Resolution independent" means that the absolute size of stuff on the screen, such as text, GUI elelements and so on, is independent of the resolution of the screen. So if you have a CRT, and you change the screen mode from, say, 1280x960 to 1600x1200, everything looks the same except that (especially) text is now sharper. The same size letter is now drawn using a larger number of smaller pixels, just like printing at 600 DPI vs 300 DPI. RI allows two very useful things: you can increase display resolution without automatically shrinking everything that's on the screen, and you can make everything look larger on screen without artificially lowering your screen resolution, so that text and other stuff stays sharp. It is of course also possible to zoom out so that everything gets smaller and you can fit more stuff on the same screen. Apple has said they are going to support RI in the upcoming Leopard OS release, but it's unclear how they are going to expose this functionality to the user. Ideally, it will be possible to adjust the zoom factor on a per-application basis so that it's finally possible to compensate for the strange preference for ridiculously small text that is so prevalent among web designers without breaking the intended layour of websites, as the text zoom available in current browsers does.