MacBook Pros Upgraded and Shipped

Moby Cock writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple has started shipping the new MacBook Pro with an upgrade to the CPU clock speed. The two models now sport 1.83 GHz and 2.0 GHz Core Duos (up from 1.67 GHz and 1.83 GHz). A 2.16 GHz upgrade is also available. The price point remains the same." Dear Apple: Slashdot needs to review 5 of these indefinitely. Thank you XOXO ;) Seriously, i'm waiting for someone to give good benchmarks on these- especially testing for Warcraft. Now that it has a new Universal Binary I can't wait to see how it holds up against a modern windows machine.

WoW

[gEvil (beta)]

Ahhh. WoW - the single most important universal binary released so far. I hope Blizzard listens to their customers and releases universal binaries of thier existing OS X compatible games (WC3, SC, Diablo2). With regards to the story, cool that Apple bumped everyone up a notch on the speed pole for free.

Hotcakes

[Peregr1n]

It's a shame they haven't been available to review yet, but to be fair, Apple aren't really missing anything. They will sell like hotcakes to start with, even if they turn out to be bricks with LEDs strapped on.

what about preorders?

[invader_allan]

What happened to the people who preordered a 1.66GHz for the same price as the 1.83 when they hard launched? Did they get the prototype they ordered or the real deal? Note to self: never preorder new tech!

I can't wait until you guys realize

[cyberbian]

That there's a TPM chip installed shipping enabled, with no end-user controls to verify the trust settings match the security context in which it's installed. Like my maxed out iMac Core Duo... Privacy Commissioner in T-10 days... still no response from Apple Privacy... Check the documentation http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/specs/bestpra ctices/ [trustedcom...ggroup.org] You'll see what I mean... Caveat Emptor.

Now it makes me all more impatient

[Shivetya]

for the new iBooks and Minis.

When is the next big Mac get together?

While I like the specs of the new MacBooks, at their price point they don't quite cut it. Perhaps the second revision will make changes. Its just so hard to justify $600+ MacTax for 1lb of less weight and a few minor extras. Case in point CompUSA is selling an Acer duo, (1280x800 display x1400 graphics, 2GB memory, 120gb hdd, for 1299). While I understand that to some their is better engineering in the Mac I doubt the assembly lines used by either is much different). Yeah I know, its the software/experience/quality. There are levels to which all of us assign imporantance to these items. However most of it is opinion and we can all find pro and con examples to back our case. To me the justification of owning one of the new Intel based macs is being able to run any x86 OS.

If they deliver a duo-iBook, say with 13" screen and similar graphics ability I may find my next notebook. Throw out the iSight and give me a modem :). The excuse of not being able to load XP has been pretty much solved as I can find numerous methods of doing so. I really could put to use a laptop that can boot the big 3 OSes.

iBook dream, 1599 for 1.66 duo, x1600 256mb, fw400, usb2, upto 2gb memory, 13" 1280x800, etc. I don't know Apple's screen sizing principles and heard the new Macbook deviated from established norms (is that true?)

The world of Mac is getting closer to me everyday...

Price Drops?

[richdun]

So, we all know that Intel releases incremental speed bumps nearly every quarter or even more frequently, and this seems to have worked well for Apple here. But what about the quarterly (or more) price drops? A series of cuts is scheduled for the Pentium D over April and Q3 2006 that will almost half some prices. Will Apple catch things into even better margins, or will we see much more quickly update specs AND prices?

64 bit

[dusanv]

You do realize these laptops are 32 bit only? The 64 bit portable CPU (Merom core) will be available by year end (together with the matching desktop core - Conroe). It also seems that the current core (Yonah) has 64 bit instruction set support (AMD64/EMT64/x86-64, whatever you want to call it) although it has been disabled by Intel. The interesting bit for me will be the upcoming iBook. I want to see how Core Solo stacks up against the G4 (seeing that Duo doesn't really clean out the house against the single G5). I think there may be a couple of surprises.

Opposite

[jonoid]

This is actually the opposite of what happened a few years ago. When Apple came out with the G4 desktops they planned on releasing them in 400MHz, 450MHz, and 500MHz configurations. Due to supply problems or whatever, they ended up downgrading each configuration by 50MHz (so 350, 400, 450) and kept the prices. Of course there was a huge uproar and IIRC Apple ended up discounting the machines.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/10/14/apple_down grades_power_mac_cpus/ [theregister.co.uk]

It's good to know that Apple is now in a position to do the opposite.

I Was Down at the CompUSA The Other Day

[Greyfox]

Taking a G4 Powerbook for a test drive. The sales droids there were seriously downplaying the MacBook Pro -- "No one knows when they're going to ship, it could be a month or more" and "Almost no software will run natively on them when they're first released" were the two lines I heard the most from several of the sales droids there. I'm going to have to go back when they get their first units in just to see how much the tune has changed. "These are radically faster for not much more money" and "You can run all previous software in an emulator" are the lines I expect to hear then. Sorry guys, but I'm not inclined to buy a machine from a sales droid who went out of his way to mislead me. I'll just find my machine online if I decide to buy one. Pfft.

Re:Now it makes me all more impatient

[dasil003]

While I like the specs of the new MacBooks, at their price point they don't quite cut it. Perhaps the second revision will make changes. Its just so hard to justify $600+ MacTax for 1lb of less weight and a few minor extras. Case in point CompUSA is selling an Acer duo, (1280x800 display x1400 graphics, 2GB memory, 120gb hdd, for 1299). While I understand that to some their is better engineering in the Mac I doubt the assembly lines used by either is much different). Yeah I know, its the software/experience/quality. There are levels to which all of us assign imporantance to these items. However most of it is opinion and we can all find pro and con examples to back our case. To me the justification of owning one of the new Intel based macs is being able to run any x86 OS.

These machines are for the pro users; the people who need the absolute fastest Mac laptop they can get and they need it right now. If your livelihood is based directly on Mac platform then the MacTax is incidental. Personally I wouldn't recommend anyone getting a rev1 Mac of any type. You'll be better served by waiting til the intel ibooks are released anyway. Might as well at least wait until universal binaries are out for everything you use.

I bought a top of the line PBG4 last May, and for the first time in my life I feel like I bought a machine at the best possible time. They've bumped the screen resolution and improved battery life, but that's basically the only improvement in 9 months. By the time I'm ready to upgrade they'll be deep into Intel revisions with every program universalized. This was not the case when I bought my Mac SE, Centris 610, Performa 6200, or even my G4 Tower. And don't get my started about my 286, or K6.

30" display

[Eccles]

Does anyone know why the MacBooks, with x1600 mobile radeons, can drive an external 30" Apple display at full res, but the iMac, with regular x1600s can't?

Also, anyone know why the 17" iMac can't have 256 MB of VRAM but the 20" can? Is the VRAM something that is potentially upgradeable, or do you have to buy it installed?

WoW performance

[Stradenko]

I run max res (1600x1280, or something like that), with textures at full distance/quality, and I get minor choppiness (off and on, once things load it's smooth) in IF by the bank/AH. Gryphon filghts are amazing (not only can I see the landscape, with great clarity, I can see OTHER gryphon flights cross my path -- something I could never do before)

All this using the 20" Imac duo, with 1G memory. (The universal binary vs. Rosetta made little difference in performance). IMO, the only thing that could kill the laptop is disk latency, but with those 5400rpm SATA drives in the macbooks, I doubt it will.

One thing I have noticed with Mac WoW vs. Intel WoW -- zooming out (like, with the scroll wheel) goes maybe 15 yards back in the Mac version and double that in the intel version. (e.g.: on the IF bridge in front of the AH, I can stand in the center and zoom out, straight up, and my visibility is almost exactly the length of the bridge -- on my intel box, the visibility is double that (I can see quite a ways of of the bridge)). Sadly, Blizzard has not responded to my support request regarding this.

Re:Now it makes me all more impatient

[21chrisp]

Apple contracts out construction of their laptop, so in a way you're correct that it goes down the same assembly line. The difference is that they contract out to highly respected manufactures. So your MacBook is likely to come off the line next to a Toshiba, but probably not an Acer. Acer always contracts to the lowest bidder. So of course they cost less, but are less well manufactured. The REALLY important thing regarding manufacturing , however, is the hardware that actually goes into it. This makes a big difference in stability and durability. Apple uses higher quality hardware, so you're Mac is likely to be around much longer than your Acer. I have a 6 year old mac running dual 1.6ghz G4s (upgrade) that does core image and everything. You wouldn't know it was that old, and it spent half of it's life sitting in a dusty warehouse waiting to be thrown away. Even my 6 year old linux box is consigned to the file sharing roll now.. and likely to lose even that lowly function before long. The mac is doing some pretty heavy graphics work.

It's not really fair compairing the price of a Mac to an Acer. If you compare it to premium Windows brands, it's about the same. Also.. if you want to use anything other than Windows, you'll be making big compromises w/ the Acer (a lot of hardware is not likely to work).

In the end I find Mac laptops to be only a $100-200 more than the equivelant offerings. That's fairly negligable in mind and worth the added benefits. At least that's for the Power/MacBooks. I honostly wouldn't bother with an iBook. They are (IMO) this worst of the Mac products. I'd just wait for the next paycheck and get the Power/Pro.

Re:OS is not everything

[Golias]

The Dell 9300 is a single Centrino laptop. Not at all in the same class as the MacBook.

The e1705 has dual-core models available starting at $2221 ($1971 after rebate.)

So, for $20 less than the MacBook, you get a nearly identical-spec machine with a little bit more memory and... WOAH. Stop the press.

That $1971 Dell comes with "Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950", while the MacBook features a screamin' ATI Mobility Radeon X1600.

The closest the Dell can do to match that is add the NVIDA® GeForce(TM) Go 7800... For $300 more!

So, if you want a laptop that is suitable for gaming, you will pay $300 if you follow the "Dell Dude's" advice.

ADD Apple rather than SWITCH to it

[sedyn]

When non-technical users look at buying Apple, one of the first things they typically will hear is that it isn't 100% compatible with Windows programs (Virtual PC isn't perfect)*.

That creates a degree of trepidation, and in some cases is enough to discourage a sale. That is why it is called a "switch" rather than an "add" campaign.

If supporting Windows is so terrible then why does WINE exist?

Yes, you and I might not use Windows, but some people do. And some people do actually need it for running custom programs.

People who don't know much about computers are typically a little timid of them. I like the thought of being able to tell people not to worry [sic: , relax], and that all their software will work on a shiney new Apple laptop (I only recommend Apple laptops, but would never buy a desktop), and that the quality of an Apple laptop (not to mention with Apple care) is well worth the initial cost.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_PC [wikipedia.org] - So to be honest you have to use a line like "your Apple SHOULD be able to run every Windows program" rather than "your Apple can run every Windows program" People don't like maybes when spending more than a thousand dollars.

Re:Great!

[wolrahnaes]

No shit. I had 1680x1050 on a 15" Compaq 2 years ago, and a friend of mine had 1920x1200 on a 15" Dell. Apple needs to get with the program and give laptop users better resolutions. I love my Powerbook G4, but 1280x854 is limiting. If a 1920x1200 15" model comes out, or even 1680x1050, I'll buy it in a second, to hell with my credit. No way I'm carrying around a 17" machine just to get a reasonable resolution.

If they also bring along an nVidia graphics chipset with at least 256MB of RAM, I won't be able to get my mastercard out fast enough. I used to be an ATI fanboy, but the whole Linux driver thing has me turned off to them for a while, and I hate the Catalyst Control Center. I shouldn't need to install .Net just to set up my graphics card.

Obviously neither of those are issues on OS X, but being an Intel platform I expect it to be capable of triple-booting within the next 6 months.