About today’s Macbook announcements

Chuck There's where we disagree. I drive a Lotus not for style or elan (although I used to own a Lotus Elan) but for their superb engineering and their design philosophy. If they didn't do the things I care about better than their competitors I'd buy the car that did. The problem Apple has had is that it seems as though they've forgotten the "do thing better" part and now seem to care about style for the sake of style rather than style from doing what you think is best. They've moved from style in the sense of great engineering to style in the sense of "aluminum is the new black" fashion.

drylight "Don't forget that Paul himself is a Microsoft zealot." Hardly. If any reporter bashed Apple as much as Paul bashes Microsoft (read his comments on Zune prior to v3 or XBox 360 or Windows Mobile as a start) or praised Microsoft as much as Paul praises Apple (read his comments on Apple TV or iPod or Mac hardware) he would hardly be called an Apple zealot. He'd be more likely to be tarred and feathered by the Apple fans.

@Chuck - To simplify what you are saying...For you, using a Mac makes you feel better. There could be many reasons for this, or for somebody else preferring a Windows or Linux PC.. a. It runs the applications that they use to get what they do done. b. They learned on that OS and are more comfortable using it. c. It is what they could afford. d. It matches their eyes. e. The competition pissed them off at some point. The list could go on and on. Simply put, nobody is "wrong" for using a certain OS or preferring one over the others. To say as much is idiocy. --tayme

@bettie: The Jell-o keyboards suck. There - I said it. Sony's computers are made by ASmobile - a division of Asus. Last time I looked Asus makes a LOT more PC gear than they do for Apple. @chuck: Obviously you've never used a quad-core. I bet you said the same thing when you were you using your sad little G5 when a Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading was kicking its @$$. I'll give you this one though: "640k should be enough for anyone". Obviously the Doc won't agree by the cars he drives. ;) Oh and BTW: It's another minority Conservative gov't in Canada tonight. The people have spoken. It nice to be able to live in a country where you don't have to be ashamed to have voted the sensible choice going into a recession, while still not handing over ultimate power. The sensible choice in Canada is Conservative. Can you say that? U.S.: *crickets* Nice going on that extra $250 billion buyout. That other $700 billion really went far.... :)P I bet Bush probably spent it all on [the wrong nation's] Thanksgiving weekend on a bender involving hookers and coke.

@mikegalos Apple's presentation seemed to be completely about "superb engineering" and "design philosophy" yet you see it as "style for the sake of style". Seems to me to be a rathe perverse observation. Perhaps they should have wrapped up their new MacBooks in a sheet of bamboo... like Dell.

Hey where's pappy so I can make fun of him about the lack of his connection of choice. Firewire is dead, john. The Steve has spoken. :p

bettieblue There's nothing wrong with them aside from being vastly overpriced. The problem is that with a limited line of only 3 models of laptops and so limited a range of options inside that line and such a long turn-around between revisions, a major revision of the line should be more than "nothing wrong". It should be compelling. These are not compelling improvements.

@ Wae "I've seen Sony's software loadout. I'm not impressed" I guess I would never know. I would download the drivers from Sony that I absolutely need, drivers from Nvidia/Intel for the parts that are in that Sony from them, and pop in the Vista DVD and go. No way would I use the Sony/Dell/HP or whomever build. I do the same on OS X. I do a custom build on OS X and remove the 50 or so languages I wont use, and GIGS of printer drivers I will never use.

The elections in Canada were a waste of money. Who knows how much spent on adds... and they get what? 3 more seats? BQ is gaining seats again! Minority will only last probably at most 2 years. (Ah well that’s politics for you) Oh and back on topic. I think that Mac’s are overhyped but not to say they are terrible computers. My G4 sure lasts longer then the gateway laptop I had before.

I chose sony viao TZ237GN over the Macbook Air six months ago, because I wanted a very light weight PC with a DVD writer. I love the sony viao TZ237GN and the new Z 13 inch - it is brilliant. The new macbook 13 inch looks very interesting but glossy screen no way and no firewire!. The sony viao has a glossy or bright screen but sony is very clever - they placed an AR (Anti reflection) coating on the screen - it really helps in cutting back the reflection and it still looks very sharp and bright. The only thing I miss on my viao is a backlight keyboard and a high end graphics card - my MS Flight simulator has to operate at a low scenery density!.

Actually, there is one very important use that macs make of firewire. As macs are claimed to have a stronghold in audio recording and editing, and most audio interfaces (particularly those used with laptops for location or home studio recordings) use firewire as their interface, maybe apple has shot itself in the foot?

The Migration assistant also uses firewire, you can network over firewire, even some pro cameras (besides video cameras) use it etc. I think I'll send Apple an angry mail about this nonsense.

"Firewire is for high end video cameras" Oh, really? Like the $200 JVC MiniDV camera I bought from Sam's Club? "Most pro users doing heavy lifting with audio or video would be using more of a 'pro' machine." Then tell me, "drylight", what's "iLife" all about? Is that marketed towards pros? It's hardly a "pro" application (especially the new iMovie, which is a complete joke compared to the older version). King Steve and His Court talk about the wonders of video editing on a Mac, then rip out the protocol that most people use to get the video INTO THE SYSTEM. Particularly in education markets, this is a ridiculously shortsighted and ignorant move. For once, I'm in total agreement with Paul. Yesterday's announcement was a joke. "We're saving big money on a new manufacturing process!" (But we're not passing on the savings to you). "We're introducing a new MacBook that's perfect for video editing!" (But we're taking away FireWire, so good luck getting that video into the computer). "We're dropping the price on the el-cheapo MacBook!" (Our best-selling Mac ever, so we've recovered all our cost and then some, but still won't drop the price to where it's reasonable in today's economy). Dumba$$es. What I don't understand is why all you WinJihadists who profess to think of Apple only rarely have given this issue so much "virtual ink". Paul's commentary was concise and to the point. Y'all just can't help yourselves, can you? (And before someone points it out...yes I know there are USB to FireWire adapters. I don't trust them. Working with FireWire for video is particularly tricky with SONY cameras, and another layer of complexity and expense is the last thing people need.)

"Steve gets up there, snaps his fingers, and the crowd starts to weep uncontrollably." Get a life, a$$hat. No one was "weeping uncontrollably". And if you were to actually to the requisite 10 minutes of research, you'd actually find that the reaction in the Mac community largely mirrors Paul's. There are exceptions, to be sure (and I'm sure we'll soon see those links from "mikegalos" and "waethorn"), but there isn't a terrible amount of excitement here. I suspect you know that, but then it wouldn't make for a very interesting snarky post, would it? Conversely, "mikegalos" is EXACTLY right when he says, "The problem is that with a limited line of only 3 models of laptops and so limited a range of options inside that line and such a long turn-around between revisions, a major revision of the line should be more than "nothing wrong". It should be compelling. These are not compelling improvements." As I stated in earlier, I don't know why he cares when he doesn't see Apple as competition. But whatever...he's still right.

On the bright side, the new low end model is cheaper and could appeal to the more impulsive buyer, although we know that a Vista model is even cheaper. Still it's possible as we are out there. An example is my Benz. I wanted to lease to update my car more often and saw the lease special and made the choice in 5 to 10 minutes. It's AWD, and I usually drive an SUV, but the impulse was there. [I'm am thinking about replacing it with an Acura MDX due to it's size and 3rd row of seats.] The cheapo $400 laptop that I bought was a focus in price for a computer that I really did not need right now, but it 'looked' like a good buy [and I think it was], so the impulse prevailed. Still The price increase in the two other models and lack of FW may not have been good judgement. I would like to know the idea behind it. We will se in sales volume in the next few quarters, I guess.

"Maybe you should just install a Firewire ExpressCard...." Touché, Wae. Is this a french Canadian word from German descent with Asian overtone?

Waethorn I said, "For a laptop, and the way 99% of people use laptops, I don't really know what you do with a quad-core." And I stand by that. OTOH, ---I'd--- like to have a quad core(!), but then I'm in the lunatic fringe posting on this board. As for this, "Obviously you've never used a quad-core. I bet you said the same thing when you were you using your sad little G5 when a Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading was kicking its @$$." Curiously enough, when the dual G5's were Apple's top of the line, we did detailed head-to-head comparisons of our fire modeling codes and the G5 was faster than the P4. BTW, hyperthreading makes almost zero difference on a code that is not a mix of integer and floating point operations, and ours (like most such scientific codes) was nearly 100% floating point. In the end, the fact that the G5 was faster was essentially irrelevant because the boxes were expensive and flops/$ favored the P4. We bought a bunch of Dells and put Linux on them to build a cluster, and I did the admin work from my G5. Again, this is the "right tool for the job approach". @Mike, yah, actually the "elan" comment was a bit of an inside joke. I know all about that model Lotus. Didn't know you owned one though; nice car. @Lotsamystuff "As I stated in earlier, I don't know why he cares when he doesn't see Apple as competition." Yah, that is the mystery. Macs are irrelevant compared to the Windows juggernaut that rules the world and at the SAME TIME, everything that Apple does must be deirided and scorned because it is so UNFAIR to the great Windows empire. I can certainly understand either viewpoint, but what I've never gotten is that so many here seem to say both things at the same time. And, finally back on the POINT of this thread, the basic question is whether this Mac notebook update is anything substantive and important. Well, to me, not so much. However, as Apple has already demonstrated with the (in my view, flawed and limited) Macbook Air, they know how to design products that will sell, and these new notebooks will, regardless of price and limitations. The reason is what I was trying to suggest above, they do good design and people like the products.

"BTW, hyperthreading makes almost zero difference on a code that is not a mix of integer and floating point operations, and ours (like most such scientific codes) was nearly 100% floating point." Actually, you're wrong there. It improves the responsiveness and efficiency of a system running ANY type of code, so long as the code supports multithreading. If it doesn't, Windows will still balance independent threads. The Dual G5's were faster than P4's, but by that time the Pentium D's were already out and kicking their A$$ too. The Pentium Extreme Edition chips with dual-core also support Hyperthreading, so they could run 4 independent threads. They were energy hogs, but the G5's were too, even if they weren't as fast. The Dual G5's required special support for them, while Windows was already optimized for multi-CPU, and thus, Hyperthreading, making machines much more responsive under heavy load. That benefitted everyone.

Actually a comparable 17 in HP with the same hardware config as the base model 17 in MBP is around $1,000 cheaper than the MBP, even when adding a DVD making app. It's true that the MB is only a little more expense than Windows config, but just check that MBP and you'll be shocked. I was exploring one for my nephew until i found the price difference, then even found a $500 off coupon for the HP and upgraded everything, including a RAID 0 with two 7200 RPM HD's, 4GB RAM, the top end CPU, so still got it for around $1,500, because of all the discounts. Check the HP website. If Apple made a $500 cheapo laptop with a cheap 14 or 15 in screen, I would have bought it. But my laptop needs are very basic, so it was a no brainer.

Waethorn, I won't send the whole thread of in a discussion of hyperthreading, but we benchmarked our codes with HT on/off and found something like 1-2% differences. Now, like most codes with a long legacy base (Fortran, no less) the code wasn't designed for a P4s with HT (aside from being old, it had to run on everything), so the only benefit we could get, since the floating point code was not MT, was simultaneous use of the integer processing. Since the code had essentially none of that, we got no benefit. I don't doubt that you can do slightly better if you design the code from the ground up with HT in mind, but we didn't have that luxury. This was circa 2003, so HT may have evolved since then; don't know. Two links on these new machines, the Macworld first look and an Apple movie on the design and manufacturing of these things. http://www.macworld.com/article/136063/2008/10/macbook_first_look.html http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/mac/macbook/2008/designvideo/app... People here will predictably find the movie inspirational or sheer puffery. It IS a commercial, no doubt of it, and the manufacturing process is utterly routine, except that it hasn't been applied to laptops before. However, they do make these things look gorgeous and they're gonna sell like hotcakes. I will say that Ives believes in his soul that these products need to be gorgeous, and his philosophy sure works for me; it makes me WANT to use these things, and that's why they'll be best sellers.

"the code wasn't designed for a P4s with HT (aside from being old, it had to run on everything), so the only benefit we could get, since the floating point code was not MT, was simultaneous use of the integer processing. Since the code had essentially none of that, we got no benefit." You don't "optimize for HT" - you just make it multi-threaded. Windows will balance the threads for itself. If the code isn't multi-threaded, then HT, multi-core, or multi-CPU will be equally unbeneficial. As far as the new MacBook's are concerned, I find them unattractive. The black-on-silver colour treatment is UGGGH-LY! Make it black, or make it silver, but don't combine the colours. Ick!

"Windows will balance the threads for itself. If the code isn't multi-threaded, then HT, multi-core, or multi-CPU will be equally unbeneficial." Just to be a little more precise, you will get some benefit from HT, multi-core or multi-CPU systems even on code that isn't written to support multithreading because while that app will be running on one core, the other processes in the system will migrate to the less used cores so you'll end up with at least a little use of the other cores.

"So how do you boot up an external hard drive that has a clone of your MAC OS that has been made with a utility like superduper?" All Intel Macs support booting off of USB2

My Canon video camera I bought last year connects via USB2. I think this is the direction that things are heading. I have a number of Firewire 400 peripherals which means that after receiving the MacBook Pro I ordered yesterday, I'll have to get an adapter, but that's not really a big deal.

I think that we all know that Paul is a proxy that MS has 'hired' in their fight with Apple. I found it interesting that Wikipedia notes that his integrity has been called into question...and also that the discussion page seems to insinuate that he's tried to have that part of the writeup taken down.