I WANT TO GET A MAC
RAJ
tenacious local 7,782 Posts
I'm bored with PCs, should I take the plunge? Which laptop do you recommend?
RAJ
tenacious local 7,782 Posts
Comments
I have a 17" powerbook and it is lovely but TOO BIG to carry around. It is not a laptop really = TOO HEVVVVY. GOOD FOR BIG LAYOUTS.
What you gonna do w/a mac anyways? Might help determine which one is the best for you.
I need a laptop to work wirelessly at home. Way too many instances where I'm on the 3rd floor of the mansion and wife & kid are a mile away in the family room... Optimally, I will be doing web graphics, some coding, web surfing, listening to music, the usual deal.. doubt I need a $2500 Powerbook.
Another thing is I have all my software for PC... which MAC users got me on the software hookups?
PMs
What are the most intensive, processor-hogging tasks you think you'll run?
There's also a $2000 Macbook Pro that you could consider, or, as others have noted, they'll start dropping the price on the older Aluminum Powerbooks.
I wouldn't recommend an iBook however, despite cheaper cost.
it sounds like the most rugged thing you'd be running would be photoshop. and if that's the case don't let the dorks fool you, you can cop a mid level ibook for ~$1300 that should more than meet your needs.
so dope...fast as fuck...gotta cop.
Seriously, you don't need the latest, top of the line laptop, but if you're going to get a mac, at least get a fucking powerbook. You're a grown man. You got kids and shit. An iBook is a fine machine...if you're a college student eating ramen in your dorm room.
Let me put it another way, if you get the iBook, there will be a time, sooner than you think, that you will look at it and wonder, "was this such a great idea?" You will never look at your Powerbook and encounter the same doubt.
(This goes back to Noz' thread about "iPod or not?" The Powerbook is not simply more powerful but it's a beautifully designed piece of machinery.)
PB =
cheers.
i got you, doggee. lemme know when you get it.
oh yeah. if you get that laptop, might as well cop yourself a microwave dildo. maybe you could get rane to trade you one for some free advertising?
here: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/
Yeah, just to cosign. The MacBook basically IS the G5 even if the naming convention has changed so it's not like the MacBook is some kind of stop-gap measure. It IS the next generation Apple Powerbook, just with a new name since they're not running off of the PowerPC chip anymore.
Frankly, I think MacBook = dumb as nails name but hey, whattya gonna do?
Spec-wise, dude, just go to http://apple.com and read up. Ain't no mystery, god.
Soulstrut is not special MFin' google, batches. (We might be special MFin' popsike/ebay however).
This would be another reason why Raj should consider getting a top of the line G4 Powerbook instead of the new MacBook. It'd be cheaper and he doesn't sound like he needs the extra processing power.
Even though I'm completely against all things apple (a tad biase). I completly agree with this logic. Macbook pro is better value for the money, but I'd wait a month to see what else apple comes with.
- spidey
The iBook is ok. Not a bad computer. Also, not a Powerbook.
And dude, I wsa never "shitting" on Spinna. I think he's a good producer. Don't get it twisted.
na, my bad. i was more so inquiring if the powerbook pro runs on 64 bit processing, but didn't make that clear. I thought all g5's are on the 64 bit platform.
ez.
No, the Macbookpro or whatevs is not a G5. Before you take the plunge do some research, because as of right now there is not a version of protools that will work with the intel macs. If they are smart there will be an update soon, but smart and digidesign are rarely used in the same sentence.
universal binary for apple's pro apps (logic, fcp, etc) ship in March. $49 upgrade fee for existing users.
Seriously, fuck with a mid range iBook. Better wireless reception, sturdier (powerbooks have no cross bracing so they have a tendency "wobble" when stressed), blah blah blah...
I was thinking about saving up to get one, until I read this.
From Unsanity.org
We've also lost quite a few technologies and features in this transition. All of the following items compare the Old PowerBook 15 inch to the new MacBook Pro 15 inch.
Power: The new portable ICBMs (Intel-chip based Macs, also iCBM) require more power than their previous iterations. They have a 60-watt-hour battery compared to the old PowerBook's 50-watt-hour battery. They also have 85 watt AC adapters compared to the old 65 watt AC adapters. Of course, more power also means more heat.
Parts Missing: The S-Video output, the Modem, the PCMCIA port, and the FW800 have been removed. The modem was extremely useful for those that traveled a lot and needed dialup access to get internet access. Not every hotel/rest area has an ethernet jack/wireless and not everyone can use dialup networking on their cell phone via Bluetooth. In fact, many cell phone companies do not permit you do to this kind of connection (called tethering) as they want you to purchase an additional type of service for your laptop. This additional service requires an EVDO PC Card which uses the PCMCIA slot. So far, such a card does not exist for the new ICBMs. However, the companies involved say an ExpressCard/34 solution should be available by the time the MacBook Pros ship.
The S-Video was very, very useful for presentations on projection screens. Especially when so many of today's presentations are being done via PowerPoint slides. When you're traveling a lot and doing various meetings hosted at other companies, you cannot guarantee the type of projector/video monitor they use. It may be S-Video, DVI, Composite (RCA), or even VGA. Others have suggested using the included remote to control DVD playback. It may be much more "useful" if you can output your DVD playback onto a TV screen via an S-Video cable. Yes, a DVI to S-Video adapter is available at an additional cost.
The FW800 (FireWire 800) was very useful for those that had FW800 devices and needed speed. Even more so for those that needed multiple FW400 ports because their devices weren't daisy chain-able (like the iPod, iSight, and pretty much all digital video cameras). It's not so much that you had a FW800 port, it's that you had two FW400 ports available (with an additional adapter). However, I imagine this could have been removed if having two bus powered devices on two different ports was too much of a power drain for the ICBM. Remove a feature to add longer battery life. Some people suggest these can be added back using the ExpressCard port. However, that's spending a more money for one feature as there is but one slot.
Visually Unimpressive: Here's an odd one. The old PowerBook has a 15.1 inch screen with a 1440x960 resolution. The new MacBook Pro has a resolution of 1440x900. Notice the smaller number? Yes, the new MacBook Pro has 86,400 fewer pixels than the old one. And because these pixels are in a greater area, it means the DPI is lower on the MacBook Pro as well. 60 pixels is enough space to fit the menu bar and the dock into. Vertical space is extremely crowded on most operating systems (menu bar, title bars, dock, toolbars, floating palettes in Quark) as it is.
Burning Issues: I didn't notice this until at least 3 people pointed it out to me, but the new MacBook Pro lacks Dual Layer DVD burning. I'm not even sure how that happens. Previously, Macs would come with DVD??RW burning or DVD+R DL burning without Apple even advertising it; machines would just have it included before it was a standard feature. Now they've actually removed Dual Layer burning. OMGWTF? Yes, this is very likely due to a much slimmer drive being used. In fact I'd bet on it as the slot on the MacBook Pros is near the bottom of the machine compared to being at the top in the current PowerBooks.
Arbitrary Additions: New to the MacBook Pro is a built in iSight and an IR port for the Front Row remote. I can barely understand the iSight for professional users. It might be useful for meetings on the road (or in a plane) and imagining Phil Schiller in a thong. But otherwise, it seems somewhat unnecessary. The Front Row remote I don't get at all. The MacBook Pro is a portable, professional machine, having a remote with a portable machine just seems redundant in some way. The iMac's remote can be snapped on the side of the machine via a magnet, does the MacBook Pro's act the same? All the remotes I've seen here at MWSF for the MacBook Pros were in the Apple employee's pocket or sitting on the "table" with the ICBM.
Performance: Apple says the new MacBook Pro is 4x-5x faster than the old PowerBook. I have to question this a lot. They didn't seem to mention the SPEC test was designed specifically for dual cores/processors and that the Intel compiler has been accused of cheating when it comes to compiling synthetic benchmarks in the past. But that's from memory and I can't find any concrete links on it at this time. Granted, Motorola dropped the ball and never really increased the bus speed for the G4, so even if it could process data fast, it was starved. The faster bus speed allows everything to proceed faster. However, the loss of AltiVec is a HUGE problem which Apple didn't show in their test. I watched a display MacBook Pro here at MWSF play a H.264 trailer for Fun With Dick & Jane and it was very, very noticeably skipping frames. My current 1.5Ghz PowerBook (with AltiVec, of course) plays the same trailer with no skipping. The skipping is highly noticeable on machines with 128megs VRAM (which is the default configuration for the MacBook Pros) but not very noticeable on the MacBook Pros with 256megs of VRAM. My current PowerBook G4 has 128megs of VRAM, for comparison. A friend pointed out Apple's page with some basic application benchmarks. He also seems to mention that the performance increase is very similar to the performance increase you'd get if you just added another core to the current G4s, much like Freescale's ne?? Motorola's e600 PowerPC does. Imaginary Watt per Performance Arbitrary Unit my butt. If you're going to throw out some number in the computer industry, at least define the measurements and give the math used so observers can reproduce the calculations.
All in all, it doesn't seem like the MacBook Pro is a very compelling laptop, especially without a 17-inch version. It actually seems like these things (the iMac too) were rushed into production. The MacBook Pro's case differs little from the old one and the iMac's case doesn't differ at all sans a mini-DVI out. The MacBook Pro does have one compelling feature, the magnetized power adapter. I've tripped over my current AC adapter so many times I've lost count. And it's fallen on my toes and cut up my shins when it falls. Snakes on a plane.
I should also mention that these new ICBMs from Apple use EFI instead of the standard PC BIOS. According to various documents from Microsoft, Windows for x86 machines does not support booting from EFI (HTML via Google) and won't until Windows Vista is released. As far as I know, no consumer PC ships with EFI support (why bother if Windows doesn't support it, right?). However, the Itanium machines require EFI. This has two "problems". One, you may not be able to dual boot Windows until Vista is released unless you have a third party EFI bootloader that can mimic the PC BIOS. Two, it'll be significantly harder to make OS X run on a stock PC without EFI.
I'm just saying wait for at least the second revision to come out and some end users give some feedback on these first edition macbooks.