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New Core i5/i7 MacBook Pros released
- antidaily 17y agoOnly in 15". the 13" are c2d.
- Dylanfm 17y agoWow, I can't believe they actually released another one with Core 2 Duo.
- jrockway 17y agoIt eliminates the ??? step: Step 1: Release Core 2 Duo Step 2: Release Core 2 Duo now that they're practically free Step 3: Profit.
- salsabor 17y agoI think the point is Apple prefers the 13" Macbook pro having the more powerful NVIDIA integrated GPU over the iX Intel Core CPUs's Intel HD integrate GPU.
- OrangeGuutan 17y agoNot to be snarky, but, we know :) "We chose killer graphics plus 10 hour battery life over a very small CPU speed increase. Users will see far more performance boost from the speedy graphics" (Steve Jobs).
- astrodust 17y agoNo amount of CPU would make the NVidia 9400 faster. It's simply a dog.
- enterneo 17y agoIs there really any difference between 13" MBP and 13" MB apart from unibody? (and is it worth the price difference?)
- dagw 17y agoGiven how evasive the salesman at my local Apple store was when I asked that question recently I imagine it's not much of a difference.
- jbellis 17y agoI don't think the non-pro model can drive a 30" monitor.
- borism 17y agoboth had Nvidia GeForce 9400M
- jonknee 17y agoAs of the update today the MBP is more desirable: significantly better better life, twice the RAM, slightly faster CPU and that slick unibody case which is thinner and lighter. Before the refresh the MB was the best bang for buck.
- Tichy 17y agoNot Apple's fault, but I have troubles with the naming schemes of the new Intel CPUs. Somehow if a CPU is called Core i5 or Core i7, I expect it to have 5 or 7 cores respectively. I take it that isn't the case?
- Anon84 17y agoThese current incarnations have 2 cores. I'm a bit disappointed that Apple didn't go for the 4-core i5/i7, though.
- jrockway 17y agoProbably because the top-end TDP is 130W for the i7. That has a tendency to lead to low battery life.
- yread 17y agoThere isn't a 4 core mobile i5. The i5 should mean mainstream and i7 enthusiast performance. So you have i5-520M, i5-540M and i7-620M dual cores and i7-720QM, i7-820QM and i7-920QM quad cores. And their TDP is 35W for dual cores and 45W for quad cores. See http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Processors-Arrandale.25085.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Proc... for perfomance of these new chips
- veemjeem 17y agoThese are laptops... so I'd rather have battery life over performance.
- shpxnvz 17y ago
- davecardwell 17y agoIf you go to customise there are new display options on the 15" models - http://store.apple.com/uk/learnmore/MC371B/A?group=macbookpro_display_15 http://store.apple.com/uk/learnmore/MC371B/A?group=macbookpr...
- hackermom 17y agoHas anyone come across performance tests between nVidias older 9400M chip and their new 320M chip? I find it interesting that the 13" models now tout a "10 hour battery", up from the old 7 hour one - I am curious to find out if it's all caused by replacing the old 9400M north/southbridge with the 320M, or if there is also a new battery behind it. A 45% increase in estimated avg. battery time is a pretty damned nice number for any laptop user.
- borism 17y agolooking at specs new battery is 63.5Wh vs older model's 60Wh
- hackermom 17y agoMeaning the 320M is a whole lot more power efficient than the 9400M. Thanks for the numbers.
- benologist 17y agoThe benchmarks will probaby be on this site somewhere - http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark...
- grk 17y agoIs there any reason to be excited about the new CPUs? I'd say that the high-res display on 15" and better battery life are more interesting. Also, any info if the graphic cards switch automagically or you have to log out?
- Anon84 17y agoAccording to the website you shouldn't even notice the switch: www.apple.com/macbookpro/performance.html
- Dylanfm 17y agoIt seems Nvidia's Optimus has made it in to this generation -http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html
- cpr 17y agoApparently not: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/13/nvidia_says_new_macbook_pro_graphics_switching_isnt_optimus.html http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/13/nvidia_says_ne... .
- jrockway 17y agoIn my experience, the i7 is ungodly fast. A linux recompile is about 20 seconds on my box. Unfortunately, it's the i5 that has crypto acceleration. The i7 does about 80MB/s/core, and the i5 does something like 2000MB/s. But is slower otherwise. Fucking Intel....
- petercooper 17y agoI can't speak for the mobile models but on the desktop, i5 vs i7 is a wash for most tasks with only a few percent in it.
- Anon84 17y ago
- jcromartie 17y agoI just got a new MacBook about two weeks ago. Edit: My employer paid for it, so I'll probably stick with it.
- booticon 17y agoThis should help you in the future: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
- ciniglio 17y agoIf it's been less than fourteen days, you can return it and only pay a restocking fee to upgrade.
- jbellis 17y agoBetween the (10%) restocking fee and the pita-ness of switching machines, I'm not sure that's such a great deal. :( (I added my own SSD to mine, so it's not just a matter of Time Machine.)
- aarongough 17y agoIf you're a business customer they'll often exchange your Mac without charge if you bought it within the 14 day grace period. That's been my experience anyway...
- martythemaniak 17y agoLooks like a nice upgrade. One thing I really wish they would change is the clicking on the trackpad - instead of a heavy hinge at the top, it should be equally and easily depressable everywhere (for example, like the BB Storm2 screen). I don't know if I could use my macbook without turning on touch-to-click.
- carterschonwald 17y agoi think the hinging probably increases the overall expected lifetime as the pad, 'cause then theres fewer degrees of freedom where friction wear needs to be accounted for, but this is only personal speculation/experience
- quellhorst 17y agoIs SATA 6gbps supported?
- wmf 17y agoNo.
- mike-cardwell 17y agoBut will these new Macbooks play flash without overheating and making the fan spin up to max? Can't even watch a 2 minute Youtube video on mine without it going mental.
- ihodes 17y agoNo, and ask Adobe why.
- oconnor0 17y agoIsn't Apple to blame for not exposing the APIs to allow use of the graphics card from within Safari?
- cjbos 17y agoHave you tried the new 10.1 beta? http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/ http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/ apparently it's meant to solve a few performance problems for Mac users... would be interesting to hear any feedback from a Mac user. Edit: Forget this comment, didn't realize until now that hardware acceleration for video decoding was not coming to the Mac, just the PC. That sucks.
- ihodes 17y agoIt's better(ish). But it's hardly good.
- karipatila 17y agoNot sure about any performance problems it might have solved for me. I just don't see a difference.
- mike-cardwell 17y agoI tried the beta about a month ago. Made no difference to the fan problem, but it did leave a string of text in the middle of every video. I can't remember what it says as I've not got my macbook to hand but it normally disappears a few seconds after a video starts in the non-beta version.
- ihodes 17y agoAny way to find out what "solid state drive" they've got? Is it Intel's X2? That'd make a big difference in how much I'd want to spend/how much time I'd want to spend installing my own.
- jbellis 17y agoAll of apple's SSDs are Samsung, by a large margin the worst on the market. http://it.anandtech.com/show/2829/19 http://it.anandtech.com/show/2829/19
- ihodes 17y agoGood to know. Waste of a thousand or so $. Was hoping it had changed for this release, but I suppose that's hoping too much.
- jrockway 17y agoThe best strategy with Apple is to skimp on everything and upgrade it yourself. The price difference will cover a second laptop if you fuck the first one up.
- edj 17y agoThis is what I've always done. I managed to keep my first Mac (a TiBook) feeling fresh for 6 years, and my second (a MacBook) still seems basically new at 2 years. But can you do this with the unibody MBPs? The battery's not user replaceable, right? What about the HD and RAM?
- rbrcurtis 17y agoThe ram is absolutely replaceable and easy to do. From reading above, it looks like the HDD is pretty easy as well.
- DenisM 17y agoThe 8Gb RAM upgrade now is $400 - same price if you buy it on newegg. You could argue that you will still have 4Gb laying around, but I personally have no use for that and can't be bothered to sell it.
- jrockway 17y agoSeems like I replied to the wrong article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1261802 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1261802 Anyway: Very expensive. Why not go for a netbook and desktop instead? Are you really so mobile that you're willing to pay $1000 to get less hardware?
- ugh 17y agoSure. Most laptops are definitely powerful enough for my needs and I absolutely can’t stand the fixed nature of desktop systems (and their ugliness). My laptop is not on my desk most of the time, even though I don’t really take it with me (anymore) when I leave the house. (I’m also one of those strange people who prefer using a trackpad to using a mouse.)
- philwelch 17y agoI replaced my desktop with a MacBook and an external screen, keyboard, and mouse. I get all the performance I need, the experience of a desktop, mobility, and no need to keep anything synchronized across different machines.
- elai 17y agoI eventually got a desktop because I didn't want to keep on re-plugging every time I got home and have lesser screen real estate than two dedicated screens and got a lighter secondary laptop. It's really a shame that macbooks don't have docks.
- philwelch 17y agoRe-plugging when you get home is a lot easier when you have a second power adapter that lives on the desk.
- cpr 17y agoAnd even easier when using the 24" (LED) Cinema Display with the built-in power adaptor. Just plug in power, USB (hub), and video from the same cable group and you're done.
- sz 17y agoNo USB 3?! Hello, Thinkpad.
- jboydyhacker 17y agoNice to have i5/i7 but the NVidia GPU is somewhat terrible. An ATI 5xxx series is not only more power efficient which Apple cares about, but much more powerful. No IPS screen or USB 3.0 which you sorta want given the premium status of mbps. Jobs commented that MBP would go to a "new level" this year-- this isn't quite new level so I would guess another update in the fall. SSD upgrades also not as useful since no TRIM support. Still the sexiest laptop out there tho so what can ya do but give Steve your money?
- whalesalad 17y agoOne reason I like my nVidia chip is that the Adobe creative suite (Photoshop CS4, and I'd assume CS5) takes advantage of the GPU to take load off the CPU. I'm not a gamer though, so I don't have anything to share in that department. Link: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15571 http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15571
- jboydyhacker 17y agoYeah but they could have at least done more memory on the GPU if they were gonna do a 330m. And if you are gonna stick with Nvidia why not do a NVidia 335 which has been out a while now.
- elai 17y agoNot give him your money. MBPs are not that special.
- callahad 17y agoWhat else is available with a similar build quality? Anything besides ThinkPads?
- jbellis 17y agoDell Studio XPS or HP Envy line are good alternatives, depending on what you need. Both are available with higher-res screens and faster (quad core i7) cpus than the mbp, for instance. The major caveats on the Envy are that it has serious, deep issues preventing Linux from running on it, and it has no displayport or dvi out for driving a 30" monitor. The Dell's biggest weakness is battery life.
- yread 17y agoAny idea how come the battery is so huge and so light at the same time? 78Wh for a battery that doesnt protrude from the case is a lot
- philwelch 17y agoWhen you remove the constraint that the battery has to be user-removable and user-replacable, you get to choose battery sizes and shapes that are a lot more impressive.
- cpr 17y agoAlso, Apple is putting a fair bit of fundamental R&D into battery technology, pushing existing technology as far as they can, and, presumably, investigating future. They're clearly obsessed with battery life at the highest (read: Jobsian) levels.
- mark_l_watson 17y agoI bought a new laptop recently: i5 Toshiba, 4GB, 0.5 TB. Also plays blu-rays. It cost just under $800. There is no near match with Apple's new lineup, but roughly the Apple tax is about 50% and for those of us who mostly boot Linux the price difference is just not worth it. I must say though, that for developers who live in OS X, the new i7 MBP 15" does look great.
- ryoshu 17y agoI have a Studio XPS 16 on the way (RGBLCD @1920x1080). It was about $1500 after coupons and it blows these MacBook Pros out of the water (a lesser configured MBP runs about $2300). Apple's actions last week had me ordering the Dell Friday morning.
- mark_l_watson 17y agoJust looked at the Studio XPS 16 - sweet. A bit off topic, but Windows 7 is actually OK. For work using platform agnostic IDEs (for me, this is IntelliJ for Java/Scala/Clojure/JRuby), the choice of OS does not matter much, so at least for my work load I don't even have to boot to Ubuntu all of the time.
- AlisdairO 17y agoArent you lucky to get a couple of hours battery life with those? That would drive me nuts.
- ryoshu 17y agoIf I can get 3-4 hours I'll be happy. It will be my new mobile workstation that I can use at the office, home and sometimes while travelling. I have a Vaio i3 14" if I need to do extended work, but the lack of resolution and smaller keyboard on the Vaio doesn't lend itself to long coding sessions. My last hacking laptop was a Vostro 1500 with a 1680x1050 resolution. The 9 cell battery lasted about 4 hours while coding, so I carried two of them. I may do the same with the Studio XPS 16.
- borism 17y ago
- l0nwlf 17y agoA brief history of 15" PB/MBP screen resolution: Oct'01-1152x768, Apr'02-1280x854, Oct'05-1440x960, Feb'06-1440x900, Apr'10-1680x1050 - finally!
- kevinherron 17y agoThis was one of the first things I noticed. I've always considered the MBP pretty much perfect except for the lower 1440x900 screen resolution. Now I wish I could upgrade mine :)
- pw 17y agoBut it looks like 1680x1050 is $100 more. 1440x900 is still the default configuration. The 1680x1050 screen is offered in both "Glossy" and "Antiglare", though. (PS: Is "Antiglare" just Apple's marketing term for matte?)
- cpr 17y agoYes.
- jonknee 17y agoI'm surprised Apple's marketing team uses the name anti-glare as it makes the default configuration seem like the glare version. Matte doesn't have that connotation.
- jcl 17y agoHowever, implying that "anti-glare" is better makes it easier to justify charging an extra $50 (for something that used to come standard on all devices... grr).
- astrodust 17y agoI like how they charge $50 extra for what is essentially removing the plastic screen protector cover that causes all the "glare" in the first place. A "matte" MacBook Pro has an exposed screen, no black border where the plastic cover is mounted, and looks almost perversely naked.
- seltzered 17y agoSo, I priced my MBP out to around $2500 bucks, and a somewhat similar Lenovo T510 to $1869. I was thinking about getting a mac really just to have the option to do mac desktop application development. Would I be better off with a hackintosh setup instead?
- rdl 17y agoNot really; the hassle of maintaining a hackintosh is high. (I've considered it). Your time should be worth the $650 or so. I would consider the W510 to be a closer analogue, too.
- seltzered 17y agoThanks for the replies. I guess I'll go see a macbook pro in stores tomorrow, and carry a couple of dell laptops with me for comparison. I really like the form factor of 14" (1440x900) matte screen laptops my work has. I'm looking for something with a similar feel, and hopefully something with good audio quality (all my dells have had noisy outputs, I end up using my iphone more for music these days because of it).
- zefhous 17y agoI don't have hackintosh experience but here are my thoughts. - The trackpad. You won't be able to use gestures and multi-touch features. Especially if you use some software that lets you add custom multi-touch gestures, it's really nice to have a huge trackpad with gestures. - Battery life (and longevity) will almost certainly be significantly better on a MacBook Pro. - Apple's support is pretty great. If you have any hardware issues Apple will take good care of you. Sometimes you have to push for it, but I've had a 2 year old computer replaced with a new one because they couldn't fix a relatively minor WiFi issue. - The MacBook Pro displays are really good and viewing angles are much better than most PC displays I've seen. You can optionally bump up the resolution of the 15" MBP to 1680x1050 for $100. - Backlit keyboard — I thought I wouldn't really care about it, I type in Dvorak anyway so I don't need to see my QWERTY keyboard, but this is actually really nice in low-light situations. - I've also read that there's a lot more that makes Mac hardware fast than just the tech specs. The hardware is well tuned. A lot of these are little things, but they add up and make for a really good experience.
- davidedicillo 17y agoThe Apple Care will expire this summer, I think I'll hold up until the fall to see if they introduce USB3
- rmoriz 17y agoSo many say the SSDs delivered by Apple don't perform and recommend Intel SSDs. But when you need 256GB or 500GB there's no choice, right?
- wmf 17y agoSandForce is available in 200GB and 400GB and is as fast as Intel. If you want 512GB you definitely don't have many choices.
- bmalicoat 17y agoI have a fall 2008 unibody MBP that requires a complete logout to switch graphics cards. Anyone know if the ability to switch on the fly requires hardware or will it make its way back down to older owners via a software update?
- tdmackey 17y agoIt's a hardware thing, so no. Surprisingly though it isn't Nvidia's Optimus switching stuff but rather some proprietary apple concoction.
- avani 17y agoI had to fact-check this because some sites (including Ars) are incorrectly reporting that Apple does use Optimus. Here is a link from Apple Insider discussing Apple's graphics switching: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/13/nvidia_says_new_macbook_pro_graphics_switching_isnt_optimus.html http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/13/nvidia_says_ne...
- mmagin 17y agoI'm assuming that they didn't put the better processor in the 13" due to thermal or battery requirements. Sad, I would really have liked that config.
- alanl 17y agoI was wondering that myself. I have been holding off upgrading my 13" MB for the new line MBP. Now I'm thinking I should just bite the bullet and shell out the extra couple hundred for a 15".