The New Macs
My reaction: meh.
Yeah, “meh.” I was really expecting something better. The new form factor looks nice. Not incredibly cool, but nice. The black border around the screen is maybe the nicest touch, for me at least. The glass trackpad? I’ll have to try it and see. Probably it’ll be pretty good. But this is not the innovative upgrade I was expecting. No Blu-Ray. More Multi-touch, but no LCD trackpad or touch screen. Nothing that knocks my socks off, to be sure. Nice, but not great.
I will buy it, however. I have an aging 3.5-year-old G4 PowerBook, which has long been outclassed–even though it still stands up surprisingly well. I’ll even keep it, for its pre-Intel functionality, as kind of a bridge unit, a backup, something that can run a lot of the software I still would like to access once in a while (I might even downgrade the OS to something more Classic-friendly).
The new MacBook Pro (gotta have a 15-incher) will be a major upgrade for me. The ability to run Windows will be useful for my job. The 2.4 GHz dual-core low-end model will be quite sufficient, many times faster than what I’m used to, and the NVIDIA chipset will not be bad either. I’ll enjoy having a webcam on my portable, and the WiFi may even not suck like my current PowerBook’s does. I also like the fact that Apple is shaking me down a lot less than before on RAM–a 2GB upgrade to 4GB for $150 is not bad, and is even reasonable. I’ll take that, along with the 7200 RPM 250 GB drive that far outclasses the 80 GB drive I now suffer with.
Sure, it’s a big upgrade from my early-2005 model. Just not the barn-burner of a new release I was hoping for. So I’ll take it, but, you know, meh.
Update: While the “Apple tax” is imaginary, the “Living in Japan tax” is not. Even at the Education store, I will still have to pay about $300 more for the Macbook Pro here in Japan than it costs in America. True, half of that difference comes from sales tax which you can avoid in the U.S. by buying out-of-state, but it’s still a difference. And $300 is not quite worth it to put my family in the U.S. to the trouble of re-shipping a U.S.-bought machine here. Between the shipping costs and the import duty they’d slap me with the price difference would kind of disappear anyway. But it still sucks that you pay a premium for living closer to where the machines are actually produced. And ordering in Japan won’t save me time, either–getting the U.S. keyboard is a special order and usually adds a week to delivery time.
My biggest complain is the glossy screen, but no way around that one. I welcome the user-replaceable hard drive, though. It would be nice to know if OpenCL can take advantage of the dual-GPU.
GG and I were kind of bummed out too- I was thinking if there was a significant upgrade that it would make a nice Xmas present for her. Instead… eh, probably not.
I’m surprised that you would say you’re not crazy about it
and then turn around and say you will BUY it!!
When a new model line comes out that I’m not crazy about
is exactly when
I buy the older model from the past 6 or 12 months
and get a 50% discount on something that hasn’t even been used.
That’s what I did with the iLamp.
Never had one but added the last model of the line to my collection
when I saw the new model was a worse design.
You have to settle for something slightly less cutting-edge but with the savings you upgrade twice as often or have twice as many computers around.
BB: I am thinking of doing exactly that. In fact, the Apple Store is advertising a refurbished 17″ Macbook Pro for about the same base price as the new 15″. Downside: it might be too big, and I’d have to swap out all the RAM to upgrade to 4GB (I don’t think Apple builds to order for refurbished). In fact, that’s a downside of any older model, I think–having to toss 2GB of good RAM just to upgrade to 4GB. Unless you know somewhere?
In fact, I would be interested to know exactly where you could get the February 2008 MBP for a full 50% off–Apple sure doesn’t sell them that cheap. Please do tell!
But really, I am pretty much down on the new ones. Looking at the specs, there is almost no reason to buy the new one–the CPU, L2 Cache, RAM, and Superdrive are exactly the same; the FSB is 800 MHz vs. 1066 MHz, the HDD 200 GB vs. 250 GB, and the new MBP has the better graphics chips and better battery life. However, the old MBP connects to all video and I can even use adaptors I already own, there’s a FireWire 400 port, and the screen is not nearly so reflective.
For me, that’s as close to a wash as you can get. The lack of FW400 port, the super-reflective screen, and the lack of analog video out are pretty big disappointments.
As I said, do tell where one can buy for 50% off.
Luis,
I wasn’t actually responding to the specifics of your post so much, as I haven’t even looked at the new Mac laptops yet. Maybe I should have said “half or a third off” but I think 50% would be findable. I have a 12″PBg4 and a 13″MacBook that’s about 18 months old (with a dvd-drive problem i gotta get fixed tho) so I’m not really in the market, and I’m interested in running Ubuntu on much cheaper hardware my next gen if I can ever break away from Apple. I like portables as small and light as possible, hence the 12/13″ size.
I wasn’t considering the Apple store or even a high-rent area store like Akihabara, either. The iLamp I got was from a computer store in Funabashi near Makuhari–somewhere in suburbia. It HAD been used for a week or 2 by someone who brought it back. This was a while ago (2004?), so maybe I was thinking it was just half the price of the NEW models that they wanted to make space for by pricing the OLD one so it would move TODAY. Specs aren’t really ALL that different. And in your case it seems the new one didn’t have the specs you even wanted so why buy it? Why pay more for less (fewer of the specs you want)? Auction sites might be OK too but the price would be market price and not a place you could take it back to. Some used computer shops in Akihabara have racks or Mac laptops and you can just walk along the shelves like a library periodicals section and pick the model from the month that you want with the specs you want.
I guess you want…
+ 15″ (or 17)
+ Intel
+ Webcam
+ WiFi (AirMac/Port card)
+ ample RAM
+ HD as large as possible
+ US keyboard (I totally agree but it could be a problem with my approach)
+ Firewire port (you are so right!)
+ Out-to-TV (Agree!)
Given those specs, it sounds like the new model is not the one you really want. In fact, you almost NEED to run out and buy the best last getting-phased-out model now while it’s cheap and they are dumping it to make space for the new model. They might have cleared away the stock already weeks ago to build up demand for the new one, but if you can find the display model cheap, or like me, one that some sucker has returned, it might be the best for you!
My idea, for what it’s worth.
Peace.
Sorry– I’m half asleep and was looking back at your original posts and forgetting what you said in the comments. Seems like you’ve already convinced yourself, so as to where, I’d look around the massive stocks in the city but also bike/train/drive/call around to stores in the burbs/boonies that may have a model that they are basically dumping because not many people are into the LAST big thing. Just have a look around.