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Well that was weird
Mac… Book..... Mac… Book.....
No matter which way I say it, it still sounds like it’s a huge waste of 15 years worth of marketing. And with it being the MacBook Pro what will that make the PowerMac? The Mac Pro? And then what happens to the iBook? All this is confusing.
What is more confusing is the choice of Macs being updated. Why the Pow..erm.. MacBook and the iMac first? I mean, there are VERY few pro apps out there that are Universal Binaries. In fact I think the only one might be Quark (since when has Quark released an update so quickly?). Apple has said their pro apps will be out later in the year. But who honestly will care that these new Macs are 2-3x faster when they run pro apps like a machine they bought 2-3 years ago? At the prices they’ve set they aren’t going to appeal to consumers and there’s gonna be no major demand from pros until the pro apps are out. The thing is that Apple could’ve got away with releasing an Intel iBook or a Mac Mini that is technically faster than the PowerBook or iMac, because the majority of apps will run faster on the latter 2 machines.
Oh well, what about the rest of the keynote? Well it seems that Apple has pulled the carpet out from under another small developers feet with iWeb. Other than that the iLife and iWeb updates aren’t really that big. I suppose it was kinda bright when it came to not over doing it with the iPod.
Well let’s get onto another subject, the actual Macs themselves (assuming Apple finishes messing up their site for me to look at them:
MacBook Pro
Well, let’s start… It has an Intel Inside. By the looks of the photos it has no stickers on but that could be deceiving. I can’t seem to find any mention of battery life so I’m guessing it’s less than before. There’s also the iSight and FrontRow, which is actually pretty amazing. Oh and there’s also a lack of Firewire 800, which is slightly disturbing. And of course the name.... What were they smoking?
iMac
There’s not much to say. It’s pretty much the same as before except that it’s got an Intel processor inside. I still think I’ll get one of the last 17” iMac G5’s though. I’d rather have a good PPC mac as a send off.
All in all a pretty, well.. weird keynote. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get round the name…
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thinkback
yes… interesting. I also think that the lack of FW800 is a bad omen. It seems to me that they have worked all out to get the Intel chips inside (sorry!!) at all costs. No new design.., no new shapes etc. The built-in iSight would have been scheduled long ago. I also completely agree on being mystified as to why they dropped the Powerbook name. Oh well. So, most likely the 15 inch is the most popular Powerbook and the current spec for the new MacBookPro will find itself transmogrified to the next iBook iteration, with a coincident revision of the entire “powerbook” range in a new casing etc etc (and the dropping of FW), in the autumn. I won’t be buying one for now, certainly. On the side of techie questions, now we’ll see how they are avoiding the new native OS running in regular intel boxes - maybe back to the old ROM? Also, it will be interesting to see the real-world speed tests. On the software side, I think the updates to iPhoto, Keynote and Pages sound intersting, but now spectacular.. these I will buy today!
Of course they were called Powerbooks well before they had PowerPC chips in them.
Still, IBM owns the copyright on PowerPC. so it’s hard to call them “PowerBooks� at this point.
What does PowerPC have to do with “Powerbook?” The last laptop I had with the name Powerbook on it, had a 68030 chip in it.
I’m simultaneously relieved and disappointed that Apple stuck with the same basic look. I like the clean lines of the PowerBooks and such, but I would have liked to see Apple’s designers show off.
And “MacBook Pro” blows as a name.
| Nick | Jan. 10, 2006 | |
| 12:57 pm |
Yeah, I am pretty underwhelmed, a dual core powerpc could have done made similar performance numbers. I agree the name is dumb and the lack of Firewire 800 sucks.
RE: IBM owns the the copyright on PowerPC.
Yeah, I momentarily forgot that Apple had PowerBooks before the PPC chips. And I just double-checked, and they maintained the trademark even after Apple, IBM, and Motorola formed the AIM Alliance.
Still, it makes sense for Apple to move away from the name to avoid confusing. Still, I think I would have preferred just calling it “Mac Book” without the “Pro” affixed to it.
And I missed that the new book didn’t have FireWire 800 on it. Shame.
Not that it’s THAT crucial, but it also lost the built-in modem.
Apple has said their pro apps will be out later in the year. But who honestly will care that these new Macs are 2-3x faster when they run pro apps like a machine they bought 2-3 years ago?
What are you basing that on?
| Jan. 10, 2006 | ||
| 3:22 pm |
Not having FW800 is a deal breaker for me.
A significant segment of their PB [nee MacBook Pro] market are video editors that require a secondary FW port. They now only have one FW port. If they had 2 FW 400 ports on separate buses it would have been acceptable [barely I might add]. But now forget it.
There will be a tyranical barrage of “you stooopid idiots” from the video editing crowd towards Apple.
I think firewire 800/1394b will show up on the 17” version and they are using 1394b to differentiate between consumer and prosumer versions
You may be right Jeff about it showing up on the 17” but most people feel the 15” is the *perfect* sized Mac laptop balancing portability with usability.
Hopefully, there is a PCMCIA card that does FW800 and works under OS 10.4.x
Pro users don’t have to worry now anyway cuz none of the key apps are ported to intel yet.
$2000 and $2500 is a lot more money than $700 or $800.
And every time I try to say “Macbook” several times fast, I sound like a chicken.
Apple has said their pro apps will be out later in the year. But who honestly will care that these new Macs are 2-3x faster when they run pro apps like a machine they bought 2-3 years ago?
2-3 times faster in SPEC… which means next to nothing in the real world. If they were to say it is 2-3 times faster in Photoshop, Quicktime Encoding, iTunes encoding, or something like that then it would be impressive but without real-world numbers we need to wait for Barefeats to give us a real representation of how fast these new Macs really are.
| Jan. 10, 2006 | ||
| 4:57 pm |
Anyone else think it’s odd that Apple isn’t listing the battery life on the Macbook Pro? Did they lower the screen resolution back to WXGA from WSXGA+? That would explain the brighter screen.
I’m impressed they got that video card in such a small package (although we don’t know how the machine deals with heat yet).
| Jan. 10, 2006 | ||
| 5:07 pm |
1394b will come (either as an add-on card, or as part of the high-end or Rev B. machines)
hardware developers now have to contend with creating a totally new card since Apple has dropped the old cardbus/pcmcia standard and gone with the new ExpressCard format (which I am still trying to find some information on)…
Did they lower the screen resolution back to WXGA from WSXGA+?
I hope so, my dad has a new AlBook and the lines on the screen are so visible to me that I can’t really use it. Apparently Dell is having the same problems on some of their laptops.
What are you basing that on?
At the moment, the fact that my 3 year old TiBook boots photoshop faster than the iMac did in that demo. It booted almost as fast as my 4 year old iBook. It may be much faster when we get native versions of apps but until then it’s kinda pointless.
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| Jan. 10, 2006 | |
| 5:43 pm |
I hope so, my dad has a new AlBook and the lines on the screen are so visible to me that I can’t really use it. Apparently Dell is having the same problems on some of their laptops.
Dell Latitude D810.
| Nick | Jan. 10, 2006 | |
| 6:02 pm |
At the moment, the fact that my 3 year old TiBook boots photoshop faster than the iMac did in that demo.
Launch time doesn’t mean much, really. How many shootouts have you seen where they compare the launch time of After Effects versus the time it takes to render a comp?
I haven’t seen the keynote or read much of Apple’s copy yet, so I’m asking you these questions with sincerity and not sarcasm.
But I would look at the speed of Photoshop’s PSBench and After Effects Total Training bench before I formed an opinion on how fast or slow the emulation is.
I transitioned to PowerPC from 680XX and I remember that the speed of the non-native applications was the same or a bit better simply because the PowerPC processor was so much faster it made up for the emulation. And when those apps went native, boy did we see a huge speed increase.
I also remember Classic with Photoshop. You had to launch Classic and there was that issue with the UI jumping back and forth, but I tested Photoshop and timed filters in Classic in OS X and in OS 9 natively and the times were almost identical.
Apple’s benchmarks for the MacBook Pro:
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/intelcoredu o.html
Cinebench is 3.1X faster. That’s pretty damn impressive. So the MacBook Pro is 3X faster in Cinema and it’s the same price.
Since when is jumping in speed by a factor of 3 for the same price not a big announcement?
I’m wondering what Apple would have to announce for everyone to be happy. 
| Jan. 10, 2006 | ||
| 6:24 pm |
Overall I found the new MacBooks very impressive. The speed increase is awesome. The lack of the FW800 port was very disappointing. Someone from the design team was on the show floor and said it was a trade off to keep the device thin. He suggested that an Expresscard could add more FW ports.
Just curious why Apple went with an IR port for the remote for FrontRow. Why not do this with Bluetooth? This would save adding more hardware and would not require line of sight.
If you put a dual core powerpc in the powerbook, then it becomes PowerBook Grill - capabile of cooking a steak and maybe a egg or two. Yummy!
Yeah, I am pretty underwhelmed, a dual core powerpc could have done made similar performance numbers. I agree the name is dumb and the lack of Firewire 800 sucks.
Anyone else think it’s odd that Apple isn’t listing the battery life on the Macbook Pro? Did they lower the screen resolution back to WXGA from WSXGA+?
The MacBook Pro resolution is 1440x900; the 15” PowerBook G4 resolution is 1440x960.
| Nick | Jan. 10, 2006 | |
| 9:56 pm |
They haven’t stated the battery life as they haven’t finished the production model yet.
Intel mobile chips of late have been known to be good on the batteries.
Since when is jumping in speed by a factor of 3 for the same price not a big announcement?
Depends on where you are, the 1.67GHz MacBook is slightly more expensive than the 15” PB and the 1.83GHz MacBook is slightly more expensive than the 17” PB.
Anyway, I’m not debating how fast they are, I do believe that they are that much faster. But I don’t see how any professional would want to buy it when they can still get a much faster PPC machine for apps like Photoshop, FCP etc. I don’t see too many professionals buying them just yet.. not until there are more Intel native apps out there
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| Jan. 11, 2006 | |
| 1:34 am |
In reply to Pilky, not everyone uses Photoshop, FCP. Luckily todays it’s not just graphic designers that use Macs.
I’m an enterprise java developer and I will defintely be taking advantage of the new MacBook. My powerbook G4 1.67ghz is too dam slow at running Java. Can’t wait to run my eclipse, webMethods and other apps at a decent speed.
Plus they had to go with the macbook now, the powerbook was already well behind PC centrino laptops in speed and don’t think that DELL, HP et al. won’t be releasing dual core laptops over the next few months. That would have made apple a joke especially with the “power” moniker!!
1.
Yeah, it’ll take some getting used to calling that new beatie a MacBook Pro. Still, IBM owns the copyright on PowerPC. so it’s hard to call them “PowerBooks” at this point.
I’m not sure why it’s called “Pro,” though. You’d figure that “MacBook” would have been enough to tell it from the iBooks. Unless Apple has a mind to drop the “iBook” name once those go to the Intel processor, calling them “MacBooks.” I doubt it since they didn’t change the name of the iMac desktop machine.
As for the PowerMacintosh towers, what to call those? (For that matter, how well does a dual core Intel work with another dual core Intel?). They might just call it “Mac Pro” or “Pro Mac.”