That's right, Mr. Meader- don't look here for thoze rum0rz...

dharlow – February 18, 2012 01:54PM Reply Quote

If they can figure out how to do a MBP that is like a MBA but allows me to still take out the hard drive and such then I will be happy. If not I will be holding on to my MBP until it dies.

tliet – February 18, 2012 09:16PM Reply Quote

We've been saying that since, what, the Quadra 950? Yet, every time Apple seems to find a new customer base that is more than willing to buy the new machines with yet more limitations on the expansion or tinkering capabilities.

Tony Leggett (Moderator) – February 18, 2012 10:50PM Reply Quote

I don't care if it's a sealed box "no-user serviceable parts inside" deal - as long as the product as it stands has the functionality that I need.

For me, that is:

1. Optical drive
2. Graphics decent enough for casual gaming (nothing fancy, just not that integrated crap)
3. Decent storage capacity (500Gb min)
4. Cost around $1000, preferably under.

The old white MacBook did all this.
The 11" MacBook Air almost achieves 1 out of four.
The 13" Macbook Pro achieves two out of four
The 15" Macbook Pro gets three, but is an epic fail on the last point.

Surely I'm not the only one who wants those four things?

(I'll even give up the optical drive for the other three points, but Apple doesn't let me do that either)

El Jeffe – February 19, 2012 03:55AM Reply Quote
What a journey.

T H U N D E R B O L T

John Willoughby – February 19, 2012 04:26AM Reply Quote
Homo Sapiens Sedentarius

Thunderbolt is useless to me for anything but backup. I use laptops in my lap, and can't daisy-chain apparatus across my chair.

El Jeffe – February 19, 2012 05:02AM Reply Quote
What a journey.

ThunderKILT will keep all your ThunderBOLT accessories neatly lap-centric.

Cloudscout – February 19, 2012 06:10AM Reply Quote
˙pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ʎɯ ɥʇıʍ ƃuoɹʍ ƃuıɥʇǝɯos sı ǝɹǝɥʇ ʞuıɥʇ ı ?ɹǝʇndɯoɔ ʎɯ ɥʇıʍ ǝɯ dlǝɥ ǝuoǝɯos uɐɔ

My current MBP is over 4 years old now. It'll probably be nursed along until its 5th birthday at which point a Windows laptop is looking increasingly likely.

James DeBenedetti – February 19, 2012 07:11AM Reply Quote

Quote
Tony Leggett
I don't care if it's a sealed box "no-user serviceable parts inside" deal - as long as the product as it stands has the functionality that I need.

For me, that is:

1. Optical drive
2. Graphics decent enough for casual gaming (nothing fancy, just not that integrated crap)
3. Decent storage capacity (500Gb min)
4. Cost around $1000, preferably under.

The old white MacBook did all this.
The 11" MacBook Air almost achieves 1 out of four.
The 13" Macbook Pro achieves two out of four
The 15" Macbook Pro gets three, but is an epic fail on the last point.

Surely I'm not the only one who wants those four things?

(I'll even give up the optical drive for the other three points, but Apple doesn't let me do that either)

What do you *need* an optical drive for?

The current MBA's integrated GPU is already fine for casual gaming (30+ FPS in Portal at native resolution), and Ivy Bridge is supposed to be 50%+ faster, so that's covered. I admit that 128GB is a bit tight, but what do you need 500+ GB for that wouldn't be better supported by some kind of centralized NAS / Time Capsule / remote storage type of solution?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2012 07:12AM by James DeBenedetti.

John Willoughby – February 19, 2012 09:56AM Reply Quote
Homo Sapiens Sedentarius

iPhoto, iTunes master library, Boot Camp. Apple doesn't make it easy to keep your iPhoto library off the machine you sync your camera to, and iTunes Match/iCloud is failing for me big time.

I agree that the MBA graphics are surprisingly capable, but I'd still prefer a seperate nVidia or AMD chip.

James DeBenedetti – February 19, 2012 03:10PM Reply Quote

We keep all our music, videos, photos, and iDevices synced on the mac mini (attached to the TV) in the living room. It was getting too difficult to keep everything synced between four computers and four iDevices without centralizing to a single system. This makes backing up and external multi-TB HD swaps a breeze. I'll grant you the boot camp issue, but I'd say multi-system families are a lot more common than boot camp families.

Tony Leggett (Moderator) – February 19, 2012 03:59PM Reply Quote

Quote

What do you *need* an optical drive for?

To rip all my DVDs so they'll play on Apple's new crippled devices?

To reinstall any pre-2010 software (how long has the app store been around, 18 months? Less?)

I do still burn the odd CD/DVD (music, photos, files) - can't always use USB drives.

Quote

The current MBA's integrated GPU is already fine for casual gaming (30+ FPS in Portal at native resolution), and Ivy Bridge is supposed to be 50%+ faster, so that's covered.

Lots of games specifically say "integrated graphics not supported" or even go so far as to say "will not play on MBA". It may well be that they're good enough but some games just say "fail" if they don't see a dedicated GPU. They could fix the problem by just adding a cut-rate GPU and abandoning the integrated crap (that's the one bit of Intel I wish Apple would dump)

Quote

I admit that 128GB is a bit tight, but what do you need 500+ GB for that wouldn't be better supported by some kind of centralized NAS / Time Capsule / remote storage type of solution?

And the 128GB is an extra $250. I guess I could go all out and pay and extra $700 for the 256 GB model, yeah, might do that...

And what's the point of having a nice speedy SSD if most of the stuff you need has to be beamed wirelessly from some "prone-to-stall-and-glitch" setup? I don't see the point of having a state-of-the-art super light laptop so you can watch a movie skip and stall because there's no room to store it locally, wireless is still glitchy, and an optical drive wasn't cool enough (unless you want to buy one of those silly external ones).

What do I need all that 500GB for?

~~Well, obviously my prodigious pr0n collection~~ er, I do tape a few things with EyeTV. I have some old video projects, movie downloads, ripped DVDs for the optical drive-less future. iPhoto, iTunes blah blah. Most importantly - I like my laptop to have virtually everything my desktop has. If the iMac is out of action I can work from the laptop no problems.

Unless it's a dinky 64GB MBA, then it can't be a "main axe" subsitute. It can do lots of things, but you're seriously compromised if it's your only computer.

And don't mention the cloud. I can't control the cloud. I don't like the cloud.

Bottom line, I have to pay double to get the same functionality of my Macbook, admittedly in a sexier case, but still double price nonetheless.

Jeff Cooper – February 19, 2012 05:12PM Reply Quote

Quote
Tony Leggett

And don't mention the cloud. I can't control the cloud. I don't like the cloud.

Plus, try moving all those big EyeTV files up to and down from the cloud. Pain in the ass, and slow.

I guess we're all supposed to use external drives.

Cloudscout – February 19, 2012 06:28PM Reply Quote
˙pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ʎɯ ɥʇıʍ ƃuoɹʍ ƃuıɥʇǝɯos sı ǝɹǝɥʇ ʞuıɥʇ ı ?ɹǝʇndɯoɔ ʎɯ ɥʇıʍ ǝɯ dlǝɥ ǝuoǝɯos uɐɔ

You're supposed to accept the fact that all content you wish to hear, view or read should be obtained through Apple. If you are obtaining content from other sources, they can't tax it. Selling devices with large hard drives only encourage people to evade paying Apple's tax on content.

If you give women pockets, they will want something to put in them.

John Willoughby – February 19, 2012 06:56PM Reply Quote
Homo Sapiens Sedentarius

I do note the sarcasm, but I have to say that I DO obtain my content from Apple, by and large. But I have some files that Apple doesn't offer. iCloud won't accept them. I'm not just going to abandon stuff that I want because iTunes Match doesn't recognize it. I thought that it was supposed to upload unrecognized data into my personal space and still let it stream back to me, but it does not. It seems like some bands (AC/DC, Nightwish in my case) may have legal arrangements with Apple that prevent their tracks from being uploaded or streamed. Of course, since iTunes doesn't offer these artists, I had to rip them myself (to mp3), so perhaps the problem was with the program I used to rip them. (Though I think it was SoundJam, which ought to be good enough.) Anybody else have iCloud reject AC/DC with "There was an error uploading this file?"

Tony, remember that a USB CD drive will work for a lot of your optical drive cases. Unless you truly are burning discs all the time. Also, the "doesn't work with MacBook Air" messages generally refer to the first MacBook Air (was that 2010 model?) which had seriously underpowered graphics. I am actually able to play SWTOR and WoW (before I unsubscribed) on my 2011 MBA with frame rates from 15-30, which I consider bearable. I do have an i7 CPU and 4GB RAM, though.

James, how do you get iPhoto to use a remote network library, or do you use Aperature or something else? I'd like to centralize my photos.

ddt – February 19, 2012 08:59PM Reply Quote

Soundjam? Wasn't that what Apple bought and made into iTunes? if so, quelle ironic. (Then again, I'm really, really beat at the moment.)

ddt

James DeBenedetti – February 19, 2012 10:45PM Reply Quote

John, we use iPhoto mainly on the central mac (TV) itself, but if you want to share your centralized iPhotos with other macs, go to:

iPhoto -> Preferences -> Sharing -> Share my photos

You have to keep iPhoto running on the central mac, but this will let you access the photo library with any mac on the network, using the "Shared" section on the left side of iPhoto.

Tony, why are you ripping DVDs to your small screen mac when you could be watching them with the blu ray player on your large screen TV instead? Never mind the thousands of TV shows and movies on Netflix - EyeTV goes to the big screen as well; why would you want to watch them on a laptop? And where are you finding this pre-2010 software that runs on (Mountain) Lion (i.e., modern MBAs), but can't be downloaded and is only available on CD?

Like I said, the future is desktop + iPad. A mac mini + iPad starts at $1100 (combined). Once Apple figures out how to make iCloud work, you might even be able to swap the $600 mini for a $100 AppleTV. The (traditional) laptop is rapidly losing its relevance, though I suspect it will take a few years for most people to realize this.

El Jeffe – February 20, 2012 12:42AM Reply Quote
What a journey.

Apple Keynote released on Amazon/Kindle.
That is the Keynote that is upcoming...

http://tinyurl.com/83etlzv

Quote

Kindle BookPrint BookFeedback | Help | Expanded View | Close
2012 Apple Spring Draft Script (Kindle Edition) by Noam D'Guerre
(1)
Kindle Edition $0.99

Deliver To

Send this sample to your Kindle

Book sections
Cover
Beginning

Draft Script

2012 Apple Spring Product Announcement

March 2012 - iTV, iVision, iPad 3, iMac

CONFIDENTIAL! Distribution STRICTLY limited per terms of special non-disclosure agreement for this documentation.
Any violations of special non-disclosure agreement terms will be pursued both civilly and criminally as appropriate!

March 2012 - iTV, iVision, iPad 3, iMac

NOTE: All items indicated with “insert final ______” are due in final draft script and are due NLT 15 Feb 2012!!!

=====PLACEHOLDER======

This space reserved for general welcome announcement, and “State of the iPad” presentation following general format of last year’s iPad 2 announcement:
- Culmulative sales numbers for iPad
- Culmulative sales numbers for all content stores
- Latest market share and other relevant statistics
- Current state of competition
- Video (circa 5-7 minutes) showing current usage/vertical markets/”heartwarming”segment/etc.
- Other data points as relevant

Total time: 15-18 minutes, dependant on length of final cut of iPad video

Final draft verbiage/content for all above due NLT 15 February 2012!!!

====PLACEHOLDER=======

Cue: Project Slide with simple “Introducing iPad 3!” text

Tim Cook: As amazing as the iPad 2 was and the world’s response to it, we haven’t been sitting on our laurels, and today will bring you the iPad 3!

Cue: Project slide of iPad 3 hardware

Tim Cook: As you can see, the design has not changed very much from the outside, but it’s what’s on the inside that makes the iPad 3 different.

Cue: Project slide of A6 CPU, bullet points added as iterated

Tim Cook: The A6 is a quad-core CPU running at ______ (insert finalized clockspeed)

- Up to 3X faster than A5 dual core
- Up to 15X faster graphics performance
- Same low power as A5
- First Quad-core tablet to ship in volume

Cue: Project slide with A6 image + iPad 3 image

Tim Cook: We’ll talk about it more in detail later, but the power of the A6 quad-core chip takes the iPad 3 further down the road in the post-PC world and will allow us to include features in iPad applications previously only available on your laptop or desktop.
End of this sample Kindle book.

tliet – February 20, 2012 11:53AM Reply Quote

> Tim Cook: As you can see, the design has not changed very much from the outside, but it’s what’s on the inside that makes the iPad 3 different.

Yeah right, they'll be downtalking a new device even if the design didn't change?

porruka (Admin) – February 20, 2012 12:46PM Reply Quote

I have no idea if this is legit or not, but this sort of description that tliet calls out rings true. Didn't Jobs himself make a statement about the 4S (or maybe 3GS) about the insides being the improvement?

El Jeffe – February 20, 2012 01:54PM Reply Quote
What a journey.

I just thought it was funny to be available like this.