The great macdebate (now with roids)

[k1ngarth3r]

I bought the iMac last year but need a laptop for studying and for work so it's ideal

I just phoned Apple customer services and got them to add the £70 Apple voucher

I know I could cancel and save even more money for a little over £1500 for a £1800 machine and a free £70 App Store voucher is enough for me

[pubjoe]

Fair enough.

The ram upgrade thing... The bottom of the case looked suspiciously inaccessable.

[edit] Soldered ram. Apple will be loving this.

At least it comes with 8GB at default I suppose. Apple's ram prices have been a lot worse in the past when they've charged about £500 to quadruple a tiny amount of default memory.



(Does look nice inside )

[edit 2] SSD is a socket design at least.

[edit 3] P.S. I liked that stuff about asymmetric fan design > variations in pitch > eliminates the hum.

[markedkiller78]

£1,500 / £1,800

I'll bet the majority of buyers use this for little more than browsing / iTunes. It looks stunning but it's massively over spec'd for me (and apple of old)

[pubjoe]

non standard ssd.

Well they can have that seeing as the 'standard' is currently putting a few little chips inside a hollow hdd shaped box.

[pubjoe]

You remove yourself.

[pubjoe]

...From my bum hole.

[cRacKh0rN]

£1,500 / £1,800

I'll bet the majority of buyers use this for little more than browsing / iTunes. It looks stunning but it's massively over spec'd for me (and apple of old)

I dev on mine and also run Parallels for Windows dev. Current MacBook crawls so it will be a welcome upgrade for me. Agreed that it is total overkill for most, but I guess they offer the i5's as a consumer option now.

A little disgusted by the soldered ram discovery...

[pubjoe]

£1,500 / £1,800

I'll bet the majority of buyers use this for little more than browsing / iTunes. It looks stunning but it's massively over spec'd for me (and apple of old)

Come on. Every photoshop user will want this for the screen. There's always some fashion buyers, but macs still don't sell that much - especially compared to apple's media devices. A lot of the buyers justify the cost due to their software costing as much as the machine, if not more. And come on, it is top spec. It's got a 5megapixel screen ffs. I've been waiting far too long for something like this. I don't think it's too crazy at £1500, and I'm severely tempted. On the ipad the high res is lovely and all, but nowhere near as useful as on a computer.

A lot of the mbp buyers who don't need the power are highly paid **** like plastic surgeons using it to show their tit portfolio, but I've by far seen them mostly used in the creative tarts industry. They'll all be wanting this and they'll be getting good use out of it.

[pubjoe]

How many times did I come just then?

[SuperPang]

I'm proper drooling over this but 15" is a desktop replacement in my eyes and I don't think I could justify it, especially at that price. I prefer 13".

[cRacKh0rN]

Here is the anandtech review. If you're a hater, probably best not to read

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5998/macb ... y-analysis"

[markedkiller78]

I have never seen the point of massive, super fast laptops, so this is all probably lost on me. I'm normally more impressed with a well spec'd well designed, compact device, so I get that this is good, but stand by my earlier statement. I don't doubt there are a lot of buyers that will use the MBP for work, but here is my personal experience:

My mate, the policeman & his wife (the police woman)
2010 Imac 27"
2010-11 MBP 15"
MB? The white one
IPAD 1

He watches films at work on the ipad. She surfs the net on the MBP, the imac never gets used as a server for films or to DL stuff! They gave the MB away to his little brother who actually uses it for music production

My mate the account

MBP 17": uses it for work, sending emails. He doesn't even do books, just gives tax advice.

My Wife's mate from Uni.

2011 MBP. She is a graphic designer, never done any free lance work & manages a team of people in a government call centre. Surfs the net / uses facebook.

From my experience, as well spec'd as the new MBP is, I still think it’s total overkill for 99% of people. Who really needs that much power or that resolution screen on a portable device? I've got a 4MP 30" IPS screen at home. I can see why it would be good for editing or professional use, big size + big resolution is a good thing. Any serious detailed work is much better carried out on a desktop, even if it's just from an ergonomic perspective. 5MP on a 15" screen is useful for a photographer who "needs" to edit on shoot, but whom else?

Apple have finally released a top spec machine that actually matches up to its price (more or less)

[cRacKh0rN]

I don't want one because everyone else has one pretty much, it doesn't matter how well designed it is, it's still running macos and that makes it utterly useless to me. I'd never buy one even if I won the lottery because it's just a useless computer for me. The fact other peoples hapless devotion to whatever this company releases also turns me off completely.

I was always an advocate of Windows, but from a coders point of view OSX is the best of all 3 worlds and when a friend showed me some of the cool stuff OSX had back in '06 it was a bit of a no brainer. Add the fact that you can install windows on a mac either virtually or via dual boot and the fact they are much nicer than any other laptop anyway all add up to dave = sold. Balls to who has one and who hasn't. If you use a machine as much as I do, you want it to be nice.

[Rossyra]

massive pixel count, mid-spec GPU... meehhhhhh

[cRacKh0rN]

Yeah. Why Apple always use average GPUs frustrates me too. Even the Mac Pro GPU options are limited.

[pubjoe]

From my experience

Personally I completely agree with small simple laptops and would prefer a super high res 24"+ desktop display too (which isn't available yet). I've never even tried to do much more than write or browse on a laptop, but in my experience a lot of people definitely make heavy use of them.

Apple have finally released a top spec machine that actually matches up to its price (more or less)

The 27" imacs have been a pretty good price for what you get. When they were new, they were incomparable with anything.

balls to who has one and who hasn't.

Damn right. I've always found it a pain in the **** if anything. I tend to disguise what computer I use because I can't be arsed with people thinking I want to be all different. And 'everyone has one'? Not here they don't. ipods or whatever maybe, but definitely not macs.

To be honest, back when I first used Mac OS 7 or something all those years ago, the main thing I liked was using cmd as the primary modifier key with my thumb instead of ctrl with my pinky. I never got on with photoshop modifier combinations and shortcut keys with a cramped hand on my PC at home. That was probably the stupidly simple main draw. Just so happens they happen to make nice stuff too.

[cools]

Yer, I'd be buying solely for the screen res. Don't need that size SSD (and non-standard is a big no-no) - and at that price it's far in excess of what I'm willing to pay for a personal machine. Plus I really, really want a touch screen

[pubjoe]

mid-spec GPU... meehhhhhh

Oooh hark at you with your new big toy.

There's something about macdebating that makes me go all multiquotey.

[cools]

Not sure I like how OSX handles the screen...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how- ... es-scaling"

[pubjoe]

It can display the normal (72dpi designed) UI at native too, but you need good eyesight. I think it's a good solution. The detail's still available wherever needed, plus you have various options for realistic UI element sizes.