Apple Announces MacBook Pro

That kind of reminds me of a video we used to show at the department during AED classes...Mr. Bean using jumper cables and a car (car battery) to shock a guy.
 
Im pretty gutted they dont have a 12 inch version.

What i like most about powerbooks (apart from the OS, which obviously all macs have) is the size and how thin it is, but theres no point in having a thin lap top when the smallest screen size you can get is 15 inch. Hopefully they will release a smaller macBook Pro.

Another down side is the lack of dial up connection, if i brought a $2000 model (close to 4k New Zealand dollars) then im not at all keen to pay another $100 (NZD) so i can connect to the internet when im home from university. (i currently use wireless while at uni)

But of course im not planning to upgrade from my 12 inch PB until i leave design school (another 3 years) so hopefully i wont ever need to have to use dial up by then.

I also perfure the lighter grey over the darker color they now have
 
fryke said:
"ist teh stoopid!!11!!"? ... Yeah, I, erh, get this... And no, I don't think so.

The 5-year-old's comment aside, I agree - the rename is a very poor move. Perhaps not quite as much in the pro sector, a reasonable amount of Apple sales draw (and certainly its marketing) is the "cool factor", and "MacBook Pro" is just too awkward to be cool.

No one sitting at Starbucks would mind talking about their "new PowerBook!!". They might, however, hesitate before they start jammering about their "new MacBook Pro!!".

It seems minor, but it's not an insignificant observation to make when you note that in the various forums discussing the new 'book, about 25% of the comments are discussing the terribleness of the new name.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Heh... never trust someone who claims to be a designer yet uses Corel products. :p

That's like trusting a doctor who still practices bloodletting!
lol. that's quite the remark.
 
would you believe my uni taught us vector graphics using Corel Draw? Even though Illustrator was right there next to it.

I still haven't forgiven them.
 
Thank The Cheese said:
would you believe my uni taught us vector graphics using Corel Draw? Even though Illustrator was right there next to it.

I still haven't forgiven them.
My Uni taught both... CorelDraw 2.0 and Illustrator 4.0 at the same time.
 
Oscar Castillo said:
Are these the first ever dual core x86 laptops?

Depends on how you look at it. Alienware has been offering a gaming laptop that has the AMD 64 X2 chip in it for a few months now. In reality, the MacBook Pro is probably the first laptop that's usable as a laptop with dual cores. The Alienware system isn't really designed for use as a laptop (battery life is misreable)...it's more for those gaming die-hards who drag a computer to different places to play. In a nutshell, it's easier to carry/move than a complete system (tower and monitor, etc.).
 
erh, not really. CES showed quite a few, acer has already released some for example, heise.de had a list of about 12 makers of Centrino Duo notebooks makers listed. Most were announced at CES or even before that.
 
I guess this is the first time in years that Apple has named a product the wrong way.

PowerBook was the strongest brand-level name in all the laptop market. To discard it - privileging the Mac part of the brand - seems to mean thay really are worried about losing their OS-hardware identification.

Simply put: how could you find the courage to run Windows on a Mac?
 
Zammy-Sam said:
Shouldn't these laptops also use EFI? If so, how will WinXP run on those? By the way, isn't Yonah 64bit?

EFI was invented by Intel and has not yet become a standard (and may not - BTX anyone?). They may not be using Intel motherboards.
 
Zammy-Sam said:
By the way, isn't Yonah 64bit?

I thought it was but after searching around it turns out the Duo is not 64 bit, but the Merom (the Dual Core Desktop Based on the Pentium M) is.

The Duo is a mobile laptop chip...not a desktop chip
 
Shookster said:
EFI was invented by Intel and has not yet become a standard (and may not - BTX anyone?). They may not be using Intel motherboards.
Thought so too, but I wondered: if Acer and Co. are releasing Yonah laptops that early, there might be only the intel reference board available coming with EFI. But it wouldn't make sense to release such a laptop without a fitting windows version.
 
I would somewhat agree with the name being wrong. I understand the idea of discarding "power" since it does not use the ppc. And I think it does make sense to reaffirm that these systems are macs. I don't think the name flows as well as powerbook, or ibook, or maybe it takes some getting used to. I'm just going to keep repeating it til it sounds normal.
 
Zammy-Sam said:
Thought so too, but I wondered: if Acer and Co. are releasing Yonah laptops that early, there might be only the intel reference board available coming with EFI. But it wouldn't make sense to release such a laptop without a fitting windows version.

EFI can emulate classic BIOS through a CSM (Compatibility Support Module) that is added to the implementation by the vendor. However, Apple has zero reason to write and include a CSM. Video cards are handled in EFI in a similar manner as OpenFirmware, meaning it makes sense to just make the full leap and get EFI-compatible video card firmware rather than write up a CSM. (ATi has hinted at this with their interview with IMG) And video cards would be the main reason why Apple would have a CSM in the first place.

So what is happening is that Apple will still need specific video cards on their platform... and Apple's hardware until Merom will not boot any flavor of Windows software.

Apparently what is happening is that MS decided that 32-bit EFI was a waste of effort that could be spent elsewhere. Because of this, the Duo-based PC offerings will at the very least be using a CSM + EFI firmware, or a classic BIOS firmware. This will allow Windows to boot just fine without EFI support.

So unless Apple includes a CSM at the last minute that we aren't aware of, or Apple moves over to 64-bit chips really fast (screwing the early adopters anyways), we will be running Windows in QEMU/VPC or the like for awhile.
 
Switching to 64-bit processors would in no way be screwing early adopters. Mac OS X will run on both 32-bit and 64-bit processors for a long while to come, and 64-bit computers have still got to prove any real-world improvement over 32-bit computers. So far, for consumers as well as most professionals (some special uses spring to mind, of course), it's nothing more than a buzzword.
 
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