New Core i5/i7 MacBook Pros released
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I think the best powerhouse laptop is the Dell M6500 with 1GB ATI m7740 or 1GB nvidia FX3800M + USB3.0 options.
The worst part is that the macbook pro has a max memory capacity of 8GB, while the M6500 has a 16GB DDR3 top capacity.
No brainer IMHO.
The major caveats on the Envy are that it has serious, deep issues preventing Linux from running on it, and it has no displayport or dvi out for driving a 30" monitor.
The Dell's biggest weakness is battery life.
- Touchpad click buttons don't work, forcing you to double-tap to click
- Weird BIOS caused both TurboBoost (the Intel extension that powers down cores and speeds up others) and ACPI to fuck up, leading to no TB and no heat management, fans ran constantly, very bad news
- Buggy sleep/resume
Points 2 and 3 are fixed in 2.6.33+. Point 1 can be fixed via a patch to the synaptics module, but I just use an external mouse all the time anyway.
I believe you can thank this fellow for many of these fixes: http://www.chizang.net/alex/blog/2009/12/21/linux-on-the-hp-...
1. The screen only tilts to ~105-110 degrees. This makes it tough to use on your lap or on a short table (commonly found in coffee shops sadly).
2. The AC-DC power supply is bulky. The plug has 3 pins too. Earth is not needed for laptop power supplies! There is no electric shock risk for a laptop user! I was dismayed to find such a hideous power supply bundled with this laptop.
Still, I bought my Envy about 6 months ago, so I'm not upset (at least that's what I'll tell myself).
(I complained about this to a long-time mac user, and he said "You're probably using it with the display on.")
Although they made it right, that's the last time I'm going to buy a Dell -- particularly one built on the newest tech. I don't think the QA is there.
Yeah, it's just a single data point, but when a 12" Powerbook is still going strong (albeit slowly), the series of fails in my latest laptop is depressing. I really, really hope it's a one-off.
Interesting failure pattern - overheating resulting in CPU stalling resulting in persistent Spinning-beach-ball of Death. The 2008 Airport dies, sporadically, but it has had a good run for the last 3-4 months, so I no longer carry my USB-WiFi dongle (Amazing that they even make one for Macs)
On the flip side, I'm telling myself that the last five years of misery will be worth it when it feels so good to upgrade to a laptop that is flawless (fingers crossed) - think of how amazingly good it will feel to have applications launch, consistently, within 30 seconds. :-)
(Regardless, even with the weird pain, I've never even considered switching back to Windows Laptops. CMD+Space, terminal, Enter is just too perfect to consider doing so.)
(PS: Is "Antiglare" just Apple's marketing term for matte?)
A "matte" MacBook Pro has an exposed screen, no black border where the plastic cover is mounted, and looks almost perversely naked.
Am I wrong here?
This makes me think I'll be long dead before they offer 15" 1920x1200 wuxga.
Does anyone know why Apple lags in offering the higher screen rez? I got used to this rez some years back on my 12" Toshiba Portege, and have had it on my 15" Dell Latitudes since then. But have never seen the same for a MacBook
Now I wish I could upgrade mine :)
2003 aluminum PowerBook: paid $2800, sold after 5 years for $1000
2007 iMac: paid $1300, sold after 1 year for $1300. (It was the previous gen when I bought it, so that worked out really well.)
My last hacking laptop was a Vostro 1500 with a 1680x1050 resolution. The 9 cell battery lasted about 4 hours while coding, so I carried two of them. I may do the same with the Studio XPS 16.
Edit: Forget this comment, didn't realize until now that hardware acceleration for video decoding was not coming to the Mac, just the PC. That sucks.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=7cf...
Symptoms are a very loud click, and then no audio plays until the computer's audio is reset -- do this by plugging in and removing an external device. It happened to my MBP and I thought I'd broken the hardware, it was that loud.
I hear Digg and Reddit accounts are free these days...
This is incorrect; at least with the MBPs they were shipping until today it was a bit of a toss-up as to whether you'd get a Samsung or Toshiba SSD, and the only way to know what you got is to boot up the system and look at the drive's model number in System Profiler.
FWIW, the one that came in my MBP is Toshiba, and is still awfully zippy after eight months of heavy use (during which I'm quite certain I've written enough to the drive to start noticing any real degradation).
I am using the first generation Intel SSD which doesn’t actually support such reorganization and isn’t noticeable affected by “being full” (as opposed to writing to the factory default empty state).
I am also using Crucial SSD (with OS X) and that as well is magnitudes faster than my previous mechanical disk.
So all in all, this degraded performance is blown a bit out of proportion and you are doing yourself a great disservice by holding out for TRIM support — to echo others: SSD was the best upgrade I added to my system.
Edit: I am btw using SSDs with a desktop system. So I compare them with my previous 7200 RPM drives. For a laptop there is absolutely no doubt that you should go with an SSD (if you can afford it), TRIM support or not. For a desktop, I would still highly recommend it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM
Just had to look that up myself. Shocking that OS X doesn't support it natively, although the article suggests there may be utilities that can replace that functionality.
Deleted comment
So maybe this is more of a theoretical problem than a practical one?
After eight months of heavy daily use, in which I'm quite certain I've achieved more than 256GB of total writes, I've seen... no change in performance. Still zippy and happy and writing just fine.
Time for misguided hype based on anandtech's articles to go away now.
If you're only using a small fraction of the total capacity, chances are you won't see much performance degradation for a long while no matter how much you write to the drive because of minimal fragmentation at the block level. But given enough time, you'd still hit that wall at some point.
But if you're using a large fraction of the total capacity, then you're going to have much more fragmentation, which means pages that can't be erased without having to rewrite significant numbers of blocks in those pages. Those ephemeral writes will start taking a real performance hit.
Many newer SSDs now include logic in their controllers to help mitigate this problem, with varying degrees of success. But full TRIM support on the drive and in the OS make a significantly larger difference than anything done by the drive alone. (Even with TRIM, though, the problem doesn't go away completely.)
And this isn't just some kind of spin from Anandtech--TRIM exists for a reason. It's a well-tested property of MLC SSDs. The combination of wear leveling and write combining can cause serious performance issues without TRIM. This article describes it pretty well: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669&type=expert&...
At any given moment I'm using about half the total capacity. I'm not regularly doing huge writes, but as someone who works with a ton of remote and local repositories, pulling/merging/etc. many times a day, I do end up doing a huge number of small writes nearly continuously; I'd be surprised if I haven't hit every bit of that drive at least once by now. And I haven't seen any dramatic, or even noticeable, degradation.
And this isn't just some kind of spin from Anandtech
It's more that a bunch of people skimmed the anandtech articles, then started spouting a lot of gratuitous "X25-M is the One True SSD, everything else is shit" hype, which later morphed into "never use an SSD in an OS that doesn't do TRIM" hype. Of course, the hype doesn't quite match the reality...
And no, SSDs aren't worthless without TRIM. But if you're likely to use the majority of the storage space on the drive and do a lot of writes besides, it could be the difference between "fast" and "really damn fast." Either way it'll still beat the pants off most rotational disk drives.
I think the takeaway, though, is that if you've spent potentially-obscene amounts of money on an SSD, wouldn't you prefer that your OS take full advantage of its capabilities to consistently deliver top performance?
(And no, that's not a dig at OS X. I'd recommend that Windows XP users upgrade to Win7 if they're considering upgrading to an SSD simply for the TRIM support. It can make that much of a difference depending on the user.)
(The divide might not be at the capacity of the disk; this was a 16GiB SSD with probably 20x that in writes.)
Worst disks ever.
I can't speak for the newer, non-user-replaceable-battery models, but I can't imagine they made it harder to replace the HDD.
Start imagining. You need a mini-torx screwdriver to get the hdd out, once you get the cover off (8 phillips screws).
Not the end of the world, but not too many people have a T8 sitting around. I didn't.
In other words, it's still orders of magnitude better than replacing the HD in, say, an iBook.
But can you do this with the unibody MBPs? The battery's not user replaceable, right? What about the HD and RAM?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262310
How to find out what kind of SSD is in an MBP:
In advance, no, they don't tell you.
However, up until now every SSD Apple has shipped has been either Samsung or Toshiba, and you can find out which it is by opening OS X's System Profiler. Look under "Serial ATA" and you'll see the drive's description, which will be in the format "APPLE SSD (manufacturer code)(capacity)".
Toshiba drives will have a manufacturer code of "TS" (so my 256GB Toshiba SSD shows up as "APPLE SSD TS256A", for example). Samsung drives will have "SM". When I was shopping around last year trying to find out about this, it seemed that most of the 128GB drives were Samsung, most of the 256GB drives were Toshiba. What they're using for the 512GB drives is anybody's guess, but System Profiler will be the way to find out.
The money is roughly the half, and as a bonus you also get to keep the drive that came with the computer and use that as backup or additional, external storage, or even sell it to someone to get a few bucks back.
A simple rule of thumb for the Apple customer - NEVER get upgrades along with the order. It's just a waste of your money. You really don't have to be much of a "DIY" to replace memory or storage in a MacBook - they are all much, much more user friendly than your average HP/Dell/Whatever laptop.
Step 1: Release Core 2 Duo
Step 2: Release Core 2 Duo now that they're practically free
Step 3: Profit.
"We chose killer graphics plus 10 hour battery life over a very small CPU speed increase. Users will see far more performance boost from the speedy graphics" (Steve Jobs).
Before the refresh the MB was the best bang for buck.
Really? I have a black MB that just passed the 2 year mark and it looks pristine. I carry it in my backpack every day, I took it with me on a three month trip through South America, and yet it has no scratches, cracks, or other signs of damage.
• SD card slot
• Now longer battery life with pro
Looks like they put in a new battery in the Pro, and it has a fancier graphics card, SD card reader, and Firewire.
To me, the Al casing is worth a bit more money and wouldn't mind an SD reader, so I'd watch the Apple refurb store for last-gen Pros (which is what I did in January).
I was thinking about getting a mac really just to have the option to do mac desktop application development. Would I be better off with a hackintosh setup instead?
- The trackpad. You won't be able to use gestures and multi-touch features. Especially if you use some software that lets you add custom multi-touch gestures, it's really nice to have a huge trackpad with gestures.
- Battery life (and longevity) will almost certainly be significantly better on a MacBook Pro.
- Apple's support is pretty great. If you have any hardware issues Apple will take good care of you. Sometimes you have to push for it, but I've had a 2 year old computer replaced with a new one because they couldn't fix a relatively minor WiFi issue.
- The MacBook Pro displays are really good and viewing angles are much better than most PC displays I've seen. You can optionally bump up the resolution of the 15" MBP to 1680x1050 for $100.
- Backlit keyboard — I thought I wouldn't really care about it, I type in Dvorak anyway so I don't need to see my QWERTY keyboard, but this is actually really nice in low-light situations.
- I've also read that there's a lot more that makes Mac hardware fast than just the tech specs. The hardware is well tuned.
A lot of these are little things, but they add up and make for a really good experience.
This is one of the most important usability features on my 13in. MBP. It's the first track pad I've used that I prefer to a mouse. I think it's mostly because you don't have to keep picking your finger up to scroll a long distance on the screen. Also, multi-touch gestures have become second nature, especially in Safari (3-finger swipe for forward/back is even better than keyboard shortcuts).
Adding to the list: - Magsafe - has certainly saved my computer at least 3 times now (that's the magnetic power connector) - Apple Stores: If you live near one you can drop in and get your computer looked at/fixed. If you're in desperate need they can usually turn a machine around very quickly, too...
I would consider the W510 to be a closer analogue, too.
Any pointers to good guides ? (Ubuntu, VirtualBox preferred. 8GB quad-core AMD PhenomII.)
It's all pretty much straight forward, but I found it most stable when I: use the darwin_snow.iso provided as your boot device (it emulates the bootloader used by Macs), use all SCSI devices, and in the config file, set guestOS = "darwin10-64"
The machine I'm running it on now is a i5 750 with 12 gb of mem; I have a single core and 2gb of mem dedicated to the VM. Feel free to email me if you need any help, I spent quite awhile playing with various methods of virtualizing Snow Leopard, so I can probably answer a majority of questions about issues that arise.
edit: As far as VirtualBox, I'm not aware of anyone getting 10.6.2 to run stable in it. I believe 10.4 will run okay. You may want to just use VMWare player, though. Also, you will have issues with the AMD processor, Apple was 'thoughtful' enough to include code to ensure Mac OS will only run on Intel processors. There are several distributions of 10.5 that have been modified to run on AMD processors, but I haven't really played with them - I think google can assist there, though.
I picked an AMD CPU partly because a sort-of-server box should have ECC RAM [1], which AMD does support 'for free' (and also toss in sufficient graphics in the chipset); it seems that with Intel CPUs one needs to go to very expensive MBs or the Xeon line for that.
[1] D.J.Bernstein, for one, explains why: http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html , http://cr.yp.to/hardware/build-20090123.html
P.S. Unfortunately, D.J.Bernstein refers to RAID-5 as "an easy-to-use automatic backup mechanism" (if a drive dies); he either didn't get the "RAID is not backup" memo, or does not believe it (until the day he accidentally wipes data ;-).
I had thought of a MacMini, since I'm using an external 24" screen, keyboard, etc. - but the little extra money buys occasional mobility and 'close-lid-to-suspend' ...
(Ouch for 30 euro mini-DisplayPort to DVI adapter)
mini-DisplayPort to DVI adapter $8.55 @ monoprice.com
Lots of small accessories are as little as 1/8th the Apple price there, you could batch together a big order.
One thing I really wish they would change is the clicking on the trackpad - instead of a heavy hinge at the top, it should be equally and easily depressable everywhere (for example, like the BB Storm2 screen). I don't know if I could use my macbook without turning on touch-to-click.
Also, any info if the graphic cards switch automagically or you have to log out?
Unfortunately, it's the i5 that has crypto acceleration. The i7 does about 80MB/s/core, and the i5 does something like 2000MB/s. But is slower otherwise.
Fucking Intel....
Core i5 2.53GHz: http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43544 Core i7 2.66GHz: http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43560
I think the only real difference is clock speed and that the i7 has an extra megabyte of cache.
On the media apps, the i5 beats the equivalently clocked i7 on most of the benches. On the productivity section, the i5 is equal to the i7 on 2 of the 5, and beaten by 10-20% on the others (those that seem to feed heavily on the hyperthreading and extra cache of the i7). Notably, though, the i5 and i7 are a wash in the Photoshop test (a key benchmark for the sort of things I do).
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/clarkdale-aes-ni-encrypt...
www.apple.com/macbookpro/performance.html
First line in each description ;-)
See http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Proc... for perfomance of these new chips
In fact, I can't find any sources that show any real difference between them other than clock speed. Maybe someone with more CPU expertise could enlighten me - do the model numbers in Intel's mobile processors now simply denote clock speed differences?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/intel-core-presser-32nm-c...
Here is Intel's infromation on the three chips: http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=47341,43544,43560
For some other cases, there are bigger differences between the i5 and i7, but not for these chips.
Of course! The name makes that obvious. Thanks, Intel!
http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=43483
In fact, there are only two Core i* processors that don't have HyperThreading support, and they're both variants of the same quad-core Core i5 desktop processor (Core i5 750 and Core i5 750S):
They're clearly obsessed with battery life at the highest (read: Jobsian) levels.
Anyway: Very expensive. Why not go for a netbook and desktop instead? Are you really so mobile that you're willing to pay $1000 to get less hardware?
Just plug in power, USB (hub), and video from the same cable group and you're done.
(I’m also one of those strange people who prefer using a trackpad to using a mouse.)
If you must work from a coffee shop, just bring your $300 netbook and ssh into your desktop. Why bring a noisy and hot laptop that only lasts for 4 hours when you can have a silent machine that lasts for 14?
Desktops are great for power. Netbooks are great for portability. Laptops are bad at both.
Desktops are optimized for power at the cost of obliterating portability. Netbooks are optimized for portability at the cost of being fairly underpowered. A good laptop is a generalist that doesn't do either as well as the specialist but can fill either role competently in most cases.
My laptop has enough power for my day to day needs (running web browsers, dev IDE, mail, and not taking forever to compile large tex docs), and for my larger needs, well, I need a 32GB RAM server for those, so I wouldn't have a desktop that could handle them either :-). Unless I'm really caning it, it doesn't make a sound, and all I have to do to turn it into a workstation is plug in a USB hub and monitor - not exactly a chore.
In terms of portability, my macbook is light enough for me to easily carry around, and in practise I get around 5-6 hours battery life even after a year's usage. If I upgraded to a newer macbook (I have one with a removable battery), I'd get closer to 10.
I completely agree about not buying a bad laptop. I have no interest in lugging around a behemoth that gets two hours battery life, or one that trades weight for being too slow for my everyday needs. A good laptop (and I'm not just talking about macs here, although I've had extremely positive experiences with mine) is powerful, light, and has good battery life. Unfortunately, you have to pay extra for that, but considering it's my only work-related expense, it seems cheap at the price. I love not being tied to my desk.
In general, I just wouldn't consider a netbook suitable for doing a day's coding on - it's great for short term use, or if all I need is a couple of terminals, but it just doesn't have enough power or usability. That said, if it works for you, then great! I imagine it probably comes down to how much time you spend at your desk - if you're largely in a fixed location, then I see that having a powerful laptop just isn't worth the money.
It all depends on what software you are using. I am perfectly happy with mine.
Here is a link from Apple Insider discussing Apple's graphics switching: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/13/nvidia_says_ne...
But when you need 256GB or 500GB there's no choice, right?
Edit: My employer paid for it, so I'll probably stick with it.
(I added my own SSD to mine, so it's not just a matter of Time Machine.)
I find it interesting that the 13" models now tout a "10 hour battery", up from the old 7 hour one - I am curious to find out if it's all caused by replacing the old 9400M north/southbridge with the 320M, or if there is also a new battery behind it. A 45% increase in estimated avg. battery time is a pretty damned nice number for any laptop user.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark...