Apple New Macbooks and Macbook Pros tomorrow!

Had a right good play with them all yesterday (and the ACD later on today!) and, my word, they are absolutely stunning. Seriously. They are both the best looking and feeling laptops I've ever seen. You really have to pick one of these things up to appreciate the design and the fit and finish, they're wonderful. Oh, and the track pad is just amazing. It glides like melted butter. I never use buttons when I can tap anyways but the lack of a raised button is a non-issue. It has just created even more trackpad surface area to play with. I always thought my 12" PowerBook was pretty much laptop design perfection but now I might be swaying towards the new MacBook. When you see these LED backlit screens next to ye olde glossy MacBook screens they just blow them out of the water. My one and only gripe though, is this: FIREWIRE... I. NEED. FIREWIRE! Seriously, the MacBook is now an extremely viable solution for the entire Final Cut suite, and you cut off my DV connection! WHY?! Argh. And it'd be amazing to use live at a gig or set or whatever, but where do you put your meaty Firewire soundcard? If the rumors of an ethernet-firewire adapter technology are true then I'd be more than happy... But until then I'd have to look towards the MBP really. Overall, I'm really looking forward to getting my new laptop in the new year (with hefty discount ).

 

I'm positive they'll make that whole thing a lot more clever after a couple of point release or a graphics update. 10.5.8 or so I'd bet. Think of the early days of SLI... that required a full reboot to change anything, and is still relatively clumsy.

Not fussed about the screen res, at least until we get proper resolution independence. Nor am I bothered by no firewire in a consumer-oriented device, most external drives have a USB interface and I do most any major file transfers over gigE anyways.

Now officially tempted to try and rig up one of the 10" eeePCs to run Leopard. Not exactly pretty, but given the size and claimed battery life (not to mention price) I think it'd do me fine for work on the road.

 

The thing that bothers me about a lack of Firewire is that the aluminium MacBook is basically a 13" MacBook Pro. It is an extremely viable machine for a professional now it has a proper GPU that can run the full Final Cut Suite and output to huge displays with ease. The only problem is all that HDV capturing I'd do... And those external HDDs. And those external soundcards... Seriously, what is wrong with dropping the Ethernet port? I have never even used the ethernet port on my iMac, a desktop machine. A portable really doesn't need one hard-wired into the machine when a USB to Ethernet adapter can do the job just as well for most people. It vexes me greatly, but I'll still get one... And moan about it at every opportunity

Not sure why you'd want higher res screens. Have you ever used the 17" hi-res MBP? It's HORRIBLE. 1920 x 1200 on a 17" screen?? No thanks, I don't even wear glasses, let alone binoculars.

 

Just ordered a 13.3" Alu Macbook TimeWarner employee discount bagged me one for £891 rather than £949, sweet.

Went to the Regent Street store today hoping to pick one up but they had none in stock!

Completely agree.

 

Well, to each his own. While I own a firewire hard drive, it rarely touches my MBP. GigE is faster for transferring than the ol' sneakernet via said FW drive, and excluding ethernet on the Macbooks would be insane given how many classrooms are wired up - which is to say, they have an ethernet jack at every desk, but no WiFi. The lack of built-in ethernet is one reason I'd never even consider the Air, but I hardly care about Firewire.

Don't get me wrong - I'd have liked to see it included on the new MBs. But from a business perspective, you do have to consider that it's much more commonly used by pros so forcing them to upgrade to the pro model makes sense. Given the target market of the MacBook, excluding Firewire makes a lot more sense than excluding ethernet IMO.

RTT - lemme know how it is to actually type on the thing. The edges on it look uncomfortably sharp. I know Apple loves their clean lines, but I've always found that typing for extended periods on my MBP gets rather painful due to how hard that edge is. These new cases, while purdy, look even worse in that regard.

 

Sure thing, will do. I can tell you that the plastic MacBook has much sharper edges than the old MacBook Pro. The old MBP (yours) has the dark plastic bezel running around the edges which is much more rounded off off, where as the plastic MacBook does not have that bezel at all and instead has a sharp 90 degree edge. From what I saw yesterday, the finish on the new alu MBs is roughly the same as the bezel on the old MBPs, so less sharp than the plastic MB but the same as the old MBP

 

Yeah the plastic always looked terribly sharp (my dad and brother both have one, but I've played with them for all of maybe three minutes), but every non-Apple laptop on the planet seems to really taper that edge off nicely so your wrists don't even hit the corner. The thinkpad I was given at school did for sure (and as ugly as they are, that system always treated me VERY well - almost the same specs as my MBP at the time and never ran even warm), and I know my mom's HP laptop does as well.

It's one place that Apple has always seemed to go really overboard with their form over function thing. There are plenty of places where they do it really well and benefit as a result (like removing a lot of UI customization options), but that's not one of them.

 

Mine has just shipped

 

...and has just arrived! This thing is niiiiiiiice, although the trackpad is going to take some getting used to

Firehead - the edges are more or less the same in terms of "sharpness", so i expect it'll be the same to type on