So, the MBP Core 2 Duo in 2~3 weeks?

According to Appleinsider, the Core 2 Duos should be up pretty soon. I have been hearing the rumours of the MBP c2d "around the corner" since July, but all my local Appe Store folk have been nothing but pessimistic and told me to expect it will be out either right before Christmas or Q1 2007, shortly before Leopard is released.

Another surprising thing, the gallery for the MBP is down on the Apple's danish site,, all MBP's are currently out of stock here in Denmark, and the student ipod + MAC offer is ending tomorrow. It would be nice to see the 64bit chips out soon Oh yes, and the link to the MBP technical manual is borked on both the US and Danish site (or was ~18:00 CEST).. Smells like something is cooking?

 

Wait, so there wouldn't be a Core 2 Duo Macbook anytime soon?

edit: Nevermind. Just read the article and they said it's a simultaneous release.

"I have been hearing the rumours of the MBP c2d "around the corner" since July, but all my local Appe Store folk have been nothing but pessimistic and told me to expect it will be out either right before Christmas or Q1 2007, shortly before Leopard is released"

Maybe Apple plans to skip the current gen and go with Santa Rosa instead? If it's a Q1 2007 release, sounds rather likely to me.

 

So far for pretty much a long time now, the iBook was always the last one to get an update, and the same appeared to be true for the Macbook when it came out. I wouldn't expect Macbooks to get an C2D update the same time as the MBP does.

 

Oh, and the argument for the MBP coming first in December/Q1 '07 was that Apple has as a rule updated its lineup every 10 months or so.

Oh and btw, when does "holiday season" start for you Americans?

 

Around the end of November.

 

The end of November is the start of the holiday season.
We may see the C2D in october, but could be november or december. With the extreme shortages of the C2D (it's taking a long time for other companies to ship units with c2d) that anything said about the release is pure speculation.

 

what holiday are you talking about specifically?

The first that starts the string is Halloween, but its not really considered part of the shopping holidays. The day Thanksgiving and after here is considered pretty much the start of the holiday season. So November 23rd (I never rememeber what date thanksgiving is on) and until after the new years.

 

Do u think Apple will pump in the Nvidia 7600/7700 instead of the X1600/X1700?

 

I think he meant the date that this years Thanks giving falls on.

It is highly doubtful that we will see an upgrade of the vid card along with the processor upgrade. The x1600 is underclocked so it wouldn't make sense to put a hotter running vid card in.

We may see something like that when Santa Rose (or Rosa?) comes out.

 

I think they will drop ATI since ATI is now an AMD thing. So I would say they would probably put a go 7600 in the MBP.

 

They won't just drop ATI since it's an AMD thing.
First off, they probably have a contract with ATI to provide so many units for such a period of time.
Second off, they probabl would have to go in and reengineer the insides a bit for dropping in a new card.
Dropping in a Merom is simple. It's easy, no real need to change anything on the inside.

Santa Rose will require other changes, possibly even a chasis change. Thats when they would be more likely to switch to nVidia.

I'd rather have an nVidia card myself as every ATI card I've ever had goes bad, and nVidia has always been much more reliable (both hardware and driver wise).

 

The x1600xt/7600 debate is negligable really, all one needs to do is clock the x1600xt up to par and it will work as well as any x1600, the only problem being the lower voltages, which unlike on most nVidia cards + highend ati cards cannot be bumped simply through a bios flash.

Now we have the whole NAND talk - the way things are going, it looks like I'll be holding off the purchase for all eternity.

Maybe the T60 is not such a bad way to go?

 

Yeah, I didn't mean they would put nVidia in when they updated to C2D, I meant when they updated to Santa Rosa.

 

Ah, I see. That is a bit more likely... but then again... I don't know apple very well.

 

As long as you know that you can't use OS X because T60 isn't Apple Hardware, I would definitely look at that T60, I hear its a wonderful machine of course I would expect no less of the only PC manufacturer that I feel deserves their status in the industry. Lenovo does share the top ranking spot alongside with Apple after all.

Personally for me, I would choose Apple even if its technical specs aren't the best out there, because I'm a big fan of Apple and OS X, and OS X is reason enough for me, the stress in my life with computers has gone down tons because of it, at least I know that when I finish college and work in the computer industry, I can come home to OS X. (sounds corny I know, but its a great OS)

 

Oh ya.. i forgot the GPU for the MBP is soldered into the board. Impossible to change without redesigning. But it would be a deciding factor for me if apple pops in the nvidia 7700 (its board size would be smaller than the 7600), would fit but would require some engineering. Anyway, wont consider a laptop until santa rosa.

 

I have no issue with windows, I'm used to it, running a very tweaked version of it (coming from a hardware enthusiast background, where stripping an OS to being able to run defacto nothing but 3d ), however the Mac OS looks like something I'd like to try. Leopard looks like the shiznit itself!

And of course, the MBP is slick as hell

 

Someone at Macnn claims his "source" definitely says Tuesday for Merom. Problably just another rumor.

 

probably. but one of these rumors is bound to be true one day...

"insider" sources have been claiming false releases of Merom in MBP for a good while now.

 

Well, if your source is right, then I'll have a MBP on my desk on wednesday

 

Not true. You can run a hacked version of OS X on PC laptops. It's not exactly legal, but it's very cool. Search [edited by moderator] and you'll find a lot of information on doing this.

[link removed due to fear of thread locking]

 

which, in essence means you can't run it cause it's not legal.

Mac can run any OS legally.

 

I don't think you can post those kinds of links heres, all it is, is a link to a site that is talking about something illegal and how to do it. The sites says its not doing anything wrong because they hope most of its members actually paying for OS X when in fact they are downloading a modified OS X (which modifying itself is illegal as well) and because they download it there isn't really anything there to make them pay for it. Also the site claims that Apple isn't losing any profit if you pay for OS X, that may be true, but what you are doing is robbing them of potential profit from hardware sales, which is in fact where they ACTUALLY make their profit.

You should probably edit the post otherwise it won't be long before cashmonee locks this thread. Anyone else who reads this, please don't support something like the forementioned project.

 

Well, danish channels are completely dry of macbooks and macbook pros, excluding the 17" model and what a handful of stores have in stock. Hopefully this is good news for us lesser mortals who cant wait until january Both french and english online apple stores list 3 days availibility for MBs, but 24hrs availibility for MBPs.

Let's hope

 

I never heard of such a problem - in fact whereas ATI do mfr card, NV only makes chips.

On the contrary NV had a long history of ****ty, horrible picture quality until not too long ago - their mid- and low-range cards' PQ was waaay inferior to those of ATI before GeForceFX (fiasco anyone? ), arrived in 2003, brought good PQ all across the board.

PS: interestingly enough when I recently tried a GeForce 7300 LE - taken from a brand-spanking new HP Core 2 Duo-based machine - at higher resolution (1280 and up), it was visibly inferior to an integrated ATI 200M's (in a used HP dx5150) output quality on the same displays, even on the desktop, let alone compared to my x1900's PQ...

 

Uh... no.
nVidia has not had a history of ****ty, horrible picture quality. In fact, you could only really tell the difference when they did side by side comparisons in gaming (where they cut out very small parts of screen shots and zoom in).

Most ayone who's used several cards from both companies will also state similar things: ATI drivers suck (they've gotten better over the past 3 or so years) and nVidia has always had better drives.

and yeah, I know others who've had ati cards go bad (especially in DTR notebooks).

FIY, I use resolutions from 1280x1024 up to 1600x1200 (in gaming) and desktop. Though I rarely used TV-out much.

 

No. ATI and Nvidia are both chip producers. the Built By Ati cards are produced by Sapphire, which amongst other things built EVERY x850, x1800. x1900 and x1950 card. ATI does not produce the cards.

ATi has been claimed to have better image quality than nvidia, but 90% of this is driver optimization and components used to secure quality of signal transfer. On such low end cards, IQ is pretty crap anyway compared to the higher end of the spectrum.

 

lol, this reminds me when google took some pages out of their index since some companies said they were infringing their copyright... and then put a BIG notice stating that pages X and Y were not available and why, increasing awareness to them.

I am afraid I am going to disagree with you on that one, xbandaidx. I already explained in another post why I am pretty certain it is legal down here, and it is most probably legal in the US too. It might not be ethical, but that is another discussion altogether. Anyways, I respect your opinion, which seems to happen to be the same of the forum official policy. we got to play by the rules of the place we are standing in.

 

Wooky, I don't think Apples user agreement for OS X could be any clearer considering the fact that it states that OS X may only be run on Apple branded hardware/computers. Look it up its there.

 

Actually you're wrong: ATI always had a smaller capacity production capacity in Canada. As a long-time member of their dev program my (often pre-release) samples came from there.

Oh no, the usual urban legends... for 100th times: how do you 'optimize' (= jack up) PQ when we are talking about desktop 2D?

Which means better picture quality, thank you.

Contrary to this the integrated 200M looks absolutely fine even at high res whereas I cannot say anything nice about the 7300 LE...

 

How old are you, may I ask? It's quite funny to read these comments - until 2002-2003 Nvidia had a VERY BAD reputation when it came to PQ.

Read up on older forums and you'll learn what kind of PoS were most of their GF2 card (across the board), their mid-range GF3 cards or any of the MX-family craptastic PoS stuff.

The 'old' PQ list was always 1. Matrox 2. ATI 3. Nvidia - and when I got my Parhelia sample from Matrox just 3 months before I got my 9700 Pro from ATI I was still very impressed by their quality...

I like these very 'scientific' reasonings...

Which was true before the Catalyst times, I agree, I often cursed back and forth - but it's pretty far from true since Catalyst (actually it became fine a little bit before).

FYI: Nvidia didn't even have mobile chips when ATI was already the long-time giant of the mobile discrete market...

Nice - I bought my first 24" CRT 4-5 years ago, to replace my then-aging 2x22" CRTs...

 

Is it? If so then as soon as Apple can get out of the single-digit market share ghetto they will change it - or face with a nice MS-like lawsuit from both federal and state governments here and abroad.

 

Personally I don't think that time is anywhere near, so Apple doesn't have anything to worry about.

Even so, it'd be a little hard to argue against something like that if Apple were ever to get to the point that MS is in, Apple can argue they have always had it that way (and they did) where their agreement was that it could only be run on their product. Thinking from a lawyer standpoint, that's a tough arguement to go up against. To me it would appear that a 'grandfather' effect would prevail in this instance.

 

25 actually. I've been dealing in and reading reviews and purchasing cards for over 10 years. I've also owend a GF2 card and had a great time with both that and the GF4 cardes. I can't comment on GF3 and MX cards. While most sites that did reviews on both say the PQ is better on the ATI's, it is (and as far back as I can tell) always hard to see any difference unless you look very hard.

I always held matrix in a different class just like the FireGL cards and other pro level cards. I had an old Matrox card as my first 3d card... but that can hardly be put into the conversation.

Just like reviews from people on here?

Yeah... like Catalyst drivers are any good. It's sad that for mobile drivers, they're actually the worst to use. I always used the modified drivers for my 9600 in my old laptop before the GPU burned out.
Plus, the fact you have to now install the .net framework is annoying.

 

I see. The question is whether the EULA is enforceable. As I said before, I am sure it isn't here. And I am quite sure it isn't enforceable in the US either, but IANAL. But EULAs, at the very least, are subject to contract law, so it is not because something is forbidden in an EULA that it is illegal. I might make a software and state in the EULA that anyone using it should sent their sister to spend the night with me. Worse, this post is my intellectual property; I can say that by reading it anyone is enforced to do the same. Would that be legally binding? But, as I said, I do respect your opinion though; this subject is quite flammable and I don't want to be involved in another flamewar.

 

Um, T2k, even if ati has a small production capacity, which I doubt (too expensive to upgrade to new processes), all consumer cards are manufactured by other parties. I indulge in hardware just a little bit, so some links to support this (even by PM) would be nice, as its the first time I hear it.

PQ, ATI vs. nVidia, as the chairperson of nVidia once said, the problem is that at one point your eyes just dont get any better. If we have a good nvidia chip with bad card manufacturing (i.e. components), then we get bad IQ. If we have a bad ati chip and decent manufacturing, we might have it yield the same result. All in all, its subjective, and largely off topic

 

I wouldn't really expect it to be enforcable there in your country as it is in the states, however if you agree to something and check the box, checking that box is pretty much equilivant to signing your name on a document, breaking such an agreement is something that can be bought to court, and Apple would win such a case, but Apple would most likely tell you to stop running the operating system before such measures were taken. This isn't an opinion, its fact. There is a difference between what is enforcable and whats not, but in this case Apples agreement is acceptable enough to be enforced in a court of law (the US that is at the least).

I don't see how this subject is something that is flammable.

 

Hrm... but the thing is, if a contract is binding you to do something illegal, it is no longer a legal binding contract. That's been proven in the US courts before.

not a bad point there perry

 

what contract is binding someone to do something illegal?

Can you clarify what you said?

 

Well, let's just say I'm close to fourty...

Nice... You know I wrote my first - very primitive, of course - game on Sinclair, somwhere around 1983...

Then you must consider yourself very-very lucky - MX cards were the most notorious crap kings but GF2 cards by general had pretty ****ty analog circuits (hence big name/good quality mfrs like Asus became so expensive).

Ummm... hate to kill your beliefs but FireGL chips are not different from Radeons - only some board models are different (ie gig of memory, genlock on Quadros etc).
Last time they were different was when ATI just bought the FireGL brand from Diamond.
It's the driver, that makes a big difference.

Let me guess... Millennium G200?
Why? My fallback PCI card here at home is still a 32MB Millennium II PCI...

FYI: ATI does not support mobility chips in Catalysts at all - it's hard to tell what are you talking about...

Modified drivers... look these "modified drivers" are nothing but stock Catalysts with updated HWCL and changes in initial settings here and there. When I buy a new laptop with ATI I do it myself if there isn't any 'mod' at handy even though I hate this tedious crapjob (Usually that's it for that laptop, I don't change drivers ever again, at least for 1-2 years unless there's something serious update.)
But hey, I barely use my wife's laptop...


Plus, the fact you have to now install the .net framework is annoying.[/QUOTE]

 

They always had:

http://hothardware.com//viewarticle.aspx?articleid=462 - 2001

http://www.driverheaven.net/insideati/index2.htm - 2003

To what? I haven't heard about 'new processes' in card assembly... ASIC, bunch of analog, SMD stuff, memory modules and the chip. Board can have more layers but that's hardly a 'new process'.

See above. As I mentioned it's certainly not for massive mfr'ing anymore but for example that's where they repair RMA'ed boards if possible.

Correct. y point was that Nv had a very liberal licensing back then, a hands-off approach - no wonder: they never been a card mfr - but ATI, as an old card mfr, knoew very well how important is this. Eventually both migrated towards the 'middle' - with the arrival of the 9000-series era some ****ty 3rd party ATIs have arrived and by the GF4 era high-end NVs became much better quality cards.

 

So back to the point: what's the latest rumor about MB/P update?

 

I say we'll see something tomorrow or Wednesday.

 

Thats pretty interesting. What are your grounds for your guess?

 

Man, don't do this to me... I'm way too old to tell something for my wife and get ass-kicked when it turns out to be BS...

Linky?

 

Don't worry about Core2Duo T2k. It would be frustrating if they cane out the day after you bought it, but all in all Core2Duo is not an earth-shattering upgrade. Buy the MBP when you are ready.

As for the OS X on PC argument, EULA rulings have been mixed. Sometimes they hold up in court, sometimes not. The problem is that reverse-engineering is illegal, and that is required. As for the OS X monopoly possibility, that would never stand up. There are several options available besides OS X. Now if Apple got to 90% and forced you to use Apple hardware, you may have a case, maybe.

 

Section 1201(f) of the DMCA states that "a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs." (my enphasis). While Apple may well reason that OSx86 is not about interopeability with other programs, but in fact with other hardware, one could always reason that in fact Apple and beige PCs hardware are the same; the only thing preventing OS X from running in beige PC hardware out of the box is EFI/BIOS issues and drivers - therefore, it can be thought of interoperability with other programs. But the main argument to the legality of OSx86 project is that it still haven't been sued out of existence by Apple by now. Apple has always been very protective of its IP (or what it thinks it is its IP, like the word podcast - simply ridiculous in my opinion). If there was a clean, effective way to stop OSx86 they would have done it by now.

 

I'm less worried about C2D, more about dual-layer DVD writer (and perhaps a fingerprint reader - I know, time to wake up)...
Anyway I have to take my wife to the SoHo store and have her to check it out first.

 

Dual Layer is obsolete, HD-DVD is the way to go.

I'd be more concerned about getting that then Dual Layer.

 

I highly doubt MBP will get HD-DVD writer anytime soon. Not before 2007, I'm telling you.