mbp upgrade is kind of a downgrade...

Apple prices have been higher than average for quite some time. Let's not act like this is a recent phenomena. As for Blu-ray...pass. I want NO optical drive; not a tech that nobody really wants in computers. Maybe if blank blu-ray media was a reasonable price, it'd be interesting...but it isn't. I don't think many people miss it either. I had a BD-R on my Vaio and used it for BD playback no more than once a month. Maybe less than that. And it was murder on the battery. So why would Apple want to put one of those into their laptops?

The balloon will pop? Their prices have been high for a long, long time. There is no balloon in their laptop market. The price is the price, and as always, most computer buyers don't pay it. Apple has been content with their <15% market share. That <15% will continue to buy because they're very satisfied with their product.

Won't happen. Part of the costs of development and maintenance of the OS is tied into the hardware sales. Unlike Microsoft who sells about 13,000 products, Apple sells relatively few. As such, their prices are a bit higher to offset costs and be able to invest in the future.

Unless you're going to Hackintosh, buying a Mac is supporting the OS. Without the hardware, Apple would have to charge quite a bit to maintain the OS. And supporting as many hardware combinations as Microsoft is a non-starter.

 

gotta love the hyperbole. someone is willing to spend more than you for the experience they want. It's a crisis. In other news, people spend more for things in life that they like more. Film at 11.

 

I think the worst part is just how far apple is falling behind in hardware GPU-wise and price/performance-wise.

High-end laptop hardware has <7lb 15" laptops with top-level sandy-bridge Quad-core i7s paired with Nvidia 485m. Note the 485ms produce benchmarks similar to previous generation SLI-setups! The benchmarks are good enough to truly put even a 15" laptop with mobile CPU and GPU parts "on the map" even when it comes to desktop benchmarks...

While we cannot expect the 5.6lb 15" macbook pro to carry around that much firepower, the 6.6lb 17" macbook pro should be able to handle something similar. Why isn't there at least an option for one of AMD's enthusiast or even flagship GPUs in the 17" macbook pro? Why doesn't the 15" have the option for at least the 5830-class AMDs already in 5.2lb 15" laptops?

The 6750 is roughly as fast as my 2.5-yr-old 9800m GS and adds DX11 support. This means it should cover the bases, but isn't a "performance" GPU by any means. It seems fitting for the lower-end 15" model... but the higher end one or the 17"? In comparison to what 15" laptops already on the market are doing, the 6750 seems a complete letdown.

We are talking about $2200-2500 luxury laptops... without even an option for a performance GPU.

 

I don´t mind paying up if the hardware is worth it, but paying almost 3000$ for a 6750m and a 5400rpm HDD is really stupid...

Just my 0.02

 

if you're buying for GPU and HDD alone, then I agree.

If you're buying because you think the OS is great, appreciate superior multitouch (ftw!), want/need OSX-exclusive (or OSX-superior) applications or hardware, want a slightly less user-dependent OS maintenance routine, less chance of contracting malware/trojan/virus-born issues, and have a thinner, lighter machine with one of the better screens on the market (not the best, but better than most), and second-to-none battery life considering the power included...paying almost $3000 might be worth it for people. It was worth $2,500 to me after a lifetime of PC laptops and expertise. It's unlikely that I'll buy another PC laptop outside of an Elitebook DreamColor system. It's that enjoyable to many of us.

So yea, if you're buying and your only need is for GPU/CPU and HDD, you can spend much less. But there are more factors to consider when buying a Mac, not unlike any other market. Most people who've never owned a Mac don't seem to understand that. But I don't blame them; I didn't either before I bought one. I used to be you...and if you look back on my post count history, you'd see me presenting the same ignorant arguments others who don't understand have presented here. It was all about horsepower to me until 2010. Then I found out that upgrading other parts also increased the enjoyment of my user experience much more than upgrading baseline specs.

$0.02

 

I'm going for a £2k set (15", 2720qm, 6750 GPU, Hi-Res screen upgrade, 7.2k HDD, 3 yrs care) in the mind it'll last me 3-5 years. This'll do my mobility, multimedia and should have enough horsepower considering developers seem to have consolitus. Main reason is obviously so I can whack it out at Starbucks and the ladies check out my sexy unibody [/jk]

XPS 15 r2 and N53SV should both offer slightly weaker multimedia options at £900-1300 (no 3 years care) so there's a significant void in price still.

My Dell 13z has been a hero for travelling lots while I didn't have too much money, but the difference between 3-4 hours actual use on ULV & G105m compared to probably 3-6 hours actual use, SB Quads and AMD 6750 GDDR5 is just too great for me.

Edit: forgot bonus reason is really the stupidly good resale value of MB's, they don't drop as quickly. My cheap laptop has lost ~70% of it's worth in 15 months while I expect this could cost £1800 (sans applecare) and in 3 years might sell for £600-800 (i.e. losing 55%-66% of value in 36 months).

 

Whats up AJ, I pose with you at TXB. I am "sacird" over there. Can you do name changes BTW

I understand they have always been that way, I firmly believe the spec to price ratio is far worse than it ever has been. Mind you I am following since 2003. Laptop's are getting cheaper to make not magically more expensive. Your needs on BRD doesnt reflect everyone, neither do mine. Enough people have asked for it and they could add it if they wanted to. Streaming only is a WAYS off I am willing to bet on that. It's the Apple MBP, not Apple's when I buy it. I can drain my battery at my will, I usually leave it in a charger anyway.

I am speaking of backups and it is a great storage solution. Apple obviously has their iTunes agenda, and those transfers they have are horrid.

Apple has hit the ceiling and might go through it a little bit. They have to come down eventually. MS will get stronger on their OS, they may be other players getting in as well. HP might do well with webOS, we shall see. That 15% controls the pricing, unfortunately they do buy, if they did not then Apple would have to compete with price/spec. IMO its a shame they avoid antitrust suits but that's why they want that share at 15%. They want to remove hardware specs you are at their mercy. I do say in 3-5 years they will no longer be able to price gouge, but I may be wrong. Hell their "fans" probably would pay 500 extra on top of the prices.

They do very little maintenance to OSX IMO nowadays. They focus on iDevices a hell of a lot more. I was definitely an Apple fan but those days are gone for the time being. Its a wonderful OS, and they make rock solid hardware, I still say they are the best overall at the combination of the two, but they have Nazi like parallels in a few respects. That may be strong to say but its the best analogy I can think of.

You and many others likes/love their stuff and that's fine. I just hope people realize they could be a hell of a lot better. They wont though since they get absolutely 0 push to do so since its a jump and how high company with their fans.

 

the reason they can't put in a more powerful gpu is because of the thickness of the machine. has nothing to do with the weight or cost or screen size.

apple isn't falling behind in the mobile gpu tech. they are staying just as far behind as they always have. the only annoying thing is that they are dropping the value out of the near 2-grand machine, and all the 13" machines.

i also agree firmly that the apple tax has shot skyward recently.

 

That is true, same with the iMacs I believe. It would get way too hot with a high end GPU. Be nice if they had more models, but F choice in Steve's world. He obviously got better LSD than I did in the day.

PS I wont take anymore pop shots at em. Enjoy the new machines if anyone here snags one. CPU's on the 15 and 17 should be a nice bump from last time.

 

Maybe next years hardware redesign will be more to you fellas' liking. I'm okay with what I'm seeing. then again, after the initial buy-in, getting New Macs is a relatively cheap affair. this upgrade may not be worth a cold $2500 of currency, but for me, it would be $500 at most by selling my current MBP. I think it's worth the upgrade price, IMO.

oh, and sup Viva!

 

first time MBP buyer, ordered the 17 inch,
2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
4GB 1333MHZ DDR3 SDRAM - 2X2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200
8x Double-Layer SuperDrive
MBP 17"HR Antiglare WS Display

with education discount, costed me 2344 CAD + tax, not really much more expensive than the previous generation.

 

Congratulations. I'm sure you will be really pleased with the unit.

 

congrats! 10char

 

Sup G!!!

I am looking forward to Ivybridge. I am just a bitter man right now, did pay bills today haha

If the notebooks stay that high I might skip em since its too high for my blood. I would however get the cheap air or MBP if I can snag a 200-300 discount like microcenter did last year. I wont do a hackintosh, not my style but would like to keep an OSX machine around for a few things. I will say the high end iMac is pretty well priced IMO, like to see the next revision of that.

 

thx,
chose the MBP mostly because of its 1920*1200 resolution, which isn't available with other notebooks.
well hopefully, it turns out to be good for me.

 

if you don't need the battery life a MBP offers, I strongly recommend the HP Elitebook series. For the same money you can get:

-A far superior display (DreamColor 2 = drool-worthy)
-Stronger CPU and GPU
-Bigger RAM capacity (up to 16GB)
-Similar form-factor

Battery life will be more like 2-3 hours at best, but everything else will be similar or measurably better (not including the multitouch trackpad which is kind of a big deal).

Only reason I didn't jump Elitebook last May was because of the battery life. Now the battery life and lack of Apple's epic multitouch would make it even more difficult...but if those features aren't attractive/needs, going Elitebook is a great way to fly.

 

There are always trade offs when it comes to upgrades in any machine. It seems Apple was keen on keeping there price points but really increasing CPU performance. Too bad gpu performance had to take a hit as a trade off this go round.

 

GPU has not taken a hit if you're getting a 6750-based system. Not at all.

 

1 Month ago i bought my 15'' MBP with i7 (Bad moment for thati know), but i really missed OSX, at least im happy with the performance (i switched from an Alienware M15x with i7 820QM and GT240m).

I think the Quad's Sandy Bridge are a big upgrade (well not too much if the apps doesn't use the 4 cores like what happened to me in windows), the GPU i have my doubts: I came from the M15x's GT240M (which is practically the same 330M in my MBP) and the performance between the HD5750 (i could say the rebranded 6750?) was similar because a friend had that M15's model.

My current MBP obtains aprox 40fps (sometimes 50 fps but the OSX drivers are not well optimized, also in some situations performance drops to 20fps) in SC2 and my previous M15x obtained like 54-60fps, i mean you can have a better GPU in the macs but until they dont do a serious gpu driver's update it will be in vain.

The quad will be standard in some time and more apps will use completely the 4 cores (like the move from single to dual core), today not too much apps use more than 2 except games, also hardcore games/apps like bad company 2 use 4 cores completely, but there are more that use dual. I would like to move to the new MBP but actually im fine with my MBP (no regrets from my M15x with 820QM) and i can do almost everything without problems (Movies encoding, Office for studies, typical web surfing like msn and facebook, in games im totally happy playing WoW and SC2, but like i obtain 35fps average in-game i expect some graphics driver update to use totally the performance from my 330M and obtain simillar results to my 240M GT).

I could buy the new one but like i will move to live in Germany (University studies) i can't do the upgrade because i need the money for other more important costs, i think i will wait 1-3 years until the next MBP upgrade or my current one can't satisfy my needs, but if the 2012 models obtain a redesign i will consider them (also Ivy Bridge ).

For the people who bought the new model: Enjoy your new MBP!

 

I'm seriously considering a macbook pro 17" and your comment intrigues me.

New macbook pro 17" is £2000.

Display: Simular priced models have equivalent display or worse to the mac, DreamColor 2 is a LOT more.
Stronger CPU and GPU: CPU in the SB refresh is much stronger than even the i7 940 on the elitebook, GPU is stronger on the elitebook though.
Bigger RAM capacity: 8GB will do most for a good while
Form factor: Mac is thinner and lighter

I'm looking for good arguments to convince me to wait for the HP, Dell and Lenovo SB refreshes / new models because at the moment the MBP 17" is looking nice.

 

I checked that out actually but those seem hit or miss. Display is freakin nice though. 100% agree on the multitouch trackpad on the Macbooks, for me personally I would pay 100 extra just for that since I use a trackpad often. Thanks for looking out though.

 

oh, they're hit & miss?

maybe the Precision 6500 line?

 

I argue that the GPU has risen to a much higher degree than it has in previous years and that Apple has undershot even previous expectation.

The 485m part + sandy bridge places the mobile CPU+GPU (as opposed to desktop hardware in laptops) on almost desktop-level.
Previous mobile hardware has never been that potent. The 6750 is almost 2.5-yr-old $900-laptop horsepower. The previous year was 2-yr-old $900 laptop horsepower.
With the high-end performance skyrocketing (and with sandy bridge + 485m 15" premium laptops around $1800) and the $2200-2500 price tag, you would think that apple would at least raise the standard a little.

As for thickness, I am fairly certain they CAN do better. They simply chose not to. HP got an enthusiast GPU in their ultra-thin series... it cost them battery life, but it rocked anything available in thin laptops at the time.

You would think a luxury-priced laptop would have a performance option so it wasn't absolutely obliterated by every other laptop in its price range... It is one thing to be out-performed, it is another to not even be worthy of consideration for performance.

While there might be users who absolutely MUST have an ultra-thin, ultra-light, 10-hour battery macbook pro; there might also be people who want a solid Mac OS laptop with enthusiast GPU performance, don't mind a 6-7lb laptop, don't mind an extra fraction of an inch in thickness, and don't really need more than a handful of hours of theoretical battery life. Call it Macbook-Turbo.
(Or Macbook-20%-bigger-220%-faster)

 

Battery life hasn't changed, their battery life *METRIC* has changed.

 

The 6750M isn't a rebrand. Plus, I'm willing to bet that your friend's 5750 (which I don't even recall ever being in the M15x) used DDR3 memory.

 

totally agree. the last time i bought a mac (admittedly a while ago), i could justify the extra ~$100 over comparable pc's, but now, I'd have to justify ~$800 comparing the $2200 MBP to the Sager NP5160, which is roughly comparable in terms of specs. sigh.

 

what's the weight, thickness and battery life of said Sager, if I may ask?

 

He has a right to complain, so the bigger question is, why so serious?


MasterChef has a point. There shouldn't be tradeoffs involved in an upgrade. You don't tell someone that his Corolla was an upgrade over the Camry because it has better gas mileage.

 

So sad. But true.

 

Ok, my error, it used DDR3, but the 5730 number of shaders are very similar to the 5750, the only difference are the clocks and DDR5. Yeah is faster but in processing power is very similar, also that 128 bit bus (including in this the 6750) is some important possible limiting factor for the performance.

 

Check out Sager/Clevo. Some resellers (e.g. Mythlogic) will install custom screens, which are actually better than the MBP. Much better bang for the buck. I am probably going to wind up going the Sager/Clevo route even though I'd like to get another Mac. I just don't think I could sleep thinking about the other things I could have done w/ the several hundred dollars of difference in cost.

 

5.73 lbs, .93"-1.46", 3-5 hours.

So the only significant loss is battery life. (and looks, but that depends on taste and whether or not you care about that, which I'm guessing you do)

However, it has an option for a 1080p screen.

 

NP5160: 5.73 lbs, 14.72" x 9.84" x 0.98"~1.46", 4-5 hours
MBP15: 5.6 lbs, 14.35" x 9.82" x 0.95", 7 AppleHours

0.13lbs heavier, up to 1/2" thicker, and 1 or so hours more (depending on the conversion between AppleHours and hours). Based on the spam I get, people will pay a lot for an inch... but is a half inch really that big of a deal?

I guess if you travel a lot, a lot and need to lug around a 15-incher or care about the "sexiness" of your personal computer, then the mac is worth something extra, but $800?!? Of course, people spend $200 on jeans, so who am I to say what makes sense to spend money on?

Edit: Argh. CityPig beat me to it.

 

If Apple is testing under the conditions they claim, that 7 hours is 100% accurate. I'm inclined to believe them, given that their estimates for the MBA (late 2010) were accurate.

... And, no, I won't post the conditions again. Go to the damn page.

Also, I'm seeing a $900 difference, and that's after upgrading to the $160 matte screen option...

 

Oh, they're probably reasonably accurate on the battery life. It's just that once someone has lied, uh, I mean, been overly optimistic for so long, it'll take a little extra to convince me that this time they are being straightforward.

I was using edu pricing for the Apple since I'm staff at a uni, and then on the Sager I was indeed choosing the higher gamut display since to be fair the MBP screen is better than the stock Sager screen. That make everything work out?

 

Maybe you should brush up on your history. You make it sound like Apple fell to the floor in 1999 and begged for Microsoft's mercy. Didn't happen. It was an anti-trust issue with MS. Do your homework please before posting nonsense.

 

I think he's talking about 1996 when the scenario described above occurred verbatim.

 

I bought a mbp13 today. At screen brightness 4 out of 16, with wifi on, reading news articles online, I'm seeing estimated battery hours of 7 to 11 hours fluctuating. Haven't had a chance to fully cycle it yet. As I am typing this, it's showing 10:15 on the battery gauge.

When I had it plugged with kill-a-watt, I had the screen brightness about 8 of 16, it used around 7 watt idle. 10 watt when actively using internet, and downloading hundreds of emails from google through Mail. Considering the battery capacity is about 63 watt hours, I think 7 hours is a realistic number for web surfing. Wow, as of typing this, battery is showing 10:24 now.

 

interesting, anyway - this thread wasn't meant to spur another mac vs rest thread. there's really nothing new there. just interested in how this machine stacks up to the previous one, especially for the cost.

 

Atm i am ONLY considering apple because of the OS, since i am used to it.
Sadly, i dont have much options from this point :/

So how much slower the $1800 version will be comparing to $2200? I mean will it run lets say Starcraft II on high?

 

not even close. the 330m does low-med in osx and med-high in windows. the new machine will do low-med in osx if youre lucky, and probably med in windows.

the 2200 machine is probably med high in osx and high in windows.

 

I have 2007 macbook pro now with 8600m GT 256mb and i am already running it on low-med more or less ><

 

Can anyone tell me what is the AMD 6750 comparable to Nvidia's what? I would really like to see some 3d mark scores with the new machines and how good it is for gaming.

 

it's between nvidia's 540m and 550m

 

So its actually faster then this kobalt laptop? Kobalt Systems - GS150 Optimus Notebook

i mean obviously its also x2 more expensive but at least we can measure that its not stupidly slow

 

my bad for sending the thread slightly off topic. i do think it's not totally irrelevant, though because comparing one generation of offering with the next, especially in terms of cost, requires comparing the laptops with the cost landscape of each generation. anyway, enough said.

yes, i believe that's the same machine as the sager NP5160 i mentioned earlier in the thread. the chassis is made by clevo and sold by several oems. i think the high end MBP15 is in fact quite a nice machine. i think it's just crazy expensive.

 

they changed from a 25w processor to a 45w processor without changing the cooling or power supply...............

 

i said the settings i use to achieve the performance i prefer. the desired frame rate will vary between people.

you can run the game on high on the 9400m if you want.

 

Well obviously i meant that i get 30+ fps with that.
Mostly 1v1 games and more low settings that mid, but still.

 

Well the 550 is likely WAY more powerful than the 6750... the comparison chart would look like:

550
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
6750
540


The 540 is likely the right comparison, and that's if Apple doesn't underclock it.

Its not a bad card by any means. Its just a bit lackluster for a $2200-2500 machine.