Sandy Bridge Notebooks by January 31st?

They always say better battery life but the facts are that the C2Ds gave better battery life than the current Core i series. We'll see how much better the new Core i series will be...

 

In idle / not CPU-intensive tasks Arrandale was more efficient than C2D. It's the turbo-boost kicking in that makes it more power hungry under heavy load. I remember reading some comparisons between P8700 & i5-520M back then on the same Asus laptop and the i5 gave generally better battery life, little bit less under quite unrealistic conditions (cpu permanently solicited).

 

No because putting SB in everything wouldn't make sense from a business sense. MB is entry level Apple product and putting SB in there would steal from their entry level MBP 13" sales. It's a smart business strategy.

 

Smart for Apple, not for it's consumers that get to pay today's prices for yesterday's technology.

 

Yeah but people continue to buy Apple products. Apple makes you pay more for higher end performance. Look at the base MBP 13" and white MB. They are exactly same spec, but one is 200 bucks more for aluminum casing.

Funny enough at Micro Center where I work we are selling the 13" MBP for 999, the same price as the white Mac Book so nobody has bought the Mac Book.

Besides when you are buying an Apple product, the average joe schmoe customer doesn't care about Sandy Bridge, chipsets, and all that. They want a working reliable laptop. And the MBP 13" with the Core 2 still gets 8+ hours battery life (I have doubts about the 10+ hour they quote) so it's still damn better than any equivalent PC except maybe the Timelines, and the base Macbook spec wise craps on the Timelines with 8 hour battery life.

 

With apple though, you pay three times the money but don't get three times of 'anything'.

 

You get WAY better tech support, and Apple has consistently been #1 in customer service and tech support. Also I tend to find the build quality for Apple products easily surpasses that of higher end PC manufacturers (bleh to Sony). And servicing Apple products from an ASP side has been fantastic.

 

No, not way better.

Besides, I could buy and throw away two out of three Timelines and still be ahead - no support is worth that cost, nor is simply having a brand new system the moment a problem occurs matched by what apple offers.

 

If you say so. I had two macbooks. First fan failed within 3 months, sent it in to get repaired twice because it kept coming back damaged. Third time they let me do an express exchange at my local Apple store. Two months later the optical drive died, I took it the Apple store for repair. Where it sat for 10 days waiting to get a replacement optical drive. After several calls I finally went in there, and one of the managers said they were going to do a "work party" that night (that's what she called it) to get all the systems in queue repaired.
My macbooks were creaky, flexy cheap plastic. I can honestly say my Lenovo T410 has far better build quality, and it's been totally reliable. I've used the hell out of it and I haven't had one single issue with it.
So I do beg to differ on your assessments.

 

Nice OT with all the Mac-talk here folks

But, going along with the flow - has anyone considered the possibility that the new incarnation of Macbooks might actually feature AMDs upcoming Fusion APUs instead of Intel CPUs?

 

I can also quote you plenty of horror stories of PC brands. Sony? Pfft. Cheaply made crap, horrible ASP service, pain in the behind finding part numbers AND their order system is now down so NOBODY in the United States as an ASP can service them, they MUST ship everything to Sony for warranty repair. Dell/HP are some of the far superior ASP service, very fast turnaround time for parts and warranty repair. Toshiba is bleh, parts come fast but usually orders get shipped incorrectly, and Toshiba warranty repair is 50% of the time messed up. Lenovo is horrid as an ASP, ordering parts is confusing as hell, and their service is sloooooooooow. Acer/Gateway/Emachines is a crapshoot, sometimes very fast sometimes slow. And none of their drives come preimaged, which is a pain.

And I was mostly referring to the Macbook Pro. I don't know how long ago you purchased your Macbooks but ASP wise again, Apple is superior to ANY manufacturer. In fact we had a Macbook in a few months ago, with a bad touchpad. We shipped it out Wednesday. It came in Friday from California repaired. They Fedex'd it same day, repaired same day and was shipped back. Apple GSX service manuals are industry leading. Very comprehensive service, very fast, parts come quick. Oh and I very rarely see the problems on Apple vs. PC

They said SL was going to support AMD, that fell flat on it's face.

 

Jees, someone rename this thread to "Apple release SB by January 31st?".

 

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No, it isn't. If they drop the level of graphics for an insignificant CPU boost, it'll hurt them and informed Apple customers would go for refurbs or wait a year. They'll either upgrade to SB or stick with C2D, but there is no chance of them putting Arrendale in there.

 

Then I think they will stick with Core 2 as MB has always been lower end, and Core 2 are still fine for most people who use it. Maybe give it more robust graphics

 

Oh god, please no! Then it'd never go past C2D.

 

The Sandy Bridge IGPs don't support OpenCL, which Apple might choose to build in to the foundation of the OS starting with Lion. Some kind of custom solution or AMD processor are really the only possible solutions.

 

Any AMD processor out right now or even in the first half of 2011 would be a massive downgrade relative to even the Arrandale MBPs, never mind Sandy Bridge. They might put Bobcat into a MacBook Air, but I simply don't see them taking that kind of performance and battery hit for the sake of OpenCL.

 

Of course we have no idea how e.g. Llano will fare against Arrandale or Sandy Bridge.

Plus I don't think Apple has ever been concerned with giving its customers the most powerful hardware around. It'll just use parts that make most sense economically and market is as the latest and greatest and the flocks will buy...

 

The only reason I want SB out on notebooks ASAP is so that they'll push other i7's down =p I'm really not impressed by them otherwise and I can't upgrade my laptop to them anyway.

 

I doubt they will drop significantly. They will probably discount stuff during Black Friday to get rid of excessive overstock and wait for SB laptops to come in.

 

Prices will drop, can't say how much, but they'll drop. That's all that matters to me lol I plan on upgrading at some point.

 

Welp, I'm waiting for a 15" MBP SB.

 

We will hear back from you in a about a year whence you have got it then

 

Confirmed: Intel Sandy Bridge or 'second generation Core processors' to be introduced at CES -- Engadget


I think theres a decent chance.

 

If you want a new generation GPU though, you might have to wait a bit longer. While the new CPUs will be shown in January, typically models take at least a month of more before you actually get them in your hands (especially popular models such as the previous Dell XPS m1530 laptops for example). Business version typically also are a few months later (like the Dell E6400).

 

Come on now, falling for all the marketing hype are we? Your machine will not become obsolete until it can no longer do what you NEED it to do. Not a moment before!

Their apparent product support would indicate different.

There is of course a lot of hype involved. Nevertheless, they do have much improver (for those that require it) security measures built in. An especially important asset in business application.

 

Apparent is the key word, right?

 

What are the chances of a company like XoticPC/IBuyPower offering the processors as an upgrade for their existing line up? I know the new architecture requires new motherboards so I'm not getting my hopes up but still curious.

Also, any chance of something with DVI-I/DVI-D dual link support so I can plug the laptop into a 27 inch screen and use it as a desktop replacement? Obviously if it can be added as an upgrade at boutique system builders that would mean I could simply choose a DVI-I Sager and have a very satisfying machine .

 

Hah. Maybe so. Do you really think apple will take that long though? The next freakin' intel CPU will be out by Q1 2012. lol

 

And you'll (maybe) get that one around 2013 - if you're lucky.

 

Ugh. You guys are hopeless. Do you really think Apple would go more than a year without upgrading the MacBook Pros? God, I'm not a huge fan of Apple, but if you're going to hate on them, at least do so reasonably. You know as well as I do that the next update won't be coming any later than Summer 2011, and even that's unlikely. It'll probably be updated in Spring.

And anyway, this is really offtopic, and with how stupid it's gotten, this really needs to stop.

 

Thank you for some sense in this thread.

 

Who's hating?

Just having a little 'lighter' conversation. Sorry.


I'm certainly no fan of Apple, but I'm also far from hopeless too.

And, actually no, I don't know when the next update will come - but now I do.

 

Who said that? Actually the Macbook Pro's are already past due for an update according to Mac Rumors. They typically get updated every 6-7 months. It's already been 7 months, but SB is coming out in Jan so I think they will wait.

Also Macbook is soon to be out for an update.

 

That's great cause I'm hoping to get a MBP with SB by Summer '11.

 

Really? I would have never known.

You're not getting the hint: they're not Apple fans. Hence, the exaggeration. What they're saying is, when it comes to the latest innovations, you don't look to Apple.

 

I know, but I'm not an Apple fan either. That's not much of an excuse for exaggerating.

Then again, I've seen worse, often from Apple fanboys. :/

 

I am not sure I agree with that. I haven't bought any Apple product(most are overhyped) but they did play the role of introducing many latest innovation to the general public.

 

Like?


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The original Mac, iPod, iPhone

 

id call them design innovations more than technological ones, but thats going a little OT
id expect the mbp's to go sb, maybe 6months after the pc notebook market does. sb may finally allow mbp's to use quads, and since battery seems to be a big issue for apple, sb could give them this plus an added graphical boost to boot.

 

Of course they are design innovation. For technological ones, we are looking at IBM, Palo Alto of the old Xerox, Intel, Microsoft etc. Just look at their IP portfolios.

Though it usually is Apple that introduce these to general consumers. How many times Microsoft has tried the touch computing thing and look at what iPad (I cannot find a use of it even it is given to me free) has done ?

 

I'd love an iPad. I'd have it using Logmein Ignition 100% of the time to my pc lol

 

They don't really have anything innovative, they just have better marketing. As for when Macbooks will be getting SB, you'd best check Macrumors or forums with their notebook release timeline, as Apple typically has a set schedule for releases.

 

And you would need to find a keyboard for it

 

Onscreen keyboard works just fine.

 

iPad isn't a technological innovation, it's basically a gimped tablet. They took an existing iPhone, stretched it, and deleted important features like a camera, 3G, multitasking, and omitted use of important browsing apps like Flash.

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UciKe5EbjqQ?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UciKe5EbjqQ?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width='640' height="385"></embed>

 

I'd hate to drag this thread further into Apple territory but 3 out of 4 of your points aren't even true. There is a 3G ipad, multitasking is coming in 4.2, and flash is available as a very easy to install addon for jailbreak users. Its not even fair to assume that such a thing isn't possible (same with multitasking which can also be added when jailbroken) as we're talking about software support here. Yes it may not be included out of the box, but its more then doable.

 

My bad.

Coming? No excuse not to be there at launch. Multitasking has been done on cell phones for years. Again, my point not innovative.

A hack? Again, not Apple, not innovative, not even compliant with one of the most common web apps.

And what about a camera? I mean it's supposed to be a multimedia device. It should include a camera both back and front side for webcam use.