Should I buy an Apple laptop?

in terms of raw performance, splitting hairs over the difference between 3.06/3.33 will be nowhere near as effective as swapping out the hard drive for a SSD (admittedly, they are $$$ and you will lose a lot of storage space.)

Just finished setting up the 27" i7 - daaaaaaaaamn

Screen looks excellent, no flickering issues (yet), fast.

Trying to finagle my way into getting one 'for work' - "look, I can keep track of everything that happens day to day in iCal" "um, isn't that on your current computer?"

This thread is making me want a 2nd monitor. And hey, it's a business expense!

3.0 is plenty fast enough for a home studio. my 'real' studio still uses a g5 and even that is alright for the most part.

So, reformatting my iMac. I've noticed that much older computers than mine perform better than mine in rendering time, snappiness, etc, so I thought I'd get it set up so that I keep my Final Cut/video stuff as separate from the rest of my computer stuff as possible. Is it insane/unnecessary to create two Snow Leopard disks? Or would I get the same benefits from just having two users?

Older computers that are kept as clean workstations, I mean.

http://www.kyleconroy.com/apple-stock.php

well shit

what's the moral

buy their stock not their computers?

http://www.yourprops.com/norm-492d0bb2e8c7b-Back+To+The+Future+2+%281989%29.jpeg

Ow, that's sobering - are they likely to increase another forty times in the next six years, does anyone know?

wouldn't put it past them

bought aapl in late 2005, cashed out around late 2007 when i decided i didn't understand wtf was going on in the global economy shitbin enough to be investing. ~2.5x profit, but hindsight a bitch.

27" iMac design was supposed to have been fixed earlier in the year. However, a Mac technician I know is still seeing an inordinate number of these coming back, I think even ones built after the supposed fix. That said a friend of mine has one definitely built after the fix and it's fine.

The mindblowingest thing about that page imo is that Apple ever sold a $5700 laptop!

Do they have a model that's that $$$$ today? Also, what is the most expensive thing they've ever sold to the general public? According to Wikipedia, the Lisa was "$9,995 US ($21,693.67 in 2009 dollars)."

my new macbook pro is just travelled from shanghai to anchorage to newark and should be on it's way to maspeth soon...

the mac pro can get pretty expensive (5-6000) if you deck it out with upgrades

i have options but i'm out of the loop:

13" core 2 duo 2.4ghz + 10 hours + NVIDIA 320M built-in = £1040
13" core 2 duo 2.66ghz + 10 hours + NVIDIA 320M built-in = £1225
15" i5 2.4gz + 8-9 hours + NVIDIA 330M+256MB built-in = £1450

all are with 4GB + 500GB + applecare + display adapters and the prices are UK education. i don't actually care about the display size that much (certainly not to justify the cost), but how much difference is the i5 going to make? i am currently rocking a macbook with 2ghz C2D + 2GB, so i wonder if the 13" options would be noticeably faster at all.

your thoughts?

i5 is definitely a step-up from c2d in terms of processor architecture/future proofing. go for the i5

not really about the clockspeed - the i5 spanks the previous gen c2d, even the 2.8, in just about every test:

http://www.macworld.com/article/147273/2010/04/benchmarks_corei5mbp_15in240ghz.html

I have the first on your list, it's a nice piece of kit but I don't do anything that pushes the processor so I can't comment on that. I did some reading around when the new MBPs were released, I think the consensus was there isn't really any point upgrading from a recent 13" to the new ones.

my 13" is late-2006, so already pretty old, but i dropped it a couple of weeks ago and smashed the screen and broke wifi and the CD drive, so whatever i get will be a considerable upgrade in the sense that it works.

If money's a factor there are some good refurbs on the store right now (as of yestdy anyway)

just bought the 15" i5 2.53Ghz. lol.

good job yo

^^ but I also feel it is my duty to inform you that i5/i7s apparently have a freezing issue?

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=912218

dunno how widespread it is or if you will be affected (should have linked to this yesterday :/)

you'll note that isn't even on my list of options. i see numbers i get excited.

and it came with a free (with rebate) ipod touch, which i can give to my mum, who has wanted one for ages but is a bit weird about me spending money on her, but totally deserves it : )))

haha, i'm used to far worse. those kids don't know they're born.

u r a good son

haha okay, so long as you're going in with both eyes open

ordered a tube of thermal paste today, will likely be opening up my mbp and reapplying thermal grease next week.

you have this freezing problem yourself?

no, I have the previous gen, which has a screen flickering problem

ah yes, that one i heard about.

people on that thread seem to be describing about 15 different issues with no common hardware. i haven't seen the i5/i7 thing reported anywhere mainstream (which is my litmus for is this delusional fanboy worrying, or is it statically significant).

still plenty of time to correct me if i'm wrong though. should i cancel order and get 13" MPB with C2D y/n? Kind of prefer the 13" ones on form factor actually, but the extra speed is attractive.

p.s. major lols at "apple quality control really has gone downhill since they got big"

fuck, I have an i7, I never have any problems, freezing or otherwise. The only reason I'd crack it open is to add memory or a larger hard drive, otherwise the servant drones at the Apple store can do my bidding. Also, it totally kicks ass.

i gather the theories are this freezing thing is a laptop/gfx/heat/form factor/~nobody knows but steve jobs better fix it~ thing so is not expected in the imacs if that's what you have mh

Oh, I have a Macbook Pro.

give it to me

That graphics driver thing with 10.6.4 blows right now, though.

But yeah, other than that, this is the most fucking awesome laptop I've ever had. Matte screen, not sure if that was necessary, but it's what I wanted.

lol fancy

would like a matte screen, but my eyes aren't up to the extra res until the whole ui and more apps support resolution independent widgets

I am trying to hold off on buying a mac mini or anything else, because Apple already has my money for an iPad, new Time Capsule, and Macbook Pro this year. sheeeeit.

Oh yeah, I forgot it was the higher res screen, too. That thing is a++

one of the things i love about them is how well they hold their value. will be selling this thing in ~1 yr and will probably lose << £500 on a £1500 purchase. couldn't wait -- can't finish a phd with a smashed screen.

p.s. much love to the UK government for ballbusting apple into offering applecare at 75% off for uk education purchases

Ha, is there a story there? I wondered why I got my Applecare for £notmuch.

hah so I took my mbp apart to replace the thermal grease. I vacuumed out the interior too to remove dust. in the process I think I vacuumed off three tiny resistors near the speaker/mic assembly. punched myself a few times and put it back together and everything seems to be working okay. haven't tried to use any of the things near the sound card/express card area. :>

on the plus side, my macbook is now idling at 47 C where before it was idling at 65 C

oh look they got rid of the enter key and replaced it with another option key. good going.

and it's heavier than i was expecting.

but otherwise this is solid. runs my number crunching code appallingly quickly.