Should I buy an Apple laptop?

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.

Does anybody have any insight into SSD drive vs., say, 7200rpm hard drive? The SSD adds massively to the cost but I've heard some people say it aids speed dramatically.

lots faster in benchmarking terms, but the practical different depends what you typically use your computer for to a great extent

http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/2446/xbenchx25mzf1.png

I'm gonna wait on SSDs. They keep improving drastically and lowering in price and I don't need one just yet. (and don't have the money). In a year or two I'll either remove my disc drive and replace it with an SSD, or remove my 7200 and put it in an enclosure and put in an SSD.

OWC recently announced some new SSDs:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extreme_SSD_Sandforce

Claims they're better than Crucial. Don't know about Intel but people were recommending those.

the cost effective way of doing it is using a small SSD for your OS + apps, and a bigger platter drive for your data, but for me that's still to expensive, and the cognitive/backup overhead of having two disks is a pain.

the practical different depends what you typically use your computer for to a great extent

Which patterns of use would benefit from SSD and what wouldn't? I usually have lots of applications and tabs open but don't do a lot of hard-core computation on my laptop (though that might change if the laptop were equal to the task.)

Also: can I swap out the hard drive on a Mac after purchase without voiding the AppleCare? If so, I'm happy to go with regular HD for now and then buy SSD if I feel I need it later.

SSD makes my MacBook Air feel massively faster than the paltry 1.8ghz it is

oh look they got rid of the enter key and replaced it with another option key. good going.
Until they did that I had no idea I used it so much. Bring back enter.

gah so tempted to upgrade after a night of working with RAW files that made my system creak (i have a mbp c2d 2.33ghz with only 2gbs of ram).

might just add another gig of ram for $50 and see if that gives me some more life on this 3-year-old baby. thoughts?

I just successfully transformed my PC into a Hackintosh. On torrents there are various releases (Kalyway, iPC, SnowLeo, etc) that are basically ISOs of patched OSX install DVDs. But it takes a LOT of work to make everything work right. I was hacking away for a solid 4 or 5 days before everything was nice and ready. Now I have OSX 10.5.6 and complete working sound, video, and internet. My usb connections all work, and even the latest release of Final Cut Studio!

I tried at least 3 different releases before one would work for me, iPC OSX86. Some of them would install and then fail to boot, some of them wouldn't even get to the installation. What I ended up doing was backing everything up and formatting a 300GB HD into 2 partitions. One partition I installed Windows 7 and the other was formatted for FAT32. After installing OSX86 I had to do alot of looking around online for the correct video and audio drivers, but now when I start my computer I can select whichever OS I want!

I have a Dell XPS 420 desktop btw.

420

s1ock check your pageins/pageouts in activity monitor. if your number of pageouts is similar to your number of pageins or is a high number, that means you would benefit from adding more RAM. try checking after an editing session with RAWs.

SSDs are good for instant loading of apps & for doing work with files located on the SSD itself, but if you're going to be using in conjunction w/ a regular hard drive, there won't really be a speed increase if all the data files are located on the regular hard drive.

yeah, the biggest different a normal user notices with SSDs are app launching speed, which becomes essentially instant.

unless you are a billionaire you won't be storing video or whatever on them, and they don't help with processor-intensive tasks like video, so they're not so useful for that. they're not useful for the science simulation stuff i do either.

i gather putting your photoshop swapfile on one is a good for PS performance.

I ended up getting the stock 5400rpm drive on my MBP. Instead of paying Apple's hefty drive upgrade prices, I figured I'll swap in a larger 7200rpm drive when prices drop. Pretty sure hard drive swapping doesn't mess with AppleCare.