Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

You can always partition and install Linux on the second partition for matlab stuff. Boot Camp should work (but call it Windows).

It it really is a 100times slower, you could try running a flavour of linux in a VM.

How is matlab performance in Windows? the last time I ran matlab was version 5.

+1 partition with linux...never had any issues

so... mac boys, if i want a new mac book pro, when they bring out the new os in june will i have to buy that well?

should i wait...?

The new OS will run you about £30. I would buy now to get the most out of the updates...

Funny enough I do need a pc for spreadsheet and accounts work. Excel on the MAC doesn't cut it. I'm going to get a half decent pc I can use as storage for all my music as well, fit a ssd to my macbook and all is good in the world.

That's a great little logo...

I wonder if there is going to be a thunderbolt on the ipad 2?

I wonder if there is going to be a thunderbolt on the ipad 2?

Will the sun rise tomorrow?

new macbook pros out. quad core. want

Most of the people I know are pretty disappointed in the latest round of updates. To the point that the lack of improvement to battery life and resolution is making people seriously consider alternatives.

Right now, I know more people who own a MacBook Pro and want a Lenovo T420 (with Ubuntu or FreeBSD) when that comes out at the end of March, than who own a MBP and want a new version of it.

That's pretty damning.

With an external battery slice you can get 30 hours out of the T420, and you'd get a realistic 9 hours without that. The resolution goes up to 1600x900, and it's a 14" screen rather than 13" with only half an inch physical difference in the machine size. Then there's the quad core, 8GB RAM option, the SSD option... basically stuff that rivals the MBP. Factor in Lenovo's incredible keyboard, and the MBP really starts to look like a lame duck.

Too many people had too high expectations. Everyone I know was hoping the CD bay would go in return for more battery life at the least and that the resolution would be bumped. With neither making an appearance, those Lenovos look really nice.

Probably. But Apple are losing their touch. It should have the port - but if they put it in or not, who knows.

i doubt they will. the current port has been there for ages and would require a re-design of iphone / ipod / ipad / docks etc

• usb2 is fast enough for video and music no?
  

USB2 is fast enough to listen to music and to watch videos... but it's crap at transferring large amounts of music and videos.

USB3 on the other hand at 5gbps is fast enough for those jobs. With USB2 the bottleneck is USB, with USB3 the bottleneck (even with an array of SSD drives) is the speed of the drive.

Light Peak (a.k.a Thunderbolt) has good promise for the future (when it's actually optical rather than copper), but right now doesn't give you anything over USB3, and there is already tons of USB3 stuff on the market (looks at the 2 x 2TB Western Digital USB3 drives on my desk at the moment).

Thunderbolt isn't compelling enough a reason to do anything today, and if anyone thinks it is for the iPad then welcome to 1996 as the Palm also had to be tethered to be synchronised. Upgrades, iTunes sync... this shit should all be wireless.

No doubt about it, Thunderbolt will be awesome in 5 years time. Welcome to today though, it's not really anything at all.

No I mean as well as the usual ipad/phone/pod dock.

Minidisplay/thunderbolt

I must admit, I had a quick look at the think pad range after the Mac Book Pro specs were announced.

Light Peak (a.k.a Thunderbolt) has good promise for the future (when it's actually optical rather than copper), but right now doesn't give you anything over USB3, and there is already tons of USB3 stuff on the market (looks at the 2 x 2TB Western Digital USB3 drives on my desk at the moment).

What about daisy-chaining & 10Gbs per channel ?
I would say that both of those are over an above what USB3 can offer...

The "Thunderbolt" port is universal too. It can be USB, FW, HDMI, DVI all at the same time with up to 4 daisy chained items on the tone port.

You can't output to a display via a USB port AFAIK

What about daisy-chaining & 10Gbs per channel ?
I would say that both of those are over an above what USB3 can offer...

2560 x 1440 resolution at 24 bits per pixel = 88,473,600 bits.

At 60Hz, that's 5,308,416,000 bits per second.

So a little more than half the claimed 10Gbit potential bandwidth of Thunderbolt.

I guess you're not going to be daisy-chaining two of them on the same port as you can't split bandwidth across channels, so daisy-chaining 2 monitors would saturate your bandwidth.

Currently, DisplayPort is 17Gbps over a single channel, which means 3 monitors can be daisychained, except Apple never supported version 1.2 of the protocol as that would've left Thunderbolt dead in the water.

Don't get me wrong, Thunderbolt is nice... but the capabilities have existed for years and already exist in other devices in the market for faster bandwidth and daisy-chaining. Thunderbolt is only going to be able to make a difference in terms of reducing the number of ports and cables needed... nothing else, and to achieve this Apple needs to achieve widespread adoption and can only do so by not implementing other technologies that would make Thunderbolt irrelevant before it took hold in the market, i.e. USB3 and DisplayPort 1.2 which are both widespread and have many supported devices.

The main problem with Lenovos is that they're not made by Apple, Inc.

That does appear to be it... that and they're not shiny.

I like picking the best tool for the job, at work that happens to mean a Mac Pro, at home it means a HP Z800, and for laptop... well I'm in the market and was awaiting the MBP announcement like most people I know. But unless something else happens it's going to be a T420s for me.

It's the best tool for the job.

I'm not precious about operating systems thankfully, nearly everything I do is over the web and with cloud stuff. And I never bought into the iTunes walled garden, so I'm not trapped by it. Being able to make real choices is nice. I already use both a Mac and Windows machine, and both have pros and cons of their own... neither is substantially better than the other, this means I can compare an MBP to a T420s quite well, and really the MBP isn't a winner. Which is a shame, as even I like the shiny stuff.

I would say that the Think Pad has been as much a style icon as the ipod, imac, or anything else. it was a huge feat of design when it came out at the time.

It's just the fact that it was mostly owned by suits, rather than graphic designers and such.

The Think Pads have always been the peak in terms of reliability and durability.

I would say that the Think Pad has been as much a style icon as the ipod, imac

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, NO.

Sapper designed some great stuff. The butterfly keyboard? It was all revolutionary at the time.

Ive's design is well documented, but it's not like he's the only designer of merit.

come on, everyone likes a nipple

Sapper designed some great stuff. The butterfly keyboard? It was all revolutionary at the time.

Ive's design is well documented, but it's not like he's the only designer of merit.

Isn't there one of Sapper's ThinkPads in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC? A quick Google says yes.

IBM had let go of Sapper, but Lenovo contracted him in again.

Do we have a design appreciation thread yet? Ives has nothing on a good bit of Marc Newson. Someone needs to hand over product design at something like Dell to a Newson, educate the masses.

David, you're spot on ... the appification can fuck off. I don't need all that shit. The less icons on my desktop the better.

Lenovo T420, how much does that set one back? Maybe time to get something before I piss off to Oz and can still get VAT discount ...