Apple's MacBook Pros Catch Up with Core i CPUs

[Marcus Yam]

New MacBook Pros get refreshed with Nehalem and new Nvidia GPUs.

Apple's MacBook Pros Catch Up with Core i CPUs : Read more

 

[mianmian]

Apple, you are late!

 

[jonpaul37]

not that i am a fan of Dell's but Apple is the devil!

 

[jonpaul37]

... and the Dell version of the SAME exact laptops cost almost half what the Apple products sell for! Good for you Apple, rob from everyone and give to the rich!

 

[warezme]

but they have the most advanced cutting edge technology available! pfftt!

 

[Toddosan]

Yawn, snooze, We will talk apple when u get a better graphics chip instead of a rehased one that sucks badly. Also i predict that apple will stop being a computer company and head fully into the realm of consumer electronics and leaving its Macintosh users in the dust in about 5 years or so.

 

[Lessqqmorepewpew]

good god. the asus u30 is half the cost and twice the power!!

 

[builderbobftw]

Must be pretty hard to be the worst prebuilt now thats saying something

 

[Abrahm]

Oh look! They are still under powered and over priced!

 

[orionantares]

And of course today's deal is an 18.6" HP i7 at 1/3 the price of a slightly bumped up configuration on the 17" MacBook Pro to better match the HP laptop.

 

[Guest]

lol, I love how some readers are here. Saying cheap plastic laptops with short battery life and a bloated OS never designed for mobile use actually compares to a Macbook Pro. I don't see any of the mentioned laptops with multitouch, IPS LED screen, and aluminum unibody. Along with 8-10 hour battery with a full Core i5/i7.. not the watered down low voltage core 2's.

 

[Guest]

Dude, just use your ultra fast serial ATA 5400RPM drive to crush the iCompetition! Then dazzle'em with your 512MB of VRAM to the Alienware's m11x's 1GB, then they'll all be iSorry... They even read this article....lol

 

[norb8]

Ethan314159: All those "premium" features is why Apple enthusiasts are labeled as snobs because most people don't want to pay an additional 100$ for a uni body laptop plus $300 for an LED screen. That savings could go to additional upgrades or other uses.

Maybe Apple loyalists need the extra long battery life while they sit in a Starbucks typing their novel.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

Not having a swappable battery is unacceptable. On the other hand, everyone has their reasoning. I wonder what theirs is?

 

[thejerk]

[citation][nom]Ethan314159[/nom]lol, I love how some readers are here. Saying cheap plastic laptops with short battery life and a bloated OS never designed for mobile use actually compares to a Macbook Pro. I don't see any of the mentioned laptops with multitouch, IPS LED screen, and aluminum unibody. Along with 8-10 hour battery with a full Core i5/i7.. not the watered down low voltage core 2's.[/citation]

You're obviously a moron.

 

[manitoublack]

[citation][nom]mlopinto2k1[/nom]Not having a swappable battery is unacceptable. On the other hand, everyone has their reasoning. I wonder what theirs is?[/citation]
So that when the battery dies you have to buy a new laptop, not just replace the battery

 

[pcfxer]

The battery is swappable. "OMG not six screws I can no longer unplug the flat cable and unscrew six tiny screws!!! TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE give the exception life and longevity!"

 

[jimmysmitty]

[citation][nom]Ethan314159[/nom]lol, I love how some readers are here. Saying cheap plastic laptops with short battery life and a bloated OS never designed for mobile use actually compares to a Macbook Pro. I don't see any of the mentioned laptops with multitouch, IPS LED screen, and aluminum unibody. Along with 8-10 hour battery with a full Core i5/i7.. not the watered down low voltage core 2's.[/citation]

Those same "cheap" laptops have had multitouch, LED back-lit screens AND Core i3/i5/i7s for a while. Apple is just way behind in tech. You always pay more and get less with Apple. They are kinda the anti-Wal-Mart.

Oh and in honesty, Windows 7 is actually easily on par with OS X.

 

[onekill]

Lol, I love Apple haters, they make my day. The fact that you can't afford a good computer, is no reason to hate on the people who can afford an amazing quality laptop. Core i5 or i7 in a 17 inch notebook for $2300? Gotta be kidding, but when you get that smooth 8-9 hours of battery life, while your recharging 4x more times on your Sony (2 hour battery life) il still be going, saves battery cycles, saves time being tied down. 3+ hour plane ride? Can't use your laptop for those 3 hours. I can go that 3+ hours, and still have battery to do everything I want. And your LCD screen doesn't compare to the samsung displays on those $1k laptops. Most people look at price and ask why would somebody pay for this, if that competitor is better? Screen quality is a huge one for laptops. I've owned PCs, I've owned expensive ones ($1.5k-$2k) and there quality is crap. Everyone thinks plastic is the way to go, Apple did it right and went with metal. Go pick up that Sony Z series. It feels cheap, the plasic bends and feels almost like it's going to fall apart. The screen is flexible enough that you feel like you can just... Snap it off with no effort. Other brands have horrible quality. So before you go hating apple, at least have some actual facts to back up what your talking about.
Have a good day

 

[tipoo]

13 inch still using a Core 2, blech. But thats more the fault of Intel's lawsuit, Apple didn't have a choice since Nvidia cannot make chipsets for the i-series. Since they cannot put a discreet card in the 13 inch, they were stuck with a Core 2 Duo plus Nvidia chipset. The larger ones use Core i-series with an Intel chipset and Nvidia discreet graphics.


And still no blu-ray, double blech.

 

[applerocks]

I love the Apple Haters here...

Where do you buy this mysterious Dell for half the price that has the same specs? By the time I customized a Dell M6500, to be roughly the same specs as the MBP 17, I had to upgrade the 802.11g wireless to N, I had to upgrade the screen 1920x1200 res, had to add the built in camera, had to upgrade the hard drive to 7200 RPM, the stupid thing costs several hundred dollars more than the apple and is twice as thick, has 1/3 the battery life, and is made of plastic not aluminum... I just dont see the deal here.

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

2x education discounts later and all of a sudden a high-quality laptop with a Unix-based OS is cheaper than a comparable Dell/HP laptop.

... I love my job.

 

[Guest]

jimmysmitty: LED =/= IPS LED. Far higher quality screen. You can't get that on any laptop, and buying one from Dell will cost you at least $700+

 

[tipoo]

[citation][nom]ragnar-kon[/nom]2x education discounts later and all of a sudden a high-quality laptop with a Unix-based OS is cheaper than a comparable Dell/HP laptop.... I love my job.[/citation]


Really? My education discount only knocks off 8% of the low end 13' price from the Apple online store.

 

[shoelessinsight]

With all the problems she's had with her current Macbook Pro, my friend has been waiting for the last two years for Apple to release something that was a real upgrade over what she already has. She was hopeful that these might finally justify her desire to upgrade, but it's just turned out to be a big disappointment for her.

Software is finally catching up with the parallelism trend, and we are now seeing clear performance improvements as we scale up beyond two cores. Most of the high-end notebooks now are using quad-core flavored Core i7 processors, yet Apple has chosen to stay back and stick with dual cores.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the Geforce GT 330M was among the graphics cards that were little more than re-branded versions of older models. I know Apple has some kind of deal going on with Nvidia, but you would think that they would have looked at ATI by now.

With a few upgrades putting the Macbook at $2,950, it still wouldn't be nearly as good as a $1,645 Asus G73JH-A1. I wish I could get my friend to switch. =\