New MacBook Pros are Cheaper, Faster, Pro-er

[Hanin33]

[citation][nom]spanky deluxe[/nom]chaohsiangchen, that's not an equivalently powerful machine though. The 1.86GHz processors are only dual core, not quad core, the memory with those chips can only run at 800 MT/s instead of 1066MT/s and the L3 cache is 4MB. There's also less RAM. An octo core Nehalem can't be built for much less than about $1500 and even then you'd worry about the quality of a $300 'workstation' class motherboard.[/citation]

you didn't say anything about 'equivalently powerful' in your first response...

 

[chripuck]

[citation][nom]spanky deluxe[/nom]I'd be pretty impressed if you can build an octo core workstation class machine for $1000. Although I'm pissed off at Apple for raising their profit margins by $1000 on their Mac Pros, they're still comparatively priced to equivalent Dell workstations since Dell followed suit. For the first time though, the Mac Pros are actually more expensive which is a shame.Can you tell me where to buy the Nehalem CPUs, workstation motherboard and ECC memory for $1000?[/citation]

If I'm a common end user such as my friend who wants a powerful computer to work on do I need to pay $3000 for it?

Of course my PC doesn't have the exact same specs as the Mac Pro, but it is core i7, it does have 6 gigs of ram, it does have over a TB of harddrive space and get this... it actually has a GTX 260 in it instead of those pathetic GTS 120's... which you can SLI for a couple of hundred bucks.

Nobody disputes that Mac's make great workstations for graphic artists, but how many people that walk into the mac store who want a desktop that is not an all in one are graphic artists?

 

[chripuck]

[citation][nom]moejoe4420[/nom]Hey Chripuck, if you're running Windows on that cool Antec then you're the chump! Nothing wrong with PC other than Windows. Nothing wrong with Apple other than snobbery and price.[/citation]

Oh and additionally, I'm not running Windows "on that cool Antec." The Antec reference was to the case and it actually doesn't run anything, it just houses the components. What it does do is look sexy, just like a Mac.

If you want a duel of wits at least come armed.

 

[frozenlead]

They have memory card readers. I'm sure then next Mac kid I run into will boast about this, right before I tell him (because I'm sure he didn't know..) that PCs have been carrying memory card readers as standard for years...

You have to wonder how Apple can just decide to dock $700 off of a price. What does that tell you about how trumped-up the prices already are?

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

[citation][nom]rooseveltdon[/nom]Lol you fail to forget that at startig price the mac pro doesn't come with an octocore set up and it comes with the shitty gt120,and yet still costs more than 2500 dollars starting price....2500 dollars alone would get me an i7 extreme rig with the gtx 295 and multiple hard drives in RAID or even SSD and if you go and conifigure a work station on avadirect.com you will see that even the octocore is overpriced compared to similarly specced systems how can i walk into an apple store and in good conscience drop well over 2500 dollars for a single 2.6 ghz xeon and a gt120 knowing that i ca get a machine that will run circles around it for much less? you conveniently try to use dell as an example as if most of us on this site don't know where to actually find good prices and good performance nice try.[/citation]

He said his friend's Mac Pro cost $3000, so it must be the Octo Core. I agree, the quad core Mac Pro is a joke at that price.

Hanin33, sorry I meant chripuck claimed he built a machine that was equivalently powerful for $1000 to what sounds like an Octo-core Mac Pro. I should have been more specific in my "Nehalem for under $1000" post.

 

[Hanin33]

[citation][nom]chripuck[/nom]Nobody disputes that Mac's make great workstations for graphic artists, but how many people that walk into the mac store who want a desktop that is not an all in one are graphic artists?[/citation]

this is no longer true... there was a time when this was true.. but this has not been the case since apple switched to x86 hardware and what amounts to standard commodity parts. adobe photoshop currently happens to run slightly better on windows than mac because of issues with support for x64, which seems to be a disaster either way... but RGB/Adobe Color support seems to be supported well in both camps these days. really the only talking point a mac has over a windows machine these days is it's temporary immunity to common web trash that the majority of common users seem to be drawn to like a magnet. that will change soon enough though. show me the money!

 

[mitzz]

God I swear this site should disable comments for anything apple related since all it turns into is a mac bashing fest. Are we really still in the 5th grade where we go around a kicking the shin's of the kids that look different?

 

[chripuck]

[citation][nom]frozenlead[/nom]They have memory card readers. I'm sure then next Mac kid I run into will boast about this, right before I tell him (because I'm sure he didn't know..) that PCs have been carrying memory card readers as standard for years...You have to wonder how Apple can just decide to dock $700 off of a price. What does that tell you about how trumped-up the prices already are?[/citation]

Yeah, and the new price has at least a 20% margin on it if Apple wants to retain that 14.4% profit margin they posted in 2008. I mean seriously, 14.4%? Average for Wall St. is around 6%... the oil companies make 8% and people have shit fits and you've got Apple running around making 2 1/2 times the average margin.

 

[dante01010]

I love macs and pc's but dont' think hardware of the both are exactly the same , Macs use EFI instead of BIOS , and you can only run OS X on PC's if you hack it but will run slower and more unstable

 

[chripuck]

[citation][nom]mitzz[/nom]God I swear this site should disable comments for anything apple related since all it turns into is a mac bashing fest. Are we really still in the 5th grade where we go around a kicking the shin's of the kids that look different?[/citation]

This is more like the rich kids coming to school claiming their Range Rover their mommy and daddy are buying them is better than my 1996 Explorer. Who cares, it gets you to school and back.

 

[chaohsiangchen]

[citation][nom]spanky deluxe[/nom]chaohsiangchen, that's not an equivalently powerful machine though. The 1.86GHz processors are only dual core, not quad core, the memory with those chips can only run at 800 MT/s instead of 1066MT/s and the L3 cache is 4MB. There's also less RAM. An octo core Nehalem can't be built for much less than about $1500 and even then you'd worry about the quality of a $300 'workstation' class motherboard.[/citation]


Can't be built for less than $1500? O RLY?

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[Hanin33]

[citation][nom]mitzz[/nom]God I swear this site should disable comments for anything apple related since all it turns into is a mac bashing fest. Are we really still in the 5th grade where we go around a kicking the shin's of the kids that look different?[/citation]

hollow sock puppets require broken record style reinforcement to remind them of the reality of their rhetoric... the greater-than-thou mentality breeds contempt.. and since they have no solid foundation to stand on all we get is the smell of manure... being an elitist is hardly an admirable quality in a person.

 

[chripuck]

[citation][nom]spanky deluxe[/nom]He said his friend's Mac Pro cost $3000, so it must be the Octo Core. I agree, the quad core Mac Pro is a joke at that price.Hanin33, sorry I meant chripuck claimed he built a machine that was equivalently powerful for $1000 to what sounds like an Octo-core Mac Pro. I should have been more specific in my "Nehalem for under $1000" post.[/citation]

Should have clarified. That price was with the multiple hard drive upgrades he put in (he rips like every DVD he can get his hands on so he has something like 3 TB) and with tax.

Anyways, I said mine was close, and given what we both do with ours mine is certainly close enough to merit a comparison. I'm not trying to compare an E4300 Core 2 vs. his.

 

[chaohsiangchen]

[citation][nom]dante01010[/nom]I love macs and pc's but dont' think hardware of the both are exactly the same , Macs use EFI instead of BIOS , and you can only run OS X on PC's if you hack it but will run slower and more unstable[/citation]

We've been on this lie many times. EFI is just extended firmware. There is practically nothing EFI can do that BIOS can't. You can even write a small OS masquerading itself as a form EFI and tell BIOS to read it. Microsoft have been replacing BIOS callback with Windows kernel codes since 2000. So did various Linux distro. Apple Inc. simply use EFI (provided by Intel) as a form of hardware lock, but that's defeatable. The reason you hack it and it runs slower and unstable is because Apple Inc. lack the software skill to master hardware/software interface that Microsoft and Linuxers have.

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]dante01010[/nom]I love macs and pc's but dont' think hardware of the both are exactly the same , Macs use EFI instead of BIOS , and you can only run OS X on PC's if you hack it but will run slower and more unstable[/citation]
You might want to actually read something about EFI before you blather on about it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_Interface

I could use EFI with Linux if I chose too.

 

[rsud]

[citation][nom]eklipz330[/nom]i guess your mom doesn't give you enough attention, so you troll on forums?and I'm still in disbelief that they cut the prices by so much, and yet, everyone is okay with it! they are obviously still making a huge profit margin to be able to do this...[/citation]

Hey, thanks for being the one to finally pickup on my lure to flame here... Came quicker than I expected !

I've observed in every apple article how winheads can only look at specs to gauge value. Its like rating a resturant by how much food they pile on your plate.

 

[frozenlead]

[citation][nom]rsud[/nom]I've observed in every apple article how winheads can only look at specs to gauge value. Its like rating a resturant by how much food they pile on your plate.[/citation]
There's good reason for that. You can't compare the quality of consumer hardware. Everything is shotty at best. Apple isn't flawless and neither is Dell. Hardware specs and performance numbers, however, don't lie, and never will. That's called a scientific arguement...which is really the only way to prove something; otherwise, there will always be debate. Words can lie. Numbers can not.

 

[rsud]

[citation][nom]Hanin33[/nom]hollow sock puppets require broken record style reinforcement to remind them of the reality of their rhetoric... the greater-than-thou mentality breeds contempt.. and since they have no solid foundation to stand on all we get is the smell of manure... being an elitist is hardly an admirable quality in a person.[/citation]

neither are folks who grovel in manure and think anyone who espouses better is an elitist. In general, 90% of everything is manure. Last I checked windoze had 90% of the market.

As long as your manure maintains 90% of the market we 10%'ers who smell better can surf the web virus free. The apple ads are accurate!

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

chaohsiangchen, I said "not much less than about $1500", I'd say $1485 is not much less than $1500. Good work though. It shows that basically all workstation manufacturers are charging a $1000 makers fee, which is a lot more than pre-Nehalem machines.

[citation][nom]chripuck[/nom]Should have clarified. That price was with the multiple hard drive upgrades he put in (he rips like every DVD he can get his hands on so he has something like 3 TB) and with tax.Anyways, I said mine was close, and given what we both do with ours mine is certainly close enough to merit a comparison. I'm not trying to compare an E4300 Core 2 vs. his.[/citation]

He bought a quad Mac Pro and bought his hard drives pre-configured through Apple? What a fool. Everyone knows that you should never purchase hard drive upgrades with a system. True for Dell, definitely true for Apple. Same goes for memory upgrades. The quad Mac Pro is priced sinfully. The octo Mac Pros are far more reasonable (compared to similar machines) although annoyingly Apple is now slightly more expensive than their competitors whereas they've always been cheaper than their competitors for Mac Pro class machines.

 

[Guest]

Where did ExpressCard go on MacBook Pro 15"? How am I supposed to stick my ExpressCards in this SDCard reader? What's next, they will remove USBs and replace them with eSATA. May be they have some slot count limitation - if they add one slot then they have to remove some other.
Why there is no SD card reader on 17" MacBook Pro. They couldn't find a place on this tiny machine?
I think that people that designed these machines are retarded! Not less than that.

 

[ajcroteau]

Mac is lowering their prices down... Unfortunately, they need to do a lot better than that to sway me...

I don't think they got the memo regarding the current state of our economy...

 

[neodude007]

Mac fans should realize that Linux can do "virus free" web surfing for free. They also need to realize that if Apple ever had 90% market share for an OS you can be GOD DAM sure it would have as many virus issues as Windows, and likely more since Apple has very little experience fixing virus issues.

You OSX never crashes? Neither does my "huge piece of crap" Vista. Oh, and gratz on not crashing seeing as how OSX can only run on like... 3 different sets of hardware. It BETTER not crash, jesus.

I just don't see the point of paying the $100s of dollars for the Mac Tax.... Just learn to Linux which has more applications, for free, and has the coolest visual effects of any OS if you set it up properly. ohhh taking time to set it up... thats is why people buy Mac, to have a computer that "just works." I forgot. I like mine to not work...

 

[Guest]

Nice to see the pirice coming down, now all we need is the line up dropping by the same amount again and I might be interested.

 

[norbs]

nice, I still would not buy one anytime soon since my hackintosh works just fine for now. Maybe someday when I am a bit more well off. Till now my 2ghz c2d dell d620 works 100% on OSx besides the LAN, but i use wifi on the laptop anyways. I only paid $500 for it so it's still not worth it for me to get a mac, but they are pretty.

 

[chripuck]

[citation][nom]rsud[/nom]neither are folks who grovel in manure and think anyone who espouses better is an elitist. In general, 90% of everything is manure. Last I checked windoze had 90% of the market.As long as your manure maintains 90% of the market we 10%'ers who smell better can surf the web virus free. The apple ads are accurate![/citation]

When did they allow the non-techies on this website? You seriously that afraid of a virus? I run multiple PC's, some with and some without anti-virus. I use my protected machines to occasionally scan my non-protected machines and no viruses...

Don't be a moron and click on a link for a website you don't recognize and you **GASP** won't get a virus. Same goes for attachments in your email.

The Apple virus tagline has to be the most overrated sales ploy I've heard in a while... looks like you fell hook, line, and sinker.