Steve Jobs's Smoke and Mirrors on 13" MBP's CPU

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Lol, profit margin my ass (pardon the french) but thats a $500 laptop and their selling it for $1,200, i think a 250% profit margin is good enough.
 
@foxalopex: Apple uses slot load drives in ALL their notebook computers. The slide in/out tray drives on the Sony take up less space because the spring loaded open/close mechanism is much simpler than the disk load/unload motors required for slot drives.

It was probably a close call, in the end the engineers decided that it was simply too risky to cram in a GPU. I'm sure that Apple is working on a solution for the next revision, it will take some time and perhaps a slight size change before they get it right.

You are correct in saying that the Sony has impressive specs. I would consider buying one, but there is no place that stocks them for me to "see" what I'm getting before I hand over my money. And for $2000.00, I need to see it first!
 
So he prefers to have a 10-hour battery life by combining new graphics with a heavily modded chipset and a four-year old processor. Confirmed: Jobs doesn't have A CLUE about computers. Bring the Woz back, bring the Woz back...
 
You all miss the real issue. Nvidia does not have a license to produce chipsets for the i3/i5 & i7 processor. This is why the 15" and 17" have Intel GFX parts that are used when no GFX intensive tasks are active. The Intel part is there to support the i5 & i7. You just get a "bonus" of hybrid GFX.

Apple would have had to put an Intel Chipset in the 13" which would have increased cost and space requirements. Not to mention for most people removing a large factor to motivate people to pay for the 15" and 17" notebooks.
 
[citation][nom]TEAMSWITCHER[/nom]@foxalopex: Apple uses slot load drives in ALL their notebook computers. The slide in/out tray drives on the Sony take up less space because the spring loaded open/close mechanism is much simpler than the disk load/unload motors required for slot drives.It was probably a close call, in the end the engineers decided that it was simply too risky to cram in a GPU.[/citation]

The only real benefit I see in slot loaders is that it's easier not to break the tray off your laptop. Although when it comes to +$1000 laptops one should be really really more careful than that! I find I don't use the optical drive all that much, it's more a nice thing to have. Sony actually made their new Z series laptop even smaller and quieter than the old Core 2 Z which is amazing. There's a huge copper heatsink which is visible through the vents too and I've had the thing idling at 9 watts. It pushes an amazing amount of heat under full load as well which means a well designed cooler. I think Apple passed on this because it would take too much effort to design a system like this. Sony I recall bragged about a 12 layer circuit board for the old Z. Of course all this means that it will blow a hole in your pocketbook but at least I know it was spent on design and engineering. Probably the only thing Apple has going for it is the OS. Hardware is quickly becoming typical off the shelf for them with the exception of bland design to me anyhow. The new Z I heard is in some major retailers but it's selling fast despite it's price tag. I hard about a mobile i7 chip shortage was causing issues.
 
The way I got it, it's because the new Arrendale gets hotter which means they would have to add another fan, as with the 15" and 17".

BUT the main reason I believe is that with a Core i5 they would get an Intel graphics too, and would have to add functionality to switch between built-in and discrete gfx. That would have resultet in a more expensive 13" == not interesting.
 
Translation: Apple is still obligated to buy core 2 processors under existing contracts. Rather than pay the liquidation under the contract and give users the best product possible, Apple is going to hype the old tech and charge new tech prices.

Props to Marcus for solid investigation before posting his first anti-Apple article of the year.
 
[citation][nom]foxalopex[/nom]The only real benefit I see in slot loaders is that it's easier not to break the tray off your laptop. Although when it comes to +$1000 laptops one should be really really more careful than that! I find I don't use the optical drive all that much, it's more a nice thing to have. Sony actually made their new Z series laptop even smaller and quieter than the old Core 2 Z which is amazing. There's a huge copper heatsink which is visible through the vents too and I've had the thing idling at 9 watts. It pushes an amazing amount of heat under full load as well which means a well designed cooler. I think Apple passed on this because it would take too much effort to design a system like this. Sony I recall bragged about a 12 layer circuit board for the old Z. Of course all this means that it will blow a hole in your pocketbook but at least I know it was spent on design and engineering. Probably the only thing Apple has going for it is the OS. Hardware is quickly becoming typical off the shelf for them with the exception of bland design to me anyhow. The new Z I heard is in some major retailers but it's selling fast despite it's price tag. I hard about a mobile i7 chip shortage was causing issues.[/citation]

I have to say I completely agree... Apple seem to be less and less concerned with engineering a decent product and more and more pushing a brand and 'lifestyle.' This didn't always used to be the case... they used to make (and to some degrees still do) solid products which you could buy with a guarantee you were getting a really decent computing solution, despite paying over the odds for that reassurance. I actually don't mind that, I do it myself if its for something I don't understand very well. Nowadays I wouldn't be able to say this is the case with Apple's computing solutions, they are all decidedly average.
 
I'm posting this from a laptop that is the same price as the 13" MBP. But for $1199, I got an Asus G73 17.3" (from Best Buy) with an I7-920, 6GB RAM, 500GB 7200RPM HDD, HD 5870 graphics, and much much more.

Steve Jobs must be insane to think that I would have paid the same price for some weak ass 13" dual core with very poor 320m graphics. Apple just can't seem to jump off the fail train.
 
Does Jobs just wake up in the morning and say "hmmm how can I convince everyone that less for more is more than more for less?"

or "how can I convince everyone that last year's technology is better than today's?"
 
"Absolutely astonishing that people do this. I swear, Tom's readers are the worst spellers on the internet."

Many people posting in Tom's HW are not native English speakers. Its impressive that people whose primary language is other than English, and who post from far away places can actually get their message across. I tend to disregard their grammatical and spelling errors.
 
very disppointed i aold my 13inch to wait for the same thing.. thanks steve jobs you really "did" your job
 
[citation][nom]insider3[/nom]Can't blame Steve Jobs. He's not forcing anyone to buy his products. People are just dumb. And unfortunately there are plenty of them out there to keep his company rich. If I can sell tapped water in recycled plastic bottles and get rich, I would.[/citation]

well... actually they did sell tap water in the bottles. Did they get rich? I am not sure. But they did get famous..😉

http://tapdny.com/media.php
 
Seriously, people are complaining about this? I think the whole issue is pretty straight forward - for cost/power/size reasons they didn't want to include a dedicated graphics card in the 13" model. Apple want all-round machines that are suitable for everyone, they can't afford to be using crappy intel graphics and needed a more balanced platform. Thus, the core 2 with nvidia graphics is the obvious choice. Honestly, unless you don't do anything with the mac that needs graphics, the core 2 with nvidia is the far better machine.

I'm not an apple fanboy, (especially seeing as in Australia there seems to mysteriously be a 15-20% increase in price over US prices, after tax and exchange rate are factored in) but it does annoy me that people whinge at them for making good decisions that will benefit the most people w.r.t. hardware components.
 


Please explain how profit margins account for Apple offering a 13" dual core with craptastic integrated 320m graphics for $1200, when Asus and BestBuy offers the G73 17.3" i7 with a HD 5870, 500GB 7200RPM HDD, bluetooth enabled monster for the same price. The whole "profit margins" excuse is rediculous. The 320m dedicated version can BARELY play BF BC2 on Minimally LOW settings. The integrated version won't even do that since it has 256MB of shared memory. The 5870 eats everything alive. If Apple really needed to make such performance cuts, and are so pathetically uncompetitive with its offerings (I won't even bother to go into how utterly stupid you'd have to be to buy an Ipad over other tablets like the Genesis)...maybe they should consider merging with someone who is actually putting out great products for great prices.

For comparison of mobile video cards click here.
 
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