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20060110 Tuesday January 10, 2006

MacBook Pro Thanks Steve. Much appreciated.

MacBook Pro

Purchased. Fully-loaded. Ships in February. :-D Posted in Mac OS X at Jan 10 2006, 12:21:21 PM MST 22 Comments

Comments:

So you bought it! Ive been thinking of switching over from my Dell... Did you upgrade the HD to a faster RPM version? 7200RPM perhaps? I find that on my dell... the HD is always the bottle neck with Java development. Do you plan on developing entirely on this? Or just mobile?

Posted by Mike Porter on January 10, 2006 at 01:50 PM MST #

Yep, I upgraded to 7200 and 2 GB of RAM. I plan on using this for a lot of development, but I'll probably still do a fair amount on XP and Suse too. We'll see though - if it kicks ass, I'll probably use it a lot more!

Posted by Matt Raible on January 10, 2006 at 01:59 PM MST #

Did you purchase the AppleCare plan? I always wonder if that is worth the $

Posted by anon on January 10, 2006 at 02:07 PM MST #

Definitely - it's saved my ass on past PowerBooks.

Posted by Matt Raible on January 10, 2006 at 02:09 PM MST #

Are you worried about whether all your tools are compiled native? I assume that Apple would take care of the JVM, but what about other UNIX underpinnings?

Posted by Ted on January 10, 2006 at 02:22 PM MST #

Nice! Business must be good :-)

Posted by anon on January 10, 2006 at 02:24 PM MST #

Does "Fully-loaded" imply the 30" display too? ;-)

Posted by Rob Misek on January 10, 2006 at 02:59 PM MST #

My question is will there be a 3rd party app that will let me run Windows apps on the new Intel Apples? I sure would like to save a few bucks and run a Win XP version of Office on an Intel Apple. Erik

Posted by Erik Weibust on January 10, 2006 at 03:07 PM MST #

Rob - nope, no 30". My 23" is good enough, but it would be nice to have something for the office. I thought I'd miss my 17" screen (from my current powerbook), but it looks like this new one has the same resolution (1400 x 900).

Posted by Matt Raible on January 10, 2006 at 03:16 PM MST #

I had no doubt, but on day 1!

Posted by Srgjan Srepfler on January 10, 2006 at 03:41 PM MST #

Don't you afraid that 7200 HDD will heat up box and processor will reduce speed?

Posted by Ruslan Khafizov on January 11, 2006 at 01:59 AM MST #

Matt, I'll let you be a guinea pig ;) I'm sure you'll let us all know how you get on with it when it arrives... if its all it promises to be, looks like i'll also have to ditch my current 17" PB.

Posted by Lee on January 11, 2006 at 04:01 AM MST #

I've never been a mac person - but after hearing about the intel chips - I am going to get a powerbook! Now I just need a docking station that allows for 3 monitor connections!

Posted by John Mark on January 11, 2006 at 10:28 AM MST #

Erik - Steve Jobs apparently demoed MS Office for Windows running under OS X. They have an emulator (? don't know much about it) that allows you to run Windows apps. It's called Rosetta.

Posted by James on January 11, 2006 at 10:51 AM MST #

Scratch that. Rosetta is used to run apps that are not universal binaries, i.e. Microsoft Office for *OS X*, not Windows. After I thought about this for, I dunno, 10 seconds I realized what a silly thing it was to think Rosetta was a Windows emulator. More info here: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/universal_binary/universal_binary_exec_a/chapter_7_section_1.html

Posted by James on January 11, 2006 at 11:51 AM MST #

Ruslan - I read somewhere that Mac laptops where never called "laptops" for a reason. They've always used "Book" because it's meant to sit on a desk, not on your lap. I'm sure the heat-problem has been solved better on the MacBook - my first G4 PowerBook (667 MHz) was ridiculously hot. My current one is better, but still pretty hot. As far as reducing speed - I tend to be an optimist. ;-)

Posted by Matt Raible on January 11, 2006 at 12:38 PM MST #

I have two Windows laptops into which I put Toshiba 7200 rpm drives, one 60gb one 80gb. Huge overall speed difference. No heat issues. I'd expect them to do just fine in a MacBook Pro.

Posted by Anil on January 11, 2006 at 04:28 PM MST #

Hmmm...here's an interesting Cedric Beust blog post that's on topic for this thread:
http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000354.html

Posted by Dave Macpherson on January 11, 2006 at 08:53 PM MST #

I definitely wait for Intel iBooks because i dont need that much power for my occasional notebook usages. To be honest, i thought they would announce iBooks instead of Powerbo... aeh MacBooks. Another issue if the non existant bios which makes it impossible to install XP on it (i want to have a dual boot system). I will only consider a buy if dual boot is possible or till someone shows me a virtual PC session with Windows on it which is not a pain in the ass.

Posted by Marc Logemann on January 13, 2006 at 04:22 AM MST #

Sounds like you've fallen prey to their PR koolaid as have I: http://gabrito.com/post/apples-pr-genius

Posted by Todd Huss on January 14, 2006 at 11:14 PM MST #

well you've done it now, you've triggered my compulsive disorder and made me just order one as well.. the 1.83Ghz, 100GB 7200 rpm version.. my first Mac ever.. I wonder where this adventure will take me..

Posted by Rob Augustinus on January 15, 2006 at 05:45 AM MST #

good man. it will be the best choice you ever made. I too have ordered the 1.83Ghz 100GB 7200 rmp, to replace my first generation 12inch powerbook which im using to write this now. End of Feb...

Posted by Haz on January 30, 2006 at 10:48 AM MST #

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