Well, that
took long enough but
they're finally here. Without fanfare, Apple finally got around to updating their
MacBook Pro lineup with a taste of Merom just in time for the big holiday shopping season. While we were only expecting a
ho-hum bump in performance especially after the
Core 2 Duo iMac sibs only saw a
10% increase, Apple touts these new Merom-based MBPs as being a full 39% faster. The 15-incher ships with your choice of a 2.16GHz or 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo processor while the 17-incher ships only with the 2.33GHz proc. It also looks like the 15-incher now comes with FW800 like its big bro while upping the base disk capacity to 120GB and a faster 6x SuperDrive to boot. The 17-incher now starts with a 160GB disk and 8x SuperDrive to keep the cost premium viable. Both models max-out with up to 3GB DDR2 memory and 200GB, 4200RPM disks. Pricing still starts at that same $1999 though, so get out there kid, enjoy it, the long hard wait is over.
posted Oct 24th 2006 9:00AM
The screen protector is unnecessary. At least in my experience with my MacBook Pro. I've had it for over 6 months and there has been no apparent contact between the keys and screen.
I'll take it
Seriously
I'll take it even faster... :)
This is wonderful news, however I'm still worried that these might have overheating issues just as the last generation Macbook/Macbook Pro's. I really hope this isn't the case and that the fans actually turn on without having to be patched for firmware later on.
No heating issues, I just got mine. It runs cooler than the G4s
Also worth noting, the new core 2 duos support 3 gigs of RAM and a 200gig (4200rpm) hard drive.
Yeah. Now how bout some Merom love for the MB.
Correction: they both now support up to 200GB and up to 3GB of RAM, each. Previous max's were 120GB and 2GB RAM.
Hopefully the normal macbooks will be upgraded soon... :)
Ashley
Well it's good to see that Apple is again using Intels new technology to sell their products. Yes, it's 40% faster - as are Dell, HP, and Acer machines that use Core 2 Duos.
I hate that companies (not just Apple) can't find anything good about their product other than someone elses input.
Okay Miles, will me your shameful Core Duo and I will do the suing. Most likely. I would also like to sue to get a gd SD reader built into one of these.
The best part is that now there won't be posts in every single XP Core Duo 2 lappie annoucement exhorting Apple to do the same.
Where are they getting that the C2D iMac is only 10% faster than the CD iMac? The iMac page at Apple says it has a 50% performance increase. As a user of both machines, and just going on using the machine and not benchmarks, I would agree there's a big improvement between the two.
Damn... it was nice being on top while it lasted. Long live the 2.16 duo!!!
I'm also interested in a possible heat decrease/increase with these new Macbook Pros. Maybe the new one are shipping with new motherboards & a proper thermal management (read less thermal paste).
Well done Apple! Only a few months behind the rest of the pack but best late than never; when do normal Macbooks get the new Duo?? Anyone know?????
I'm primary a web developer and graphics designer, lookin to purchase my first mac product..
Is the $600 (CAD) price difference betweeen the 2.16 and 2.33ghz versions worth it? I dont play games so I dont see the additional video memory being beneficial.
I see a piece of 1GB DDR PC2-5300 can be hand for about $175 USD.
Should i save myself the $600?
@randy
for the purposes of web design, cpu speed (especially a paltry 200mhz) won't make any difference, but RAM is your friend. save the $600 and max out the RAM.
unless you do lots of flash development. flash rendering takes up processor power. as a web developer myself, i just got a macpro and decided to go with the medium processor and 3GB of RAM because flash takes up about 50% of my work load.
Dan, the 50% increase comes from iMac's G4 processor comparison. The difference between CD and C2D is only 10%. However the major advantage of C2D over CD chips are their further reduction in power consumption and cache sizes.
soupbanana, the 200GB disks are only 4200RPM, the 160GB is 5400RPM, and the 100GB is 7200RPM.
there is no 100 GB version for the 15", kinda a dissapointment. I am looking forward to the actual real world speed comaparisions between the CD and C2D, should be interesting.
Nope those are 4200 rmp disks, thats so 5 years ago :P. i got my 2.16 CD MBP with a 100 GB 7200 rpm HD. I have heard that it helps start-up times alot, it certainly is speedy. I don't think i would buy a laptop with that slow of a HD, even for the extra space (thats what an external HD is for).
Well, aside from the hard drive upgrades (which I can upgrade mine at home myself on my 17" MBP CD 2.16) Its not much of a spec bump for me. Although, I hope they release an upgrade for older CD users to be able to use the 3 Gigs fo RAM on our MBPs. That shouldn't be to hard, should it Steve.
glossy screen is an option now for mbp, is this new?
that reference came from the 17" model, I wouldn't even look at the 15", its too small for me ;)
The iMac page currently says that the delta between the 20" 2GHz CD iMac and the 20" 2.33GHz C2D iMac is 1.5.
While I am willing to believe in actual benchmarks there's only a 10% increase.. I just pointed this out because the post uses Apple's 39% increase numbers for the new MBPs. Although, having just come out this morning, I doubt that anyone will get a chance to benchmark it for real for a few days at least..
Me? I'm just waiting for the unboxing post!
This update really sucks... I wouldnt buy it...apple needs some new... "flair" ...lol
This is great news but I will wait for the Santa Rosa platform, i have waited long enough for these macbook pros, i can wait another 6 months. My old powerbook as old as it is, is still going very strong. Only thing I can't do efficiently is render in Maya and to my knowledge there is no Universal version of Maya just yet.
i will be interested to find how these benchmake against the coreduo macbook pros.. seeing i bourght one two weeks ago *sigh*, but it was a great price of ebay & is still very nice.. still hearing that you can stuff a whole extra gig of ram in them, well that makes me excited!
I just checked with Apple Store. This one is 64bit processing which means it will work at 64bit with Leopard. Note though, nothing in it will take advantage of 64bit processing until Leopard comes out next year. Also note, iLife will also come out when Leopard is released next year. The rep told me that Apple always includes the latest software with the computers it sells. As much as I want to get the new MBP released today, it would make no sense for me to spend the $$ now and then spend an additional who knows how much to then upgrade to Leopard and iLife. I think I'll hang on to my decently performing MBP Core Duo. At least Apple kept the same kind of RAM on these so I'll be able to remove my 1gb extra RAM from my MBP and transfer to the MBP 2 I will buy next year when Leopard comes out...
It's not "who knows how much", it will be $129 for both. They have sold their last 4 OSs for $129 and there is no reason to assume anything different. Leopard will include the newest iLife ('07 is probably a good guess) with it.
On the plus side of all these upgrades is you can now get a 2.0Ghz MBP Core Duo for $1449.00 refurbished. So, if you don't mind the "outdated" Core Duo, that is pretty sweet.
I recently bought a Dell Latitude D620, Core 2 Duo, and have to say, I am very glad I can return it. The displays that Dell uses in thier laptops are absolute junk. I am so sorry that I gave up on Apple. So, as soon as I can hide enough money from the wife, I will pick up one of these new C2D MBP's, to match my awesome MacPro.
I hope you rot in hell Dell!
When the 17" MBP's came out, they had a brighter screen (33%? brigher than 15"?).
Do the new 15" C2D's have a brighter screen? compared to the CD's...
Typical iBoast "test" results- Jobs says 39% faster and the rest of the world says around 10-12% faster. Reminds me of the old Apple "but Motorola IS faster" b.s. with "special test measures" or cooked results. We all know the reality of those claims.
4200 RPM HD???
HAHAHAHA.
what's so funny?
thats the standard speed for a 200 gig drive at the moment.
FInally, FW800. Wish it had the 100GB 7200 as an option for the 15". 17" is a pain to lug around. I'm buying though, been waiting since september for this.
M. Rod - I also just got a D620, and I'm extremely pleased with it. The screen is excellent - I've heard that there are quality issues based on where the notebook was produced, but I'm finding it to be a solid, fast computer with a very nice screen.
I wanted a MacBook, but I wanted C2D more - I'll probably end up selling or giving this D620 to my sister or my dad after Leopard comes out, though.
any idea when they will stuff a blu-ray or hd-dvd drive in these things?
My 6 month old MBP CD 15" is doing great, so no need to upgrade just yet. The added features (6x DL SuperDrive, FW800, C2D chip) are nice, but I don't do anything today that would garner the upgrade. Now a year from now or maybe next summer, I may look at upgrading.
Heres an honest question. Now that Macs are intels and can run windows, why hasnt anyone successfully reversed enginneered a way to run osx on a pc?
Google 'osx86' ...
Hey, question for you mac users... i've been using pc for a while and since the Memrom chip is out, i'd love to try the mac book pro. The main thing is since Apple has bootcamp, how good is this with running bootcamp with windows and playing games? I'm a advid gamer so i'd love to play around with a mac and also play games.
any input?
@spinteews:
don't go with bootcamp - it requires you to restart your computer and choose which partition you want to run. I have been using Parallels now for a few months on my MackBook (not pro) and love it - of course, you need a copy of windows and any ther program you would want to run on your windows OS, but if you get a big enough hard drive to accomidate everything you want to run on it, and enough ram to handle it all, it should run fine. i have 1GB RAM and a 10GB partition to run windows and it works great for all the office applications and some minor web work i do that requires windows OS, but if you are going to do gaming, etc, i would max out your specs wherever you can.
I have been using BootCamp for playing Windows games on my iMac for a while. It's excellent, adaquate and free! Enjoy the switch! A virus free world awaits ;)
@spinteews:
Bootcamp works OK on a laptop since you cannot 'tap' on the trackpad and you need to hold the apple button and then click to perform a right click. Right clicking with this method works in most games though. I play counter strike with my trackpad regularly and right clicking is just as easy and fast. But the apple+click doesn't work in GTA because you either click a dedicated right mouse button or an assigned keyboard button, I assigned caps lock for that. Other than the problem of not being able to tap, the MacBook (Pro) works fine in Windows.
I use a standard macbook and have played a lot of games via bootcamp and had no problems. The games have all worked fine up to my systems specs. With the macbook pros graph card the performance should be even better for games.
Gaming is awesome w/ no lag on MB CD. I have COD2 & Q4 both run smooth & fast.
Anyone have any information on when Leopard is supposed to be released by Apple? I think Jobs said January when he unveiled it recently, but is that still accurate? Trying to figure out if it is worth waiting another couple of months to get the most up to date MBP available? Hmm, I wonder if there would be any other changes, like to the body, at that point?
Thanks.
@Al
Jobs said "next Spring" at WWDC. Nothing to go on besides that.
What Parallels software did you use?
Thanks!
Running Windows on a Mac with Parallels:
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/
Windows on a Mac (whether using BootCamp or Parallels) is just as susceptible to viruses as Windows elsewhere, and you should take the same precautions. It's OSX that is effectively virus-free; if you use OSX and don't touch Windows then there is no need to worry about viruses.
Hopefully you will be able to run that SMC Fan Control software on these guys to check you temps and control the fan. Anyway, I am going to buy one and get the warranty.
I was really hoping for a black MBP - cool tax aside, it would have been nice to have the option...
Great! Now for some Adobe CS3 and Leopard, and I am officially Intel ready.
is it possible to upgrade sans c2d
This took too long. Core 2 quads are right around the corner. The only reason it took them so long is because they didnt want the price to go up. Sp when are the core 2 quads going to be put in macbooks, late 2007
Intels road map for a quad core mobile processor is 2008 you chach. I am fine with waiting the extra month for mac to release them, because I know the quality is going to be higher. I am on one right now and I love it
I wish they offered a HD DVD drive already....
My take on a speed bump:
Core 2 Duo over Core Duo: 10%
2 GB RAM over 1 GB RAM: 15%
7200 rpm drive over 5400 rpm: 14%
Total: 39% increase
Reg - Other way around with the hard drives. They took away the optional 7200rpm... fastest you can get is 5400rpm now....
Yeah this is great and all, but I want a 12 inch model.
Anyone else notice that estimated battery life has increased to 5 hours from 3 hours in the specs??? Must be the 65nm process and new power stepping technology.
Ummm isn't the difference is CD is 32 bit and cd 2 is 64 bit. Plus, intel themselves claim a 40% iincrease. Anybody who bought a 32bit mbp was just impatence. I still use my G4s and they do just fine still. I guess it show you it's better to wait for the final product. Am waiting for the 3rd gen mbp to come out with the new OS.
CS using a trackpad? That's pretty hardcore.
now if they would just put an external sata port on the macbook that would be sweet
Great now lets wait for the Intel Core Duo 3 in March.
This computer kicks PCs butt so many times over for graphics processing, it is really silly to compair the two.