How would you change Apple's Penryn-based MacBook Pro?
By Darren Murph 
posted Feb 29th 2008 7:37PM
posted Feb 29th 2008 7:37PM
Nevertheless, the time came and went, and the re-opening of the online Apple store brought a whole heap of disappointment to many. Sure, folks still (somehow) enamored with the aging MBP design were thrilled to have access to a more potent, less scalding iteration of their favorite machine, but honestly, we're still using the GeForce 8600M GT? Really, Apple? Needless to say, this refresh likely did little to satisfy your desire for a revamped MacBook Pro, but we're interested in finding out exactly what it is you really wanted. An option for an SSD? What about a built-in Blu-ray drive? Would integrated HDMI make things more appealing? Or is a top-down case redesign the only thing stopping you from abusing your credit card in the name of Steve Jobs? Go on, we know you folks are chock full of good ideas, so let's hear 'em, shall we?
Change the design completely...
So, how? What are your brilliant plans?
Like that 'I R SO EXPENSIVE' macbook pro design... that thing was BRILLIANT.
We must have something that looks new every 6 months, or we will become de-hypnotized and stop buying these shinny object that master illusionist Jobs tells us too.
we get it Nabil, you hate apple; this is your 6th post trolling. nosotros comprendemos, el douchebago
Lets see...
To change it completely:
it must accept waffles for the disk
Forget changing the design. Drop a real graphics card in the MacBook and it's better than the MBP. The weaksauce integrated graphics is the only real drawback to the MacBook.
Give it a magnetic latch, get rid of the speaker grill (yuck), change the keyboard to a MacBook Air style one, switch the ports around to match the MacBook.
That would improve the appearance of it dramatically IMO.
Have you ever actually used a Macbook Air or Macbook keyboard? They absolutely suck for any kind of extended usage. I wrote a 5 page paper on one once at my local bookstore (college bookstore that is also an Authorized Apple reseller), and my fingers were numb after 15 minutes. Literally, the keys were worse than the absolutely atrocious keyboards on Dells a couple years ago.
What Apple needed to do is make a 13.3 or 12.1 inch version of the current design, pretty much copying the 12 inch Powerbook design, except with modern components (including a modern low-end GPU, like a 128 meg 8400). This is what people want, not the POS Air.
I would actually love to own a silver MacBook. Apple come on introduce a new colour to the MacBook.
"How so?"
Why is it that the fanbois always require an answer from the people looking for a new design. Clue: Apple is the supposed design genius....let them fucking figure it out, meanwhile I'm sitting here with a C2D that looks pretty damn similar to a laptop introduced in 2001/2002. Same can be said of the iPod until they grew a set and released the neutered iPod Touch...same damn interface, same damn design rehashed over and over and over and over again.
so you ask what would I do? Answer: take a damn chance with a new design. something bold, not just slim, which by the way != revolutionary. Apple has crawled into a hole scared to try something really new for fear that it could break sales? Apple TV? iPhone? Those are side projects for Jobs pure and simple. They refuse to really try really revolutionary (Both in their OS and their hardware...*looks at his watch* still waiting on Piles Apple...anyday now.) for fear of killing those sales and that is where they fail.
still bitter i see jon? jeez i guess the MBP design stole your girlfriend
No just my enthusiasm for the platform. I want to like Apple. I really do. They need to try harder then these minor design bumps every 6 months. At least Dell is trying something...
phanbouy
Wow, just because we have a difference in opinion, you feel it necessary to call me a douchbag?
Plus, it is clear from your tone that my remarks aggravated you.
I hope I never live a pathetic life, where I would get insulted when someone doesn't like my favorite brand of consumer goods.
I guess I can't blame you because you are a fanboy (remove brain, insert propaganda).
Um, sorry, but I actually heavily prefer the macbook keyboard. It *did* take a while to stop hitting CapsLock, which i then totally disabled anyways.
Something has to be done about the heat. More air vents. Jesus! We have to be working in an igloo in order to work with MBP on our laps, the most ergonomic position for a laptop. Come on Apple, design a better ventilation system or innovate to cool down your notebooks.
Wow Nabil, them's be fighting words.. all over being called a douche bag? You must get that often, being a pathetic little troll who's so insecure about others using macbook that he has to constantly tear everyone down and then go ballistic when someone calls him on it. talk about "pathetic life"!
Some here seem to like the idea of change for the sake of change. I myself think the current MacBook Pro design is approaching perfection as I write this on one. I'm all for gradual and tangible improvements though. The heat issues in the MacBook Pro are a manufacturing flaw, not a design flaw that still needs fixing. I know this because mine is cool running after fixing the thermal paste application. There are plenty of gradual improvements they could make. Better wifi strength, magnetic latch, better and louder speakers, etc. The idea of getting rid of the grills is stupid. They are needed for the speakers at the very least. Move them elsewhere and sound quality is diminished.
Magnetic Latch. Other than that, the current MBP design is perfectly fine.
if Apple really wants to get more buyers, copy dell and add colors to a new, low end MacBook
Now that Hd DVD is gone, a blu-ray drive in the Pro would be nice
I agree change the design completely; the same should go for the bright spark who came up with 4 legged chair and a shower where the water runs down. What's wrong with these people, it's about time chairs had 5 legs and the water in my shower went up instead of down, now that would make things better!
WUXGA standard on 15.4" already. I'm sick of having to hack my macbook with non-apple screens to get a minimally acceptable DPI.
Make it Black!
Yeah, black would be awesome! Also, toss in Blu-Ray, SSD, and HDMI. Would be nice to round out the edges on the thing just like MBA.
yea, if they could make the already anodized aluminum colored, that would be awesome. Also, maybe slightly cheaper.
Black would be amazing! Also, bright white lights around the slot drive, trackpad, power button, and "MacBook Pro" branding in addition to the Apple logo and keyboard. Also, optional laser-drilled hole designs for ventilation and style!
Make it go faster!
Make it right click! I think that's been suggested for...8 years now?
Know what you are talking about before saying something dumb. Apple has a right click and scrolling via the mousepad / touchpad. The mouse pad is smart enough to know if you are using one finger or two and can react differently.
Apple doesn't need to need to do much to improve their products so long as Windows Vista keeps sucking up the PC market.
- from someone who has used PCs and Macs for the past 20 years, Mac is on its way up.
Right click? Put two fingers on the trackpad and click. Boom! yer done. Wow, that was hard.
Man, if everyone likes using the two finger click why doesn't apple get rid of the click button all together. Put one finger on the trackpad and click. boom your done. The could even tout it as a "revolutionary interface" that doesn't require any buttons to navigate.
you know you can click via the touchpad. No it's not revolutionary but it works.
1. 23" screen
2. 7.1 channel surround sound
3. available in brown
4. replace Apple logo with portrait of Steve Jobs
5. circular touchpad
6. get rid of lowercase letters
7. preinstall Vista Ultimate and Kubuntu
8. 5.25" floppy drive
9. HD-DVD/Betamax combo drive
10. cupholder
11. complimentary black turtleneck
12. 32 GB RAM
13. Pentium III processor
14. ?????
15. Profit!
Can it play Doom?
No it can't....we all know that macs can't play any games.
What a waste of money on something that can't even play doom.
yes, anything and everything that doesn't play doom should be incinerated. life is doom.
Macs can in fact play Doom. Well, I don't know about Doom 3 but they will play Doom 1 and 2 for certain.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/doomlegacy
yup. I first played doom 3 on my G5 when it came out. Also, with intel macs, I can play whatever windows game I want via bootcamp. Runs just fine. =D I kept my old PC for games, but don't even need that any more.
Make it foldable, so I can put it in my pocket when it's sleeping/hibernating !
Put a "works with Zune" sticker on it so fanboys stop trolling posts for Apple gadgets.
...but it doesn't
it's still locked to windows? ah well. must be apple's fault somehow i'm just sure of it. burrrrn them!!!
bluray drive, intel extreme, and thinner design
would you like fries with that?
yes i would, and a shake too please
Oh sirnoobius are you taking orders? /pizza work for you?
Im not sure about you but I dont really have a problem carry around something thinner then the Sunday newspaper. Really, 1 inch isnt that much.
Mmmm. Not a bad idea at all. Add in a built-in scanner, and there you go.
Same thing I'd do with the previous model, more usb ports or a base station.
I cannot express how much I agree with you in words. It's simply ridiculous that my $2,000 computer has two USB ports. The sub-$1000 Dell comes with at least 4, usually more. I'd be willing to sacrifice a little thinness/sexyness/sleekness for more USB ports!
mck,
didn't you ever take a sec to think that using more usb ports on a computer will quickly drain the battery power? if you have a lot of devices to use at the same time, that's cool... but if you have a problem get a hub. otherwise, i think this is apple's way of keeping the battery alive just a little bit longer.
oh! and a card reader! and fingerprint scanner! and like 4 trackpad buttons, and one of those eraser thingies! and a few LEDs that are really bright but don't really tell me anything. and an entire row of extra buttons that launch IE or Outlook.
:P
I'm just kidding, extra USB ports aren't as worthless as the rest of the nonsense you find on other (non-apple) laptops, but at the same time, i hardly see the 2 as being to little. If you have a bunch of devices, get a hub. you obviously don't mind carrying around a bunch of extra crap. :)
Shouldn't be up to apple decide how many f'n devices i want to use. They should put at least four, and if i want to drain my batter from using my usb powered dancing stripper on a pole, then I can. F you apple
I understand the argument of having to much stuff on a laptop (something that sub-$1000 Dell probably has!), but 2 USB ports is ridiculous.
Granted, I don't really take my laptop anywhere all that often, but if I plug in my two iPods, I'm out of USB ports. That means no printer, no mouse, camera, or USB beverage chiller!
Again, I agree that there needs to be a balance between to many and to little ports, but giving me an extra USB port or two wouldn't clutter it up to much.
@mck
"If I plug in my 2 ipods, I'm out of ports"
What? I don't know man, that's just kinda a wierd thing to need to do. I'm in the camp of saying that if you need more than two ports, get a hub. As for me, two usb ports just fine. 99% of the time I don't have anything plugged in, and that 1% of the time I run out, I'll unplug my mouse and use the trackpad. I need to carry this thing around all the time, so I'd rather have it light and thin than set for the small chance I need to plug in three ipods.
I'd totally agree. I have an easy time using up the 3 ports on my windows laptop. Two would be difficult. I mean, come on, if you use Time machine w/o the time capsule, that's one port, another for a mouse, and that's it! No iPod, no USB drive, no cooling pad, no soundcard, no scanner!
I think the whole idea of having only 2 usb ports is because their communist and want to push wireless technology. they create desirable products to make people conform, as seen in the mba, then in a few years time when physical ports become redundant they can say 'we started that'.
with the mbp, if you buy a wireless mouse and time capsule, you've saved 2usb ports for a printer or scanner. hmm so wheres that wireless sync ipod then ey?
just my 2c
@B
Even a printer can be plugged into a time capsule and turned into a network printer.
@USB Fans
It seems a lot of people who are citing cases where 2 ports isn't enough seem to be sitting at a desk. For instance, when do you really need to charge two ipods at once on the go? And how many people really carry a printer around with them?
The way I see it, if you're sitting at a desk, leave a hub there, and plug that into /one/ of your two ports. That's even ignoring wireless alternatives that don't take USB ports.
install windows as default OS
stfu
might as well....everything else under that silver case is the same thing under most PC's.
You can install Windows as the default OS yourself. Apple makes it quite easy for you, actually.
Do you mean, make it come with windows preloaded so it can join all the botnet zombies out there????
good idea, Windows as a default OS... NOT. If I wanted a sucky computer with an OS to eat all my resources up I wouldn't have bought a Mac. Thank you, come again
blu-ray!
add Esperanto to the Kernel Panic screen!
replace the trackpad with a touch screen.
Still on the 8600? Boy i'm still on the x1600
Ahh for bloody hell, how hard is it to give the Macbook Pro a blu-ray drive???? You think if I'm paying atleast 2k for this thing they'd give me an option to add blu-ray drive..
Why is everyone crying for this so badly? Did you all really expect Apple to announce BluRay drives in their laptops first? At a completely off-kilter time?
They should make it a little thinner and lighter designwise it could be a big brother to Air the weight should be around 1.8-1.9 kilo, Hdmi, wireless syncronisation between the ipod and computer.
Yeah I was actually hoping for it.. it just seems that apple is always behind the times or likes to look that way. Think about how long it took for them to add n support. Now if Apple is top of line and I'm paying 2k , I expect to be given an option for bluray... especially since the format war is over.
FASTERRRRR PROCESSOR
Just make it look a little nicer. Seeing this right after the Air, it just looks ugly.
I couldn't disagree more. The only reason the Air looks nicer is because it's slimmer and has more rounded corners. Do this on the MacBook Pro and you have the Air! With all of it's shortcomings!
nothing new here
For people that have MBPs last yha bets are they will keep what they have. Thouse who don't its cool for them
MBP design is awesome but we have all come to expect more from them seem they put more R&D into the air and not much thought to better the MBP
Air lacks allot to be next in the evolutionary chain.
zuh?
Reduce the price and stop kidding ourselves that our Macs are anything different underneath the plastic than all the other manufacturer's offerings that are actually competitively priced; stop using OSX as a carrot to get me to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars over what my Macbook Pro SHOULD have cost coming from say HP, and allow interested third parties like Acer, HP, Dell to offer it on their machines to increase adoption (and with it third party software support). Until then, I think this is the last Mac I'll buy for a while. :(
I'd slim it down just a tad.
Loose the DVI in favor of an HDMI port.
1680x1050 Display on the 15" model.
If it had at least the higher res display, i was going to buy one.
HDMI is already too "loose". :p
Yeah, because if you slimmed it down too much you might loose it!.
Lose(*) the DVI port? Are you kidding? Have you ever given a presentation?
#1 - type-o nazis can go suck a big one.
#2 - ever heard of a HDMI to DVI cable?
23" MacBookPro laptop...in see through glass case. Yeah, that would be sweet.
Easier hard drive replacement like the lowly MacBook
MBP should add the macbook and macbook air keyboard, bigger multi-touch fingerpad
So your third post *finally* makes some sense.
agree 100 f'ing percent about the keyboard. i look at my friend's macbooks and am sad cuz my friggin expensive computer has a shitty keyboard
The backlighting of the keyboard is awesome. The lack of tactile feedback, the shallow key depression depth, and the low-resistance keypress effort are un-awesome. The keyboard on my ThinkPad is much, much better for typing, and it is much easier to read in daylight (big white letters on black keys.)
Vista!
(waits for the down vote)
You _can_ put vista on it.
Needs more cowbell!
Oh God.. not more cowbell.
It *SO* needs more cowbell.
disappointing how the media remote is not included in macs anymore without an extra charge
Dude, can you stop posting every one minute with a new idea? Wait like 10 minutes and dump them into one post.
Amazing.
I'd like a safari update that concentrates all of mrussel's posts into a single post
This isn't necessarily a Macbook Pro thing, but allow Mac OS X to go on other computers. I am not sure, but I think I heard that Dell wanted to use Mac OS X, but apple declined.
I don't see this happening. Loses a lot of lock in for Apple and opens them up to having to support 3rd party hardware.
Don't say "b-b-b-but Hackintosh!" either. That's an extremely small subset of users who are going to hack things together anyway.
the reason that mac OSX works so well on macs is because they can develop for their hardware and only their hardware. If other companies started making hardware for OSX it would make it harder for them to develop (more testing) and since dell changes their hardware like you change your underwear (hopefully) there would be a lot of computers that they have to test on.
also theres hacintosh.
Apple's business model is to sell Hardware. Yes, we know they sell software too, but software that runs on Apples hardware, very well.
OS X is the glue, the interface, the medium by which you can interface to that hardware & software, in an elegant, functional and superior way.
Apple wants to sell you their hardware, not make it easier for competitors, to sell theirs.