MacBook Pro first hands-on!
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Oct 14th 2008 2:09PM
posted Oct 14th 2008 2:09PM
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Will it have a matte display option?
No it won't
Are you kidding?
"11:01AM Q: Concern about the glossy screens. Are you going to offer another option?
A: Steve: We're going all glass -- we won't offer another version. Phil: You offset the reflection by the brightness, and consumers love it. One of the great things about a notebook is you can turn it however you want!
Yeah, nice try, but that's kind of a pain."
Nope, but you get to toy with the contrast level to offset any undesired illumination effects. "A Pain", said Engadget.
Have you just NOT been reading any of the other 5 posts with comments and endless notes about how no, the screen isn't coming in matte?
The glossy is going to be a major step backwards for people doing photo editing on these things. Those people loathe the glossy displays, which have been absent from apple products for a long time. Now, a lot of photo-types are going to really think hard about how much they want a glossy-screened MBP+MB+Cinema Display.
I've been using a dell with a glossy display in a number of settings and I have has no issues with glare, but then again I used CRTs for 20 years and didn't have a problem then either.
Yes it will.
there goes any chance of buying a macbook pro for myself.
professionals demand matte screens ... what's wrong with all of these laptop manufacturers?
To whoever down ranked me: Im right. Try to Configure a 17.
I love how Apple even *highlights* the glare in all their promo shots. It's a feature!
Easy fix, just have the screen soda blasted by your local autobody repair shop!
I have both a glossy and a 30inch non glossy and its day and night difference. You dont get the real colors with glossy. Graphic designers and photo editor need non-glossy. If not, you are out of the game.
New MacBook non-Pro no longer has a firewire port.
Too bad they couldn't get the USB 3 spec done in time either. Maybe next year when they jack up the prices another $300.
@smak
That's what the express card is for. Although you'll be limited to 2.5gbit vs the 4.8gbit/sec in the USB3.0 spec..
Nor proper keyboard, nor matte screen, nor mouse buttons! No thanks to this downgrade...
It has Firewire 800. Just need a different cable as it is backwards compatible. Still a shame though as I use multiple Firewire devices on a regular basis. So much better than USB
=/
I don't get some people's cynicism here, no offense to anyone. I for one, thnik the notebook looks absolutely stunning. Look at the close up pictures, the manufacturing process has made these a seemless(literally, lol) work of art. The lines are clean, and I for one like the contrast of the black keys on the aluminum shell.
As for glossy screens, whats the big deal? I do heavy photo editing, a significant amount of it outdoors, and I personally despise matte screens outdoors because the light becomes diffused around the screen, and just yields in worse coloration overall. Glossy screens on the other hand just reflect the light at a more concentrated angle. So if the screen is bright enough(which it sure will be with the LED backlighting), it would actually allowing for better visibility. Also, look at the iPhone/iTouch's displays. They have some of the most readable displays in direct sunlight, despite their glass screen. The LED lighting in this product will just ensure that the brightness is great without affecting battery life as significantly, aiding the visibility even more.
If you really really don't like glossy displays because of simple personal preferences, there are cheap ways around it. This glossy display won't kill anyone, although I understand your concern. To anyone who is worried about the display and bezel scratching: its glass. Glass doesn't exactly scratch easily.
And all this is coming from an avid Windows VISTA user, a Microsoft kid since forever, who has never owned a Mac, yet has quite a bit of knowledge and experience about them. This is just a good piece of hardware, and I'm very impressed by its eco-friendliness. If I could afford it, I would switch over to mac just to get this laptop, and dual boot with vista. Who knows, maybe I'll become a convert.
My only irk is that it only has 2 USB ports. Ouch.
I don't know.. in the pictures it looks pretty cheaply made.. but that might just be the pictures..
boom chika wow wow
brown chicken brown cow
Don't try stealing my lines Caboose!
The guy said the 17" was being updated also, but it still shows the old 17" on the site.
Store is being updated...
I think he said they were getting "refreshed" which apparently is a nice way of half-ass updating it but leaving the price the same...
Updates specs however....I am guessing they will update the 17in and the air with the new styling further down the road. Also the 17incher already has a better graphics chip so it wont be getting the new 9400 one.
The 17" doesn't have better graphics 9600MGT > 8600MGT.
I want it!!!!
me just ordered... :D
Nice :) Once I get enough money I'm getting the $2500 Macbook Pro (need like $700 more). Gotta get some more clients to make websites for...
Very nice ^^
Still cant afford to replace my Powerbook G4 Titanium :p
ditto
is that a CS4 Photoshop icon on that macbook pro?
Yes it is.
"Adobe announced that Creative Suite 4 will be released on October 14th, 2008." -wiki
So I guess it's expected.
hopefully - cs4 is love incarnate
it still says pre order on adobes site. i NEED CS4 encore!
HOLY CRAP. I just realized. Wikipedia says CS4 comes out today! :D
CS4 may be good, but they still haven't fixed that case-sensitive file system issue. Funny too, because that is probably a half-hour fix.
holy jeebus, that's a big trackpad.
Yeah, I noticed the same thing. The Mb and MbP have larger touchpads... Looks a bit awkward.... But over-all I love the new ones!!!
Does anyone know Apple's policy on switching out a newly-purchased MBP with this new iteration? (I'm a few days outside of the 14-day return policy...) Do they make any exceptions?
sorry your comment got so lowly ranked, people are dicks I guess
I think you have 30 days to return it if they update them, but I'm not positive, so don't quote me, but it's definitely calling the apple store or where ever you bought it from and asking.
Yeah, technically, if your MBP was custom configured (i.e. with anything but the defaults) you can't return or exchange it after 14 days. That being said, I called today and successfully requested a free upgrade (I bought my current MBP on Sept 23).
Just call Apple, be patient, be polite, and then welcome your new MBP :)
P.S. - I will have to pay for shipping, for me it wil be $30 - $40. Worth it, I think.
Again no Blu-Ray? Damn! Loved the Vista joke, though. Would love to have one of these new MBPs but they just cost an arm and a leg, and all that for 4 hours of battery life? Don't think so.
What a disappointment. I expected a LOT more.
sexy but £1.399 ):
I'm not sold... Its far to expensive for whats in it...
WHERES MY BLU RAY STEVE!!! I'll give you a damn bag of hurt....
I was excited, but I always feel let down by apple.. looks like I will be keeping my ibook g4 and looking for a used 15-17" macbook pro with a matte finish and better looks all around..
Sweet! BTW, the Apple Store is down...ERROR, haha.
What do you guys think is/are the next update(s) to these notebooks?
I wonder...
Holographic screen, 30 hour battery, 3lb weight, $399 pricepoint. Don't be the sucker who bought this model. Just wait 2 more years and you'll be glad...
Why do you think they don't put Firewire 400 ports on the notebooks anymore. I like/need my firewire!!
Yeah...... Id really not want to have to buy a expresscard to upload some video......
Noticed a distinct lack of ExpressCard holes... plus sans-Firewire on the little guy... hmmm... odd. Plus that glossy-only option for the display... not sold on it Steve! I guess it's a wait to see in person type of thing, but I have never like glossy (read - reflective like a mirror)...
I think they said there's an EC slot in the new MBP but likely not in the 13.3.
Looks great. Too bad about the pricing; an $899 pricepoint could have driven an even greater boom in sales, but even at that price I think they'd have to be offering the 'new' Macbook, not just the old one at a lower price. Lowering the price $100 for the old unit just makes it feel like they're trying to clear out old stock even if that's not the case.
I guess the good news is I'm not tempted to buy a new laptop I don't need. I can just keep using my work thinkpad for casual on-the-couch websurfing and keep the money on my pocket.. or Apple stock :)
I predict the old macbook will be discontinued, leaving one unified design for the mac notebooks.
This means only one thing: a new mac product line is coming at macworld.
The mac touch :)
Or in the case of Australia, RAISING it by 150 dollars.
CJ: Pretty sure it was a bit more than that.
Including the educational discount, the base MBP model has gone from $2550 to $3050. I'm not really sure how Apple justified reducing the education discount by $100. Sure, the AUD has dropped heaps in the last two weeks, but Apple only brought down the prices by $50 when the Australian dollar was almost at parity with the US dollar.
I will be holding on to this prev-gen (OS X Tiger era) Macbook Pro for quite a while. It looks like Apple is headed back towards the early 2000s where all their products were too expensive to attract anything more than a dedicated niche market. The price structure is far too conservative even though any modern retail/manufacturing company in any industry should be able to quickly respond to market conditions by altering prices. I'd rather a fluctuating price which follows the state of the economy rather than a consistently high price.
The MacBook was a big disappointment for everyone I know for 2 main reasons: Number 1: No firewire (are they crazy!) 2. No matte screen option (Double crazy!) I could live without the matte screen although it would be annoying and I hear you can buy a matte film to stick on your screen but no firewire? Everyone was looking forward to the new graphics card but now it's useless because I can't import the stuff from my DV camera anyway! Nice move Apple! I can guarantee Apple has hurt their sales dramatically over these points alone....I just hope they put firewire back...
Kev
What's the word for uglier than fugly?
I believe the word you're looking for is "wormbolt"
(oh, come on, that was too easy. you can't blame me. and anyway, I think it's okay to insult a troll.)
I wonder if someone will sell aftermarket keys. It would look great with aluminum keys.
$899 for this new Macbook would have me thinking about it. $599 for the old plastic one. And they need to come out with a small netbook to compete in the netbook market (with a sub $600 price).
the Macbook Air is their $2500 "netbook" .. what is happening to apple? they try to change too much and just ends up making everything impractical
Apple products have become like those kid's shoes with lights that flash when they take a step. The lights don't improve functionality but those who don't know better are mesmerized by them.
Fugliest! Apple'd approve of that one too.
Toshiba
The price remains the same! What ever happened to aggressive pricing? Still the same display Port and now you have to extra $30 to get a converter to DVI and other $30 to get a converter to VGA.
WTF? Talk about raping the customers. Especially when the economy is going down the drain!
DP to DVI $13.30 http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10419&cs_id=1041911&p_id=4827&seq=1&format=2
DP to HDMI $13.30 http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10419&cs_id=1041911&p_id=4826&seq=1&format=2
Hmm, not half bad. Especially the backlighted-keyboard. It looks cool to the touch.
"That trackpad isn't as hard to use as you think." High praise.
No matte screen, chiclet keyboard: no thanks. I use my MacBook Pro to get work done, and both those changes make it harder to do that.
Pass.
Separated @ birth
VAIO and MacBook
One sheet aluminum top surface - Check
Black chicklet keyboards - Check
Sony explodable battery - Check
Whats up with the the new 15" macbook pro and 1440 x 900 pixels resolution ? are they insane? I`m suppose to be able to use FCP2 and edit 1080p video on 1440 x 900 resolution?
Isn't it great to have a cool computer that has great software to edit high definitio, but the screen des not support HD resolutions, nor is there a way to burn a disc of yourcompleed HD work.
I was really expecting them to add Bluray today and was highly disapointed when they said no.
That's a valid complaint for a 17" screen but you want native 1080p on a 15" screen? That's pretty rare and would be unusable for a lot of people.
I'm currently using a 15.4" laptop with a 1920x1200 resolution and it is far from being unusable.
Well keep using that one then.
Looks like Sony FW-2XX is what I'm buying. I'm so pissed about the lack of matte!!!! Great...you can press some buttons and adjust the brightness. I get crappy inaccurate color renditions. I have to run my stupid i1 Display2 software every freakin' 5 mins when the ambient light around me changes? When the sun hides behind the cloud and the glare goes away, I gotta recalibrate? WTF!!!
is anyone else bummed about the missing firewire 400 port?
it's a bold statement saying "hey, our new laptops aren't compatible with all your firewire sound cards anymore!"
Presonus is pissed.
Apogee is stoked cause they sell USB and ExpressCard products.
I am......
FireWire 800 is backwards compatible with the legacy FireWire. It just requires yet-another-cable...
Yeah O agree, that was the whole point in gettin my pro tools setup, so i could run it off a mac book when Im on the road..looks like I'll be keepin the G4..screw another 3,000 for this crap
Yes!!!! But thanks for letting me know about this legacy cable, otherwise my 1TB of Firewire 400 drives are just going to go to waste and Briana's not going to have any compan... I mean, uhhh, my important work files will just be sitting there, yeah, that's right.
of course, we use it all the time, now we'll have to downgrade our already lacking technology
Yeah, but presumably connecting a 400 drive limits the bus speed to 400, halving the speed of any 800 drive that's connected. That's a bit rubbish.
I like the white one better. Better specs, better design. The new one is blah. Far far overrated.
Design - ugly
New specs - disappointing
New price - too expensive
Apple stock - going down...
BUT ITS SOOOO SLEEEEEEEEK AND APEEEEEEEEEEALING.
No Firewire on MacBooks.
No matte displays on MacBook Pro.
Consumers welcome!
Pro people... well, start looking in other place ;)
I was ready to go out and get one too....... I was like everyone else sooooo excited.......
"The great thing about laptops is that you can turn them any way youd like."
Eat me........
Well... depends on the pro... as a physicist, a matte/glossy screen doesn't matter, really. I just need the power! I do use graphic intensive apps, but in simulations and such, so its great ;)
I think it's pretty plain that the pro is no longer really marketed to professionals, but consumers wanting a high end computer. Jobs himself said that they are pandering to the consumer with the glossy screens. Pair that with fewer ports and you have a consumer-grade net-surfer.
Is it just me or does that thing have like 30-40% more bezel than the original Macbook Pro??
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/MacBook_Pro.jpg
They seriously screwed the pooch by adding more bezel and not having a matte screen option... the old pro looked slick cause of the nice thin bezel.
since usb 2 firewire is on the way out.
do the 9600 and the 9400 integrated graphics work together, or is it one or the other?
i want to know too. Currently the mbp come with the infamous 8600m gt and the intel g950 (or 945) but disabled.
my guess is no
the only reason the PRO has the integrated 9400M is because it's the same board as the regular MacBook.
I wish they had a more high end discrete graphics card for the Pro
I like that Apple is using similar integrated components like the motherboard and keyboard between the new MacBook and MacBookPro
I was waiting to see what came of the new mac book pros and it has fell short, and I will be going with a Sony FW series. For 1699 I get 4 GB ram, Bluray read/write,16:9 aspect ratio, HDMI in a better looking though similar design with two choices of shades. Really, all I wanted was the Bluray on the Macs but whatever. I get to save some money and get a nicer looking laptop.
black + aluminum = upchuck