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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Apple destroys MacBook Pro

Internal battery = good. Stop whining, people. Small trade-off for the extra battery life and more efficient construction. Battery can still be replaced.

No ExpressCard = bad. Suddenly the whole "Pro" moniker is meaningless. I could live with no ExpressCard if they were to give us an eSATA port or maybe a second FW channel. Either way, all this stuff could be added for nothing.

The low entry price is to sucker people in. They stock the systems with a base config of 120GB HD and 2GB RAM so that most every customer will want/need to upgrade and then they try to tear your left kindney out through your wallet with the upgrade costs. Greedy bastards. Dell and HP do the same thing, though. I priced out a 17" notebook through both HP and Dell about 2 months ago and at the time it was a good $400 more than a 17" MBP with the same CPU, GPU, HDD and RAM options. The so-called "Apple tax" that people like to complain about is really just a "large computer vendor tax".
 
Brook Willard said:
I love that they went with the SD slot too... even though professional cameras use CF. Unbelievable.
Click to expand...

Evin Grant said:
Maybe not today but SD is were flash memory (and cameras) are headed. I don't know what the SD card speed limit is projected at but the Mini ATA interface of CF cards won't be able to hold up forever.
Click to expand...

Gotta agree with Evin here. Panasonic just came out with class 10 cards and I bought 32gig class 6 last week from Abel cinetech for $119 to shoot 24mbs 1080P on 2 canon HFS100s for 3D. And the new Canon DSLR rebel T1i which shoots 720p 30 or 1080p20 uses SD cards as well, so I think as they drag the pros along you will see a shift to SD even on the pro cams.

BTW at $799 the T1i is pretty cool - S35 chip size, 15mp, get your feet wet with DSLR video so I can take one camera with my stable of Canon lenses for family or lightweight shooting of stills and video, when I don't want to drag the RED or an extra video camcorder around.

At $799 for the T1i there isn't much economic downside. I think the 5D MarkII may be competitively/economically obsolete at $2.5K pretty quickly with what Panasonic, Pentax, Olympus and of course Nikon are coming out with and working on. (Think something similar to REDcode Raw, by the next generation - 6 months - they will have something figured out.)
 
I also really don't like Apple removing the Expresscard slot on the MacBook Pro 15". I only use it for XDCAM EX offloading and there are alternatives for that. But looking at stuff like the AJA Io and the various RAID solutions, I feel your pain.

The choice for a SD slot made me think. It is true that a lot of professional DSLR's use SD instead of CF now. Since RED is modular, isn't it just possible to use SD instead of CF (if they released such a module)? Or does the RED really need that extra bit of speed the CF can give? If it doesn't matter that much, it would at least be a solution for people like me who just use their MacBook Pro's for offloading.
 
why is cf better than sd?

i like cf better.

im holding off buying a mac for quite some time, atleast till they come out with blu-rays, ill then nag my boss.
 
One more reason to skip this one.

that - plus the "designed to slow down your typing" keyboard.

From what it looks like from my perspective, Apple is more and more not giving a crap about Pro, not just Mac Book Pro.
 
I used to like mac better because they where the underdog and tried harder. I have had this "on no they chaged that too" feeling allot lately regaring apples "upgrades". I have actually gotten a eee pc with WinXP i my red kit because my macs been off to lala land.
 
Ed Watkins said:
I suggest everyone make their displeasure felt:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/

It'll probably have no effect, but it's nice to vent.
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I second this...just wrote a lengthy case in defense of bringing back the Express Card slot. It's all about giving people options, and keeping it on the 17" solely is not the kind of option I'm talking about.

I wonder if part of the reason they did this was to accommodate the internal battery, which likely takes up more room than just the general space of the removable battery & it's connections. Still, it seems like something they could afford to keep on the 15" MBP if there was enough reason to do so...

...so, write to them and explain why you think the Express Card slot would help keep the 15" MBP at the "pro" level.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html
 
I was going to get the new MBP, and I'm soooo glad I waited till I read more articles and heard what you guys thought about it.
Seriously though, why couldn't they have both the expresscard AND and sd slots?
 
Its probably the Hottest laptop ever. Its harder to run osx on a laptop b/c you can't switch some hardware.

This thing with x3 Raid 0 SSD's will be screamin' fast.
 
USB3, Expresscard 2.0, SATA 6Gbps, FW3200 means everybody who use their laptops for file based video acquisition will have to upgrade relatively quickly after that tech becomes available. My tricked out MacBook Pro WITH expansion cards in the expresscard slot is a dog slow tool for this kind of work, most of the time loosing with a wide margin even to tape based acquisition....

So what are you really going to buy today if you can't wait until early 2010? Probably a refurb that you plan on replacing 9 months from now. So in some sense Apple is better off optimizing their product for a market that's going to buy right now. Then make a killer product and cash in on the upgrade cycle when the new IO tech is available.

Or... If Apple really thinks it's fine to not make laptops that cater to file based video and motion picture acquisition, I think it's reasonable to assume we'll be looking at a wholesale shift to Windows for all video & film professionals.

Either way, in the mean term people selling Hackintosh laptops will make some good money.
 
Listening to all those new port and connection possibilities, I wonder, even with the expresscard slot in place...

How is one going to do a mobile backup of the upcoming redcode250 of the EpiX ?

250MB/s will fill the REDRAM (128GB) in 8,5 minutes, if I am correct.


What will you guys to do handle this amount of data?
 
  • Thread starter
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  • #59
http://i.gizmodo.com/5284638/when-pro-doesnt-mean-pro-anymore

Everybody's hurting over this. I'm really blown away.

They almost need to kill the MacBook line, turn the MBP into the new low-end and introduce some models that are actually high-end. The 15" MBP has features that should cost half what they do. The design is cool and all, but design doesn't matter when it eliminates functionality.
 
Vince K said:
I was going to get the new MBP, and I'm soooo glad I waited till I read more articles and heard what you guys thought about it.
Seriously though, why couldn't they have both the expresscard AND and sd slots?
Click to expand...

The same reason why they 'couldn't' offer the matte screen anymore on the 15". Because the want people to pay extra for the 17" now.
 
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