Mountain Lion is available for download but I’ve been recommended to hold off for a few days until the wifi problem becomes a non-issue. Reports are that with the upgrade, wifi signal is apparent but data is not being transmitted. Ethernet connection is unaffected. However, there are still some nice updates for all Retina Macbook users. The complete iWork Suite is now Retina aware and it’s gorgeous. No more blurry text in pages! Aperture and Safari has been updated as well. You can now search in the address bar and things are pretty snappy.
I’m still looking forward to Mountain Lion. As a Retina user, my experience has had many hiccups. I’ve seen more spinning beachballs, especially when I’m using Final Cut Pro X, in the last month than I had in the two years I had my last Macbook Pro. Mountain Lion Potentially addresses some of these issues as scaling algorithms get worked out and work gets offloaded more onto the GPU.
Don’t forget to redeem your code if you’ve purchased a Mac after June 11, 2012 here.
Breaking News: Fake leather and stitching is still a part of OSX. Whoever is in charge of that needs to be tortured.
That’s what I told myself when Apple announced the Macbook Pro refresh today at the Worldwide Developers Conference. I knew it was going to be a beast. Heck last year’s model was a monster and my first gen i7 still handles rendering tasks with relative ease. To read and see the new Macbook Pros as a total package just made me scramble seeing what goodies I could sell to justify the upgrade price. Your computer may not suck but the one I’m staring at does.
Here’s the rundown of key features for the 2012 Macbook Pro. It’s slim. Jobs demoed the iPod by saying it fits in your pocket. The Macbook Air was pulled out of a manilla envelope to show off it’s thin figure. The new Macbook Pro’s are said to be no bigger than a finger nail. It’s not tapered like the Air, most likely to house some surprising internals and a battery that lasts 7.5 hours with 30 day standby time (if you get one with an SSD). The Apple Store first asks you if you want standard or Retina displays with $400 separating the 15″ entry level versions of each The 13″ Macbook Pro doesn’t seem to have the Retina display option which comes in at a resolution of 2880 x 1800 or 220dpi or more pixels than that big HDTV you have in your living room.
Out with the old and in with the new. Old being optical drive and ethernet. New being the intriguing inclusion of HDMI, USB 3.0 AND two thunderbolt ports. 8gb of ram and 256 gb SSD hard rive come standard on the $2,199 base model Retina Macbook Pro. There is also a new cooling system which sucks air through three slim vents and and channels them into a non-symetrical fan that produces undulating frequencies almost imperceptible to the human ear. The new heat efficient (and unbelievably powered) Ivy Bridge quad core i7 cpu combined with this new form of heat dissipation should alleviate any heat issues with previous MacBooks. It’s also good to see nVidia and Intel reuniting on the Apple notebook with the 1GB GeForce GT 650M.
It looks like Apple had a pretty good day today and Siri did a nice job kicking the event off.
Recommended reading SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: OS – Apple fan boy or higher. CPU – Super Geek or higher GPU – Mega Nerd or Higher
I’ve gathered some confirmed and speculative rumors with an attempt to make sense of what this means going into the future. MacRumors reported a few weeks back that production already commenced on the new line of MacBook Pros with an initial batch of 100,000 to 150,000 units a month. With the PC market and the likes of Acer banking their business on UltraBooks, Apple has clearly started a REVolution with high-performance mega-mobile computing. Netbooks were a fad in a new market tablets now reside in, but the MacBook Air and UltraBooks are categories that may just be integrated into the standard laptop segment.
For now let’s discuss the evolution of the new MacBook Pros which are due to hit the market sometime this Fall. Legacy technology looks to be ditched in this incarnation so say goodbye to an optical drive, Ethernet and FireWire port. I don’t know about you but I haven’t touched either of the three in about a year. No wait, I watched five minutes of Redbelt to see if the drive still worked. Then I went over to Netflix to finish it. I hear the SD card slot and a new combination of SSD and HDD will get a starting nod though it’s unconfirmed if the disk drives will be a single unit hybrid like this, Apple proprietary, or standard laptop units. Apple continues to push thunderbolt being fully backed by Intel gives it a chance to succeed. It is after all faster than USB 3.0, does audio/video and is compatible with mini display-port. All this nerdy, geeky tech talk means brings us to this. The internal omissions will give the MacBook line a slimmer more Air-like profile. It may even be more dramatic of a tapered wedge due to its larger overall size than the Airs. Can’t wait to my finger board to the Apple Store!
Photo by GearPatrol
It’s still called the Pro. Not the MacBook 15” Air and not the Macbook Air Pro. So how is Apple going to differentiate the two? It starts with the new Ivy Bridge CPU. I’ll simplify what it means as best as I can. Slight boost in CPU performance, huge increase in the integrated GPU (about 30%) and ridiculous battery life due to the reduced 22nm architecture. Since it will be marketed towards the professional-level user Apple will also upgrade the dedicated graphics processor to something like the AMD Radeon 7700m family of chips. Games will look and run five times superior to PS3 offerings. Video encoding times will be something along the lines of an 8-core Mac Pro from a few years ago. I’m guessing raw GeekBench scores to clear 13000 easily as the current ones consistently hover around the 8,000 – 9,500 mark. Basically, you’ll be able to replace your desktop or iMac with this laptop and maybe an external display. Heck, I’ve been able to do that with the 2010 model i7 MacBook Pro paired with the Cinema Display.
Get ready for HiDPI. High Dots Per Inch. Not quite retina but close in other words. The iPhone 4S has 364 dots (or pixels) per square inch. Expect the new Macbook Pros to at least clear 200. Gizmodo also reports that these new computers will sport a surface trackpad. The entire palm rest will be touch-sensitive, gesture controllable, and I don’t think it will make this generation. The costs of the aforementioned seem to be broaching Apple’s standard product cost ratio so look for Tim Cook to keep this further down the pipeline.
The iPhone basically cannibalized the iPod market. A more powerful iPad plus iOS integration into Lion could certainly do the same to the 11 inch MacBook Air which already ate the entry level polycarbonate MacBook line. The Air’s genetic physical traits would pass upstream to the current line of MacBook Pros. The Mac Pros eventually will bow out to the iMac as the standard desktop power professional workstation. Finally, the Apple TV would be replaced by the umm Apple…Television. I know.
Photo from hindustantimes
Do you own a MacBook Pro? If so, I’d recommend backing up your data and start making plans to sell via Craigslist, Amazon or eBay. A visual refresh always kills market value as well as all the new power under that aluminum hood. My 15.4” MacBook Pro with 8GB ram and pre-Sandy Bridge 2.66GHZ i7 looks to be fetching $1,100 to $1,200 on the used market. This could go as low as $700 after the new line comes out. If you made it this far into the reading, slap another 100 points to your GeekBench score.
If my hunch is right, Apple HQ has that thing in the pipeline and it was supplied none other than by Steve Jobs in a Tupac-like role. When Jobs was forced out of Apple 27 years ago, nothing innovative was created by the company. John Scully had an opportunity to prove it was capable of producing something revolutionary while structuring an environment capable of competing with big brother and Microsoft. Time revealed that 1 Infinite Loop could not create without; however, Steve proved he could compete demolish the competition when he was asked back.
Father knows best and Steve’s first move was to strike a $150 million dollar deal with Microsoft. Add the iMac, iPod, iTunes, AppStore, iPad, Macbook Air, Pixar and the iPhone to the list that started with the Apple I, II and Macintosh. The man redefined our common conceptions and turned Apple into one of the wealthiest companies in the world.
Apple is now orphaned, however it can ride its fiscal success for the next few years without any significant technological innovation but it doesn’t last long (see Microsoft). Chief Apple Designer Sir Jonathon Ive said “if we can’t make something that is better, we won’t.” Without it’s creative father, just how is Apple going to do this? Like any good son taking over the family business, Cook will get a shot before confidence wanes. He’s going to need to do well immediately if one expects reasonable growth above the upper edges of the long term trading channel valued at $460. Plus, I think good ol pops had a gift to give.
Now we’re not at that point yet, though it’s clear creativity has stalled. The iPad got thicker and heavier. What’s next for us? Siri on the Nuevo New iPad? WooHoo! Retina on the Newer Nano? Oh, I know! Thunderbolt AND USB 3.0 on the Nearly Now Macbook Pro. No. No. And no. These moderate updates will not do regardless of inferior competition. Dig through the rumors and ask yourself if Jobs could’ve done better. Pushed harder. Got more.
Famous for creating the “I’m working 90 hours/wk and loving it” T-shirts to get the Macintosh team motivated, I think Steve Jobs worked his magic one last time. Rumor has it he did not work on the 4S. Rumor has it that he worked on a secret project yet to be released. Rumor has it that it’s the iPhone 5.
Masayoshi Son said, “I visited Apple for the announcement of the iPhone 4S [at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California]. When I was having a meeting with Tim Cook, he said, ‘Oh Masa, sorry I have to quit our meeting.’ I said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘My boss is calling me.’ That was the day of the announcement of the iPhone 4S. He said that Steve is calling me because he wants to talk about their next product. And the next day, he died.”
I know. Wow. It’s mind blowing how passionate Steve Jobs was and I’m sure his creative juices were given huge electric jolts considering his time constraints due to failing health. The iPhone 4S was a logical progression and Steve knew the team he assembled for it would be self sufficient. So he worked on the followup in the days leading to his untimely death. Covert style. Whatever they choose to call the next iPhone is sure to be a cult classic based upon the idea it was his last project. An egomaniac like Jobs wouldn’t want to go out working on a moderately improved product, would he?
Summation time. Steve Jobs worked on the next iPhone. This will give Cook plenty of time to find the next creative genius and develop him without sacrificing reasonable growth to the shareholder. And I NEED this new device. I am a Machead, I realized. I have the Apple Cinema Display, an i7 Macbook Pro, an iPad 2, an Apple TV. They all work beautifully together. I now more than ever, understand I just need…one more thing.
Michael Merto 