Should I buy an Apple laptop?

seriously, i prefer pcs by miles; but that's cos the things that i want to do (maths stuff, downloading mp3s) are v easy on pcs + next to impossible on macs, and this prob isn't true for most users.

Aww Graham that's the one I want! Either that or I'll go whole hog and get the 833mhz Powerbook, which looks stupid good.

Toby my Desktop is a PC so no worries there.

Also, if you fly or take train rides, it's nice to have a DVD drive, then you can put in headphones & watch movies. :) It looks like the new ibooks are the way to go-- they're much tougher, and have pretty much all the features you're likely to need. 1 GB of RAM might be nice, but I run os X quite nicely on 192 MB, so it's not really necessary. Anyway, sound in ports can be added w/ USB adaptors & the ibooks are lighter if you're going to be carrying it around.

Granted, sound editing or Photoshopping might be a different story. Which leads me to my next question: how much audio related work (ie. sound editing, Reaktor, VSTing, sequencing, etc) could I be expected to get away with on a G3-800mhz with 640MB?

Compaq does have nice tiny laptops, but all windows computers have TERRIBLE color... and, well, they run windows. I wish Apple would someday make a laptop that weighed less than 3 lbs, but it'll probably never happen.

that being said, one of my main hesitancies regarding the iBook is that i really want to get a computer that *lasts* and at the rate apple is upping requirements for things i don't know whether an iBook is a better "long term" investment.

And oh yeah; Macs *are* cooler!

Ultimately, the final answer to this is a question of money - you get what you pay for. I've had four Mac laptops over the years (currently I have a PB G4/800MHz) and for the most part the quality of them has been several degrees higher than that of any other manufacturer. At work we have a mixed network of Macs and Windows 2000-boxen, and the few PC laptops we have (this includes Dells, Sonys, and Toshibas) literally have to be babysitted. If you want to fuck around all day tweaking settings, then go Windows. If you just want to get to work, get a Mac.

BTW, SoulSeek for the Mac DOES exist. Check out PySoulSeek

(A nice alternative for Mac users who don't want to rely on Python for PySoulSeek...)

It's not that PCs are significantly better than Macs, technology and interface-wise (or vice versa). I have had PC laptops, and haven't had to spend any time "babysitting" them, whatever that means. I've had Macs too, and watched them crash every 5 minutes. If Macs were the standard platform, I would use a Mac with no complaints. But they're not, and you pay a penalty for being on a different platform from everyone else. Whether it's that software you can't use yet, or the hassle when you want to transfer your files to a PC computer and something goes wrong... who needs it?

PS A lot of Mac design is really kind of cheesy. The milky white iBook and titanium thing are dope (tho they ripped off Vaio on the latter), iPods rock, but the bright colors and the exposed circuitry lines? So Swatch. And the iMac looks like an ugly lamp. Then there's the whole techno-elite superiority image projected by Apple/Steve Jobs...

All reports I've heard suggest that Virtual PC will run 90+% of Windows programs without a hassle, and at decent speeds. It's certainly a good argument to buy a Mac -- with OS X, Virtual PC, and Fink, you've potentially got access to programs from just about every current OS. I don't think the state of Mac emulation on Windows is nearly as advanced, last I heard anyway.

I'm getting an 800mhz 12" after work today. Thanks all.

OS wise OS X is second to none, it is stable as anything going, it looks nice. You can use it without tweaking a thing or get right into the nuts and bolts if you want.

As far as the hardware goes, build quality is second to none, my only gripe is that the headphone port broke, but this appears to have been fixed with better ports on newer models.

Buy a mac you won't be disappointed.

Plus apple just upped specs and cut prices on iBooks and powerbooks.

Which is slightly distressing...

OK, Mac happiness it is, although getting used to iTunes over Winamp is gonna take some work...

There's a version of Winamp for Mac but it's an Alpha and kinda light on features (stable but you can't fiddle with the settings like you can in windows).

As a result, I recently purchased a rather nice PC laptop. It cost AUD $2k. Specs: 12" TFT (1024x768), 1ghz Celeron, 20gb hdd, 256mb ram, DVD, ethernet, 56k modem, 3 USB ports, firewire.

Photos: one, two, three.

So far it works nicely.

so dave q ... please do keep up to date on this thread about your progress with iBook/OSX. i'm so perilously close to buying one of these that a good iBlog could push me over the edge.

isn't that 12" screen WAY too small to be useful?

Sean C! Glad you saw this thread; I obv. took yr advice re: the iBooks and took the plunge. So far, I'm pretty happy I did (although I'm holding off on a full thumbs up until I get another 512 megs of ram, hopefully soon...)

iBook: P92, 600 Mhz, 12.1", 128 MB, 20 GB, Combo Drive (DVD-CDRW), Internal Modem -

£475?

but I could still say that that's mem. is too lo.

I should take it and add some (cheap?) memory (easily?)?

Yes, you can. If I can do it, anyone can - Cozen you should get it.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~christi/cattery/second-golden-age.html

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~christi/cattery/second-golden-age.html

My iBook is in the shop AGAIN. It keeps blowing through logic circuits like so many M&Ms. I am hoping Apple will just replace the computer at this point, but we'll see.

I don't mind it getting scuffed up, I mean I bought it so I could use it as a laptop (out and about &c.) it just ruins the overall prettiness.

What is 'blowing through logic circuits' and should I worry or is it that-computer specific?

You can get the fabric things at computer stores. I am not sure what they are called, but if you ask for a laptop screen protector fabric thingy doo, they might have it. I don't have one, since the keyboard marks seem easy to clean off. But my bf has one, because he is fussy.

One of my friends wraps her iBook in a scarf but her computer is still getting all scratched up so ah well!

So awesome! I can't wait until I dig its teeth into my high-end video stuff in a few months. I'm never going back to Windows. I may go to a *nix one day, but never back to MS.

Just wondering, though, are there any good programs for some simple WYSIWYG HTML? I don't need anything as mighty as Dreamweaver, however.

So... my old Powerbook G4 which I purchased in 2002 (I think) is finally on its last legs. The disk drive doesn't work and one of the hinges broke this weekend. While I can still use it, it has lost much of its functionality.
I'm thinking of buying a new MacBook but I'm wondering if there's any reason to believe that the prices on them will drop in the next few weeks/months?
Advice/suggestions?

(Blimey, toby's undergone a conversion) since 2002)

You might check the mac buyers guide:

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook

Should I get a MacBook Air? Does anyone have one here?

Problem with macbook air is its just too big and too expensive for a secondary/travel laptop

um, are you really willing to pay an extra $799 dollars so that your computer can be slightly (.32") thinner than the macbook? have you ever complained about the thickness of your laptop? because if not, than you might as well save your money.

manufactured demand say what

but what if you are very weak?

maybe you should get a desktop so you won't have to strain yourself carrying it around

or do squats with the extra two pounds of macbook weight over your head to build up your muscles

three vs five pound barbell weight makes a big difference, you know.

macbook air - the first laptop for women and small children

http://www.buy.com/prod/hp-mini-note-2133-pc-via-c7-m-ulv-1-2ghz-128kb-l2-1gb-ddr2-sdram-120gb/q/loc/101/207873474.html

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria=BA24527

I cannot believe how overpriced the mac laptops are at the moment (not just the Air). When I bought my MB Pro 2 years ago it seemed a bit expensive but now you can get an equivalent laptop for about half of what Apple are charging. It seems to be the only reason to buy one is if you are a designer or something and absolutely require mac os.

equivalent

designer or something

absolutely require mac os

In which case, stay the fuck home and get a desktop machine.

t seems to be the only reason to buy one is if you are a designer or something and absolutely require mac os.

i agree they are overpriced but apple laptops have always been. if you do web development and require a unix installation though having one is nice, that way you don't have to deal with some annoying linux package.

os x is a fucking miracle compared with other operating systems, is the reason to get one

although have people now booted os x onto all manner of intel boxen? i would imagine they have

i can't get past the NO CD DRIVE thing, with the macbook Air.

although have people now booted os x onto all manner of intel boxen? i would imagine they have

has this happened? I didn't think so

are you saying its easy to install unix on a mac? i read reviews and the consensus seems to be that getting a macbook is the better option.

Mac OS X is Unix

or at least *nix

have people really not managed to patch Leopard to work on even ONE (1x) make-model of non-Apple machine?? not saying it's trivial but given the interest and the talent out there i would have bet cash money someone had done it

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Installation_Guides

haha

it's instructions like this which i guess explain the continuing popularity of all-apple systems:

"MAKE SURE TO SET THE JUMPER CORRECTLY. CABLE SELECT WILL NOT WORK PROPERLY."

There's also the fact that you cannot safely apply updates. There's no telling which one will render yr PC unbootable.

Was about to get a Macbook Pro, but a Dell will be thousands less for a superior machine. And it's not a fucking Mac.

ya, i wish apple would make a computer that wasn't a fucking mac already

thousands less would = free. i haven't used a pc laptop for a while but after using one this weekend i'd have to say i'd be loathed to get one even if they were "thousands less".

is it loathe or loathed?

not getting the overpriced thing, go check out some vaios if you want a corporation shitting in your wallet

loathe

or "loth"?

I think loth.

If you mean reluctant, it's "loath." Not loathe, which is how I see it spelled 90% of the time.

Apple laptops are quite expensive. I might get an Acer.

Was about to get a Macbook Pro, but a Dell will be thousands less for a superior machine.

superior how? it depends on what you want your machine for. if you need a machine for doing basic word processing, internet surfing, and some business applications, by all means buy a dell. if you want to do any web development or multimedia anything, get a mac. this has been true for years and continues to be true.

Dells have no resale value

i require a superior machine to match my superior attitude

superior how? it depends on what you want your machine for. if you need a machine for doing basic word processing, internet surfing, and some business applications, by all means buy a dell. if you want to do any web development or multimedia anything, get a mac. this has been true for years and continues to be true.

-- akm, Monday, April 28, 2008 12:11 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Why is that? I have asked this question a few times and never got a decent response. I think the people I've asked either didn't know how to explain, or really did not know.

It seems to be the only reason to buy one is if you are a designer or something and absolutely require mac os.

I wonder how long people will continue to believe this total myth?

I'm waiting for blu-ray, hope they roll it out to the entire line as I'd love a smaller black mac book.

better for web development because of the unix backend and default php and apache installations (putting these things on windows is a pain in the ass and will invariably have platform differences from any production box you're going to migrate your code to great than the differences w/ the Mac *nix version); better for multimedia because the machines just seem faster and better able to handle it (this may not be true under the latest OS release? I think I heard there were many problems with photoshop, for instance, I think because it wasn't written to take full advantage of leopard or something); you also can use things like Final Cut and all the other hokier built into the OS things like Imovie and stuff which aren't there for windows

if you really want to spend like £300 on a laptop get an ibook off ebay, they're still good, don't get some celeron piece of shit

xpost, development sure, but everyone still thinks Macs are superior for design which just isn't true. They're more pleasant to use in general, but the ability to run Final Cut is their only real "design" advantage. As for this: "better for multimedia because the machines just seem faster and better able to handle it", I just don't think you're going to see a huge difference on similarly spec'd mac or pc machines.

I would never ever ever recommend someone to buy a non-Intel Mac now..

As for this: "better for multimedia because the machines just seem faster and better able to handle it", I just don't think you're going to see a huge difference on similarly spec'd mac or pc machines.

-- Spencer Chow, Monday, April 28, 2008 3:17 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Quartz.

So Quartz helps with more than just the OS interface? I still don't see a huge difference on similarly spec'd machines running typical photoshop stuff etc. The price difference is much less now though so I'm largely moving to Mac.

unless you need to use microsoft-specific office and communication apps for business purposes, I still rate the lower risk profile of OS X for anything. I don't want to ever have to deal with rebuilding my system from a backup just because I forgot to patch Flash and went to a website which is perfectly legimitate 363 days out of the year but happens to have been pwnt by one of the automated sql injectors running around lately. Never having to blow a whole weekend pulling teeth to fix my home jukebox is worth the $$$, to me

and linux has nothing I want or need to run plus still pulling teeth occasionally

I bought a MB Pro a few months ago. It's a refurbished one (knock wood, buying applecare before the 1yr. warranty expires) but it's more than what I need, and the price was excellent. If/when I am unemployed it will probably come in very handy.

So Quartz helps with more than just the OS interface? I still don't see a huge difference on similarly spec'd machines running typical photoshop stuff etc. The price difference is much less now though so I'm largely moving to Mac.

-- Spencer Chow, Monday, April 28, 2008 3:36 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Not in Adobe products (they don't even have 64 bit Photoshop working on OS X) but Final Cut, iMovie, and Aperture have Quartz acceleration.

unless you need to use microsoft-specific office and communication apps for business purposes, I still rate the lower risk profile of OS X for anything. I don't want to ever have to deal with rebuilding my system from a backup just because I forgot to patch Flash and went to a website which is perfectly legimitate 363 days out of the year but happens to have been pwnt by one of the automated sql injectors running around lately. Never having to blow a whole weekend pulling teeth to fix my home jukebox is worth the $$$, to me

-- El Tomboto, Monday, April 28, 2008 3:41 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Being able to rebuild from a time machine backup is nice, too.

multiple x-post - look for Applecare on Ebay. I got it for my MBP and Mac Pro for about a third of what Apple charges retail, and it registered fine.

I would never ever ever recommend someone to buy a non-Intel Mac now..

even over some nasty inspiron?

If the Mac thing ain't yr thing, then don't get one, fine. Just don't pretend that there's some kind of equivalency going on between OS X and Windows and that the only real difference is the hardware.

moral equivalency

OK so 'equivalent' was not correct, OSX is far superior to windows. I like Apple, and I bought an MBP because I figured £200-300 was worth it to have a play with OSX. I loved OSX, but I tried to reformat and my OSX DVD broken so I installed Ubuntu and I've been pretty happy with it. Now I see that to buy a Mac is about £500 more than a 'PC' with the same hardware inside and I just wonder if that half-grand justifies itself?

Maybe it does - what are the technical reasons that certain industries require Mac OS? I'm not an expert on this but I was talking to a designer friend the other day who claimed that if he bought a Windows machine he would be 'laughed out of the office'.

Already addressed upthread

There are technical reasons, but it's not the type of thing you can make a black-and-white case out of. For every Mac tit in the chamber, there's a Wintel tat in the clip. To properly evaluate whether Mac or Windows or Linux or whatever is right for you or yr company, you've either got to spend plenty of quality time with each platform or discuss the matter with someone whose needs are similar to yrs and who has done this. And if you choose wrong, you can choose again later and it all counts under the former category.

I've been "the industry" for 12 years now, and I've had Mac OS, Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, IRIX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, NeXTSTEP, and Linux as my regular desktop OS in that time. Of those, Mac OS X has been and still is by far what makes me personally most productive. Other folks' experiences obviously differ from mine, yet I wouldn't claim that their opinions on the matter are any less valid. You need to use what works best for you and stop fretting about making the wrong choice.

Let me boil it down into a couple sentences: If you are not confident enough to choose a computer based on yr own knowledge, find someone you trust and take their advice. When you are confident enough, you may discard the previous advice.

m not an expert on this but I was talking to a designer friend the other day who claimed that if he bought a Windows machine he would be 'laughed out of the office'.

well this is probably just down to snobbery

graphic design requires mac os because the industry came up with it...a Mac SE, postscript, ATM, Pagemaker, Laserwriters. While there'd be plenty of textbook publishers working with Ventura Publisher on PCs and whatnot, the Mac desktop publishing revolution was real and became standard and still is. Years later compatibility became a big issue, I still remember the days of working at one of the top printers in NYC and getting powerpoint and word and publisher files and having to output pages to postscript to place in quark just to do large format printing. At this point, the actual software is virtually identical, but the industry is filled with designers who contrary to some opinions, are not on the cutting edge of anything and still want to use Quark 3.32 or whatever it was. The entire industry is lurching towards InDesign, some places more quickly then others, but Quark 6 (or 4) on a Mac is still the only thing most print designers are comfortable working with.

YES

Okay Jed, not thousands less sorry, but well over a thousand less.

Pretty much I need it for running Pro Tools, which doesn't run on Leopard (also it's unlikey to for a good while).

Jon, I've had my last computer since about 2001 (and am hanging onto it to do retarded internet shit), if this is anything similar then I'm forgetting about resale value.

Finally, I find Macs difficult to use. I'm sure I could work it out in a week or so, but why bother? I prefer PCs.

Pro Tools does run on Windows.

I don't understand what makes macs "hard to use."

Quark 3.32 basically does everything you need. Nice little program.

JW there are people who think all computers are "hard to use."

Pro Tools does run on Windows.

-- libcrypt, Tuesday, 29 April 2008 02:09 (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Which is why I'm getting a Windows machine.

Jon, just lack of familiarity.

i don't understand why you'd post on this thread if you want to use pc-specific software and don't know how to use a mac. ya, we get it, you're not gonna get a mac.

Pro Tools runs on Macs as well. Just not the new OS yet

Sorry for using a thread titled 'Should I buy an Apple laptop?' for musing about whether or not I should buy an Apple laptop.

I could sell you my clamshell, which runs 9.3.

Naughty.

didn't know that about ProTools, that's pretty ridiculous. The history or ProTools dates back to mac-centric software. Sound Designer, SD II, Audiomedia...

Quark 3.32 basically does everything you need. Nice little program.

nah...InDesign does so many amazing things, it's really hard to go back. I mean, once you've grabbed a dozen images from your desktop and dragged them into a layout, dropping them into multiple frames one at a time, with each frame already set to fit the images...makes it really hard to go back to Quark.

Actually my part-time job, the one that pays most of the rent, they're still on Quark 6.5.

Pro tools will take ages to appear for leopard as Avid/Digidesign remain eternally grumpy that apple destroyed its happy monopoly on mid-range video editing. They also lost a tonne of money last year, a lo of it from digidesign as so many other products can now do significant chunks of what ProTools can do. (they also lost a tonne of money through their arrogance and generally pissing of key people they should be working with in the video industry).

for hand:

http://gizmodo.com/384526/exclusive-video-psystar-in-the-wild

The entire industry is lurching towards InDesign, some places more quickly then others, but Quark 6 (or 4) on a Mac is still the only thing most print designers are comfortable working with.

Depends who you ask. I work for a large commercial printer and we've banned Quark completely. After fighting with Quark's post-version 3 products I believe this is a sound decision.

Maybe it's because I'm youngish, but I only know one person who still uses Quark compared to maybe 10 InD users.

I emailed the prepress guy at our printer and asked him what percentage of jobs they get in ID vs. QXP, just out of curiosity. Will report the answer tomorrow. He may not know for sure, since jobs come in to them as press-ready PDFs usually now.

I haven't touched QXP in about 5 years.

For what it's worth, I speak as somebody who's freelanced at many agencies of different sizes doing Mac production work for the better part of the last 10 years. Many of the larger and older companies are still using Quark because they're so accustomed to basically just picking up old files and modifying them. I don't know how well the Markzware Quark to Indesign utility is selling, or how well it works, I'm sure it's better then what I've had to do a few years back which involved saving Quark files back to 5, then to 4 just to open in InDesign CS and CS2. That and older art directors are still loathe to learn a new program. Trust me, I'm no fan, although I work much faster in Quark (10+ years of use will do that) and I think InDesign has a few really stupid techniques, but they're way overcome by the great features.

I'm sure young people getting into design now are learning with InDesign, but every place I've worked in the last 5 years have all still been Quark, and that includes 2 of the big 10 advertising firms, several small and medium sized general and pharm. advertising firms, 1 major newspaper of record, and the internal studio of 1 major leather goods designer.

Pro tools will take ages to appear for leopard as Avid/Digidesign remain eternally grumpy that apple destroyed its happy monopoly on mid-range video editing. They also lost a tonne of money last year, a lo of it from digidesign as so many other products can now do significant chunks of what ProTools can do. (they also lost a tonne of money through their arrogance and generally pissing of key people they should be working with in the video industry).

any actual facts to back this apparent total speculation up?

also yeah companies really dig pissing off/alienating a large part of their customer base to 'get back' at a company that already took a great deal of its market share. for fuck's sake.

lots of bad engineering decisions made by adobe et al

Option to use Logic instead of Pro Tools now on the table, and IT dude recommends a higher end Acer or Fujitsu over Dell.

FFS, why can't I hand in work on 4track cassette.

logic mac only, i really dislike it as a daw but some people are all over it

Rumor has it Quark wasn't going to be OSX compatible until a certain sometime ILXor and her friend, who's father may run Quark told said father he was nuts. Quark would be ancient history by now if they hadn't.

I use Performer, fwiw. Since version 3 on a Mac Plus.

It's amazing how industries can shift...Opcode Studio Vision was first with digital audio and almost completely knocked Performer out of the game, but MOTU came out with the 2408 interface, first real low-cost multi-channel interface. Where's Vision now?

i remember opcode - you had to get the damn drivers in order to do anything with protools

Heard back from my contact at the printer -- he said that more and more jobs are coming in as PDFs, but the ones that are native files are 70% ID, 30% QXP.

my girlfriend, who runs the the student graphic design firm on our campus, uses indesign exclusively for layout. very few of the design jobs shes applying for require quark knowledge... not that this contradicts anything anyones been saying, but even my quark-loving dad has switched to indesign, not that he does layout anymore at all

I like Logic quite a bit, although I'm more familiar with Pro Tools. If you have issues with Macs being "overpriced", though, then you gotta have a massive hate-on for Digi.

^ i do

One of the nifty things about Logic is that you can use a (not-too) old Mac as a DSP farm. Conversely with Pro Tools, you can trade in yr first-born to Digi to get more DSP action.

logic mac only, i really dislike it as a daw but some people are all over it

To overgeneralize, I've found that Logic is great for composition while ProTools' strength is straight-up multitrack recording.

Also, I haven't upgraded to Logic 8 yet so that difference may not exist

logic you fucks! behead the infidels!

i still fuck w/quark a lot - tho i wouldnt start a new project w/it it

ive used the markzware quark to indesign utility a little bit and it seems really good - tho my testing has been by no means exhaustive

I think all the smaller and sharper shops have already switched to ID, it's the bigger older agencies with years and years of archives and stodgy creatives who are holding on. I didn't take InDesign seriously until my friend who started a really hip 2 person design firm with very cool clients said he never uses Quark anymore. Still, the freelance agencies in NY and the types of firms they place people at, as mentioned all the big advertising firms, are still stuck with it. Personally, I can't wait till everyplace switches so I can get as good at ID as I am with Quark, and am hoping I'm just not quite fluent enough with ID, as some of how ID works seems a bit more painful then it needs to be, all the stuff with selecting the container vs the content, the Paste Into command, gets overly complicated. I've tried creating key commands to make it faster to a little success.

Option to use Logic instead of Pro Tools now on the table, and IT dude recommends a higher end Acer or Fujitsu over Dell.

I'd suggest HP.

People like Thinkpads too, but my boss (video production) uses HP. (His next computer is a Mac)

a certain sometime ILXor and her friend, who's father may run Quark told said father he was nuts.
wau!

We're about to switch to InDesign at my office, and if we're doing it that means pretty much everybody else already has. Jon's right that Adobe's made lots of bad engineering decisions, but Quark were bafflingly bad at responding to users or updating their apps. I once saw an list of the wont-fix bugs in 4.1, and it was epic.

I've got one of the tiny thinkpads, and really like it a lot. The hardware's solid as hell and the battery goes forever.

how ID works seems a bit more painful
It's got a largely different metaphor from Quark, which took me a while to understand. Now I grok where it's coming from (Illustrator meets Pagemaker, kinda) I get on a lot better with it.

For me the learning curve was about ten days and the comfort curve was about two months.

To overgeneralize, I've found that Logic is great for composition MIDI while ProTools' strength is straight-up multitrack recording absolute market dominance.

The more I use Logic (8), the more I like it, crazy keyboard mappings notwithstanding.

I mean, WTF: <esc> brings up a menu????

I have remapped that, by the way.

pretty much everybody else already has

I WILL REPEAT...NOT EVERYBODY HAS! The last 4 places I've worked in the last 2 or 3 years have all been Quark. I know a lot can change in 2 years, but the place I am still is still Quark, and it's a pretty large operation.

I'm pretty good with InDesign, there's just this one major technique that keeps feeling awkward to me, likely because I'm still using Quark at the same time and it gets frustrating to go back and forth. I won't set InDesign to use Quark key commands because in the long-run I think that'll be lazy and I'd rather just get used to InDesign, not to mention having them consistent with other Adobe products. My main personal issue is that InDesign makes it so easy putting almost every command on a palette that I'm not learning keycommands. With Quark, I can like, layout a book without touching the mouse.

I just think switching between frame and content by using key commands to switch between frame and content tools in quark is quicker and more logical than switching between select and direct select and using that weird "container" button on InDesign.

Yeh, I didn't mean to argue with yr point, just mean that our lot moving to anything being a really strong sign that a gale is blowing.

That select/direct select thing is part of what I mean about the metaphor. Quark feels like it's trying to create a page in the old paste-up style, while ID feels much more computery.

We're about to switch to InDesign at my office

some of us already have, dude :)

today was day two of indesign (with an atex prestige back end) on windows, coming straight from quark 3 (with a QPS1 back end) on mac os 9. it's been ... interesting.

at the moment it's still a strange mix of novelty and unfamiliarity (which, personally, is going to be fucked right up by the fact i'm actually only working one day between now and may 12) but i'd be enormously surprised if, in a month's time, i wasn't totally converted to indesign.

THAT SAID: windows sucks dick in every dimension, and i fucking loathe it (this is the first time i've had to use it in many, many years). counter-intuitive, half-arsed shit. the thing i loathe most of all is the fact the pointer doesn't disappear once i start typing, the way it has on macs since time immemorial. tiny little thing, but says it all. oh, and how do i change the colour of a folder? WHY, I DOWNLOAD A FUCKING SHAREWARE APP. mother FUCK. the setup we have now, only on OS X, would rock bells.

ALSO WORTH NOTING: comparing quark 3 and indesign ... fuck, what version is it? not the newest, but hey ... anyway, comparing quark 3 to it is obviously grossly unfair -- i mean, for all i know quark 6 could rock all the stuff i'm being impressed by right now and do it a thousand times better. i dunno: i'm only just beginning with it (although we've managed to rock out the pages and be off-stone about the same time as always) so i can't say for sure. right now i couldn't fucking care less, either.

To overgeneralize, I've found that Logic is great for composition while ProTools' strength is straight-up multitrack recording.

this is what i've heard in general too. PT doesn't do midi all that well, even if it has come along way with the last major release. but then i don't need it to.

wait, since when can macs change folder colors?

essential
hot
in progress
cool
personal
project 1
project 2

As somebody who's spent a lot of time with InDesign CS2 and 3, and many years with Quark 6.5 and even dabbled in Quark 7, I can say for sure that InDesign has more features in it's little pinky then Quark can dream of. I'm still impressed enough with drag and drop from the desktop, don't even get me started with Ink Density Previews! For the record, Quark 7 handles one of Quark's traditional drawbacks, which was every single option brought up a dialogue box instead of just letting you do what you need to do...now Quark 7 pops up these little mini-palettes right out of the measurements palatte, it's their solution, their way of avoiding InDesign's major drawback, which is having thousands of palettes floating everywhere. It's pretty slick, but it's not enough.

For the record, Adobe has dealt with InDesign's palette overload with their complete redesign of the user interface in CS3, something I found really annoying at first but now love. The idea now being that palettes more seamlessly pop in and out of the sidebar.

And for anybody who wants to learn Adobe stuff, this website is pretty amazing:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

When I got CS3 I sat there and went through a bunch of the videos. A great website, really useful.

i work at an agency and the print team has been trying to move to indesign for over a year and it's been pretty slow going, in part because some of the actual production houses they deal with still only accept quark files.

Quark were bafflingly bad at responding to users or updating their apps. I once saw an list of the wont-fix bugs in 4.1, and it was epic.

Quark threw an amazing amount of programming effort into Xposure (a Photoshop competitor) and Immedia - a poorly-planned multimedia package that was "supposed to leverage the Internet." That was the actual language they used at Macworld in 1996 - I remember asking one of the sales droids there what exactly they meant and they couldn't answer it.

I still remember when Quark 5 (think it was 5) was released at the same time as InDesign 2. Guess which one ran natively on Mac OS X. Quark couldn't answer when they were going native because by then they had fired all their programmers and offshored everything to India.

Somewhere in there, I was doing some consulting work for a large print-shop and ran head-on into the $999-per-seat upgrade price for Quark. In lieu of dropping $30,000 (the Quark rep wouldn't give volume discounts to anything under 50 seats) they switched to ID.

I can't remember if Immedia actually shipped.

This is a reply to esoj, way way up thread.

Avid it has to be said are changing in their attitudes having lost a tonne of money in the last 18 months. This is my experience of avid. I am a broadcast engineer and everywhere I have worked has been a customer, partner, integrator or conpetitor with avid and frequently more than one of those. Currently I work for somewhere where we have one product that competes with one bit of avid and integrates with another and another product that integrates with the avid product we compete against.

Avid have been on the back foot as regards apple for a while now. Xpress on the mac lagged xpress on windows for a long time because avid hated the idea of users having systems with both avid and fcp and then the users forgetting they have avid. Avid also fights tooth and nail to keep apple out of the newsroom, there, there is no newscutter for the mac and never will be because avid don't want anyone getting the idea that they can throw in a few fcp stations for a few extra users and to make sure people stay with newscutter they often throw in iNews for free to seal deals. (There arew fcp newsrooms out there in case anyone is wondering)

In adition to all of this avid have long had closed video standards (the oh so incongruously named Open Media Format). Even since they have transitioned to the truly open standard MXF you still need to either buy their transfer manager or a third party rewrappering tool before it becomes an MXF that anyone else's edit system or video server can actually use.

So, yeah it is conjecture that avid/digidesign deliberately drag their feet deliberately on mac development and tbh they fired a huge bunch of developers last year, however, given the rest of what they get up to I find it plausible.

a propos of nothing much ... stet: i still remember that time you and i found ourselves in a small room with a bloke from quark and DIDN'T HIT HIM IN THE BALLS.

For a while between 5 and 6 most of Quark's updates and new features where al about adding web support and the ability to output html documents from Quark, while InDesign focussed on novel ideas like the ability to preflight documents and preview output separations, i.e., they were actually talking to graphic designers and print production people and listening to what they needed.

not to forget the epic leap between 4 and 5 of ... tables.

thinking about the time i've wasted on quark 5 brings me out in a rash

I never knew anybody who used 5. We all went from 4 to 6.1. 5 was only good for saving files down from 6, to 5, to 4 so people could work in 4. We used to have to do that to release files.

ph34r

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/splashes/quarkxpress/5.0-demo.png

Well, teacher is mates with a bloke from D1g1d351gn, and has written an angry letter. Waiting on response. Logic is OK for class, so I'm getting a Mac. Unlike Pro Tools, I can use my own USB box. hmm.

use tracktion

sounds good, but couldn't turn work using it in.

Ok this is not about laptops but it was the best thread I could find. I need to buy a new desktop; do I buy a 2 ghz mini, or do I buy an imac (maybe the 2.66 ghz one)? the only thing holding me back from the imac is that I already have a (pretty new) lcd monitor. keep in mind my primary desktop machine is a six year old dell running win xp and it is fine for most of what I do but is starting to get slow and is probably going to fail for mechanical reasons soon.

i guess my question is: are the drawbacks of the mini (slow hard drive, lack of graphic expansion capabilities) really that big? I do some web development and use computers for music (not creating, perse, just juggling mp3s around and crap)

okay well i just bought a mini because it was cheaper and figured that would be the responsible thing to do. if it's too unbearably slow for me then I can return it.

For what you described, I think you picked right.

yay!

Use some of that saved $$$ to pack it full of RAM, though.

well it only takes 2gb so I did

Mum asked me yesterday to get her a Mac lappy. Currently trying to decide if this means I get her an older model or I get a new MB and give her my MBP.

Decided to get a new MB for me and give old MPB to ma. I shudder to think what # mac this is for me, let alone what # computer.

A conservative estimate puts this at Mac #12.

Mac IIsi (given me by pops long ago)
Mac Quadra 800
PowerMac 9600 (this & quadra bought around 2000 from Weird Stuff)
iMac DV (sold to guy in Iowa)
Mac Classic (given to computer friend?)
PowerMac G4 Quicksilver (still have, upgraded years ago)
PowerBook G4 Titanium (destroyed screen trying to fix cracked side of case)
Mac Cube (in storage; still works)
PowerMac G5 (sitting next to couch)
iBook G4 (dropped on PS; freezes after 5 min now)
MacBook Pro (going to mum)
Mac Pro (my desktop computer)
MacBook (just ordered)

Roughly chronological order.

all macbook needs now is a number keypad.

apple really needs to make a less expensive desktop that isn't an imac; basically, the top of the line imac specs w/out a built in screen. this is a gaping hole in their product line

My mom has a Toshiba laptop w/ full-size keyboard and keypad, it's awesome.

I'd find a way to sell my MBP and get a 17" if Apple had one.

Roughly chronological order.

My computer chronology goes...

Apple II+ (given away. Now a seismograph for a school in Los Alamitos)
IIx (given away. Became the host machine for an underground BBS)
IIsi (sold to friend)
Quadra 840av (sold)
Power Mac 8500 (became webserver for many years then given away)
PowerBook 1400
PowerBook G3 ("Wall Street" model. given away)
Ti. PowerBook G4 (given away)
Al. PowerBook G4
MacBook Pro (2.33 intel)

New MB in paws. Old MBP cleaned and ready to send mum once I put a fresh OS onnit.

Shit, I was enjoying the 'stacks' function on the new Apple OS (Leopard?) but I accidentally dragged them off the dock and they disappeared.

Then I tried to get them back on, and I ended up dragging the 'documents' folder *into* the trash and now it's gone.

Also whenever I download something it turns up as a disk image, where should I put it then?

You probably mean the "downloads" folder. Any folder can have "stacks". Just drag it back onto the right side of the dock.

I am trying to convince my wife we should get an Apple laptop to work on musical endeavors (her website, my idle musical ideas, etc).

- Which machines should I be looking at if my parameters are "better-than-decent"?
- How much, realistically, should I expect to spend for a better-than-decent machine?
- How useful is the out-of-the-box software? What should I consider upgrading and what's the cost for that?
- Anyone have experiencing adding a Mac to a Window-based network? How complicated is that to manage?

are you sure you need a laptop? you can save a lot of $ if not

if you do need one, you'll probably also want some kind of upgraded audio interface if you want to record music onto it. i haven't looked at laptops in a few years, though.

I R FatNicK spends an awful lot of time making his music using Logic on a 6-month old Mac Mini (w/maxed RAM) with no complaints, all runs swimmingly

Laptops, look at macbook and macbook pro, a bit more power in the latter and bigger screens which is useful for music however the macbook should be adequate. You may wish to choose the faster hard drive option if working with music.

Budget up to 2 grand (dollars) but could be a lot less, possibly budget for a controller keyboard/audio interface.

Garage band is an ok place to start but you will probably outgrow it quickly. Next place to go is software that gets bundled with a keyboard or audio interface. Eventually you'll want to buy full software.

Easy peasy.

Take a look at novation and m-audio for good usb controller keyboards some with built in audio interfaces.

Budget for a decent large diaphram mike, stand and pop shield too.

Yeah, we may be using this to record some of J's audition material as well so the whole microphone/audio interface issue is a good one to remember.

How portable are non-laptop Macs these days? Which ones should I be looking at if I'm expanding the scope?

(I mean, I know what various iMac variants look like etc, I'm asking more about the practicality of shuffling them around to places.)

USB and firewire interfaces are so good nowadays that there is not much need for expansion slots, you can get firewire dsp processors as well. So an iMac would be a good option. Pretty portable for location recording, obviously not as easy as a laptop but there are case manufacturers who make cases for the iMac.

iMac has bigger screen, better processor and better HD than laptop so if you are not looking to move it often, go with the iMac.

Same price scale?

More or less.

take a look at the 2.6Ghz 20" iMac, maybe a TASCAM Fire one interface or focusrite Saffire, you play keyboard so you can use that as a controller over midi. Maybe consider getting logic express which is $199 with a new Mac, Maybe a Rode NT1-A Mic (although you may want to take the wife down to test out Mics), stand, pop shield

All is missing from that is some good headphones or a pair of active monitors and you are set

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FireOne/
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Saffire/
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/NT1A/

Look out for computer, Mic and interface bundle deals.

or you could get a mac mini for a fraction of the price

Dan should buy IR Fatnick and his Mac Mini as a recording slave, are you selling DG?

well he can have fatnick for free but i think he likes his mini

Is there an advantage to going with an iMac rather than a Mac Mini? Either way, what issues can I expect to run into regarding expandability?

well the mini is a bugger to upgrade admittedly but they both have the same 4gb ram cap these days IIRC

oh and the imac has a fw800 port that the mini doesn't which may make a difference to some of these fw devices (probably not though)

you could just go crazy and get a mac pro and pwn us all

http://www.harmony-central.com/articles/reviews/firebox/

A 6-pin FireWire port supplies the needed juice, but if you're stuck with a 4-pin port, you can use the included AC adapter for power.

hmm probably an imac or macbook pro then

mini has a 2 gb ram cap I think

^^^ yeah i checked :(

you could just go crazy and get a mac pro and pwn us all

Not quite.

yr not one of those guys that pops up on mac forums with an oct-core thingy with like 32gb of ram or something are you?

Not that bad, no. Dual-core 2.66 Ghz Mac Pro, 5GB RAM. Also I'm still not touching 10.5 yet.

unhealthy

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=115655&d=1210680329

(not mine, i have a measly macbook)

Is there an advantage to going with an iMac rather than a Mac Mini? Either way, what issues can I expect to run into regarding expandability?

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac_mini
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac

haha ok

Must do more research and convince the wife that she needs one to further her singing career...

iMac best for apt living

if you have a mac pro does it look like this when you open time machine?

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/geekend/images/84573main_warpsped.jpg

^^^ tuomas + vast seas of mystery

In all honesty, doing high-or-even-decent quality recording or mixing on a computer is an expensive proposition, regardless of whether you use a Mac or a PC, especially if you are to be recording vocals. It could very well be that the biggest expense you have is the microphone(s) (and it certainly is the case for even middling studios). Other necessary components are an ADC (at least $500 for a decent one), amps, monitors, interfaces, and so on. You can reduce the costs somewhat by using a combo ADC/DAC w/good headphones (at the cost of a great mix, perhaps) and borrowing mics from friends. Fundamentally, though, you are going to be spending money, and the Mac isn't going to be yr cost center.

If you are cool with the fact that yr wallet is gonna get significantly lighter, then one of the first things you need to think about is the software you want to use. One of the nice bennies of Mac is that you can use Logic, which in my opinion is a damned fine piece of software. Another option is Pro Tools, which necessitates an investment of at least $500 (= Logic Studio $) in a Digidesign ADC/DAC, but which is also a great piece of software and is the industry standard for "live" (i.e., not sequenced) music. I'm not very knowledgeable about more MIDI-centric software, but that's apparently not yr central concern here. As far as I'm concerned, the only Mac to use with either software is either a Mac Pro (the best choice) or a MacBook Pro. Both of these have considerably more throughput than their cheaper counterparts, which definitely matters when recording and mixing music.

If you are not cool with spending a lot of cash outta the gate, but just want to get yr feet wet with recording on Mac, then I suggest you get a MacBook, a cheap USB ADC, borrow a Mic, and record on GarageBand, which comes with every new Mac (via iLife). You can probably get some surprisingly good recordings (albeit only 44.1/16) with such a setup, but yr mixes are going to sound amateurish because GB is quite light on mixing resources (no waveform editor, primitive automation, limited plugin capabilities, no buses, almost-nonexistent MIDI, on and on and on). However, GB has a good number of UI elements in common with Logic, so you could get an idea if Logic is for you. Most GB files can be directly imported into Logic 8, if you ever decide to upgrade. Also, you could get involved in the IMM Internet Service Collab project (which seems to be a bit stalled at the moment), and that'd be cool.

Personally, I have a Mac Pro 4-core 3.0GHz with 5G RAM that I use with a MOTU 828mkII ADC & headphones for recording & mixing in Logic 8. It's a bit of overkill, since I use it mostly for roughing out songs for my band: if I wanted to produce pro-quality mixes, I'd have to invest at least a good amp and a pair of nearfields, which might cause my neighbors (I have both upper and lower) to complain. Thus, I don't really put a lot of effort into mixing at my house (I have a friend with an iso room in his basement with good nearfields where I can mix if need be).

One thing worth noting is that Logic 8 is pretty good for both sequencing and recording. The sequence editor in GB is very similar to that of Logic, in fact.

^^^ power user

"one of the things about playing golf is that if you want to be taken seriously you need to spend as much money as possible on everything"

doing high-or-even-decent quality recording or mixing on a computer is an expensive proposition,

truthiest of truth bombs

If a power user is one who has more computer than he needs, I'm guilty as charged.

expensive is a relative concept here esoj. libcrypt seems to mean "low five figures" - I personally believe if you can't get decent-to-very-good recording and mixing out of a USD $4K setup then maybe you just shouldn't be making music, but what do I know.

You can make good music with a $4 cassette recorder you get at Salvation Army as long as you embrace the aesthetic.

you're absolutely right tom. i have the additional requirements of needing a buttload of inputs as i mostly record three or more piece bands playing together. but if you need only two inputs at once you're laughing for that sort of cash

that's a very good point. if they're playing together, though, my instinct would be to mix down to two channels on an analog rig using headphones like it were live. I realize that is also a terrifically stupid/horribly imperfect solution.

I think you guys need to reread 2nd-to-last paragraph above.

Dan, you may wish to budget for one of these:

http://www.seelectronics.com/rf.html

I'm going to get a Macbook (probably not Pro). I was thinking about just going to the Apple store and picking the best deal among their refurbs. Anybody have a better recommendation -- ebay, craigslist, etc?

Apple refurb is best 'cause you can get fresh Applecare onnit.

hey, is this a good deal or just an okay deal? it would be for my gf, who is starting grad school and just needs something stable (won't be doing much besides writing papers, youtube, and itunes).

15 inch Apple PowerBook G4 laptop -- $350.00

1.5 GHz, 1 GB DDR SDRAM, Superdrive (burns DVDs and CDs), 40 GB hard drive, beautiful condition, good battery life, never needed a repair. Comes with Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11, power cord, and original install discs.

It'll do ok, but it is a bit of a dead end, being a G4. It better have word etc. loaded on it because you'll have a hard time finding software for it. If it were $200 I'd be more inclined but it seems a lot for something 4-5 years old.

Once she puts her songs on there and a few videos that 40GB is going to feel very very small. And 1GB RAM is not enough for having say, iTunes, iPhoto, Word, Mail open and Safari playing a Youtube video at the same time, at least not on a G4. it's relatively cheap to upgrade the memory and the HD but that's about $100-$200 extra you're looking at. So I'd ask for less.

But I'm typing this on a G4 Powerbook that still does me perfectly well (after upgrading everything to the max).

thanks guys. is it reasonable to swap out/upgrade the memory & hard drive yourself, or do you have to take it somewhere? (i've haven't fucked with a mac since i was like 12)

iirc it is a real pain to swap out the hard drive on the G4 powerbooks; I did it with my 12" and it involved many tiny screws

have a look

for $350 you might be able to pick up an early Intel-chip powered macbook, the plastic ones, and it'd be a lot more future-proof (plus swapping HDs on those is much, much easier)

Jordan: the single best Mac I've ever owned is my 12" G4 PowerBook but that's largely down to the fact I've had it now for donkeys' years and it's a dependable workhorse that I've lugged about all over the place and have always been able to rely on.

But ... compared to this (also wonderful) iMac on which I'm writing now, it feels painfully slow; 10.4.11 (which it's running) lacks a lot of nice productivity tools (eg Spaces) which I take for granted now; I'm starting to realise that there's a lot of stuff it just won't run (eg the new version of NetNewsWire); basically, although I love the thing like a child, I wouldn't pay $350 for it. Like Ed says, $200 would be a much, much better price.

I am trying to convince my wife we should get an Apple laptop to work on musical endeavors (her website, my idle musical ideas, etc).

- Which machines should I be looking at if my parameters are "better-than-decent"?
- How much, realistically, should I expect to spend for a better-than-decent machine?
- How useful is the out-of-the-box software? What should I consider upgrading and what's the cost for that?
- Anyone have experiencing adding a Mac to a Window-based network? How complicated is that to manage?

I am revisiting this! I was looking at MacBook Pros but the lowest-level one I'd consider is the 15" 2.66 GHz processor one, which is already $1999. Conversely, I could get a quad-core 2.66 GHz 27" iMac for $1999. The screen real eastate is going to be critical to me re: looking at sheet music/sequencers/etc so I'm currently leaning in the direction of the iMac since it seems to give a whole lot more machine for the $$. Anyone have pros or cons to add to this line of thinking?

(as an aside, how easy is it to upgrade RAM in an iMac?)

I dunno but my mom just started using one for some kind of music composition/manipulation software and she is suddenly IN WUV and wants one -- I've been asking for a mac laptop for like 10 years but have my parents ever bought me a computer?? NNNOOOOOOOO.

HI DERE the upgrade is easy.

if you don't need to take it anywhere i'd say go with the imac for sure.

ya if you dont NEED a lappie the desktop models will always offer more screen real estate, RAM, HD space, ports etc for the $$

I was originally thinking laptop because I don't plan on giving up my PC desktop and it might be easier to set up music stuff somewhere else in my place if based around a laptop (plus easier to take with me and work on stuff "on-the-go" if I so desire); however, I started cleaning up my office space this weekend and, if I move my printer, I will have a perfect place to put an iMac that will be totally accessible and make sense as far as building a music space is concerned, plus it's not like trying to toe around an iMac is like toting around a Dell desktop machine so there could be limited portability if necessary.

very tempted to buy this this week actually

btw is there a practical difference between 4x2GB RAM and 2x4GB RAM, like are Macs built suck that it makes more effective/efficient use of larger RAM chips?

the only real difference is that 2x4GB will probably cost more, but would leave you with two empty slots in case you want to add memory in the future.

I'm sure you know this but just in case: if you're upgrading your RAM, do not buy it from apple, they're extortionate

I likely want to go to 16GB at some point but, for what I want to do initially, 4-8GB should be plenty.

wtf is it with me and typos today btw

I absolutely love my 24' iMac and would recommend one to anybody. However if you want to get a 27' I might wait until the next batch/update - there have been some display issues apparently, though like with many Apple hardware problems, it's hard to tell how widespread the problem really is (actually serious or just enough on the internet to make a stink). And you know, first generation of anything Apple... (sorry to be that wet blanket)

Hmmm...

Not being super int tune with the Apple product cycle, where do I look to figure out when the next update will come out?

New MacBooks are expected (and somewhat overdue).

It's always good to check the Mac Buyer's Guide, where they keep track of Apple's release cycles.

So a few things:

1. Super super SUPER pissed that apparently you can't buy the 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 at the store; fuck you and your "baseline configurations", your Boylston St store is fucking massive and should be able to support this kind of thing. The sales guy I talked actually said "we don't have the tools to do that" which made me go "uh this store is somewhere between 20K-25K square feet, what do you MEAN you can't do that type of thing here". This is the type of thing that makes me scream "style over substance" at a lot of Mac products; you can usually find about a bazillion different processor options on various PCs at Best Buy/Micro Center.

2. The screen issues are terrifying. I am imagining the fury I would unleash if I dropped $2500+ on this thing and it's all jacked up and no one really wants to see that.

3. I really only need the 21-inch one as far as screen size goes but the processor I want only comes with the 27-inch one, which after seeing it in person is kind of fuck-off huge, to the point where I was a little like "lol actually I am very satisfied with the size of my penis, no compensation necessary". (see also bullet #1)

Also lolled at inept salesdude's failed Jedi mind trick re: "well some ppl buy a MacBook Pro and a big monitor" right after I told him I was switching focus to an iMac because of processing power and screen size per dollar. It was very funny because I basically kept quoting stuff I read off the website at him and asking "is that correct?" to which he was like "well let me look that up... yes". I was really hoping he could give me a loophole around the processor thing and he couldn't, which you know boo hiss etc.

I am imagining the fury I would unleash if I dropped $2500+ on this thing and it's all jacked up and no one really wants to see that.

it would make an awesome thread, you have to admit

apple store people pretty much blow; buy online imo

yeah i would check dealmac and macmall for, um, deals

apple stores are only useful if you want to get something repaired and don't want to wait at home for the UPS guy, or you need a baseline iBook NOW. geniuses notwithstanding, the employees tend to be morons, and, yes, they maintain a very streamlined stock.

if you drop $2500 on is and the screen is busted then can't you just get a refund? i don't get it. or are you worried about three years down the line? (buy applecare, by the way.)

The only screen issues I've heard of are immediately apparent out of the box, so I don't think it's anything you'd have to worry about in the long term.

I was worried about it cropping up later, yes.

Also, tbh, I'm a little worried about the box being delivered to my house and my wife going "OKAY WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU" when she sees how large it is. I need a large screen but I don't need one that large!

Can I do financing via DealMac and MacMall? (willing to look this up, just wondering if anyone knows offhand; I am currently credit card lite by choice and need to know if I should be prepared to shell out $$$ up front, as that will greatly reduce the spree aspect of this purchase)

there was one guy who got in the news trying to submit a class action suit after his imac g5 screen failed after three years or something. apparently the problem with his class action was the class was essentially just him. he tried to include "every owner of an imac in the U.S." without asking them. got thrown out iirc.

dan: apple hardware problems tend to get a lot of attention because they are pretty much the biggest selling brand of home computer these days, with a very high media profile compared to, say dell or lenevo, and expectations are very high. i think the fact that there are only about ten configurations on sale at any time tends to contribute to the echo chamber too; if your lenevo xbt670A-SD fails in some way, you're unlikely to find a community of people with the same machine to figure out the problem and/or convince yourself it is systemic, which is very easy to do with a mac.

anyway, apple hardware always has scored extremely highly on customer satisfaction surveys and independent reliability measures. so, they are far from perfect, but unless you are unlucky, it will likely be more reliable than any pc you have owned.

I need a large screen but I don't need one that large!

to that i respond, where the tittays at?

27" is kind of nuts, but you can never go home again once to step up.

don't want to confuse you, but given you're looking at the very top of the line imac, why don't you get a mac pro and a dell monitor?

does apple in the u.s offer an academic discount? in the uk it's very easy to find someone to make the purchase for you (can just be an undergrad, doesn't need to be a student), and it's quite a substantial discount (15%?).

they do, and often you can just make up whatever university you wish you actually went to on the online apple store and they do not ask for proof. whereas when you go to the b&m apple store, they ask for ID.

but dan went to harvard, in case you were wondering

oh right, mac pros cost a billion dollars at the moment. ignore me.

i knew dan went to a university in boston, not tufts, but i wasn't sure which.

in the u.k. you can get a regular student discount quite easily, it's like 8% (?), but if you can find someone with an academic IP and an academic shipping addresss you can get 15%. apple think i own 6 ibooks/macbooks iirc.

Gotta say, I've had an extraordinary run of good luck with Dell desktop computers; I've owned since 1994 and have never, ever had issues with them aside from one video card glitch last year that was fixed by pulling a jumper (oh, and a USB glitch this past Decemember that was fixed by pulling a jumper). The one time I had a hard drive die, it was one that I'd carried forward from... 2001 I think? that I'd turned into an external storage drive; never had a problem with my boot drive or the operation of my machine in general.

I'm looking at the Mac not as much for "stability" as I am for isolation of function and dedicated processing power; the only real reason I'm going Mac is so that, if I so desire later, I can make a partition that I could use for Mac development and this as a good excuse to ease into that world (kind of undercutting my "isolation of function" idea but I would likely try to rebuild the machine to keep the music env and the software play env separate).

My wife works at a university in Boston. Well, Cambridge; no, not Tufts. I might have it sent to her so I can get the discount (likely going to do the same with Sibelius although I think I actually qualify for that discount since I get paid to sing at a church).

okay lol, students save a whopping $100 ZOMG

Yeah, i'm not sure how much of the screen issue is echo chamber, adimttedly. But as you probably found out it's all over the Mac news sites right now. So the next point is going to sound contradictory...

You probably should go with the 27' over the 21'. I thought 24' was too big when I ordered it - now there's no way I can ever step down again, the real estate is just so DELICIOUS. Being an iMac, you're stuck with this monitor for good when you buy it, so get the better one if you can afford it. Also, the 27' has a video input, which is new to iMacs (took them long enough!) so that might be worth it, assuming something in the future besides an MacBook can actually use the DisplayPort in.

And I agree with the sentiment to just go with the Apple site and ignore the store except for tech support. Had no problems with my refurb ordered direct.

make sure you look at the academic staff or, if possible, institutional buyer discount.

Dell are my go-tos when people ask me what PC to get. They are pretty great ime.

If the _only_ reason you're going to Mac is for maybe development in the future then get a mini and a Dell 20/24" screen. Ah, but you also want a machine that has the power/extensibility/upgradability to do music stuff in the meantime? a mac pro is even more powerful and upgradable and, especially if you get into serious music stuff, extensible with PCI. people better qualified than me will be able to tell you in more detail what potential you're sacrificing without PCI. but also bear in mind that macs hold their value very well and if you really to start to be constrained by the imac then you can always sell it. so i would get that.

i think it's a shame they've dropped the 24". 27" is verging on sociopathic in a home environment i think ;)

Just got an Apple 24" screen to replace my old monitor...a Sony Trinitron from 1996. So yeah, an upgrade.

haha, remember to wear sunscreen

Blinded by the light etc. (Had to turn the brightness WAY the hell down.)

Mostly I'm happy just because I now finally have room on my desk to rest my arms.

Comparing and contrasting, it looks like if I go with the processor I want and leave it at 4GB of RAM (which is upgradeable easily enough to 8GB via MacMall prices for like $200 if it turns out to be unlivable) I can et it from Apple for like $5 cheaper than MacMall.

Hmm, must chat with the wife tonight.

I think for music stuff you're okay as long as you've got a Firewire port on there, which I believe all the iMacs have, and 4GB is plenty of RAM for that. Not sure how beefy it needs to be for a programming environment. I wish the Mac Pro was a better option but pricewise it is kinda crazy right now (and much of the time).

Ordered a 27" i7 for my father today.

I'd jump on one (and sell my MBP) in a heartbeat if they offered some kind of matte screen option.

one benefit of buying from apple is that (at least true of their laptops) it's assembled and shipped straight from their factory in china. the 27" problem has been out for long enough that I'm sure they've done some kind of QC check at their factories to check for it by now. if you buy from a third party you may be buying old stock..

lol looks like you should wait a while:

http://www.hardmac.com/news/2010/02/01/production-of-all-imac-27-core-ix-models-stopped-by-apple

Thinking of getting a used iBook offa CL for somewhere between $200-300 bucks. Hopefully will work better than this Acer shit I've got now.

See if you can find an early Intel model instead. Going PPC these days (especially G4) is just going to be painful.

get a 13" macbook pro and a 21"+ Dell monitor. Once you go dual monitor, you never go back, you get the benefit of big screen(s) at home and having a laptop. win-win.

Hmmmm

get a 13" macbook pro and a 21"+ Dell monitor. Once you go dual monitor, you never go back, you get the benefit of big screen(s) at home and having a laptop. win-win.

Agreed with this (only I have 15" MBP and am picking up 24" Apple LCD)

Another for dual monitors here. I've been using my 15" MBP with a 23" Samsung LCD since August, and it's fantastic.

I've got a G4 and my only problem with it is that it can't do web video (it used to, but the codecs everyone's using now are too high bit-rate). If you're not doing anything too heavy duty it's just fine.

On the subject of monitors, Costco have some truly great 24" monitors right now for $140, we just got a bunch of them for the office and I am continually impressed by how good they are.

What brand?

I already have a 20" monitor for my Dell (which I am not giving up btw, this is in addition to my other desktop computer) so if I went that route, I'd get a KVM switch and share the monitor. I use dual monitors at work and love it.

My main concern is machine power per dollar; if I am shelling out more than $2K for a computer, I want the most powerful processor I can get for the money. There is no way in hell I'm paying Mac Pro prices and the performance benchmarks I'm seeing on the quad core iMac vs the dual core MacBook Pro are making me lean very heavily towards the iMac; if I'm getting the same processor either way, that MIGHT push me towards Macbook Pro as long as there aren't also memory issues to contend with. Like I said earlier, portability is not my main concern.

you get more flexibility for upgrades with a pro too, but if you don't care about that for now then yeah, imac.

But what upgrades though? Its not going to be a gaming (LOL its a Mac) rig so graphics card is out. Most audio stuff is USB or firewire nowadays unless you want to pay big bucks. There's extra drive bays but Firewire 800 is plenty fast. Dual monitors, you can have it.

I can't see expandability making much of an argument.

Ed, what brand were the Costco monitors?

so lol some of my bitching may be moot anyway since I'm not 100% sure that the 27" iMac will fit in the desk area I've prepared for it

srsly if they put that fuck-off awesome processor in the 21-inch iMac, that would be perfect

yeah, like i say, i don't know much about what you might put in a home studio machine these days. if everything is usb or firefire then don't worry about it.

competition comin' up now
load up aim firefire pow

Can they update the Macbook Pro sometime soon, please? I want a quad core laptop with like... something else my current one doesn't have, maybe a blu-ray drive?

hah hah, I implied Apple will install a blu-ray drive in one of their systems

Mac Pro and MB Pro updates are probably right around the corner.

I'm tempted to go back to a Mac Pro if edu pricing puts them roughly even w/ the big iMac at update time.

Mr Steve thinks blu-ray is almost as bad as flash.

I really hope around the corner means this month

what the fuck, are my posts not showing up on this thread?

Sorry, I din't notice your question. I think they were Asus, however ask me again next week when I back in the office.

when's the most likely date for update mb pros? I'm in the market

any...second....now

or a few months.

I'd like one as well. Get rid of the optical drive alltogether. There's a company that will replace it with another hard-drive but it's a battery hog and heat generator. I basically would like a macbook air pro.

My friend estimates March-ish, supposedly other companies (Dell) are getting the new chips from Intel in March-April timeframe, so it'd make sense if Apple gets them a little early as per usual.

march wd be perfect *fingers crossed*

no blu rays tho right? ;_;

u know u can just buy an external bluray drive

wait, can u? how do you play it through the Mac?

Yeah, i don't think there is any good player that can actually output Blu-ray - the full works, surround audio too - on Mac OS X. Even VLC is in trouble, I think.

I want legit HDMI-out too and not just DVI. The newer laptops probably have this, but mine doesn't, and my tv doesn't play well with the laptop and I end up with weird scaling.

http://reviews.cnet.com/blu-ray-drives/lacie-d2-external-blu/4505-6512_7-32330473.html

but ya, dont know if u can play them

get a 13" macbook pro and a 21"+ Dell monitor. Once you go dual monitor, you never go back, you get the benefit of big screen(s) at home and having a laptop. win-win.

― dan selzer, Tuesday, February 2, 2010 12:21 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OTM --- this is what i want.

I've got a 17" MBP (no external, my 20" ACD isn't large enough to bother) and I don't like it. I thought I could live with my iTunes directory on a separate HD, but since that runs video from there too it's kind of a pain. Maybe when I can stick a 2TB disc in my laptop it would be okay, but for right now the space limitations and having to use an external aren't worth it for me.

I don't like it being my only computer, that is. The MBP itself has been fantastic.

yeah, suck it suckstsky!

totally gonna get a PS3 soon anyway so it's academic

this thing gruber linked works so much better on my macbook than any flash ;_;
http://jilion.com/sublime/video

it's jerky and maxes out one of my cores on my macbook ;_;

you can enter the youtube html5 beta here if you use safari or chrome:

http://www.youtube.com/html5

my cpu temps stay below 60 (80+ for flash) but the browsing bar doesn't always keep up with the video. also a lot fewer jerks/freezes in the video

oooh dyao - i will try that link on my aging G4 when i get home

i should just say "aged" at this point

dog years are x7.. my g4 is what, 5 years old at this point so we could say that computer years are.. x14?

I kinda wish I hadn't sold my 12" powerbook...

Yeah I have a friend who's a hardcore 12" PB loyalist.

What's wrong with the 13" MBP?

nothing! the 13" is great. just nostalgic, that's all.

meanwhile, my 15" MBP unibody seems to be a victim of a pretty common screen flickering problem. no idea what's causing it but I think I will buy applecare in case there's some big nVidia reveal later down the road.

how do u kno if the yt vid ur watching is displaying in html5 and not flash?

widgets look a little bit different and http://www.youtube.com/html5 gives you the chance to leave (rather than join) the html5 beta

I've opted in but it says it doesn't cover all vids; I want to know when it is and isn't in effect so I can guage difference in performance seems dumb tht it doesn't say somewhere on a vids page tht it's showing w/html5

ah right. dunno. the widgets do look subtly different i think.

d'oh! there's a little pause before the vid starts and it says html5 right in the centre

it is SOME BULLSHIT that I can't just easily redownload all of the itunes content I've paid for in one click

any...second....now

or a few months.

I'd like one as well. Get rid of the optical drive alltogether. There's a company that will replace it with another hard-drive but it's a battery hog and heat generator. I basically would like a macbook air pro.

― dan selzer, Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:26 PM (Yesterday)

OTM. I wonder how long it'll be before Apple stops shipping all their laptops with optical drives. It might take a while, but it'll happen.

*without, obv

http://i50.tinypic.com/2mpfmzc.gif

srsly can't get the idea of plants vs. zombies ON IPAD out of my mind

yeah the more I think about the iPad the more I can see how I can integrate it into my homelife. like, having your entire recipe collection ON IPAD while in the kitchen. or using it as a giant universal remote.

I don't think CDs or DVDs are going to go out of regular use for at least some time dudes. it'll happen eventually, but there's still plenty of them out there and selling in the mainstream, so people can rip their Taylor Swift CDs.

it is SOME BULLSHIT that I can't just easily redownload all of the itunes content I've paid for in one click

so true. amazon pulls this crap too, and it's not like they don't have the bandwidth to spare, they're in the damn business

^that's not even the worst thing, as I discovered last night from some quick googling. it's not only tht u can't easily/quickly redownload itunes purchases but tht in the case of music you can't redownload the files at all, without going through some at-the-discretion-of-apple laborious process

wtf

I think I'm ditching the 27-inch iMac. There are too many problems with reported on it swimming around the net, it's waaaaaaaay to big for where I want to put it, it's power overkill for how I'm going to be using the machine (at least initially) and it's more money than I actually want to spend.

Tracking down performance stats on the 3.06 processer vs the 3.33 processor seems to be harder than it should be.

What are you going to use it for? Have trouble imagining that 3.06 + a bunch of RAM is going to feel slow to you.

Home studio, mostly. I am pretty sure I'll be fine with 3.06 but I'm a processor/RAM whore.

in terms of raw performance, splitting hairs over the difference between 3.06/3.33 will be nowhere near as effective as swapping out the hard drive for a SSD (admittedly, they are $$$ and you will lose a lot of storage space.)

Just finished setting up the 27" i7 - daaaaaaaaamn

Screen looks excellent, no flickering issues (yet), fast.

Trying to finagle my way into getting one 'for work' - "look, I can keep track of everything that happens day to day in iCal" "um, isn't that on your current computer?"

This thread is making me want a 2nd monitor. And hey, it's a business expense!

3.0 is plenty fast enough for a home studio. my 'real' studio still uses a g5 and even that is alright for the most part.

So, reformatting my iMac. I've noticed that much older computers than mine perform better than mine in rendering time, snappiness, etc, so I thought I'd get it set up so that I keep my Final Cut/video stuff as separate from the rest of my computer stuff as possible. Is it insane/unnecessary to create two Snow Leopard disks? Or would I get the same benefits from just having two users?

Older computers that are kept as clean workstations, I mean.

http://www.kyleconroy.com/apple-stock.php

well shit

what's the moral

buy their stock not their computers?

http://www.yourprops.com/norm-492d0bb2e8c7b-Back+To+The+Future+2+%281989%29.jpeg

Ow, that's sobering - are they likely to increase another forty times in the next six years, does anyone know?

wouldn't put it past them

bought aapl in late 2005, cashed out around late 2007 when i decided i didn't understand wtf was going on in the global economy shitbin enough to be investing. ~2.5x profit, but hindsight a bitch.

27" iMac design was supposed to have been fixed earlier in the year. However, a Mac technician I know is still seeing an inordinate number of these coming back, I think even ones built after the supposed fix. That said a friend of mine has one definitely built after the fix and it's fine.

The mindblowingest thing about that page imo is that Apple ever sold a $5700 laptop!

Do they have a model that's that $$$$ today? Also, what is the most expensive thing they've ever sold to the general public? According to Wikipedia, the Lisa was "$9,995 US ($21,693.67 in 2009 dollars)."

my new macbook pro is just travelled from shanghai to anchorage to newark and should be on it's way to maspeth soon...

the mac pro can get pretty expensive (5-6000) if you deck it out with upgrades

i have options but i'm out of the loop:

13" core 2 duo 2.4ghz + 10 hours + NVIDIA 320M built-in = £1040
13" core 2 duo 2.66ghz + 10 hours + NVIDIA 320M built-in = £1225
15" i5 2.4gz + 8-9 hours + NVIDIA 330M+256MB built-in = £1450

all are with 4GB + 500GB + applecare + display adapters and the prices are UK education. i don't actually care about the display size that much (certainly not to justify the cost), but how much difference is the i5 going to make? i am currently rocking a macbook with 2ghz C2D + 2GB, so i wonder if the 13" options would be noticeably faster at all.

your thoughts?

i5 is definitely a step-up from c2d in terms of processor architecture/future proofing. go for the i5

not really about the clockspeed - the i5 spanks the previous gen c2d, even the 2.8, in just about every test:

http://www.macworld.com/article/147273/2010/04/benchmarks_corei5mbp_15in240ghz.html

I have the first on your list, it's a nice piece of kit but I don't do anything that pushes the processor so I can't comment on that. I did some reading around when the new MBPs were released, I think the consensus was there isn't really any point upgrading from a recent 13" to the new ones.

my 13" is late-2006, so already pretty old, but i dropped it a couple of weeks ago and smashed the screen and broke wifi and the CD drive, so whatever i get will be a considerable upgrade in the sense that it works.

If money's a factor there are some good refurbs on the store right now (as of yestdy anyway)

just bought the 15" i5 2.53Ghz. lol.

good job yo

^^ but I also feel it is my duty to inform you that i5/i7s apparently have a freezing issue?

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=912218

dunno how widespread it is or if you will be affected (should have linked to this yesterday :/)

you'll note that isn't even on my list of options. i see numbers i get excited.

and it came with a free (with rebate) ipod touch, which i can give to my mum, who has wanted one for ages but is a bit weird about me spending money on her, but totally deserves it : )))

haha, i'm used to far worse. those kids don't know they're born.

u r a good son

haha okay, so long as you're going in with both eyes open

ordered a tube of thermal paste today, will likely be opening up my mbp and reapplying thermal grease next week.

you have this freezing problem yourself?

no, I have the previous gen, which has a screen flickering problem

ah yes, that one i heard about.

people on that thread seem to be describing about 15 different issues with no common hardware. i haven't seen the i5/i7 thing reported anywhere mainstream (which is my litmus for is this delusional fanboy worrying, or is it statically significant).

still plenty of time to correct me if i'm wrong though. should i cancel order and get 13" MPB with C2D y/n? Kind of prefer the 13" ones on form factor actually, but the extra speed is attractive.

p.s. major lols at "apple quality control really has gone downhill since they got big"

fuck, I have an i7, I never have any problems, freezing or otherwise. The only reason I'd crack it open is to add memory or a larger hard drive, otherwise the servant drones at the Apple store can do my bidding. Also, it totally kicks ass.

i gather the theories are this freezing thing is a laptop/gfx/heat/form factor/~nobody knows but steve jobs better fix it~ thing so is not expected in the imacs if that's what you have mh

Oh, I have a Macbook Pro.

give it to me

That graphics driver thing with 10.6.4 blows right now, though.

But yeah, other than that, this is the most fucking awesome laptop I've ever had. Matte screen, not sure if that was necessary, but it's what I wanted.

lol fancy

would like a matte screen, but my eyes aren't up to the extra res until the whole ui and more apps support resolution independent widgets

I am trying to hold off on buying a mac mini or anything else, because Apple already has my money for an iPad, new Time Capsule, and Macbook Pro this year. sheeeeit.

Oh yeah, I forgot it was the higher res screen, too. That thing is a++

one of the things i love about them is how well they hold their value. will be selling this thing in ~1 yr and will probably lose << £500 on a £1500 purchase. couldn't wait -- can't finish a phd with a smashed screen.

p.s. much love to the UK government for ballbusting apple into offering applecare at 75% off for uk education purchases

Ha, is there a story there? I wondered why I got my Applecare for £notmuch.

hah so I took my mbp apart to replace the thermal grease. I vacuumed out the interior too to remove dust. in the process I think I vacuumed off three tiny resistors near the speaker/mic assembly. punched myself a few times and put it back together and everything seems to be working okay. haven't tried to use any of the things near the sound card/express card area. :>

on the plus side, my macbook is now idling at 47 C where before it was idling at 65 C

oh look they got rid of the enter key and replaced it with another option key. good going.

and it's heavier than i was expecting.

but otherwise this is solid. runs my number crunching code appallingly quickly.

Does anybody have any insight into SSD drive vs., say, 7200rpm hard drive? The SSD adds massively to the cost but I've heard some people say it aids speed dramatically.

lots faster in benchmarking terms, but the practical different depends what you typically use your computer for to a great extent

http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/2446/xbenchx25mzf1.png

I'm gonna wait on SSDs. They keep improving drastically and lowering in price and I don't need one just yet. (and don't have the money). In a year or two I'll either remove my disc drive and replace it with an SSD, or remove my 7200 and put it in an enclosure and put in an SSD.

OWC recently announced some new SSDs:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extreme_SSD_Sandforce

Claims they're better than Crucial. Don't know about Intel but people were recommending those.

the cost effective way of doing it is using a small SSD for your OS + apps, and a bigger platter drive for your data, but for me that's still to expensive, and the cognitive/backup overhead of having two disks is a pain.

the practical different depends what you typically use your computer for to a great extent

Which patterns of use would benefit from SSD and what wouldn't? I usually have lots of applications and tabs open but don't do a lot of hard-core computation on my laptop (though that might change if the laptop were equal to the task.)

Also: can I swap out the hard drive on a Mac after purchase without voiding the AppleCare? If so, I'm happy to go with regular HD for now and then buy SSD if I feel I need it later.

SSD makes my MacBook Air feel massively faster than the paltry 1.8ghz it is

oh look they got rid of the enter key and replaced it with another option key. good going.
Until they did that I had no idea I used it so much. Bring back enter.

gah so tempted to upgrade after a night of working with RAW files that made my system creak (i have a mbp c2d 2.33ghz with only 2gbs of ram).

might just add another gig of ram for $50 and see if that gives me some more life on this 3-year-old baby. thoughts?

I just successfully transformed my PC into a Hackintosh. On torrents there are various releases (Kalyway, iPC, SnowLeo, etc) that are basically ISOs of patched OSX install DVDs. But it takes a LOT of work to make everything work right. I was hacking away for a solid 4 or 5 days before everything was nice and ready. Now I have OSX 10.5.6 and complete working sound, video, and internet. My usb connections all work, and even the latest release of Final Cut Studio!

I tried at least 3 different releases before one would work for me, iPC OSX86. Some of them would install and then fail to boot, some of them wouldn't even get to the installation. What I ended up doing was backing everything up and formatting a 300GB HD into 2 partitions. One partition I installed Windows 7 and the other was formatted for FAT32. After installing OSX86 I had to do alot of looking around online for the correct video and audio drivers, but now when I start my computer I can select whichever OS I want!

I have a Dell XPS 420 desktop btw.

420

s1ock check your pageins/pageouts in activity monitor. if your number of pageouts is similar to your number of pageins or is a high number, that means you would benefit from adding more RAM. try checking after an editing session with RAWs.

SSDs are good for instant loading of apps & for doing work with files located on the SSD itself, but if you're going to be using in conjunction w/ a regular hard drive, there won't really be a speed increase if all the data files are located on the regular hard drive.

yeah, the biggest different a normal user notices with SSDs are app launching speed, which becomes essentially instant.

unless you are a billionaire you won't be storing video or whatever on them, and they don't help with processor-intensive tasks like video, so they're not so useful for that. they're not useful for the science simulation stuff i do either.

i gather putting your photoshop swapfile on one is a good for PS performance.

I ended up getting the stock 5400rpm drive on my MBP. Instead of paying Apple's hefty drive upgrade prices, I figured I'll swap in a larger 7200rpm drive when prices drop. Pretty sure hard drive swapping doesn't mess with AppleCare.

yeah they mention it in the manual iirc

Let me put it this way -- right now I have a 120GB drive which is almost full (5 GB free) and my machine is very laggy. Let's say I want to choose between having a small SSD which is almost full and a big conventional drive which is much less full. Which will be less annoying?

(xp to mh: yeah, thinking along the same lines -- maybe swap in an ssd when the big ones get cheaper?)

go with the conventional drive - a 120GB SSD would be 3-4x the cost of a 500GB drive (I use a western digital blue label scorpio)

another option is to try one of the new Seagate momentus hybrids...it has a SSD section on the drive that stores all your most-used files.

i was about to buy a new macbook pro (15", 2.4GHz i5) to replace my slightly-falling-apart (literally! in that it's missing screws) powerpc powerbook-- and then my internet connection died just as i was pressing the 'buy' button. and now i am attacked by waves of superstitious fear.

15" mbp is a champ. i literally lolled the first time i saw the battery time remaining.

anyway, anyone tried this? http://onethingwell.org/post/977670277/go-ssd

I haven't used mine much yet (bought it in anticipation of a need that hasn't quite arrived yet) but it seems like the battery time goes quick when it stays on the Nvidia graphics.

hello! i think i should buy a new apple laptop.

i have a macbook, about 6 years old now, i bought it for about £650 iirc. it's not dead yet but it's definitely overly creaky now. the model i have doesn't seem to be on sale any more and all the new ones are confusing me. also someone told me a while ago i should hold out because apple are bringing out a new model? what is the status with this?

i just want a basic laptop that's like the one i have now but not creaky for around the same price :(

you should definitely buy a new laptop

the new ones just got released last week.

they don't make laptops for 650 quid. they never have iirc.

the cheapest current model is the 11" macbook air for 849. that's probably about 700 with a student discount, which you can get if you have a pulse. that's fine for your purposes. a+ recommended.

if you need a disc drive for cds/dvds (lol old) then you'll need to buy an old model second hand or get an external drive. they don't sell them any more.

hang on what laptops don't have cd drives any more? you can't play dvds on them?

but...

I AM CONFUSED

i need to rip CDs to the hard drive all the time! and also i want to watch DVDs on the laptop!

apple don't make laptops with cd/dvd drives since last week.

no one except music journalists and my dad use them any more. you can buy an external one like an external hard drive for < 100£.

i don't know what to do now

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD564ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=topSellers

buy an 11" MBA and one of these http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD564ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=topSellers

so is it just the new models that don't have CD drives? aargh i should have done this the other week

WHY don't they have CD drives? I JUST WANT A LAPTOP THAT IS THE SAME AS THE ONE I HAVE

you can still get the old models refurbished though http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac they are cheaper and have optical drives. they are repaired ones, but they come with some sort of guarantee

e.g. this would suit you fine http://store.apple.com/uk/product/FD313B/A

also what do people watch if not DVDs these days? i knew CDs were obsolete but i didn't think DVDs were?

people download movies from the internet

the cheapest current model is the 11" macbook air for 849.

is this one of the new ones that just got released last week?

i find everything about this so stressful

people download movies from the internet

i thought that was just illegal torrents though? i tried to work out how to do torrents once and EVERYTHING CRASHED and i've been too frightened to try again since

also there's nowhere enough room on laptops for more than a few films?

yes, all the laptops are new ones that got released last week

you can rent/buy movies using itunes.

a film takes up the same amount of space as 10 albums

and if you rent it you delete it anyway

my current laptop won't even let me watch youtube without skipping or freezing

ok these new models, in what ways are they better than the old ones? like is there something to actually make up for lacking a function i need to use regularly?

they are not creaky

no i mean the macbooks that were available two weeks ago that have been taken off the market

they weigh less because they got rid of something most people don't use

they didn't exactly weigh a ton to start with. what else have they made better. if there's nothing else i may as well get a refurbished one.

they are a bit faster, but tbh the refurbs will be so much faster than your 6 yr old one the difference between the new ones and the two week old ones will be marginal to you

i would get a refurb

if i were you i mean

lex, having read many of your angry posts about your current creaky model, you will be absolutely fine with last year's model. also, get applecare.

my mbp is two years old and it's still superb

and are refurbished ones actually...likely to last long? given that they are 2nd hand/repaired/whatever? that makes me a bit uncomfortable.

ugh so if i hadn't dithered and had just done this two weeks ago i could've got a new model that actually had what i want? ugh

make sure you look at http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/refurbfaq_popup

also no education discount on refurbs

and yes, get applecare

they are fine. you are guaranteed for 12 months + you are sensible so you get applecare for any apple laptop refurb or not, which extends cover for 2 more years.

i'm not a student so don't get discount anyway (but i save a similar amount cuz i get to claim tax back)

old refurb vs new model + external CD drive aargh. also aware that old models can become obsolete in annoying ways when it comes to software programs and stuff, like i haven't been able to use google chrome on my current one

you get a student discount by having a pulse. you would get it on a new laptop. in the uk it is 15% + free applecare, so it's worth ~300 quid.

actually applecare for uk students is not free, but it's something totally nominal like 50 quid

but like i say, i recommend that refurb for you

+ applecare

they don't check you're a student?!

you find someone with anything to do with a university and you place the order from a computer on their campus

otherwise there is no check

lex, is your company in on apple's employee purchase programme? my wife is entitled to that, so all our apple stuff is something % off

i don't think i know anyone at university any more :/

xp i'm freelance/self-employed

bugger

+1 for the refurb btw, apple's refurbs are incredible

Small business discount in that case!

my old imac died (i think maybe the power supply blew a fuse?) it's the old 17 inch non widescreen ones.

should i bother fixing it? do i take it to apple or to the dodgy computer shop round the corner?

it's deffo out of warrenty

dodgy comp shop

ask apple first

apple don't make laptops with cd/dvd drives since last week.

This isn't true. All the MacBook Pros (apart from the Retina display one) have CD/DVD drives.

Also PC World in Moorgate are selling the just-replaced models for £350 off, Lex.

actually yeah, apple has a record for being nice

xxp true, the current 13s and 15s still have the drive built in

ha oh shit lex's brain is going to melt

i just looked at http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/13-and-15-inch/. they don't even mention the drives.

just noticed that

sigh

if you order a retina mbp, it offers you the external superdrive as an optional extra. if you order a standard mbp, it doesn't. assuming that means the std mbps come with the built-in drive, and apple just doesn't want to make a big deal of it.

lol the whitewashing of history

also lol optical media

this year I have used an optical drive to:

- rip chinese soap operas to .m4v
- rip mandopop to .mp3
- copy chinese breeze .mp3s to my ipod
- nothing else

i'm even more confused than i was to start with now

also i think i want a 13" one cuz that's what i have now

so get a 13" mbp, either the current one or the previous model or a refurb (you will get a cd/dvd drive whatever you do)

just check for the cd slot before you buy it

basically you can't go wrong, unless you're expecting two usb slots or something

is this one ok? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apple-MacBook-Dual-Core-1-7GHz-Graphics/dp/B005DYB9GC/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1340100429&sr=8-7

HANG ON i need two USB slots

i don't think i can cope with this

that's a macbook air, no cd drive xxp

looool

only the 15" mbp has two usb slots built in

the cheapest one here is what you apparently want http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro/select

pretty sure the 13" mbp has two usbs. even the 13" mba has two usbs.

yeah, it's go two usb ports

the refurb caek linked upthread has two USB slots

i should really just get that refurb

it's 13", it has two USB slots and it has a CD drive

brilliant

lex, get it

lex: the new laptops aren't on sale on amazon yet, and you won't save any money by buying with them once they are. get it from apple. and get applecare.

yeah get the refurb. and get applecare.

i am genuinely physically shaking through sheer panicky meltdown here

oh except the battery is external with that one

joeks

hnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggghhhh

i can't tell whether that was serious or not

which one

nm i just saw "joeks". well thankyou for the hand-holding anyway! hopefully i won't have to repeat this process for another 6 years

np

caek did all the work

lex get the refurb, apple refurbs are sometimes just laptops that customers took back to the store. they go through a rigorous checking process by apple people, and they come with the same 12 month warranty that new apple laptops do. you then buy applecare for it, and what you get is a laptop that's indistinguishable from a new apple laptop. except that may have a few minor scratches on it.

The new 13" also has two USB slots. Details (and the DVD drive) listed here:
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/features/13-and-15-inch/

What price is the refurb? Those PC World prices were pretty great yesterday I'm told. Want me to check at lunchtime for you, lex?

ah £789, I see it now

if it's convenient that'd be appreciated stet! might have to transfer £££ before i buy if certain people haven't paid me yet, won't be doing that til later in the day

Yeh, their best is £850 for the 13" MBP. Better with the refurb caek linked, I think.

thanks stet - looks like that's solved then

if only there was some ubiquitous, vastly lower priced alternative to apple laptops that offered a DVD drive, a ton of features, and better tech specs...oh well, just a crazy dream i had.

go on, please

You want Lex to use Windows?

you want lex to get a playstation 3? xp

haha dayo

i know what windows are but i don't know what a playstation 3 is?

Lex go to the window in your apartment and say, ” windows, compose email”, the process should be pretty intuitive from there

hnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggghhhh

lmao xp

why did am0n bump this after a week? number one ilx crepe.

anyway i forgot to buy the refurb caek recommended and now it's gone :(

I'm so sorry :(

lex some of the new macbook pros still come with optical drives!

its true what he says

i took the optical drive out of my mbp and put in a 2nd harddrive what do you think abt that

is an optical drive the same as a CD drive?

yup yup

Soon as my macbook pro (2 yrs old) starts feeling sluggish and I have the money I'm replacing the optical drive with an SSD boot drive. I've used the optical maybe twice.

Putting in an SDS is the biggest improvement you can make to a laptop. Although I just replaced the regular drive with a 250GB SSD, and move little-used files to a NAS with larger spinning discs so I can access even if I'm away from home (psudo-cloud I guess).

okay that is a badass setup, kudos

SSDs are so pricey and also they make me nervous! I hear scary things abt failure

How big a deal is the Thunderbolt port? Without it would mirroring a MacBook Air display be feasible? I've never tried the Mac mini display port, but I have a shitty Windows laptop now w/ an HDMI port which is useless for displaying on my TV.

I hear scary things abt failure

Hedging your bets re hdd failure v having a decent backup regime in place. The degree to which a hdd dies is bunk imo.

(ime the conversation is usually about a ssd insta-dying rather than just slowly failing, where both cases are equally huge a risk if you're not backing up)

but I have a shitty Windows laptop now w/ an HDMI port which is useless for displaying on my TV.

Wait really?? Why?

Eh but ssd's are so much more expensive and I don't want it to die!!

fair point

if it dies right away u can return it no, ive had no problems w mine fwiw

Stevie - When I ran the HDMI from this laptop to the TV, I couldn't make the image fit and there was a huge lag and if it overloaded and froze up when I tried to switch windows or minimize or maximize too quickly. It's a pretty cheap HP laptop less than a year old, which I got as a stop gap.

can i play a bass dvd through a guitar amp

Je55e - I had something similar when connecting my PC through HDMI to my TV. Turns out that you change the aspect ratio on the TV from 16:9 (or whatever you have it) to "Just scan" or "original ratio" or something similar. It will stop trying to force it into a format and just show it as the laptop is outputting. It should make the image fit properly into the screen. Not sure about your lag problems tho, sorry.

I tried changing the TV's image size and other stuff but never got anywhere, but honestly I gave up without tons of effort b/c the lag and freezing up was the real problem. IIRC I read that the laptop's wimpy graphics processor is the problem. NBD since I have low expectations of a lower end laptop.

Late 2008 13" white MacBook is on the wane: keyboard needs replacing (costs around 100 supposedly?) mag charger has died and costs 80 to replace, and now the battery has died completely (130 to replace). Got a surprise bonus check at work last week so I suddenly have 1200 to 1300 at my disposal. Feels like I should not sink 210 bucks into old whitey but just replace it. What I can afford:

11" MBA with a 1tb portable drive to help with storage. Or,

13" MBA by itself (I like small things but the extra 2 hours of battery life is persuasive?) or,

13" mbp non retina by itself (faster processor than the others and 500gb of storage but I have to say I would rather have flash memory than hdd memory at this point...

I guess I'm gonna have to make a move in the next couple days.

There's one wild card-- ol Whitey has the classic crack in the case edge by where your palm rests. I know as recently as last year apple was still replacing this defect gratis even if you were out of warranty. So mayyybe that policy is still in place and can put off the whole dilemma...

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/08/alleged-apple-ebay-store-offers-better-deals-than-apple-refurb-store/

u should def try the cracked palm thing

i think my macbook air (current gen) is faster in all respects than my mbp from 5 years ago

Damn there is a powerful 11" MBA on that refurb page which is just within my price limit and free shipping. Argh!

as an owner of an 11 inch mba I would prob go for a 13 inch one if it were gonna be my primary comp

Hm-- even if that means 4gb (the new 13" i can afford) vs 8 gb (the refurb 11" on that page?)

Sincere question, I am no expert on these matters...

And yeah it wld be my primary.

the bigger screen is worth it, 8gb not really necessary unless you're photoshopping a lot imo

or u can get the 13 mbp, which has user replaceable ram and hd I think

I do one thing with photoshop, and that's to touch up black and white 600dpi artwork after scanning it in (I'm a cartoonist). And then drop some flat colors into it; I usually don't go above like three layers. Hm.

dropping in 8 gigs of ram into my 5 yr old mbp + adding a ssd made it much faster but like I said it still dont feel as fast as my mba w 4 gigs of ram

why does the bigger one have less space idgi

i am also going to buy an apple laptop, might buy one of those "refurbished" ones i know nothing about computers or apple but i guess it's the same thing as regular stuff but cheaper?

yup

why doesn't everyone just buy those

shhhhhh

ok so why is there less space on the one with the bigger screen

because bigger computers are cheaper to make

You can't BTO refurbs - since current-gen models usually aren't user-serviceable, if you want to max out RAM you've got to get it that way from the jump.

4 gigs doesn't seem like a lot? do you have an external hard drive for your music?

milo i don't know what any of that means

l3x k.

4 gb is the ram, not the storage. The storage is 128gb or 256 gb or more.

On current Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs there's no easy way to change HDs or RAM yourself. Used to be you could change them out yourself and save a couple hundred bucks.
Most base Apple configurations don't have enough RAM - getting all the RAM you possibly can greatly extends the life of a product these days. So it comes down to refurb (that may have upgraded RAM or may not) and saving money vs. ordering new with your exact specs.

The Ebay outlet looks like it's listing specific properties, so you could wait and get one with extra RAM, but the apple.com store is a crapshoot.

never seen an apple refurb MBA w/8GB RAM & believe me I've been looking

the refurbished macs aren't always as cheap as, ahem, taking a student along to an apple store with you to make the purchase of a brand new one. i just last week got a new powerbook with 14% off and something crazy like 80% off applecare (which iirc was £36 rather than £199). the staff don't care and the computer doesn't have to be registered to the student, it's registered to the machine only, not the purchaser (e.g. you could theoretically sell the laptop on ebay a year down the line and it would have still have two years of applecare registered to it). so if you know a student or an academic with an hour to spare then you could consider doing that.

if you are near a store, of course.

fyi p easy to change ram and hd on a mbp http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+RAM/10374/1

what's the difference between ram and storage?

jed are you implying that as a student i would get a discount?

well for one you would not be able to fit the dawn richard album onto just 4 gigs of ram since its so long, u would need at least 8 gigs

also this link should help bit.ly/WCWUTS

http://www.animateit.net/data/media/124/ram.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random-access_memory

get a chromebook

Quote by Bill Gates, of Microsoft, when asked if he would develop software for the NeXT computer: "Develop for it? I'll piss on it."

> the refurbished macs aren't always as cheap as, ahem, taking a student along to an apple store with you to make the purchase of a brand new one

> if you are near a store, of course.

Or you are near a university - there is often a store on campus, either a tech store or a bookstore, that sells new Apple products with the student discount or promo.

k3vin, students get 8-14% discount depending on what kind of institution it is. no questions asked as far as i can tell and from my experience last week. 14% off a powerbook is a pretty hefty amount.

I've found that MacMall often winds up a better deal than using Apple's student pricing, if you're not in California.

The US discounts are a flat $50-200 on most computers.

Educational discount also applies at the online store - you need to be purchasing via a university/school IP address I think.

Not in the US - you just go to the Educational store on the website. They could call for student verification but I've never had them do that.

the uk student discount on hardware is usually a little bigger than the us one, and better than a poke in the eye, but the massive applecare discount makes it worth figuring out

what’s to stop people ordering directly off http://store.apple.com/uk-edu

do they check you’re a student somehow?

i think that's not the full "institutional discount", which requires an .ac.uk IP

they probably check your email address or something. i remember i had to fax them my student id to a phone number in ireland in 1999. good times.

iirc the institutional discount available to ac.uk is 15% + applecare for like 75% off (but some institutions negotiate more for bulk purchasing, etc.)

upgrading my 4 y.o MBP to 8GB did wonders - I'm now wondering whether to also upgrade to SSD but it would cost a leg to get a drive that's bigger than my present one

You should get a snowmobile

My plan is still to ditch the optical drive, install an ssd and have two drives. Ssd for system an apps, old drive for data.

^ that's what I did... still kinda annoying to wait for the physical drive to spin up when you click on it

Dumb question - is it even possible to have multiple drives in an MBP? Anyways, seems a bit too complex of me - I'm guessing SSD prices will get bigger (capacity) and cheaper at some point?

yes http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ (among others i think)

this is the one I got http://www.ebay.com/itm/Light-weight-2nd-HDD-SDD-hard-drive-caddy-for-MacBook-Pro-2011-2010-2009-/221002963557

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Data_Doubler

they sell packages with the tools and whatnot. Good source for ram as well.

that link dont work http://www.ebay.com/itm/Light-weight-2nd-HDD-SDD-hard-drive-caddy-for-MacBook-Pro-2011-2010-2009-/221002963557?pt=US_Drive_Bay_Caddies&hash=item3374cd9a65

So I stopped by Tekserve before work this morning with Ol' Whitey (see my post from yesterday) and found out Apple is no longer covering the notorious top case edge crack for free :( Sooo I'm thinking to just buy a new MBA as mentioned. Here's the thing... MacMall has a MBA 13" with 8 GB RAM thats just within my 1300 buck limit and free shipping. This is a dumb guy question but... that maxed out RAM will have been put there at the factory, right? Not upgraded by MacMall? I.e. an 8 GB MBA from them (which I can afford) will be performance-wise indistinguishable from an 8 GB MBA from Tekserve (which I can't afford)?

multiple xps re UK Higher Ed discounts: you can visit institution-specific stores from outside their IP range. Probably shouldn't link to this, but it's googleable. Of course, it may well raise a red flag if you order from outside an ac.uk IP range.

Also, three years' Applecare is actually free when bought through the higher education site (but confusingly not if you buy in a physical shop - they can match the 15% but not the applecare). The only difference is that you don't get phone support past the first 90 days - the £35 they try to tack on is to upgrade that to a year.

i have a 2011 mini with space for a second HD.. thinking that when it starts feeling sluggish (i have already maxed out the RAM) i'll put the existing HD in the second bay, then put an SSD in the first bay

XP - I'm not sure if MacMall is upgrading their own RAM or going through Apple, but performance/lifespan/etc. will be equal.

I know there was some talk on another thread but is anyone using a iPad+keyboard case for moderate amounts of work/typing?
I'm going back to school in fall, I don't see getting away from my iMac or a Hackintosh as my main computer at home, so I'm wondering if the ipad might be enough for notes/etc. and for browsing/work e-mail when I'm at my gf's place.

yes I do this combo on the reg