The New Apple / Intel Macbooks

[russ_c]

I am surprised no one has said anything about the new dual core Apple Macbooks with the Intel chip. I was really excited AT FIRST because they are cheaper and faster then the latest Powerbooks, but then I realized something...

They don't have FW800 OR a 54mm ExpressCard slot!

Of course these two features take center stage in the HVX / laptop workflow disscusion! You would think there would have been some type of conversation between Panasonic and Apple on at least the inclusion of the PCMCIA slot to fit with the professional P2 workflow!

Please help me out. Am I mistaken by the ExpressCard/34 slot on the Macbooks? Will they also except the 54mm size (P2 card size)? I wouldn't think so since the slot appears to be so much smaller in width. What is up with this technology?

Thanks,

Russell

[oxrs]

I've seen a few threads about it, people have been talking.

There are adapters in developement for PCMCIA to ExpressCard.

Also keep in mind that while Apple's software (eg: FCP) will be avaliable as an update to work in Feburary and retail version after March, other programs like Photoshop or Maya probably won't work until their creators either make an update or new version. Chances are it will probably be the later which means waiting at least a year to use it. Fingers crossed I'm wrong on that point though.

With all that, the fact that nobody at Apple has even hinted at the battery life (meaning it's probably not worth taking it away from a wall plug) and the lower screen resolutions just make it less and less desireable... I'm about to buy a laptop for direct capture/P2 transfer and I'm more than happy going with the 15" Powerbook. I'm really not that impressed with the Intel book passed the first "wow" factor.

Congratulations to Apple for finaly getting up to a decent speed with their laptops but I'm going to be doing all the hardware intensive work on my PowerMac... So it's not all that important.

[Zack Birlew]

Uh, battery life won't be much of a problem there oxrs. At minimum, a laptop can last an hour and a half. The Intel chips being used are probably more than the Intel Centrino CPU's, meaning that these things won't last three or four hours a charge. But even so, video editing is just as, if not more intensive than gaming on a laptop and your battery life will be shot down to an hour and a half anyway.

The lower screen resolutions do bother me too, but I'm aiming for the best of the best of these Intel Macs by waiting until the latter half of the year. I have to fully convert to Apple, so that's just me, but if you've already got FCP and stuff, I don't see why these Intel Macs wouldn't be worth the purchase if you need them.

[oxrs]

Apple say their powerbooks can manage 4.5 hours of battery life, real world - actually using programs - it's closer to an hour and a half to two hours. If Apple is so scared that they don't say a single word on the battery life on these new ones what makes you think they'll even get that close? If it was good news on the battery they would say something. Especially considering the screen is 60%+ brighter than the 15" powerbook. They only just increased the brightness on that one from the previous 60% recently. It's true that you can decrease the brightness but all these little things start adding up. So until somebody actually gets one of these macbooks I'm certainly not happy just saying "At minimum a laptop can last an hour and a half.".

The biggest issue for me is how long it might take for all the programs I use to catch up. It might work easily and all of them could update in a matter of months. Or they might not bother because none of the "Pro" machines are out yet. I don't know if I'm making much sense but it might just not be worth updating until there is a big enough market, and their market is, more often than not, interested in the "powermac" line of products. Seeing as they will probably be out closer to the end of the year and the quad core just came out it would make sense to me if I was in charge of developement not to bother yet and just go for the market that still has G5 duals, and quads, etc.

[Policar]

The reason no battery specs have been released is because there's no completed MacBook yet that Apple has had a chance to test for battery life. The current units are all prototypes, although they're probably starting production on final units soon.

Apparently, they estimate 3 hours of life when you unplug them, and according to Steve's ridiculous "performance per watt" chart, they perform 4 times as fast and are 4 times more efficient. They are also just a tiny bit hotter than the current generation. They use more advanced batteries, though, which should offset the extra power consumption.

So I'd expect Apple to advertise 4 hours of battery life (maybe 3.5) and for real world use to range between 2 and 3 in most cases.

They're super fast, by the way, but the lack of pro apps is lame.

[oxrs]

Ahh... That makes a lot of sense then.
Well, even if they get good battery life I doubt I'll be interested for a couple of years. I'm happy with what I've got to do what I need. Just upgraded to the quad core, hopefully that doesn't become obsolete anyway. ;) If they get their act together and unified the pro area quicker these could be serious machines by the looks of things.

[Zack Birlew]

You know, I was thinking about this topic today after I replied. As luck would have it, my brother and I decided to go to the Las Vegas strip today and we ended up going to the Fashion Show mall, which has an Apple store. When I went into the Apple store, I looked for Intel Macs, unfortunately they didn't have any Intel Macbooks, but they did have Intel iMacs. I tried one out in a simple non-scientific way by just loading an application or two to see how fast they loaded. I first tried the Intel one and then I tried a Quad. It was a cool outcome which made me feel pretty positive about the future Intel Macs to come, the Intel iMac loaded things up about one second less than the Quad, making it about on par by my estimations. If one dual core Intel processor can almost match two Power PC processors, imagine what two Intels could do. True, it wasn't a full-on test, just a real world performance how-it-seemed-to-me estimate thing, but I thought it was impressive.

[oxrs]

That's a great starting test, actually. It does need further investigating but I agree, it does look good. I don't want to be the first to jump into them but after a year it seems like they'll definately be what we've been waiting for.

[David_M_Payne]

I'm new to Apple and was wondering if you guys can give me some pointers here. It looks like my new G4 with the old 1.67 gig processor and 1.5 gigs of ram should handle the feed from my HVX with no problems, when I finally get the cameras that is. Anyone here have any sugestions on external hard drives to record to and what software is best to capture with?

David

[oxrs]

Oh yeah, that will be fine for that. It may be "old" now but it's been tested by some people and works for that. I'll be doing the same. Final Cut Pro 5 is exactly the program you need, which you can only buy in the Final Cut Studio now unless you can still find a stand alone copy floating around somewhere... Goes about $1300 I think.

Hard drives... A lot of people have different experiences. No matter which you get it will probably fail at one point. So some people are dead set against one company or another, etc... I like Other World Computing's portable drives personally, but I'm sure there's somebody out there who has had a bad experience with them.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go/
Just make sure you get a fast drive, 5400RPM if you're strapped for cash but you should really aim for 7200RPM.

The 100gb firewire only drive is their best $ to GB drive in the 7200RPM range if you end up going for OWC's.