The New Apple / Intel Macbooks

R

russ_c

Member
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! :undecided

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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
oxrs said:
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.
Click to expand...

I was thinking about one of these for the quad G5 with 4.5g of ram. I'll have the FCP studio installed in it only: 800GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL PRO 800 RAID Dual Drive 7200RPM FireWire 800/400 Oxford 912 Storage Solution w/16MB Data Buffer(8MB per HD). FW800 & FW800 to 400 Cables, Dantz Retrospect Express, and Intech Speed Tools Included. 2yr Warranty. (OWCME8R7800GB16) for 600.00

For the laptops I was thinking a couple of these to capture video in addition to two 4g P-2 cards for mobile shots: 500GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL PRO 800 RAID Dual Drive 7200RPM FireWire 800/400 Oxford 912 Storage Solution w/16MB Data Buffer(8MB per HD). FW800 & FW800 to 400 Cables, Dantz Retrospect Express, and Intech Speed Tools Included. 2yr Warranty. (OWCME8R7500GB16) for 360.00
Here is a link to them.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/

Is the standard software that comes with the G4 laptops enough to capture the video feeds from the cameras, or is there some inexpensive program that is better for that? I'm buying them new from MacMall along with the "old" G5.

David
 
I'd want to get at least one of those on-the-go ones as well but if you know for sure you'll always have access to a power supply then they're great choices. The portable ones are a lot more expensive per GB but they're bus powered through firewire or usb so if you ever do a shoot in the middle of nowhere you just need a couple of extra camera batteries and laptop batteries.

It slipped my mind until now but you should be able to get Final Cut Express HD for a few hundred. I haven't actually used it myself but capturing video feed shouldn't be out of it's reach... And then iMovie HD should come with your macs and again, I've never got around to using that either... I don't know if it captures. I don't know why it wouldn't though.

Edit:A lot of people say that iMovie isn't worth spitting in the shower for and as it's their free, entry level editing app and I'd tend to agree just based on that. If you're going to be doing any serious editing you should at least get FCE. I really recommend the Final Cut Studio though, it's amazing for it's price, or almost any price really.
 
oxrs said:
I'd want to get at least one of those on-the-go ones as well but if you know for sure you'll always have access to a power supply then they're great choices. The portable ones are a lot more expensive per GB but they're bus powered through firewire or usb so if you ever do a shoot in the middle of nowhere you just need a couple of extra camera batteries and laptop batteries.

It slipped my mind until now but you should be able to get Final Cut Express HD for a few hundred. I haven't actually used it myself but capturing video feed shouldn't be out of it's reach... And then iMovie HD should come with your macs and again, I've never got around to using that either... I don't know if it captures. I don't know why it wouldn't though.

Edit:A lot of people say that iMovie isn't worth spitting in the shower for and as it's their free, entry level editing app and I'd tend to agree just based on that. If you're going to be doing any serious editing you should at least get FCE. I really recommend the Final Cut Studio though, it's amazing for it's price, or almost any price really.
Click to expand...

I have FCP studio for the G5, Its the G4's that I'm looking at. When I bought them the sales guy checked with the techs and they said that the iMovie will be enough to do a simple capture from the cameras to the hard drives, but if there is better software to do it with that is cheap I'd look at that. The FCE program with the HD upgrade is about 500.00 which is more than I want to spend right now given how much I'm into the cameras and computers already. If something was around 100.00 I'd look at that, otherwise I'll just have to see how the iMovie does the job.

David
 
In that case then you should be fine with iMovie. My only concern was the issue that I wasn't sure if it would capture live streams, but it only makes sense that it does now that I think about it... Ahh well. With all you've planned it seems like you'll be set without needing any more software.
 
Quicktime Pro 7 is perfect for just straight capture and it cost $30, but if you already have FCP you might as well use that. I would prefer quicktime pro over imovie any day if you are just looking to simply capture.

My .02
 
That's a great idea. I just looked into it and iMovie actually encodes what it captures into a format that doesn't work with FCP or something... Supposedly FCE encodes in a more "lossey" format so it defeats the purpose of having an HVX... If quicktime captures then it's perfect, short of finding a full version of FCP5.

Just got this information from a quick glance at HD for Indies. Somebody had the link in another thread.
http://www.hdforindies.com/2005/05/hd-for-indies-frequently-asked#EditingHD
 
oxrs said:
That's a great idea. I just looked into it and iMovie actually encodes what it captures into a format that doesn't work with FCP or something... Supposedly FCE encodes in a more "lossey" format so it defeats the purpose of having an HVX... If quicktime captures then it's perfect, short of finding a full version of FCP5.

Just got this information from a quick glance at HD for Indies. Somebody had the link in another thread.
http://www.hdforindies.com/2005/05/hd-for-indies-frequently-asked#EditingHD
Click to expand...


He's refering to capturing HDV into iMovie.. not DVCPro.
 
russ_c said:
Quicktime Pro 7 is perfect for just straight capture and it cost $30, but if you already have FCP you might as well use that. I would prefer quicktime pro over imovie any day if you are just looking to simply capture.

My .02
Click to expand...

But does it work well capturing 1080 from the HVX to the G4's? Anyone know the answer to this? As for FCP that is in my G5 not the laptops, so I still need to be sure I have a solid capture program for them. I looked over the Apple site on Quicktime pro 7 but didn't find a direct answer to that question, but perhaps I missed it or something.

David
 
I wouldn't use iMovie for that sort of thing.
In QTpro you can record in 'device native' settings. So those are fullrez native files. Should work, but then again; I ain't shure since I haven't got an HVX. Works with my TRV900 though... :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top