So, if you haven’t heard.. a couple hours ago from this writing, Apple announced new laptops.. revisions from the MacBook Air to MacBook’s to MacBook Pros.. I’m not feeling totally up to speed on things… but I’ll give you where I’m coming from.. But I’ll give you the basics of what’s new, and follow it up from there.

What’s the hubbub about?

First off, what’s new and exciting?

• New “unibody:”  Stronger, lighter, thiner, nicer design
• Multi Touch Track Pad supporting gestures
• New Screen: Better color
• All Around more speed: processor, RAM speed, bus speed
• New Graphics system.. Apple claims up to 5 times the speed of the old laptops (Adobe CS4 stuff ought to really take advantage of this)

Ok, so that’s really about it..  Contrasts between MacBook and Mac Book Pro

• MacBook Pro offers two graphics processors.. one that consumes less power, the other is more powerful.. where as the MacBook only has one. 
• 13″ versus 15″
• 4.5 pounds for the MacBook, 5 pounds for the Mac Book Pro
• MacBook has 2 USB 2.0 ports, where as the MacBook Pro has 2 USB 1.0 ports plus a Firewire 800 port.. and oh yeah.. the MacBook Pro has a ExpressCard/34 slot.. 
• MacBook Pros have faster processors.. though not by large margins
• The new MacBooks Start at $1300, the Pros at $2000.

Out side of all that.. you do get more hard disk space on the pros.. and blah blah blah… but its all custom configureable from Apple’s website. There’s a New MacBook Air on the way.. which is significantly more attractive to me then there first model..  so.. What computer makes sense for you, of course, has to do with what your needs are.. to illustrate this concept, I’ll give you what I’m looking at. 

Matt’s Laptop Needs

I own a Mac Pro.. and an outdated cheesy pc laptop. In a new laptop I’m really looking for a secondary sorta Mac.. so for this reason “cheap” is good… There’s been roomers that Apple would announce super cheap ultra portables.. If they did, the question for me would be “is it the right mix of stuff?” This didn’t happen, though might still happen in the future.. one would think this could have a huge effect on Mac market share if it did.. so one assumes there’s some likely hood to it.. but even in a secondary laptop I do want “some power.”

I do everything from video to sound to animation to graphics to web stuff.. and who knows what I’m forgetting to mention.. all of which like power.. but um.. ok, here’s what I’m really looking at:

• To be able to do presentations
• I’m thinking of looking at doing work as a live sound engineer, and to have a system for making those live recordings.. and latency willing.. possibly effects processing.. where I can use my effects as a pose to what a house system has on offer..  Along with this goes a making multitrack recording of live performances that then can be mixed and potentially done any number of things with.
• Live Rig as musician.. use my synths and effects.. this can be my rig.
• The usual not being tethered to a desktop stuff.
• Some software allows you to connect multiple computers in order to increase your power.. like render farms for 3D graphics.. this kind of thing.
• If I were doing web work.. I could show you right from my computer.. what I was working on for you.. This is really ideal.
• Being able to watch movies portably.

Because I have a Mac Pro.. this laptop being secondary.. power not being so important and portability being more important then power or other considerations..

I find myself looking at the 13″ MacBooks  

Size matters 

The first issue is screen space.. 13″ is not happy time for pro apps… productivity is an issue.. but you can connect up a second monitor.. and I happen to own a 17″ monitor that’s not getting to much play these days.. so instant duel monitor at home.. and 13″ does have a portability advantage over larger laptops. And we’re only talking about 4.5 pounds.

But I want my Firewire Port!

Currently my studio features 2 pieces of Firewire Gear.. an audio interface and Liquid Mix 16. The latter is a DPS processor that, do to how it connects to your computer.. has huge latency issues making it useless for live applications.. Still.. not being able to use it with a 13″ laptop is still an issue. 

On the interface side of things.. stuffs a little more complex. My current interface would like to be updated.. the trouble is that, generally speaking, firewire interfaces are better then there USB brethren: USB 2.0 doesn’t have the same data rates.. not to mention requires more processing power… so in USB interfaces you don’t get the same number of ins and outs, and or sample rates.. as you can get over firewire. Things like MicPres are more important to actual sound quality.. but the better Pres are often limited to more high end gear.. and that gear is on the Firewire side.. it’s sort of suggestive that I might have to buy 2 interfaces.

Of course, as it turns out, my studio does have 2 USB interfaces: a Kore 1 controller plus an H4 Portable recorder.. the latter featuring phantom power even.. So really the only reason I would need to invest in a new interface is for live applications where I had a band going into the laptop.. and it turns out there are fairly cheap interfaces that can handle the mount ins I’d likely be wanting to handle.

I suppose the other issue is most video cameras want the firewire port… and Firewire drives are surely preferable.

So those are really my only complaints / Issues

There maybe more issues when I look more closely at the subject.. we’ll see.

The model I’m likely to go with probably runs $1400 plus a kind of extended warranty deal. In addition to that I’m thinking of getting a Mobile Me account and a $500 1 TB Time Capsule.. and a $50 AirPort Extreme Card for my Mac Pro..

Of course the trouble is.. I have limited money till a CD matures in a few months.. so I don’t know but..

And the other thing is a social media friend is looking to sell his old Mac Pro.. I was feeling pretty serious about buying that.. till Apple announced the new MacBooks..

Later that night: 

Well, I just discovered that hard drives are super cheap for this sorta computer.. we’re talking $80 for 500GB.. which means Matt’s going to go for a cheaper laptop and buy a drive to swap in there.. So.. anybody wanna buy a lap top drive? 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 5:22 am and is filed under Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.