Apple Macbook ... take the plunge?

dwillis45 said:
That's why it's a good idea not to buy the first generation of any newly designed Apple. It seems they always have problems. Of course, the good thing about Apple is that they are pretty decent about repairing issues. That applies to the i-book power cable and the macbook power cable--both of which have a history of failing. It also applies to the shutdown problem in the macbook, the logic board failures in the old G4 i-books, the melting capacitors in the second generation i-mac G5, the fan issue in the first i-mac G5s, the defective DVD drive in the second generation i-mac, and the mouse pad issues in the first macbooks.
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The logic board failures were with basically the entire run of white iBooks except for the first generation. Bad example. :D

The capacitors weren't technically Apple's fault. Apple doesn't make the capacitors.... Ditto with the DVD drives. Now if you had said the early TiBook optical drive (case flex issue), then you'd have a point.... :)
 
I bought a 17" widescreen Acer for $599, 2 cores, 2Ghz, 1gig of Ram, vista home premium...macs are very pricey, unless you are talking mac and cheese or even big macs. But computer macs, just to run bootcamp?? And OSX? Let me go throw up, get the camera baby Gorty is gonna want a picture of this.
 
noisedude said:
Interesting stuff, thanks guys. I'm waiting on an insurance payout and then I think I'm just going to go for it.

The cheapest one seems to make sense .... I'm not going to pay an extra £130 ($260) just for an extra 40gb hard disk and a DVD writer. All of my stuff is on external drives and network resources anyway, and almost always just burn CDs anyway.

Boot Camp looks quite straightforward, but I am tempted to get hold of Parallels and run them as virtual machines instead ....
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I haven't done any research on Parallels, but if it is going to be running Windows on a virtual machine within OS X, go with bootcamp - bootcamp sets the machine up (AFAIK) to run Windows on the native hardware, just like it would if it were the main OS on any computer. Running it in a virtual machine within another operating system is usually much, much slower.
 
exactly. just like running windows on quality PC hardware. I did benchmarks for Nuendo and Sonar in Bootcamp and it had very good numbers. In fact, slightly better than a PC with the same processor setup. Pesky bios.

And a $599 notebook is not going to have near the quality of the components that are in a MacBookPro. If you look at the high end PC notebooks made with quality components, they're in line with the cost of Macs. You pay more for good components. And Pro Audio is very demanding of and sensitive to those components. See if you can run Ivory or EWQL Gold at a 64 buffer on a $599 Dell or HP.
 
If you are concerned about hardware durability, you will be stuck with Windoze on either a Thinkpad (Lenovo.......formerly IBMs product line) or a Panasonic Toughbook. As far as linux vs. Mac vs. Windoze.........linux and Mac are pretty similar under the hood, just the GUI is all foo-foo'd up on the Mac. Linux doesn't have all of the cool audio software that Macs and Windoze has. Sure, you have Audacity and Reaper for linux, but if you rely on Pro-Tools...........kiss it goodbye. I haven't really read or had the chance to play with the new generation of Intel based Macs to see if they still have the multimedia advantage still. Windoze.............well.............it's just Windoze...............everyone knows what to expect.:p
 
dgatwood said:
The logic board failures were with basically the entire run of white iBooks except for the first generation. Bad example. :D

The capacitors weren't technically Apple's fault. Apple doesn't make the capacitors.... Ditto with the DVD drives. Now if you had said the early TiBook optical drive (case flex issue), then you'd have a point.... :)
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Well, it really doesn't matter if the problems are caused by design issues, suppliers, or some other source. When all these things happen to you, you begin to wonder about Apple products and the company itself. I'm not about to switch to a Windows-based computer. I've never used Windows and I never will. But, in the middle of any Mac-PC debates, I can't line up squarely on the side of the Apple folks--even if they are younger, cooler, and more hip. :p Apple is a large corporation and they make computers. Computers break and corporations are corporations. :cool:
 
noisedude said:
Interesting stuff, thanks guys. I'm waiting on an insurance payout and then I think I'm just going to go for it.

The cheapest one seems to make sense .... I'm not going to pay an extra £130 ($260) just for an extra 40gb hard disk and a DVD writer. All of my stuff is on external drives and network resources anyway, and almost always just burn CDs anyway.

Boot Camp looks quite straightforward, but I am tempted to get hold of Parallels and run them as virtual machines instead ....
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I use paralells on my MBP and it's as fast as running natively on my work laptop (DELL)
 
I figured out a way to turn my i-mac into a PC. I can now get addware, spyware, viruses, uncontrolled pop-up windows, and really cool solitaire games and other cheap software from the grocery store. I can also run Vista. The great part is that I paid twice as much for the computer and it requires a technician to take apart and repair. :D
 

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as long as you run decent components and maintain windows... you really shouldnt have any problem with it. neither OS is superior to the other.

its just like recording... without fully knowing your equipment, you'll always have sub par results
 
im gonna chime in.
i got my 17" macbook pro in august, first time ever with osx and i couldnt be happier. Its super fast, really easy to use (although i was really lost for the the first few days) and i really see no need to put windows on it (unless you specifically need a windows only software). And as far as mac vs pc goes, i moved into university halls in september with seven people on my floor, all with new laptops (xp and vista). Since then i have had to sort out large problems (internet explorer refusing to run, not connecting to wireless networks, faulty drivers) on each of thier computers, one of them has been sent back due to the screen being broken (being told in the shop "oh that happens pretty regularly with those laptops").

Moneywise if your going for the top end hardware the prices even out pretty fast (ever seen a dell xps?), and i did get student discount.. which was nice :D
 
Well, to clear it up I'm a Mac Pro Audio VAR and PC DAW builder and repair person for both and they break just as often as each other.

But in OSX theres no right click functionality and you can't play real games. Thats the drawbacks for me.
 
I have a new (1 month old) MBP and love it.

I can run XP in a window using "Parallels" and it works well so sonar and wave lab are still an option as well as Logic 8.

Having put the new OS on the G5 in the control room I can share the screen with the MBP and remotely control the computer in the control room form the live room.

How cool is that !

Me, Im just stoked !
 
For the record .... I got it and I LOVE it!!

There were some teething problems with Leopard and the other bundled software but now I've got it all running nicely it's a great interface. I haven't quite got the hang of the keyboard shortcuts etc that I routinely use in Windows, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

Thanks for your advice chaps!
 
Cool. I'm glad to see somebody is enjoying their MacBook. Mine, which is a little over a year old, is staring to have issues. It goes into a deep sleep whenever I run Photo Elements or another graphics package. The only way to wake the thing is by attaching the power cord. The battery shows plenty of power. I suspect that Apple never really solved this issue in the first generation Macbooks even though when I bought mine, they assured me that they had. :mad:
 
dwillis45 said:
Cool. I'm glad to see somebody is enjoying their MacBook. Mine, which is a little over a year old, is staring to have issues. It goes into a deep sleep whenever I run Photo Elements or another graphics package. The only way to wake the thing is by attaching the power cord. The battery shows plenty of power. I suspect that Apple never really solved this issue in the first generation Macbooks even though when I bought mine, they assured me that they had. :mad:
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Go buy the Applecare 3-year warranty, give it a few weeks then take it in. By all accounts they replace Macs as often as they repair them so it could work out well for you.
 
dwillis45 said:
Cool. I'm glad to see somebody is enjoying their MacBook. Mine, which is a little over a year old, is staring to have issues. It goes into a deep sleep whenever I run Photo Elements or another graphics package. The only way to wake the thing is by attaching the power cord. The battery shows plenty of power. I suspect that Apple never really solved this issue in the first generation Macbooks even though when I bought mine, they assured me that they had. :mad:
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If it wakes correctly when you plug in the power cord, it is not the problem that some early adopters were having with forced sleep. Those problems were caused by a thermal sensor issue, and didn't go away by plugging in the power adapter....

The problem with saying that the battery has "plenty of power" is that the charge meters measure voltage, while the computer has to be able to draw a certain about of current at a given voltage. If the computer's current draw exceeds the provided current, you get a voltage drop, which causes the computer to believe that the battery is low when it isn't (by some definitions, anyay). When the computer goes to sleep, though, it isn't drawing much current, so the voltage may appear normal when testing the battery afterwards.

The menu bar meter is better, but still depends on a lot of guesses about how the current/voltage will decay over time. If a pack decays at a much faster rate for some reason (partial internal short in one cell, electrolyte decomposition, etc.), you will often see the battery seem to have some charge left up until the moment the computer suddenly goes to sleep to protect itself.

If resetting the SMU and installing the latest battery update (if you haven't already) doesn't solve this, then the battery is probably bad. Get a new battery and you should be back to normal.
 
Why not get a laptop with the same specs (for much cheaper) and just put Unix on it? OSX is basically Unix with a pretty frontend and some additional programs (that you can probably get the equivalents of for free anyway). I'd recommend trying it on your current laptop and seeing if it'd be something that you may like. Hell, even installing Linux would be a step in the right direction.
 
timthetortoise said:
Why not get a laptop with the same specs (for much cheaper) and just put Unix on it? OSX is basically Unix with a pretty frontend and some additional programs (that you can probably get the equivalents of for free anyway). I'd recommend trying it on your current laptop and seeing if it'd be something that you may like. Hell, even installing Linux would be a step in the right direction.
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Believe me, I know all about Linux. And I'm an Open Source evangelist. But I wanted to buy something that worked out of the box, that was compact and easy to use .... and when you look at the horrible laptops being turned out by the likes of Acer, HP and Dell compared to how nice this Macbook is to use, there's no competition. No setting up power management profiles, no configuring built in cameras or remote controls, it's all just there.

I think it's a bit unrealistic to compare Linux to OSX, I love Ubuntu (and I'm glad Apple finally caught up on having different desktops) but the iWork bundle kick the arse of Open Office and even MS Office (certainly the Mac version anyway) and iLife has a lot of fun stuff in it too. Honestly, I'm still a bit of a techie nerd but if I can avoid trawling the net to find the GIMP and its contemporaries, then I'm happy.

I'll keep Linux for my PC and then put XP on my Mac and then the world shall be thoroughly confused ... er ... I mean, put to rights. :)
 
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