Whoa. The new Macbooks and especially the new Macbook Pros are insane.
Here's what excites me about these:
The track pad is huge, supports multi touch gestures, and the whole thing is a physical button (kind of like the "click wheel" on the iPods). It's also made of glass, which is odd, but I suppose that would make them durable (glass is actually very tough in the right application), and judging by my iPod Touch it'll feel nice when doing the gestures. I've actually been saying, for years, that they should mount the track pad on top of the button. Seriously. I like the big buttons that Apple's laptops have had for some time (hunting for the tiny ones on some PC laptops is quite annoying by comparison), but of course a larger track pad would be a good thing, so it seemed like a no brainer to me. I'm guessing it's the iPhone's touch screen technology that finally make this feasible.
The new graphics cards sound great, which will help with things like Photoshop (when I can finally afford one). I don't think I've mentioned this here yet, but I'm an art student now, and Photoshop (and other programs like Flash, Illustrator, and eventually even Maya) is going to be a big part of that. Eventually I'd like to get a laptop that can handle all of that (my trusty old iBook, alas, can not), and these are a step in the right direction.
The new manufacturing process is amazing. I can't be the only person who's held a Macbook Air and marveled at how light and, well, solid they feel. The fit and finish is unparalleled by anything else on the market. Now that's been brought to the Macbooks and Macbook Pros, and I couldn't be happier. My only complaint about the last three Apple laptops I've owned is their fit and finish, which looks nice, but doesn't feel as solid as I'd like. Problem solved, from the sounds of it.
Finally, the prices. As far as I can tell (the store is down now, and the news reports are a bit frantic and off the cuff at the moment) nothing has gone up in price, and a few things have gone down. There's still a plastic Macbook that sells for $1000 now, so there's a cheaper option even if it doesn't have the great new fit and finish. And it sounds like the $1300 Macbook might be just what I'm looking for. A follow up to the 12" Powerbooks (I had one once... it didn't end well, through no fault of Apple or the laptop itself). Booyah!
Of course, all of this will have to be confirmed once the store is back up, and as usual early adopters should beware. Luckily (?) I won't be able to afford a new laptop for some time, so I'm covered!
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2 comments:
The $1300 MacBook is effectively a 13" MacBook Pro, also known as the exact product I was trying to buy last year.
I bought the $1500 MBP instead, and it's a nice machine and I really do like it, but I'm really tempted to try to sell my MBP for the price of the new MacBook and get one of those instead. Hell, I could sell it for that price a drop a couple hundred to get the 4GB RAM/320GB HDD MacBook option.
Seriously, that machine is exactly what I wanted to buy last year. I almost bought a MacBook, but without the video, I couldn't justify it and wound up paying a lot more simply because video was important, but for as much as I like my MBP, it feels too big for a laptop.
I'm thinking I may try to buy the new MacBook sometime in Feb, perhaps as a birthday present.
I'm right there with you, especially now that I get the student discount from Apple.
A 13" MacBook, with 2.4GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, the 320GB hard drive, and AppleCare clocks in at $1907 before tax (that's about $2060 with tax here). That's a lot, but not too much for what you get, in my opinion.
We just started a strict campaign to get all of our debt taken care of in two years (student loans excluded), so it'll take some finagling to make it work, but one way or another I'll do it.
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