Macbook Pro Up Date To Day

[ThaiLife]

Just spotted that the MacBook Pro has to day been up dated

MacBook Pro Up date LINK

Just wondered if any one was thinking of getting one of these up dated versions, or is using a MacBook Pro at the moment and could comment on it please

Thanks

[negreanu]

Yeh. Will be picking up a 2.66ghz i7 15" model in the next 2-3 weeks. Will get 8GB ram from OWC half the price of Apple ram and just as good.

Drive bay will put in a 1tb western digital and take out the optical drive and replace it with a Intel 160GB SSD for OS and Apps.

Ref the new model. CPU is around 20% faster over the same speed core2duo. Graphics card is showing around 25% improvement on the 9600GT on the previous model.

Biggest improvement for me is the option to select the higher res screen on the 15" model. Always thought Apple has always been two conservative on the 13" and 15" models when it came to resolution.

Overall happy with the new model only disappointment was hoping for IPS screen same as the new iMacs and iPad....maybe next year.

[nikster]

Biggest improvement for me is the option to select the higher res screen on the 15" model. Always thought Apple has always been two conservative on the 13" and 15" models when it came to resolution.

Yes, that's the biggest improvement. I have a 1 year old 17" and don't think the update is quite worth it for me, but what stands out compared to mine:

- 15" now has great battery life too (8 - 9 hours they say, realistically probably 6-7)

- 15" got a high res matte screen - together these two improvements make it nearly as good as a 17" at a much smaller footprint

- Core i7 - I am disappointed there is no quad i7 on offer, though I do realize that the reason is battery life / power consumption. But - if they had a quad laptop, I'd buy it in an instant.

- 17" is a lot cheaper than before

- Seamless switching of integrated graphics and dedicated graphics card. This is new and this being Apple they did it perfectly. When apps use certain 3D frameworks, the machine automatically (and seamlessly) turns on the high performance GPU. When they're not in use, the GPU is turned off for a significant gain in battery life. Previously, the GPU could be turned on in preferences but it required a log out to switch.

My main disappointment: DVD drives on all models no option to replace it with a SSD. My current setup, and I think it was negreanu who prompted this, is a SSD in the optical tray and a HD as the main drive for 580GB of total capacity and SSD speed. Haven't missed the DVD once. This setup probably makes my 17" faster than any of the BTO options with hard drives in day to day use.

[nikster]

Yeh. Will be picking up a 2.66ghz i7 15" model in the next 2-3 weeks. Will get 8GB ram from OWC half the price of Apple ram and just as good.

I noticed that the 8GB upgrade now costs $400 at Apple. Are you saying OWC has it for $200?

Could you post your upgrade experiences once you are done? I am especially concerned about TimeMachine and my 2 hard disks. Is it going to restore the SSD to the new SSD and the HD to the new HD, and keep all the symlinks working?

I kinda think the symlinks will probably break. My SSD is only 80GB so I symlinked some heavyweight items from the SSD to the HD. Example iPhone backups totalling 6GB; they were in Application Support, I moved them to the HD and symlinked the directory.

With just one hard disk, you open the new machine, click on "restore from TimeMachine backup", connect your backup hard disk, and once it's done copying you are ready to work. The whole process of setting up a new Mac to be a perfect mirror of your current working environment takes an hour of unattended copying. One of my favorite features. However, with the SSD mod this is probably going to be a little bit more involved...

[negreanu]

Yeh Apple just dropped the price of ram 2 days ago to around US$450 for 8GB - so the above comment regarding half the price does not stand however it did until 2 days ago.

Price for 8GB at OWC is US$376.00. So still cheaper but the time you add postage if you use Shipito is probably another $25.00 so saving of only US$50 now. Apple finally realised that consumers are not going to stand for their rip off prices anymore.

Regarding upgrades with the SSD and HD combo. Never used time machine for that. I always just take the SSD and HD out the old macbook pro and put it in the new macbook pro and nothing changes. That's the beauty of mac os x no need to worry about drivers etc. etc. in fact I have done the same with a iMac SSD from Macbook Pro into a iMac.

Other way to do it is use a external usb case to use Superduper! to make exact clone of the SSD and the current HD.

Edited April 15, 2010 by negreanu

[nikster]

I think they dropped the 8GB upgrade price with this release of MBPs, from $800 to $400 (US Apple store). About time, too! In all fairness, at the time the first 8GB configurations were released a bit over 1 year ago, $800 was actually really cheap - street price usually above that.

The Thai Apple store lists it for $450 which is fair enough since that includes VAT. VAT in the SF bay area where I live is now 9.5 %, so the difference is $10.

I guess i could just move the drives around and/or make clones, that's easy enough. Just not quite as magical as the TimeMachine recovery I believe TM would actually work, I'd just recover the system volume first, then the other volume. But I will have to open the MBP and swap the opti bay first thing. Would be awesome if there was a shop here to do that for me, but the iStudio in Chiang Mai where I live can't be trusted.

Will be interesting to see what brand SSDs Apple is going to put in the new MBPs. Judging by the sizes it's not Intel which is a bit of a letdown.

Edited April 15, 2010 by nikster

[nikster]

"build the system of your dreams" indeed...

Edited April 15, 2010 by nikster

[negreanu]

Will be interesting to see what brand SSDs Apple is going to put in the new MBPs. Judging by the sizes it's not Intel which is a bit of a letdown.

Believe it's samsung drives. With no Trim support.

I still think at this time it's probably best to stick with Gen2 Intel drives OR haven't read enough reports on them yet the OWC offering. Which ON PAPER looks to out perform the Intel Gen2 and with some intriguing features. But then again it's US$800 for 200GB

Ref the dream machine above. Will be going similar but the SSD and RAM and 1TB Western digital still come from OWC - So I think with that my dream machine is better than your dream machine

Edited April 15, 2010 by negreanu

[nikster]

We'll see would be hard to believe that they'd charge people over $1000 for a drive with no Trim support, then again it's a bit of a misleading feature since a drive with proper garbage collection wouldn't need TRIM.

The system of my dreams will remain just that, a dream... I think I'll sit out this upgrade and catch the next one. The SSD+HD solution is much cheaper and better than a single SSD so if I was going to get a new machine, it would be with the cheapest HD option since i would replace it anyway.

What SSD are you going to use? An Intel X-25M G2 160? That would be my weapon of choice, I think... then I could leave my music and various symlinked things in the Application Support folder all on the SSD.

[negreanu]

Will be going with Gen2 intel 160gb ssd and the WD 1TB 12.5mm drive for storage.

[mshoichi]

Some great technical knowledge here : )

I'll try to provide a different angle with some general comments. Purchased a 13" MBP a year ago, after years of prodding by my friend and 10 or so years of PC experience (way, way back I did tech support for Win9.x). For me, I made a drastic switch and swapped my primary work computer for a 2.4ghz machine.

It took some time to get used to and while my productivity suffered for awhile, had an opportunity to use a friend's 3yr? old MBP running Snow Leopard. Night and day difference literally - resolution, "speed" (in all senses), battery life. I also have a year old Dell XPS m1330 on Windows 7 for some reason still, but it really wasn't until I used this that I appreciated OSX again - though a bit slower, much more stable.

Anyways, since this isn't a platform comparison, I did briefly ponder the new MBPs and the possibilities. Since I use an external monitor and bluetooth accessories, I felt the change was minimal except the battery life. Even then, my laptop spends 80% of its life plugged in. At least until I read about "similar" specs to what my friend's upgraded, albeit older, MBP was using.

Wow, I'm just starting to ramble. Long story short, I can't reconcile spending money right now considering how I use my laptop. My professional life is also taking a turn where in some ways, it could be argued I'm in less need of a more "capable" machine. Will see in 3 years, that's nearly a lifetime with technology.

Edited April 16, 2010 by mshoichi

[negreanu]

Wow, I'm just starting to ramble. Long story short, I can't reconcile spending money right now considering how I use my laptop. My professional life is also taking a turn where in some ways, it could be argued I'm in less need of a more "capable" machine. Will see in 3 years, that's nearly a lifetime with technology.

The i5 and i7's processors and 330 Graphics would certainly future proof you for a 2-3 years roughly.

However as beign discussed above stick a SSD and double the ram on your 13" MBP - believe me it will be like you have just bought a completely new machine. You do not appreciate the performance increase from a SSD in mac os x until you have actually used it. Really is the best bang for your buck in my opinion over all performance increasing components such as Higher RPM Hd, Ram, CPU Upgrade.

[gotglue]

All i can say is ....typical fkkin' Apple!..... MBP 13" 2.26 6mnths old. You wankshaft Jobs!!!

[nikster]

All i can say is ....typical fkkin' Apple!..... MBP 13" 2.26 6mnths old. You wankshaft Jobs!!!

They dared to improve their machines and lower prices! A scandal, really!

That said, I will skip this generation. There are reports that the dedicated graphics card might be turning on when you don't expect or want it here.

Worse, there is no way to turn off the automatic switch on of the graphics card.

I am getting a feeling that this has to do with the integrated graphics in the i5 / i7 processors. These are perhaps slower than the integrated NVidia chipsets on older models (would love to see confirmation of that, maybe on PC-based machines - on Macs, you can't test it since the dedicated graphics turns on automatically whenever needed). The new generation would look bad if it's slower than the old one, so Apple implemented the automatic switching. Problem is, that decreases battery life.

It all goes back to Intel and their decision to make the on-chip graphics for the i5 and i7 mandatory.

I have my MBP mainly for the great battery life, and I never use the discrete graphics.

Edited April 24, 2010 by nikster

[hughden]

Will be going with Gen2 intel 160gb ssd and the WD 1TB 12.5mm drive for storage.

Is it possible to buy the SSD drive in Thailand? If not, can you recommend a good site to buy from?

Thanks.

[negreanu]

Yes available in Fortune and pantip. Don't know the latest thailand prices but expect higher than the us price.

Best place to order all memory and drives for shipping to Thailand is OWC macsales.com

Although if you are ordering from OWC you might want to consider their mercury extreme SSD which has outstanding performance and getting great reviews.

Edited April 24, 2010 by negreanu

[negreanu]

For those debating the i7 or i5 MBP, looking at barefeats.com latest comparison benchmarks there does not seem to be much in it at all.

For a 9% premium on price for the i7 although you do get a 512mb GPU instead of 256mb it is fairly hard to justify it.

Even with the upgraded memory on the graphics cards the FPS's are still very close.

[hughden]

Yes available in Fortune and pantip. Don't know the latest thailand prices but expect higher than the us price.

Best place to order all memory and drives for shipping to Thailand is OWC macsales.com

Although if you are ordering from OWC you might want to consider their mercury extreme SSD which has outstanding performance and getting great reviews.

Thanks.

[nikster]

Honestly, these are a bit of a dud. I think because there is no option to TURN OFF the discrete graphics card. The automatic switching will never really do what you want. E.g. you are running Photoshop, then leave the app open - guess what discrete graphics remain enabled, and the battery life will go down to 3 hours. So if you want battery life, you need to carefully manage which apps are open and which are not. Hopefully they will fix this in software, with an off switch, should be easy enough.

The display is apparently awesome though, thorough review here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3669/apples-...splay-evaluated

Core i7 uses 10% more battery than Core i5, which is a bit surprising. Core i5 is slightly better than Core 2 Duo, which is amazing considering it's faster. So I'd definitely recommend the Core i5.

Edited April 26, 2010 by nikster

[negreanu]

Standby for user hacked third party add-on in prefs pane to control graphics card in use manually. Or indeed I can see apple releasing this on their own.

[nikster]

Standby for user hacked third party add-on in prefs pane to control graphics card in use manually. Or indeed I can see apple releasing this on their own.

Yeah they'll probably do this sooner rather than later, or indeed 3rd party hacks will appear to do this. Once that happens these will get an enthusiastic 2 thumbs up from me

[nikster]

Standby for user hacked third party add-on in prefs pane to control graphics card in use manually. Or indeed I can see apple releasing this on their own.

Yeah they'll probably do this sooner rather than later, or indeed 3rd party hacks will appear to do this. Once that happens these will get an enthusiastic 2 thumbs up from me

And... here it is!!

http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/

I sent an email to the developer. He told me that this utility can force the graphics to be Intel at all times. in fact, that's the main feature. He started writing it within 24 hours of receiving his new MBP because he was annoyed that Transmission (bit torrent client) would trigger the GPU and kill battery life. This is exactly what I thought would happen as soon as I read about the auto switch feature... and thinking about it more, a manual switch is preferable even to the best automatic, because the computer can't know what I want. Too much depends on external circumstances. A manual switch is perfect. And now we have one!

So my revised opinion of the new MBP range: Two thumbs up!!

Edited May 19, 2010 by nikster

[anotheruser]

My MBP 15" 2.4 is over a year old now. For my needs I can't see a bump in specs making any difference. If I upgrade will it make Asian networks load faster? For a few years now computers have been strong enough. I don't chase specs. I think the latest one is great but I will buy it when mine dies. If I bought that computer it looks identical to what I have and for my needs it would not perform any faster.

I would spend my money on a quicker connection not a machine that can render it quicker. My uses are basically limited by net speeds not by CPU speeds. Okay I want one, Nikster, please buy me one. Please, pretty please, with sugar on top.

[nikster]

Well the gfx is faster, the bus is faster, the CPU is (much) faster, so I think you'd notice a difference. Battery life is better too. All in all, it's evolutionary changes though, rather than revolutionary. For a 2 year old notebook, you might want to replace it. Or if you use your computer for work every day and just like to have the latest gadgets. It's hard to justify for me too. Ok another "good" reason is games - now that Steam has arrived on Macs, games are suddenly much more interesting - you can just download them, and many are quite cheap - so the automatic GPU switching will come in handy. Logging out and back in just doesn't do it for me (2009 MBP here).

But if you have this older MBP and add either 4GB more RAM, or an SSD, you will see more real world speed gains than with a stock model of the latest.

[negreanu]

Got the 15" 2.66ghz i7 330M GT 512mb HR this morning - lightning fast. just finished the 1TB upgrade for the optical bay and the intel SSD in the HD Bay.

I went with the high-res glossy screen option. The extra screen real estate is a godsend. It's about time Apple increased their Res on the 15" models.

Highly recommended for anyone undecided about it. Now time for Steam

Edited May 25, 2010 by negreanu

[nikster]

Envious!! At least I have a new iPad to tide me over..

How did you get a 1TB disk in the optibay? Do you have the newmodeus adapter? I am tempted to do this, but only with the opti bay mod, wouldn't want to give up on that... I imagine I'd revert my 17" MBP to stock before selling it.

As for SSDs, the new king of the hill is the OWC mercury extreme - lowest power usage, best long time performance... beats even the X-25M, and shows no performance deterioration over time.

[negreanu]

Envious!! At least I have a new iPad to tide me over..

How did you get a 1TB disk in the optibay? Do you have the newmodeus adapter? I am tempted to do this, but only with the opti bay mod, wouldn't want to give up on that... I imagine I'd revert my 17" MBP to stock before selling it.

As for SSDs, the new king of the hill is the OWC mercury extreme - lowest power usage, best long time performance... beats even the X-25M, and shows no performance deterioration over time.

Yeh the OWC is an awesome drive really want one but I could not justify the price increase over the intel after shipping etc. maybe in a couple of months Just using it for Mac OSX everything else is on the 1TB drive. The thought of 2 480GB OWC drives in Raid 0 in the macbook pro makes my mouth water

The 1TB is in the Optical bay just now - you can use either MCE optibay upgrade or Maxupgrades.com kit either works fine in all the UNIBODY macbook pro's and indeed the white macbook.

Dilema now is lose the safe sleep option by putting the SSD in the optical bay and the 1TB in the HD bay. The reason being weight distribution with the 1TB and the adaptor in the optical bay the Macbook Pro is ever so slightly top left heavy resulting in about 1mm of the bottom right side not contacting the desk surface. Does not really bother me that much but....

Edited May 25, 2010 by negreanu

[nikster]

Yeh the OWC is an awesome drive really want one but I could not justify the price increase over the intel after shipping etc. maybe in a couple of months Just using it for Mac OSX everything else is on the 1TB drive. The thought of 2 480GB OWC drives in Raid 0 in the macbook pro makes my mouth water

The 1TB is in the Optical bay just now - you can use either MCE optibay upgrade or Maxupgrades.com kit either works fine in all the UNIBODY macbook pro's and indeed the white macbook.

Dilema now is lose the safe sleep option by putting the SSD in the optical bay and the 1TB in the HD bay. The reason being weight distribution with the 1TB and the adaptor in the optical bay the Macbook Pro is ever so slightly top left heavy resulting in about 1mm of the bottom right side not contacting the desk surface. Does not really bother me that much but....

Raid0 with 2 480GB SSDs... wow... that would pretty much guarantee you saturate the SATA bus, isn't it still limited to 3Gbps?

So the 1TB is heavy? Well, it's a lot of data so no wonder

[negreanu]

Yeh but there is 2 sata controllers 3Gbps per controller is my understanding.

[nikster]

Another new feature on these new MBPs: Inertia scrolling. I am used to scrolling on iPhone and iPad, so I believe this will work very well.

Also new is support for inertial scrolling on the Multi-Touch glass trackpad. If you have an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, the scrolling works the same way: swipe your finger up or down to scroll through a document, and the momentum continues the scrolling until it slowly stops. An Apple representative said that this feature is unique to the new MacBook Pros and is not available through a software update on older Mac laptops.