Apple introduces 17" MacBook Pro

[Boyd Ostroff]

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

The new 17-inch MacBook Pro includes a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processor that delivers dual-core performance in a breakthrough power-efficient design, making it ideal for use in MacBook Pro's thin and lightweight design. The new 17-inch MacBook Pro is up to five times faster than the 17-inch PowerBook G4, running industry standard benchmarks* and offers an all new system architecture including a 667 MHz front-side bus that is four times as fast as the PowerBook G4 and 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory expandable to 2GB that is twice as fast as the PowerBook G4.

[Chad Terpstra]

Looks very nice. Still waiting for the new PowerMac Intels, though. That will be a good day for me.

[Matt Davis]

It's reassuring to see the return of FW800 in addition to FW400.

It would be absolutely great to find that they're two separate channels so we can ingest on FW400 and dump to our G-RAID FW800 disk. Quite frankly, the G4 1.33 GHz 17" could do this with its chained FW800/400 ports, but aparently it's an unsupported feature.

The ATI's VRAM seems big enough to do Motion proud at 256 Mb. I note there's some HD features in the ATI spec - hopefully doing a nice scale from HDV to the screen spec (1680x1050, which is so close yet so far from 1920x1080 - heck, I'm sure the ATI could do an intelligent scale from 1920x1080i to 1440x1080p if only the screen could match it - or perhaps a nice scale up from 1280x720? No, doesn't work - laptops seem, like Auntie Beeb, to favour 14:9).

I'm still left wondering, though... On the PC front, machines like the Alien Area51 line are pretty phenominal (if fractious). An Alien 51 with Avid Xpress Pro and DNxHD is a bit of a temptation.

Does the MacBook SPIDF do 5.1? Surround sound is one of those blinkers that Apple's had (QT6? Oopsie...) - I was demoing 5.1 18 months ago on a PC laptop with £199 of gear (USB pre-amp and speakers) from PC world, whereas even at IBC, Apple wouldn't get out of bed for less than £2k without speakers. Hopefully THAT attitude has changed.

Has this machine made the transition from 16 bit 48 KHz to 24 bit 96 KHz sound yet? It's the transition from GIF to JPEG for audio.

Is it possible to do a faux sub-bass in such a slim form factor? :) Apple's notebooks are no Samsung*, believe me - but Big Dells can fill a room if necessary. Perhaps all this iPod HiFi nonsense can be put to some good use. I inherited a pair of iMac speakers with a Griffon FW dongle thingy, and those can fill a room - so why's it so hard for a MacBook to do the same?

Welcome, 17" Macbook. Live long and prosper.


* Samsung XT laptops (I bought a load of them) had the weediest sound system ever. They could play movies on internal and VGA unlike VAIOs, they could play nice with USB sound boxes, but if left on their own, Samsungs converted any sound to a rendition on kazoo, tin can on string and dial-a-disc.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Looking good....

I almost clicked the order button (and I still might). But I have a few reservations right now...

1 - What!??? No 1920x1200 display option? Why????

2 - Please, can Apple get with the program and put a numeric keypad on the 17" notebooks instead of leaving us with 60% of a full keyboard. It's not like they don't have the room.

3 - BluRay slimline drives/recorders from Sony, Samsung and Philips come out in June. I'd like to have one of these in my MacBook instead of just another DVD writer.

4 - Why did Apple choose the ATI X1600 GPU? Not bad, but I would have much rather seen the X1800 or the nVidia 7900GS (or dare I dream of the GTX).

Right now, I'm torn between the Dell XPS M1710 and the 17" MBP. I'll be using WinXP on both, but with the Mac I also get OSX without running a hacked version that has all the proper driver support. The Dell is bigger, heavier, uglier, more expensive, etc... But it has a better display and video chipset and a few other things going for it. I think I'll probably go for the 17" Mac, but it's just lacking a few things that I'd like to see so I was able to fight off the impulse to buy. :)

[Paulo Teixeira]

15.4 inch Mac Book Pro with a 2.16 Intel Core Duo with a 120 gig hard drive cost $2899.00.
17 inch stock with the same features cost $2799.00.

The 17 inch Mac Book Pro is 100 dollars less than the 15.4 inch model. I wonder if this is an indication of a price drop on the 15.4 inch Mac Book Pro.

[Evan C. King]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kilgroe

3 - BluRay slimline drives/recorders from Sony, Samsung and Philips come out in June. I'd like to have one of these in my MacBook instead of just another DVD writer.

Those things are like 800 dollars!

[Rob McCardle]

I'm also very, very sorely tempted as well.

But, I'm going to wait for merom.
Hopefully Woodcrest will appear in the towers around the same time.
Have one massive blowout that will see me through for a couple of years.

That's the cunning plan for now, at least.

[George Ellis]

Footnote: TravelPro makes a rolling case that fits our 15.4 wide HP and has enough room for a change of clothes or even a small business laptop in a neoprene zipper shell. We bought one the week before we found out my wife does not have to travel anymore. :)

So, accessorize...

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Originally Posted by Evan C. King

Those things are like 800 dollars!

$1495 estimated MSRP for slot-load, slimline Sony BR notebook drive. :)

Either way, I guess I can just swap one into the system when they become available.