New macbooks next tuesday

[beyond dead]

yeah guys... im an apple advocate, but im very disappointed in the new release. glad i bought my macbook before the release. they will still have the old version in stock, so hurry to pick one up if you want one!!! I dont even like the metal casing. who needs a good graphics card on a portable with a 13" display??
macbook air: fail
new macbook: fail

seems that apple is gearing themselves more towards the average computer user, tailoring the comps to word processing, gaming and web browsing. hopefully they wont lose their pro users

 

[Kazrog]

Major fail, no firewire on new macbooks, only FireWire 800 on the new macbook pro. Will be interesting to see how the pro-audio world responds

Seriously, fuck Apple. This is retarded. They have gone too far - how can a "pro" machine NOT have Firewire??? My current MacBook (black MacBook from 2006, not Pro) has Firewire 400. I love it. My fucking May 2001 iBook had Firewire 400 - it's the reason I bought it at the time - they finally added it, the earlier iBooks lacked it. Now they take it away from the MacBook line (the logical successor to the iBook) and leave us only with Firewire 800 on the Pros? So I would have to spend at least $1999.99 USD on a new machine AND still have to get one of these to use my interfaces and drives?

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fw_adapter.html

They have lost me completely as a loyal customer since 1998. Steve Jobs was great for Apple for a few years, but they need somebody new - somebody who isn't trying to dumb everything down. Fuck that guy.

Meanwhile, Mac OS X is the only operating system out there that is acceptable to me. Windows is beyond horrible, and Linux is just not there for doing pro audio yet. My primary DAW machine is a hackintosh and my next laptop will be as well. If Apple can't figure out how to make good hardware, I will continue to do it myself and run their OS on unsupported hardware. Pick your components right and OS X runs like a dream for less than half the hardware cost - in other words, using the same components Apple uses but paying less for them than what Apple (over) charges.

 

[beyond dead]

ftr, fw 400 can be plugged into fw 800 port. but still, the entry level macbook should sport fw fa sho

 

[Metaltastic]

Really? The ports are shaped differently, so there's an adaptor availabe?

EDIT: nevermind, just saw what Kazrog posted. Still, though, that's a really annoying thing to have sticking out of ones laptop... :Smug:

 

[LydonB]

I have no idea why they dropped FireWire 400. I guess they think it is old technology and they are trying to move away from it? The only issue with that is that so much stuff is still FW 400.

Really dumb of them to do that though.

 

[Kazrog]

Apple invented Firewire 400. It's one of the best innovations in the history of the company and it is still in use and relevant today. USB 2.0 is horrible for audio.

 

[beyond dead]

is it very hard to get mac osx running on a custom pc?

 

[Kazrog]

is it very hard to get mac osx running on a custom pc?

Totally depends, my experience was pretty easy. Keep in mind this is against Apple's TOS and probably illegal, but as the owner of 6 Macs in 10 years, and somebody who has purchased every release of Mac OS X (even the Public Beta) and every release of iLife, I don't feel bad about hackintoshing. Apple needs to learn a lesson that they can't fuck with their core, pro market. The moment they start releasing good hardware at reasonable prices again, I will switch back to the real thing.

I highly recommend checking out the InsanelyMac.com Forums if you're interested in hackintoshing. The only drawback to it is that you are at your own risk, not supported by Apple, and you can't use the Software Update feature. For most of us, Software Update is something we have to disable if we want to ensure our DAW rig stays stable and compatible, so that's not a big deal.

If you ever need to upgrade the OS version on a hackintosh, you have to back up your boot drive and nuke/pave. I also HIGHLY recommend building a machine specifically to do this, or hackintoshing a machine that is known to work well for this.

 

[beyond dead]

thanks for the advice!!! i own several macs, and work as a support agent for them, (for little pay lol) so i def. wont feel bad. hope steve jobs isnt reading this lol

 

[Transputer]

2003 Apple buy emagic and do their thing - result no PC Logic Audio after 5.5.1 - their solution - buy a Mac, then with PowerPC...and rubbish Intel all the time !

2006 PowerPC can't get em fast enough without watercooling (G5) jump ship to Intel (and then make out that that Intel are now Great!) so we are all basically back on PC hardware to run Logic just like in 2003 except it's called an Intel Mac ! and BTW you have to buy your PC from Apple and still no Logic Audio for PC...

2007 produce laptops with crappy firewire ports threads abound the internet and some perhaps realise that the old Apple is long gone - I'm talking about the PowerPC Apple and Nubus Apple of old... make a ton of ipods etc (don't worry about replacing the battery on 'em either unless we Apple do it for you, whilst i can pop some triple A batteries in my Sanyo personal cassette player from 1984 and crank a tape 23 years after i bought the thing !)

2008 drop firewire on entry level macbooks - after forcing firewire down our throats in the first place - my Digi 001 from 2001 still works - sitting in a PCI slot in an old Pentium 3 1Ghz ! but Digi brought out the 002 on firewire cos "PCI was dead".

Anyone notice a pattern here....

 

[t-rave]

the biggest problem could be the nvidia chipset on the new macbook pro..Has this even been tested with alot of audio hardware?..I thought Digidesign doesnt work on nvidia..could be wrong though...

Strange that Apple partners with Apogee to make cool affordable firewire interfaces ( Duet + macbook + logic and Garage band....affordable all in one solution) ..and now make you spend arond 2 grand and an adapter to run a cheap duet...

 

[Transputer]

The new chipset may well be troublesome - over on the duc there are calls for a compatibility warning or confirmation of compatibility.

Guess it comes down to what Apple wants to do nowadays - sell consumer junk. No one can have missed the recent comments by Jobs and Woz about wanting the mac-faithful to ask for stuff not just worshipping at the altar of apple ? But the audio community is so small, the dollar comes first and audio nerds asking for a port for a firewire interface don't get a look in...

 

[Trep]

I like the look of the old ones better as well. Spec wise, these new ones havent upped anything enuf to impress me.

I guess its not just apple its the world, but i hate the obsession with things getting smaller and smaller, sound old fashioned, but ie the mac book Air, I cannot think of a Possible situation where a Reg Macbook is too big so a AIR is needed.

I still Love Macs tho,

Once u Go Mac, you never go back- lol was that too cheesy haha

 

[aramism]

did anyone else not see this coming? as the company skyrockets in popularity and into the mainstream, every tv character can be seen with a MB or MBP with the pearl lit "apple" logo in a strarbucks. it's become a pop culture staple of this decade so apple is trying to capitalize while they are still hot. i don't care about the pop culture shit but like others pointed out, the big deal here is that they still need to keep making quality stuff for the pro consumer which has kept apple alive through a good chunk of its existence.

 

[Sloan]

applol.

 

[Let it burn...]

dropping firewire 400 is like killing your first born and then throwing his remains in a pit full of hungry dogs.

not done

 

[::XeS::]

This is the solution http://efi-x.com/index.php?language=english

 

[Sloan]

i thought firewire 800 was backwards compatible with 400????
wat

 

[beyond dead]

now the new 24" displays that go wth the new macbooks... they are pretty sweet. would consider one for a previous gen of macbook.

 

[Kazrog]

So I wrote Apple the following email:

The new MacBooks are beautiful. But no Firewire? What were you thinking? Firewire is essential to music and video production. Not everyone who does music and video production can afford a MacBook pro - in fact most can barely afford the MacBook. And we wanted two mouse buttons - not zero!

I understand that Steve Jobs is obsessed with elimination, simplicity, elegant design - but when that obsession starts to eat away at the essential features we rely on every day, it defeats the purpose of having a machine as powerful as the new MacBooks.

Bottom line: I can get a laptop from Dell or Acer for far less money with onboard Firewire, no problem, with comparable specs. But they won't run Mac OS X.

Apple built the perfect laptop in 2001 with the introduction of the original PowerBook G4 Titanium. Since then everything has been a variation on that theme - with some nice improvements - don't screw it up! Firewire 400 is here to stay, whether Apple wants it to or not.