Apple releases new MacBook line

[delerium10101]

So, ya, whee. Apple released another line of Intel macs. The only PowerPC macs left are the PowerMac towers.

As for the new MacBooks, I already posted my thoughts about them on the Inside Mac Games forums, so I\'ll just quote that here (I\'m so lazy)

The speed boost over the iBooks is nice, and defintely welcome. Multiple processors/cores are the way of the future and it\'s nice to see Apple getting on the bandwagon so quickly. Now if devs could just follow suit and start multithreading their apps...

The extra screen real estate is nice, but I have to say, I\'m not sure how much I\'d like a 1280x800 13 inch screen. I run 1280x960 on a 17 inch screen and every now and then it definitely feels like things are a tad too small.

Built in memory: The black MacBook should have a gig to fully justify the price.

Graphics card: As an OpenGL programmer... meh. It isn\'t a step forward, that\'s for sure. But it isn\'t much of a step back either. The GMA 950 and the Radeon 9550 it\'s replacing are pretty equivalent in terms of feature support. The shared memory does present a nice slowdown, but that\'s the price to be paid I guess. The jump from the 9200 to the GMA 950 in the mac mini was much more significant (can you say GLSL shader support?) I would have preferred to see, at the very least, a GeForce Go 5200 FX or Mobility 9600. Hell, a Radeon Xpress 200M would\'ve been better. A graphics card without support for floating point buffers is going to be completely obsolete within the next two years.

All in all though, it\'s perfect for what it is: the casual computer user\'s laptop. It\'ll play the latest shareware games. It\'ll play all the latest \"casual\" games (Sims 2, Civ 4, etc). It\'s *perfect* for people who like to do video blogs on the road. It also makes an awesome laptop for anyone who travels a lot as part of their work. It\'s cheap, speedy, and has enough oomph in it to last a couple of years before you\'d need to seriously consider getting a replacement.

I\'m holding out for a nice deal on the midrange MacBook Pro though. Radeon X1600 with 256MB VRAM. Woo!


Pre-emptive strike: TTR will run on a MacBook.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

[Big-Al]

Pft, I just ordered an Asus A6Ja with a centrino duo prossesor (2.0ghz) and Radeon X1600 with 256mb VRAM (512mb \"hyper memory\"), a 100GB HDD, 2048MB of Ram, 15.4\" screen (1280x800/Color Shine) DVD writer, wifi, and a built in webcam.
I\'ll be running win XP Pro LSD 2 on it.

Macs are for l337 people that don\'t have to run windows aps...

i\'ll have mine on friday evening

[tomcat ha]

Actually big al that is quite awesome how much was it? do you have ddr2 ram?

[Reno]

\"Macs are for l337 people that don\'t have to run windows aps...\"
Except for when you install windows on the intelmacs and run it there, right?

[Big-Al]

oh.

?1799
and yeah... DDR2 with a frequence of 533mhz i think.

(I get 1 GB of ram free... if i\'m lucky i might get the prce down some more, but I doubt it, and as I understand it, the 2 1GB meomry sticks will be working in dual channel mode. I think.)

a review:

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4359

now the reason for me getting a new laptop? well, my dad broke my old one an Asus A6G, still under 1 year old, he literaly broke the screen. but he needs another machine anywy, so he\'ll be using that one with a \"bigger screen that he can actuarly see\" and i\'ll get a new laptop

[Smithcraft]

Anyway, the whole Intel Graphics deal, again kills the deal for me. First the mini, and now the replacement for the iBook.

Phhhh!

SC

[delerium10101]

In the mini the intel integrated graphics were an improvement. In the MacBook they\'re just kinda... there. The performance difference because of GPU will be pretty negligeable.