New MacBook

[Ben]

Now I wouldn't mind one of these, in an ideal world, but can anyone explain why the black one costs so much more than the white one with the same specs?

http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html

:computer2:

[Marbella]

Politician's answer from Apple although it is true it looks very good in black:

So now, what is it about the black paint job that costs £90? Why the difference in price? We went back asked Apple. Here is what they said.
"The 2.0 GHz black MacBook is our most advanced notebook ever and deserves something special, and we think it looks stunning in black."


http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2006/05/16/apple_announces_the_macbook_including_a_90_paint_j ob.html

[cubix]

Hah

well the black has a 20gb bigger HD, but still

If you go to options, and choose 120GB HD for each one it works out to:

120 GB HD in White is $1549

120 GB HD in Black is $1699

or $150 price jump.

But this is apple we are talking about, it's all about the looks

[Ben]

But this is apple we are talking about, it's all about the looks

... and it does look very very nice....

[Alan]

And I want to know why my PC has a 3.4GHz processor, and these Apple things are supposed to be using the same processors but are running at 1.5-2GHz.

How does that work? Are they slower processors or what?


I would buy OS X if I could for my PC, but I would want to run Linux and Windows too . . . yeah, it's possible, but the hardware's too expensive.

[deecree]

What I find funny is if you were to buy an IBM Compatible laptop, you'd buy any colour but black. If you were to by an Apple laptop, it now seems we'd all buy the black one.

I guess Apple can make anything cool.

[Jimmy]

Now I wouldn't mind one of these, in an ideal world, but can anyone explain why the black one costs so much more than the white one with the same specs?

http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html

:computer2:

Maybe because BLACK transmits heat much more easily, they have to increase the quality of the insulation:

¡Ay caramba! MacBook is hot:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/05/15/macbook/

Maybe Ben can get one by convincing Marina that she can also use it in Cuisine from Spain to roast pimientos !!! :p ;D

[Ben]

Maybe Ben can get one by convincing Marina that she can also use it in Cuisine from Spain to roast pimientos !!! :p ;D

Not even that will convince Marina on this one I think!

[gary]

And I want to know why my PC has a 3.4GHz processor, and these Apple things are supposed to be using the same processors but are running at 1.5-2GHz.

How does that work? Are they slower processors or what?


I would buy OS X if I could for my PC, but I would want to run Linux and Windows too . . . yeah, it's possible, but the hardware's too expensive.
You can now run all three platforms on a Mac - start saving!!

[gary]

Now I wouldn't mind one of these, in an ideal world, but can anyone explain why the black one costs so much more than the white one with the same specs?

Can you explain why my son pays £150 for a pair of jeans that have been ripped, distressed and damaged before they leave the shop?

Compare the price of the iPod to the other MP3 players that are about. The reasoning is probably the same - it costs more but youve gotta have it!

Did your mum ever buy cheap ketchup and try to pass it off as Heinz?
I bet you turned your nose up at it...
Only Kellogs make truly delicious cornflakes and only Colmans make decent English mustard.
Generic ibuprofen is 35p for 24 in the Asda but people still pay £2.60 for a 24 pack of Nurofen - and they are next to each other on the shelf - the more expensive product is perceived to be superior.
Its the perception that people hold that makes them willing to pay extra and Apple think that people will perceive the black MacBook as cooler - no rock star will be seen without one on the road! (Especially Bono who appears to be up Steve Jobs' arse)

I have a 15" MacBook Pro and its great... runs no hotter than the average Wintel laptop. No noises and no whining... works fine

BUT For good arguments faced with feminine resistance to purchase of a new laptop - the mac ships with Garage Band which makes creating and editing podcasts simple and the iMovie video editing application (also free) is a dream They both integrates with iDVD, iPhoto, iWeb and iTunes(also all free) to produve incredibly professional output from a little or no IT savvy.

You will need to buy MS Office, but the student and teacher version is only About £100 - if you cant afford it use Open Office for free or online free word processing at www.writely.com (http://www.writely.com)

Alan - According to what I have read you can overclock the processors but its a lappy and dissipating the heat is harder I suppose. (Plus youve just paid an arm and a leg for the thing, you immediately invalidate your warranty and anyway what will I actually do with the 26 nanoseconds I save in processing time?)

[Ben]

Can you explain why my son pays £150 for a pair of jeans that have been ripped, distressed and damaged before they leave the shop?

Compare the price of the iPod to the other MP3 players that are about. The reasoning is probably the same - it costs more but youve gotta have it!

It's all in the marketing, and we all fall for it every time! Though I would lean towards a white one, if I were ever to get one of course? But don't those white mac laptops get really dirty?

[gary]

But don't those white mac laptops get really dirty?

No, Ive got an old iBook thats about 4 years old now (and still runs MacOs 10.4 - needed a RAM upgrade and its not the fastest thing in the world but once the apps open its fine.) They are made of the same semi shiny material as the white iPods - a barely moist cloth does the trick and they look like new.

I would recommend a cover to keep it pristine. Tucano make a nice range as do Second Skin. Apple Store (is there one in Madrid?) have a good range

HINT: If you buy a MacBook online and you are involved in any way with a school or college then you can use the Education Store which in the UK is usually 5 - 8% cheaper than Retail.

You simply have to fill in the name and town of your school - (actually you can type anything you like cos no one actually checks!) So anyone who has friends or relatives that have school age children more or less has a carte blanch.

Recommend Apple Care if you can afford it in one lump but it doesnt cover accidental damage.

PC World UK (and I presume ESP) will match the Education price if you push them and do offer monthly cover (which includes accidental damage ) - I pay £11.60 per month for A £1600 15" MacBook Pro - MacBook should be cheaper. (My son worked there at the time and I got 10% off the price of cover aso the actual cost would probably be circa £13). Like all insureance its a gamble, you bet whether or not your machine will get dropped or screw up.

If it seems like a lot of money on cover remember a busted screen is over £250. I dropped my 12" PowrBook before Christmas, I claimed on my house insurance and was given £1150 towards the cost of a replacement, (which was more than the PowerBook was actually hasve cost to buy a new one) so I upgraded to the MacBook Pro. The upshot is that the insurance company doubled my excess.

So if you drop your laptop say every 3 years you have almost automatic upgrades (if you're that cynical!)

[richardksa]

Eve, in the garden of Eden, got an Apple - and look at the trouble that caused!!;D

[gary]

Eve, in the garden of Eden, got an Apple - and look at the trouble that caused!!;D

Yeah but the new ones are plug and play!

[greytop]

Yeah but the new ones are plug and play!

So was Adam. That was the problem.

[Alan]

Be careful though. Apple's customer care isn't up to much.

[Alan]

You can now run all three platforms on a Mac - start saving!!

You can run all three platforms on a PC ;)

http://www.osx86project.org/

[gary]

Be careful though. Apple's customer care isn't up to much.
Is that heresay Alan? - it is the sort of thing that showroom salesmen have been saying to people for years, (along with - theres no software for a mac). Fact is that they make a bigger markup by selling you mid priced PC then the ram upgrades that you need to make it do anything, then all the integrated software for editing audio, video, photos that they conveniently forget are bundled with every Mac. Engineers hate them cos they rarely go wrong so theres no corn to be made repairing them. They have only ever had 1 virus which affected 70 machines before it got stamped on.

My son has a 23" Apple monitor which we bought just over three tears ago. One of the backlights went. He called Apple Care who, although they had no record of his registration of the monitor and the serial they had referred to an IMac, were happy to recieve a photo and our documentation and bend over backwards to straighten out the mess. This was probably caused by the company we dealt with shuffling kit & serials to make a quota. This process began within seven days of the end of the three year warranty expiring and carried on for ten days, after which they sent a box bu UPS to collect, repaired it and sent it back within seven working days.

Over the years we have had a noisy drive, a knackered iPod shuffle and several pairs of white 'mug-me' earphones replaced. All except the drive were probably our fault but Apple sent replacements by courrier and a bag to return the faulty part. you can just go on line and request replacements and they arrive....usually next day.

To extend your usual 1 year (many electicals are 90 days) warranty to three years parts, labour and courrier service cover on a Mac Mini or iMac is £129 and £139 respectively. err... less than the price of half of lager per week I think!!

On a top of the range maxed out desktop unit as per the stuff the pros use to edit HD DVD the price is £199 - but if you can afford £11,798.01 then you can go the extra yard!

You can run all three platforms on a PC
Yeah, but why would you want to - they're so ugly!!

[gary]

So was Adam. That was the problem.
Fair point - does this make Microsoft and Bill Gatesssssssss the Serpent in this allegory?

[Alan]

No, it's not heresay :). Some of my uni work was buggered up due to a faulty mac and the long response time. We had to pay for the faulty hard drive in order to give it to the data recovery people. It's based on first hand experience I'm afraid. I know parts can fail, but it's the way you handle it afterwards that counts. The Mac support team together with their Scottish contractors need to do some work to earn my trust again.

But, I would say the same about Acer and Medion - two other companies I have also had trouble with. But their profit margins are razor thin. I'd expect more from Apple.

I'm not picking on the Macs - they're very elegant machines and I wouldn't mind owning one :)

[pablo]

Being an Apple Systems Engineer, I feel obligated to post on this thread. Y'all are right, it's only a color and 20GB hd difference for the extra dinero. I personally would go white, but I'm a bargain hunter. Of course, that's why I'd get a Mac over a PC as well. I see lots of value not included (or not possible) in your standard non-upgraded PC: integrated iSight, internal Mic, Audio Line-in, FireWire, iLife suite (Garageband alone is enough to persuade many folks), language / keyboard integration, voiceover, screen reader, zoom, open source software (OpenOffice for example will save $500 on Microsoft Office), Spotlight, AppleScript, shell scripting, and on and on. For a photographer, Aperture alone is enough reason to go Mac.

As for processor speed, they are a bit faster than suggested above, being 1.83 Duo-core at the slowest, but the real test is performance. I have Windows 2003 Server running via BootCamp on a MacBook Pro, and it screams. The biggest problem is finding ctrl-alt-delete without an external keyboard :). Also, check out the beta of Parallels: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/ . Wanna run Windows 3.1? Go ahead. Redhat? Fine. OS/2? Sure. Parallels still needs work, but when it's ready for prime time, why get anything else? It's a single machine that can run any OS and thus any app.

P.S. If you are a professional user (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Aperture, LiveType, Gamer), get the MacBook Pro, iMac, or wait for new PowerMacs. The MacBook and Mac Mini's aren't for you.

[Ben]

P.S. If you are a professional user (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Aperture, LiveType, Gamer), get the MacBook Pro, iMac, or wait for new PowerMacs. The MacBook and Mac Mini's aren't for you.

Wow, I'm more convinced than ever... are you sure you don't work for Apple's marketing department ;):D

Two questions, what are the PowerMacs, and what is LiveType?

[Brian]

You can run all three platforms on a PC ;)

http://www.osx86project.org/

Very interesting, but isn't OSX basically built on a Linux/Unix kernel, anyway? Maybe Freebsd? It was just a matter of time before you could throw it on an Intel box- harware/driver support being the biggest sticking issue.

[Brian]

Fair point - does this make Microsoft and Bill Gatesssssssss the Serpent in this allegory?

Folks like to pile onto Bill Gates, but he's driven the personal computer market to a place where it's affordable for almost anyone to own a pc, or to have access to one.

People do like to beat up on Microsoft, myself included from time to time, but without them, we'd only have very expensive computers, and much fewer people would own them.

And I'm not drinking the Redmond Kool-Aid, either. I just see value in what Gates has done for the market.

[Brian]

I'm very much a PC guy, but I love the new Mac advertising campaign!

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

In the business sector, the only folks that I see using Macs are graphical designers, musicians, and other visual/audio artists. Apple has clearly set the precedent in that realm.

But as far as support for the enterprise, I'd much rather stick to the Intel/Windows domain.

[gary]

It's based on first hand experience I'm afraid.

Fair Enough. Im sorry your experiences have not been as positive as ours. I am very aware of the riskof losing valuable data. When my PowerBook crash landed on a carpark just before christmas I had a scare.

In the end we managed to get the data off before it went to the insurers.
So - after the horse has bolted I now back up regularly.

In addition to this as an extra belt and braces I opened a Google mail account to which I send all my valuable not to be lost stuff - just in case tha house burns down. There is a hack that allows you to use your account as a remote hard drive, but it is a hack and theres alsways the chance that Google will quote terms of use and wipe it so I stick to attachments

[gary]

People do like to beat up on Microsoft, myself included from time to time, but without them, we'd only have very expensive computers, and much fewer people would own them.

Fair Enough...Guess the answers no then.;)

[Brian]

I haven't been keeping up...how did the lawsuit between Apple Computers and Apple Corps (the Beatles' music publishing company) end up?

[Alan]

Very interesting, but isn't OSX basically built on a Linux/Unix kernel, anyway? Maybe Freebsd? It was just a matter of time before you could throw it on an Intel box- harware/driver support being the biggest sticking issue.
It's built from FreeBSD as far as I'm aware. And it's solid. You won't find me saying anything bad about Apple's OS apart from it being proprietary. But I don't see that changing and if I owned Apple, I doubt I would change it :)

Yes, it was only a matter of time before this happened, but Apple go to great lengths to actively prevent their software from running on non-Apple hardware. This was easier when they used the PowerPC processor, because it's not possible to recompile from binaries, only to emulate the OS from within an x86 architecture OS, like Windows or Linux (Linux runs on PowerPC too).

Hardware/driver support is the biggest issue, and you have to commend Apple for their wide support of a lot of devices. Some produce Apple drivers, but most of them only provide support for Windows. Microsoft doesn't have to do this, because the companies do it themselves. Linux, has to come up with drivers for almost everything itself. It's a difficult job. But yeah, the driver support within the OS X installation is designed for pre-approved Apple internal hardware (i.e. not my nVidia graphics card) and common external devices, like printers. It's still a problem.


Folks like to pile onto Bill Gates, but he's driven the personal computer market to a place where it's affordable for almost anyone to own a pc, or to have access to one.

People do like to beat up on Microsoft, myself included from time to time, but without them, we'd only have very expensive computers, and much fewer people would own them.

And I'm not drinking the Redmond Kool-Aid, either. I just see value in what Gates has done for the market.
Far from driving it, Gates has held the market BACK. Without Microsoft we would have more competition and more progress. Microsoft doesn't innovate, it buys good ideas and brands them Microsoft. Even the original Microsoft DOS was bought. The price of computers is thanks to IBM who allowed other companies to build using their design (heard of the now antiquated term "IBM compatible"?). Hence it is the competition that reduced prices. The LACK of competition in the software world forced almost all of these companies to bundle MS-Windows onto them. MS take standards and make them Microsoft-only, when they were perfectly good before. They also use their market share to FORCE themselves into other markets when their software isn't good enough to be there. I refer, of course, to the "Browser Wars" when the inferior Internet Explorer took over from Netscape thanks to underhand tactics from MS. And the latest ISO standard, the OpenDocument Format will not be supported by Microsoft but WILL be supported by every other Office suite I can think of.

I'm not beating on Microsoft either, I just don't think ANY monopoly is a good thing. For that reason, I support Apple and Sun in their quest for greater market share and I support the open source world in their quest for open standards. I don't want Microsoft to fail miserably. I just want them to be a normal company and I want to be able to CHOOSE whether to use them or not.

But both Apple AND Linux are a threat to Microsoft at the moment, and we'll see whether their business skills are good enough to last when their monopolistic powers are reduced. Apple is hard to beat because it doesn't depend on Microsoft for anything and Linux is hard to beat because it's not one particular company that can be beaten or bought.


In the end we managed to get the data off before it went to the insurers.
So - after the horse has bolted I now back up regularly.

Yeah, unfortunately, we didn't have the opportunity to back up. The Mac was recording data and it failed the same day. I'm not blaming Apple for that - hard drives do fail. But we needed the data from the drive whether it failed or not and Apple were very awkward about getting the drive back to us.


I haven't been keeping up...how did the lawsuit between Apple Computers and Apple Corps (the Beatles' music publishing company) end up?
Apple Computers won.

[gary]

Apple Computers won.

Beatles lot have sought leave to appeal so its not quite over but I reckon Jobs wont lose in the end

Poor sir paul - lost in court and in love in the same week!

[gary]

Wow, I'm more convinced than ever... are you sure you don't work for Apple's marketing department ;):D

Two questions, what are the PowerMacs, and what is LiveType?

PowerMacs are the Desktop Tower version of the Mac - where the real muscle is - not yet released in the Intel version.

Live Type is part of the Pro Audio/video suite that Apple has
Quote from Apple Website:
"Use LiveType to create sophisticated, professional-quality titles for film, TV and video using revolutionary LiveFont animated font technology. Integration capabilities let you edit and automatically update LiveType projects in Final Cut Pro 5 and use LiveType projects within DVD Studio Pro 4."

Its part of the Pro Audio/video suite that Apple has

[pablo]

Wow, I'm more convinced than ever... are you sure you don't work for Apple's marketing department ;):D
ha ha (or as the transcripts would say, "ja ja"), my job as a Systems Engineer in Education sales is to convince schools to go Mac or stay with us, so I must admit I'm a bit of a sales person by trade. I help schools out with client management, imaging, scripting, do podcasting seminars, etc, but in the end, the point of my positiion is to sell. Man, I can't remember dreaming I would be in sales when I grew up... :D

Two questions, what are the PowerMacs, and what is LiveType?
Gary, I believe, answered these questions very well (wanna come work with us Gary? ;D ). I'd add that the PowerMacs are Quad processors, but they are still PowerPC chips, so you can't do Parallels or BootCamp with them until they flip to Intel.

[gary]

....wanna come work with us Gary?
Thanks for the comment

I have been banging the drum for Macs ever scince the LC series. Most schools I work in are PC based but Media Studies departments dont take much persuading once you show them the tricks Macs can do right out of the box....

My next mission is to demo iMovie and have 200 eleven year olds make and edit an interview video over four days, having never held a video cam before in their lives.

I am already working with you...but Apple dont pay my salary!!!;)