MacGeekery at its finest!
Apple has introduced i5 and i7 MacBook Pros.
Gizmodo has some benchmarks. Here are some Core 2 Duo v i5 v i7 benchmarks [Tom’s Hardware] from the PC world.
Aside from the obvious performance improvements other differences seem to be
What more could one hope for in an evening of MacGeekery than 15 MacGeeks (one from far afield of the Mothership) for a ramen dinner, a hands on session with an iPad, and an announcement of the much awaited new i5 and i7 MacBook Pros?
With Intel’s new processor announcements slated for the International Solid-State Circuits Conference starting February 7th, it would seem that it’s about time for Apple to release a new top of the line MacBook Pro as the announcements usually seem to coincide (and it also coincides with MacWorldl Expo. The MacBook Pro is 242 days since the last release, somewhat over the average of 200 days.
According to CNET News, Apple is working on a software fix for a bug in MacBook Pros with 7200RPM 500Gb drives which causes a beep sound, clicking, then the machine pausing temporarily. I know of at least one instance where a new machine was replaced under warranty for this problem, so it will be interesting to see if there’s a software fix.
Other World Computing’s bench tests compare the current and previous generations of 15 inch MacBook Pro, along with RAM and hard drive upgrades.
Apple has a tech note about which Macs will work with 64-bit editions of Microsoft Windows Vista under Boot camp. Hint, you have to have a 2008 or later Pro model.
It seems that some people’s 2008 MacBook Pros are exhibiting vertical light/dark screen stripes, as seen here, as if half the LED backlight is not on. There is also Apple support forum discussion on the topic.
Fortunately it seems the problem can be resolved by sleeping and waking the machine, but unnerving nonetheless, especially on brand new machines.
After introducing the multitouch user interface in the iPhone and iPodTouch, and then in the MacBook Air Apple has now introduced it across the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines.Interestingly, this means that the desktop machines don’t have multitouch, which given it will no doubt be more widely adopted by developers as SDK’s for it become available, which may leave desktop users in the lurch. The obvious move would be for Apple to incorporate multitouch in the screens it manufacturers. However this answer would probably be a bad solution given the problem of gorilla arm. Perhaps a multitouch pad built into keyboards? A third party Kensington multitouch USB trackpad? Then again the MacBooks already use a different input method to mice, however it’s not clear how easily the rotational gestures would map to a mouse (scrolling and zooming is already usually mapped to the scroll wheel/ball). Mouse with a knob?Or perhaps Apple has an even more revolutionary input device up its sleeve…
