New Apple hardware

Marty_J

Apple released a bunch of new hardware today, including:

a quad-core 2.66 GHz iMac with a 27 inch 16:9 2560x1440 LED display:



a redesigned MacBook with a unibody enclosure, LED display, and 7 hour battery life:



a Mac Mini that runs Snow Leopard Server:



and the Magic Mouse, a new multi-touch bluetooth mouse with a laser tracking engine:



Early Christmas present anyone?

shell1000

Hey Marty, I've seen from posts and threads that you seem to be a bit of a mac specialist!

ive been thinking of investing in a macbook for a few months now, as i have a radio show and get a lot of music promos as well as editing interviews. My friends have advised me i would be far better off with a mac, and as my old pc is on its last legs ive been looking into it.

Ive decided to go for a macbook, but with a 500 gig hard disc and 4gig memory, to get the highest spec on it i can and for the most reasonable price as money is not overflowing!

I had heard rumours that they were releasing new models, but can you tell me whats the difference between this new macbook and the older model? just interested to know!

As someone who has always used pcs for work and study, its a bit mindblowing! and its going to get some getting used to! But i rely on itunes for everything, and now i have an ipod as well as my new iphone i guess it makes sense to go 'apple'!

kwikbreaks

Today?

Wow - same day as MS officially launch Windows 7

What an amazing coincidence :rolleyes:

rsykes2000

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Today?

Wow - same day as MS officially launch Windows 7

What an amazing coincidence :rolleyes:

No, 2 days ago. The clue in the first post was the date : 20-10-2009, 6:03 PM:)

isofa

^ And let's face it, they are well ahead of the game release the Snow Lepoard OS ages ago... well ahead of Win 7...

qw3rt7

Can someone please explain why macs are considered so fantastic.

I realise a while ago they used different hardware, but nowdays dont they run on intel core2duos/quads?
For the same price as a top spec imac you could get blisteringly faster intel i7 pc, plus change.
Is the OS really that good? Or is it just branding.

Im not mac bashing, but i just cant find a non-biased answer anywhere, its either:
"macs are the best, you would understand if you had one"
or
"Expensive waste of money"

I do feel im leaning towards the latter atm.

Sput2001

but i just cant find a non-biased answer anywhere

Not something that's about to change, unfortunately.

kwikbreaks

rsykes2000 wrote: »

No, 2 days ago. The clue in the first post was the date : 20-10-2009, 6:03 PM:)

Indeed it was I hadn't noticed that - maybe it's because most posts here get their first response in under 2 days - it obviously didn't fire the imagination of the MSE board posters.

kwikbreaks

isofa wrote: »

^ And let's face it, they are well ahead of the game release the Snow Lepoard OS ages ago... well ahead of Win 7...

From bits I've read Snow Leopard was neither a full blown release nor a roaring success. It seems they also cut the rug from under users of their older systems - no more OPsys upgrades for them. Mind you with the excessive bloat MS add to most of their releases they wouldn't run on older hardware either.

isofa

qw3rt7 wrote: »

Can someone please explain why macs are considered so fantastic.

I realise a while ago they used different hardware, but nowdays dont they run on intel core2duos/quads?
For the same price as a top spec imac you could get blisteringly faster intel i7 pc, plus change.
Is the OS really that good? Or is it just branding.

Im not mac bashing, but i just cant find a non-biased answer anywhere, its either:
"macs are the best, you would understand if you had one"
or
"Expensive waste of money"

I do feel im leaning towards the latter atm.

It depends you want to do with a computer, what software, what user experience you want and what quality of product you expect.

It also depends if you are comparing like with like. A cheap box shifting brand vs Apple, and the price differential is great, Sony or Levono vs Apple, and there is barly anything in it price wise. Both are well respected premium brands, and their build quality and features are better than the cheap competition.

I drive an expensive German car, it does the same in essence as a much cheaper English car, however it's build quality is superior, the features are better, the engine and performance better etc, its resale value will be much higher than its competitors. So to me it's a reasonable "investment" as all cars (as computers) lose money.

People buy all manner of different cars, just in the same way people chose which computer system they want to use.
Macs have advantages and disadvantages, as do PCs. OS X is a mature stable 64-bit OS, and comes with a raft of video, photo and other tools, out of the box, which make the equivalent offerings in Windows look very poor. But Windows computers are cheaper and PCs feature in nearly every modern office.

However I use both Macs and PCs all the time, neither is better or worse in general, but some applications are more geared for one platform than the other.
Music, video imaging and design software in general are much more at home on the Mac.
Databases, development and a raft of other things, in general are better on the PC.
General office tools (word, excel etc), web browsing, email, are perfect on both.

Macs have a higher build quality, they last a lot longer (I've a 10 year old Mac laptop running almost the latest OS, and still working fine), they retain their value better, secondhand Macs have a thriving resale potential.

Personally I can't live without both. I own both personally, I work with both on a daily basis. I've owned both platforms since pretty much their modern inception. I use Macs generally for design work, photography and music. I use PCs for general work, and application development.

Still I'm just about to move some of my older PCs to Windows 7

isofa

kwikbreaks wrote: »

From bits I've read Snow Leopard was neither a full blown release nor a roaring success. It seems they also cut the rug from under users of their older systems - no more OPsys upgrades for them. Mind you with the excessive bloat MS add to most of their releases they wouldn't run on older hardware either.

Therefore the analogy is ever beter for Win 7. Most professionals agree that Win 7 is just a service pack on the Vista platform.

Snow Leopard is essentially the same for the Mac but re-writing some crucial elements to allow newer developer technology.

According to Net Applications web analytics research Snow Leopard is now on a fifth of all Macs in existence. (Although it's not on any of mine home or work!)

Apple, just as MS, phase out updates to older systems, but support the last 2 releases, it's just that Apple release newer OS versions faster than MS.