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eddiecatflap · Sep 16, 2006, 05:03 AM

http://www.brianmay.com/brian/brians...sep06a.html#14

Since writing about my frustrations about the Apple MacBook Pro, I have been literally DELUGED with mail from Mac users who are feeling the same frustrations.
You might have noticed that I prefaced my moans with a declaration that I have always been a staunch Mac supporter. A lot of you agree ... my favourite comment was from a VERY unhappy MBP user who said,

"Do they understand how much I really want to love this machine?"

That's my feeling too. I don't want advice from helplines telling me how to make the best of my problems ... I want an admission from the manufacturer that they realise that the machine has severe faults, and that they care enough to try to rectify them.

It's so much like Tony Blair .... the man who will probably go down in History as "The Man Who Could Not Admit he was Wrong." Every day our young men are still losing their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, and every day it becomes plainer that it was a gigantic, terrible, tragic mistake. Tony Blair even now could depart a hero if he could only bring himself to say ...

"OK ... I can now admit it: I screwed up. As my final gift to the nation, I'm bringing the troops home ! "

Will it happen ?

We shall see. He's another example .... we all SO wanted to love this man when he was elected. And now .... ??

Love
Bri

eddiecatflap · Sep 16, 2006, 05:04 AM

not quite sure what tony blair has in common with a macbook pro

11011001 · 05:44 AM

I'm confused. Is this thread about your MB or Tony Blair?

Blogs, and forum categories aside... I'm gonna play Devil's advocate:

"The faster chip at present really gives NO discernible increase in processing speed ...even in copying large numbers of files, or processing the large images I am used to .... not impressive."

You gotta realize that this thing is a portable computer. CPU generally doesn't mean very much for these kinds of things. The hard drive, not the CPU is slowing things down.

It's not that Apple is using crap either, it's that the hard drives used in portables just can't offer the same level of performance as their larger desktop cousins. If you want performance get an eSATA card, an eSATA hard drive enclosure, and a fast desktop hard drive for it. Firewire is a slower possibility.

Secondly, image processing? Getting into this, you should have known that Adobe hasn't an Intel version for OS X yet, only PPC. It's obviously a problem, just not a problem with the MBP in particular.

Big battery:
I guess it's a tradeoff between things like a brighter screen, vs weight, size etc. Not everyone's going to be happy I guess.

Heat:
That just totally sucks. But what really is the alternative? The small size comes at a cost. That cost is heat. They could ramp up the fans to something more robust.. but again, at the cost of noise and battery. A material other than aluminum? One looses the heat dissipation advantage, and that has to be picked up by fans. Cooler processors? Fine, but then they have to run much slower, and people will complain about performance.

Apple (and the industry) as a whole, are having a difficult time with the whole heat thing. They've seen it coming for years (as I've watched the heatsinks on my CPUs go from fins, to big fin blocks, to fanned fin blocks, to the monstrosity that is the G5s cooling system), but it's not like they can suddenly make things bigger, or loose their performance edge. So, we as the consumers have to suffer I guess (or accept the tradeoffs in our computers).

Personally, I'm ready to buy a MBP, and am willing to accept it's shortcomings (what alternatives do we have!?). I'll wait for a Merom though, which might also get a better GPU! Yay!

turtle777 · Sep 16, 2006, 05:48 AM

Originally Posted by eddiecatflap

It's so much like Tony Blair .... the man who will probably go down in History as "The Man Who Could Not Admit he was Wrong." Every day our young men are still losing their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, and every day it becomes plainer that it was a gigantic, terrible, tragic mistake. Tony Blair even now could depart a hero if he could only bring himself to say ...

"OK ... I can now admit it: I screwed up. As my final gift to the nation, I'm bringing the troops home ! "

-t

eddiecatflap · Sep 16, 2006, 08:08 AM

i didn't say that stuff , brian may ( the guitarist from queen ) did

his macbook pro is playing up , basically

i shouldn't have posted the blair stuff , sorry , it was all on the same page , that's all

Cody Dawg · Sep 16, 2006, 09:04 AM

First of all, Brian May is off his rocker (pun intended), as evidenced by his weird blog.

Secondly, my Powerbook 1.5Ghz is having some problems significant enough for Apple to offer to trade it in for the current new version with the Intel chip. I declined. I explained that I'd heard about some issues with the current Powerbook line-up and that I was willing to forego a really great offer to stay with tried and true. I know that my display on my Powerbook can be replaced and it will be fine for another couple of years. Battery life is great on it and only recently did I start having any issues with it (the display - pixels are dying on it for some weird reason.)

My point is that when I explained to Apple why I didn't want their newest Powerbook the Apple person I was talking to literally said, "I totally understand and I'd probably make the same choice. The Powerbooks are great machines and I'm keeping mine also." (Versus MacBook Pro.)

Kevin · Sep 16, 2006, 09:30 AM

Yeah may has good tone. But he is one fork short of a full drawer.

mitchell_pgh · Sep 16, 2006, 10:04 AM

I feel this is more banter from the "I want it cheaper, I want it perfect, and I want you to take care of it forever" crowd.

"There are plastic mold marks on my G4 Cube!!!"

eddiecatflap · Sep 16, 2006, 11:22 AM

yeah , he does seem a tad 'eccentric'