[fox-orian]

Hey everyone. It's time for me to get a Macbook Pro. As a student at AIB [the Art Institute of Boston,] I've been living off of my 20" Core2 iMac for the past academic year. It's proved wonderful and I love it. Unfortunately the BlackBook I've been given for my position as a Campus Rep / Apple Designer has been becoming increasingly sub-par for my needs as a digital artist. The hardware of the Macbook isn't so much the issue - it's the screen. It's no real secret that the Macbook screens have rather poor color reproduction with dull, flat colors and insane dithering/banding issues in subtle gradients. It's been driving me crazy. My 20" iMac's screen has spoiled me with its great color and deep black levels. The CS3 icons are enough to display the poor color quality of the Macbook. The Flash CS3 icon on the macbook looks brownish, like dried blood. On my iMac it looks like it should, a rather saturated deep crimson. A friend of mine showed me his new 15" LED MacBook Pro and I gawked at the screen because its vibrancy and color was much closer to that of my iMac. I was jealous. -- and realized I need something better for when I'm not at home.

Now, I've tested Leopard and I love the new things being introduced to it. And even though I design promotions for Apple in the Boston area, I don't get info on upcoming hardware changes. In October with the release of Leopard, of course it will become the installed OS on all systems manufactured after that time. My concern is, for the macbook pro line, are there going to be any significant hardware changes to accommodate the upgrade to Leopard? I would like to get a MacBook Pro now before school starts up again as I'm just fine with using 10.4 until I see fit to upgrade manually. Though, if something big changes in the hardware itself, I'm probably going to want to wait to spend the $2000. (Yes, I did just say the hardware isn't so much a concern, its the screen -- but hey I like to game every now and then and get the most bang for my buck.) Hard-drive or CPU speed increases aren't really important to me. I was happy to wait as long I did to see the LED back lights come into being -- that's a major hardware change in my opinion.

If any of you are knowledgeable of hardware trends Apple has in the past or speculations as to any changes that may occur outside of adding leopard to the box in October, I would really appreciate the help! You veteran Pro users know more than I do on this subject

[BTW: I'm considering buying the $2000 MBP, which to my knowledge it's only differences are 2.2 vs 2.4 Core2, 120 vs 160GB HD, and 128MB vs 256MB graphics. The low end specs look awesome to me for that price.]

[jonswan]

You have basically summarized the difference between the 2.2 and 2.4.

Your question related to possible revisions is anyone's guess. However, all Core2Duos are ready for Leopard, as in fact are CoreDuos, as are no doubt G4s. There are clamshells that can cope with Tiger. Why would Apple alienate a large section of its users? It wouldn't make any financial or business sense.

Also, considering the latest MBP revisions have just come out it's unlikely there will be any change until either late autumn or next year. There's often at least 180 days in between revisions. Much less would also make no financial sense as they will have to keep changing their machines + making present users feel like they are getting machines that lose value quickly.

[phoenix78]

I doubt there would be a revision by the time leopard comes in october. The mbps are fresh out.

So... If you want to, or can, wait till leopard to save yourself the money in buying the new OS that would be a good strategy. I dont believe that new tech that comes out in the next revision will have any SIGNIFICANT performance improvements.

rob.

[fox-orian]

Ah yeah, I know the current systems can run Leopard just fine. My BlackBook ran the beta great. I just hate it when I get something and then a couple weeks later something like new graphics has been implemented
But, the Macbook Pro's have just recently received a graphics upgrade to nVidia chips, so I don't think I have anyhing to worry about for a long time. The Radeon X1600 was in the MBP since conception...

But really, I'm going to need to buy Leopard no matter what anyway for my iMac. So a MBP with leopard on it wouldn't really be a money-saver. I've never bought an OS before [Mac or Windows] -- lets say if I buy Leopard, can that single edition be installed on both the MBP and my iMac?

[Big Mac]

It's a violation of the terms of the license, but Apple does nothing to prevent it up to this point.

[olePigeon]

You should be worried about using apostrophes for plural words.

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

You should be worried about using apostrophes for plural words.

Indeed. Everyone knows the plural is Macbook Prose.

[silverflyer]

The Macbook Pros recently had a pretty major revision, I don't see them doing that again until next year when Intel makes new chips available.

[Sijmen]

Check this out: Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac

[mduell]

The next MacBook Pro update should be in the first quarter of next year, when Intel releases the new 'Penryn' CPUs (higher clockrates, more cache, lower power, yada yada).

[Jasoco]

I have a plain white low end MacBook for myself right now. I'm using it as a sort of stepping stone to wait for what comes out on the Pro end next year.

[PhotoBug]

Originally Posted by fox-orian 

it's the screen. It's no real secret that the Macbook screens have rather poor color reproduction with dull, flat colors and insane dithering/banding issues in subtle gradients.

i have heard of this Gradient Prob, could someone explain it. i would rather not purchase a new computer if its going to do what I'm picturing. i am looking to Buy a MBP Lower end and a cinema display.

Oh and how do you like leopard?

[PaperNotes]

If there's an update this year it will only be to add drive and display options.

[fox-orian]

Originally Posted by PhotoBug 

i have heard of this Gradient Prob, could someone explain it. i would rather not purchase a new computer if its going to do what I'm picturing. i am looking to Buy a MBP Lower end and a cinema display.

Oh and how do you like leopard?

The problem was what I thought it was, I just didn't know it was so wide-spread throughout the industry. Apparently nearly every single laptop computer in the market uses a 6-bit color display which can only produce 262,000 unique colors. I know this is old news to the more intensely tech-aware i/power/macbook users, but honestly it never occured to me that 8-bit screens [capable of 16,700,000 colors] are just rarely, rarely made and implemented. [The last 8-bit portable screen I remember was in some HP 20" desktop replacement notebook. Thing had like 45 minutes of battery life it was so huge.] The Macbook Pro versus the Macbook looks so much better duly because of the Macbook Pros [no apostrophe, be glad] better dithering ability to simulate 16.7 million colors.
I took my Macbook to the store and did a side-by-side comparison of some of my artworks and the CS3 icons with a matte MBP. The MBP still has some dithering issues, but certainly nothing like the Macbook. The MBP also has the vibrancy and depth I'm looking for. Also those LED backlights are just terrific.

The Leopard beta is good. If the beta is ALL that leopard is, I can't say its a very important immediate upgrade for myself. Though I'd probably still buy it when it's released just to see the end product. --- I hear the new dock is driving the guys over at iconfactory nuts.

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

You should be worried about using apostrophes for plural words.

;~~; you didn't have to call attention to my speech impediment

Originally Posted by Sijmen 

Check this out: Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac

Also, thanks for this! I didn't know it existed... What a lovely logical chart this is.