New MacBook Pro

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1366x768 screen, fail.

guarantee its a bottom dollar screen with shit colors, and terrible viewing angles.

Not high-end, but I definitely wouldn't say shitty. It's better than my neighbor's Toshiba that she paid a couple hundred dollars more for and better than my brother's old 15" monitor. I have a 4530s also; I use it primarily for school and also a couple of times for tuning. A Macbook Pro or anything similar would be overkill for me. If I did video production or something similar for work, and needed it to be mobile, I'd consider it.


As far as specs go: I don't think anything matches the new Macbook Pro, but when I was looking for laptops last year, they didn't really do much better than similar-priced laptops.
 
In the probook series i would say the LCD is the worst feature of the machine. but most of the time i'm in Outlook, ConnectWise, LabTech, and Firefox.

for that hour or so a week i'm doing video editing, the machine flies. I can rip 16gb of 1080 video from my gopro to another format in short time. it is what it is. the only real plus about mac laptops is the screen. everything else inside is the same as my HP.
 
I think this is a subject that is lost on many.


I work a large manufacturer. We build something that is premium priced. Our competitors are 80% of our price. We both use the same components/guts if you will. We make our own "platform" to house these guts and put together our product by hand. Our product averages 2.2 errors/mistakes from a wire loom being a 1/4 short or a scuff in a funny area. Our competitor product averages about 6.2 errors. Our product has higher support mechanisms in place if there are errors and lasts roughly 30% longer than our competitors product. Now how do we do in terms of sales?

We out sell our competition and hold 26% market share. We make the best product on the market, have the best support, best quality, efficiency, etc. Everything. we're a TQM company emphasis on Lean and 6-sigma. To be there, we have to charge people, and its a premium price. The same as apple does. No one else matches their fit and finish and R&D. I do not own an apple, or probably will mostly because I'm poor and too pragmatic to buy anything new.
 
April of 2007 I spent $4200 on a macbook pro. Maxed out ram, video card, hd, extra battery, extra power adapter.

I still use it today.

About the same time I built a PC for under $1,000 maxed out everything, I still use it today. $3,200 left over for hookers and blow!!!!
 
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I think this is a subject that is lost on many.


I work a large manufacturer. We build something that is premium priced. Our competitors are 80% of our price. We both use the same components/guts if you will. We make our own "platform" to house these guts and put together our product by hand. Our product averages 2.2 errors/mistakes from a wire loom being a 1/4 short or a scuff in a funny area. Our competitor product averages about 6.2 errors. Our product has higher support mechanisms in place if there are errors and lasts roughly 30% longer than our competitors product. Now how do we do in terms of sales?

We out sell our competition and hold 26% market share. We make the best product on the market, have the best support, best quality, efficiency, etc. Everything. we're a TQM company emphasis on Lean and 6-sigma. To be there, we have to charge people, and its a premium price. The same as apple does. No one else matches their fit and finish and R&D. I do not own an apple, or probably will mostly because I'm poor and too pragmatic to buy anything new.

I work for a large company that builds premium products too; one with heavy emphasis on Lean and 6-Sigma also. Concerning our specific division/product: We have a large market share in many countries except for where competitive alternatives are available(dominate in Brazil, least in Europe). Our machines are known for being the most reliable...and most expensive. In the US and China, the majority of the market for that product is actually dominated by cheaper alternatives. Profit and sales boost at our company is attributed to strategic marketing; main thing they want to do is get their name out there and have it associated with reliability. It's on every part on the machine too, including bolts!
 
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How's the 6-sigma working out? We just started using it here but the results haven't trickled down to the trenches yet. In such a large company, it seems to be just lipservice to the suits.
 
6-sigma? It's how we do everything. It's how we've been very profitable even through recessions and always had a good market/cash position. Biggest thing is empowering the employees to make process improvements across the board. We have a large open door policy regarding procedures and use 360 scrutiny to get input from all aspects of a procedure and all stake holders. Cutting the waste(increasing efficiency) and creating a better product = Sell more, spend less.

We're losing our 6-sigma black belt so I'm hoping to get involved and get into one of the 2 weeks classes to start working towards it. Huge career opportunities for it combined with a PMP.
 
I've heard it can work, but we're kind of laughing about it down at my level. We're a company that was formed by merging and acquiring other companies... Absolutely no systems work together properly, every department used to be a different company and has its own accounting procedures, software, etc. It's a great idea in theory, but no one is willing (or sometimes, legally able) to throw out their processes and start fresh. For example it takes something like 3 months and several 200 page contracts to be able to do business with a mom and pop vendor. It's one giant ball of red tape that I don't see six-sigma cutting through any time soon.

EDIT: And since I've completely derailed this thread:

This is the first Macbook I've ever considered as something I'd want to own... The only issue is the complete lack of repairability and upgradability...

Apple's new MBP dubbed "the least repairable laptop ever" by iFixit. It uses soldered RAM, a non-standard SSD, and a fused display unit. Say goodbye to cheap repairs/upgrades.
 
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why the fuck would anyone spend $2100 on a laptop these days... especially with those specs....o wow Retina display...really? who the fuck cares....how many HD movies are you going to watch on your 15" laptop or how many people out there are hardcore graphics people out there using Soft Image 3d extreme? 1/100,000,000 people? 99.99% of people who buy this are going to surf the web, check email, download itunes and music, and go on facebook. Just as well buy an Ipad

<end rant>
 
A good rule of thumb now is dont buy any computer over $1000 USD if you're budget-minded because of Moore's Law. If you buy something too cheap, itll be outdated way too fast and if you buy something expensive, within 18 months something new will run circles around.

Most people dont do much besides surf the web, pay bills and write papers, but with the advances in the web and to an extent internet speed, anything that doesnt have GPU acceleration is taxed pretty hard. Even my Core2Duo laptop struggles sometimes.

On a side note, if I had the disposable income, Id get a Macbook mainly because its form factor and build quality. Im interested to see what 2nd Gen Ultrabooks will look like. Might be getting one soon.
 
why the fuck would anyone spend $2100 on a laptop these days... especially with those specs....o wow Retina display...really? who the fuck cares....how many HD movies are you going to watch on your 15" laptop or how many people out there are hardcore graphics people out there using Soft Image 3d extreme? 1/100,000,000 people? 99.99% of people who buy this are going to surf the web, check email, download itunes and music, and go on facebook. Just as well buy an Ipad

<end rant>

Pretty much. As far as utility, I can see photographers using it when shooting out of studio, maybe amateur vidographers doing rough cuts in the field, but as you pointed out this screen is just too small no matter how "cool and hip" it is, to be of any real use. Now if it were 17" ...maybe, but then it would cost $6,000.
 
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About the same time I built a PC for under $1,000 maxed out everything, I still use it today. $3,200 left over for hookers and blow!!!!

At the time, I was doing a lot of international traveling, and needed something portable and decently built.

Anymore there's no real reason to buy a laptop, most netbooks and tablets do everything you'd need while traveling.
 
demotivational-posters-macs.jpg
 
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