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ptier posted:Prepare for every college prof that had a Mac Pro now picking up one of those day one. Some will need it, others will try to get Eudora to work on it. Either way it's totally coming out of a research budget. I'm totally cool with that. 
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Jun 11, 2013 03:39
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I'm going to buy a new 13" MBA to upgrade my dying 2008 MacBook. I'm upgrading the RAM to 8GB but I'm less sure about the CPU. What kind of difference will I notice between the stock i5 1.3ghz and the upgraded i7 1.7ghz?
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Jun 11, 2013 04:14
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Probably not a very noticeable difference unless you're doing something with sustained CPU load. Most computer slowdown comes from disk IO, which is super fast because it's coming from the SSD.
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Jun 11, 2013 04:16
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ptier posted:Prepare for every college prof that had a Mac Pro now picking up one of those day one. Some will need it, others will try to get Eudora to work on it. Either way it's totally coming out of a research budget. Ugh, Eudora  The bane of my life when I used to do IT support.
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Jun 11, 2013 04:29
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Selklubber posted:I just did this too, without applecare. The laws here cover the same thing. Strangely enough they didn't ask for any proof that I'm a student. They didn't ask for mine either (which is great because it would be my wife's email), either way I'll take what I can get.
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Jun 11, 2013 04:31
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So I've been looking to get a laptop lately and a friend of mine recommended that I wait until WWDC, incase new MacBooks were announced. I can't afford a new machine, but a cheaper model from someone upgrading is definitely doable, especially if that model has preinstalled software. But some friends I know are now trying to convince me to buy a MacBook Air and that I need to justify why I would ever want a MacBook Pro. The machine would be used primarily for working in Photoshop, so that I'm able to do my colouring work outside of my office or out of the house. I'd also like a disc drive to play movies on. My iPad makes for an excellent NetFlix machine while working in my office, but I can't play DVDs or Blurays on it. I'd like to have the option if my internet goes down. Judging from the OP, a MacBook Air just wouldn't cut it for my needs, though I can probably get away with the cheapest MacBook Pro model.
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Jun 11, 2013 05:45
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How often will you be playing DVDs on it when you're outside the office or home? Playing DVDs absolutely murders your battery life. If you're using it in the office or home you can just plug in a $30 external DVD drive. The MBA also has a better display. Don't get the MBP.
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Jun 11, 2013 05:53
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I would recommend you get a computer without the optical drive, be it pro (retina) or air, and buy an external drive or SuperDrive and use it as needed. Internal ones go to crap so fast. As a 2011 13" air owner I can tell you, you will have all your needs met by the airs. If you are really doing image work. A 13" retina pro would be better. The airs have non glass coated screens and are prone to scratching their screens if put in a bag with other heavy objects that press on it. Otherwise my machine has been without flaws. The battery life is not as advertised. The 2011's 7 hiurs is more like 3-4 and I feel that the new ones advertised 12 will be more like 7 with normal usage. But that's a different convo. Best of both worlds: Pimp out an 11" air with max specs and buy an external display. But honestly I would go to the apple store site and do the compare models feature. $ for $ the pros have much better processing power and also battery life, and screen for only a little more. You can also put in a higher load of RAM. Definite trade offs, and not just in the short term- but also long term. An upgraded retina 13" pro will last a long time, whereas an upgraded air probably won't. Wait for the announcement. However if you are heavily budget conscious, buy a secondhand air for like $750 or hold out for les and use that for a while.
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Jun 11, 2013 05:55
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Nessa posted:So I've been looking to get a laptop lately and a friend of mine recommended that I wait until WWDC, incase new MacBooks were announced. I can't afford a new machine, but a cheaper model from someone upgrading is definitely doable, especially if that model has preinstalled software. I used to have a 2011 13 inch base model MBA and it was more than good enough for Photoshop CS5. Even had it plugged in to an external monitor and everything. Get a USB DVD drive for the rare occasion that the Internet is down.
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Jun 11, 2013 06:00
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Nessa posted:So I've been looking to get a laptop lately and a friend of mine recommended that I wait until WWDC, incase new MacBooks were announced. I can't afford a new machine, but a cheaper model from someone upgrading is definitely doable, especially if that model has preinstalled software. I'm sorry but your friends are totally right. You really, really don't need a disc drive in your laptop if your goal is "to watch DVDs when the internet goes down" (also, where the gently caress do you live?). You think you do, but you really don't and you'll probably use it once every few months at maximum. Believe me, unless you're regularly burning discs for your job or working directly off of a DVD-rom, you will never miss an onboard optical drive at any appreciable level (and you're not gonna be able to watch Blurays on it anyway, because Apple has publicly gone on record saying that they won't ever put a Bluray drive into one of their machines). Save the DVDs/Blurays for your PS3 or maybe rip them to your computer with a $20 USB drive. Or hold on to your old computer and use the wireless Remote Disc utility in OSX to parasitize its DVD capability via your new one, it's ridiculously easy. The Air absolutely shits all over the 13" non-retina Pro in basically every way. For your use, I'd recommend a 13" model- you'd probably be perfectly happy with a refurbished 2012 one, but Apple also just lowered the pricing on new Airs by $100 with the introduction of the 2013's today. If you can swing $1300 for a kitted-out 13" with a 256gb drive, you'll have a computer that could probably last you comfortably for the next 4 years. Seriously, once you've used an Air/rMBP for a day or two you will be so happy that you didn't buy a fatbook. Edit: Beaten and beaten fast.
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Jun 11, 2013 06:10
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Really? The Airs are good enough for heavy Photoshop work? And working on lots of large files? My ex had an Air for a while, but he switched to a Pro since he found the Air to be too brittle. As for DVD usage it wouldn't be constant, but it would be enough for me to find value in a drive. I find my iMac occasionally has difficulty when trying to play a movie and run photoshop at the same time. My iMac is 5 and a half years old, and so is my Creative Suite (student pricing!). Electric Bugaloo posted:I'm sorry but your friends are totally right. You really, really don't need a disc drive in your laptop if your goal is "to watch DVDs when the internet goes down" (also, where the gently caress do you live?). . Eh, our router just tends to go down a lot, so streaming is not always viable. I suppose it's not that big a deal. I'll look into a used Air then. I certainly cannot afford to drop $1300 on a computer, but $700 would be doable once I get my next paycheck. Nessa fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 06:15
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Nessa posted:Really? The Airs are good enough for heavy Photoshop work? And working on lots of large files? My ex had an Air for a while, but he switched to a Pro since he found the Air to be too brittle. I recently worked on a 300dpi 3'x8' banner on my MBA.
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Jun 11, 2013 06:19
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Bob Morales posted:It looks like you can put one SSD in each side that has a graphics card, for a total of 2. If you look carefully the SSD connector is mounted to the graphics card, and the left hand card is missing the SSD connector. This actually makes some sense. The E5 Xeon they're going to use has a total of 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes. They'll need 16 per GPU, leaving 8 for other things. There are three Thunderbolt 2 controllers, and each of those should need 2 PCIe lanes. That leaves two lanes for the SSD, which needs both of them if it's capable of 1.25 GB/s. That's that. There are no more lanes to route to the second graphics slot for a second SSD. There is a way they could possibly work around this -- the chipset should have some more PCIe lanes available. I don't know if they'll be PCIe 3.0 lanes though. Star War Sex Parrot posted:(Xeon E7 things) Xeon E5 v2 should support up to 12 cores in one socket: http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2013/2013040201_Some_details_of_upcoming_Intel_Xeon_E5_v2_and_E7_v2_CPUs.html E7 v2 is... unlikely to be appearing in this film. E7 is Intel's "big iron" x86 CPU line, designed to compete with IBM's POWER6/POWER7 server CPUs. It costs a lot more than E5 and is actually a worse workstation CPU. (Unless you need a workstation with huge amounts of memory per CPU socket. And by huge I don't mean a mere 128GB.) mayodreams posted:Two sockets and 8 ram slots to one socket and 4 slots. This is significant for compute heavy workloads like animation and heavy effects. There is no substitute for cores and ram, and the new Mac Pro lost 6 cores, 12 threads, and 4 ram slots. I dunno why you're saying it lost 6 cores when it still supports 12. Times have changed, Intel's putting more cores in one chip. And they're rather obviously shifting emphasis to GPU compute in this new Mac Pro, which is significant for animation and effects and so forth. Despite the reduction in DIMM sockets they doubled the supported RAM from 64GB to 128GB. (If OWC is to be believed, current Mac Pros are compatible with a 128GB config, but an OS X limitation prevents you from using more than 96GB anyways.) Same kind of thing goes for much of the rest of your list. I have some doubts about this direction for the Mac Pro, but the sky, it is not falling.
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Jun 11, 2013 07:04
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BobHoward posted:(If OWC is to be believed, current Mac Pros are compatible with a 128GB config, but an OS X limitation prevents you from using more than 96GB anyways.) Unless that's changed in Mavericks... in which case it all makes sense.
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Jun 11, 2013 07:06
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BobHoward posted:And they're rather obviously shifting emphasis to GPU compute in this new Mac Pro, which is significant for animation and effects and so forth. Depends on who you ask. Big time animation and VFX haven't ported over code to GPGPU yet. All of the stuff that takes advantage of it now are either tech demos or really low budget tools that a small studio might use. Interactive sessions of '3D' tools don't need all that GPU power yet. Its more useful for rendering but like I said, rendering code hasn't been ported over by a lot of vendors. Big VFX houses are more likely to buy a traditional workstation and load it up on cores and memory for at least a few more years (decade?). Its a big catch-22 right now anyway. I'm kinda of glad Apple is pushing the issue but its also not winning them any friends in big production but then again they never were that big there to begin with.
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Jun 11, 2013 07:26
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Nessa posted:Really? The Airs are good enough for heavy Photoshop work? And working on lots of large files? My ex had an Air for a while, but he switched to a Pro since he found the Air to be too brittle. The Air has more or less eclipsed the 13" standard MBP in terms of "tangible performance" per dollar since the launch of the 2011 models. It surprises a lot of people but the last 3 revisions have been seriously powerful machines- certainly compared to the performance gulf that existed between the Macbook that they replaced in Apple's lineup and the Macbook Pro. In fact- at this point, the only really noticeable difference between a 13" Air and a 13" retina MBP is the retina display. A 15" Pro is going to have a quad-core CPU and discrete graphics card (retina model or not), so that's a totally different beast entirely. It feels weird to ditch the optical drive at first, but I think you'll really like this computer.  EDIT: Also, it may be in your best interest to jump on Adobe's Creative Cloud offers for students if you can finagle yourself an education discount. You get access to all of the latest CS software on any computer for $20/month for the first year if you join before June 25. Also also, Apple's interest-free financing plans are pretty great if you can't swing the extra cash for a newer model right away. $700 would put you in the 2011 model range, which might not be as future-proof as you'd like given that it's now 2-year old hardware. In your shoes, I'd either wait until I could afford the ~$900 for a refurbished 2012 model or pay it off over two or three paychecks if you need it NOW and you're sure you won't be unemployed in the very near future (you can get financing on refurbs too). trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 07:34
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Electric Bugaloo posted:In fact- at this point, the only really noticeable difference between a 13" Air and a 13" retina MBP is the retina display. Electric Bugaloo posted:Also also, Apple's interest-free financing plans are pretty great if you can't swing the extra cash for a newer model right away. $700 would put you in the 2011 model range, which might not be as future-proof as you'd like given that it's now 2-year old hardware. In your shoes, I'd either wait until I could afford the ~$900 for a refurbished 2012 model or pay it off over two or three paychecks if you need it NOW and you're sure you won't be unemployed in the very near future (you can get financing on refurbs too).
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Jun 11, 2013 07:53
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When can we expect MBP updates? Or will they most likely be quite ones?
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Jun 11, 2013 07:58
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Shaocaholica posted:When can we expect MBP updates?
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Jun 11, 2013 08:07
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SourKraut posted:Barclays seems to have a mixed track record, so it's interesting to see people recommend them. TBH, I only used the 6-month plan to boost my post-collegiate credit score a bit when I bought my Air back in 2011. I made sure that I had more than enough money to easily pay it off in full before pulling the trigger. That said, the whole affair was pretty painless and I got a credit card that I almost never use out of it. Assuming that you can comfortably pay it off before the interest kicks in, it's not at all a bad way to go- particularly if you'd rather not chop a $1000+ piece out of your bank account in one go. Star War Sex Parrot posted:Nobody knows. Logic says before Back to School, but that's already coming up so they might be waiting for the Mavericks release.  I want it to be soon so I can decide what I want and put this Air on SAmart already.
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Jun 11, 2013 08:20
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Electric Bugaloo posted:The Air has more or less eclipsed the 13" standard MBP in terms of "tangible performance" per dollar since the launch of the 2011 models. It surprises a lot of people but the last 3 revisions have been seriously powerful machines- certainly compared to the performance gulf that existed between the Macbook that they replaced in Apple's lineup and the Macbook Pro. In fact- at this point, the only really noticeable difference between a 13" Air and a 13" retina MBP is the retina display. A 15" Pro is going to have a quad-core CPU and discrete graphics card (retina model or not), so that's a totally different beast entirely. My student days are long behind me, and I honestly can't afford $20 a month just to use Photoshop, when I already have a serviceable, though frustrating Photoshop. If I get a solid, well paying colouring gig, sure, but not while working part time minimum wage. I only really have enough money saved up to replace my machine if and when my iMac dies on me. One reason to get a laptop is that it would function as a backup machine, so I wouldn't have to worry about immediately replacing my old one. Would an Air be able serve as a back up computer in that case?
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Jun 11, 2013 08:26
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Is it just me or does the new MacBook Air have a proper full speed Thunderbolt port (or that the old one had a half speed one)?
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Jun 11, 2013 08:47
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Electric Bugaloo posted:I completely agree but I'd say that most non-pro (and even many pro) users can't justify the extra cost of most external TB storage- or at least they couldn't for the first year and a half that it was out. For most people, the benefits are still outweighed by the cost and there hasn't been real pressure from power users or enterprise to move the standard forward or lower costs. Nessa posted:Really? The Airs are good enough for heavy Photoshop work? And working on lots of large files? My ex had an Air for a while, but he switched to a Pro since he found the Air to be too brittle. SourKraut posted:Well there's also HDMI, which definitely makes the Retinas more valuable in my opinion. Edit - Forgot about this thing, Blackmagic has apparently had a Mac Pro for testing: http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8898#p56608 quote:We have been testing with DaVinci Resolve 10 builds and this screams. Its amazing and those GPUs are incredible powerful. I am not sure what I can say as I am only going off what Apple has talked about publicly here in the keynote for what I can say right now, however there is a whole new OpenCL and DaVinci Resolve 10 has had a lot of performance work done to integrate it and its really really fast. Those GPUs are very powerful and have lots of GPU memory so this is the Mac we have been waiting for! We have lots of Thunderbolt products too so video in and out is taken care of. japtor fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 09:03
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Shaocaholica posted:When can we expect MBP updates? Or will they most likely be quite ones? Speculation: they have to wait for Thunderbolt 2 chips to become available so they can drive 4K Thunderbolt displays.
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Jun 11, 2013 09:05
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Nessa posted:My student days are long behind me, and I honestly can't afford $20 a month just to use Photoshop, when I already have a serviceable, though frustrating Photoshop. If I get a solid, well paying colouring gig, sure, but not while working part time minimum wage. I only really have enough money saved up to replace my machine if and when my iMac dies on me. One reason to get a laptop is that it would function as a backup machine, so I wouldn't have to worry about immediately replacing my old one. Your iMac is more than half a decade old. Frankly, it would be the back up in this case. And if it's got target display mode (doubtful), then you could also use it as an external display with the Air. A 2011+ Air will run circles around your current computer.
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Jun 11, 2013 09:10
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A little something from Anand's twitter for anyone wondering about the HD5000 graphics: "Last tidbit, I think HD 5000 will provide another 15% over HD 4400 which was 15% over HD 4000."
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Jun 11, 2013 09:20
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Electric Bugaloo posted:Also also, Apple's interest-free financing plans are pretty great if you can't swing the extra cash for a newer model right away. $700 would put you in the 2011 model range, which might not be as future-proof as you'd like given that it's now 2-year old hardware. In your shoes, I'd either wait until I could afford the ~$900 for a refurbished 2012 model or pay it off over two or three paychecks if you need it NOW and you're sure you won't be unemployed in the very near future (you can get financing on refurbs too). Just going to chime in and say I have a 13" mid 2011 mpb, and for working on pictures in photoshop it is not as strong as I want it to be. Working on comic book pages between 600 and 1200 dpi causes it to turn into a burning hot jet engine, and it's really difficult to have anything running in the background (pandora, youtube, streaming podcasts, it's fun hearing songs pause for a moment after making a larger than average brush stroke). I feel like either having the 15" model or a newer model of the 13" pro/air with double the ram would make an appreciable difference, but then the price jumps up a decent amount.
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Jun 11, 2013 09:32
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japtor posted:A little something from Anand's twitter for anyone wondering about the HD5000 graphics: drat, that is nice. What % size is the keyboard for the MBA 11/13?
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Jun 11, 2013 09:41
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fookolt posted:drat, that is nice. What % size is the keyboard for the MBA 11/13? The keyboard is the same exact size (minus the upper function key row on the 11" only) between all of Apple's laptops.
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Jun 11, 2013 10:08
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Shipon posted:The keyboard is the same exact size (minus the upper function key row on the 11" only) between all of Apple's laptops. Sorry, what is that in relation to a regular size desktop keyboard?
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Jun 11, 2013 10:10
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fookolt posted:Sorry, what is that in relation to a regular size desktop keyboard?
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Jun 11, 2013 10:20
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japtor posted:Exact same size. Well barring the stuff that was cut down like the arrow keys...but even then there's a direct desktop equivalent too. drat, that is pretty neat, especially for the 11". Time to go to the Apple store and actually try these new ones out.
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Jun 11, 2013 10:48
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BobHoward posted:Speculation: they have to wait for Thunderbolt 2 chips to become available so they can drive 4K Thunderbolt displays. Good speculation, because that'd be the only component they'd need for an update that's not out yet.
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Jun 11, 2013 11:14
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Nessa posted:My student days are long behind me, and I honestly can't afford $20 a month just to use Photoshop, when I already have a serviceable, though frustrating Photoshop. If I get a solid, well paying colouring gig, sure, but not while working part time minimum wage. I only really have enough money saved up to replace my machine if and when my iMac dies on me. One reason to get a laptop is that it would function as a backup machine, so I wouldn't have to worry about immediately replacing my old one. Considering your price point, when I was hunting for a Mac laptop, I never found anything in a decent year for MBAs at the $700 price point. Ideally, it would be a good choice (you could just rip movies from your DVDs on your iMac and put them on your MBA if needed), but if you're working with super huge files, then an 2010 or older MBA may not cut it. The used prices for 2011+ MBAs may drop with the new MBAs out, so check, but you'd definitely need a 13" and not the 11". If not, an MBP non-retina is fine (despite the naysaying, it works perfectly fine, and the only trade off is the weight and screen resolution). Yes, the other choices are nicer, but if you're on a budget, then a used MBP is fine, since it's easy to upgrade the harddrive and RAM if needed, it'll have the CD drive you want, and you can use an external monitor if you need it. A 2011 13 MBP should fit right in your price range, and service all of your needs except the screen resolution, but the 13 MBA isn't much bigger anyway, so you'd need an external monitor either way. Feel free to save up for a new MBA if you have the time to, but if you want to buy something now, then the MBP 13 is great. I just bought a used 2011 MBP 13 since I'm also on a budget, and it fits my needs perfectly (especially for price), and I have another screen when I need the space. Only thing I may do is throw an SSD in, once I find a good deal. All of the advice here is good, but not for being a Mac user on a budget.
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Jun 11, 2013 12:34
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Anyone else hoping TB 2.0 means cheaper Thunderbolt docks, and maybe even a first-party one with a power adapter?
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Jun 11, 2013 12:53
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I've been waiting for a MBA refresh and think I'm gonna pull the trigger on it. I'm a bit worried about the 1.3 GHz base speed though—does that really matter? It just seems so small. For reference I'm moving up from a 2010 13" MBP so I'm coming from 2.4 GHz C2D/8 GB RAM/320M. It does everything I want it to do. Also not sure if I want to spend or save $100 to get the 11" vs 13". My MBP is the only computer I have at the moment. In the future though I was considering buying a iMac or building a Windows box. 11" just sounds really tiny and unworkable. I think I'm set on the 13", just not sure if the $140 CPU upgrade is worth it or not. Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 12:58
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Anandtech has a quick 2013 MBA Review up: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7058/2013-macbook-air-pcie-ssd-and-haswell-ult-inside Single-threaded CPU is the same speed as the 2012 1.8GHz, compared to the new 1.3GHz CPU  But multi-threaded takes a hit, it's actually slower:  But the new PCI-E SSD is 2x faster than the previous SATA drive. Nearly 800MB/s 
Bob Morales fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 13:21
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Makes perfect sense given that they turbo to the same single-core speed. Looks pretty good though, the PCI-E SSDs seems like one Apple-esque quirk that won't be wasted.
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Jun 11, 2013 13:43
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I'm a programmer and have been a linux desktop user for like 4 years and was a windows user before that. I need a new computer and I think I want to get a Macbook this time because I'm tired of lovely hardware support and lovely hardware in general. I'd be using this as my main desktop. I'm coming from a desktop I built in 2009 with a quad core AMD processor which is just now starting to not be enough for me. Really my main concern is that this new laptop I get is noticeably better than that, and also very future proof. I was hoping they would announce new Macbook Pros, but now that they don't I'm a little stumped. I don't care at all about optical drives or ports or anything, nor do I really care about battery life, but I do want power. So I'm debating between getting a maxed out 13in Air, or a stock Retina (can't decide between 13 and 15 inch). I don't want to feel like an idiot when the release new MBPs in six months, but I also can't wait six months. Any suggestions? MBPr or MBA?
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Jun 11, 2013 13:59
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jjttjj posted:I was hoping they would announce new Macbook Pros, but now that they don't I'm a little stumped. I don't care at all about optical drives or ports or anything, nor do I really care about battery life, but I do want power. So I'm debating between getting a maxed out 13in Air, or a stock Retina (can't decide between 13 and 15 inch). I don't want to feel like an idiot when the release new MBPs in six months, but I also can't wait six months. It'd be silly to get a Retina now. They didn't change the battery in the Air at all, just the CPU, so the Pro (if they continue with it) and the Retina should see huge gains in battery life when the new ones come out in the near future. But if you want 'power' there's really no substitute for the 15" rMBP with the quad-core. As far as 13" rMBP vs 13" Air, it just depends on if you want the better screen, extra TB and HDMI port...
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Jun 11, 2013 14:03
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