MacBook Pro - page 63

A “one of a kind” MacBook Pro prototype, which has been listed for sale on eBay, reveals Apple’s work on a notebook with built-in 3G connectivity. It’s the first MacBook Pro we’ve seen with an antenna built into the side of the display, and a SIM card slot beneath the memory cover.

So what we have here is a MacBook Pro slathered in so much 24 karat gold and multi-colored sapphire encrustation that you’d think it was a rapper’s bridgework. In fact, the guys over at Computer Choppers took this whole crazy idea so far that they even gold-plated the keyboard.

You know what they say: one man’s bling is another man’s vomitsome eyesore. Check out more pictures after the jump.

Apple is allegedly investigating complaints from some Mac OS X Lion users about system crashes related to graphics or sleep/wake issues on various Macs. Users that complain about the problem say that a person will see their Mac suddenly crash and display a black screen or a kernel panic. One common situation surrounding the problem is that some sort of graphics event is taking place or that the crash may take place when the computer wakes from sleep.

As you stare lovingly at your new MacBook Air before you go to bed tonight, caressing its smooth aluminum shell, know this: its Thunderbolt port is inferior when compared to that of its cousins.

Hot on the heels of the new MacBook Air, Apple looks to already be working on a mysterious, “ultra-thin” 15-inch Macbook to add to the mix.

Not much is known about what this upcoming notebook from Apple will be like, but the MacBook Pro line hasn’t seen a refresh since February. Could it be an Air-style MBP?

Apple’s new 11-inch MacBook Air is simply incredible. Of course you probably already knew this puppy was light, and gorgeous, but the power that this tiny machine packs is truly breathtaking. Optimized for speed and portability, the new MacBook Air improves on its predecessor to prove that it’s the best notebook computer Apple’s ever made.

Apple’s latest lineup of MacBook Air ultraportables are not only significantly faster than their predecessors, but thanks to those new Core i5 and i7 processors, they also beat the high-end 2010 MacBook Pro in early benchmark tests.

Apple’s next-generation of MacBook Airs are expected to launch alongside OS X Lion as early as this week, and in addition to the latest Sandy Bridge processors and Intel’s high-speed Thunderbolt technology, the new models could boast a backlit keyboard.

The latest addition to Apple’s online store is a fancy new high-speed Thunderbolt cable designed to connect your Thunderbolt-equipped devices to the latest iMacs and MacBook Pros.

We went bonkers last week and gave out more free hardware in seven days than we ever have before. To mix things up this week we’re going to be giving out some beautiful software to enhance your Apple experience. Today we’re teaming up with the great people behind StackSocial who have given us three promo codes for their latest Mac Essentials Bundle. With eleven Mac apps worth $333 that we’re giving away for free, this is one of the best software giveaways we’ve ever had. You’ve got to play to win though, so here are the details on what you’ll win and how to qualify for the giveaway:

You’ll find a notebook to suit everyone within Apple’s family of notebooks: the entry-level MacBook is perfect for students and casual computer users, the MacBook Air is a blessing to the travelling businessman, and there’s a MacBook Pro fitting for just about everyone. And I’m not the only one who thinks so – Consumer Reports just dealt Apple’s awesome MacBooks a whole lot of love.

After an unexplained absence, Apple products have officially returned to NBC’s The Office, which wrapped up its seventh season last night.

Apple gear was prominently seen and mentioned during the show’s earlier seasons. In 2005, for example, former boss Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) gifted a then-cutting-edge 5th generation iPod Classic (“video iPod”).

But as of late, HP replaced Apple for “promotional consideration”, as evidenced by the closing credits. Apple products continued to appear on occasion, but only discretely, the logo always obscured.

Crucial has just launched its new M4 lineup of 2.5-inch solid-state drives, which are the successors to the RealSSD C300 range, and boast faster read and write speeds. The M4 uses 25nm technology NAND flash created by its parent company Micron, and is available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB models.

Crucial claim the new M4 SSDs reach read speeds of up to 415MBps – a 17% increase over its predecessor – while write speeds are up 20% with speeds of up to 260MBps.

As with all SSDs, however, this technology doesn’t come cheap. The 64GB M4 will cost you $130, which rises to $250 for the 128GB, $500 for the 256GB and $1000 for the 512GB. All can be purchased directly from Crucial and include a three-year warranty.

While the M4s are pretty pricey, solid-state drives are a great way of improving the speed of your Mac. Traditional hard drives are famous for being the bottleneck in modern-day Macs, and since the release of the incredibly nippy second-generation MacBook Air, many users have realized the difference an SSD can make and have adopted the new technology. Recent tests have proven that MacBook Pros equipped with SSD drives are significantly faster than those with traditional HDDs.

[via Macworld]

The next revision of Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup will boast a brand new case design for the first time since the aluminum unibody models were introduced in 2008. The current lineup of MacBook Pros – which was recently refreshed earlier this year to introduce a Thunderbolt port, Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, and new GPUs – will be the last revision before an all-new design.

A source for MacRumors has provided “reliable confirmation” that a redesign is currently in the works, however, there are currently no details on what the new MacBook Pro will look like:

Unfortunately, we have no specifics on what the next MacBook Pro might look like, though many have previously speculated that Apple will take cues from the MacBook Air line.

I’m sure previous speculation won’t be far off either. Apple’s latest MacBook Air has proven to be a huge success and at its unveiling back in October 2010, Steve Jobs hailed the device the “future of notebooks.”

My guess is that the next MacBook Pro will be at least thinner and lighter, with SSD storage and better battery life. If we’re really lucky we’ll get one of those Retina displays everyone’s talking about.

It’s not everyday you see a case like Silva Limited’s bamboo Macbook Pro case. Hand assembled, hand finished, made from sustainable bamboo — it’s obvious these handsome cases have been crafted with love and a ton of attention to detail.

Update: Final Cut X will be $299 and will be available in the App Store in June. Still unknown are the future of Final Cut Studio (Including Soundtrack, Motion, Compressor, Color, DVD Studio) or Express.

Apple is, at the very moment I’m writing this, taking the cloak off of Final Cut X live and to much applause in front of the Final Cut Pro User Group Network in Las Vegas. For several weeks there have been rumors and murmurings that Apple would today unveil the next iteration of its venerable Final Cut video editing software, we’re learning now those rumors were true.

Final Cut users know that the last major update the software had was about 10 years ago. Though many users love the program, it was getting so long in the tooth it was starting to look like a vampire.

Details of the new Final Cut X are still coming in since the unveiling isn’t over yet, but one attendee at the event is posting updates via twitter (thanks @fcpsupermeet). Here are some notables from his twitter stream:

• Crowd is unruly!
• Final Cut X is a full rebuild from scratch
• 64 bit – Crowd: “finally!” “thank you!”
• Cocoa, Core Animation, Open CL, Grand Central Dispatch support
• The Focus was on image quality
• Fully color managed
• Resolution independent playback/timeline all the way up to 4K
• Features people detection, single or in groups
• Non-destructive auto color balance
• Automatic audio cleanup (option to auto noise reduce audio, more)
• Features “smart collections”: a lot like the smart folders found in OS X
• Editing can start immediately during importing of AVCHD and other media, switches silently to local media as it ingests
• Uses every available cpu cycle to keep things rendered. Also highly scalable. Will even work on a Macbook
• No interruption for rendering. No transcoding, EVERYTHING native. (incl DSLR footage–assume this means AVC)
• Presentation received a standing ovation!

Via macrumors.com.

While everyone else is talking about the new almighty Thunderbolt ports the new MacBook Pros are sporting, one big switch that isn’t getting all that much attention is Apple’s switch from NVIDIA GeForce GT graphics processors to AMD’s Radeon HD GPUs.

The switch takes place on the 15″ and 17″ units while the smaller 13″ MacBook Pro just has the standard Intel integrated graphics card. Apple is claiming that the switch to AMD has increased performance threefold over the old MacBook Pro models.

The Apple Store is down, and new MacBook Pros are on their way. We saw the 13-inch yesterday: now we’ve got the details on one of the 15-inchers and 17-inchers, respectively.

Here’s what we’re looking at for the 15-inch and 17-inch:

• An Intel Core 2.0 GHz i7 quad-core processor with a 6MB cache (15-inch)
• An Intel Core 2.2 GHz i7 quad-core processor with a 6MB cache (17-inch)
• 4GB of DDR RAM at 1333 MHz (both)
• 500GB hard drive (15-inch)
• 750GB hard drive (17-inch)
• 15.4-inch LED backlit screen with 1440×900 resolution (15-inch)
• a 17-inch LED backlit display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution (17-inch)
• Intel HD Graphics 3000
• AMD Radeon HD 6490M GPU with 256MB of memory (15-inch)
• AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5 memory (17-inch)
• FaceTime HD camera
• 8x SuperDrive
• Thunderbolt and Mini DisplayPort
• SDXC slot, FireWire 800 port and two USB 2.0 ports
• Audio and Ethernet ports
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Like the 13-inch we saw yesterday, these are more modest updates to the MacBook Pro line than we anticipated, boasting no LiquidMetal design or ubiquitous SSDs. The only notable update is the adoption of Light Peak, branded by Apple as Thunderbolt.

There’s still two new MacBook Pros (a 15-incher and 17-incher) to be revealed, but expect them to be variations of these two. We’ll let you know price when the Apple Store comes back up.

Fscklog has just posted a photo of what they believe are the specs to the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, which should be due out any day now.

Here are the specs, translated from German

• 2.3Ghz Sandy Bridge Dual-Core Intel Core i5 Processor with a 3MB L3 Cache

• 4GB of DDR3 RAM clocked at 1333MHz

• A 320GB hard drive

• a 13.3-inch diagonal LED backlit display with a 1280×800 pixel resolution.

• Intel HD Graphics 3000 with 384MB of DDR3 RAM.

• An integrated FaceTime-HD camera

• An 8x Superdrive

• Two USB 2 ports, an SD card reader, FireWire 800, a MiniDisplay Port, Ethernet and, most interestingly, Thunderbolt port (this is very possibly the Apple-branded implementation of Light Peak we’ve been hearing about).

Overall? It seems the 13-inch model is not the radical re-imagining we’ve been hearing about for the last few days. It’s not made of Liquid Metal, there’s no SSD and the new MBP has an identical chassis design to the old model. Short of the new Thunderbolt port and the leap to Sandy Bridge, these aren’t markedly different than the last generation of 13-inch MBPs. That said, the 13-incher is the entry-level MBP model. Perhaps Apple has something more radical afoot for the 15- and 17-inch models.

After the jump, a look at the new MacBook Pro’s marketing materials and a close-up view of the Thunderbolt port.

Apple is asking its retail employees to sign non-disclosure agreements ahead of a secret, all-hands meeting to be held this Sunday, Apple Insider is reporting. It could foreshadow a major launch, a media event or both.

The new MacBook Pros expected later this week will boot off solid-state drives, claims Boy Genius Report, citing unnamed sources.

In addition:

• The new MacBook Pros will feature larger glass trackpads. It’s hard to imagine how this is possible, but they’ve been growing with each successive machine, so maybe so.
• The lower-end models will have 8GB-16GB SSDs for Mac OS X, and will also come equipped with a regular hard drive. This will offer the benefits of SSDs — instant on and super fast performance — while also providing lots of room for power users’ files (video and Photoshop).
• The higher-end models will be SSD only, just like Apple’s new MacBook Air line.
• The new machines will be up to a half-pound lighter than curent models. Again, hard to imagine how this is possible given that Liquidmetal rumors are unlikely.
• The report also note there will be five different SKUs, jibing with previous rumor reports.

Boy Genius Report: New MacBook Pro models imminent; we’ve got some new details

The new MacBook Pros are due on Thursday according to pervasive Internet scuttlebutt, and at the very least, a jump to Intel’s new Sandy Bridge architecture is a sure thing… but another state-of-the-art Intel technology might be coming to them as well, with Mactrast reporting that the February 24th MBP refresh might include the adoption of Intel’s Light Peak technology.

Apple has delayed shipping MacBook Pros on its online store for 3-5 business days… delaying the earliest day you can have a MacBook Pro shipped to you to well-ahead of the rumored Thursday launch of the next-gen MacBook Pros. Given how religious Apple’s Tim Cook is about supply, this has all the markings of an official MacBook Pro refresh.

It looks like Apple’s all set to launch new MacBooks next week, but the launch day is — a Thursday?

What’s up with that? Apple’s big product launches are almost always on Tuesdays. (It allows reporters on the East Coast to fly into California on a workday instead of the weekend).

So why would Apple launch new MacBooks on Thursday February 24?

It’s new MacBook Pros next Thursday February 24, according to MacRumors, citing a “reliable” source.

We’ve since heard reliable confirmation that this information is accurate and that the expected release date is next Thursday, February 24th. The move would be a bit unusual for Apple to launch new machines on a Thursday. So, if you are about to buy a new MacBook Pro, wait until next week.

MacBooks were last updated a year ago with Intel Core i5 and i7 chips. The new machines are likely to get Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge processors, which are faster and a lot less power hungry. Rumors that the machines will have cases made  of Liquidmetal are unlikely, but they will probably will be lighter, thinner and have higher-resolution screens. A big price drop is predicted too.

Apple’s said to be releasing five new models, which will include two new 13-inch versions, two new 15-inch versions and one new 17-inch version.