Apple’s Core2 Duo notebooks: Do you wait?
This post was published 3 years 4 months 27 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.Apple, on Tuesday, announced the first Core2 Duo powered notebooks in their all Intel powered lineup. The Macbook Pro’s Intel chip is the same chip used in Apple’s popular iMac and the same architecture that powers the Mac Pro’s dual Xeon chips. Apple’s Macbook and Mac mini computers are still powered by the dual core Yonah chip and have not been graced with Core2 goodness.
What’s so great about the new Core2 Architecture? For that question I suggest visiting the core2duo.org page for more technical details on the architecture. What does this mean to the user? More speed comes to mind, better power efficiency and of course bragging rights. There’s no sticker on the new Macbook Pros signifying, “Intel Core2Duo inside� so more speed is about the only thing you do get out of the new chips. From a personal standpoint, my work machine is a Dell Dimension 9200 with the Intel Conroe E6700 processor. This is a dual core chip with 4 megabytes of cache with a clock speed of 2.67GHz and boy is it fast! Core2 chips are extremely efficient processors and this Dell running 500Mhz slower than my previous Pentium D 3.2Ghz (also a dual core) is easily 30% faster.
Moving on to our original question, should you buy the new Core2 based Macbook Pros? I say yes for more than one reason. Let’s say that Apple speed bumped the Macbook Pros with its current Yonah chips. I would still recommend buying this release of the Macbook Pro because Apple would have resolved many hardware issues from the first revision. Since Apple did perform enhancements like better graphic card options, larger hard drive, faster DVD burning Superdrive and larger amount of maximum ram in addition to the Core2 mobile chip, there’s no reason why you should wait if you are in the market for a professional notebook from Apple.
Apple has not made any modifications to the body of these devices and has not added a new wireless networking protocol to succeed Airport Extreme, improved iSight or claims that these notebooks run cooler and more efficiently than previous generation Macbook Pros. This is definitely a new beast underneath with the features I listed above and at least there is finally a great separation between the Macbok and Macbook Pro notebook offerings from Apple. I’m sure there are thousands of users still waiting for a Core2 Duo powered Macbook (I’m one of them) but with the holiday season just around the corner, it appears that Apple won’t release an update to their Macbook model until 2007.
Apple current product line is perfect. A high end Xeon based server and workstation, Core2 Duo powered Desktop and professional notebook and at the low end, a $599 dollar CoreDuo Mac mini and consumer level CoreDuo notebook priced at $1099 all from one company and all of these systems can run Windows or Mac and are all Vista and Leopard capable. I would like to see a price drop in the Macbook Pro models but I think 1� thin makes that $1999 entry-level price tag oh so worth it.
Am I the only one to be surprised by the lack of HD-DVD/Blue Ray?
It seems odd, especially when big companies are all jumping on board.
Oh! and the question I would loved answered is: can you cook an egg on it? Or have they solved the heat problem with by adding this fancy new Core 2 Duo?
Supposedly the power per watt is still applied to newer chips coming fron Intel. These machines are not extremely faster than the previous Yonah chip but have a larger l2 cache and faster front side bus as well as better execution and memory handling. With that said, these chips operate 30-50% faster with the same clock speed without increasing heat or using a significant ammount of power of their predecessor.
To answer your question regarding heat, I can’t say. Apple did shave half an hour off of the maximum batterry life noted in their Apple Tech specs page versus the previous generation macbook pro and I’m not sure why that is to be honest
Apple is being cautious when it comes to the next generation optical burners and for good reason. All movie studios use Macs even if its preproduction post production or for dailies. And the movie studios using Macs are also the ones competing over HDDVD and blu-ray. Apple siding with Blu-ray (althought they are on the blu-ray consortium) would be a bad decision forcing many studios to wait for external HD_dvd burners or just move to Vista and the Dell boxes. Apple’s current version of DVD studio pro and the upcoming Final cut studio will be built to support both formats but will Apple give users a choice when they order the machine? I doubt it.
I think Apple is waiting for the laser drives that burn HD-dvd and blu-ray to have a huge price drop. probably 2nd quarter 07 to be honest. It will be at that point that Apple will issue huge updates to the iMac and Mac Pro as well as bring the Macbook and Mac mini to Core2 status (but that’s just my two cents
I am an ordinary family user considering a new PC.
Can someone explain simply why I should switch to a Mac?
Regards Confused…..
Entry Level ‘Pro’ Machines from Apple are never worth it. Atleast the mid level at a minimum.
Taking a look at your Site John, thats one reason to get a mac.
Wow, Cynic81, that was certainly not a needed comment. I would simply say to John, aka “Confused” that this blog post may not be the best place to ask such a question simply because this topic has been discussed a million and one times throughout the interwebs. You may want to check out apple.com/switch to watch some of this switched commercials, or do a quick google.com search to see what results you get for “why switch to a mac?”
Good luck and ignore comments like Cynic’s, then again, he could just be a cynic.
So he wouldnt be able to make a much better website, much easier using iWeb?
http://apple.com/switch
hey.. fix the link.. its makin me uneasy!
activity
1.reason: no virus->no virus -apps+no wasted time (if you ever had a bad virus, you’ll know what i ‘m talking about)
2.reason: more confort in usage (workflow)/less error-messages
etc. have a look to the apple homepage, there are a few more reasons listed
i switched one year ago and can’t imagine to return to pc. i have saved a huge lot of time and energie.
apple is not perfect, but i think its much better than its rival