The fact that Apple keeps hardware and, increasingly, software, so tightly controlled leads to a situation like that of this "new" Mac Pro. If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways. Performance would go up and prices would come down.
There are lots of use cases where the user couldn't give a crap about a nice and polished enclosure. You are paying dearly for design you don't need. If you want to pay for design, fine, do so, but to a lot of us it means nothing.
Case in point: We have several workstations setup for Finite Element Analysis of heat and fluid flow. They are dual quad core i965 Extremes. They run overclocked at 4.0GHz with memory overclocked to 2.0GHz. They have 64GB of DDR3. All fluid cooled. Tons of storage as well. They also have dual NVidia graphics cards and sport three 24 inch 1920 x 1200 LCD monitors. Total cost, about $3,500. Including the three monitors and the OS hard drive.
These are monster machines in terms of performance and they still cost less than a Mac Pro. We have three Mac Pro's as well.
I would really like to see Apple open it up. A lot of interesting things could come of it.
Because their hardware is not subject to competitive forces, we will now be stuck with a less-than-desirable incremental update for probably three years, if not more.
The irony of this post is so hilarious to me, this is Apple coming full circle from its clone wars days.
Man, those were some shitty experiences.
Apple is an hardware company. They make money off the nuts and bolts pieced together with premium markup, software is but icing on top. They practically give away the results of their development costs on OSX.
You're encountering the cognitive dissonance as experienced in the 90's. Why, oh, why is Apple not courting customers that don't care about shiny enclosures and slick packaging?
Because that's not the Apple way.
I'm just waiting for Mac Pros to go the way of Xserves (which the group was ran for years just to break-even for the sake of pretension)
Apple is what it is because they tightly control the end-to-end user experience, from the hardware to the software. You can't maintain that and open up the hardware ecosystem; it's an either/or choice. So far, their choice has worked out really, really well for them, so why should they mess with that?
I'm sure you're aware of Apple's fairly disastrous entry into the world of Mac clones back in the day. What you're arguing now is essentially the same theory back then: clones would benefit them by increasing the marketshare for their OS. Instead, clones just cannibalized Apple's own sales and diluted their brand with a bunch of crappy knock-offs. I'm not sure why anyone would expect it to play out differently now.
Sure, it might be in your interest as a consumer to have choice in hardware, but I don't see how it's in Apple's interest to do so. They seem to be doing pretty well precisely because of the choices they've made to lock things down, not in spite of them.
> If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways.
And OSX would also be crashing all the time, getting a reputation for being unstable. This is exactly why they have such tightly controlled hardware configurations: so some cheap company with bad drivers can't make Grandmothers think Mac OSX crashes all the time.
It's not "free" throwing in support for any stupid (even conflicting!) configuration that people could come up with. You have to write your OS different and you're still not going to stop all the problems. Most of Windows old reputation for being horribly unstable came from a handful of drivers.
The crowning irony is that it looks like the digital creative set is going to be pushed into the arms of Microsoft, for so long the subject of their scorn. If you want a fast digital workstation now Windows is your only reasonable option.
If you want non-Apple hardware, go buy it. There's nothing stopping you (or anyone else) from doing so. I think Apple fills an obviously valuable niche (several niches, really) and I don't see any incentive for them to open up like you suggest. A lot of us do like to pay for design, reliability, and the end-to-end experience, and I'm glad there is a company like Apple to provide for customers like myself.
I can't see much benefit to Apple though they obviously already make heaps on markup of the current Mac Pro's. Selling OS X standalone I imagine would devalue the rest of OS X products.
You are forgetting the primary question here: What is in it for Apple to cater to users who couldn't give a crap about a nice and polished enclosure? They are happy to play in the premium segment.
Even though I agree with your sentiment, you're comparing a desktop/server with a laptop. One is built to be portable, and will have big tradeoffs because of this.
Our sound guy is PISSED at the lack of update. Seriously, incredibly pissed. I've honestly never seen him this angry before. He'd been counting down the days till WWDC and a long overdue update. There are three major pieces of software he uses on his Mac that he swears by. It sounds like they have all just released or are about to release Windows versions.
I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly focused on iOS and consumer/prosumer and not professional. I certainly don't blame them. Is the future of professionals going to be Windows? Even for lifelong Mac die hards? It seems plausible imo.
Except there's not really a premium Windows platform to compete with the overall integration that a high-end Mac and Mac OS X offers.
If you can get the same performance out of, say, the new MacBook Pro plus a couple Thunderbolt displays and a Thunderbolt RAID, the pros can just move in that direction.
Notice that there was no iMac update at all today; Apple might be planning to release a new high-end iMac to better serve the old Mac Pro crowd.
Why is he pissed? I assume he has custom sound hardware anyway, what can't he do with the last gen Xeon he can with the latest gen Xeon? It's Xeons...in a box. Most editors (video/sound) would be provided with fibre storage links from an all-in-one vendor, whilst it might be nice to see thunderbolt on a mac pro, you can't put infiniband on an imac...
I read recently that the Mac Pro accounts for less than %2 of Apple's Mac sales.
Since thunderbolt basically is a PCI express cable, there's nothing to stop people from building external cases that can hold PCI express cards, like the Mac Pro can. Since thunderbolt is becoming prevalent across the line, I can't really see a need for the Mac Pro so much anymore.
True it is nice in some situations to put all your hard drives and all your PCI cards in one box, but at %2 of the total sales (by units) the big old tower is less relevant these days.
The other thing the Mac Pro had was the highest end of Intels CPUs. If the sales aren't making the engineering effort worth it, then the answer Apple's intending people to take may be a high end iMac.
I edit a lot of HD in Final Cut X on my 2 year old Macbook Pro, and background rendering seems to have no trouble keeping up. I've not really felt CPU constrained in awhile with HD.
My Dad, who is really into video editing and 3D animation, swears by the Mac Pro line. I have been suggesting that he get a fast MacBook Pro, use Thunderbolt with the nice raid box Apple sells, and move on. After the new MacBook Pro hotness and the minor Mac Pro update, I bet he will make the switch.
My world is Linux servers and a MacBook Air (and a good SSH shell on my iPad if I am travelling light) work fine; some local develop using IntelliJ/RubyMine, etc., and good access to servers == happiness. I could personally care less if Apple wants to concentrate on what makes them money.
For people who do professional video, sound, etc., maybe the Windows world is looking better, especially with Adobe's neat Creative Cloud stuff. I am a rank amateur when it comes to video and digital photo post production, and even I am thinking of dropping Final Cut Pro 7 and paying Adobe $50/month for Creative Cloud. I think that Apple has made their intentions clear.
1. Marco's pessimistic take that they are clearing through existing inventory in slightly reconfigured and cheaper machines.
2. grecy's comment here that they needed to keep people hooked while they get the real bump out the door.
If the answer is 2, then they really can't wait too long. A few people will be satisfied that they can get 12 cores for $3800, but it's only a stop gap.
My pessimistic gut says Marco is right (see FCPx/exFCP fiasco), but I keep hoping he's wrong. Right now I have too much invested in PCIe in my studio (audio hardware) and might get one of these new 12 core boxes and nurse it along for as long as I can.
If I used your logic last year when they did soft bumps to the MacBook Pro after not having a major upgrade since 2010, I would've been shitting my pants thinking they would be dropping the MacBook Pro and only going consumer... which, as we learned today, is not the case.
The Mac Pro is a necessary part of their line for professionals and aren't going anywhere. My guess is next upgrade will be a big overhaul. It will also probably come with Mac Mini upgrades & a complete thunderbolt display selection (which I am waiting for).
EDIT: the upgrade I'm referring to is April 2010 when the MacBook Pro's started using the Intel Core i5 and i7 processers, removed the express slot, etc. That's 2 years and 2 months between major updates AND you could say the 2009 was really the last time it was upgraded THIS much. So 3 years? and you're complaining about 2 which is not abnormal by any means.
You and OP have made clear, concrete, differing predictions about the future, predictions which can be checked within the next 6-12 months. This is epistemically virtuous -- congratulations! If you want to be even more epistemically virtuous, you could arrange a bet. How much would you be willing to bet that there will be a new Mac Pro within the next year?
If you're into home recording (who isn't, these days?), this is a huge blow. When your Pro Tools/Cubase/Logic project has 40+ tracks of high resolution audio files and several high quality real-time plugins processing each one of them you really need a lot of CPU power.
I purchased a Thunderbolt display just a couple of months ago. I wanted to use it with my Macbook Air while waiting for the Mac Pro to be updated, feeling that not even Apple could get away with a $1000 display that was not supported by its super expensive high end computer.
I was wrong, apparently. Now I know what it must have felt like to have bought NeXT computers or Betamax VCRs.
Cubase VST was doing 32 track audio flawlessly on Windows back in the late 90s on an original Pentium. Seriously weird seeing people demanding more power for audio work.
Well, if you are banking on OS X as your platform for scientific computing, it seems you have chosen very poorly. I still don't understand why an organization would choose Mac Pros for workstations. That seems to me to be a class of machines where price/performance is very important, and Apple hasn't been very competitive in that area.
I think Apple has done a pretty good thing today. They've politely signaled to the market that they want you to f' off and buy someone else's product in this segment, because you aren't worth the effort anymore.
The money is in iOS and the laptops. And you don't need more than an iMac to develop for iOS or the laptops, so they just can't be bothered to make a workstation anymore. If you are pissed off about this you should investigate Linux or Windows.
At the moment, this feels very much like a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Well, sales are down" or "Sales are such a small percentage of revenue"... that they question keeping the product line around. Given that there haven't been any major updates, yes, sales are down.
I suspect if they hadn't put out a new model of the iPhone since the 3GS, sales of the iPhone would probably decline over the last 2-3 years.
A souped-up iMac and some sort of thunderbolt 'bay' for expansion cards would serve the pro market, one would think. A large-scale touch display would be on the wish-list as well. That's my complete guess as to where they might be headed. I can't really imagine that Apple is unaware of how important the pro market is to their image, if not the bottom line. Consider the strong ties with Pixar – they must get constant feedback into what a pro setup needs. I'm betting on a big iMac/Pro update in the fall.
But I don't think that means it's dead for certain. Maybe they are having a hard time figuring out if Thunderbolt will go on the gfx card or the motherboard...maybe they are still waiting for a usb 3.0/thunderbolt/ivy bridge chipset from inel?
In fact, I think a "lame" update is a good sign that Apple wants to keep it around, and for whatever reason doesn't have the tech yet to make it much better.
Has it come to the point that the only way to build a serious Mac rig is a high end hackintosh? I had high hopes as I need a very serious rig for work related stuff, I put off doing soe RMA and other nonsense waiting for this thing... and ... this is it?
Speaking of which, has anyone built a monster hackintosh?
I was thinking about it, but then I just bit the bullet and got the top iMac, ordered 4GB with it, then ripped out the 2x2GB from Apple and put in 4x8GB. It's acceptable, though sometimes when I am churning data I wish I had more than 8 threads.
Having to deal with opening up one's computer and also occasionally losing a half a day to tracking down proper kexts is not my idea of cost savings. (I'm not afraid of it, it just sucks and absorbs my only non-renewable resource.)
That said, a Hackintosh can save you a lot of money if you're looking at the Mac Pro line. It's a crappy solution, for sure. Apple would never bless such a thing, but they don't seem to try and stop it.
Ditto to Hackintosh. The Mac Pro never was a good buy.
Half the reason one buys an Apple product is because of the terrific build quality and design. That's extremely important in a notebook computer, something you'll carry around day in day out and have to depend on to not fail when you're in the field.
There's far less incentive in buying a terrifically sturdy and pretty machine that will sit under your desk and not be moved for years on end.
The fact is Mac Pro's aren't as profitable as iPads or iPhones. If you were CEO you'd de-prioritise the line as well.
They're not killing off the line altogether probably because it's a less risky market. iPads and iPhones are new, and tomorrow a new phone could kill off iPhone sales over night.
It is pretty shitty to see Apple do this however. I'd love for them to put in the bleeding edge hardware on the line.
I suspect that Apple has delayed significant changes to the Mac Pro until desktop Retina displays are ready. Likely there was some snag, and the whole kit (including a Retina capable video subsystem) wasn't ready when originally planned. In that case, a small incremental update is the only option.
I wonder if this is a tacit acceptance of the DIY hackintosh. Has anyone seen hacintoshes used by audio/video pros for production work?
Everything I've read over the last year seems to imply that Apple is losing interest in the pro A/V market in favor of the profitable portable market, instead of keeping both going.
But the truth is, this is really self-entitled. There's huge iPhone updates on the go (iOS6 and hopefully iPhone 5 later this year), big MacBook Pro updates but that wasn't good enough. Nope, because they didn't cover Marco's chosen line of computers… they're playing a half-assed game.
Buying a computer is a 1:1 deal. You give money, they give computer (and support for a year.) That's it. That's the deal. There is no "we'll forever be in your debt" by Apple. Just because you want something, and you kick and stomp doesn't mean they should do it.
We also don't know why. There could have been a hardware issue holding them up, or a software. We've got no idea on this.
Apple are doing a pretty good job at the moment if you ask me.
Neglect on the internals side is objectionable, but what of the the case? It's still just as (subjectively) beautiful today as it was six years ago. Does a product really need to radically look different just to be "new?"
Only tangentially related, but what's the consensus on which "ultrabooks" look best to compete with MBP/MBA? I was hoping that Apple would make my choice for me, but I'm underwhelmed.
I'm personally surprised that the Lenovo X1 Carbon hasn't gotten more notice: 14 inch screen, 1600x900, made of carbon fiber, beautiful body, less than 3 lbs, embedded 3G connectivity.
Question marks seem to be battery (I've heard numbers ranging from 3.5 hours to 10 hours) and price (I'd wager around $1200ish?).
Skepticism around the claims of improved sound.
The Samsung Series 9 (also 1600x900, but 13.3 inch screen) also looks solid. Any others out or on the horizon worth noting?
[+] [-] robomartin|13 years ago|reply
The fact that Apple keeps hardware and, increasingly, software, so tightly controlled leads to a situation like that of this "new" Mac Pro. If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways. Performance would go up and prices would come down.
There are lots of use cases where the user couldn't give a crap about a nice and polished enclosure. You are paying dearly for design you don't need. If you want to pay for design, fine, do so, but to a lot of us it means nothing.
Case in point: We have several workstations setup for Finite Element Analysis of heat and fluid flow. They are dual quad core i965 Extremes. They run overclocked at 4.0GHz with memory overclocked to 2.0GHz. They have 64GB of DDR3. All fluid cooled. Tons of storage as well. They also have dual NVidia graphics cards and sport three 24 inch 1920 x 1200 LCD monitors. Total cost, about $3,500. Including the three monitors and the OS hard drive.
These are monster machines in terms of performance and they still cost less than a Mac Pro. We have three Mac Pro's as well.
I would really like to see Apple open it up. A lot of interesting things could come of it.
Because their hardware is not subject to competitive forces, we will now be stuck with a less-than-desirable incremental update for probably three years, if not more.
[+] [-] alaskamiller|13 years ago|reply
Man, those were some shitty experiences.
Apple is an hardware company. They make money off the nuts and bolts pieced together with premium markup, software is but icing on top. They practically give away the results of their development costs on OSX.
You're encountering the cognitive dissonance as experienced in the 90's. Why, oh, why is Apple not courting customers that don't care about shiny enclosures and slick packaging?
Because that's not the Apple way.
I'm just waiting for Mac Pros to go the way of Xserves (which the group was ran for years just to break-even for the sake of pretension)
[+] [-] akeefer|13 years ago|reply
I'm sure you're aware of Apple's fairly disastrous entry into the world of Mac clones back in the day. What you're arguing now is essentially the same theory back then: clones would benefit them by increasing the marketshare for their OS. Instead, clones just cannibalized Apple's own sales and diluted their brand with a bunch of crappy knock-offs. I'm not sure why anyone would expect it to play out differently now.
Sure, it might be in your interest as a consumer to have choice in hardware, but I don't see how it's in Apple's interest to do so. They seem to be doing pretty well precisely because of the choices they've made to lock things down, not in spite of them.
[+] [-] flyinRyan|13 years ago|reply
And OSX would also be crashing all the time, getting a reputation for being unstable. This is exactly why they have such tightly controlled hardware configurations: so some cheap company with bad drivers can't make Grandmothers think Mac OSX crashes all the time.
It's not "free" throwing in support for any stupid (even conflicting!) configuration that people could come up with. You have to write your OS different and you're still not going to stop all the problems. Most of Windows old reputation for being horribly unstable came from a handful of drivers.
[+] [-] cageface|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bronxbomber92|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdfaoeu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therandomguy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] T-Winsnes|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] forrestthewoods|13 years ago|reply
I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly focused on iOS and consumer/prosumer and not professional. I certainly don't blame them. Is the future of professionals going to be Windows? Even for lifelong Mac die hards? It seems plausible imo.
[+] [-] Bud|13 years ago|reply
If you can get the same performance out of, say, the new MacBook Pro plus a couple Thunderbolt displays and a Thunderbolt RAID, the pros can just move in that direction.
Notice that there was no iMac update at all today; Apple might be planning to release a new high-end iMac to better serve the old Mac Pro crowd.
[+] [-] beedogs|13 years ago|reply
Both Windows and OS X are becoming walled-garden tablet-centric shitfests.
[+] [-] petercooper|13 years ago|reply
Which itself is going super-consumery with Windows 8..
[+] [-] millzlane|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueprint|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mathnode|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcromartie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrodust|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nirvana|13 years ago|reply
Since thunderbolt basically is a PCI express cable, there's nothing to stop people from building external cases that can hold PCI express cards, like the Mac Pro can. Since thunderbolt is becoming prevalent across the line, I can't really see a need for the Mac Pro so much anymore.
True it is nice in some situations to put all your hard drives and all your PCI cards in one box, but at %2 of the total sales (by units) the big old tower is less relevant these days.
The other thing the Mac Pro had was the highest end of Intels CPUs. If the sales aren't making the engineering effort worth it, then the answer Apple's intending people to take may be a high end iMac.
I edit a lot of HD in Final Cut X on my 2 year old Macbook Pro, and background rendering seems to have no trouble keeping up. I've not really felt CPU constrained in awhile with HD.
[+] [-] cheatercheater|13 years ago|reply
> Is the future of professionals going to be Windows?
No.
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|13 years ago|reply
My world is Linux servers and a MacBook Air (and a good SSH shell on my iPad if I am travelling light) work fine; some local develop using IntelliJ/RubyMine, etc., and good access to servers == happiness. I could personally care less if Apple wants to concentrate on what makes them money.
For people who do professional video, sound, etc., maybe the Windows world is looking better, especially with Adobe's neat Creative Cloud stuff. I am a rank amateur when it comes to video and digital photo post production, and even I am thinking of dropping Final Cut Pro 7 and paying Adobe $50/month for Creative Cloud. I think that Apple has made their intentions clear.
[+] [-] abruzzi|13 years ago|reply
1. Marco's pessimistic take that they are clearing through existing inventory in slightly reconfigured and cheaper machines.
2. grecy's comment here that they needed to keep people hooked while they get the real bump out the door.
If the answer is 2, then they really can't wait too long. A few people will be satisfied that they can get 12 cores for $3800, but it's only a stop gap.
My pessimistic gut says Marco is right (see FCPx/exFCP fiasco), but I keep hoping he's wrong. Right now I have too much invested in PCIe in my studio (audio hardware) and might get one of these new 12 core boxes and nurse it along for as long as I can.
Geof
[+] [-] justindocanto|13 years ago|reply
The Mac Pro is a necessary part of their line for professionals and aren't going anywhere. My guess is next upgrade will be a big overhaul. It will also probably come with Mac Mini upgrades & a complete thunderbolt display selection (which I am waiting for).
EDIT: the upgrade I'm referring to is April 2010 when the MacBook Pro's started using the Intel Core i5 and i7 processers, removed the express slot, etc. That's 2 years and 2 months between major updates AND you could say the 2009 was really the last time it was upgraded THIS much. So 3 years? and you're complaining about 2 which is not abnormal by any means.
[+] [-] MBlume|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brunorsini|13 years ago|reply
I purchased a Thunderbolt display just a couple of months ago. I wanted to use it with my Macbook Air while waiting for the Mac Pro to be updated, feeling that not even Apple could get away with a $1000 display that was not supported by its super expensive high end computer.
I was wrong, apparently. Now I know what it must have felt like to have bought NeXT computers or Betamax VCRs.
[+] [-] petercooper|13 years ago|reply
I have a 2008 Mac Pro and was looking into doing this, but I'd need to buy a graphics card with DP first.
UPDATE: Thanks! Yes, I was wrong ;-) Another source: http://store.apple.com/us/question/answers/product/MC007LL/A...
[+] [-] huggyface|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|13 years ago|reply
I think Apple has done a pretty good thing today. They've politely signaled to the market that they want you to f' off and buy someone else's product in this segment, because you aren't worth the effort anymore.
The money is in iOS and the laptops. And you don't need more than an iMac to develop for iOS or the laptops, so they just can't be bothered to make a workstation anymore. If you are pissed off about this you should investigate Linux or Windows.
[+] [-] mgkimsal|13 years ago|reply
I suspect if they hadn't put out a new model of the iPhone since the 3GS, sales of the iPhone would probably decline over the last 2-3 years.
[+] [-] gdubs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|13 years ago|reply
But I don't think that means it's dead for certain. Maybe they are having a hard time figuring out if Thunderbolt will go on the gfx card or the motherboard...maybe they are still waiting for a usb 3.0/thunderbolt/ivy bridge chipset from inel?
In fact, I think a "lame" update is a good sign that Apple wants to keep it around, and for whatever reason doesn't have the tech yet to make it much better.
[+] [-] MetaCosm|13 years ago|reply
Speaking of which, has anyone built a monster hackintosh?
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
Having to deal with opening up one's computer and also occasionally losing a half a day to tracking down proper kexts is not my idea of cost savings. (I'm not afraid of it, it just sucks and absorbs my only non-renewable resource.)
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|13 years ago|reply
That said, a Hackintosh can save you a lot of money if you're looking at the Mac Pro line. It's a crappy solution, for sure. Apple would never bless such a thing, but they don't seem to try and stop it.
[+] [-] AndrewNoNumbers|13 years ago|reply
Half the reason one buys an Apple product is because of the terrific build quality and design. That's extremely important in a notebook computer, something you'll carry around day in day out and have to depend on to not fail when you're in the field.
There's far less incentive in buying a terrifically sturdy and pretty machine that will sit under your desk and not be moved for years on end.
[+] [-] pippy|13 years ago|reply
They're not killing off the line altogether probably because it's a less risky market. iPads and iPhones are new, and tomorrow a new phone could kill off iPhone sales over night.
It is pretty shitty to see Apple do this however. I'd love for them to put in the bleeding edge hardware on the line.
[+] [-] codex|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewNCarr|13 years ago|reply
Everything I've read over the last year seems to imply that Apple is losing interest in the pro A/V market in favor of the profitable portable market, instead of keeping both going.
[+] [-] zachinglis|13 years ago|reply
But the truth is, this is really self-entitled. There's huge iPhone updates on the go (iOS6 and hopefully iPhone 5 later this year), big MacBook Pro updates but that wasn't good enough. Nope, because they didn't cover Marco's chosen line of computers… they're playing a half-assed game.
Buying a computer is a 1:1 deal. You give money, they give computer (and support for a year.) That's it. That's the deal. There is no "we'll forever be in your debt" by Apple. Just because you want something, and you kick and stomp doesn't mean they should do it.
We also don't know why. There could have been a hardware issue holding them up, or a software. We've got no idea on this.
Apple are doing a pretty good job at the moment if you ask me.
[+] [-] chrissnell|13 years ago|reply
The Mac Pro hasn't seen a case update in at least six years. What other Apple product has been neglected like this?
[+] [-] ary|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewNoNumbers|13 years ago|reply
What, besides A/V work, is a 6+ core OS X machine necessary for?
[+] [-] tar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robert_nsu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarmig|13 years ago|reply
I'm personally surprised that the Lenovo X1 Carbon hasn't gotten more notice: 14 inch screen, 1600x900, made of carbon fiber, beautiful body, less than 3 lbs, embedded 3G connectivity.
Question marks seem to be battery (I've heard numbers ranging from 3.5 hours to 10 hours) and price (I'd wager around $1200ish?).
Skepticism around the claims of improved sound.
The Samsung Series 9 (also 1600x900, but 13.3 inch screen) also looks solid. Any others out or on the horizon worth noting?