Apple announces updated Mac Pro, Mac mini, iMac, quietly updates MacBook Pro

1-2% gain?

Maybe you mean iMac

It seems to me that Apple has driven the high end even higher. The old 8 core was 2800 US bucks, new one is 3300. Yikes. iMac is yawn but recession friendly. Mini looks fine except who ever thot those mini DVI and mini display ports were a good idea should be naturally selected.

For the hackintosh community it means, vanilla kernel for i7/x58 (we had them beat by a few months...), ATI 4870, 4850 and a few other video cards (still no nvidia 2x0!). A good time to be hackintoshing.

Khan

So a MB464LL/A is just another name for a MB463LL/A with bigger hard drive and 2GB ram.

So you're saying that if someone gets the base 599 model, and then later adds 2-4 gigs of memory, that they will also have 256mb available for the 9400?

Blu-ray without an HD tv is completely useless.

Blu-ray media is available in 25GB and 50GB sized formats, and TDK has developed 100GB samples.

These are massive increases over the ~8GB available in dual layer DVDs.

Obviously, Blu-ray is good for more than just HD content.

@Maxintosh

That's what I read at the Mini specs page (bottom model comparison). I don't see any hint to 2 different 9400 processors, nor that they have memory on their own, but only taken from main memory.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html

In October Steve Jobs balked at the question saying Sony wanted too much money and that he didn't feel it was the future of video distribution.

Like I posted above, we can be certain that Apple is Blu-ray talks with Sony and has been for some time. Sony has yet to "bend over."

The truth of the matter Apple has gone to great lengths to block Blue Ray but why?

This would seem to be an overstatement, but without water-boarding Steve Jobs it really can not be proven wrong.

Turns out they wan't to distribute movies like they have done with music, over the Internet. This model allows them increased profits and leverage over the movie industry. Yet another example of when given a choice Apple would block hardware innovations that don't suit their interests.

This Microsoft-like behavior is certainly true to some extent, but it should be obvious that Apple can do little more than delay Blu-ray (or really refuse to accelerate it).

This is part of an article that cover the Apple/Blu-ray issue last fall, it seems relevant to the discussion at hand:

ArsTechnica

October 27, 2008

Apple's margin-reducing product that wasn't: Blu-ray?

Apple was supposed to see lower margins because of a product transition this quarter, but that didn't quite happen. Were plans to include Blu-ray drives in the Mac shelved? Ars looks into the available evidence.

...

Blu-ray drives in the Mac, perhaps? Let's examine the evidence.

Exhibit A: Apple is on the board of directors of the Blu-ray Disc Association. During the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, conventional thinking was that the Mac maker would wait to adopt a next-generation optical format in its products until the war w[as] over. That happened some nine months ago, clearing the way for Blu-ray adoption by Apple.

Exhibit B: There is talk that the version of QuickTime included with the new unibody laptops uses GPU acceleration for decoding H.264 video. This is a capability announced for QuickTime X in Snow Leopard, but it's apparently showing up early.

Exhibit C: The bag of hurt. In the Q&A session after unveiling the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros, Steve Jobs was asked about Blu-ray. The reply: "Blu-ray is a bag of hurt. Not from the consumer point of view; it's great to watch movies, but the licensing is very complex. So we're waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off before we burden our customers with the cost of licensing."

And of course, Exhibit D, the margin-reducing product transition that didn't manage to reduce margins all that much after all.

Now, there are those who say that Apple has deliberately omitted Blu-ray drives from its computers because the company wants to push HD downloads through iTunes. I don't believe that for a second. First of all, a company full of obsessive perfectionists led by the most obsessive perfectionist of them all isn't going to accept the barely-better-than-DVD quality "HD" downloads in lieu of the real thing.

Add to that the fact that downloading 20GB movies isn't going to happen in the near future. Even at today's one to two gigabytes—and geographical restrictions—the number of people who can download HD movies (if they wanted to) is only a fraction of those who can buy or rent Blu-ray discs. But apart from that, Blu-ray isn't just a movie distribution medium; it's also on its way to replace DVD as removable media for data use. Apple can afford to be a bit behind the curve here—just like it can afford to be ahead of the curve in other areas—but the company can't ignore the direction the industry is going in for too long.

Besides, Jobs' comment clearly indicates that he has been looking into adding Blu-ray drives to the Mac product line, but got somewhat frustrated along the way.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/10/...snt-blu-ray.ars

In addition they have not added Blue Ray to any of their DVD authoring software (consumer and professional).

The problem is that Sony is apparently asking for an expensive license for Blu-ray authoring software.

Btw, I'm not impressed with the new Mac Pro. Performance wise 1-2% gain...

The only thing to complain about with the Mac Pro now, is that the x58 (quad core, single socket) version is ridiculously over-priced (at least $500 too expensive, even for Apple).

Otherwise, just switching from FB-DIMMs to DDR3 is a huge improvement in itself. There are major performance gains too, especially in the dual socket version.

I'm annoyed with their removal of the firewire 400 port. Yes you can use an adapter, but this is just another example of Apple doing whats convenient for them.

I find the fact that people are still using PS/2 ports, BIOS and even 3.5" floppy disks to be more much annoying. Legacy {censored} has to be dumped at some point.

If you want to complain about something, it should be that Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 use different plugs. This was obviously a serious design flaw. Otherwise, I am happy that Apple is now clearly indicating that it is almost fully supporting Firewire 800 and I have no problem buying an adaptor. Most people had assumed Firewire was dead.

Firewire 400 on the Mac Mini was no longer a viable option, it was Firewire 800 or no Firewire at all.

Like I posted above, we can be certain that Apple is Blu-ray talks with Sony and has been for some time. Sony has yet to "bend over."

This is part of an article that cover the Apple/Blu-ray issue last fall, it seems relevant to the discussion at hand:

The ArsTechnica article is interesting. But the margin reducing product was the switch to nvidia m/b. I think the statement was made to cover up for the risks so that stock owners was aware something could happen. The margin reuction was seemingly minimal. Also consider the price other Blu-ray systems have, I doubt

If Apple plans to put their entire HD-future on one bet that HD-movie downloading is the future, they are insane. Downloading of movies are in its infancy, and if i compare with my peers who have internet I have the highest bandwidth and my others friends are quite tech savvy as well. Consider the common people, with maybe 2kbit/s bandwidth. I still find HD movies to download painfully slow. Unless you go down in quality and accept all the artifacts. As the article suggest also I agree, it is not going to be a big hit anytime soon. And playing it all on one card I doubt Apple would do.

Blu-ray has a complex licensing, both for playback and authoring. Hardware is also new, and I think Apple want to be safe on the hw side. What happens behind the closed door will only be speculations, but certainly I think some major points are here. Apple already pay to be in the blu-ray "club", so they can control to some extent how the license scheme should be. So I guess it is a combination of hw/licensing issues, maybe also software issues, and issues with the HDCP chain.

I can't understand why some people refuse to acknowledge that Apple has blocked Blue-Ray for their own selfish interests. First you said, Apple was waiting for a decisive winner in the HD DVD vs Blue-Ray format war. Then you said the hardware prices would too high for consumers to adopt. Then you said there weren't any movies or enough consumer interest. Now you say that Sony licensing cost too much and that's why they have neither included Blue-Ray as an upgrade option or included it in either their consumer or professional DVD authoring software. That's strange how can Adobe and many other smaller software companies offer Blue-Ray authoring software and yet Apple can't? I suppose Apple who targets the upper end of the computer market with its pricey Mac Pro and FCP studio which retails for over $1,000 is just looking out for our wallets to save us money by not offering the option of Blue-Ray. Lol. Give me a break. Oh and about firewire 400 removal on the Mac Pro. News flash the number one user of the Mac Pro are video editors. How do you think 90% of us import video... firewire 400.

So I guess it is a combination of hw/licensing issues, maybe also software issues, and issues with the HDCP chain.

I think we can entirely rule out the additional hardware cost of Blu-ray for the following reasons:

(1) Steve Jobs explicitly indicated that licensing was the problem with Blu-ray.

(2) Blu-ray is not even a build-to-order option on Mac Pro yet (obviously, Apple could and would make money here by just marking up whatever they pay for Blu-ray drives wholesale).

(3) Apparently, there is no support for Blu-ray in Apple software like Final Cut Studio 2.

Hence, I think the primary issue is the Blu-ray licensing expens, but it also seem clear that Steve Jobs/Apple has fantasies about delivering HD content over the Internet:

Apple: Blu-ray Won the Format War

Posted January 17, 2008 01:13 PM by Josh Dreuth

Jim Goldman of CNBC recently sat down with Steve Jobs to discuss the new and upcoming products Apple announced during the MacWorld Expo held earlier this week. Jobs was asked about the format war and if he thought Apple had usurped both Blu-ray and HD DVD with their addition of HD movie rentals to iTunes. His response was, "Clearly, Blu-ray won, but in the new world order of instant online movie rentals, in HD, no one will care about what format is where."

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=873

"New world order," eh Steve?

Hmm... maybe its time for a "new world order" thread here.

Blu-ray media is available in 25GB and 50GB sized formats, and TDK has developed 100GB samples.

 

These are massive increases over the ~8GB available in dual layer DVDs.

 

Obviously, Blu-ray is good for more than just HD content.

That's what I'm saying, but Blu-ray hasn't expanded that much to the point where it's used for data. Only media really right now, and games. And they're just samples, as well as like I said, it's not cost effective to make yet.

And they're just samples, as well as like I said, it's not cost effective to make yet.

The 100GB TDK media is just an "engineering sample," but you can buy the 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray media now:

http://www.provantage.com/tdk-48668~7TDKK0PM.htm

But I would argue that Blu-ray media prices absolutely are not a barrier to Apple's adoption of Blu-ray.

That's strange how can Adobe and many other smaller software companies offer Blue-Ray authoring software and yet Apple can't?

That is an interesting point, but I can not buy in to the "Apple is blocking Blu-ray" conspiracy theory (not unless, it gets really juicy with connection to the "new world order" and Al Gore's global warming pseudo-science ) .

Nobody said Apple "can't" license Blu-ray either.

The Mac Pro is supposed to be a workstation. Workstations should be bleeding edge. Blu-Ray isn't even bleeding edge and it isn't supported.

The Mac Pro is supposed to be a workstation. Workstations should be bleeding edge. Blu-Ray isn't even bleeding edge and it isn't supported.

Workstations should also have workstation graphics, while all there is on offer is mid range consumer graphics.

God knows why Apple doesn't offer Blu-Ray, they are one of the major shareholders in the tech.

I think everyone's requirements are different.

For Me, I've been waiting to plunk down my money on a new Mac Pro Core i7 machine, I was looking forward to working with 16 virtual cores. I currently have an 8 core Mac Pro.

That leaves out the 4 core one, as there would only be a slight benefit to my 8 core machine, for me.

The 8 core 2.26 Mac Pro Core i7 seems like the logical choice to add a more powerful machine, except that it is now $3300 US, for this machine. If I'm not mistaken the previous 8 core machine was $2500 US. That's an $800 increase. In other countries the increase is even more, over the previous generation.

I was waiting to purchase this machine, and now I have second thoughts. Is it worth it? For some maybe. For Me? I don't know. That's a lot of money, and it's the base machine. I would need more ram, and a better gpu card, 8800gt or better, the GT120 that comes with it, is only a rebranded 9500GT with 32 gpu cores. I don't do games, so that doesn't concern me, but I do use the GPU cores for research work. The 8800GT has 112 gpu cores. The new ATI 4870 card could be a good candidate, and the nVidia GT 260,280,285,295 cards would also be candidates. Now we're talking way too much money.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do, maybe stay with my 8 core Mac Pro for another year.

How Apple has dealt with Blue-Ray isn't a conspiracy its pretty much their philosophy, making software and hardware proprietary to lock out competition. Just look at iTunes, Apple encrypted the music in a way that only their software and hardware could play it. If a CD drive was small enough to fit on an iPod do you think they'd really want to offer it? They're simply applying their wildly successful download distribution model for music to movies and thus they don't want to offer a competing distribution method (Blue-Ray) on their platform. This isn't some evil conspiratorial plot its how Apple does business, they have done many other similar moves. Why do you think OSX86 exists?

Why do you think OSX86 exists?

A. Because the proprietary OS X is the most advanced OS there is.

B. Through it's open source base it's posible to make it open.

But okay partly your right.

The Mac Pro is now actually two distinct models: a regular x58 motherboard with 4 DIMM slots (limited to 8GB RAM or 6GB for triple channel, just like the Intel DX58SO was originally) and a new dual socket motherboard with 8 DIMM slot (expandable to 32GB or 24GB for triple channel). It is possible the x58 version will be fixed so it can take 4GB DIMMs like the Intel DX58SO (which the Apple motherboard is almost certainly based on), but Apple may leave it crippled to encourage people to pay for more (while perhaps lowering the price of x58 version to fill the gaping hole in the Macintosh line up which OSx86 partially occupies).

With other words, the lower end new Mac Pro is the middle tower, cheaper Mac desktop we have been waiting for years.

Fair enough. The problem is that I could build something similar, possibly even better, for half the price or less.

I am especially appalled by the default graphics card (and I don't like ATI in case I wanted to upgrade).

With other words, the lower end new Mac Pro is the middle tower, cheaper Mac desktop we have been waiting for years.

 

Fair enough. The problem is that I could build something similar, possibly even better, for half the price or less.

 

I am especially appalled by the default graphics card (and I don't like ATI in case I wanted to upgrade).

Final Thoughts on this is that APPLE Mid Range Mac Pro Desktop is not in the right Price Gap to make HighEnd Hackintosh Useless....

How many Blu-rays do you see in an average home? How many do you see in high end computers now? Blu ray is going to be difficult to grow, because it's not cost effective right now. Yes, Blu-ray does have much higher quality then DVD, and also a hell of a lot more storage space. But, with the way Bluray is now, it's not cost effective. It needs more support. It's not like DVD, where dvd had time to progress from just movie formats to games, to data, basically to computers. That's it's problem right now with hitting off. As well as we're no where near dependant on bluray as we are DVD.

That's chatting our your ass. Apple isn't cost effective, yet it's popular, so why the hell can't BlueRay? BlueRay has MORE options as opposed to DVD stuff, Gaming, Movies, Music, Storage etc. With the size of new applications etc getting bigger by the day, it wont be long before we kick away DVD. Maybe not 100% but CDs for example will be like tapes and Floppy disks. If you're going to go into "more support" Macs in question are only truely usable in this day and age with BootCamp - which Apple HAS to advertise as a good point on their website. Even though we all know Apple saying "Use Windows on MacOS because MacOS is awesome" shoudn't be a good point - but most of the Mac users don't even notice that.

In order to make the Bluray drive worthwhile, Mac needs to be able to play Bluray movie out of the box, and so OS X and all the hardware must be HDCP compliant. HDCP compliant means any non-keyed HD content will result in degraded quality on display. Remember the homemade HD video non-sense on Vista? Apple will have major issues with their current FCP users.

The Mac pro does have PCI-E power. It's got like a 1000W PSU too.

My complaint is the Apple 4870 costs too much. Solution: flash a regular 4870!

http://netkas.org/?p=90

The Nehalem Mac Pro is a decent enough CPU and I wouldn't mind owning one, but Mac seem to not understand how to give users the option for advanced GPUs. They are still messing around with GeForce 8000 Series (The GT1xx is a rebranded 9xxx which are mostly rebranded 8xxx). That and if I was to put my 9800GX2 in there, it would stall because they don't provide PCI-E power.

Yes some would argue there is no need because the Mac Pro is for Pros, but there really is no games Mac which is why games are made for PC and why I am reluctant to switch.

I'm not a Microsoft fanboy because I like OSX, but not the hardware it's designed for.

I am nonplussed about blu-ray, seems to me this is needed more in the market that might use their Mac for HTPC duties, where the price of the drive & licensing for the playback IP is an obvious issue. Probably explains the lack of having an option, as building all that tech just for a few Mac Pro users isn't cost effective.

BUT the lack of decent GPU options is a killer! Apple is consistently adopting 9 month old GPU tech for their top tier line of towers. For people who never boot anything but OSX the 4870 isn't horrible, and I can understand that Apple probably likes the margins they can get on them. But no Quadro for how many months?