MacBook Pro And iPad 2 – Why I Think I Need Both – The ‘Book Mystique
Apple has given portable computing fans a great deal to chew on over the past few weeks –– too much, really, to comfortably digest in that compressed a time-interval. I still haven’t completely digested the revised MacBook Air’s introduced last October!
Anyway, in recent released first came the heavily revised MacBook Pro lines –– especially the 13–inch model (my favorite of the Pros) that gets Intel Core “i” power for the first time, providing it with a substantial performance injection. However, the speed improvement is also more than just an incremental speed bump for the new Sandy Bridge Core “i” equipped 15–inch and 17–inch MacBook Pros as well. Reportedly, the slowest 13-inch Pro is now faster than the fastest 15”–17” models of the previous generation.
Photo Courtesy Apple
All three sizes also get Intel’s lightning–fast new Thunderbolt data interface, which happily piggy–backs the Mini DisplayPort, so all models get to keep their existing two or three (letter 17-inch only) USB ports, FireWire, and Ethernet ports.
Photo Courtesy Apple
Thunderbolt features two bi-directional channels supporting transfer speeds up to an 10 gigabits per second, plus routing PCI Express directly to external peripherals such as RAID arrays. It can also support FireWire, USB, and Gigabit Ethernet with appropriate adapters. Moreover, Thunderbolt supports DisplayPort external displays and works through adapters for HDMI, DVI and VGA displays.
The third element of the troika of major advances for the MacBook Pro is a FaceTime HD camera with triple the resolution of the previous generation models’ camera on all models.
Not insignificant is the shift to Intel HD graphics 3000 integrated processor units, and AMD (ATI) Radeon discrete graphics processors with either 256 MB or 1 GB of dedicated video RAM on the two larger models, which also have the HD graphics 3000 IGPU that handles lighter graphics loads with much less battery drain.
This all means that there are no longer any Nvidia graphics in MacBook Pros, although the Nvidia GeForce 320M IGPU is still used in the base white plastic MacBook and the both MacBook Air models for now.
This generation MacBook Pro update reminds me of nothing so much the Pismo PowerBook 2000 update from the previous Lombard PowerBook G3 Series in March, 2000. As with that transition, the difference in appearance from the previous model(s) is extremely subtle, near-identical to the uncritical eye. However in both cases there was a major overhaul of the internal specifications, as well as a major high-speed I/O interface advance. In the instance of the Pismo, it was FireWire replacing SCSI. In the early 2011 MacBook Pro, it’s Thunderbolt replacing nothing. I prefer an incremental approach to hardware evolution, so it troubles me not a bit that Apple decided to stick with the existing MacBook Pro unibody form factor, which isn’t that old and still looks great.
For my tastes and needs, the 13” MacBook Pro is now as close to perfected as any Mac laptop has been so far, but one aspect that ddi disappoint me is that this revision didn’t get the higher resolution 1440 x 900 13” display used in the 13” MacBook Air, but has stayed with the 1280 x 800 res. spec. that dates back to the original Intel MacBook of 2006. A weird decision, since the higher-res. MacBook Air display has the same 16:10 aspect ratio as the MacBook Pro’s display, so it would physically fit with no case modification necessary. Sometimes incrementalism can be carried too far.
Consequently, the 13” MacBook Air remains on my shortlist of system upgrade contenders — for the screen, not the standard SSD, which is either too small capacity (128 GB) or still marginal but way too expensive (256 GB). The 13” MacBook Pro is most likely to get the nod when the time comes, probably late 2012, or at least that was the plan.
The plan’s been complicated by Apple’s release, hard on the heels of the MacBook Pro refresh, of the iPad 2. I’ve liked the original iPad, but not quite enough to impel me to buy a revision A unit. iPad 2 is another matter. I want one, although not badly enough to stand in line for one. I’m perfectly content to bide my time until the initial orders backlog is cleared, which will reportedly take two months or more, and reportedly the iPad 2 release date in Canada, originally slated for March 25, may now be pushed back due to shortage of supply. Fine. By the time supply and demand hits comfortable equilibrium early production bugs (such as reports of bleeding backlights, dead pixels, and speckles-in-the-glass on some of the first batches of iPad 2s) should have been identified and hopefully squashed.
Photo Courtesy Apple
Some jaded folks find fault with the iPad 2 being an also somewhat incremental makeover of the concept and features introduced iBook the iPad 1, although it does get a new form factor, and is slimmed down markedly from the original Apple Tablet, and gets an A5 dual core CPU in place of the iPad 1’s single-core A4 silicon. I ‘m not sure whether I will opt for a white iPad 2, or go with classic black, but appreciate being given a choice.
Photo Courtesy Apple
Like the 13” MacBook Pro, the The iPad 2 could stand a display resolution upgrade, but gets the same 9.7-inch display as iPad 1 with a ho-hum lowish resolution (in this instance 1024 x 768) and mediocre 132 pixels per inch pixel density (compared with the iPhone 4’s Retina Display’s 326 ppi pixel density).
Unfortunately the number one priority on my iPad wish list –– a USB port –– was not delivered, so iPad 2 users are still stuck with dongles for the 30-pin connector and bereft of a really satisfactory file transfer interface. You’ll also need a $39 dongle to get HDMI support for connecting iPad 2 to a television and there’s no SD Card slot for data storage overflow and transfers. Consequently, I still don’t find the iPad 2 irresistibly compelling, but now at least compelling enough that I’m ready to climb aboard.
For me, the iPad will not be a laptop substitute, but a complimentary device, with a laptop remaining my primary production tool. I’m keeping an open mind, and it’s possible the iPad will surprise me once I have my own. This week PC World’s Tony Bradley posted an articulate argument for making the iPad one’s only mobile computing device, and he proposes a number of workarounds for the iPad’s many shortcomings as a production tool (and rebutted by The Mac Night Owl’s Gene Steinberg) that I’m filing for future reference, but at this point I’m not seriously considering joining the “post-PC era” to that degree. I Love my Macs and don’t have any real enthusiasm for leaving the PC era.
What I do want an iPad for is its long suit — as a more convenient and comfortable-to-handle content consumption device for relaxed access, and a leg up on what I perceive as the not too distant future of news and information media. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2011 State of the News Media annual report on the health and status of American journalism finds that news media increasingly follow the rules of device makers and software developers such as Apple and Google to deliver their content, and that In 2010, digital was the only media sector realizing audience growth.
The Pew researchers found that as of December 2010, 41% of Americans cited the internet as their primary source for “most of their news about national and international issues,” more than doubling from 17% a year earlier, with 46% of respondents saying they now get news online at least three times a week, surpassing newspapers (40%) for the first time, and with local TV news the only more popular news platform (50%). Additionally, the State of the News Media survey finds that 47% of Americans now say they get some kind of local news on mobile devices such as cellphones or other wireless devices (such as iPads) and that as of January 2011, the number of Americans owning electronic tablets (7 %) had also nearly doubled, but in this instance in just four months, while the audience for cable news has declined substantially over the past year, with median viewership falling 13.7%, and rime-time median viewership by 16% in 2010 — CNN suffering the most (37% decline), but Fox News and MSNBC down as well.
Network News also continued its three-decade downward trend, and print newspapers weekday circulation fell another 5% and Sunday editions 4.5% year-over-year, while newspapers’ online audience grew, although not enough to fully compensate for print losses industrywide, and another Pew Research Center survey for the People & the Press, finds the total audience that reads newspapers, in print and online, at least three times a week dropped by six percentage points over the last two years, with just 40% of Americans reporting reading a newspaper in any form, down from 46% in 2008 and 52% in 2006, while the metric for those reporting reading a newspaper “yesterday” — print or online — now sits at 37%, down two percentage points from 2008.
Circulation for the six news magazines fell 8.9% – subscriptions, fell 8.6%, and newsstand sales were down 17.7%, while circulation for the magazine industry as a whole dropped 1.5%.
It’s not difficult to discern which way the proverbial wind is blowing, and that those who don’t join the tablet or e-reader revolution are going to be left behind, perhaps more rapidly than we imagine. I still subscribe to half a dozen or so monthly magazines and a daily hard copy newspaper, and I just renewed a couple of hard copy subscriptions, but could have opted instead for digital instead of hard copy delivery at about one-third the price I got with substantial “final notice” renewal discounts, and less than one-quarter the full hard copy subscription price. With an iPad I’ll have a more comfortable and convenient reading platform for relaxed and incidental reading than a laptop computer, and at least in some cases would take advantage of the digital alternative.
I didn’t want to buy two new devices within a few months of each other, so with my three-year target for a main system upgrade approaching next winter, I’ll maybe have to rethink things a bit, perhaps buying my iPad 2 by late spring (by which time hopefully the first batches of Apple Certified Refurbished unit will be available), and postponing replacement of my by next February three-year-old 2.0 GHz Core Duo unibody MacBook for a bit, at least past the next 13” MacBook Pro refresh, which probably makes more sense anyway.
Like I said, Apple’s given me a lot to think about. Be sure to visit the MacBook Pro Price Trackers (17″ MacBook Pro, 15″ MacBook Pro, and 13″ MacBook Pro) on this site for the latest and greatest prices on these new models from Apple’s Authorized Internet/Catalog Resellers.