MacBook Pro 2012 Launch Imminent

[Fourstaff]

If you have good strong wifi signal as most small offices do its not an issue, but my phone outperforms the one a owner has as far as wifi performance. My laptop is faster, has more RAM, larger disk, bluray (where is your optical media player?) and a APU that I can game on, and it overclocked like a motherfucker.

It also cost less than half as much, and has harman kardon speakers that, dare I say, sound alright, considering its a laptop.

Plus my old laptop was dropped out of my company car numerous times (Explorer), took a cup of coffee and all it needed was a new $19 replaceable keyboard, and took a 10 foot fall that broke the screen $130 ish. It still works, just needed a larger hard drive and it was time for a new one. Still have it for a backup.

Anyone with a MBA care to try?

Wifi signal is good where I usually sit, so I can't comment on how powerful it is. In general tasks the two would be about the same, depending on whether your laptop has SSD or not. I have not used an optical device outside PS3 since 3 years ago, so its a moot point for me. Might be important for you, but not for me. I can game on the MBA too, just that my game choices are pretty limited (but I can still play the games I want to play, so again its moot for me).

Costs half as much, but MBA is lightweight and I would gladly spend quite a lot for that premium (lugging it to and from uni with books daily is a pain, I gave up carrying the K50 to uni but I still occasionally bring the MBA). Prices will fall over time, so the next laptop I get should have a much narrower price premium than MBA.

MBA's speakers are "suitable for use", but I wire the sounds over my earphones anyway so it doesn't really matter to me.

I never drop the MBA, so I can't really comment on how robust it is. I never drop any laptop ever either, or spilt coffee on them, so a robust laptop is not high on my priority.

My only conclusion is that the laptop you are using suits your purpose, and MBA suits mine fine (because most of its issues does not affect me). If there are anyone in my position, I would ask them to consider getting an ultrabook. I will not stoop low enough to diss any product simply because it does not agree with my uses/philosophy in one way or another.

 

[dzero]

Apple does make a decent product. I probably will not be picking up this model though since there will be another refresh later in the year.

 

[bobmilkman]

Apple does make a decent product. I probably will not be picking up this model though since there will be another refresh later in the year.

According to who? And what would they refresh once IVB is out?

 

[CoreDuo]

I will consider getting an ultrabook for my next portable machine if the graphics improve to about 400% of what HD3000 is right now.

That's a little bit of an unrealistic bar to set. Intel can improve their graphics by 400% but so will everyone else. According to Anandtech's review of the 3770K, HD4000 is 55% faster than HD3000, but matches Llano's performance in the A8-3850. If rumors are a true and Trinity is 56% faster than Llano, then that puts Intel right back where they started.

 

[sergionography]

1920x1200 would be more than enough pixel density on a notebook, and that has been possible for about 10 years now.

A 21-24" monitor in the 2560x1440 to 2880x1620 range would be a nice next step in monitors; something in the 200+ ppi range.

lol you must be crazy to think apple will use such resolutions on intel integrated graphics XD
its possible but very useless in terms of stepping up the performance, just look at the ipad 3, it has twice the theoretical performance of its predecessor, but in benchmarks it performs nothing like that in terms of fps mostly because all that hp will go into higher resolution rather than fps. tho apple made sure they dont go below the 60fps on apps(since apple pretty much control the apps since they do the hardware and software for the most part)
for computers tho thats not the case, software is more demanding and sacrificing fps for resolution is a bad move.

 

[Inceptor]

lol you must be crazy to think apple will use such resolutions on intel integrated graphics XD
its possible but very useless in terms of stepping up the performance, just look at the ipad 3, it has twice the theoretical performance of its predecessor, but in benchmarks it performs nothing like that in terms of fps mostly because all that hp will go into higher resolution rather than fps. tho apple made sure they dont go below the 60fps on apps(since apple pretty much control the apps since they do the hardware and software for the most part)
for computers tho thats not the case, software is more demanding and sacrificing fps for resolution is a bad move.

I wasn't referring to Apple products in that case, I was making a general comment on what I'd like to see from future PC monitors.
If you mean 1900x1200 on a Macbook, AFAIK it's already been done, years ago now, just as it was with PC notebooks. Old technology, ten years old, or more. If it can work with no serious problems on a mobile radeon 9600/9700, then it should be no problem for intel HD4000. Anyway, why would you buy a macbook pro for gaming?

 

[sergionography]

I wasn't referring to Apple products in that case, I was making a general comment on what I'd like to see from future PC monitors.
If you mean 1900x1200 on a Macbook, AFAIK it's already been done, years ago now, just as it was with PC notebooks. Old technology, ten years old, or more. If it can work with no serious problems on a mobile radeon 9600/9700, then it should be no problem for intel HD4000. Anyway, why would you buy a macbook pro for gaming?

well back then it was possible because software wasnt much demanding, and the only computers that ran back then on 1900x1200 were most of the times paired with ati/nvidia discrete graphics like you stated, that made it possible, but on integrated that wasnt the case, ive heard people complain about sandy bridge not able to play 1080p movies fluently, not to mention even windows aero suffers with such graphics.
so what im saying is, having such high and dense resolution is pointless when that resolution will not be put to use
but true tho hd4000 is a step forward, but super high resolutions would still cripple it

edit: to give an example, i have a llano apu, and it plays most games on med/high settings with full fps
the laptop i have has a 720p screen, now if my laptop had a 1080p i would have to lower the settings to have good fps, and setting the resolution to other than the native resolution looks awful usualy
so in such case, having less resolution works better with the gpu performance available
this is my opinion tho and you might have ur reasons to prefer higher resolutions, and there may be things ive overseen but as far as i know thats what i think

 

[repman244]

ive heard people complain about sandy bridge not able to play 1080p movies fluently, not to mention even windows aero suffers with such graphics.

I heard the same + they don't even support 10-bit panels so IPS (10-bit) screens can't even work on the SB iGPU hence no switchable graphics on laptops, I wonder if the HD 4000 supports 10-bit.

 

[Fourstaff]

That's a little bit of an unrealistic bar to set. Intel can improve their graphics by 400% but so will everyone else. According to Anandtech's review of the 3770K, HD4000 is 55% faster than HD3000, but matches Llano's performance in the A8-3850. If rumors are a true and Trinity is 56% faster than Llano, then that puts Intel right back where they started.

No, if they improve it by 400% from where there are right now, I can play all the games I enjoy smoothly (Starcraft II, various DotA clones, Skyrim, addictive flash games). It doesn't need to be blazing fast delivering constant 60+fps, as an old school gamer I believe content and gameplay is more important than fancy visuals.

 

[Red_Machine]

This issue has been discussed many times by many different people. So I shall wade in with my opinions.

My Dell Inspiron 8100 from 2001 has a 1600x1200 screen. It was a $2000 laptop when it was new, which probably equates to about $5000 in today's money. For $5000 today, I'm lucky if I can even get 1920x1200, which is barely an improvement over 1600x1200.

Back in 2001, the standard desktop resolution was 1024x768. Somebody looking at the 8100 for the first time would have been blown away by its massive resolution by comparison. Today, 1920x1080 is the desktop standard, but 98% of laptops only have a 1366x768 screen, even some of the higher end ones. The really expensive stuff is usually 1600x900 (going by the Alienware M17x) but you can get 1920x1080 models.

We seem to have ground to a halt in terms of resolution. I blame 1024x768 and 1280x800 being the standard for too long.

 

[Fourstaff]

Today, 1920x1080 is the desktop standard

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/11/statcounter-finds-1366-x-768-to-be-most-popular-screen-resolutio/

 

[Red_Machine]

I'm talking about gaming here, not general usage. And even then, that's no more than a 2% increase on the mainstream standard of 10 years ago. It's horrendous.

 

[Fourstaff]

I'm talking about gaming here, not general usage. And even then, that's no more than a 2% increase on the mainstream standard of 10 years ago. It's horrendous.

Even in gaming, most people still use resolutions less than 1920x1080, there was a survey in steam. Granted, 1920x1080 is the biggest lot at 25%, but it also means that more than 70% of the people are using resolutions lower than 1920x1080

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

 

[sergionography]

That's a little bit of an unrealistic bar to set. Intel can improve their graphics by 400% but so will everyone else. According to Anandtech's review of the 3770K, HD4000 is 55% faster than HD3000, but matches Llano's performance in the A8-3850. If rumors are a true and Trinity is 56% faster than Llano, then that puts Intel right back where they started.

what are you talking about dude, in the review llano holds a good 30% advantage over hd4000
so the hd 4000 is more of a amd A6 gpu performance and not an A8
and dont forget one very important bit, when amd gets 30fps over ivy bridge remember that in reality hd4000 is more than 30% slower than llano, because the cpu in ivy bridge is light years ahead of llano in cpu performance which helps alot in games(just look at the discrete gaming page)
notice amd is claiming 50% increase in graphics performance on trinity, i bet some of that increase is due to the faster x86 performance(because vliw4 is only 15%faster than vliw5 at the same clocks and same number of sps, but the trinity gpu will be clocked 25% higher than llano to total 15+25=40% increase in pure gpu performance, but then u have that extra 10% increase in fps and so on due to the faster cpu)
the only way you can accurately benchmark gpus is when you make sure the rest of the system is identical in the test benches, but in this case that is impossible