Well, it’s back. After initiating a return of my MacBookPro with the defective screen on November 4th, the brand-spanking new replacement made it in record time from Shanghai, arriving today after shipping out yesterday! She looks A-OK – I’ll post impressions shortly…. By the way, I think this makes it two MacBook Pros in my hands in the same time some of my coworkers have been waiting for one to arrive. I guess the ‘expedited order’ since my first was was ruled DOA by the helpful folks at AppleCare actually helped this time.
Tag Archives: Mac
The MacBookPro Has Landed
That’s the good news. And, I might add, the little wonder arrived at 10:09am today, despite Fedex estimating delivery by Monday at 10:30am. So total turnaround time was 10 business days since I ordered on the day the new Core 2 Duo versions came out, including custom build options. Now on to the bad news…
The machine has an obvious screen defect (as seen at left). I went with the glossy version, and approximately 100 pixels from the right side of the screen is a band roughly 100 pixels wide which is significantly washed out compared to the rest of the screen. It runs from above the top menu bar to the bottom of the display.
Guess I’ll be visiting my friends at the Apple store at Lenox tomorrow. Click here for a gallery of the ritualistic unpacking of the new machine.
Oh Happy Day
Yes, Virginia, there is a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro.
As those of you who know me well, it has been a painful year for me. When I moved back into the world of ad serving last Fall nearly full time, I needed a PC laptop to access our adserving system (’twas not Mac-friendly).
I have been waiting with baited breath for the first major revision to the Intel MacBook Pros that came out almost eight months ago. That has led me to travel with not one, but two laptops for most of the past year. Oh, my aching back! All that changes next week when my new MacBookPro arrives.
This morning, I was oh so excited to see a notice on TUAW.com that the Mac store had it’s old-skool ‘We’ll be back soon’ message that typically precedes a new product being posted. Lo and behold, shortly after arriving at work I visited Apple.com to see the beautiful news you see in the image above. Fully capable of running Windows via BootCamp or Parallels, this will replace both of my existing laptops. First to retire will be my ancient (4 year old) Titanium Powerbook G4 running at 1Ghz. I’ve been using that laptop for over a year with no functioning ethernet access and miserable battery life, and can’t wait to get my hands on this new machine. Also heading for the backup bin will be the sorely underpowered IBM Thinkpad Tablet I have as well – it’s better in concept than reality. The Core2 version of the MacBook Pro will run at 2.33Ghz, includes 3GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. My back thanks you, Apple.
Apple drops a bomb
So, after suing folks who published ‘rumors’ of upcoming Mac products, his Steveness 
decided to do some rumor-mongering of his own today with a classic ‘one more thing’ during today’s announcement of iTunes 7 and the new feature films on the ITMS. Flying in the face of the Apple-PR bible, he confirmed the existence of an unreleased product well in advance of release: a Macintosh set-top-box optimized to connect directly to HD tv sets. Codenamed ‘iTV’, (and priced at $299) the new box is due in Q1 2007, and will be 1/2 size of Mac Mini, built-in power supply (no brick!),
- Networking: 802.11, Ethernet (not sure what flavor of 802.11, though)
- USB2
- Video: HDMI connector for the best HD goodness or component RGB
- Audio: Analog via RCA jacks or optical digital
Steve also shows off the UI, a very slick and more 3-D treatment of the existing Front Row interface for the new device and wows the crowd by playing an HD-quality flick. At root, this completes an ecosystem – rather like ITMS and the iPod did for music, you now have a STB device (the iTV), a storefront (Showtime in ITMS/iTunes7), and a portable outlet. If they can bring more content aboard, this has a good chance of taking a strong foothold.
Problems I see – no TV tuner or information on how this might take incoming video from your existing cable or satellite vendor. It’s also unclear if this is going to have a hard drive at all, or provide any kind of DVR features. And I’d worry about the stability of the wireless connection for HD video content (I know my Windows Media Center and 802.11pre-N network struggles with SD at times). I suspect that the lack of a tuner and possibly of a drive are quite intentional – you’re probably less likely to buy flicks and shows on the ITMS if you have free alternatives like ripping content off the cable and saving it to your drive. That sucks. But if this provides access to HD movies, I’m sure I’ll be buying one as soon as it’s available.