The Null Device

MacBook Pro

Apple have unveiled their new Intel-based PowerBook-class machine; of course, they can't call it the PowerBook, though one would think they could have come up with a better name than MacBook Pro. The new machine also has a new power connector, rendering your collection of Apple power adapters redundant, and only one FireWire port, doing away with FireWire 800. The PCMCIA slot also seems to have been replaced with something called ExpressCard/34.

All in all, it doesn't look too bad; the lack of FireWire/800 is perhaps a concern (they're not planning on getting rid of FireWire altogether and making it more like a legacy PC, I hope; I wonder whether it still has Target Disk Mode), and it's probably not worth getting one for music or video just yet, until all the plug-ins one uses have been recompiled for Intel (as emulation of CPU-intensive PPC code will certainly be very slow).

I wonder whether, in a few years' time, Jobs will announce that the new version of MacOS (perhaps MacOS 12?) will be based on the Windows Vista kernel, licensed from Microsoft, rather than Mach/BSD, giving Macintosh-quality design on top of improved PC compabilility and access to Hollywood-standard DRM?

There are 4 comments on "MacBook Pro":

Posted by: Peter http://www.frogworth.com/blog/ Tue Jan 10 23:45:20 2006

I find your cynicism amusing.

But I do also find it odd that they're doing away with FireWire 800. How weird! All PC notebooks come with at best the small FireWire ports (most do have one of those though), but why make this machine *so much* like a standard Wintel notebook? Odd.

I guess the new power connector was par for the course, because it's fairly different hardware we're talking about. Losing Target Disk Mode would be a bummer for Mac users too, but given that notebooks are moving more towards "instant-on" and suchlike, I'd imagine not. Maybe that's not related.

Posted by: Peter http://www.frogworth.com/blog/ Tue Jan 10 23:46:14 2006

"Remember my details" totally doesn't. Something wrong with my cookie settings or something? Email me! Thanks for fixing up the mime type for the feed btw, if you did. Working now, huzzah!

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org/ Wed Jan 11 00:43:37 2006

It also looks a lot like a PowerBook, other than lacking a FireWire port and being an Intel machine. (I wonder if it'll boot Windows XP, as the Apple Intel developer boxes did.)

Posted by: Colin http://onepointzero.com/ Wed Jan 11 11:04:57 2006

If the powerbook becomes the Macbook, does that mean the Powermac will be called the Macmac?