New MacBook Pros

[jayjo19]

yeah that's what I meant. and that's another 1000...the price of a used G5

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/index.html

[beautypill]

I suppose that's what the "Pro" in MacBook Pro means. It seems that just when the less expensive laptops got up there in speed, firewire was dropped in order to make all of the audio and video folks have to pony-up the extra cash.

Yes. Precisely.

Pro is for professionals. They're making that distinction clearer with this release. If you are a professional, you should not be looking at MacBooks. Those are for people like my wife, who is going to buy one this weekend. She is a school teacher, does some stuff with film editing, is an amateur digital photographer, likes messing around with Final Cut Pro and Photoshop (although not too intensely), surfs the web, checks email, enjoys the occasional video game here and there. She is the target market for MacBooks. MacBooks are for regular people going about the regular things that regular people do.

The MacBook Pro is for people who use the thing as a professional tool. Hence the name.

We are all complaining because a lot of people were expecting to get away with using MacBooks at a professional level.

Not what they're designed to address.

- c

[gearboy]

Speaking of stability and comfort, I wouldn't track an album or a "big band" concert on a laptop, just too much hassle.

I've tracked nearly half of my friends' records (the one released August 2007 and the one that we're mixing right now) on a 1.5GHz Powerbook G4 on location. Not a single hiccup. I can't mix on the thing because of processor power for the amount of plug-ins that I use (I mix on my G5), but I'm telling you, based on my G5's performance, Apple's laptops have been fine for tracking and mixing with tons of plug-ins for the past 2 years+. And again, my Powerbook G4 is from 2005, handled more tracks than my Alesis HD24 could handle, and was perfectly stable the whole time. I also ran it in 2007 for two 14 hour sessions over two days doing re-recording of dialog for film. I maxed out the voices in DP4.61 and it still was running fine. Hundreds of tracks, takes, etc. No problems. And again... G4.

Jeff

[ghobish]

Adding a card to a Powerbook only gives you more ports. There is still only one Firewire bus. Don't believe me? Check your system profiler with your card and devices attached-you will see only one FW bus.

Sorry, that's just not the case. A PCMCIA or Express Card Firewire card definately is a seperate bus and controller from the motherboard. I see 2 busses in System Profiler.

And, if you want to get FW 800 speed out of your Powerbook, you can't have anything FW 400 plugged into either the Powerbook or the card. You have to plug your FW 800 drive into the FW 800 port and daisy-chain your interface off a dual-interface drive (or use a FW 800 to 400 adapter cable after the drive).

That part is definitely true- if you mix FW400 and FW800 devices on the same bus performance on all devices will drop to FW400.

[jayjo19]

Speaking of stability and comfort, I wouldn't track an album or a "big band" concert on a laptop, just too much hassle.

I've tracked nearly half of my friends' records (the one released August 2007 and the one that we're mixing right now) on a 1.5GHz Powerbook G4 on location. Not a single hiccup. I can't mix on the thing because of processor power for the amount of plug-ins that I use (I mix on my G5), but I'm telling you, based on my G5's performance, Apple's laptops have been fine for tracking and mixing with tons of plug-ins for the past 2 years+. And again, my Powerbook G4 is from 2005, handled more tracks than my Alesis HD24 could handle, and was perfectly stable the whole time. I also ran it in 2007 for two 14 hour sessions over two days doing re-recording of dialog for film. I maxed out the voices in DP4.61 and it still was running fine. Hundreds of tracks, takes, etc. No problems. And again... G4.

Jeff

I trust you on the stability, I myself use a 13" powerbook when on the go and doing editing. What I meant to say was, with top paying clients I'd rather have a G5 or Mac Pro with a big screen they can see, rather than a small laptop (which is gonna do the same job) where everybody has to squeeze in to watch you working the "pro tools" (can you count how many times a client asked you "so which version of pro tools is that, I don't have it on my Mbox" ). It's not really the comfort of having great CPU and RAM, it's more having the comfort that your client is not thinking "what the f***?! I could have done that with my Mbox". As for live sound, if you got bass, guitar, drums, vocal that's fine. Now if you're recording the parliament funk and you have everybody's cousin gettin on the stage to jam and you have to record 24 tracks at the same time, good luck...

[monkey man]

A bunch of stuff.

Yay! So glad you're still gracing us with your presence, Tyrone. Watch out for the next DP update, hear?

[Dwetmaster]

Pro is for professionals. They're making that distinction clearer with this release. If you are a professional, you should not be looking at MacBooks. Those are for people like my wife, who is going to buy one this weekend. She is a school teacher, does some stuff with film editing, is an amateur digital photographer, likes messing around with Final Cut Pro and Photoshop (although not too intensely), surfs the web, checks email, enjoys the occasional video game here and there. She is the target market for MacBooks. MacBooks are for regular people going about the regular things that regular people do.

The MacBook Pro is for people who use the thing as a professional tool. Hence the name.

We are all complaining because a lot of people were expecting to get away with using MacBooks at a professional level.

Not what they're designed to address.

- c

Totally agree...

[tyronehowe]

Pro is for professionals. They're making that distinction clearer with this release. If you are a professional, you should not be looking at MacBooks. Those are for people like my wife, who is going to buy one this weekend. She is a school teacher, does some stuff with film editing, is an amateur digital photographer, likes messing around with Final Cut Pro and Photoshop (although not too intensely), surfs the web, checks email, enjoys the occasional video game here and there. She is the target market for MacBooks. MacBooks are for regular people going about the regular things that regular people do.

Hi beautypill

I can see the point you are making, I’m just don’t think that a Firewire port is the way to distinguish between pros and non-pros. Should you be a pro to use an external Firewire drive (for backup or photos or video)? Should you be a pro to want to connect a consumer camcorder to your MacBook? Personally, I don’t think so.

I think the problem that Apple have had is that the previous MacBooks have just been so darn good and powerful, and the MacBook Pros being nearly twice the price suffered. I have a white MacBook – and it’s brilliant. Yes, I’m sure I could run a few more plug-ins/tracks if I’d bought a MacBook Pro but I decided to save money instead – and I’m very glad I did.

So I’m agreeing with you that Apple somehow needs to distinguish between the pro / non-pro lines, but I don’t think Firewire is the way to do it. Or maybe, now would be the time to merge the two lines?

Yay! So glad you're still gracing us with your presence, Tyrone. Watch out for the next DP update, hear?

Hi MM

I’m never far away!

[Mr_Clifford]

Those are for people like my wife, who is going to buy one this weekend. She is a school teacher, does some stuff with film editing, is an amateur digital photographer, likes messing around with Final Cut Pro and Photoshop (although not too intensely), surfs the web, checks email, enjoys the occasional video game here and there. She is the target market for MacBooks. MacBooks are for regular people going about the regular things that regular people do.

And how is she going to get the video from her camera into the laptop in the first place with no FIREWIRE PORT.

Firewire for everyone, not just the rich.

[Kaspar]

There must be a million amateurmusicians out there with small firewire audiointerfaces who would love the better graphics performance of the new MacBooks. Motu definitely didn't see this coming with their great firewire-lineup. I've been doing 48 track recordings (Big Band) on a regular basis with my 2 year old MacBook for a year now using 8pre's.
I'm a pro and I can find the extra money but with Apples big interest in music I don't understand this.

[timriley]

The new Macbooks could be good for using in gigs and other live performances. As long as they're stable that is!

I could, for instance, use my line6 toneport (USB) with it and plug a guitar or synth or electric violin through it using all the amps and effects in gearbox.

OR

Plug a MIDI controller keyboard into it and use it for Truepianos or other stand alone VIs. Although latency may be an issue for this one..

Even just use them for playback..

Pretty amazing machines, with or without Firewire IMHO!

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

The entry level (white plastic) MacBooks still have FireWire. For what their charging for the new aluminum MacBooks (with no firewire port) you can probably get one of the previous model MacBook Pros Check out Expercom.com.

[mhschmieder]

Well, maybe the MBP isn't such a bad deal after all then, since the iMac only gives you one FW bus.

I guess one needs to chart out on paper what one uses at the same time, to see if the topologies work.

PoCo has to be on a separate port, and preferably a separate bus, but usually is used during mixing and mastering.

External drives can easily be daisy-chained, and can insulate the RME Fireface 800 from Agere chip problems.

These are just personal examples, but they map into quite a few other scenarios that others might have.

So it comes down to maybe using eSATA during recording, for sample libs, and FW daisy-chain for data drive & I/O.

If UAD-1 is used during mixing and mastering, it would simply have to be used separatelt from PoCo.

As I've never owned a laptop, I'm not sure how quick/easy it is to swap out the ExpressCards.

Also, I don't even know if they are hot-swappable, or require rebooting or any other bootstrapping.

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

Well, maybe the MBP isn't such a bad deal after all then, since the iMac only gives you one FW bus.

I guess one needs to chart out on paper what one uses at the same time, to see if the topologies work.

PoCo has to be on a separate port, and preferably a separate bus, but usually is used during mixing and mastering.

External drives can easily be daisy-chained, and can insulate the RME Fireface 800 from Agere chip problems.

These are just personal examples, but they map into quite a few other scenarios that others might have.

So it comes down to maybe using eSATA during recording, for sample libs, and FW daisy-chain for data drive & I/O.

If UAD-1 is used during mixing and mastering, it would simply have to be used separatelt from PoCo.

As I've never owned a laptop, I'm not sure how quick/easy it is to swap out the ExpressCards.

Also, I don't even know if they are hot-swappable, or require rebooting or any other bootstrapping.

The ExpressCard/34 is a card that just pops in and out of the side of the MacBookPro. I use it to add eSata to my MacBook Pro. It is hot swappable. I just eject the disks first and then pop it out.

Isn't the UAD-1 a PCI card? If so, that wouldn't work unless you had an expresscard/34 to PCI adapter like the Magma chassis. (They're not cheap)