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New Mac notebooks - stop gap? Where's the eSATA? WUXGA for HD?

post #1 of 5
5/18/07 at 2:02pm
Thread Starter 
Apple have refreshed their product range, adding Firewire 800 which hopefully is good enough for editing and capturing full true 1080p high definition, HD.

Comments? Would you agree?

One would have thought that built in eSATA would be better as it had higher data rates. There are PC cards that provide eSATA but they link into the Mac's slower USB or Firewire subsystem apparently.

Comments?

Also, what about high definition WUXGA 1920x1200 displays to display full HD video natively?

Such resolutions on 15.4" or 17" can make text very small causing eye strain but with anti-aliasing and up-scaling I would have thought OS X Aqua UI would be able to make text and graphics big enough.

do you think the refresh is significant or just a stop gap?
Does is use the newest mobile chipset?
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post #2 of 5
5/18/07 at 2:45pm
The MBPs have had FW800 for a while now. The MBs are unlikely to get it as it's Apple's entry level notebook segment. I'm not sure offhand what kind of through put one would need for raw 1080p capture. I'm guessing that having an HD capable GPU might have more to do with that than the external drive. i.e.-I'm guessing 60MB/s would be fine for most scenarios. You get a bit of a tradeoff with an external 3.5" drive. Technically the drive can handle more than what FW800 can carry, but it's enough to improve upon the performance of an internal 7200rpm drive, since the 3.5" drives have larger platters.

I'd love to see an eSATA connector built into the MBPs w/ the expresscard slot open for other options, but then again the expresscard slot allows for a host of connections. BUT, if one's use of an eSATA drive is likely to be in a desktop situation using desktop peripherals (ideal for manipulating HD content), the idea of having it built into a mobile solution seems less needed. hence the expresscard option, as needed, makes more sense imo. i don't know that i've seen any eSATA 2.5" drive reviews but I'm guessing that the prospect of the faster bus is mitigated by the smaller platters.

Leopard is supposed to have resolution-free scaling for the desktop (fonts, icons, etc.) which might make higher res options on the notebooks available.

The MB refresh is just a CPU, hard drive, and RAM upgrade for the different models.
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post #3 of 5
5/18/07 at 7:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rjamesd
Apple have refreshed their product range, adding Firewire 800 which hopefully is good enough for editing and capturing full true 1080p high definition, HD.

Comments? Would you agree?

One would have thought that built in eSATA would be better as it had higher data rates. There are PC cards that provide eSATA but they link into the Mac's slower USB or Firewire subsystem apparently.

Comments?

Also, what about high definition WUXGA 1920x1200 displays to display full HD video natively?

Such resolutions on 15.4" or 17" can make text very small causing eye strain but with anti-aliasing and up-scaling I would have thought OS X Aqua UI would be able to make text and graphics big enough.

do you think the refresh is significant or just a stop gap?
Does is use the newest mobile chipset?

The reason for having FireWire 800 over eSATA is pretty straightforward. FireWire 800 is more versatile than eSATA. eSATA is (to the best of my knowledge) strictly for connecting hard drives, whereas FW800 can be used for that, or for directly connecting to digital cameras, and other such things.

The same basic reasoning is behind the choice of ExpressCard over an eSATA port. I wish they had gone for an ExpressCard 54 slot instead of 34... but one can't have everything.

I agree with you in that I also wish Apple's MBPs had higher res screens. However I have seen a some pictures of a guy that modded a 1920*1200 res screen into his powerbook (had to use a MacBook Pro screen bezel... but got it to work)
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post #4 of 5
5/24/07 at 4:31pm
reason being, apple wants HD video producers to buy their MBP and not their MB which is more for consumers (in th eir eye)
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post #5 of 5
6/5/07 at 4:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rjamesd View Post
Also, what about high definition WUXGA 1920x1200 displays to display full HD video natively?

welp, there u go. the 17" now has a BTO 1920x1200 option.
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