Apple MAC

paulr

Anyone have a apple macbook or know anything about them are they any good, are they worth buying. Any feed back would be good

tywy

I've had mine a month and I love it! It's small, light and reasonably light. The OS kicks ass and it's competitvely priced if you take into account the weight. A lot of people will try to get you to get a Dell instead but the ones in the same price range weigh in and around 3kg whereas the macbook only weighs 2.35kg. The weight matters to me, I don't know about you!

xebec

Have a macbook too, very happy with it, for most things it's just as easy or easier to use than a Windows machine. Looks way better and is far more fun!

For more info check out a pile of threads on the mac forum.

rogue-entity

I have the bigger brother, the Macbook pro, and its a fantasitic laptop, the OS is fantastic, and it boots up in under a minute, (try that with Windows )
The only problem that I have with the Macbook Pro is the DVD drive. Its made by Mash1ta and it contains the bastard firmware from hell and cannot be made to play multiregion DVDs, even if you use something like DVD RegionFree or VideoLAN. The older powerbooks had "proper" drives that will play an out-of-region disc with VideoLAN. This region crap is the only drawback.

8T8

The Matsush*ta drives are re-branded Panasonic ones but yeah there is something up with the firmware in those that has so far thwarted the usual firmware hackers (one of the big names who did Mac firmwares also retired to make things worse).

There is a thread here that covers the topic a bit but the solutions are largely Windows only.

MacBook.fr also keeps tabs on region free firmwares.

Can't see a clear shot of the DVD connector here but Apple probably use the standard one (verify that) so you could probably replace the internal DVD drive with another brand with a region free firmware available if it was really bugging you.

paulr Apple just updated the MacBook Pro specifications as well if you plan on getting one.

dubmick

I didn't know Apple had updated the MacBook Pro...I just had a look at the specs there....very impressive.

but jaysus they are so expensive. I just couldn't shell out €2.5k for a laptop.

trout

paulr wrote:

Anyone have a apple macbook or know anything about them are they any good, are they worth buying

OP : it depends completely on what you need a computer to do

a machine is only good for you if it does exactly what you need it to do ...

i make a living from pc's, but my home machine is a mac portable... reason being, my main requirement is surfing the web / email / and mp3's ... for these requirements the mac has a huge battery life, is very light, and very, very, very stable when compared to similar spec windows laptops... so for me it's a no-brainer

question to ask yourself ... what do you need a computer to do ?

zilog_jones

8T8 wrote:

The Matsush*ta drives are re-branded Panasonic ones...

Matsushíta Electric are the parent company of Panasonic, Technics, National and a few other brands.

SouperComputer

The only problem that I have with the Macbook Pro is the DVD drive. Its made by Mash1ta and it contains the bastard firmware from hell and cannot be made to play multiregion DVDs, even if you use something like DVD RegionFree or VideoLAN. The older powerbooks had "proper" drives that will play an out-of-region disc with VideoLAN. This region crap is the only drawback.

Why not intall bootcamp + windows and flash it with a "PC" firmware for the model?

I havent tried it with intel macs I must admit, but ive done it with some PPC's that I couldnt find a mac-based firmware. Of course I had to remove the drive and stick it in a PC\Laptop but it worked fine on numerous (in fact all) occasions.

Nalz

Apparently, for some reason (I dont know why TBH) apple macbook are said to be ideal for people working in the photography/jornalism industry...

8T8

The firmware issue isn't actually Mac specific it affects PC's as well, The dangerous Brothers who are one the most prolific firmware hacker(s) say this on the matter;

Do not buy Matsush*ta drives or laptops containing them if you want to watch movies from multiple regions.

Which is a bad sign for any future breakthroughs in firmware hacks.

rogue-entity

If I had known that the Macbook pro had a Matsu****a drive, I would have never bought it. I have a few R1 DVDs that I got in LA and I also have all 5 seasons of 24 on DVD. Two of them are R3 and two are R2 and one is R1. I would have loved to watch them on my nice new mac, but I cant. That said, both my DVD players are region free and the Apple Macbook Pro is an excellent machine, I just love it.

Anti

How about a external dvd drive ?