Yep, the MacBookPro is on the US Apple site as a refurb already. Not entirely sure whether that is a bad sign two months into product life.

Usually just means someone bought it and returned it. Maybe they didnt like it. I doubt it means that there was a problem with the machine. (although you never know)

I thought that too but they have both the 1.8 and the 2.0 available. Perhaps they are demos from trade shows or something.

I'd hate break it to you guys, however, there are a lot of people with problems on the Macbook Pro. Just read the reports on Macintouch:

Macbook Pro User Reports (http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/macbookpro/index.html)

I'm not saying that there aren't usable machines out there but there seem to be a lot of defective ones. Also there are a lot of people with problems but are content with putting up with them.

I'm dieing to buy a Intel based Mac Notebook but I can safely say that the right decision is to hold out until the problems are fixed or Rev. B machines are released.

Yep, that was kinda what I was getting at. I don't want to say they're not a step in the right direction but I'va always been a little iffy on the decision to go with intel in a mac. It still seems to go against everything that's holy for me.

Well, you can continue to use underpowered computers, or live with Intel. I have a new MacBook Pro, with the following problems:
1) Whine - has come on a total of three times in three weeks; hello mirror widget
2) Buzzing with LCD at high brightness - audible probably to my dog, but I have to put my ear to the laptop to hear it
Frankly, I think most of the people who are complaining are just being ridiculously anal. I'd take the three hundred dollar discount, and just run back to Apple if you need to complain. It is, after all, under warranty.
Meanwhile, my experience with my MBP is excellent; the thing flies compared to the G4s.
BTW, it's not as if the last gen of G4 powerbooks were without problems.
And the screen, oh boy, is it ever bright . . .

Yep, the MacBookPro is on the US Apple site as a refurb already. Not entirely sure whether that is a bad sign two months into product life. <iframe border=0 frameborder=0 framespacing=0 height=1 width=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 name=new_date noResize scrolling=no src="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=*H4hz/ywH9w&offerid=77305.10003289&type=3&subid=0" vspale=0></iframe>

Someone just returned it thats all

not a big deal - refurb sales are not symptomatic of problems with revA boards unless they're available in HUGE numbers :D

Doesn't sound like there are too many problems. The main problem seems to be a whining sound problem. Other than that it sounds like there are the usual couple of lemons. There was mention of a heat problem, but no users seemed to report a heat problem on the page. A few users, as usual, got bad RAM from a third party. And for the whining sound problem it sounds like Apple is accepting it as a problem and replacing returned MBP's with new ones.

Well, you can continue to use underpowered computers, or live with Intel. I have a new MacBook Pro, with the following problems:
1) Whine - has come on a total of three times in three weeks; hello mirror widget
2) Buzzing with LCD at high brightness - audible probably to my dog, but I have to put my ear to the laptop to hear it
Frankly, I think most of the people who are complaining are just being ridiculously anal. I'd take the three hundred dollar discount, and just run back to Apple if you need to complain. It is, after all, under warranty.
Meanwhile, my experience with my MBP is excellent; the thing flies compared to the G4s.
BTW, it's not as if the last gen of G4 powerbooks were without problems.
And the screen, oh boy, is it ever bright . . .

Hey milhaus,

1) theres nothing underpowered about my Dual 2.7GHz PM.
2)Who's complaining? This is a discussion on why there a refurbs and where they are coming from.
3)I agree wholeheartedly about the discount. If I were in the market for a new portable I would definately buy one of these.

Then you may want to reread my post where I mentioned that I was NOT saying that intel was not a step in the right direction. Don't take a discussion about these things to be a personal attack on your purchase. I'm thrilled that your new mac is working great for you. I love experiencing the new mac feeling every time and I love just as much hearing of others experiencing the same feeling.

Yep, the MacBookPro is on the US Apple site as a refurb already. Not entirely sure whether that is a bad sign two months into product life.

The noise problems seem quite variable. There was a comment in the running macintouch thread on this from a reseller who notes a significant subset of machines are afflicted by the various noise problems (and not all to the same degree) but most machines are not.

I would be leary about buying a refurb b/c there have been a lot of returns for the noise issue in particular and it is not clear to me that a software fix or firmware fix is/will be possible. If you can get a refurb (and let's face it, this is Canada so it's a bit of a hypothetical discussion) then I would just make sure you are able to return it for a refund if you are unhappy with some aspect of it.

Hey milhaus,

1) theres nothing underpowered about my Dual 2.7GHz PM.
2)Who's complaining? This is a discussion on why there a refurbs and where they are coming from.
3)I agree wholeheartedly about the discount. If I were in the market for a new portable I would definately buy one of these.

Well, we're talking notebooks here, and frankly, the G4 is underpowered. I used a Powerbook G4 for years and even had a single processor G5 desktop, both of which are downright pokey compared to my MacBook Pro.

Who's complaining? If you read the third post in the thread, a lot of people. I'm trying to address the issues brought up in that thread, not yours. I didn't direct the comment at you.

My point stands: buying Rev. A. products is not inherently more risky than say, a Rev D version, with the last version of the Powerbook G4 as a prime example.

As soon as a RevB comes out, or a fix etc... I'm running in that direction. Not being anal about things I can get by with the whine running mirror widget. But for the roughly $3000+ most people spend on this laptop we should be able to be anal about our purchase.

"A PC user argues that for roughly the same in high end PC laptop you won't get these issues and for cheaper the price."

I dont know if the above about PC's is true or not, I just keep thinking

"No anti-virus yay!, no spyware yay!, no BSOD yay!, no technical knowledge needed yay! No anti-virus yay!, no spyware yay!, no BSOD yay!, no technical knowledge needed yay!" etc....

and that keeps me gleefully happy!

Hey milhaus,

As I believe this is headed in the direction of schoolyard childishness, this will be my last reply to this particular part of the discussion.

I believe your original post was a kneejerk reaction to a percieved insult directed at your new mac. There was no such insult, nor would there ever be from me.

I ask, however, that you re-examine your reasons for posting an attack on PPC based mac's. Be honest with yourself. No really, be honest with yourself.

On another note I have a magnificent setup here which I am very proud of and have no interest in changing. It is entirely G5 PPC based and, as such, I probably took your "underpowered" comment to heart. I should have, instead, treated it with the disdain it deserved.

B.

Hey milhaus,

As I believe this is headed in the direction of schoolyard childishness, this will be my last reply to this particular part of the discussion.

I believe your original post was a kneejerk reaction to a percieved insult directed at your new mac. There was no such insult, nor would there ever be from me.

I ask, however, that you re-examine your reasons for posting an attack on PPC based mac's. Be honest with yourself. No really, be honest with yourself.

On another note I have a magnificent setup here which I am very proud of and have no interest in changing. It is entirely G5 PPC based and, as such, I probably took your "underpowered" comment to heart. I should have, instead, treated it with the disdain it deserved.

B.
Actually, as I mentioned in the post above, I wasn't responding to your post at all. Please read my post where I specifically say this. I was responding to the small but vocal group of users who feel that the problems with the MacBook are unacceptable. It seems like you're the one who's taking this a little personally.

I don't think that any reasonable person could compare the performance of a G4 and a new Intel computer on a Universal app and not say that the G4 was underpowered. I never wanted to admit this at the time, but this processor (the G4, not the G5, I'll say again to make sure we're talking on the same page) was at least one generation behind what Intel was doing on both the desktop and notebook side of things. Again, my response was in the context of notebooks, not your personal setup, even though I find a single processor G5 slow compared to my new MacBook.

Unfortunately, I think you're the one that is being unreasonable here, by claiming that the heart of the Mac experience is in a processor. You say that you think the move to Intel was "iffy"; why is that? PPC or Intel; I couldn't care less, except for the fact that the Intel is faster. It's precisely this silly attachment to anything with a tinge of Windows that makes Mac fanboys targets for PC users.

I'm happy you're happy; I happy you're happy. I never took your comments as a slight on my MacBook Pro and I'm disappointed you took my underpowered comment as a slight on your very nice setup. But again, if you would read my posts properly, and consider the context of this thread - a discussion about notebooks where I specifically compare the Core Duo to the G4, I think you should respond more reasonably.

Finally, if this post is condescending, I apologize; it's only because my last clarification didn't really get noticed. Once again, I was never responding to you. And I too am happy to end the discussion here.

refurbished is not exactly the same as returned. they have been factory refurbished, meaning, any problems they had would have been fixed by apple. you shouldn't assume that a defective product will continue to have said defect.

Does anyone else think saying a 1.67 G4 is Pokey is sortof silly. I mean, I moved from a 2gig Pentium M to a 1.2 G4 I book and couldent believe how fast it was. Now, I have a 1.67 G4 and my brother, with a Pentium 4 3.2ghz cant believe how fast MY G4 is. What is pokey? Im not 100% sure of this but id be willing to bet that in the real world, where we all live, most G4 Mac portable users feel their G4's are equally as fast if not faster than a comparable PC. Now, if an Intel Duo Mac is faster, good, it should be. But does the new hardware being fast automatically mean the old hardware is slow. I think not. Its a silly argument in the first place for sure. But really, when someone tells me an Intel Duo 2.0 Mac is 4 times faster than my PPC G4 It makes me laugh. Why would %90 of the people here need that? Im sure some do, im sure some not only need it but have been pineing for it for years. The rest of us would probably hardly notice.

however specious, a ferrari is 4x faster than a camry...thus faster=better.

I like to go fast...in my car, which is why i buy a fast car....don't forget that all that speed apple is pushing does not do much under emulation...wait until you are running all universal code...

besides i both a G4 pb, a dual G5 powermac maxed with ram, and played with an intel 2.0 Pb today and say not much increase in speed for my day to day activities...now mind you i did not render images as i would have with my G5 or compress video but none of the programs i use are universal yet so how would much faster can it be at this point....

mind you the minute they annouce a 12 or 13 inch intel PB i will but it (first gen and all...)

To be perfectly honest, as a PowerBook user a good majority of my days, it's not that it's underpowered, per-say; it's that it's under-RAMed. A mobile platform for Photoshop and Dreamweaver is what it serves me as and 1.25gb of RAM is just not enough. I'd just like the option of going to at least 4gb. Not all that is slow is the processor falling down on the job, we must all remember. The Intel versions of the same software will still feel rather sluggish on laptops with the minimal RAM that can be put in them, unfortunately.

Just my $.015...

I like to go fast...in my car, which is why i buy a fast car....don't forget that all that speed apple is pushing does not do much under emulation...wait until you are running all universal code...

besides i both a G4 pb, a dual G5 powermac maxed with ram, and played with an intel 2.0 Pb today and say not much increase in speed for my day to day activities...now mind you i did not render images as i would have with my G5 or compress video but none of the programs i use are universal yet so how would much faster can it be at this point....

mind you the minute they annouce a 12 or 13 inch intel PB i will but it (first gen and all...)

Good Advice ... not really sure why people are switching to Intel so quickly without a strong selection of universal apps. Adobe CS, MS Office etc won't have Universal apps for quite some time and running Rosetta sucks up a lot of that so-called performance gain.

A ferrari F40 is faster than a camry. But, a guy who only needs 4 doors or needs to take his family with him, or, most importantly, realizes that even a camry can do 160KMH, which is too fast for any road we have in canada will not feel the camry is slow. Likewise, a camry, compared to an echo might be a rocket.
There will always be the ferrari out there. But, comparing apples to apples, what do you really get. A G4 1.67 is, in my mind, more like...say, a Corvette. Not the most expensive and not the most exotic but still damn fast and much cheaper than your Ferrari. For %90 of the people out there the vette is more than enough car and can go way faster than anyone needs to. The Ferrari is more exotic and IS cabable of more but few, if anyone, ever gets to realize it. Is the Corvette slow becuase the Ferrari is faster? Not a chance.

Does anyone else think saying a 1.67 G4 is Pokey is sortof silly. ...
Now, if an Intel Duo Mac is faster, good, it should be. But does the new hardware being fast automatically mean the old hardware is slow. I think not. Its a silly argument in the first place for sure...

Is the Corvette slow becuase the Ferrari is faster? Not a chance.

Well said. I applaud you for getting my point across better, and more eloquently as it turned out, than I could.

I think your point is better made between imac g5s and intel iMacs where the performance gap is not so phenomenal.

In the case of the MacBook Pro versus Powerbook - the 1.83 CoreDuo with 2 gigs of RAM in the $2700 range simply blows off any Powerbook g4 offering in value - especially considering the headaches with the latest gen powerbooks.

With a few exceptions you will get at least equivalent or better performance from Rosetta against a late model Powerbook and the native apps just destroy any Powerbook ...these are not minor differences as is the case between iMacs.

For basic needs a 12" iBook with 1.5 gigs of RAM still has much to offer tho not for long.
THERE, the value issue $1400 versus $2700 makes more sense.

But clearly not in the $1700+ area where most Powerbook purchases reside.

IF you are unsure - please if you reside in the GTA - take us up on trying YOUR apps on one of our Intel iMacs.
You know historically we cast a jaundice eye on the latest and greatest but in this case g4 versus Intel Duo - the header for our next newsletter will be

Intel revolution....what are you waiting for? ..jump right in.

This is an enormous step forward for Apple and for Mac users.....in particular portable users and those in the entry level desktop.

...and the superb value for money MacBook 1.83s are in good supply finally.
For once Apple has a true "bargoon".....jump on it.

My point was never that the intel books are not better machines. As a previous poster mentioned. They should be!

My point was that the speed of the new intel books does not justify the slagging of the G4's. Just because the newer technology is faster (as it should be) does not automatically make the older technology slow.

Sorry but yes it does, the older machines are pathetic for the price and the fault lays entirely with old tired - past it's due date" processor technology.

Apple squeezed the best it could out a sow's ear processor - geez a dual 500 G4 with 2x1 meg L2 cache was out how many years ago???

It's been an anchor on Apple's growth in the entry and portable market for 2-3 years now. :mad:

How could ANYONE justify a price gap of $2000 last year between the entry iBook a 1.33 ghz and the 17" PB at 1.67 ghz.

They only sold because there was no alternative - not because they fast OR good value.

Now especially consider the problem plagued last gen G4s....., orphan RAM that can't be used in anything else, loads of issues because they were an orphan machine and a first gen to boot, short product life and Apple is still scrambling to dump them.