Comments on: Dear Steve Jobs, I think I am going to buy a Macbook Pro

By: Black Bloke

Black Bloke — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:02:44 +0000

It seems as if all your wishes have come true now.

By: fhunter

fhunter — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:56:30 +0000

i could just imaging their faces when they read this letter. Some good points but im happy with apples products the way they are.

By: free macbook air

free macbook air — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 02:44:07 +0000

Some good points made throughout the letter, would be interesting to see if you got an official response.

you should send a hard copy to a few of apples offices

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:34:28 +0000

Some of you all are killing me. If you read the post, he clearly said these aren’t demands. He is just making a wish list. What is wrong with dreaming, and letting Apple know what us users want? The Mac faithful truly slay me sometimes. I love my Mac, I don’t worship Steve. Oh, and Apple is light on memory resources my backside. Once a week I was slowing to a near halt with 2GB. The overhead just from start up is around 800mb of memory in use. Swap file is SLOW, active memory fast. 4gbs to avoid page outs is well worth the $200 in my mind.

By: I finally bought a Mac » Ad Terras Per Aspera

I finally bought a Mac » Ad Terras Per Aspera — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:46:20 +0000

[...] I said in my open letter to Steve Jobs and my previous posting, I finally went out and bought a Mac: an Apple Aluminum G4 Powerbook to be [...]

By: Anauel

Anauel — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 05:33:26 +0000

Welcome to the Cult of the Mac.

To be honest, if they could pull all this with a 12″ I’d probably build one of those Steve Jobs Altars that I’ve read so much about.

And I’d buy it of course.

By: digginestdogg

digginestdogg — Tue, 29 May 2007 21:06:20 +0000

I ‘ll bet Mr. Jobs spending his waking hours desperately trying to meet your specifications. I can hardly wait. I agree about the 4 GB though especially when I run Windows in a VM.

By: Patrick McFarland

Patrick McFarland — Fri, 25 May 2007 06:55:41 +0000

Oskar, draft 802.11n is /not/ 802.11n final spec. Hardware produced now under the draft may or may not properly function under the final spec.

Mac Pros aren’t laptops, thus thats a silly suggestion.

By: Oskar Syahbana

Oskar Syahbana — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:10:06 +0000

802.11n is already out, my macbook has this type of connection albeit that this is only draft type (not FCC-approved perhaps?), but surely the 802.11n is already out.

And if you really do need to do those heavy lifting (that justify the 4GB price tag), why not do it on Macpro? You’ll get better deal with the same price. It makes a lot more sense.

By: Bill Coleman

Bill Coleman — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:58:34 +0000

I think Apple will be very happy to make this laptop for you. Of course, you didn’t mention a specific price point. So long as you are willing to pony up the required $100,000 for a custom-built Apple laptop of this nature, I don’t foresee any problem….

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 21 May 2007 12:37:22 +0000

Siren, Patrick is correct. I use Photoshop, InDesign, Final Cut Pro, and other similar software professionally, and for heavy use of these applications (even just one at a time), 4GB is definitely recommended. Not necessary, but recommended. If you upgrade to 4GB, you will notice a difference.

By: Patrick McFarland

Patrick McFarland — Mon, 21 May 2007 05:51:30 +0000

Siren: I run Linux as my primary desktop, and have done so for the past ten years. I regularly hit swap with just 2GB. So yeah, I’d really prefer 4GB.

By: Siren

Siren — Mon, 21 May 2007 05:36:53 +0000

Maybe its just because you are now recently thinking about joining “The Cult of Mac” but 2GB of RAM is most certainly alot. My MBP with 2GB is used for not only photoshopping large files, but also for Edititing and Compressing video in HD, and I have rarely used the whole bit. I guess its just old habit, thinking that more RAM would make a wretched OS(XP/Vista) better..but in Mac land..we get along just fine with 2GB.

By: alex

alex — Mon, 21 May 2007 05:35:54 +0000

Dude, looks like you’re getting a Dell. There is no chance of all those specs in a MBP.

By: Patrick McFarland

Patrick McFarland — Mon, 21 May 2007 03:39:22 +0000

na: The 4200 RPM drive won’t beat a 7200 RPM on pure sequential reads, but combined with a solid state cache, it will beat it on often ran random reads (such as booting, starting often used apps, on disk caches/memory (ex: virtual memory, Photoshop’s disk swap), etc)

Jesse: I left those out for a reason. I won’t buy any HD-DVD or Bluray equipment (not even players the TV) until one or the other format dies. I refuse to get screwed over in what seems to be yet another VHS vs Beta war.

Mark: As 802.11n is not out, no machine in existence has a 802.11n chipset. People can only hope their non-spec N chipset can be firmware upgraded or physically replaced.

4GB of RAM does make sense if you have a specific use for it. I often compile large software or run Photoshop so I legitimately have a need for such RAM. I may also want to run Parallels or Xen as well.

On 2GB, Photoshop for large images requires swapping occationally, and Xen on 2GB kind of sucks if you want both VMs swapping on large work sets.

Hybrid disks are not useless, however a separate SSD/cache may be more useful.

Yes, DX10 chips are currently shipping in most if not all Santa Rosa laptops.

e:leaf: They’re not really demands, just suggestions. If Steve misses one or two of these, I’ll still consider a Macbook Pro as my next laptop.

By: e:leaf

e:leaf — Sun, 20 May 2007 17:09:21 +0000

Dude. Good luck with that. Making these types of demands and being part of the “Cult of Apple” are not rally all that compatible. Yes, we Mac users are finnicky and want what we want, but one of the biggest reasons we use Macs is that we have faith that Apple will get the configuration right. They generally do, and we don’t have to worry about the nit-picks because we have some of the best engineers worrying about them for us.

Just sayin’

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 20 May 2007 15:00:22 +0000

Well..
I agree on the LED-display, but current MBPs already DO have a 802.11n-chipset (upgradable, upgrade costs like $5 or so). 4 GB of RAM does not make that much sense. I currently have 2 GB and it is rarely completely used — and I really push my MBP (Can be seen in Activity Monitor). Hybrid disk is quite useless. However.. You can get yourself an ExpressCard SolidStateDisk and install OS X on that.
A DX10 chip.. well.. are they aviable yet?

By: Jesse

Jesse — Sun, 20 May 2007 14:58:44 +0000

You forgot to mention the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Reader/Burner.

By: na

na — Sun, 20 May 2007 14:56:19 +0000

“A large 5400 or 4200rpm drive as an option, which in theory should boot faster than a 7200rpm drive without a solid state cache, yet use far less power, make less noise, and be less expensive.”

What magical theory is this?

By: James John Malcolm

James John Malcolm — Sun, 20 May 2007 14:52:23 +0000

And while I’m at it, I’d like a pony too.