Its slowly irking me that Apples laptops are falling behind again in comparison to PC laptops, they need to update them quick, considering apple laptops are supposed to be top of the line, and they certainly charge as though they are. So … you may ask how are they lacking ? >…
The following points highlight where Pc’s laptops have been at recently and are contrasted with where the apple laptops are :
1: Laptop graphics cards :
quite a few pc laptops now boast 512mb graphics and some real high end from alienware etc are even exotic dual 512 sli in configuration meaning 1024mb onboard graphics capability. The 256mb the top end apple has now seems weazy, tiz understood that extra graphics memory is not necessarily so important for frame rate in comparison to the kind of grunt in the graphics cards itself, but often the 512mb cards have more of both and can handel larger amount of textures etc, an update by Apple is needed in this department urgently.
2: Laptop LCD screens :
Dell 15.4″ laptops have had hi-def 1920×1200 lcd displays for quite some time possibly even a year or so now, Apple have been very slow on equaling this, especially when mac os x 10.5 leopard will hopefully have a fully resolution independant interface, then arguments about interface gadget size being too small for eye comfort, could not even be used as an excuse as to why apple are not producing true hi-def laptops, and while were on the subject of the display : considering what theyre doing with touch sensitivity on the iphone, they better not hold out on integrating that technology into their laptop line as well, I’ve been waiting for touch sensitive tablet style apple laptop for some time, preferably with a screen that can rotate flat on itself and work like a wacom cintiq with a pen in image editing programs, after all if it added £250 to the laptop price, it would still save spending a grand on a cintiq itself.
one thing apple do seem to be rumoured to be going for is LED backlights in the screens more efficiency brighter etc, all good progress and field leading, just as long as it doesnt impede the other screen improvements arriving, such as I mention above. Apple currently top end screen is only 1680×1050 which although covers you for 720p does not cover you for 1080p.
3. WiFi:
Ok it may not be fully ratified but get on with 802.11n and please Apple lead as you use to in this area. 802.11g is all that apple offers and that is now long in the tooth.
4. Blu-ray, is available now and some PC laptops have integrated this already, expensive admitadly, why not at least push for the possibility of laptop sized blu ray player drives at least, if not burners, or make it an expensive build to order version. Apple offer DVD burners in their laptops, id say if it was a choice between an internal blu-ray player or a dvd burner, i might still go for an internal dvd burner, but it should be a choice, after all an external dvd burner is very cheap.
5. Laptop Hard drives are a tiny bit bigger capacity on pc laptops sometimes, but this would not be a big issue if you could easily replace them on macbook pro’s as you can on the macbook range, but since you cant this also highlights that the case design itself now needs updating to rectify this lack of upgradeability. And In terms of bootup speedboost how about a dedicated internal to the PC bus Flash based Hard drive especially say 4/8GB in size to cache most used parts of the operating system, to give a big operating system speed increase on top of that we’ve seen witht he switch to intel cpu’s.
6. CPU’s Well quite a few PC laptops have faster intel duo core 2 cpu’s, but for me im not so interested in paying the ultimate premium price for the topmost spec CPU, as this is not in my my opinion is not cost effective. But perhaps it should be there as a build to order option for the really monied types.
Apple have been smart enough to re-introduce FW800 to the whole macbook pro line, though all the external interface standards USB2 and 1 and FW400 rarely seem to reach their potential quoted speeds, at least FW800 is the fastest of them and this should certainly be passed down the line to the other computers in their range. USB still seems especially flakey in my usage of it, especially with audio devices and hubs but thats another long story. And often the bridge interfaces in the 3rd party devices are the weak point in the data transfer rate.