So I’m in the market for a laptop, and dammit, I think Apple has pulled me over into their camp. Leopard is slick as hell, and I can’t get enough of the large trackpad and two-finger scrolling – it simply works too well.
I think I’m gonna spring for the 2.4ghz standard Macbook – the price is pretty decent and it does what I want. However, I’ve heard that a newer version is coming out in Spring, which is earlier than usual, to my understanding.
Do you think there are likely to be many changes? I’m wondering if they’ll incorporate the multi-touch pad from the Pro?
So what do you think? Buy it now, or hold off til June?
Apple is famously tight-lipped about unannounced products; their rumor mill is famously wrong most of the time.
That said, Apple can be counted on to do a significant upgrade of each of their products about once a year, and a minor bump (usually a slight processor or RAM upgrade) a little more often than that.
It’s a truism, though, that you’ll ALWAYS have a better set of options if you wait; but by that logic you end up waiting forever. And no matter when you buy, your purchase will soon be obsolete because a better model is available.
So: if you have a need for the machine right now, buy it now. The extra couple months of utility will almost certainly outweigh whatever features show up in June (if any).
On the other hand, if your goal is to have the maximum amount of time between purchase and “there’s a better one out now” regret, wait and place an order the first day the next model becomes available (realizing that it could be well after June – late summer is more likely because of back-to-school). But be aware newly announced Apple hardware is often very hard to come by.
Check out the Buyer’s Guide before buying any apple product. Their recommendation is to buy, especially considering that the Macbook was updated only three weeks ago, so you’d be a bit silly to wait for the next product cycle. Any huge changes will wait for MacWorld next January, anyway, so all updates between now and then will likely be minor processor or RAM bumps.
My mindset is that the machines are obsolete the day they roll off the production line, there’s always a newer, faster, better model in the pipeline, heck, that model’s obsolete already too, it won’t be long before the machines are obsolete by the time the engineers think about the next model…
don’t worry about waiting for “the next best thing”, if the one you’re looking at does what you want, go buy it, it’ll be obsolete by the time you read this anyway…
What others have said is correct. If you like it, want it, or need it, just buy it. Computers advance at a phenomenal pace. That is what they do. Apple won’t discontinue support for whatever you buy for a very long time. Plus, they already made most of their big moves with chip architecture and operating systems a while ago so I can’t see it being that fundamental a change and even if it is, you still have the system that caused you to want it in the first place.
Back in the olden days, the slogan for the extremely-popular Commodore 64 was “I adore my 64”. Current Macs have a 64-bit system with two processor cores.
Now that Apple uses Intel processors, they’re going to get upgraded yearly anyway with some brand-spanking new architecture that will make whatever you buy outdated. But the good news is, the processors they have now are good enough that unless you use the most up-to-date 3D-rendering software all the time, the computer you buy today will be good for quite a few years before it feels sluggish to you. I have a first-generation MacBook from the summer of 2006 and there’s nothing it can’t handle.
Yes, that’s a website. :rolleyes: So? What does it say? Got an unbiased cite?
Here’s how arguments go around here- you post your thoughts or facts, then a cite to back them up. Not just a naked link. That is meaningless. You can cut and paste a few paragraphs if you must.
I bought my 15" PowerBook six months before the Intel Macs came out, for $2500. I knew that a product line revision was looming, but frankly, they always are. It would have been silly to wait for it; at that rate I’d never get my computer.
Two and half years later, I still love it. It does everything I need it to do without breaking a sweat. I may not have a shiny Intel Mac, but I have no regrets about buying mine when I did.
Oh hell’s bells. This afternoon I sold a Titanium PowerBook G4 667 MHz laptop that I bought five years ago. Ran perfectly. ALL the time. No bugs, no crashes, no glitches. The work I did? Upgraded the HD from 30 Gig to 80 Gig. Did it with a pal. Zero labor.
I sold it because I wanted two things it did not have. A DVI connector built in, and the chip speed to handle 10.4. Otherwise? I’d still have it on the desk. No reason not to.
Your machine will still be serving you long after the people hemorrhaging money on a fancypants Dell with all the bells and whistles have dumped it and tried to move on to the next new Dell with all the bells and whistles.
It is an investment with legs. Don’t wait a few months if you need the machine now.
I should have remembered about the octo-core desktop machines. I was thinking of portable Macs, like my Lappy, and wasn’t specific enough. I think I blanked it out because I can’t afford one right now.
Well, I took your advice and went out and bought mysef a 2.4ghz Macbook today. I’m pretty happy with my brief time with it so far, though the screen isn’t quite as nice as it had seemed in the store. But I do love the OS and the two-finger scrolling.
