My MacBook Pro is the best computer I’ve ever owned. This is not saying much, as you would presume the last computer you buy is better than any you have owned before.
Usually after about a year I’m pining for a hardware upgrade and averting my eyes from the Apple store. But I’ve had my current machine for 2.5 years and it’s still going strong and running the latest version of everything with aplomb.
With one exception. As my tool set is growing, I am wishing for more RAM. 3GB isn’t cutting it anymore. I have to keep a close eye on MemoryStick app in the dock to make sure I don’t run out of RAM and start the descent into the swapfile swamp, from which a reboot is the only rescue.
So in a moment of weakness I surfed over to store.apple.com to see how I might be living. I was surprised to see this:
At left, a brand new midrange Macbook Pro, $2500. At right, the specs for my 2.5 year old MBP.
They are roughly the same! Especially since I upgraded the RAM to 3GB a long time ago (cheap) and my hard drive to this fast, quiet, inexpensive Seagate 320GB drive last week ($90 bucks including shipping). The only appreciable difference is that the newer machine goes to 4GB.
Wow, 2.5 years goes by and a machine with roughly the same specs is still $2500. I am not sure what to make of that. Apple continues to do a good job squeezing out margins on their premium (and worth it) products. Perhaps the performance/battery life curve is taking a breather at a local maximum.
According to the MacRumors buying guide the Macs are all due for a refresh soon. Let’s hope Apple hits us with more than a few sharp bevels. It’s overdue.
Phil,
That’s not really a fair comparison. Processors haven’t been an apples to apples comparison for years (pun intended). At least not if you’re just using frequency. The new Xeons, for instance, run at a slightly slower frequency than the previous generation, but have much larger caches, use less energy and ultimately run applications substantially faster. Furthermore, the new systems use a much more advanced video card, which will be accessible for general processing when Snow Leopard comes out.
That being said, I’d love to see them expand the upper limit of the 15″ RAM capacity. The new 17″ Macbooks can handle 8GB, so I’d expect that from the next generation of 15″.
Yes, I’m sure that under the negligible spec improvements are some other optimizations. But are they more than negligible?
And with what impact to everyday performance?
The other truism of computing is that improvements to peak performance have little effect on everyday computing (unless you’re always doing computationally expensive work like gaming or motion graphics).