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Apple just killed the blackbook!

i purchased a blackbook two weeks ago, originally wanting a MBP but knowing full well that an update was coming. i couldn't wait as my connection was flying back from US to NZ.

happy with the blackbook but since yesterday, im suffering a slight case of post-purchase dissoance. for if i was able to purchase today ie. had a friend flying back from the US to NZ at a later date then I would have definitely opted -no hesistation- for the MBP over the blackbook as the saving is a whopping 1000NZD if you buy from the States + a nano. imo the SR MBPs represent great value, but ONLY if your paying USD.

dont get me wrong blackbook is nice but sometimes the 13" just isnt big enough.

all i really do is email, surf and movies. but i dont care i like my tech gadgets and the old 7 year PC will never see an upgrade - so this is how i justify it to myself...

can't wait to get a MBP in a few months time :)
 
prism said:
For those enlightened fools amongst you who think that $500 is insane for the difference, explain to me how you justify coughing up $200 extra for an extra 40gigs and black paint? I really want to hear this one but hold on just a minute so that I get the popcorn ready!
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I don't think the extra $500 is an insane amount for the MBP - or even an $600 as it is over here in the UK.

I do believe, however, each person needs to think about what they need/want to judge if it's value for money.

I'm not going to argue whether $500 is a lot of cash or not, but it represents paying roughly 33.3% more - which I think most people would agree is a marked difference.

Now to answer your question about whether it's worth paying an extra $200 for the black MB over the white one:

The success of the black MacBook - and plenty have been sold - is not about value for money. Personally, if I was going to get a MB for my main machine, I would go for the white mid-range machine as it offers the best bang for your buck - which is one of the most important considerations to me as a consumer.

But I can understand why others would plump for the black one. For instance, they love the black one but hate the white. Of course, there's something of a cachet of the snob value of having the rarer, more exclusive one.

Going by various forums, plenty of people were aware they were paying a premium for the colour; they may not have been delighted about it, but they still did it . Their money, their choice.

Personally, I doubt I would buy a MBP if I was going just to do email, word processing, surf the Web and watch DVDs - which quite a few people seem to be doing (if they are being honest) according to these threads.

Speaking of which, would you consider that buying a MBP for that kind of usage is sound financial sense?
 
prism said:
For those enlightened fools amongst you who think that $500 is insane for the difference, explain to me how you justify coughing up $200 extra for an extra 40gigs and black paint? I really want to hear this one but hold on just a minute so that I get the popcorn ready!
Click to expand...
Sure. The moment I read a mention of there being black MacBooks, I knew I was getting one. I had had PowerBooks and iBooks before that, and was not satisfied with either one - the former because of the size, the latter because it was white. Anyone who knows me knows the week they were available at retail stores I went to all of them in Los Angeles and I called them incessantly about getting my hands on one until I finally did.

A good paint job would cost me $200 or more. I do not care for most of the extras in the MBP. I take this laptop to school and treat my bag roughly, which, despite all the padding, can't really protect a laptop completely, particularly when it's not even in the bag and I end up denting it majorly, which is what happened to all the MBPs of my friends who also take theirs to school and work and travel. Oh wait, I've dented aluminun PowerBooks before. THEY DENT, really easily. MacBooks don't.

So, I coughed up $200 for black, because a black paint job would have been more money and would have cost even more, and not look as nice (case in point: keyboard and ports).

I coughed up $200 and not $500 in addition to the $200 because that meant I had to decide on the pathetic specs of the MBP over getting additional things for my MacBook - a new bag/sleeve/whatever, 2gb ram, a hard drive upgrade and miscellaneous accessories, including AppleCare and a free iPod nano. Could I have afforded to spend an extra $500? Yes. Did I need/want to? Not really.

So you're calling people jackasses because they're cracking dumb jokes about who you must be working for when YOU'RE calling ME a fool because I made a decision that was right for me? How the *&#$ do you know what I need and what I don't need and have to come out and say outright that I'm a fool because I didn't want to buy what I consider to be an inferior machine for MY needs?

It's my money. It's my needs. You have nothing to do with them.

FWIW I use my MacBook daily. It doesn't even so much have a scratch on it right now, only fingerprints. Pretty good for a year old machine.
 
fire up

having owned a g4 ibook then a white/yellow macbook and now the blackbook i can say black is so damn nice.

i primarily paid for a Blackbook, not a macbook that is black.
 
janey said:
Sure. The moment I read a mention of there being black MacBooks, I knew I was getting one. I had had PowerBooks and iBooks before that, and was not satisfied with either one - the former because of the size, the latter because it was white. Anyone who knows me knows the week they were available at retail stores I went to all of them in Los Angeles and I called them incessantly about getting my hands on one until I finally did.

A good paint job would cost me $200 or more. I do not care for most of the extras in the MBP. I take this laptop to school and treat my bag roughly, which, despite all the padding, can't really protect a laptop completely, particularly when it's not even in the bag and I end up denting it majorly, which is what happened to all the MBPs of my friends who also take theirs to school and work and travel. Oh wait, I've dented aluminun PowerBooks before. THEY DENT, really easily. MacBooks don't.

So, I coughed up $200 for black, because a black paint job would have been more money and would have cost even more, and not look as nice (case in point: keyboard and ports).

I coughed up $200 and not $500 in addition to the $200 because that meant I had to decide on the pathetic specs of the MBP over getting additional things for my MacBook - a new bag/sleeve/whatever, 2gb ram, a hard drive upgrade and miscellaneous accessories, including AppleCare and a free iPod nano. Could I have afforded to spend an extra $500? Yes. Did I need/want to? Not really.

So you're calling people jackasses because they're cracking dumb jokes about who you must be working for when YOU'RE calling ME a fool because I made a decision that was right for me? How the *&#$ do you know what I need and what I don't need and have to come out and say outright that I'm a fool because I didn't want to buy what I consider to be an inferior machine for MY needs?

It's my money. It's my needs. You have nothing to do with them.

FWIW I use my MacBook daily. It doesn't even so much have a scratch on it right now, only fingerprints. Pretty good for a year old machine.
Click to expand...


Just for the record, I couldn't give a *&#$ about you or what you might think of doing with your money, I just made the point that between the blackbook and the entry level MBP, for the extra $500 you get a lot of bang for the buck. Now your reasoning for spending $200 is pathetic, you are basically saying that its ok to spend that money just on aesthetics, LOL!
 
prism said:
I just made the point that between the blackbook and the entry level MBP, for the extra $500 you get a lot of bang for the buck.
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Paying an extra 33.3%, I would expect something for the marked difference in price.

As I've argued, in any case, the black MB's popularity is not about its value for money relative to other Apple products.
 
Igantius said:
Then why start a post calling people insane if they buy the black MBP?
Click to expand...

Just for comparison ... Sony do a 13.3" black Vaio laptop.

It's bigger than a MacBook. It weighs the same. It comes with a 1.66GHz Core Duo processor, a 120Gb HDD and 802.11g wireless.

If you bump the black MacBook to an equivalent 2Gb of RAM, the MacBook comes in at exactly £50 more ... but has a 2.16GHz Core Two Duo, 160Gb HDD and 802.11n wireless. They even use the same GMA950 graphics card.

http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=146799

Made my day when I found that, I tell ya!

Cheers

Jim
 
prism said:
Just for the record, I couldn't give a *&#$ about you or what you might think of doing with your money...you are basically saying that its ok to spend that money just on aesthetics, LOL!
Click to expand...

:rolleyes: Now THERE'S a mature addition to a useless thread.

And yes, a lot of people believe that aesthetics are a perfectly legitimate reason to spend some extra money. Apple seems to have done all right with the Cinema Displays, despite the fact that comparable Dell models are significantly cheaper.

Why don't you just let people spend their money how they'd like and get over it instead of tossing around words like "insane".
 
smiddlehurst said:
A fellow UK poster (and owner of both a MB and MBP) here, and I've got to say you've missed a couple of things from your list:

1) The MBP has 2Gb Ram as standard
2) The MBP includes a DVI to VGA adaptor
3) The screen is, of course, bigger than the MB.
Click to expand...

Fair points, however I would add that:

1) You can max your MB RAM to 2GB for all of £51 (Crucial Memory). The Apple store is a very expensive place to buy your memory.
2) I guess this might be a benefit for people with older displays, but it's hardly a deal breaker. I don't know how much they are in the Apple store, but they seem to be about ~£10-15 on the high street.
3) Larger screen on the laptop but, if you save your money, you're most of the way towards a pretty large secondary for your desk! ;)

I agree that with your last point, that the main differentiation is the graphics card and whether you need to do gaming/3d. I still think that a £400 jump is a bit much for this and the other features - the dollars price would be more tempting, as this is closer to £300.

Cheers,

J
 
prism said:
Just for the record, I couldn't give a *&#$ about you or what you might think of doing with your money, I just made the point that between the blackbook and the entry level MBP, for the extra $500 you get a lot of bang for the buck. Now your reasoning for spending $200 is pathetic, you are basically saying that its ok to spend that money just on aesthetics, LOL!
Click to expand...
You just said you don't give a *&#$ about what I do with my money, so why are you giving a *&#$ about what I do with my money?

Again, you're calling my reasoning "pathetic".

If denting/durability and the color of a tool I use daily for hours (hi, computer science major, do this for work, do this for volunteer work) doesn't matter, then what does? I have owned an aluminum PowerBook before. I know how easily they damage. I know I don't want a laptop that vulnerable. I loved the PowerBook G3s a lot. I love my black MacBook to death because it's the perfect machine for me.

Oh wait, this is Apple we're talking about. Like the not-beige-box-company-behind-the-multicolored-iMac-G3s Apple.

For what it's worth, $500 gets me parts to a desktop with better specs. Which is what I have right now, a PC separate for gaming with immense amounts of storage that you can't even begin to dream about putting inside a MBP and a decent graphics card that I can upgrade whenever I feel like it. I am not *&#$ing paying $500 for a hard drive and graphics card upgrade in a ****ing laptop I don't use for storage or most of my gaming. 1gb is trivial, so the only thing worth paying $500 extra for is either the graphics card or the LED display or both, but again, neither are worth that much to me. I have four gigabytes of ram in my desktop right now. I have a nice big widescreen LCD display that was really cheap. It has everything I possibly want in a computer. Stuff that I can't put in a laptop.

Laptops are meant for portability, and I don't game often nor do I need that much extra ram (nor do I want to pay that much...) or a better graphics card. If it plays my music, my movies, lets me code in peace, runs Mac OS X and Windows side by side and has a decent battery life, then so be it. I am not looking for a desktop replacement, as is clear by the fact that I'd rather spend that money on parts for my MacBook and everything else in the house. And because I have to look at this thing every day and use it every day, why not get something I'm not going to be pissed off at? I've had 3 iBook G3/G4s, and with all three of them I hated the color, every single day. I had to wipe off the iBooks often because they got so dirty. I got pretty sick of how dirty it got. It was either getting the blackbook for $200 which would give me the best results, or doing my own paint job or getting it professionally painted.

So you know, in the end, it's sorta like unless you really need the screen space or you want a desktop replacement there's no ****ing reason to spend the additional $500/700 for a MacBook Pro. Spending $500 for something you don't really need sounds more "pathetic" than my "pathetic" reasoning for getting a blackbook.
munckee said:
Why don't you just let people spend their money how they'd like and get over it instead of tossing around words like "insane".
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Cause it's just too irresistable to insult people who purchase computers based on what they need over what someone else thinks they need.
Orge said:
3) Larger screen on the laptop but, if you save your money, you're most of the way towards a pretty large secondary for your desk! ;)
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For $500 I can easily purchase a 20" cinema display. Bigger, if I go with a different company (like Dell).
 
I just bought a BB to replace my old MBP that died. I thought I would not like "downgrading" but I love this machine more than the MBP.

1. The WIFI gets much better reception than the MBP. This has to be one of the single most important features of something that is "portable".

2. The casing doesn't dent.

3. It doesn't produce nearly as much heat, the size is much more comfortable to lounge on the sofa and use (also helps it doesn't set me on fire to set it on my lap), I also was delighted taking it on the plane on my way home and being able to use it in economy on the food tray with no problem. I know I should have splurged on the MBP and then splurged on first class tickets so I could use it easily.

4. I had 2 GIG of RAM from my old MBP so that wasn't even an issue.

5. I never used any of the "high end" features on the MBP. For surfing and my needs I probably don't even come close to maxing out my BB.

6. The minimal amount of difference in transfer rates for FW 800 over FW 400 doesn't matter to me. I just use my draft N to beam files to my external drive. If it takes a second, an hour or a day is irrelevant, when it finishes it finishes. This also goes back to point 1 you can't do this if you have no reception.

7. I figured that since I needed something now that $1,500 was a figure I was willing to spend. I might as well use that $500 extra to buy my next machine after Leopard is out. The MBP was just too much of an investment to justify for possibly only using until October.

8. I just didn't want to have a white machine. The OP thinks buying based on aesthetics is crazy but then mentions Porsche as compared to a Prius. Of course Porsche doesn't actually market the look of it's products.

9. I could have afforded the top end MBP fully upgraded, but I travel a lot as well. When I am in Africa, Laos or where ever I don't really want to be worried about breaking my "space age" multi-gajillion dollar pride and joy. If I do lose my BB or break it on the road its less of a loss. Try find anything in these countries to hook all those fancy ports into anyway (asks in Swahili "Does your net cafe have FW 800 ports?")

When/if I buy my next MBP it will be my home machine and not be going out on the trail with me.

10. As a product the BB has been through several revisions and is tried and true. The SR MBP is the first of it's series and I will let other people go through any potential problems or bugs that it may or may not have.

I could continue to list reasons why I chose the BB but the point is that there is most certainly still people that it appeals to. I try to stay current with technology. Part of my learning process and over all maturity as a user has been the realization to buy wisely and not purchase stuff I have no need for. When I was new to computers I always bought what I was told is the best and that was insane and foolish.

FWIW I agree with everybody that says either choice is a great machine.
 
$500 is a big big big difference.

I think it's silly to pay so much more for a black book then a white macbook with only a smaller HD...

I love my MBP and would not trade it for a MB ever ever ever.

the MBPs are just sExa;)
 
prism said:
Ummm... maybe that was the case before yesterday when the difference was not between a prius and a porsche?
Lets see what you get for $500 more...LED, SR, additional 1gig ram, 2.2ghzC2D, 8600mGT with 128mb...all those combined with backlit kb, expresscard expansion etc makes it a fantastic value for just $500 more!!!
Click to expand...

Fantastic enough to drive sales up of the better product ? Wouldn't that be novel, why would they do that, why would they want increased profits ?
 
prism said:
Ummm... maybe that was the case before yesterday when the difference was not between a prius and a porsche?
Lets see what you get for $500 more...LED, SR, additional 1gig ram, 2.2ghzC2D, 8600mGT with 128mb...all those combined with backlit kb, expresscard expansion etc makes it a fantastic value for just $500 more!!!
Click to expand...

I don't see anything listed that's worth $500 American. That's like $600 where I'm at, and that could buy me a whole lot of something else.


I'm going to follow the crowd and agree with everyone else on this one.
 
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