Comments on: Last-gen Macs: Better deals than new Macs?

Last-gen Macs are on sale at steeply discounted prices while current-gen models are replacing them on store shelves. If it's time to buy, which would you prefer?

[darkxeno]

Besides the bumped up specs on the new Macs the last gen ones look mighty tempting.
I just might have to stop by the local store and see if its wroth buying one after all.
But whats new in this story every company out there cuts their prices on old equipment when they announce and release new stuff, could it be that the writer is saying the new lineup is not worth the price Apple is looking to charge?

[ckh1272]

To darkxeno:
SHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! You'll wake the trolls! Also, I think he is trying to point out that these are a pretty good deal if you're in the market for a portable Mac.

[ckh1272]

In addition, I do believe he is trying to bait the trolls (on all sides) into a flame war for more hits.

[polaris20]

"The unibody aluminum MacBook is now part of the "Pro" series, thanks to some updates, including the addition of an Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU. As mentioned above, it's slightly faster than its predecessor. It also adds a FireWire 800 port."

The unibody MacBook 13" always had the nVidia 9400m. the white MacBook has also had the nVidia 9400m for a few months.

[dd13reis]

Good call. Updating the post with that information taken out. I forgot about that. My fault.

Thanks for the catch!

-Don

[AppleSuxLeo]

You thought Apple was REALLY going to give you a deal ? What a sucker.
It`s just a marketing ploy to cut down on Apple-bashing since they have been exposed for what they are.
Overpriced PC`s with less ports/features.

[polaris20]

How's being ignorant working out for you?

Clearly you know nothing about OS X and/or have never used a Mac for any length of time.

[Get_a_life_Leo]

Thanks AppleSuxLeo. True to form as usual. Please don't forget to tell everyone with a Mac that they are brainless lemmings. We appreciate your insight and depth and take great notice of your fundamental wisdom.

[darkxeno]

With keeping my eyes on Mac for awhile thinking about buying one, these are good prices for someone that wants a Mac. Just a lot of people get caught up in numbers and don't understand a higher CPU is not needed for everyone out there.

[kcotham]

As evidenced by your biased name, you're a trill AppleSuxLeo, just keep your idiotic commentary to yourself.

[ckh1272]

Wow, it's AppleSuxLeo!! Haven't seen a post from you in a while. I guess you're not grounded from the computer anymore!

[caseyahenry]

Don mentions that "consumers who buy now will be forced to pay $29 (or $49 for a family five-pack) to have Snow Leopard," but that's actually not true. Apple's offering an Up-to-Date program that allows purchasers of new Macs to upgrade at a discount. From the Apple website: "If you purchased a qualifying system or Xserve on or after June 8, 2009 that does not include Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can upgrade to Mac OS X Snow Leopard for $9.95."

[dd13reis]

Should have been clearer in the post. Added clarification.

Thanks, Casey!

-Don

[Perry_Clease]

Don, are consumers really forced to buy Snow Leopard, it isn't like Leopard is going to stop working.

Also the price of a Family Pack is probably less than packing the family into the truckster and heading out for dinner and a show.

[ikramerica--2008]

Not the first time they've done the $9.95 thing. Covers the cost of manufacturing, packaging and distributing the product, I suppose.

[drwam]

The way I look at it, the next big jump in performance will be the addition of more cores. Until then, everything is really incremental for everyday computing. Wait until (late) next year...

[bonesbautista]

The impending release of Snow Leopard isn't a reason to hold off:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/

The last time I bought a Mac I took advantage of the program in a local Apple Store and they gave me a copy of Leopard and didn't charge the $10.

[dd13reis]

Let's hope that happens again! I had to buy Leopard at full price when it came out. I wasn't happy.

-Don

[ikramerica--2008]

OS X is one of the few items that Apple allows resellers to discount, so if you paid full price, you was robbed! Amazon usually sells it for less than full price...

For example, it's $109 for indy and $133 for Leopard Family Pack on Amazon.

[bbabadu]

slow news day, eh?

[thisnamestoolong]

<rant>Don, can you please do us a favor and stop referring to the processors by the speed? That number is totally irrelevant and has not even been moderately useful since 2002 or so. Different pipelines/core counts make a much bigger difference than the speed.</rant>

[kelmon]

Personally speaking, I'd rather have the processor speed than one of Intel's model numbers that doesn't really mean very much. I can appreciate what you are saying but Penryn Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz means much more to me than T9500.

[parttimeaw]

Don why aren't you writing about the Xbox???

[ddhboy]

You might as well just buy the new 13 inch since all the laptops (except for the air) are now "pro" models by specification.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Snow Leopard is nothing more than a Paper Tiger ! Bwahahaha !

[kcotham]

I wish they had a "Troll" radio button to click on when reporting violations. If so, AppleSuxLeo would get that button clicked EVERY SINGLE TIME!

[thelemurking]

I agree with you somewhat kcotham, but to be fair, there's plenty of Apple trolls who pounce on Microsoft articles every chance they get.

[super__mario]

Don't you have something better to do, like scan your Windows installation for viruses. It's amazing that idiots like you are allowed near a computer, let alone allowed to comment on relative merits of each.

OS X in UNIX and for some of us that's enough to make it million times more useful than windows will ever be.

[thelemurking]

super_mario only proves my point about the Apple zealots ;) there's trolls on both sides!

[ckh1272]

"by thelemurking June 11, 2009 11:30 AM PDT
I agree with you somewhat kcotham, but to be fair, there's plenty of Apple trolls who pounce on Microsoft articles every chance they get."

to thelemurking:
You may be right but that doesn't we should have put up with from either side of the fence. Electroshock therapy is in order for those people. Slingblade just needs to go back to fixing lawn mowers or something like that.

[ckh1272]

"by ckh1272 June 12, 2009 12:22 AM PDT
"by thelemurking June 11, 2009 11:30 AM PDT
I agree with you somewhat kcotham, but to be fair, there's plenty of Apple trolls who pounce on Microsoft articles every chance they get."

Edit-Oops!! Sorry for the lack of proof reading on my part. This is what I meant to say:

to thelemurking:
You may be right but that doesn't mean we should have put up with it from either side of the fence. Electroshock therapy is in order for those people. Slingblade just needs to go back to fixing lawn mowers or something like that.

[MyRightEye]

The 13" MacBook was upgraded to a professional quality display instead of the terrible consumer level display it had. A 13" 2kg laptop with 7 HOURS of battery life, running OS X. That's it! I'm sold! First new Mac I have bought in a LONG time!

[cvaldes1831]

Correct. New models have better displays; you're staring at it all day, you might as well have the superior version.

Also not mentioned in the article is the memory upgradeability (8GB versus 4GB for the obsoleted models). That's worth more than a bump in CPU speed.

[deblink]

Dear Don,

'Forced to pay $29 [....] to have Snow Leopard.' The mind boggles ... $29!

Just to let you know, Don, that I logged in (not that common an occurrence) especially to let you know that this piece, although particularly vapid, is a typical example of your elephant-out-of-a-mole-hill style. Blog, please, if it makes you feel good. But also, try to focus on substantial issues and, above all, being entertaining? Please?

[jonk..]

the value equation comes down to these 3 things, battery life, battery life, battery life...

with out that value there is no reason to upgrade. having 7 hours or 8 hours is key. more than key... essential

course not having OSX on your laptop (a PC) it doesn't matter how long your battery lasts... you are still ferklempt...

[ikramerica--2008]

Early reviews show that when running OS X, 7-8+ hours are realistic. When running Vista under bootcamp? 4.5 hours. For people who don't think there is any value to OS X, it is a more efficient OS.

The new 15" model also blows away other laptops in a lot of tests, all run under Vista because PC reviewers can't seem to figure out how to run "encoding tests" on the mac.

[kelmon]

I'm not in the market for a new Mac at present but if I was then I think I would buy one of the new ones without the discount due to the increased battery life, which is more important to me than a cheaper price. However, if the battery life isn't that important then the discounted price could be pretty attractive since you'll still get all the selling points of these models when they were released last year. Personally, I love the new large trackpads - it's one of those things where you wonder why it wasn't thought of before.

[asiafish]

Correction, the SSD MacBook Air price was reduced $1,000, not $800 as stated in the article. I was so happy with that discovery that I went out and bought one.

[Sporlo]

We got a last-gen Macbook for $100 off in addition to $50 for the education discount. And it even had the new graphics, so we sort of got an in-between generation (still 120GB, but better graphics) for a $850.

[keplenk]

Maybe you should add that the last-gen uMacbooks have SATA II and the new ones have SATA I. Ewwww.

[Regulator7]

I have been toying with the idea of replacing my aging Dell notebook with a Macbook for months. Never could quite justify the Apple Tax - it's not insignificant.

Having been watching the prices, I was keenly aware that there'd likely be a way to get the 'previous' Macbook for a good discount now that the 'new' Macbooks have been released. Sure enough, there was. I picked up a previous-gen Macbook Pro for about $1,500 (2.53 C2D, 320GB, 4GB Ram, 9400+9600). I've been a PC user/builder for 20 years - and that price is within a couple hundred bucks of an identically configured Dell/HP/Toshiba notebook. So the Apple Tax became a moot point. I don't care about the SD slot, I like the expandability of the ExpressCard slot, and I'd prefer a user-replaceable battery anyway. So I'm thrilled with it.

The hardware is stunning. OSX is a breath of fresh air. Simple things like USB transfer speeds are mind-blowingly fast compared to Vista SP1 (and forget about SP0). Parallels handles the two or three Vista apps I need without breaking a sweat. And the few graphics-heavy games I play work absolutely perfectly in a Bootcamped XP.

[shanx24]

What you call the Apple Tax is the price of getting hardware that'll run over six years without a hitch. Buy top-end stuff in the Windows PC world and you'll see similar prices, but they'll spoil anyway. I have experience with Tosiba, Sony (the luxurious VGN series), and Dell Latitudes, all of which are above general market price for laptops. They all last about a couple of years. Macs are worth every penny -- why do you think there are so many converts? We're not all going for bragging rights. It just makes sense.

[joeschisa]

I for one like the ExpressCard slot instead of the new one, seems more versatile; also prefer more Firewire ports and a removable battery: maybe the first preference (expressCard) was changed for space considerations which the internal battery allowed, the second (firewire) maybe because, well I don't know. But, non the less I've used apple since 1982 and they work for me even though Apple sometimes makes judgement calls I don't care for much. As for taking an old, or even refurbished mac, one must choose based on what you need/want. The main software I use that requires a fairly high end laptop is Apple Logic (music MIDI software) and if I didn't use that I could probably do with an old G3 macbook.