MacBook Pro Reviewed 336
phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has an in-depth review of the MacBook Pro that compares performance with a Dell Inspiron running a hacked version of OS X 10.4.4: 'Yes, you read that right. We at the Orbiting HQ were able to have some benchmarks run on an acquaintance's Dell Inspiron 9100 with a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 HT chip running OS X 10.4.4, and decided that including the benchmarks from this machine would prove to be both interesting if not illustrative of what non-Apple x86 machines may be capable of if they could run Mac OS X (legally). Please keep in mind that the data from the Dell laptop is for illustrative purposes only and that no one at the Ars Orbiting HQ hacked a machine. As David Letterman says, this is not a competition. No wagering.'"
NY Times Review (Score:5, Informative)
Non-expiring, reg-free link (Score:3)
Courtesy of http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink [blogspace.com]
Re:NY Times Review (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, you always have choices. Unlike M$, Apple doesn't try to force everyone along its line. In other words, when M$ would make DRM mandatory part of their OS, rest assured nobody would be able to "refuse" such "offer".
Apple i
Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether this is good or bad for Apple, we shall see.
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:2)
us Macheads will undoubtably...regardless of the good or bad outcome, begin touting the usability or our most Superior OS. Now that the hardware is on an even footing we can really begin looking at the software differences, which of course is the real issue of note.
We'll complain that Adobe is shorting us on performance if the Win version is faster that the X version on the same hardware specs.
We'll crow about the OS performance if the X version is faster than the Win....
We'll tell yo
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:4, Funny)
Give the man a kewpie doll, he has hit a 10 on the lameosity meter. This ranks up there with the claim that you can't format floppies in the background on the Mac. Multitasking in OS X is smoother and more capable than what I get on my XP box and second, you can buy any industry standard USB multibutton mouse and it works just fine in OS X and with all applications. This has not been an issue for many years. It is also worth noting that the screwups I experience are on my PC rather than my Mac.
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:4, Funny)
Don't be silly. I just tried formatting a floppy disk in the background on my brand new MacBook Pro, and it simply didn't work. I then tried formatting one in the foreground. Still no luck!
...
I suppose it might help if I actually had a floppy disk drive connected to it...
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:2)
Yeah, I know that particular canard is growing barnacles by now. It was supposed to epitomize how Windows multitasking was real while OS9 and earlier multitasking was fake. I didn't have a Windows machine at the time but now I do and my kids need to format floppies fairly often. My XP box does multitask the process, but just barely. I can't believe it was something that was pointed to with pride. On the other hand my OS X (a
Better yet... (Score:2)
The best real argument I have heard for Macs over PCs is this: "I'm used to a Mac, I have already invested hundreds of $$ in software for the MacOS, I know the Mac inside and out, and I already own 3 of them, and I find the networking/printer sharing much easier. Games do not interest
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:2)
Depending on what use you have for your laptop, the G4, Macbook or Dell all have slight advantages over each other.
Frankly, I'm quite surprised that it appears that the Dell was the best choice for the consumer who wants to encode quicktime.
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:3, Informative)
to be fair, quicktime encoding is a CPU intensive operation, and the dell laptop had over a Gig of processor power over the macbook. perhaps osx wasn't taking adsvantage of the HT on the dell, but even so, that's a formiddable lead and I'm quite surprised the macbook kept up so well.
I bet the macbook is alot thinner too.
dave
if we could get them to compare similar hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily (Score:2)
Maybe the instruction set differences have been eliminated, but apps on different platforms will differ significantly in terms of how they employ the native API. I would expect an application originally written for one platform and ported to the other to suffer a penalty in performance, features,
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:2)
What? If it takes 20 seconds to do something on one OS/computer combination, and 10 seconds to do the same thing on another OS/computer combination, what is so difficult to compare?
I regularly do benchmarks across different OSes, hardware, and compilers. I've always assumed that the lowest numbers
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix (Score:2)
Then again, you posted as an AC.. Obviously you aren't secure about your opinions/facts enough to stand up for them..
Hee. (Score:5, Funny)
*sniff* It's like the reviewer was my long lost sibling!.
Re:Hee. (Score:2)
Re:Hee. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hee. (Score:2)
ROFL.
Re:Hee. (Score:2)
Re:Hee. (Score:2)
Well, to be fair, allow me to let a thought slip out of my fingers, here. Why support Safari, or FireFox, or IE? Why don't we support HTM-fucking-L, decide on a REAL standarrd (accept NO proprietary bullshit in this standard) and we get rid of the browser wars altogether? I realize I'm sorely off-topic, but this man's comment just made this thought jump into my head. Hell, I
Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely. The XBench guys have to work out some serious bugs in their so-called "benchmark".
The Intel versions get lower marks in the user interface tests because XBench tries to redraw some buttons as fast as possible, and the Mac very reasonably flatly refuses to do it faster than the screen refresh rate.
battery life (Score:2)
I'm a big fan of ibooks, as they make awesome everyday-use machines.
Only 5 hours? (Score:3, Interesting)
More data on battery life needed (Score:2)
Re:More data on battery life needed (Score:2)
Personally, I'm going to wait for the second generation Mactels, presumably released Q4 06 or Q1 07.
Re:More data on battery life needed (Score:2)
Re:More data on battery life needed (Score:2)
I use my 12 inch G4 Powerbook every day, most of the day on battery power. I run a custom power setting which is more power efficient than the "Better battery life" option. I turn down the brightness, the sleep timer, and keep bluetooth off.
Those settings are more than usable for everything except watching a movie (or I'd suppose Final Cut Pro
Re:More data on battery life needed (Score:2)
Indeed. 3.5 hours was the highest among 3 tests. That graph is especially misleading -- why show 3 values, highest, lowest, and average, when you only ran 3 tests?
That said, while you might get an full hour turning everything off, I don't think I would expect the average to be that much higher. Yonah is relatively low power, but it's not magic. The biggest factor in battery life is still going to be the size of the battery, which on the
Did anyone notice? (Score:3)
2) The Dell is hobbled with a 4200rpm hard drive. Imagine if they'd used the same speed, or even a 5400!
Re:Did anyone notice? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The Dell weighs 9 pounds.
2) The Dell is roughly the size of my apartment.
3) The Dell is among the ugliest objects in the world.
4) The Dell has an integrated subwoofer. Double-you-tee-eff.
5) The Dell has a 50% higher capacity battery, from which it coaxes less than half the battery life.
6) Comparing the Dell Inspiron 9100 to the MacBook Pro is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen attempted on the internet.
7) ArsTechnica may have jumped the shark.
Re:Did anyone notice? (Score:2)
2) Need a sublet?
3) I disagree; there are many more hideous than this.
4) We like our sound -- this was a desktop replacement.
5) Amazing what a difference two years makes, eh?
6) I agree... the Mac is still pretty far behind when a 2+ year old box is keeping up with it on it's OWN OS...
7) Who hasn't?
Re:Did anyone notice? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, no. Dell (and others) are still selling machines with massive and useless batteries. My point is that you can have one or the other. For anyone gushing over the performance of the Dell, it would help to temper that with it's dismal battery life. For the article to say that 3.5 hours of battery life for the MacBook Pro is disappointing, it seems like a glaring oversight.
I agree... the Mac is still pretty far behind when a 2+ year old bo
Re:Did anyone notice? (Score:2)
Yeah, while I understand that they only did the comparison for fun because that's what they had lying around, I'd really like to see the differences between the Dell Centrino laptops and the MacBooks with similar specs for video, HDD, and RAM.
I also wonder if this will make it easier for game developers to quickly release games for OS X. This is probably the primary reason why I don't use a Mac for my laptop or desktop now. That, and I prefer to run Linux anyways so before it wasn't worth the added cost
I am sticking with linux... (Score:2, Interesting)
sorry apple - maybe for my mom, not for me. not this time.
good review... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. the screen does have some flicker on very dim settings as noted. The auto adjust for room brightness is also a bit too sensitive - an aspiring os x hacker might want to see if an app could be written to make it less real time - use a rolling x seconds average of brightness? It is a very nice screen all in all, though.
2. the power brick's connector goes green when plugged in to the laptop, and then the light goes brown. This isn't very intuitive.
3. The blinding white led near the lid latch oscillates in brightness when the machine is in sleep. Did I mention how blinding it is?
Been trying to see if I can get it to vpn to a watchguard with free add ons - no such luck yet (anyone have a racoon conf for that?). Office 2004 took what seemed to be a long time to install, but installed without incident - I have only used remote desktop so far. This weekend I am going to play with the encrypted home directory stuff, and see what I can cook up to have my home directory sync with my active directory home dir.
Re:good review... (Score:2)
It's breathing deeply. You're lucky it doesn't snore.
Re:good review... (Score:3, Informative)
The light is green when the battery is fully charged, and orange/brown when it is charging.
It takes a few seconds to begin charging the battery, I guess.
lessons or ergonomic perfection (Score:2)
It's funny that you should say this, because that function is nearly perfect otherwise. As noted, green when charged, amber when charging. I've had to use other laptops which do not have this feature, and it's missed.
On the other hand, as the saying goes, it's the stone in your sandal which bugs you, and not the mountain you're climbing.
I'm not an electrical engineer, so I dunno why
Re:good review... (Score:2)
Don't bother, it's a lot of trouble for very small reward. If you need data to be inaccesible to anyone breaking into your machine, try encrypted disk images. The chances of something bad happening and irretrievably hosing your home directory are mid to high.
If you're after something that locks your screen and activates the screen saver, much like Windows-L does, go to Keychain Utility preferences and Show Status in Menu Bar. You'll ge
Re:good review... (Score:2)
I think the corruption risk is tolerable if I get syncing to my windows home dir. I am planning to get a vpn setup to my house, so hopefully even on the road I can sync my home directory up if needed.
Re:good review... (Score:2)
Blinding LED (Score:2)
Not a typical Ars review (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a typical Ars review (Score:2)
Re:Not a typical Ars review (Score:2)
Re:Not a typical Ars review (Score:2)
You mean shallow and pedantic [wikipedia.org]
When does the average tip? Typical for me. (Score:5, Interesting)
You must be thinking back to the days when Ars actually reviewed stuff in depth - like the OS X reviews! Ahh, those were the days.
Sadly they are gone. The point I noticed this was when Ars reviewed Aperture with a similarily lacking review, including getting some things quite wrong and refusing to correct them and then simply not reviewing entire major sections of the application, while also not looking at any technical aspects of the application in depth.
Then I looked around a little more, wondering where my Ars had went. I found the most detailed review on the site at the time was a gaming mouse!
So, let's all say goodby to Ars and try to figure out where all the detailed technical reviews went to. Perhaps considering the past body of work this review is not "typical" but I think if you looked over the past year this review would in fact be very typical indeed.
Re:Not a typical Ars review (Score:2)
But hey, to each his own.
Re:Not a typical Ars review (Score:2)
The Hannibal-type reviews tend to harp on the wrong details and are meaningless as a result. If he reviewed cars, he'd focus on the internal details of the fuel injector
If you use Xcode, you want one of these (Score:5, Informative)
Bottom line : if you're a developer and you have long compile times on your code (AND you have the need/desire to be mobile), you NEED one of these machines.
Re:If you use Xcode, you want one of these (Score:2)
Re:If you use Xcode, you want one of these (Score:2)
This just raised an interesting question that I hadn't thought about before...
When you compile an ap in xcode as a universal binary, how does a PPC chip compile code for x86 and vice versa?
What is the time difference if you compile your project on the PowerBook as PPC only?
cross compiler (Score:2)
GCC has the ability to cross compile [wikipedia.org].
Slight Correction (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually "Better Performance" means the opposite, as it disables most if not all power saving options. "Better Energy Savings" will give the user longer battery life at the expense of performance. I find most applications almost unusable at that setting and tend to run under the "Normal" setting when I need to get work done. The better savings option is good for movies and checking email.
Best new MBP feature ... the screen! (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, the increased performance is awesome. Really, things are just quicker all around.
But the biggest improvement...
The screen. Oh my. It's wonderful. It makes the 12" iBook screen look like it might be broken because of how much brighter the new MBP screens are. It's amazing. It actually may be nicer than my external 17" LCD screen. It makes working away from home positively enjoyable. Really, the screen alone makes the upgrade worthwhile.
More on the Dell? (Score:2)
Re:More on the Dell? (Score:3, Interesting)
What about the noise? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about the noise? (Score:2)
Re:What about the noise? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What about the noise? (Score:2)
Re:What about the noise? (Score:2)
No longer! Download Silent Night [versiontracker.com], and use Pacifist [charlessoft.com] to install it. Then reset the PRAM by holding CMD-Opt-P-R when booting until it chimes twice.
Silent Night is just a package containing the original fan drivers for the Rev. A 12" PowerBook. The only real difference is the fan-on/fan-off temperatures, which are
Re:What about the noise? (Score:2)
It really is the intuitive user interface of Macs that set them apart.
Re:What about the noise? (Score:2)
BTW, on my machine at least, I didn't have to zap the PRAM or reset the power manager or anything. Just rebooted with the new (old) kext in place.
Re:What about the noise? (Score:2)
Re:What about the noise? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm typing this with my spangly new MacBook Pro on my lap, so it's time for a mini-review!
Observations: the aluminium case means that if it's been in a cold van for a bit, it's COLD. Cold like ice!
It does get fairly warm in use, but is pretty quiet. Slightly louder than my iBook, but way quieter than an average machine. It makes a slight high-pitched hissing sound, which seems to cut out for a moment every so often. No idea what that is. It's not distracting, just
Keyboard needs some getting used to from my iBook- it's got loads of travel. It's more like a clacky desktop thing than a laptop one, so I'm busy typing this as loudly as I can. Tappety clack! (Where on Earth do the keys go when pressed? The machine's already ridiculously thin...)
No evidence that it's an Intel-based thing beyond the description in 'About This Mac'. No prehistoric BIOS startup screen, no 'Intel Inside' logos, nuffink. Instead, it just feels like an astoundingly speedy Mac. It's FAST. Applications often open before a single bounce of their icons. Rosetta seems completely transparent (and even while emulated, mission-critical applications [btinternet.com] seem faster than on my iBook) - most of the software I use is Universal already, and I've no idea which applications haven't been recompiled yet.
Screen is very bright, the sound is rather nice, the built-in camera seems pretty high quality (although I definitely need a hair-cut - it ain't flattering), and generally it's all rather special. Only complaints - the keyboard is a bit shiny silver, and the keyboard illumination keys get in the way of the default Expose shortcut keys. Needs a fiddle.
Oh, and there are no wireless networks for me to connect to here. LUDDITES!
Complaints? Not a lot. It gets fairly warm underneath while in use, and the battery life estimates are generally around 3.5 hours, which is still about 2.5 hours better than my iBooks duff battery. It's best not to fight the automatic screen and keyboard brightnesses - just go with the flow, and it's much less annoying.
Oh. I've got a complaint. I don't like the shade of green used on the LEDs. Too blue-ish!
Re: (Score:2)
I dont see a lot here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I dont see a lot here (Score:2)
Umm, are you sure you're in the right place?
Now all we need is a company that stands behind it (Score:3, Interesting)
As owner of a G4 PowerBook, AppleCare does not happily repair the many defects discovered during the warranty periods of their hardware.
The list of defective parts is long, and there are some things broken by simple use that they refuse to fix under warranty.
Every user experience is different, but it makes me sad I encouraged our research project to use a lot of Apple hardware from XServers to powerbooks and desktops.
The result with generic hardware (which I have used often in the past) or Dell hardware would have cost less and hardly could have been worse from a support or defect perspective. How is switching to a new CPU going to affect the basic experience that Apple really sucks as a hardware producer and as a support company.
Re:Now all we need is a company that stands behind (Score:3, Interesting)
For both laptops and desktops, Apple scored highest in customer satisfaction with tech support by a considerable amount. For example, for lap
Re:Now all we need is a company that stands behind (Score:2)
Re:Now all we need is a company that stands behind (Score:2)
Re:Now all we need is a company that stands behind (Score:2)
You know what would be nice? (Score:2)
Heat (Score:3, Interesting)
Bryan
Re:Heat (Score:2)
Automatic transfer data (Score:2)
Ok, this bit has almost sold me. No wonder everybody loves the mac, what a beautifully designed machine. And what do we get from Microsoft to compare to this??
Re:Automatic transfer data (Score:2)
Re:Automatic transfer data (Score:2)
I intend to try it when I upgrade my Mac.
Now if Apple could just set thing
Re:Automatic transfer data (Score:2)
The one catch is it's kinda slow calculating sizes (and won't let you continue until it has done its math on every step
setup assistant ppc to intel (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting. (Score:2)
I've seen a few posts here and there on Mac sites where some people found that Rosetta was kicking in w
Pease explain (Score:2)
Sorry, this might seem
Am I going to run OS X 10.4.4 on my Dell ? No... (Score:2)
More importantly, I have to say I always prefer the most practical benchmarks I can get my hands on. In that regard, wh
What ever happened to high res laptop displays? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What ever happened to high res laptop displays? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always been surprised that Apple, with its large graphic design market, never has offered the higher-res notebook screens. It keeps me from buying one. I can't live without the screen real-estate.
Re:the question is... (Score:2)
Re:the question is... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Even Steven (Score:2)
Beyond that the dell system had less ram than the macs. Then again if I wanted a high performance system I would not buy a laptop anyways, so these scores are not terribly useful.
no more 15 (Score:2)
Re:I am in love (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Expresscard/34 slot no good for 3G/UMTS use (Score:3, Interesting)
In general I agree Apple has done good sheding legacy technology from their products, but for communications options like the 3G cards there are two issues in addition to the PCMCIA vs Expresscard/34 discussion: