MacBook Pro Benchmarks 234
jfpoole writes "Geek Patrol has benchmarked a MacBook Pro and a PowerBook G4 using Geekbench, their benchmarking utility. It's impressive to see how well the MacBook Pro performs compared to the PowerBook G4 (at least when it comes to Universal Binary performance)." Their benchmarks aren't particularly surprising, and they lack the most important benchmark: Frames Per Second during Molten Core Combat (or as it is more commonly referred to since I made it up 5 seconds ago, the FPSDMCCMark, which is the only number I'm waiting for).
It's nice to see improved benchmarks, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why just benched against another Mac? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features. (Score:2, Insightful)
Weather or not jobs likes it, these things are being loaded with DRM. I'm a loyal apple user, well used to be, but if this continues my g5 will be the last apple computer i buy.
as for the firewire 800, my friend's 17 inch was bought in 2003(if my chronology is right) and had fw800. 3 years is a long time in the computing world.
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why just benched against another Mac? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm waiting for rev2 also... (Score:3, Insightful)
"no firewire 800" Thank you Apple, didn't need it (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you Apple. I prefer not paying for things I do not need, SCSI in the old days, FW800 today. The few pros who need it can add it.
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're only proving plasmacutter's point about Apple zealots and DRM. DRM does matter. It matters because DRM tells us what we can and cannot do with the software/media that we bought. It matters because we, as in the user, have to give up control of our computers and files when we accept DRM. It matters because if nothing changes within the next few years, we're all going to be using locked down computers. I have lusted for Macs since OS X was released years ago, but since the Intel switch and Apple's stance with DRM, I have lost much of my enthusiasm with Macs and Apple in general. I don't want to buy a machine with TPM chips that may be used for much more evil purposes (such as locking down my media). I want to buy a machine that does what I, the customer wants, not what Apple or Microsoft or the **AA wants. Thankfully I can still buy and build some computers that aren't DRM-encumbered.
DRM matters. That's the bottom line. And I, for one, am not going to give up my freedoms, even for "ease of use" and other minor benefits. Nobody should tell me what I can do with my media, or with a certain OS (points at Apple and OS X), but that's why I don't use that stuff anyway; I prefer to be [gnu.org] free [freebsd.org] instead.
WOW is GPU, not CPU intensive (Score:4, Insightful)
A 2003 Dual 2 GHz G5 will play WOW poorly if you have a vanilla video card, but not because of the G5. In fact, if you watch processor use while the game is "challenged," you'll notice that with dual G5s, the CPUs are running about 60%. Turn one off and the processor redlines, but the gameplay doesn't change drastically. Put in a higher end PCI card, and it plays like a totally different machine.
The last revision of G5 Macs have PCIe, and better video cards. The Intel Macs have the same stuff or better. It's no surprise that WOW plays better with a much better video card.
The G5/Core Duo are not being compared when you pit them against each other playing WOW; it's pretty much just the video card difference.
drm ignorance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's nice to see improved benchmarks, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
And even though it pains me to admit it here in public, this being
So what do I do with that iBook ? Well I run Firefox (no, it doesn't look like the other Mac OS apps, what do I care?), CopyWrite (The *only* thing that would keep me using that machine; it exports to RTF though so I'd go back to OOo without trouble) and ssh. All that (mostly) on a WiFi link. Of course (apart from CopyWrite, which is an app I've been thinking of writing for years) I could do all of that on a random laptop without trouble. So why an Apple?
Because
On the other hand, the Unix software often feels out of place, there is little "free" (as in libre) native software (for a Unix user, maybe it feels like heaven for a Windowe person), the interface isn't all that great, the bundled software isn't all that great either (iPhoto is probably the worst offender there, or maybe despite the few hours I spent trying to "get" it, I just didn't), in other words, don't listen to the hype, sliced bread is good, Apple is too, but that's it.
Anyway to get back to the subject at hand, a lot of Linux people (those people who write Debian books, who admin hundreds of Linux machines, who have been running Linux for 6 to 10 years, whop have all their workstations running it at work and at home) have Apple laptops. Just because they are sick of the elusive driver search, of the great parameter poking game.
I talked to a lot of them. Most of them aren't overly fond of the Apple interface. They all grew up with the Unix way of doing things. Things like sloppy focus. Or like virtual desktops. Yet they all got i/PowerBooks. Because that was better than spending ages getting Linux running on whatever hardware was available.
So yes, poke fun at those people who (in your opinion) bought some overpriced hardware, but when I got a *very nice* Vaio laptop, the C1XD PictureBook (you can look it up if you like), you would have been astounded at the number of subsystems that weren't supported in Linux. Still, that machine never had anything but EXT2 partitions. Same with the IBM notebook before it.
So my iBook, at 1200 € might seem overpriced to you (at the time I added a few options, the same machine is about 950 now), however it *works*. It comes with most of the Unix stuff, it sleeps on demand, setting it up took all of five minutes, if I had to choose between it an the *same* machine running Linux (whatever the CPU), I'd pick Linux without a second thought, however Linux isn't there yet. A
Benchmarks are useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Benchmarks measure the edges of the envelope where users rarely visit. If you're not doing serious number crunching or running last week's must-have video game, you don't need to worry about benchmarks. It's like worrying about the top speed of an Italian Sports car, when you're never going to drive it faster than 100 Kph. In other words, if you're content with the size of your penis you can safely ignore benchmarks.