|
I had the 1.2Ghz G4 model with 512 MB of RAM. I found iPhoto's interface generally sluggish. Opening photos took a couple of seconds, and often got me the beach ball. I never imported a majority of my photos into iPhoto simply because I figured out pretty quick that I didn't want to use it.
Here's the deal though, I switched from Linux to OS X, and compared to Linux, OS X is just plain sluggish. Windows drag and resize slower, repaint slower, scrollpanes scroll WAY slower, and that stupid beach ball...I was getting interrupted with annoying frequency in Safari, many other apps such as iPhoto as well. Even the console is slower. I ended up wiping OS X and installing Gentoo Linux, and eventually giving it to my parents. My goal for getting a Mac was 1) Windows is insecure 2) OS X is Unix and 3) Many popular apps like Quicken are on Mac (this made it better than Linux, for example.) What I found was that the couple of apps I thought I needed ran faster on my Windows laptop, so I might as well run Linux on an x86 machine where at least Flash worked in Firefox. Long story short, I am not a normal switcher.
Now, I don't know if you were a Mac user before OS X, but OS9 beats the pants off OS X in general UI responsiveness. It's just "snappy". In comparison to OS9, the OS X UI is like molasses. This plus the constant beachballs that basically locked the machine until whatever it decided to do finished, sealed it's fate.
When the new Macbook Pros came out, I bought one because as an Intel box that could run Linux and Windows, I had less risk. As it stands, the OS X UI on this machine is reasonably fast, and after a month or so I have not felt a burning desire to install Windows or Linux on it. I have my complaints, it's still a little stiff, but I'm really pretty happy.
If you are switching from a Powerbook to a Macbook Pro, I think you are going to be VERY pleased. I can't tell you specifically with iPhoto and volume, because I've got gigabytes of photos from years of work stored in an intricate directory structure that I'm not letting iPhoto close to with a ten-foot pole. I've worked primarily in RAW and uncompressed TIF files only so far on this machine, and I've found flipping between pictures is not as fast as I'd like. But then, they're pretty big files compared to JPGs.
 |