Apple Announces MacBook Pro

fryke said:
Switching to 64-bit processors would in no way be screwing early adopters. Mac OS X will run on both 32-bit and 64-bit processors for a long while to come, and 64-bit computers have still got to prove any real-world improvement over 32-bit computers. So far, for consumers as well as most professionals (some special uses spring to mind, of course), it's nothing more than a buzzword.
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Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean it in quite that sense. I meant it in a 'ZOMG! It can run Windoze!!!eleventy-one' sense. Without that CSM, dual-booting is an exercise of high-risk until 64-bit chips come out and we can run Vista or XP 64 on those. Drivers would be barrels of fun though, now that I think about it... Apple is keeping quite a bit of custom interfaces in their machines, even though the core chipset is standard Intel fare.

Quite simply, I give /very/ good odds towards the prediction that anyone who buys one of these 32-bit Intel systems will not be running Windows stand-alone on them for a very, very, very long time.
 
Well, they managed to get Linux running on iPods. I think someone's likely to be able to do it, but they may be have to take drastic measures in order to do so.
 
mdnky said:
I'm kind of split on the new one...definitely don't like the loss of a FW port, PC slot (what's the status on selection of ExpressCards...haven't seen any myself), lack of s-video, etc. Their refusal to provide even a ballpark estimate on battery life (it has a bigger battery than the 15" HD G4 did) also worries me a bit. The change in screen aspect is a bit of an annoyance...I love the 3:2 aspect of the current 15" G4...though at least it went wider than shorter. Adding a web-cam is a novel idea, but the added bezel caused by this is ugly and annoying to me...so it's not really worth it in my opinion.

On the plus side...it's got a heck of a graphics card built in via PCI-Express...that's nice. From the tests I've seen (not Mac) of the new processor, it's fast...very fast. That's always a good thing. Being thinner is also a nice thing IMO. The power-adapter is a great idea...long overdue.


After thinking about it for a while, I'm glad I bought my 15" PB before I had to make a decision on buying a PowerBook or MacBook Pro. I'm at 36 days now, so luckily I'm stuck with the PB (probably for the best).

Does make you wonder what they'll do with the iBook...probably single core versions, but will they be at the same frequency or lower...something to ponder.
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yeppers, on that. I can't even type let alone muti-task beyond a hoot. my ibook suits me just fine, thank you
 
I guess Apple won't be comparing photoshop tests anymore. Just checking out the AltiVec benchmark figures at the XBench website (db.xbench.com) The new Intel Mac scores 44.64, my 1GHz iBook gets 56.80. Aha I win... well except for just about every other bench I get severly stomped on.

No wonder Steve wasn't going to recommend running Photoshop on a MacBook for professionals.

<edit> yes I know its not a MacBook Pro benchmark, but heads up to the first one anyone sees. There is currently a fake entry at fake MacBook which is really a 1.5GHz Powerbook, so watch out for those fakes.</edit>
 
Chimp said:
I guess Apple won't be comparing photoshop tests anymore. Just checking out the AltiVec benchmark figures at the XBench website (db.xbench.com) The new Intel Mac scores 44.64, my 1GHz iBook gets 56.80. Aha I win... well except for just about every other bench I get severly stomped on.

No wonder Steve wasn't going to recommend running Photoshop on a MacBook for professionals.

<edit> yes I know its not a MacBook Pro benchmark, but heads up to the first one anyone sees. There is currently a fake entry at fake MacBook which is really a 1.5GHz Powerbook, so watch out for those fakes.</edit>
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Guess we'll all have to wait until the bechmark software runs native on the Core Duo Macs before we can get real numbers.
 
Not to mention that PhotoShop is running natively on your PowerBook, but is running through emulation on the core duo... that's not a bad score, considering!
 
Oscar Castillo said:
Guess we'll all have to wait until the bechmark software runs native on the Core Duo Macs before we can get real numbers.
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Wow... I'm stunned. No - let's make that in love (sorry Powerbook)::love::

All I need is native WOW and some money, anybody got any change they could spare?:D
 
Certainly looks like a great machine but my PowerBook is only a year old and I want it to last at least 3 so i'll be seeing quite a few revisions and bug fixes before I move to Intel. In the mean time I suppose the only way to keep my machine from getting slower is to not update to newer software which requires more processor power. I hope the Adobe CS 2 suite I use now will still cut it in 2 or 3 years time - what do you all think? I'm on 1GB of RAM right now so maybe i'll bump that in the future to try and keep up with things.
 
ibookemo said:
Certainly looks like a great machine but my PowerBook is only a year old and I want it to last at least 3 so i'll be seeing quite a few revisions and bug fixes before I move to Intel. In the mean time I suppose the only way to keep my machine from getting slower is to not update to newer software which requires more processor power. I hope the Adobe CS 2 suite I use now will still cut it in 2 or 3 years time - what do you all think? I'm on 1GB of RAM right now so maybe i'll bump that in the future to try and keep up with things.
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After the software you use is available as a universal binary then you could consider upgrading if you feel the hardware is stable enough for you. Since universal binaries are what we'll all be seeing available soon, my only question is whether the performace of a universal binary is any worse than an intel only binary. Aside from possible bloated file sizes, is there any overhead?
 
Nope, there's no performance penalty whatsoever -- the Intel machines simply execute the code located in an "Intel" branch of the binary, and likewise for the PowerPC machines. The machine doesn't have to "pick and choose" the bits of code intended for it and discard the PowerPC bits -- the code is completely separate, so execution is isolated..

File size bloat is the only consideration -- we can already see it in the current universal binaries going around.
 
Yes. And there's already free-/shareware which is able to strip the code unnecessary for the platform it's installed on, I hear, so that's no problem either.
 
fryke said:
Yes. And there's already free-/shareware which is able to strip the code unnecessary for the platform it's installed on, I hear, so that's no problem either.
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It's as easy as
lipo -remove <arch> <input_file> -o <output_file
where arch = "ppc" or "i386" :)
 
Regarding the Xbench CPU test, it's merely a benchmark of Apple's vecLib routines, not at all representing actual performance of the processor when comparing processors with different instruction sets.
It all depends on the level of optimization for each processor type.

vecLib for Intel processors is still in development. Intel's compilers for Mac OS X just entered beta stage.
 
fryke said:
Yes. And there's already free-/shareware which is able to strip the code unnecessary for the platform it's installed on, I hear, so that's no problem either.
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No doubt a lot of developers will go for this. The Installer will determine if your machine is Intel/PPC and simply install what is needed.
 
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