PCMag reviews the MacBook Pro, and concludes: “For typical users running the iLife ’06 suite, iTunes, and even nonuniversal applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe products, the Apple MacBook Pro is a solid notebook. It’s a sweet upgrade from the PowerBook G4, and Windows users switching over will like it just the same. But for sophisticated media enthusiasts or professionals, we suggest you wait a couple of months, or at least until the software can catch up with the Intel components, before diving in.” They did some benchmarks too (the MacBook Pro beats the PowerBook G4 in every area, at the cost of 7 minutes of battery life), and they made a slideshow with photos of the device.
Do I detect a hint of bias? Even if it’s accidental, in a decent review it should be eliminated…
But the MacBook Pro should not be your first choice as a gaming machine, as OS X doesn’t support most PC games.
Should read (IMHO, of course) :
But the MacBook Pro should not be your first choice as a gaming machine, as most PC games don’t support OS X.
Oh, and this is just wrong :
iWeb is probably the friendliest Web-publishing tool on the market right now, but it does require a .Mac account, which will run you $99.95 a year per membership.
You only need a .Mac account for the one-click publishing. You can upload the iWeb output files manually to wherever you wish.
Most PC games don’t target OS X, but that however ignores that someone might buy a “gaming machine,” for the titles actually available for that platform. Blizzard titles, Sims games, id titles, Epic titles just for examples. Not everyone that partakes in “personal computer gaming” does so for the breadth of titles available across all of the platforms. Assuming that quantity of a benchmark for determining if you’re interested in a device for “gaming” leads to owning a few game consoles. I see this line of thought too often by people that mistake their own behavior for what everyone else wants.
This laptop is not all it’s cracked up to be.
1: We lost Firewire 800, which on a laptop used for video it’s a must.
2: We lost 64 bit processing in favor of 32 bit. So now developers of Mactel versions will rely upon the lowest common demoninator to sell their products. 32 bit and a RAM limit all over again.
3: There has been numerous problems with these first issue machines.
see MacFixit.com
4: The Intel Core Duo’s have a unusually high amount of processor defects in the short time they have been out.
Oh c’mon. FW800 might indeed be a miss, but what’s your problem with 32-bits CPU’s? What do 64-bits add? Performance? Clearly not nearly enough to make up for the other factors that negatively influenced the performance of the G4. More memory? Like you’re going to put >4GB in your laptop.
What do 64-bits add? … More memory? Like you’re going to put >4GB in your laptop.
I’m getting tired of hearing that one. It would be more correct to say “like you’re going to put more than 1[/i]GB of RAM in your laptop? (or maybe 2, depending on the split)”.
[somewhat simplified mode] There is a 4GB limit with 32 bit, but that is the limit on virtual memory. That 4 GB is split between kernel and apps. Typically in Linux the split is 3GB for apps and 1 GB for the kernel. 128 MB of the kernel’s memory is occupied by the page table, leaving a max of about 840 MB, which means that only 840 MB of physical RAM can be accessed (the kernel must own it so it can assign it).
Altering the split to 1.2/2.8 allows a full gig of RAM to be used, or the split can be changed to 2/2 or 3/1 even, though with the latter you would hope no app would ever want to use more than a gig of virtual memory (as that wouldn’t be possible).
Windows has a similar split (2/2 I think) and limitation. With that split, slightly less than 2 GB of physical RAM is usable. The Windows kernel split is also changeable.[/somewhat simplified mode]
In all cases though, 4GB of virtual memory is not the same as 4 GB of RAM, and is in fact significantly less (.8 to 2 GB practically). This is a real barrier, and one that is already being run up against, even in laptops.
Your argument is ignoring highmem (as Linux calls it; OS X probably has something similar). If the MacBook Pro can’t access all of its 2GB of RAM, we’d have seen plenty of complaints about it.
You’re mixing the operating system and the actual applications.
With a 32-bit architecture, the operating system can support 4GB of RAM. The apps will get whatever the operating system deigns to give them (2GB for a 2/2 split, 3GB for a 3/1 split, etc.).
That doesn’t mean you can only “use” 2GB (in a 2/2 split). It only means one single program can use 2GB. Other programs can also be loaded simultaneously and also use 2GB of memory, filling the entire 4GB of ram in the system.
To elaborate, many intel processors actually support 36-bit memory access (using 80806-era bank switching). Win32 permits access to this extra memory via VirtualAlloc and co; I’m sure Linux has some equivalent functionality. 36-bits allows access to ~68GB of memory, which is why you can have 32-bit Windows Server systems supporting > 4GB of RAM.
Thus, all of your 4GB of RAM (and more!) can be used, just not by a single app. To permit a single app to use > 4GB of RAM, it either needs special support (VirtualAlloc, and it can’t all be accessed at once) or it needs to be a 64-bit binary (with full 64-bit pointers, permitting access to a 64-bit address space).
What laptop that Apple was previously selling could address more memory than can be addressed by a 32-bit pointer, and what software were you using on it that was compiled for support for a 64-bit address space?
This laptop is not all it’s cracked up to be.
1: We lost Firewire 800, which on a laptop used for video it’s a must.
Most digital video cameras still only support/need Firewire 400. And the Expresscard slot has more than enough bandwith to support a Firewire 800 card if you absolutely must use it.
2: We lost 64 bit processing in favor of 32 bit. So now developers of Mactel versions will rely upon the lowest common demoninator to sell their products. 32 bit and a RAM limit all over again.
No, what are you talking about? The PowerBooks use a G4, not a G5, and the G4 is 32 bits. The MacBooks are also 32 bits, just like the PowerBooks that preceded them.
1) What video stream requires Firewire 800?
2) When did you ever have 64-bit processing? The G4 was a 32-bit chip, and the Core Duo is a 32-bit chip. At least Intel’s future lineup includes 64-bit laptop chips for this year — Freescale’s next dual-core G4 is still a 32-bit chip!
4) They didn’t find those defects in the amount of time the Core Duo has been out. They found them over the months of testing and pre-production releases that happened before they came out. Do you think Apple got their first Core Duo chips in Jan. when Intel released them? They’ve had them and been testing them for months beforehand! So the Core Duo’s defect list is neither large (at 31, it’s about the same size as the G4’s defect list), nor unusual.
Ummm one of my friends had a brother that bought a MacBook Pro. He was using it on his lap sitting in his boxers for hours… The back of it melted and he had to use scissors to cut the plastic from his leghair.
On the brightside, the mac store paid all of his doctor bills and bought him a brand new one
A lot of men would pay for sterility.
“The back of it melted and he had to use scissors to cut the plastic from his leghair.
The back of it melted and he had to use scissors to cut the plastic from his leghair. “
Sounds like an urban legend in the making to me. Can you prove this happened because that would be the first time I’ve heard of a new laptop melting. And for that matter if it did get that hot while sitting in his lap, don’t you think he would have felt the thing get hot before it got that hot? Here’s a better question, the case melted but the insides were still fine and the computer was still working? That would be the first time I’ve heard of any laptop getting hot enough to melt it’s case withough seriously damaging the insides in some way as to make it stop working.
Laptop’s get tested for all sorts of things, and surely operating temperature would be one of those things. If this did in fact happen then the MacBook your friend of a friend (ok, your friend’s brother, close enough for me though) must have gotten a defective model.
I thought he was joking? Even at maximum capacity the MacBook Pro isn’t going to be hotter than a Pentium 4 desktop replacement, and they certainly don’t spontaneously melt. I would further expect the processor clockspeed to automatically be scaled down in the event of excessive heat due to defective cooling.
Hmph.
Apple says the Macbook is not intende to be run on your laptop, your bed, or other non-flat surfaces. Your friend’s brother sounds a bit dim — did he not realize the heat it puts out within 20 minutes of boot??
“Apple says the Macbook is not intende to be run on your laptop, your bed, or other non-flat surfaces.”
That kills one of the biggest selling points for laptopts for me. I tend to use it while sitting up in bed for lack of desk space, and I doubt I’m the only one. Maybe the successor to the iBook will be a little friendlier to people like me 🙂 .
I am sure Dell/HP/IBM/any other laptop maker would have said the same thing. This has to do with cooling. If the vents are blocked, then the laptop won’t cool properly.
I got a Toshiba laptop less than a year ago, and it runs cool enough to use on my lap. Even under heavy use it’s not uncomfortable, and the vent is on the side, not out the bottom.
If Apple wants to turn laptops into one piece desktop’s that’s their choice, but I won’t buy something that’s touted as being portable if it’s only portable to a place where there’s a desk or table to put it on. That’s not truly portable. Slower processors that run cooler and can have vents going out the side are a worthwhile tradeoff in a laptop for being able to put it down in your lap when there are no desks or tables around. If you need the fastest thing money can buy that’s what desktops are for.
That kills one of the biggest selling points for laptopts for me. I tend to use it while sitting up in bed for lack of desk space, and I doubt I’m the only one.
You do realize that the original poster was spreading an urban legend, don’t you? You most certainly can use the MacBook Pro on your lap without burning your dick off. Don’t be stupid.
um I am confused? Where is there plastic on the Macbook Pro again?
Your story doesn’t work as powerbooks/and now the Macbook have an all METAL shell. Now it could be a dell, or HP. but then again anyone dumb enough to not notice hot plastic on their legs deserves sterility.
Next up how to make a firestarter candle by dipping your finger in a cup of hot wax.
I dont see how that is possible, its case is made of aluminum.
>This laptop is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Well, personally I look at it as a version 1.0 product, a first try on a new platform.
I would expect we will your complaints addressed with the relase of the next versions when apple transitions off the current 32bit Intel Yonah processors to the 64bit Conroe procrssors by the end of this year.
I stopped reading right after this…
It is seems the PCMag editors need get their facts straight before publishing: PB uses a G4, which is producted by Freescale!
64 bit cpu’s are more future proof and i belive most PC’s (portable i mean) on the same price range will be 64 bit soon so he does have a point.
Update:
Not because of osx. Because soon enough linux and windows (vista only?) will be able to run on these machines.
Edited 2006-03-05 18:16
When Intel releases Merom we can all expect a MacBook Pro refresh to follow. If someone thinks that they require a 64-bit address space from their MacBook Pro, iMac, or Mini they can just wait. The sky isn’t going to implode because the current Intel Macs are based around a 32-bit mobile processor. People currently buying Yonah-based computers aren’t going to have to throw them in the trash in three years time. If you expect you’ll be buying software that works on large data sets in the next two years, then just wait on the purchase. That isn’t going to be the majority of people, who aren’t even typically buying computers with 2GB of RAM now.
Remember,the Macbook Pro has good preformance,but only when compared to the aging G4.
What else would you like to compare it against? AFAIK, the 2.16GHz MacBook Pro is more or less the fastest notebook ever.
My Macbook kept shutting off – just kind of “popping” off. Turned out it was a bad after-market AM module.
Now I’m using it with 512MB, and I must say, it’s slower than my ibook g4, and not really usable for what *I* expect.
If you are going for a Macbook, make sure it has at least1 GB or more of RAM. It’s worth it.
I think I’ll go get me a PowerBook while there’s still some left.
I’ve heard nothing but bad about the MacBook Pro. *sigh*
Being a user of an iBook G4 I’d advise against buying a G4 laptop. Unless you only do a bit of web browsing or whatever, you’re going to find that the PowerBook is underpowered. I wouldn’t recommend getting a first generation computer either. Get an iMac G5
Yeah, I finished doing some research. You’re right there.
The iMac G5 would be much better for my purposes than the laptop.
No 12 inch, no go. I think for a truly portable laptop that is used on hte road a 12 inch is a must, so now if i wanted an apple laptop id have to go with the 12 inch powerbook, and from the sounds of it the G4 is underpowered. I wonder how it will fair running new universal apps?