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MacBook Pro Reviewed
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.'"
David Pogue has his review of the new Apple MacBook Pro in the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/technology/circu its/02pogue.html
Another side effect of Apple switching to Intel chippies will be the increased number of comparisons of common apps (both functional and specific packages) across OS's. Before, it was always a bit sketchy comparing Win/*nix apps against OSX apps due to hardware differences. Now that the hardware is starting to become more "common", direct comparisions will take on more meaning.
Whether this is good or bad for Apple, we shall see.
*sniff* It's like the reviewer was my long lost sibling!.
I do not mean any offence to Jacqui Cheng, but with the (notable) exception of the Dell comparison, this review was shallow at best. When I surf Ars I typically expect the nitty-gritty Hannibal type review, and instead we more or less have a completely mundane blog entry about someone's new toy. The writing style is all wrong for that site.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I just got back from the Apple Compatibility Labs in Cupertino, and I was able to put my code on a MacBook Pro to do some build comparisons. On my current PowerBook G4, with a 7200 RPM drive, 1 GB RAM and a 1.67 G4, it takes about 20-25 minutes to do a full Release rebuild of my code (Universal Binary). It took around 5 on the MacBook Pro. Thank God my boss was with me to help test because that's the easiest convincing that I need a new laptop I ever done.
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.
The reviewer states, "It is important to note, however, that there is a "Better Performance" option under the battery life menu which, undoubtedly, maximizes the battery life in every way that the computer can..."
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.
I got my new 1.83 ghz MBP on Monday, and am upgrading from a 1ghz G4 iBook circa Apr '04.
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.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
The main thing that interests me is the noise. How loud are the fans? I have already heard several bad things about the MacBook: display emits a humming, notebook emits a humming if cpu is idle (apparently known from earlier apple hardware, too), fans spinning very often. Is anybody able to comment on that?
Although your repair experiences are no doubt aggravating, you are one person and thus represent too small a sample to form a general conclusion on the overall platform. For that, a large sample is needed. The data I have seen from Consumer Reports surveys of readers (a sample of 134,000 computers) reported in the December 2005 issue suggest the opposite conclusion:
For both laptops and desktops, Apple scored highest in customer satisfaction with tech support by a considerable amount. For example, for laptops, Apple scored 82 (very satisfied). This compares to 70 for IBM, 58 for Toshiba, 58 for Dell, 57 for Gateway, 55 for HP, 53 for Sony, and 49 for Compaq.
In terms of the percentage of computers that needed repairs, Apple was the lowest among makers of desktop computers. Among laptops, Apple was 4th lowest, behind Sony, IBM and Toshiba. Following Apple was HP, Dell, Compaq, and Gateway.
Apple also scores very high in the reader surveys conducted by PC World. So, while your experience was no doubt bad, the conclusion that "Apple sucks as a hardware producer and support company" is not merited.
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I do not mean any offence to Jacqui Cheng, but with the (notable) exception of the Dell comparison, this review was shallow at best. When I surf Ars I typically expect the nitty-gritty Hannibal type review
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
''Looks like they still have some bugs to work out, as the PowerBook G4 still outperforms the MacBook in some of the benchmarks.''
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.
Sup Hank. ;)