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Want To Know About the New Apple MacBook Pro?
An anonymous reader writes to tell us about an extremely helpful user who is answering questions from all comers about the new MacBook Pro. "A few days ago, a user by the name 'bcavanau' posted on the macrumors.com forums that he had just picked up a new MacBook Pro. Forum members started asking him about features, specifications, and benchmarks. He was happy to oblige, posting responses to everyone's questions. Eventually the forum thread got out of hand, and he set up a website devoted to answering the questions. If you have a question that hasn't already been answered, email him at the address on the site. He is responding daily and sometimes within minutes. This guy is dedicated. Thanks 'bcavanau', you get two thumbs up." The link to the site is cached via the Coral Content Distribution Network.
Can anyone get through to find out about heat/noise? Even the cache is down for me. I've got a Powerbook G4 (when they just added the sudden motion sensor) and while I like the laptop I would LOVE to be able to play recent games (as well as have the second core) but I'm a bit worried about the heat and noise of the new MacBook Pros. One of my favorite things about my G4 is that it stays relativly cool unless I'm really pushing it, and unless I have it's about dead silent. Even when the fans are on full (like during a 3D game) it's still rather quiet compared to the leaf-blowers that many laptops turn into.
So how is the situation with the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros? Is it the same as the Core Duos, or is it better/worse?
I intend to upgrade, it would take quite a bit to stop me. That said, my laptop still works so I plan on holding out until Leopard comes out. I'm hoping there is another revision by then (just for the speed bump or price drop), but if not I'll still get Leopard free (since it will come preinstalled).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Can the 15.4 inch version have a WUXGA screen?
Funnypics
I'm not a regular Mac user, so I don't really understand the significance of this news story. Is publishing a few specs really news? I'd expect this on a Computer site like Tom's Hardware, but not on slashdot, so I'm wondering if there is some unstated greater significance.
From what I can find, this C2D is a laptop that Apple Stores started selling over the past couple days. If it's already out, what will it provide me that other Mac's won't?
Thanks!
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Is Apple still including hardware DRM (AKA treacherous computing) in all its new Macs? If so, why would any self-respecting technically aware user buy a machine that has been so hobbled?
There are plenty of 3rd-party support for the old Powerbook power plug. How are people dealing with the Magsafe connector when it won't plug into external batteries and various other things like the iGo? I have found places that will butcher the power cord and stick in a Thinkpad male-female combination to make it compatible with stuff, but it seems rather drastic that the first thing I'll have to do to a new MBP is cut the cord and start soldering stuff.
Are you on crack? OS X is the best UNIX I've ever used.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I need a machine to run FreeDOS. Does the new MacBook Pro support FreeDOS?
For those asking that can't make it to the site, at idle both CPU cores are at 123.8 F, and the hard drive is at 100.4 F.
No to your first question. Anyway I am a Linux evangelist so what do you expect from me? I'm only a carbon-based lifeform who hates Mac OS* and Windows(even though I am forced to use it). Oh crap: I'm going to be attacked by Mac OS and Windows fanatics. Please, don't hurt me!!! *Crys for an hour, dumps a gallon of Self-Esteem on himself, and goes to watch Doctor Phil*
Until next time....
Agreed. Right now I'm listening to online radio with iTunes, fiddling with some build errors in XCode, toying around in the shell ftp'ing a file that a build script failed to fetch, sharing a file with my roommate (who runs Windows) across the LAN using HTTP (as opposed to SMB), and looking at my Monday appointments in iCal. All of this functionality out of the box - it is bar none the best 'nix I've ever used (and continue to use).
I think you're full of shit, and for the record I use neither MacOS nor Windows.
Clearly you've never used any of Apple's applications. The applications included in Mac OS X, iLife, and iWork are simply amazing, intuitive pieces of software... This MacBook Pro wouldn't be the same if I were just running Windows.
~ SP
That the MBP doesn't have:
* An option for a 7200rpm hard disk (except the "aircraft carrier" model
* A option for a faster video card
* Higher screen resolution
* A docking station
* A 12"-ish variant
Personally I consider these significant omissions for a machine touted as being a top-of-the-line "Professional" laptop.
On the flipside, it's *great* to see Apple throwing in 2G RAM standard, except in the bottom-end model.
On the wishlist, I'd _love_ to see a laptop that can drive two external screens.
(I'll probably still get work to buy me one, though, then I can get my OS X fix on someone else's tab.)
No I'm not I just went to the bathroom 5 minutes ago.
Until next time....
Which is the better 15" macbookpro for battery life?
I'm deciding in purchasing between the faster and slower macbookpro's: Does the faster one drain the battery noticibly faster, or is there better power management with the more expensive computer? If I know I'll be using the computer without access to a wall socket for longer periods: is it smarter to go with the slower computer?
That's the most amusing comment I've seen on slashdot in a long time - someone please mod this guy up +1 funny. I think you are the only person who has ever said Apple should stop writing software not making hardware. Needless to say I wholeheartedly support Apple making more versions of Mac OS X which is a wonderful operating system.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
Oh, but you're so close to the edge... Give in, feel the evangalism, follow the One True Path. In your heart of hearts, you know that Linux is only a transient state, a ripple in the pool of computing, before the Hurd blossoms forth in all its glory. It is time. Give up Evangalism, and become a Prophet of Hurd!
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
How about Debunking that tool, Rob Enderle and his "article". Or articles. Hell, just debunk the fool. I seriously question how this guy makes a living with his totally inaccurate stories.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Eh iDVD does make it easy, but the menu creation system is crap, or at least i think it is. Can't move menus from one branch to another, you basically have to remake the entire menu.
I beleive Apple.com has info on the laptop... and it can handle the slashdot\digg effect...
So many injustices..so little time..
...and in the last Apple article, there were people claiming Apple needed to leave the hardware business and stick to software. Poor Apple. I'm sure a tear falls from Steve Jobs' cheek over the fact he can't please both sides as he signs another record earnings statement.
"Sufferin' succotash."
http://www.lartren.com/mac/
I also think they ment to post the following Coral link as well:
http://www.lartren.com.nyud.net:8080/
Want To Know About the New Apple MacBook Pro?
No.
(Disclaimer: I did not put the "no" tag on.)
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
"Are you on crack? OS X is the best UNIX I've ever used."
Yea, it's wicked, except for the MM performance, VFS performance, POSIX ommisions (RT scheduling requires MACH proprietary APIs!), and fact that on my Core Duo I can freeze the UI when doing an import in iPhoto from a USB card reader.
It's a dual-core CPU, why should the VFS lock up both CPUs?
If I could run the Linux kernel with the MacOS X userland, I'd be happy.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Why didn't Slashdot link to my extensive review, with pictures and benchmarks, of the brand-new 12-inch Dell Inspiron e690 with the free Dell DJ Ditty mp3 player and Genuine(tm) Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm) XP(tm) Home Edition(tm)?
Am I the only one who sees quite obvious signs of image manipulation ("photoshop"ing) on the "About this Mac" Dialog around the Processor part..?
I was apt to believe it from the large amount of info, but that sets up a major read flag.
I can hear a WoW troll shouting -- "For The Hurd!"
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Sucking the cock of a corporation is really the lowest circle of whore hell.
A lot of this is stuff the manufacturer already provides, but in addition to that I think this is specifically a service the manufacturer could provide. Imagine being able to drop a message on a Dell website asking a specific question about how one of their computers runs a specific program and them giving you detailed results within 24 hours. That'd be pretty cool.
Q: Dell, I'd like to run Microsoft Flight Sim on an XPS 700 with three 30" displays. Can you give me the frame rate on that?
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
This entire truly deserved the tag "AppleSpam"
thank you!!! to the person who posted this article and to the person who owns the website!!! i just bought a mac book pro and was driving myself nuts trying to get the wlan to work. very much appreciated.
What is more interesting I was trying to search Slashdot archives for the release of the Powerbook G4 Titanium Back in 2001. To no avail. It seemed back that the Powerbook wasn't nerdy enough news. And now any product blip by Apple get a lot of attention. I guess it is the sign of the times.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have a 667 Mhz 12" G4 Powerbook that I adore and have been using for four years now. It goes with me everywhere, I can open it (barely) on a tray table in a coach seat on a plane, it works well on a bus, train, etc. It goes everywhere with me -- cause it is a decent size and works well. I don't need/want 15" and the 13.3" macbooks are still too big for what I want. :(
I was just at a "Sony Style" Store today and their smaller Vaio notebooks look real sweet. Just increase the DPI of the resolution and it cram into a smaller form factor please. Not all of us are blind.
I hate Apple's new laptop attitude that "pro" means huge.
Wow, I'm glad my attorney isn't such a moron. The point of the Coral Cache (you know, with an "a" in the first word -- maybe you should learn its name if you're involved in litigation over it) is to avoid flooding sites with requests. By, you know, caching their contents. Just like the name says.
What kind of retard cares that much about the specs of a computer?!
I tell you I'm starting to agree with Macleans.
Short answer: No. Only the 17" model has WUXGA resolution.
So that means I NEED the 17 inch model then!
I've heard that Apple is claiming that the new Core2 Duo is 7 times faster than the old "top of the line" 1.67Ghz PowerBook. But comparing the XBench output that was posted earlier to an XBench run that I just ran (see below my signature) shows only a 2x increase in almost every single category (there was one or two that were about 2.5 times higher).
But nowhere near 7 times.
How can they make such a claim? I could understand missing by a few percentage points, but their claim is WAY off reality.
And, yes, I have the same amount of memory and the same OS that was used on the new tests.... The only difference was physical hardware.
Steve
Results 51.32
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.4.8 (8L127)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,6
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.67 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.67 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type Hitachi HTS541010G9AT00
CPU Test 70.93
GCD Loop 139.85 7.37 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 48.47 1.15 Gflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 288.78 11.51 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 51.03 1.68 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 50.90 8.86 Mops/sec
Thread Test 71.85
Computation 68.48 1.39 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 75.57 3.25 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 39.47
System 35.49
Allocate 131.05 481.25 Kalloc/sec
Fill 35.04 1703.52 MB/sec
Copy 20.67 427.03 MB/sec
Stream 44.46
Copy 49.15 1015.26 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 50.02 1033.46 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 42.70 909.66 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 38.14 815.87 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 69.74
Line 60.56 4.03 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 69.55 20.77 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 71.08 5.79 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 78.81 1.99 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 71.21 4.45 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 85.41
Spinning Squares 85.41 108.35 frames/sec
User Interface Test 42.00
Elements 42.00 192.75 refresh/sec
Disk Test 30.13
Sequential 46.59
Uncached Write 46.44 28.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 45.47 25.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 45.28 13.25 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 49.40 24.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 22.26
Uncached Write 7.66 0.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 53.00 16.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 59.94 0.42 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 73.81 13.70 MB/sec [256K blocks]
I'm typing on a MBP "v1.0" and the only noise I hear is the hard drive- a quiet "whoosh". The fans at minimum speed (1000RPM) are completely inaudible. They are more progressive than the G4's which were pretty much an on/off switch.
As for heat? Every year I read whining about "how hot" the newest Powerbook is. It's all a bunch of shit (with the exception of the 12" Al Powerbook. That thing WAS an oven.) Component specs don't change- people just assume "oh, it's a gazillion times faster, it MUST run hotter!" Funny, but if you compare the new intel Minis to the old Minis- they use a few watts LESS power.
Right now it's sitting on my legs, I'm wearing jeans, and it isn't uncomfortable- smcfancontrol says it's 138 degrees F on the CPU die. When it's running too hot for comfort, I fire up smccontrol and bump the fans up to 1500rpm, where you can just barely hear them- and it cools things down by about ten degrees.
Please help metamoderate.
I sent Brian a question (shortly before he got "Slashdotted") about whether the new MacBook Pros supported 64 bit mode. He was kind enough to compile and run the little 'sizeof' program I sent him and respond about the output..
The announcements and marketing information about the new MBP's was conspicuously absent of any mention of the 64 bit support of the new Merom / Core 2 Duo processor. This is strange because both the Mac Pro and the iMac specifically mention their 64 bit support.
There is a lot of contradictory information floating around about the state of 64 bit support on the Intel Macs. So, I asked him to compile an app to show the sizeof a long int and pointer. The output showed 4 Bytes / 32 bits.
So, this is curious... Does x86 Tiger not support 64 bit mode? But, people have done tests on 32 bit vs. 64 bit on intel Macs ( http://www.geekpatrol.ca/blog/150/ ). So, why is the MBP different than the iMac, which uses the same processor and chipset?
Anyone have more definitive information on 64 bit support for this new MacBook Pro? Or for x86 Tiger, the new iMacs and Mac Pro's?
Also, before all the "64 bit support is pointless" replies; yes, I know it can only handle 3GB of RAM. I know the benefits of 64 bit will not be dramatic (I already have two Linux boxes running Athlon64's in 64 bit mode). I'm just curious whether all the features of the processor can be used. I also want the performance benefit of doubling the number of general purpose processors and 64 bit math. And, since Leopard is supposed to have much better 64 bit support, I want to see where this MacBook Pro will stand.
Best for what? If OS X is the best UNIX you've ever used for, say, database hosting, then it's probably the only UNIX you've ever used.
Well, I hate Linux, so I'd much prefer Apple stay in the software AND hardware business... I just wish they'd hurry up and ship my goddamn Core 2 Duo Mac Pro :)
Eventually the forum thread got out of hand, and he set up a website devoted to answering the questions. If you have a question that hasn't already been answered, email him at the address on the site. He is responding daily and sometimes within minutes. This guy is dedicated.
And thanks to slashdot, maybe those Google Ads he's added to his answers will bring him a few bucks he wouldn't have made on the "out of hand" macrumors forum.
Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with cashing in -- macrumors' forum isn't exactly ad-free either -- but I'm not real sure how making your own website to answer questions makes slashdot. If he'd taken it apart, upgraded the processor, or found out that there's something inside we hadn't heard of, well, telling us about that is possibly post worthy. Right now, this story is just hardware.slashdot.org-as-billboard.
One of the incredible bits of insight from the site:
Q: What can you tell me about the battery?
A: Not a whole lot. Made in China (what isn't), Model # A1175, Li-ion.
Wow.
Save yourself some time, and skip directly to pictures of Sudan or Christian Wife Pictures. Not joking.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Agreed. Right now I'm listening to online radio with iTunes, fiddling with some build errors in XCode, toying around in the shell ftp'ing a file that a build script failed to fetch, sharing a file with my roommate (who runs Windows) across the LAN using HTTP (as opposed to SMB), and looking at my Monday appointments in iCal. All of this functionality out of the box - it is bar none the best 'nix I've ever used (and continue to use).
OK, I'm probably going to get modded "troll" or "flamebait" for this but this is a legitimate question... Is this supposed to be funny or something? All of this functionality is also available out of the box on basically any Linux distribution (with differently named applications of course). If OS X is "the best 'nix [you]'ve ever used" then please tell us why, I'm still waiting for real reasons.
Because Apple cherry picks the test results they publish on their web site. It seems the 7 times performance improvement claim strictly relates to SPEC benchmarks.
1. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2006 using preproduction MacBook Pro units with Core 2 Duo; MacBook Pro with Core Duo and PowerBook G4 systems were shipping units. *On a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo-based MacBook Pro, Logic Pro showed a 45% performance improvement, playing 240 reverb plug-ins, compared to 165 reverb plug-ins played on a 2.16GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro. MacBook Pro continuously monitors system thermal and power conditions, and may adjust processor speed as needed to maintain optimal system operation.
2. Estimated SPECint_rate_base2000 score: 6.6 for 1.67GHz PowerBook G4, 48.4 for 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo system and 34.8 for 2.16GHz Core Duo system. Estimated SPECfp_rate_base2000 score: 4.9 for 1.67GHz PowerBook G4, 37.1 for 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo system and 27.6 for 2.16GHz Core Duo system. SPEC®, SPECfp, and SPECint are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC); see www.spec.org for more information.
"Best for what?"
Perhaps this?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Go ahead and mod me troll or flamebate but all this gush, gush, squirt, squirt over a f**king laptop just seems so bizarre. Perhaps it is because I had way too much French white wine tonight, a rare treat for me, with my wonderful fish dinner and things appear closer than they really are but doesn't this bcavanau character seem a bit contrived? He is able to answer hundreds of questions almost instantaneously and all of a sudden he has his own web site, with ads no less. All due to his new macbookpro, I suppose.
No, not really.
simply couldn't resist making this comment:)
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Okay, I'll bite.
Unfortunately for me, I tend to prefer Microsoft Office over OpenOffice. There's no Microsoft Office in Linux, FreeBSD, etc. In reality, this is a shame, because I spend most of my time using LaTeX and it stinks that when I do need an "office app" I have to resort to Microsoft Office since I consider it a better application. Also, there's no Photoshop for Linux, etc. Please don't say GIMP. I actually learned on GIMP and would much prefer to use it over Photoshop, but there's no true color calibration system for Linux. Aperture is also on OS X and I don't really have a desire to use anything else to manage photos.
I loathed the OS X interface when I first started using it. In fact, the day I got my PowerBook G4 (my first Mac, about 3.5 years ago), I spent all of 10 minutes in OS X. And I spend that time while I was figuring out how to install Debian on it. I ran Debian on my PowerBook for a year or more. I decided to try out OS X and haven't looked back. Well, I did for a bit, because the UI was a bit different to me. Since getting used to the UI, I would never like to go back to traditional UNIX desktops.
When I come from home from work and need to do something on my computer, I don't want to have to worry about it. I don't want to worry, for instance, if the new kernel I apt-geted broke my VMWare installation and now requires a module recompile. I don't have the time, nor the energy, to care anymore. OS X is for the practical inside of me. OS X is for the artist inside of me. OS X is for the lazy inside of me.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
How can they make such a claim? I could understand missing by a few percentage points, but their claim is WAY off reality.
Apple's been doing this for years, it's nothing new - it was actually quite funny to watch them do a complete 180 in regards to Intel vs. PPC a while back. Basically, don't pay any attention to any benchmarks performed by the same company that sells the hardware.
It sounds like you're giving a very lengthy explanation of why one should agree with Apple's lineup decisions, which doesn't really contradict the post you replied to, which said something very similar with a much more negative spin.
But, you've also said stuff that's not true. Most importantly, it's not a matter of not wanting to risk bleeding edge stuff. That's crap, and if it were true they would not, for example, have jumped on the Core Duo bandwagon so early. Also, the resolutions we're talking about now have been economical for several years, the lower resolution of Apple laptops has been a persistent problem for several years now.
I also don't think it has anything to do with keeping the order page simple. They've got selectable memory, hard drives, optical drives, various addons, etc. Would it really complicate things that much to give a few different options on a major component?
The only arguments that hold water are that it makes Apple's inventory easier, and that it's a good DPI to use for some applications.
However, I don't care that it makes Apple's inventory easier. That's not my problem. My problem is getting a computer that meets my needs.
Nor do I care that it's a good DPI for someone that's not me. I need high resolution to fit lots of code, documentation, and terminal windows on the screen. Many Apple fans assume that choosing the best compromise is the right answer, but that's wrong. Allowing the user to choose their favorite is the answer.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
OSX is a great desktop operating system but a poor workstation compared to Linux. I summarized this on a post here.
Basically many opensource projects conflict and do not integrate with the praoprietary macosx counterparts. Its a bitch to upgrade things like samba and lpad. Ubuntu linux is great to upgrade and so are most debian based distro's and the BSD's. IT seems Apple wants you to upgrade and pay $$$ for the next version of OSX than allow you to upgrade the sytem yourself.
http://saveie6.com/
I believe your parent wrote a so called joke. you should read about it :)
The people that have the knowledge and time to upgrade their kernels and individual system compoents, will. And they will run Linux.
The other 99.9 percent just want something that works that they don't have to fiddle with and is also rock-solid stable and comes w/ incredible media creation apps built in and integrated into every major part of the OS.
It's not necessarily a complete 180 though. A lot of those PPC vs. Intel debates were back when Intel was making the Pentium IV, and before they had gone down the path of the Pentium M, which led to Core Duo, and now Core 2 Duo. The old Pentium IV stuff was a dead-end, and the criticism of them was spot on. And the proof is in the fact that Intel did change their direction on processors.
Considering the very serious string of problems associated with the Macbook (check out the vernerable macfixit.com or the comprehensive macdefects.com), you'd think Slashdot might be inspired to actually look carefully at the issue.
Slashdot look carefully at the issue? Either I'm drinking too much tonight, or not enough.
It's an experiment. This guy opened a website where you can mail him questions and he'll answer them by e-mail and on the site. Now it's on Slashdot and every geek in the world will know about the site. Expected result: Not just a Slashdotted webserver, but also a Slashdotted guy and a Slashdotted mailserver.
;-)
Let's see what happens.
> I can hear a WoW troll shouting -- "For The Hurd!"
:-)
That's a rather disrespectful way to refer to RMS, isn't it?
...this is Apple, so it's different. It looks like you need to be reprogrammed!
You're an evangelist, and yet use Windows? I sense a contradiction.
I've seen a few laptops that had batteries in the recent replacement ranges where the new battery ran so much cooler that the laptop operating temperature dropped 15 to 20 degrees. I suspect much of the whining for the past year and a half was due to bad batteries.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
'' I've heard that Apple is claiming that the new Core2 Duo is 7 times faster than the old "top of the line" 1.67Ghz PowerBook. But comparing the XBench output that was posted earlier to an XBench run that I just ran (see below my signature) shows only a 2x increase in almost every single category (there was one or two that were about 2.5 times higher). ''
I thought people would know by now that XBench is about the most useless "benchmark" around.
There is the fact that they measure the speed of the user interface by changing the title of a single button as fast as possible - unfortunately, the OS very sensibly limits this to 60 frames per second or whatever the display rate is, so this code will _never_ get faster, no matter how fast the hardware is.
Then the benchmark is single threaded. Guess what effect two or four processors have on this benchmark: None. In the real world, they double or quadruple the speed of speed critical code. The floating-point code uses a single precision FFT implementation that was written to highlight the capabilities of Altivec but never used by anyone in the real world. Let's say it wasn't high on the priority list when rewriting it for x86.
I've run both Linux and OS X on my beige box P4 desktop machine and the Darwin kernel seems much less responsive the the Linux kernel for everyday tasks AND the driver and open software availability are just crap compared to any modern Linux distro (or even cygwin on windows). Once *bsd or Linux has a good enough ABI to run the OS X window manager minus the Darwin kernel THEN Apple will have something really nice (for the users) on their hands. In the mean time I don't understand the "mac tax" mentality where you pay more for hardware and software; and that isn't an exaggeration, a quality mac usb keyboard with mechanical key switches costs between 90-150USD while the equivalent for PC can be hand for practically nothing. The same can be said for other trivial peripheral like mice, web cams, tv capture hardware etc... It is possible that someone out there has some great isight which shoots down my arguments, so by all means if I'm full of shit please provide me some solutions.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Unless you're running code that's pushing hard against the limits of 4GB of RAM (well, 2GB on Windows), in which case you already know it and you're almost certainly not using OS X or Windows anyway (unless you're some kind of masochist, or you're Oracle), the only reason to run 64 bit is to take advantage of the larger register file on an AMD 64-bit processors. AMD pulled a very clever trick here, and used 64-bit processing as an excuse to introduce an ABI that exposed a larger register file to the compiler, which gave them a performance edge over Intel. Intel doesn't seem to have really taken advantage of this on their new rev of the old P6 core... they're just depending on their better process to make up for the overhead.
the driver and open software availability are just crap compared to any modern Linux distro (or even cygwin on windows).
Drivers are in issue possibly for some exotic hardware, but overall I haven't had a problem. As for open source availability? This really confuses me. There's Fink and there's DarwinPorts. Both have a large collection of ports to OS X.
a quality mac usb keyboard with mechanical key switches costs between 90-150USD while the equivalent for PC can be hand for practically nothing
Huh? If it's USB, it's USB and it will work on a mac. If you're saying that you can get an old PS/2 mechanical keyboard and use it on your PC, well, fine. I personally can't fault Apple for not supporting an ancient technology. The problem is that pretty soon there will be no PCs with PS/2 anymore. Mice are the same.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I can't believe that in this day and age Apple is selling notebook computers WITHOUT wireless by default. Not only that, you really have to dig around to even find the option to add an airport card to a Macbook pro. What the hell?
Wow, I've got a screenshot of this now just to prove it existed. A score:5 informative posting about the number 1 reason to use Unix based OS on Apple hardware is a Microsoft program. Elvis has left the building...
I wanted to second this. It's not that I don't like Linux, but I work with a Linux guy, much smarter than me, who laughs at me for using OSX. But then, we find ourselves someplace with WPA on the WiFi connection, and he spends 20 minutes trying to connect before giving up. For me on my Macbook, it takes 20 seconds while I click a couple places and type a password. At some point or another, we need to use VPN, and it takes him a couple hours to get it running on this Linux machine. I just open up "Internet Connect", enter a few settings, and bingo!, I'm in. Still, he makes fun of me for having a 1-button mouse.
I don't doubt that there are advantages to Linux. I run Linux in various places, like it a lot for how I use it, and my coworker's setup is a hell of a lot slicker than any of my Linux machines. Still, I've never had to recompile the kernel on OSX in order to get my 3D capabilities working on my graphics card.
You can, in theory, guarantee that your OS has not been compromised.
You can guarantee that it has not been modified through direct manipulation of the executable files. You can not guarantee that it hasn't been compromised by (for example) a buffer overflow attack in the current session. Unless you remove all interpreters from the system or require that all interpreted code (including configuration files!) be signed, it's not much harder to run arbitrary code even on a TPM-protected system than to devise an exploit in the first place.
You can't even guarantee that it's clean at boot, since a secondary exploit could be hidden in a data file, database, or configuration file to be re-run at boot.
And by making it impossible to replace the binaries without devising a similar exploit yourself you prevent people from fixing the problem... you have to wait for the manufacturer to do it. We can see how well that has worked for Microsoft.
I'm not sure of the level of unresponsiveness you're experiencing or what the precise cause is. OSX is plenty fast for me, however, from what I understand, the Darwin kernel is slower than the Linux kernel in some ways due to the fact that it's a microkernel. I'm no expert here, but I'm told that micro kernels have some advantages, including security, and monolithic kernels have other advantages, including speed. It's a design decision and there are tradeoffs, but it doesn't seem to me that thing are sufficiently slowed for desktop purposes to complain.
But did you install Darwin or OSX? Was it the kernel that was slow or the system in general, or perhaps some specific application?
Out of the box - imovie, idvd, garageband, iphoto, itunes, iweb. The were the reasons that I switched to Mac about 3 years ago, combined with the fact that I wanted to tinker with Unix, but didn't want to *have* to learn the internals if I didn't want to.
You Loonix fags are hopeless. You use a hobby OS and expect to be taken seriously. All the while you and your greasy, non-vagina-seeing neckbeard toad friends sit about drinking hard cider and talking about what a hard migration it is to Eft.
Fuck off, you fat hopeless loser. LOTD is dead, and it always will be.
Go read any Apple promotional pamphlet (including the "Switch" section of their official site, and also one of their first "I'm a PC. I'm a Mac" ads): Microsoft Office is always one of the first things they mention.
A Microsoft product is the only thing Apple has to show the general public that OS X is not a toy. It's pretty sad... If Microsoft ever kills their OS X version, they're fucking screwed.
What am I missing?
Yes, darwin is really just for OSX development. The driver support is intentionally bad. Open source software support I'll have to argue with. If you can't build something on darwin, report it to the maintainers. If its a good project like Perl, GNUstep, Etoile, etc. they will be more than happy to fix it. If its an issue with a bad project like GNU config*, they will tell you that you don't use linux and therefore deserve no support. It all depends on the developers. Linux zealots who refuse to support other platforms hurt their own platform. Vendor lock-in does not work in the OSS community very well. Most people put up with the headaches to avoid vendor lock-in. OpenBSD hates binary blobs because they introduce vendor lock-in.
*I'm referring to the config.sub and config.guess files included for configure scripts. The "developer" refuses to add new operating systems to the file based on his personal opinion. He also removes operating systems so the file is small, however, it supports many embedded variants of linux. Go figure.
Check out Matrox... They claim to have an external box that will do just that:
2 go/home.php
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/gxm/products/dh
Note: I haven't actually used one yet, just want one!
Which 'UNIX' have you used? You've used Linux and once loaded SFU on Windows NT??
Unfortunately for me, I tend to prefer Microsoft Office over OpenOffice.
Agreed. Unfortunately for you.
but there's no true color calibration system for Linux
Whoops! There goes the 2% of the Photoshop userbase for which that matters.
I would never like to go back to traditional UNIX desktops.
You've never 'resided' on a traditional UNIX desktop. That would be MWM, or CDE. You mentioned 'Debian' which didn't even exist in the 'traditional UNIX' era.
I don't have the time, nor the energy, to care anymore. OS X is for the practical inside of me. OS X is for the artist inside of me. OS X is for the lazy inside of me.
Sounds like you're parroting Apple Marketing slogans, now.
There's also all the Adobe stuff.
If you want a fifteen second delay before it displays your PDF file, you want to use an Adobe viewer. The rest of us use xpdf.
combined with the fact that I wanted to tinker with Unix,
You read that phrase on a marketing brochure somewhere, correct?
I have had the same Powerbook for three years until it decided to fry a few months ago. It was a fantastic machine, except that the metal pitted deeply where I rested my palm. And I men deep. I took it to the Apple store many times for an explanation, with no result, or replacement. I was fine with this, figuring that the case was not anodized properly or something.
I got a Macbook Pro in September. Different Apple store, different resident expert. I took my old powerbook along to show the pitting, and asked if the newer Macbook was improved in this regard. I was informed that it was, and that I should not get pitting in this machine. It is now October, and it looks like a small pin has stabbed my machine a thousand times in the area of the palm rests.
What the hell is wrong with the case of my laptop? Does anyone our here know what I should call it? And does Applecare cover this and the Apple store just doesn't know?
You've never 'resided' on a traditional UNIX desktop. That would be MWM, or CDE. You mentioned 'Debian' which didn't even exist in the 'traditional UNIX' era.
How the *heck* could you know what I've ever used? And yes, I *have* used CDE. And I have used MWM and associated LessTif niceties. Please, spare me the pedantry in analyzing my word choice. I think it was clear from context that I was referring to the thought of using non-OS X GUIs that happen to run on top of UNIX-like underpinnings.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
As a checkin assistant at a certified Mac repair shop, I can't say I'd recommend the MacBook line at the moment. I've seen more MacBooks (Pro and regular-type) coming in for repair over the past month than any other type of Mac - mostly with powering and booting issues, but we've also seen bad LCDs and really weird battery problems. Of course, the systems are all just out of return policy and the customers are pissed. I've also noticed a trend of people bringing in MacBooks with "RTN" written across their proofs of purchase...apparently a lot of them are DOA too. Not the happiest time to be an Apple repair shop.
Whoops! There goes the 2% of the Photoshop userbase for which that matters.
And this is exactly why some people hate linux, and the linux zealots. The linux community in general is helpful, but there's always a few that are willing to say "screw them, they don't really matter anyway".
1080i/p HDTV would be letterboxed, so it fits fine just has some leftover space at the top and bottom.
Don't ask me why, but for some reason even though HDTVs are 16:9, those building widescreen computer monitors decided 16:10 was better.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Our newest kitten is completely white, male, and stone deaf. Not an uncommon thing in male white cats.
Does your cat have blue eyes? Deafness is uncommon in cats, even white cats, unless their eyes are blue, it's a recessed genetic trait and doesn't matter what sex the cat is. Years ago I had a female cat like this.
FalconShould there be a Law?
But according to wikipedia both 1920x1080 and 1680x1050 are considered WUXGA. So are we missing out a lot on these new 17" PowerBook Pro's?
"OS X is for the practical inside of me. OS X is for the artist inside of me. OS X is for the lazy inside of me."
Never mind that you have three fewer orifices available; what is for you?
(Seriously, I do agree with everything you've said, but you really should have framed that last statement a bit better!)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Just make sure you get a rugged case. Remember folks, the laws of physics still apply, and metal does dent.
I've been wondering how tough the cases for the MacBook Pro are, I've heard their pretty hardy but I wonder if they can take a lot of beating. I'd like to be able to take mine with me when I go hiking. Then when I get a dsrl camera I could easily tranfer my photos to the laptop and do preliminary editing.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Go on. Educate me, you know you want to.
I must admit I've never seen the point of huge amounts of local storage in a laptop (or any standalone PC, for that matter). If you want lots of space, you're far better off putting it into a separate machine.
Maybe you don't see the need for large storage capacity but many do. My old desktop, er tower, PC has two hds, the original is 40GB and the second is 120GB. Between the two I have maybe 10GB freespace. Though I don't have one now I'll easily fillup 160GB when I get a DSRL camera. Why should I get a second machine just for storage? I may get a NAS but I doubt it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
* A docking station
BookEndz [bookendzdocks.com] makes some port replicators, but they're really not that impressive. I think thats probably the one feature I'd like to see Apple add to the MacBook lines.
Same here, I'd really like to get, have, a docking station for the MacBook Pro. When I have a PC laptop I used it almost as much away from home as I did at home and having a dock was so much easier and quicker than plugging and unplugging all the cables, I went through this daily sometimes two or three tymes a day.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A Microsoft product is the only thing Apple has to show the general public that OS X is not a toy. It's pretty sad... If Microsoft ever kills their OS X version, they're fucking screwed.
I heard, er read, some tyme back that MS was going to discontinue Office for Macs once their obligation is fulfilled. This is why Apple did Keynotes, or some such. However if MS does kill Office for Macs then they loose a leg with the monopoly charge hanging over them. Keeping Office for Macs going is a "cheap" way to say they aren't a monopoly and it earns them a little money. Now what I'm really looking forward to in Leopard are the Windows APIs in it so Windows apps can run in Leopard without using virtualization.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Kids buy them while they're in school and get the heavy educational discount.
Then they graduate, start paying their student loans, and 'sidegrade' (not upgrade or downgrade) to a Dell.
The last tyme I checked, about 3 or 4 months ago, the educational discounts Apple has weren't even %10. I recall when they were %50, back then it was half the price.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yea here is my Xbench results and I see nothing that is 7x faster. I have the last generation 1.67 15" powerbook. with the optional 7200rpm 100gb drive(which is at 90% capacity). Also i only have 1.5gb mem.
Results 44.90
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.4.8 (8L127)
Physical RAM 1536 MB
Model PowerBook5,8
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.67 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.67 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type Hitachi HTS721010G9AT00
CPU Test 68.41
GCD Loop 100.07 5.27 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 43.09 1.02 Gflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 250.02 9.96 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 77.43 2.55 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 43.53 7.58 Mops/sec
Thread Test 66.58
Computation 62.63 1.27 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 71.06 3.06 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 28.58
System 24.63
Allocate 140.09 514.47 Kalloc/sec
Fill 29.59 1438.94 MB/sec
Copy 12.36 255.37 MB/sec
Stream 34.04
Copy 33.48 691.42 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 38.75 800.54 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 32.74 697.46 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 31.96 683.74 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 57.07
Line 52.75 3.51 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 60.75 18.14 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 60.27 4.91 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 63.29 1.60 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 50.50 3.16 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 72.88
Spinning Squares 72.88 92.45 frames/sec
User Interface Test 34.71
Wikipedia's wrong then. All I've ever heard used to refer to 1680x1050 is WSXGA+
My claims of no quality loss were based on WUXGA (1920x1200) which can display 1080p pixel for pixel. On a WSXGA+ display, there will be a loss of information, though a good decoder will make this unnoticable and it will still look better than 720p content on the same display.
I have a Dell 2005FPW WSXGA+ display and I run my Xbox 360 at 720p through it with excellent results, but it can't compare to playing 1080i movies or some of the very little 1080p content out there. Side by side the difference is obvious.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
What?? Where the hell did you get that from?
One place I heard it is here. I've read a number of posts on slashdot that have said Windows APIs might be in Leopard, er I thought I did but I just searched and didn't get any results. So I googled and found some info:
I found others along the same lines: OS X leopard windows api. As for how factual they all are I don't know but I'm really hoping to see it come true, I'm using an HP PC typing this but within a couple of weeks I plan on getting a MacBook Pro and I want to be able to run at least one Windows app on it without using either bootcamp or a vm to run Windows. I'll probably get CrossOver Mac but I'd prefer Windows APIs in Leopard.
FalconShould there be a Law?
...and does it run hot enough to heat my grits to Natalie Portman levels of hotness???
Well, take how much faster Apple claimed the PPC chips were than the P4's, then multiply that by how much faster Apple claims the Core chips are than the PPC chips, and you will have how much faster the Core chips are compared to the P4 according to Apple. There is no question that the Pentium 4 was a dead end, but there is no way the Core chips are 25-35x faster as Apple math would imply.
"1080i/p HDTV would be letterboxed, so it fits fine just has some leftover space at the top and bottom."
Nonsense.
"Don't ask me why, but for some reason even though HDTVs are 16:9, those building widescreen computer monitors decided 16:10 was better."
Sony introduced the first widescreen monitor for PCs long before HDTV existed and its native resolution was WUXGA. The 16:10 format has carried on since then. On PCs it does allow viewing a 16:9 with a little vertical room for controls or a menu bar, for example, but I doubt that was a deliberate decision at the time.
The earliest evidence of 16:10 PC monitors that I've seen is the Sony GDM-W900 in early 2000. 16:9 had been part of the HDTV standard for years before then, plus DVDs (typically 16:9 or even wider) were beginning to catch on.
16:10 seems to be another confusing and reasonless LCD quirk, just like the 5:4 1280x1024 resolution. That said, I like my widescreens and don't really want things to change.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
So the Apple Pro video apps, and the Adobe apps, are all crap?
Pfft.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Nice to see this modded offtopic, even though it directly addresses the topic...Guess it's nothing but Mac fanbois on the mod squad today...
"If OS X is "the best 'nix [you]'ve ever used" then please tell us why, I'm still waiting for real reasons."
I'm sure many will bite here but it's pretty much pointless. As the arbiter of what are "real reasons" you will easily be able to dismiss any reason that may be "real" to them.
Not this idiotic complaint again - TPM is used only to make sure OS X will run on computers that contain the right signature. All other OS'es, including Windows and Linux, will run just fine on any Mac.
You see, what people are up in arms about in relation to TPM is that it will either (a) not let you run any OS but the single one that hardware vendor approves, or (b) not let you run ay applications that the OS maker does not approve. Neither is the case with any Mac hardware or software.
So basically you don't even know why you are upset, you just hear the words "TPM" and like the backwoods hillbilly hearing "bitfoot" stomping through the underbrush you start of firing without knowin' what yer shooting et.
Your post makes one itch for the ability to genetically maniupulate offspring to remove resseive genes. Brave New World, bring it on - at least I won't have to read drivel like your post.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I always assumed 16:10 was so 16:9 content, be it games or movies - can be used with additional space for controls and UI.
Haha. That number might be accurate if you count the userbase as including those who downloaded a warez version to edit their webcam shots.
But of the people who fork out $1,000+ for a legitimate copy of it? I can assure you far more than 2% are interested in calibration and ability to work with different profiles.
The claim of a seven times speed increase is likely due to a favorable test for Intel CPUs and the Intel compiler itself versus IBMs XLC.
I can tell you that, in real world terms, the MacBook Pro is a mutiple factor faster than my dual 2Ghz G5 system... with *some* things. Same OS build, same amount of RAM and the same GCC.
I worked on an app that does a lot of floating point calculations (Gamut modelling to be specific) and the MacBook Pro did a particular calculation about three times faster than the dual G5 I was developing on. It was such a dramatic change that our QA department thought something was wrong.
The app was compiled as a universal binary with GCC 4.0.1 turning on some optimizations for Intel that I couldn't do for the PowerPC range of CPUs as I had to support G3 class processors.
FWIW, I had set the following specifically for Intel builds:
-march=pentium-m -mtune=prescott -msse3 -ftree-vectorize -ftree-vectorizer-verbose=5
On the PowerPC builds I use:
-mtune=G5 -mcpu=G3
Common optimizations are:
-Os -fobjc-direct-dispatch -funroll-loops -DNDEBUG
The NDEBUG is to turn assert() off, of course.
Of note is the lack of SIMD for my PPC builds because of the G3 requirement. Also, I'm pretty sure the codegen for Intel CPUs is more optimized than for PPC builds because of the work the Linux community has done over the years. I've looked at PPC codegen before and GCC often does a bad job of loop processing and creates pipeline stalls frequently due to incorrect branch choices it makes to break the loop, according to Shark.app. Re-writing the C++ loop has been the way I've tricked it into doing what I want.
Fortunately its OSS, so if his intransigence becomes enough of a headache for people, that developer will find his project conveniently forked, as happened to XFree86.
They're faster at different things, though. If I run 3x faster than Bob, and Bob carves 4x faster Fred, that doesn't mean I run (or carve) 12x faster than Fred. In case you've never noticed, Apple always uses the 'up to' qualifier on their benchmarketing, because they're at least honest enough to admit (even during keynote speeches) that not every component in the computer has gotten faster at the same rate as the CPU.
The W900 was the monitor I was referring to. Sony had at least two versions of the monitor, and the earliest reference I found in a quick search was 1997. I had one long before 2000.
s _199706/ai_hibm1G119360432
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb197/i
While HDTV standards existed in 1997, how many HDTV sets were being sold then? Widescreen DVDs were, and are, typically published in the format they were originally produced and no movie format was ever 16:9. 16:9 was a format dreamed up specifically for HDTV and movie producers weren't fond of it. There is nothing magic about 16:9 and no reason why monitor makes need to avoid 16:10.
16:10 has nothing to do with LCD. It was established as the widescreen monitor format before LCDs were made in that format.
Yes, they always find the one little thing that their computer does do a whole lot faster on some benchmark, then apply that thing to the whole machine by making claims like "up to 7x faster". Sure, they are technically correct, but they are also being very misleading when they do this.
OS X is for the practical inside of me. OS X is for the artist inside of me. OS X is for the lazy inside of me.
OS X is for the gay inside of you.