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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.
While they were put up for order on Tuesday, they haven't hit the street yet (as far as I know). You can't go buy them in stores right now (unless someone knows otherwise). So basically this person got their hands on the laptop early.
So why all the fuss? First, this is a Core 2 Duo so it is supposed to have better performance than the Core Duo models that were replaces (and it is supposed to run circles around my little Powerbook G4). But more importantly while the MacBook Pros were nice computers, there were quite a few complaints about the amount of heat they generate, noises (from the speaker/screen/who-knows). A lot of people (myself included) want to know if the laptops run as hot as the MacBook Pros did.
To the Mac community this is a bit like someone getting their hands on a Zune and answering people's questions when there is no information about the Zune but specs out there (which I realize is not quite the case, but it's an example).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Are you on crack? OS X is the best UNIX I've ever used.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
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.
Long story short is that the guy says the noise isn't a problem -- it sounds nearly silent -- and he doesn't have any comparisons heat-wise.
Short answer: No. Only the 17" model has WUXGA resolution.
Mac OS X requires no serial number or activation. It's really quite nice. Compared to Vista and its high prices, draconian EULA, separate purchase required for 64-bit support, and bloated system requirements, Leopard makes Vista look amateur.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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]
* An option for a 7200rpm hard disk (except the "aircraft carrier" model
:)
Apparently, the 160gb (5400 rpm) and 200gb (4200 rpm) drives use PMR. Someone on the forums over at macrumors linked to a benchmark, apparently the 5400 rpm PMR drives are faster than traditional 7200 rpm drives.
* A option for a faster video card
I think the form factor has a lot to do with this. I don't know that they could squeeze an X1700/X1800 or GeForce Go 7800/7900 in the current form factor, and I don't think enough customers would want them to justify the increased size. Really, I don't see such cards being useful for anyone but gamers (is it really going to make that big a different in Final Cut Pro, Motion, or Aperture?), and gamers really should look elsewhere. Really don't know why anyone would want to do serious gaming on a laptop anyway, but that's just me.
* Higher screen resolution
Would definitely like to see this. Leopard is apparently going to support a resolution-independent UI, so you can make the widgets as big or as small as you want. That's just begging for an ultra-high resolution display.
* A docking station
BookEndz 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.
* A 12"-ish variant
The MacBook is so close. Discreet graphics are all it needs (though an ExpressCard slot would probably be nice, too). Maybe when Intel's Santa Rosa platform comes out next year.
All that said, I ordered mine, and I can't wait to receive it
The default ABI is 32-bit. Try adding -m64 to your compiler flags.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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
WUXGA is 1920x1200. ;)
Trust me, It sounds like everything would be impossible to read, but after half an hour of using it, you think every monitor in existence without such a high density absolutely blows.
Of course it isn't contrived. There was a forum thread on MacRumors, and he was one of the first people to pick up his MBP from an Apple Store. People started asking him questions, and he went ahead and set up a separate website where he could post answers, screenshots, 3DMark scores, etc. based on the various tests people asked of him. He isn't answering "hundreds of questions almost instantaneously"; he asked people to send him things they wanted to find out (i.e. temperatures, clockspeed of the X1600, etc.) and went ahead and put them up.
He would have more control over the noise and heat levels than he realizes. The motherboard in that laptop is probably not all that esoteric and you can download software that will control the speed of the fan to give you more noise & less heat or less noise & more heat, depending on your needs.
Thanks for the tip.. Brian read this thread and tried out that flag. With that flag, it outputs "8" for pointer and long int.
So, it seems that the kernel on the new MBP's are indeed 64 bit.
In New Zealand, all DVD players are region free. Normally the importer will flick whatever firmware switch is required to make them region free. You can't sell them if they are region locked.
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