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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.
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
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.
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.)
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
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."
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."
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Agreed. 1680x1050 is great on a 15.4" screen.
The next OS X is supposed to be resolution independent. Perhaps they'll upgrade the resolution on their laptops then.
Ubuntu on a Dell E1505 is a great combination, btw.
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.
"Resolution independent" means that the absolute size of stuff on the screen, such as text, GUI elelements and so on, is independent of the resolution of the screen. So if you have a CRT, and you change the screen mode from, say, 1280x960 to 1600x1200, everything looks the same except that (especially) text is now sharper. The same size letter is now drawn using a larger number of smaller pixels, just like printing at 600 DPI vs 300 DPI. RI allows two very useful things: you can increase display resolution without automatically shrinking everything that's on the screen, and you can make everything look larger on screen without artificially lowering your screen resolution, so that text and other stuff stays sharp. It is of course also possible to zoom out so that everything gets smaller and you can fit more stuff on the same screen. Apple has said they are going to support RI in the upcoming Leopard OS release, but it's unclear how they are going to expose this functionality to the user. Ideally, it will be possible to adjust the zoom factor on a per-application basis so that it's finally possible to compensate for the strange preference for ridiculously small text that is so prevalent among web designers without breaking the intended layour of websites, as the text zoom available in current browsers does.
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.