“Apple’s PowerBook line had become out of date due to what the company said was IBM and Freescale’s inability to produce substantially faster PowerPC G4 and G5 chips that didn’t also produce enormous additional amounts of heat impractical for laptops,” Glenn Fleishman writes for Personal Tech Pipeline. “The switch to Intel allows this new model [MacBook Pro] to leap a generation beyond PowerBooks while, through emulation, still supporting most existing software applications as programmers update them for best effect. Apple has abandoned Classic emulation, a method of running pre-Unix Mac OS 9 applications within Mac OS X 10.0 and later, and appended Rosetta emulation, which transforms PowerPC to Intel processor code at a fast clip.”
“In a real-world comparison between my workhorse 2 1/2-year-old 15-inch PowerBook G4 (1 GHz) and the MacBook Pro, the Intel system simply blows away the earlier’s device performance… Software works as expected: universal binaries, or software designed or rewritten to contain code for both PowerPC and Intel processors, run extremely fast, far outstripping the same programs on a PowerBook,” Fleishman writes. “Programs that haven’t yet been rewritten, such as Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 (CS2) will lag the same performance on a PowerBook or recent PowerPC system. But here’s the rub: since I’ve been using an older PowerBook and a three-year-old dual-1.25 GHz Power Mac G4, even a memory and processor hog like Adobe GoLive CS2 seems quite lively. For those who waited to upgrade, the MacBook Pro may seem faster now and much faster as software is released.”
“Rebooting is a thrill with the MacBook Pro because it accomplishes this in less than a minute. I literally thought the machine had failed to reboot when I turned around for what seemed like a few seconds and turned back to find a clean Finder window. Checking the Unix “uptime” utility confirmed it had had a fresh start,” Fleishman writes. “The ExpressCard/34 slot ties directly into the PCI Express bus offering 2 gigabit per second (Gbps) data transfer in each direction. Because of this higher throughput, dual independent FireWire 800 ports will almost certainly be one option for those using a MacBook Pro for video editing… Users like myself with older PowerBooks will already find the MacBook Pro a significant and worthwhile upgrade. More recent PowerBook purchasers or those considering a purchase should evaluate their current software use to make sure universal binaries exist before committing to the next great thing.”
Full article here.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Boston Herald: Apple MacBook Pro ‘contender for best notebook on market, comes with a superior OS’ – March 06, 2006
Time Magazine’s Gadget of the Week: Apple MacBook Pro – March 06, 2006
PC Magazine review gives Apple MacBook Pro 4 out of 5 stars – March 03, 2006
Ars Technica: Apple MacBook Pro ‘an extremely solid machine, an important step forward’ – March 02, 2006
Mossberg: Apple’s MacBook Pro gives users a ‘much better OS with vastly better built-in software’ – March 02, 2006
New York Times’ Pogue: Apples MacBook Pro a ‘beautifully engineered, forward-thinking laptop’ – March 01, 2006
Apple MacBook Pro a ‘drop-dead gorgeous laptop’ – February 27, 2006
Macworld posts Apple MacBook Pro 2.0GHz first lab tests – February 22, 2006
Apple PowerBook G4 1.5GHz vs. MacBook Pro 2.0Ghz Adobe Photoshop benchmarks – February 22, 2006
Apple begins shipping MacBook Pro notebook computers with faster 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processors – February 14, 2006
Adobe: no native Intel Mac support until 2007; Photoshop could be 14 months away – February 01, 2006
Computerworld: Apple’s MacBook Pro ‘fast, really fast – looks like a real winner’ – January 28, 2006
Analyst: Apple seeing strong sales of iMac Core Duo, MacBook Pro, 5th generation iPod – January 25, 2006
Apple: expect MacBook Pro shortages – January 19, 2006
Use the ExpressCard slot to add FireWire 800 to Apple’s new MacBook Pro – January 15, 2006
Apple MacBook Pro, ExpressCard and EVDO – January 14, 2006
Apple introduces MacBook Pro; up to four times faster than PowerBook G4 – January 10, 2006
Dr. Dude,
I will not recognize that a Studio display is old technology. Studio displays and cinema displays have almost the exact same inards. the only difference is the outer casing. ADC is only different from DVI because it caries DVI, USB, and power all in one cable. Unlike a vga to dvi adapter, dvi to adc does not require a box with fancy circuitry that converts the signal… all it does is split one cord into three, and house a power box.
Even so, I am not saying that this should be a free adapter, I just think that for customers who have a great monitor that still works wonderfully, $100 is a mighty steep price to keep it working with a newer computer. My powerbook, like all powerbooks, came with a dvi to vga adapter for free… even though apple hasn’t made a vga monitor in over seven years. I think that it should have come with at least a discount on a dvi to adc adapter.
If you think I am the only person frustrated about this, check out the product reviews on the apple website. It seems like most people who go through a similar situation to mine are dissapointed and angry about the steep price.
Maybe it’s just me, but it sure seems like MBP is the subject of a lot of advertising lately. Not from Apple (not directly, anyway), but from so-called ‘tech writers’ who have such a limited knowlege of technology. Case in point:
“Apple’s PowerBook line had become out of date due to what the company said was IBM and Freescale’s inability to produce substantially faster PowerPC G4 and G5 chips that didn’t also produce enormous additional amounts of heat impractical for laptops,”
Yeah, and we now see what a load of crap that all was. Specifically, MacBook Pro’s battery life is NOT improved over the old PowerBook (despite having a bigger battery), does NOT run any cooler (every review brave enough to talk about it has said it cooks your thighs as well, if not worse, than PB), and Freescale has had a faster, lower power (than even Core Duo), dual core G4 commercially available for almost a year now. Oh, and Freescale doesn’t make G5s – but since actually digging into the subject obviously wasn’t Mr. Fleishman’s priority, I guess that’s considered a minor oversight.
“The switch to Intel allows this new model … to leap a generation beyond PowerBooks while, through emulation, still supporting most existing software applications as programmers update them for best effect… Rosetta emulation … transforms PowerPC to Intel processor code at a fast clip.”
Fast clip?! It’s have the speed of even the last generation G4 running PPC code! I know – it’s emulation, but this guy needs to be way more honest about the extent of the performance hit involved with using it. and the only reason the MBP ‘leapt a generation’ ahead of the last PB is because the last PB wasn’t equipped with the latest generation of G4. Pretty easy to whip a horse when it’s handicapped.
“In a real-world comparison between my workhorse 2 1/2-year-old 15-inch PowerBook G4 (1 GHz) and the MacBook Pro, the Intel system simply blows away the earlier’s device performance…”
Well, no kidding. You mean to tell me that a brand new computer actually beats a 3 year old one (that’s really how old the 1Ghz PB is)? What a revelation! No wonder he’s so easily impressed.
“Rebooting is a thrill with the MacBook Pro because it accomplishes this in less than a minute.”
Thanks to the new BIOS, which is completely platform independent. Any computer with it will boot just as fast. But the fact this is so impressive to him (who knew rebooting could be such FUN) makes me wonder how he drives his car at all, what with being distracted by the shiny keys and everything …
“The ExpressCard/34 slot ties directly into the PCI Express bus offering 2 gigabit per second (Gbps) data transfer in each direction. Because of this higher throughput, dual independent FireWire 800 ports will almost certainly be one option for those using a MacBook Pro for video editing…”
Except Expresscards are about as common a s George Bush reading a newspaper. And it won’t be an “option” for video editor buying this machine if they’re using FW800 drives, cause the only way to make use of their drive now will be to buy an Expresscard adapter to use it. Nice, considering they probably already spent $2000-3000 for the machine in the first place.
“Users like myself with older PowerBooks will already find the MacBook Pro a significant and worthwhile upgrade. More recent PowerBook purchasers or those considering a purchase should evaluate their current software use to make sure universal binaries exist before committing to the next great thing.”
Finally – a logical statement. Shame it came after all the other falderal. Maybe I’ve been in this too long, but I’m getting a little tired of reviews that are nothing more than regurgitated press releases and ‘wow, it’s shiny’ opinions. Is it really too much to ask for thing to be done better?
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my powerbook has never booted in over a minute. i average about 20-25 seconds or less.
sputnik is a troll
Waiting for HD DVD burner in a Macbook?
Wait a long time-Apple backs Blu-ray, not the HD DVD backed by MS.
The dual firewire connectors is not a feature of the Macbook-but supposedly a peripheral for the express slot is coming.
Boots in under a minute?
So what, I had a 2 year old HP laptop that did that, running SuSe linux(38 seconds).