“The main goal of Apple’s automatic graphics switching is to balance graphics performance with long battery life… The first [difference in Apple’s approach] is that the switching is all handled automatically by Mac OS X without any user intervention (though there is actually a System Preference to deactivate it, if you choose). Apps that use advanced graphics frameworks such as OpenGL, Core Graphics, Quartz Composer or others will cause the OS to trigger the discrete GPU. So, when you are reading or writing Mail, or editing an Excel spreadsheet, Mac OS X will simply use the integrated Intel HD graphics. If you fire up Aperture or Photoshop, Mac OS X kicks on the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M. The second way that it differs from Optimus is that the integrated graphics are powered down when the discrete GPU is active. This saves even more power than Optimus does, leading to a stated battery life as long as nine hours.”
Read more in the full article here.
Interesting. Intricate, but interesting.
One company does and every other company says, “Of course!”
Once again Apple says, “We can do this better than anyone else can, and we don’t want to wait for their inelegant solution”.
And, they are almost always right.
Discretion is the better part of battery life!
ROBOMAC!
Perhaps this extra attention to detail and usability was the cause for the MacBook Pro refresh taking longer than expected. As usual, the results are worth the wait. 9 hours of battery life is pretty amazing; 90% of the time with its running, the Mac is just patiently waiting for the next keystroke or mouse click. So this automatic switching ability is like free energy.
And here I am, struggling along with an ATI Radeon X1600 (128mb) and 3GB of RAM. Actually, it all seems to work just fine.