Apple's MacBook Pro: Using it as a Mac and a PC
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
I had to enter my CD key and deal with activation just like you would on a PC, and then I was placed at the Windows desktop. The next step was to toss in the driver CD created earlier, and Windows' autorun feature will start a driver installation wizard for the MacBook Pro.
While there's an occasional Continue or Next button to click, the process is mostly automated as it installs the MacBook Pro's chipset, video, audio, network and input drivers. Thanks to having complete control over the hardware configuration Apple has made the process of installing Windows on your Mac easier than it is installing it on your PC. With all of the drivers installed, there's one last reboot and the process is complete. I'd just installed Windows XP on my MacBook Pro and now it's time to use it.
After installing Windows XP, by default the MacBook Pro boots to the Windows partition . This behavior can be changed in the Startup Disk utility: Control Panel > Performance > Startup Disk and select the default boot partition. If you happen to have a bootable CD/DVD in the drive you can even choose to boot from that.
While the control panel option will permanently change the system's default behavior, if you want to temporarily boot to a different partition simply hold down the option key while the MacBook Pro starts up to access the boot menu.
It takes no more than a few minutes using Windows XP on the MacBook Pro before you realize that a number of things feel out of place. The biggest problem is that there's no right mouse button, which in OS X you get around by holding down the ctrl key and clicking, but in Windows XP ctrl + click does nothing. There is a utility out there that will make holding the ctrl key down swap your left and right mouse buttons temporarily, effectively making ctrl + click function as a right click under Windows. The utility works as advertised; you just need to make sure it loads at startup to always have support for a right mouse button. The other option to right click is to hit Shift + F10, but obviously it's not the most natural feeling.
Apple's driver CD installs a driver to enable support for the eject key on the MacBook Pro keyboard, which is very helpful because without it or any support for a right click, getting a CD/DVD to eject is far more trouble than it should be. The fn key is also not supported under Windows XP, which means that not only do you lose support support for the function hotkeys but you also lose any support for page up, page down, home and end keys.
Although Apple clearly states that the integrated iSight camera is not supported under Windows XP, a camera icon does show up in My Computer. However, I made the mistake of doubling clicking it which gave me my first blue screen on a Mac. Needless to say, I didn't make that mistake again.
My only other complaint about using Windows XP under Boot Camp on the MacBook Pro is that I could never get the mouse sensitivity to be at a level I was perfectly comfortable with. The default setting was far too slow (just like under OS X), but cranking it up to where I would like it made the pointer behave a little too erratically when trying to perform more minute movements. The trackpad was obviously fine under OS X, so it sounds like it's just a driver thing under Windows XP.
In terms of usability, Windows XP under Boot Camp is pretty much like Windows XP on any other notebook other than the aforementioned keyboard/trackpad limitations; I've got no complaints there. And yes, you can even run games on your notebook, but keep in mind that the MacBook Pro's Mobility Radeon X1600 isn't going to be able to run the latest games at their highest detail settings.
Honestly, it would seem that fixing the issues I had with Boot Camp would be fairly simple for Apple to do with a more extensive keyboard driver. Much like Apple did with their eject button driver, doing the same for the other keys that currently don't work would fix a lot of the problems. It could be that Apple either released the Boot Camp beta earlier than it expected to, or that Apple wants to make the Windows XP experience as poor as possible on the MacBook Pro.
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boinkle - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Great review, apart from making me think "that's still quite pretty!", at the end of the day it's just a PC in an Apple enclosure. It's shiny, fast, but has all the problems of an Apple 1st gen product, with few of the benefits of Core duo showing up...How I wish someone had given Freescale some incentive to develop the G4 further (to a reasonablt timescale). It's amazing that it's still even *reasonably* competitive. Imagine dual-core, 65nm G4 derivative production? Don't TI have a 65nm fab up and running now? That's where your 5 hours would come from, Anand... pie in the sky, I know.
*sigh*
littlebitstrouds - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
How about some gaming benchmarks. If you run windows and game are you getting good performance numbers? If I could have a Mac for everyday use and boot up windows when I want to game I might jump on this.Visual - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
you have some borked page 18 after the "final thoughts" page showing up in the dropdown.in printarticle.aspx it shows up as a duplicate of page 17 for some reason
as to the article itself - good job :)
my guess as to why the vm is faster than the real thing is because the hdd emulation works somewhat like a ramdrive - its a file on the apple hdd but it probably gets cached up by osx or by the vmsoftware itself.
plinden - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
That could be - I have maxed out at 2GB RAM in my iMac, and I get wired RAM is close to the max and a hefty number of Page Outs (up to 210,000 last time I looked. before it setayed below 5000 even after being on for a week) while running Parallels VM.
ibisbowti - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
I been using the 1.83 Core Duo for about a week now. I think it is one of the latest builds according to the serial number. No problems at all, other than it does get pretty warm. Heat issue seems better after latest firmware update. I think the aluminum is designed to be a big heat sink! I thought the Front Row software would be a little gimmicky, but it is pretty cool, especially when sitting the unit on a coffee table and watching the HD movie trailers, IPhoto pics, etc with others. It's an awesome machine so far.artifex - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Since you say you ran the same tests as in your earlier review, I'd like to see graphs comparing the results of the Intel iMac vs. the MBP. and add in ones for the Intel Mini, if you can. I suspect we'll see iMac > MBP > Mini, but it would be nice to be sure.Also, if you could slap Parallels on the Mini and tell us how much of a hit the virtualization takes because the hardware virtualization is disabled for that line, that would be really interesting.
Thanks.
AppaYipYip - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
"Apple quality control at it's best"That comment bothers me. Overall, there are no other manufacturers that come even close to Apples quality, design, and workmanship. Yet, you find one key that sits slightly off and suddenly feel the need to make such a blanket statement. If it bothers you so much, take it back and Apple will repair it for you, in record time.
Calin - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
The IBM thinkpads (before the Lenovo deal) were regarded as the best business laptops (or at least PC laptops) as quality and workmanship. Too bad they were designed with cramped keyboards (at least the models I saw) and no trackpad.Ryan Norton - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
I'm a PC guy but I like Macs a lot and will probably buy a Macbook Pro, either now or when Merom ones come out. I figure Anand probably is too. Yet I work with Mac zealots who give me endless shit about the unequivocal superiority of Apple everything over PC (except for games, which they concede). So when someone like me finds a glaring flaw that seems like something that should have been spotted before it got to the end user, it's easy to take a cheap shot at Jobs =^)Sunrise089 - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
If I had my dream review of this product, here's how I would have you test gaming performance:Test performance in Windows mode. Then compare it to other Core Duo notebooks. Then see if there is any game written natively for OS-X under Core Duo, and run the OS-X version and the Windows version to see the difference in OS on performance on the same machine.
Other than no gaming info, terrific review.