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
Turning to the iLife suite of applications, we've got a subset of the tests I ran in my iMac Core Duo article:
"...iMovie HD, a part of the newly announced iLife '06. There are two primary focuses for performance in iMovie HD, video import speed (if you are dealing with a non-DV or non-iSight video source) and effect rendering speed. I focused on the latter, measuring the time it takes to render various transitions and video effects in iMovie HD."
The MacBook Pro's performance in CPU intensive iMovie HD effects is light-years ahead of the PowerBook G4, much like what we saw with the iMac Core Duo vs. the iMac G5. The Electricity video effect renders in less than half the time on the MacBook Pro than it does on the PowerBook G4. Since the iMovie HD effects aren't multi-threaded, there are no Core Solo performance numbers to report as it performs the same as a Core Duo.
Exporting our test movie to iDVD for creation, we've got the same iDVD test I used in the iMac Core Duo review:
"Next up is iDVD, an application that you can use to create DVDs that are playable on any consumer DVD player. There are once again two aspects to performance in iDVD, video encoding performance and menu encoding performance. Since we've already looked at video encoding performance with QuickTime, this test is predominantly limited by how long it takes to encode the menu system in my test DVD. There is a small 13 second iSight video and audio that's encoded in the process but it adds a matter of seconds to the overall time. The image is written to disc instead of sent to the DVD burner for obvious reasons. The results are expressed in seconds, lower being better. Once again, we are dealing with a multi-threaded workload, so both the Core Duo and Core Solo are present in the chart"
The performance advantage here is nearly 22% in favor of the MacBook Pro; even the Core Solo does a good job of outpacing the PowerBook G4.
Finishing off the iLife benchmarks is my iPhoto test, also taken from the previous article:
"The test is simple; I timed the import of all 379 photos into iPhoto which, believe it or not, is quite CPU intensive and not as I/O bound as you'd think. After I got the time I divided it into 379 to get the number of pictures imported per second. Like many operations in OS X, the iPhoto import process is multi-threaded, giving the Core Duo an inherent advantage over the G4 so I've included Core Solo performance in the chart below as well"
The numbers speak for themselves; the MacBook Pro is over twice as fast as the PowerBook G4 here, and with those types of performance increases you can most definitely tell by just using the system. The MacBook Pro is not only more responsive but it just gets everything done a lot quicker than the PowerBook G4.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
52 Comments
View All Comments
Sengir - Saturday, July 22, 2006 - link
I'm mainly a PC guy, but while working on Apple notebooks at a Notebook Depot, I've become interested in the Mac OS. Previously I had little to no exposure to it.I will say this. Apple has made alot of improvement with the Macbook/Pro in terms of repairing. Alot easier to get to the motherboard, hard drive, memory or anything.
Unfortunately they didn't redesign for the heat of the CPUs, the ventilation just doesn't seem adequate and as a result, overheating is common.
There are other issues with the hardware, but none I can really go into. I believe people buy Macs for the OS and not the hardware. Since some of the design/materials are cheaper than an HP notebook, for more cost. If I buy a Mac, it will probably be a mini, due to cost. The Macbooks are very nice, but have several flaws that need to be addressed.
redison - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link
"I've become interested in the Mac OS ..... believe people buy Macs for the OS and not the hardware"Right on, and check out the Leopard ( OS X 10.5 )Preview on Apples website, even better if you have the time see Jobs Kenote
phillock - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link
I've also bought a Macbook one week ago, and I also had a keyboard issue... My 'e' button wasnt working sometimes... When i lifted the key off the keyboard i could see the plastic under the key was kind of broken: there was a little crack in it. https://tinyurl.com I went back to the apple shop, and because I only had the laptop for like 2 days they just gave me a complete new one.../y83723wwphillock - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link
I'm most interested in a smaller model though, so I have to wait regardless. I suspect the smallest model may get a 13" 1280x800 widescreen too, considering that as of the Aperture 1.1 update, Apple https://tinyurl.com/y83723ww has arbitrarily (and very annoyingly) removed support for my 1024x768 iBook G4 12" 1.33 GHz, and is saying that a minimum 1280x780 screen is required, even though no such laptop is available yet from Apple.hasapi - Monday, April 17, 2006 - link
Excellent reading - I just received my 2GHz MBP - and its just fantastic in every way. My only gripe which was noted in the article is the battery life of just over 2.5hrs!, its probably unrealistic but my old PB was getting 3.5hrs - maybe a new third party battery might help but would have been nice to see upwards of 5hrs imo?Eug - Sunday, April 16, 2006 - link
I agree. Moreover, Boot Camp and Parallels' Workstation both will be improved by then, and Apple's pro line of laptops may just have Blu-ray drives as well available as an option. Even if we don't get Blu-ray drives by the time Merom is incorporated into MacBook Pros, in the very least we'll have 8X DVD-R support as well as dual-layer support.
I'm most interested in a smaller model though, so I have to wait regardless. I suspect the smallest model may get a 13" 1280x800 widescreen too, considering that as of the Aperture 1.1 update, Apple has arbitrarily (and very annoyingly) removed support for my 1024x768 iBook G4 12" 1.33 GHz, and is saying that a minimum 1280x780 screen is required, even though no such laptop is available yet from Apple.
tekkstore - Monday, April 17, 2006 - link
http://www.tekkstore.com">tekkstore.comgamehack - Saturday, April 15, 2006 - link
Hi there,I have a question to any owners of a MacBook Pro - Is the keyboard suitable for heavy use? I planning to get a MBP and use it as my main dev machine so I would typing quite a lot.
Kind regards,
gamehack
bertd - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
in my opinion, the keyboard is one of the best keyboards i've ever used on a laptop... and i code a lot of html, php and css so i use it a lot toobertd - Saturday, April 15, 2006 - link
Anand:great review!
I've also bought a Macbook one week ago, and I also had a keyboard issue... My 'e' button wasnt working sometimes... When i lifted the key off the keyboard i could see the plastic under the key was kind of broken: there was a little crack in it. I went back to the apple shop, and because I only had the laptop for like 2 days they just gave me a complete new one...
I've also experienced the 'heat' problems.. the first macbook i had was an 'earlier' version of the macbook : the serial number was W8611*****... With the new one, the one they have given me to replace the one with the broken 'e' key, the serial number started with w8612****, and I've read that macbooks starting with these numbers in their serial should be newer revisions...
The heat problem is not as bad as with the first one, but still the bottom gets kind off hotter than with any other laptop i've ever had...