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MacBook Pro Reviews

Swad

By Swad,
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Swad
Swad
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As more and more MacBook Pros (It’s not that I mind the name so much – it’s just that extra syllable…) come rolling in, we’ve got more reviews than you can shake a stick at. I’m not really sure what kind of quantifiable data stick-shaking creates, but let’s just say there’s a lot.

 

Two of the best reviews are those from MacWorld (Pro?) and Ars Technica. Ars usually does a good job with their reviews but this time they threw us a bonus: they compared the MacBook Pro with an old Powerbook and a hacked Dell running 10.4.4. Although the Dell fared poorly in the UI test (using a ATI Mobility Radeon 9700), it held its own and actually beat the MBP on a few tests. Sans the UI test, the Dell was roughly on par with the Mac with xbench scores. It didn’t do so well with the other tests.

 

Have you gotten your MacBook yet? If so, let us know your impressions here!

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Jonny_T
Jonny_T
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There is obviously something borked about the UI test anyway as the intel Macs are scoring lower than the PPCs and that is against the grain of the user experience and the improved graphics cards in the newer machines. XBench just isn't a very good tool IMO. It barely even gives you similar results when run multiple times on the same machine. At best, it only gives you a rough indication of performance.

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cyrana
cyrana
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The xbench results are flawed on x86 anyway. Beam Sync isn't enabled on PPC, but it is on x86, so the results are skewed.

 

Open "/Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/Quartz Debug.app", choose "Tools -> Show Beam Sync Tools" and choose "Disable Beam Synchronization"

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Mr. Bond
Mr. Bond
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The xbench results are flawed on x86 anyway. Beam Sync isn't enabled on PPC, but it is on x86, so the results are skewed.

 

Unless you disable it, that is. Interesting results, though. The Dell was definetly ourperformed for most of the Graphics tests. Almost no speedup with OpenGL. And Windows just blew them all out of the water :)

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iMaurice
iMaurice
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Unless you disable it, that is. Interesting results, though. The Dell was definetly ourperformed for most of the Graphics tests. Almost no speedup with OpenGL. And Windows just blew them all out of the water :censored2:

they should have used vista to compare results with windows :)

 

(i know, i know...leopard)

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Ouch
Ouch
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Well this thread never really took off as intended did it? Oh well here goes - since i've had my mbp for a few days now i'll give my first impressions.

 

1) Very Hot - i never owned a powerbook so can't make a comparison but after an hour or so the underside is certainly to hot handle for very long. I definitely wouldn't put it on bare legs! (or thin shorts - ouch!)

 

2) Speed is hard to tell, i haven't benchmarked it for the reasons mentioned in previous posts, and unfortunately the apps i use for the longest periods of time are non universal - basically all of adobe's CS2 line up and what was macromedia dreamweaver and flash - and they are noticeably slow. Office 2004 isn't as bad as i was expecting, i ran it breifly on a hackintosh with a celeron d but the core duo and whatever rosetta tweaks have been made have definitely helped.

 

Universal apps on the other hand are fast. The entire ilife/iwork suites are real snappy to launch, as is deerpark and safari. The OS also feels responsive.

 

3) Front Row - the remote was a nice gimmick, although to be honest i can't see it being used extensively, and i'm sure i'm going to loose it sometime within the next month (i wish it was a couple of mm thinner, it would give me something to put in the expresscard/34 slot) The other problem - which doesn't seem to be restricted to intel macs - is that the movie trailer service doesn't seem to work in front row most of the time. This is seems to be a problem with the servers and hopefully apple will pull their fingers out and sort it.

 

4) iSight - well its fun for a few minutes, playing with the usual morphing effects in photobooth. (I can't figure out why the image gets mirrored resulting in text appearing reversed) I don't have an AOL or .Mac account (can't really see where my $99 is actually going?!) so i can't make use of iChat's video conferencing facilities. But it does gather a crowd in uni :(

 

5) Display - the display is lovely, bright and clear. Some people complain about the resolution not being increased over the powerbooks but to be honest its actually the right resolution for the screen size - any higher and things would get too small for comfort.

 

6) Battery life - i haven't done any extensive testing here and the indicator says i have about 3:30 hours out of a full charge but i haven't had a chance to callibrate the battery yet. Once i do i'll post an update on this.

 

Overall i'm pleased, it looks fantastic runs great and is worth the money in my oppinion. However i'm looking forward to Adobe getting universal apps out the door, but i think this could be a long wait.

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Swad
Swad
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Thanks for your impressions, Ouch! Yeah, I'd love to have a few more reviews in this thread, so if you've got a MBP, let us know what you think!

 

I know that some of the powerbooks had issues with the screen touching the keyboard - a lot of people bought pieces of leather or plastic to put between them. Have you noticed any of this?

 

Also, while I haven't gotten to look at one yet, if it's getting too hot you might take it into an Apple store and see what they think. Did you add your own RAM?

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Ouch
Ouch
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I didn't add my own ram but i upped it to a gig when i placed the order. I might nip up to an apple reseller and have a feel of their display models - see if tbe heat levels are normal.

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suleiman
suleiman
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I'm thinking about purchasing a MBP 2.0 ghz model. I was going to go for the 2.16 ghz model but the wait isn't worth it for the extra 160 mhz you get. In any case, I'm sure the speed difference won't be worth much mentioning either.

 

I suppose the only thing holding me back is the Dell I've got OS X running on right now. It's smaller than the MBP, runs for about 2+ hours on a single charge, is lightweight, and scores reasonably well in Xbench (not that Xbench tests matter when comparing to the MBP)

 

If the CS2 lineup runs noticeably faster then it would certainly sweeten up the deal, but right now spending nearly 3k for a marginal speed increase, if it is indeed only marginal, doesn't seem to make much sense.

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Swad
Swad
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I'm thinking about purchasing a MBP 2.0 ghz model. I was going to go for the 2.16 ghz model but the wait isn't worth it for the extra 160 mhz you get. In any case, I'm sure the speed difference won't be worth much mentioning either.

 

Yeah, I'd agree. The only thing that the upgrade really offers to me is the increased HD space. I doubt the speed difference is noticeable. If I were going to upgrade something, it would be the RAM and the faster hard drive speed.

 

I suppose the only thing holding me back is the Dell I've got OS X running on right now. It's smaller than the MBP, runs for about 2+ hours on a single charge, is lightweight, and scores reasonably well in Xbench (not that Xbench tests matter when comparing to the MBP)

 

Yeah, I'm not running OSx86 so I really feel like I'm missing out. I see your delimma though. I'm actually trying for a MacBook Pro for testing, site stuff, etc.

 

They are indeed sweet machines and seem to be getting great reviews from most everyone.

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cyrana
cyrana
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I'm thinking about purchasing a MBP 2.0 ghz model. I was going to go for the 2.16 ghz model but the wait isn't worth it for the extra 160 mhz you get. In any case, I'm sure the speed difference won't be worth much mentioning either.

 

I suppose the only thing holding me back is the Dell I've got OS X running on right now. It's smaller than the MBP, runs for about 2+ hours on a single charge, is lightweight, and scores reasonably well in Xbench (not that Xbench tests matter when comparing to the MBP)

 

If the CS2 lineup runs noticeably faster then it would certainly sweeten up the deal, but right now spending nearly 3k for a marginal speed increase, if it is indeed only marginal, doesn't seem to make much sense.

Your Dell weighs .1lb less than a MBP (if you put a DVD drive in it), so weight shouldn't be much different I'd not think. Your Dell is smaller though, but even though it is smaller it gets over 1 hour less battery time... I'm not sure how much faster CS2 is going to run on it though, I suppose. Does Rosetta take advantage of dual-core? The extra 400MHZ+SSE3 it has on your computer should help some.

 

 

We need more xbench results w/beam sync turned off... (Although I think it is a fairly useless benchmark)

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suleiman
suleiman
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well whatever the results it's too late for me guys! I just caved in today and put an order at compusa for a new 2.0 ghz macbook pro slated to arrive by this friday :censored2:

 

I figured I'd do the ram and hard drive upgrades later, but what really got me on board was being able to run a copy of os X I could just update from Apple, where everything worked out of the box, without me having to get nervous about breaking my install. I love this OS, and I don't mind supporting apple for it.

 

It was pricey though! At 2,499 plus 349 for applecare, we're looking at almost 3k!

 

I'll also get beam synching turned off and let everyone know where the xbench scores fall after that.

 

Cheers!

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Ouch
Ouch
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With beam syncing turned off

 

Results	77.26	
System Info		
	Xbench Version		1.2
	System Version		10.4.5 (8H1455)
	Physical RAM		1024 MB
	Model		MacBookPro1,1
	Drive Type		ST98823AS
CPU Test	66.11	
	GCD Loop	226.47	11.94 Mops/sec
	Floating Point Basic	75.83	1.80 Gflop/sec
	vecLib FFT	37.36	1.23 Gflop/sec
	Floating Point Library	61.97	10.79 Mops/sec
Thread Test	178.92	
	Computation	162.59	3.29 Mops/sec, 4 threads
	Lock Contention	198.90	8.56 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test	101.46	
	System	102.26	
		Allocate	109.87	403.50 Kalloc/sec
		Fill	97.68	4749.58 MB/sec
		Copy	100.00	2065.49 MB/sec
	Stream	100.67	
		Copy	84.22	1739.43 MB/sec
		Scale	82.91	1712.97 MB/sec
		Add	127.39	2713.70 MB/sec
		Triad	125.80	2691.21 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test	82.92	
	Line	89.86	5.98 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
	Rectangle	95.51	28.51 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
	Circle	93.59	7.63 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
	Bezier	102.17	2.58 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
	Text	54.86	3.43 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test	116.32	
	Spinning Squares	116.32	147.56 frames/sec
User Interface Test	161.99	
	Elements	161.99	743.44 refresh/sec
Disk Test	30.12	
	Sequential	57.66	
		Uncached Write	60.24	36.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		Uncached Write	58.41	33.05 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Uncached Read	48.44	14.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		Uncached Read	66.65	33.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
	Random	20.38	
		Uncached Write	6.46	0.68 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		Uncached Write	63.27	20.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Uncached Read	68.53	0.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		Uncached Read	89.50	16.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]

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EtherealRemnant
EtherealRemnant
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Disk Test 30.12

Sequential 57.66

Uncached Write 60.24 36.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 58.41 33.05 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 48.44 14.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 66.65 33.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 20.38

Uncached Write 6.46 0.68 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 63.27 20.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 68.53 0.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 89.50 16.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[/code]

 

Ouch... those results make me cry. My old Maxtor 6Y200P0 got 110-140% on everything but the uncached read test, which it scored about 20 on.

 

Everything else looks good though. Highly doubt I'd be willing to drop ~3k on a laptop though, Apple or not...

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Ouch
Ouch
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That's why if you buy a mbp make sure you get lots of RAM - don't want to be swapping with times like that! A 5400rpm drive isn't going to give good results, even if it is sata.

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suleiman
suleiman
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to be honest I plan on swapping out my 5400 drive with a 7200 as soon as I get my hands on some dough. The ram upgrade is only costing around 100 for the extra 1 gig, but the hard drive will be about 200+ :guitar:

 

The good news is that's still about 300 cheaper than getting it from apple!

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cyrana
cyrana
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to be honest I plan on swapping out my 5400 drive with a 7200 as soon as I get my hands on some dough. The ram upgrade is only costing around 100 for the extra 1 gig, but the hard drive will be about 200+ :)

 

The good news is that's still about 300 cheaper than getting it from apple!

Just make sure you don't get the Seagate Momentus 7200.1. It costs more than the Hitachi part, is slower, louder, and hotter. :whistle:

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Snitch
Snitch
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Just make sure you don't get the Seagate Momentus 7200.1. It costs more than the Hitachi part, is slower, louder, and hotter. ;)

 

I have the Hitachi 7200 100gb in my Powerbook and I can say its awesome. I bit louder than the stock 4200rpm 80gb I originally had, but what do i expect, its 3000rpm faster!

Its not very loud at all really. I never hear it click, i can just hear the spinning once i get up close and its a quiet environment.

 

It shaves seconds off my boot and app launching time. Its no hotter, and is relatively battery efficient too. I think this is the second revision of the Hitachi 7200rpm drives. Model # HTS721010G9AT00. It comes in SATA and ATA (I obviously have the Parallel one).

 

The HD is one of the biggest bottlenecks in laptops. I thought I may as well go all out and get the best money can buy, as there are limited upgrade options for laptops anyway. I would recommend this drive to any Powerbook or Macbook owner. :D

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Ouch
Ouch
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How does replacing a HD in the new macs work - i thought in the switch to efi they had moved away from having an MBR do the drives need to support GPT or can it just be used with any drive? How do you copy the EFI partition onto the new drive?

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non sequitur
non sequitur
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wait a second (im a bit of a n00b), you need a .mac account to video chat in iChat? that sucks.

anyways, i am planning on buying a macbook pro/ibook, but i need more money. i need a job... :( probably going to sell my old laptops... im close.

hey ouch!, nice review. sad to see about the heat, but i still think i would want the power of the mbp over the ibook when they are released.

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