The Big Switch – First Reactions to the Jobs Keynote and MacIntels
As everyone knows by now, Apple released the first of its Intel-bearing Macs. But much of the Mac community was caught by surprise by Apple’s choice of the iMac as the first machine to use those processors. Apple also opened up the option to purchase their first Intel powered notebook named the MacBook Pro.
The new iMac is almost the same as its predecessor except it does have a slightly faster video card. The coolest thing about the machine is it houses a dual core Intel processor, making it the fastest iMac ever (when running native applications ported to it). Apple is claiming the machine is two to three times faster than the current iMac. However, you have to read the fine print to understand that the Spec benchmarks Apple published are not real but estimated benchmarks, something that makes Apple’s speed claims highly suspect. I’ve been dealing with the Apple benchmark issue ever since I became an Apple user about four and a half years ago; and if there’s been one consistent thing throughout that experience, it’s been that Apple always overstates their case, sometimes rather famously. My personal belief is that the new iMac will prove to be twice as fast as the current iMac when it runs Intel OS X native applications. (I think that, also despite earlier Apple claims, megahertz does matter and that a single Intel 2.0 GHz CPU will prove to be on equal footing with a 2.0 GHz G5 CPU.) But for those applications that have not been ported and are highly dependent on Altivec, they will at best run as well as they do on a G5 though some will be slower. I watched Jobs’ demo of Photoshop with Rosetta pretty closely last night (via the Apple web feed), and it appeared to me he was simply bringing into the frame layers which were already built. That’s not something that takes a lot of CPU power, despite Jobs’ commentary that he was doing a lot of heavy compositing. I’m waiting until Barefeats.com, MacWorld magazine, or me myself and I get to test one of these machines before deciding how much faster it is, if it is faster at all.
I’m also taking the same “wait and see” approach toward the MacBook Pro. Frankly, I don’t believe it’s four times faster than the PowerBook. Somewhere between 2 -2.5 is more probable, with three times the best that it can do. Again, I’ll wait for the benchmarks to prove me wrong. I’m not crazy about its 15 inch form factor. I was happy about its inclusion of iSight, its retention of a Firewire 400 port, and its inclusion of a backlit keyboard. I am seeing some grumbling about the deletion of Firewire 800, but I don’t have that on my current 12 inch PowerBook nor am I using it with my dual G5 PowerMac. So, it’s not a big player for me, though I know it will be with some videographers and digital photographers. The Express Card slot is less impressive to me than a PC card slot would have been; there’s nothing out there to stick in the former, almost.
Will you be able to boot either of these machines into Windows? That’s the 64 dollar question I’m waiting for someone to answer. Some kind of boot manager will surface soon if it’s not already out there; and once it does, I might be more inclined to start looking at these new Apple offerings harder. If I could dual boot an iMac, I would spring for the 20 inch 2.0 GHz MacIntel machine, load up XP and everything I need and get rid of my separate PC or turn it into a gamer running an older OS (like DOS and Win98 or 95). Likewise, I have more incentive to buy a MacBook Pro if I can dual boot since I use my notebook for flight planning when flying cross-country and the major application I use runs only on Windows; I make it work using Virtual PC and Win XP, but it’s slow.
My wife and I talked about buying one or both of these machines while still in the afterglow of the Jobs effect, but it’s worn off this morning in the light of day. We’re not going to order any of them right now unless we win the lotto win tonight, at which point every family member who wants one will be able to get a PowerPC or Intel powered Mac. I’ll look at buying a MacIntel more as applications get ported over and I recover from Hurricane Rita, Christmas, and airplane expenses. I’m pretty happy with how my 2.0 GHz G5 iMac is running everything. I see no reason right now to chance screwing that up.
I did order iLife06 (the family pack), though I did that primarily because my wife wanted it. I wasn’t that impressed. Each application has some improvement I’ll benefit from or are interested in, but the .Mac centeredness of several of the new features turned me off. If Apple keeps that trend up, iLife07 will be a ball buster for them because only .Mac customers will order it. I don’t have a problem with new features working with .Mac but they also need to work with customers’ current web servers or Internet providers as well.
The new iMac is almost the same as its predecessor except it does have a slightly faster video card. The coolest thing about the machine is it houses a dual core Intel processor, making it the fastest iMac ever (when running native applications ported to it). Apple is claiming the machine is two to three times faster than the current iMac. However, you have to read the fine print to understand that the Spec benchmarks Apple published are not real but estimated benchmarks, something that makes Apple’s speed claims highly suspect. I’ve been dealing with the Apple benchmark issue ever since I became an Apple user about four and a half years ago; and if there’s been one consistent thing throughout that experience, it’s been that Apple always overstates their case, sometimes rather famously. My personal belief is that the new iMac will prove to be twice as fast as the current iMac when it runs Intel OS X native applications. (I think that, also despite earlier Apple claims, megahertz does matter and that a single Intel 2.0 GHz CPU will prove to be on equal footing with a 2.0 GHz G5 CPU.) But for those applications that have not been ported and are highly dependent on Altivec, they will at best run as well as they do on a G5 though some will be slower. I watched Jobs’ demo of Photoshop with Rosetta pretty closely last night (via the Apple web feed), and it appeared to me he was simply bringing into the frame layers which were already built. That’s not something that takes a lot of CPU power, despite Jobs’ commentary that he was doing a lot of heavy compositing. I’m waiting until Barefeats.com, MacWorld magazine, or me myself and I get to test one of these machines before deciding how much faster it is, if it is faster at all.
I’m also taking the same “wait and see” approach toward the MacBook Pro. Frankly, I don’t believe it’s four times faster than the PowerBook. Somewhere between 2 -2.5 is more probable, with three times the best that it can do. Again, I’ll wait for the benchmarks to prove me wrong. I’m not crazy about its 15 inch form factor. I was happy about its inclusion of iSight, its retention of a Firewire 400 port, and its inclusion of a backlit keyboard. I am seeing some grumbling about the deletion of Firewire 800, but I don’t have that on my current 12 inch PowerBook nor am I using it with my dual G5 PowerMac. So, it’s not a big player for me, though I know it will be with some videographers and digital photographers. The Express Card slot is less impressive to me than a PC card slot would have been; there’s nothing out there to stick in the former, almost.
Will you be able to boot either of these machines into Windows? That’s the 64 dollar question I’m waiting for someone to answer. Some kind of boot manager will surface soon if it’s not already out there; and once it does, I might be more inclined to start looking at these new Apple offerings harder. If I could dual boot an iMac, I would spring for the 20 inch 2.0 GHz MacIntel machine, load up XP and everything I need and get rid of my separate PC or turn it into a gamer running an older OS (like DOS and Win98 or 95). Likewise, I have more incentive to buy a MacBook Pro if I can dual boot since I use my notebook for flight planning when flying cross-country and the major application I use runs only on Windows; I make it work using Virtual PC and Win XP, but it’s slow.
My wife and I talked about buying one or both of these machines while still in the afterglow of the Jobs effect, but it’s worn off this morning in the light of day. We’re not going to order any of them right now unless we win the lotto win tonight, at which point every family member who wants one will be able to get a PowerPC or Intel powered Mac. I’ll look at buying a MacIntel more as applications get ported over and I recover from Hurricane Rita, Christmas, and airplane expenses. I’m pretty happy with how my 2.0 GHz G5 iMac is running everything. I see no reason right now to chance screwing that up.
I did order iLife06 (the family pack), though I did that primarily because my wife wanted it. I wasn’t that impressed. Each application has some improvement I’ll benefit from or are interested in, but the .Mac centeredness of several of the new features turned me off. If Apple keeps that trend up, iLife07 will be a ball buster for them because only .Mac customers will order it. I don’t have a problem with new features working with .Mac but they also need to work with customers’ current web servers or Internet providers as well.
posted by Andy Foster at
8:44 PM
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