My New MacBook Pro

It arrived this morning! There are surely plenty of unboxing galleries up by now, so I'll spare you most of the pix. I thought it would be useful to post some comparisons of the 2.0 Ghz MacBook Pro w/ 1 gig RAM to the 1.67 Ghz Powerbook 15" G4 High-Res with 1 Gb RAM, which I also happen to have, at least for the moment. Both have the faster 7200 RPM 100 gig HDs in them. They are also configured the same, as I just sucked everything over from the G4 during the MBP setup.

Speaking of setup, the MagSafe connector already saved my ass! I was checking on the file transfer, without turning the office light on, and tripped over the powercord. Seriously, how stupid is that? I've had the thing for 10 minutes! Well, the MagSafe connector popped right out and the MBP didn't even flinch. Didn't move a millimeter. Thank you, Apple!

Display comparison, boot and app launch comparisons after the jump...

OK, the power brick is bigger. It's not monstrous, but about 30% taller. Still slim, and won't matter to me much when I travel, just throw it in the bag. The wire to the MagSafe is noticeably thicker as well.

It's only been up for a few minutes, so these are observations, not benchmarks. First, the display is just incredible. Not only is it significantly brighter, the colors are much better. I opened up a portrait in Photoshop and the colors and fleshtones are much warmer and truer than on the now decidedly blue-ish gray looking G4. In the dark, the display is literally too bright with the backlight all the way up; definitely want to let it adjust itself. In the picture, both displays are turned to full brightness. Hard to capture in a pic, in person the difference is even more dramatic. The downside? Those pixels missing off the vertical dimension will be missed. When I'm working in the office tomorrow, I'll try to post an update as to whether the better screen offsets that to some degree. I use the 'book screen as my main monitor, and the extra crispy High-Res screen allowed me to view Word docs at a lower zoom level to fit more on the page. The even brighter MBP screen may allow even smaller typefaces to be viewed without strain, which would make up for the lost pixels. Maybe, we'll see. Also, there's a discussion at TUAW that describes a faint band of light near the bottom. Not really an issue on mine.

Startup: interestingly, that weird sound the 'Books make that I think is the computer checking to see if there's a CD or DVD in that drive, happens earlier in the boot process than on the G4. It happens before the screen turns on. Must be the different boot system. Booting up was about 8 or 9 seconds faster on the MBP than the PBG4, not a huge difference.

Safari starts up and loads My Yahoo! significantly faster, but it's already pretty fast on the G4, so it shaves about a full second off. Web browsing in general is snappier--pages definitely load faster.

Mail opens almost instantly, but again, it's pretty snappy on the G4, too. Noticeable difference, but not a lot of raw time saved.

Photoshop CS (not CS2) takes about 8 or 9 seconds longer to start up, but opening a 1.4 meg image was only slightly slower--less than a second difference. I didn't do a lot of manipulations on the image, but for my needs, it'll be fine until the next version is Universal.

Word launched in almost the same amount of time as on the G4. Generally performance was about equal.

Entourage actually opened faster on the MBP. Again, the Office apps seem to suffer little if at all from Rosetta translation. That's a good thing, because between Word and Entourage and Safari, I've covered 85% of my daily app usage. I should be fine with the switch, and can look forward to some significant speed gains when some of my key apps go Universal. Keynote is another app I use in critical situations, and it's Universal and very fast.

Comments

[Barry Ritholtz]

Is it true that once you go Intel, you cannever go back?

I guess this means I have to do something about allmy documents in System 7 Word Perfect . . .