Hands on with a MacBookPro
Yesterday I had the chance to have a hands on with bigger version of the Apple MacBook Pro. First impression is that its just like a G4 Powerbook. Apple really did some miracle thing by just swapping out the internals and for the normal user everything seems to be the same. If you look closer there are some prominent differences that seem awkward. First of all the poweradapter is HUGE. I mean its about half the size more then the original leaving you to lug around a brick that seems heavier and bigger then my Apple Newton! Second its quite loud. The fan sounds like the fan in my aging Titanium - and that is really loud. Then its hot. I wouldnīt say its hotter then the G4 but the heat is spread over the whole enclosure and using it on my lap made me sweat. I am not so keen on the magnetic powerplug. While it seems firmly attached wants you slightly jank it upwards - something that regularely happens when on your lap - it unplugs right away. You just ask why you donīt have any battery left after a while until you noticed the automatic plug has been pulled out. Looking at a performance setting in a club with lots of cables on the table and the powerbook cramped in small space I see that as a HUGE problem - I really have better things to do then check for the powerplug every five minutes... I just see VJs and musicians gaffa the sucker onto the enclosure.
The computer did impress its new owner who just had an aging old PC before. So I would call him switcher and almost first time computer user. The iSight that wanted his photo in the registration prozess, photo booth, keynote and the templates of Pages have impressed him - he is studying bussiness stuff so thats what is his main concern. He was amazed that he actually wanted to make a presentation because it was so much fun -applaud to Apple in the category "Impress First User Experience". As a bussiness student he could "see his investment worthwhile".
I did not have the time yesterday to check the speed of the machine, will do so more thouroughly next week. The UniBinaries that come with it (iLife, iWorks (is that even Uni?) etc) where as fast as the normal G4 (purely subjective) and didnīt seem to cause any problems. Impressive was the OpenGL speed and the quality of the realtime rendered output - good graphic card that sits inside is responsible for that and billion lightyears ahead of the one in my Titanium. What Apple - after 8 years of complaining from my part - still has not understand is the "OpenGL beam sync issue". Connecting the sucker to a DVI flatpanel and choosing a high resolution and then playing some quicktimes resulted in always present "tearing" of the pictures with fast scenes or brightness changes - its just a simple flag to set and most 3rd party apps do that now even in VJ programmer amateur land why canīt Apple enable that flag? Its really disturbing detail. Other then that the machine is of the G4 aluminium quality with the exception that the displays open easier and probably will hold better on the hinge (yes there are people with a G4 powerbook where after 1 -2 years the display breaks off the hinge). I for one will wait out until they have friggin version with Firewire 800 or a similar capable interconnect technology otherwise the HD will be the limiting factor in the multi channel full rez videomixing that we are looking toward.