[Eug Wanker]

Part II: Month with a Mac

Nice review, esp. cuz it includes some videos of OS X in action.

Just in time for the G4 1.67 release.

[jooka]

thanks for sharing the link.

[Commodus]

I have to think that the upcoming (and possibly last of their breed) PowerBook G4s might at least partially address Anand's concerns: slower disk access (5400 RPM drives can provide a bit of a boost) and Exposé (with 128 MB video chipsets likely to be standard on the 15" and 17").

And if that isn't enough... let's hope that WWDC or Apple Expo gives Anand just what he's looking for.

[Fusion]

I am shocked about the memory section of the article.

I know when he picked up his dual 2.0 for review he shoved as much RAM in it as it could hold. With the powerbook, he said the stock 512 was enough?!?

I am willing to bet placing a gig or two in there would increase his performance highly. It sure did in my machine anyway.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by Fusion:
I am shocked about the memory section of the article.

I know when he picked up his dual 2.0 for review he shoved as much RAM in it as it could hold. With the powerbook, he said the stock 512 was enough?!?

I am willing to bet placing a gig or two in there would increase his performance highly. It sure did in my machine anyway.

Yeah, it was a bit odd, but he did say it's enough for the entry-level users.

I would agree, if by "entry-level" he means using Word, Safari, email, and iTunes. However, if it means those plus iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand, I'd recommend 768 MB to 1 GB. (The author says he hasn't really used iLife.)

[Commodus]

I don't think he was concerned so much about entry-level users as just that people, even the most serious users, tend not to tax laptops as strenuously as they might desktops. Rather than having 10 apps or windows open, you might "just" have 3-4 (such as Word, iTunes, and iChat).

[jasonsRX7]

Originally posted by Commodus:
I don't think he was concerned so much about entry-level users as just that people, even the most serious users, tend not to tax laptops as strenuously as they might desktops. Rather than having 10 apps or windows open, you might "just" have 3-4 (such as Word, iTunes, and iChat).

I read the whole article, and that's what he was saying. That since he's not doing as much multitasking on the laptop, that 512mb was enough for good performance.

I get the feeling that Apple products have really grown on Anand, but he has to make sure he doesn't sound overly excited about them because of his readership. You have to be very careful not to sound too complimentary, lest the PC users label him a 'fanboy'.

[Fusion]

Originally posted by jasonsRX7:


I get the feeling that Apple products have really grown on Anand, but he has to make sure he doesn't sound overly excited about them because of his readership. You have to be very careful not to sound too complimentary, lest the PC users label him a 'fanboy'.

Its funny, I got the same feeling reading through it as well. Especially since in the last article he mentioned that he would never be interested in an Apple laptop because they just weren't portable enough.

I think he's caught the bug.

[wuzup101]

I always post on the Anand boards... right now usually just in the peripherals and sff/laptops section. However, I've had tons of experience with PCs and still like them (now liking them with linux ) There are a lot of people there that have iBooks and powerbooks... not so many with desktops macs though... still it's a farily good site with a ton of reasonably intelligent people on it... and some trolls of course... can't wait to read this review though!

[SierraDragon]

Originally posted by Commodus:
I don't think he was concerned so much about entry-level users as just that people, even the most serious users, tend not to tax laptops as strenuously as they might desktops. Rather than having 10 apps or windows open, you might "just" have 3-4 (such as Word, iTunes, and iChat).

Max RAM is the only way to make a meaningful test of any box, othewise you are only testing the by-definition lame configuration. Perhaps other serious users don't tax laptops, but pro photographers and other graphics folks do.

Note that unlike OS 9, under OS X the number of apps "open" is not what challenges the throughput unless concurrent heavy multi-app background processing is involved. A single graphics app like Photoshop manipulating large files and/or complex filters works the box very hard, esp. if only one physical hard drive is available to the app. More RAM has a huge impact.

[logicat2001]

...even the most serious users, tend not to tax laptops as strenuously as they might desktops. Rather than having 10 apps or windows open, you might "just" have 3-4...

Wow. Color me crazy, but for the record I put my laptop through the grinder. I assume it will take as much as a desktop, although not as quickly.

Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/GoLive, ZBrush 2, Logic Pro 7, Final Cut Express, DVD Studio Pro, MetaSynth, Live, Mail, Safari, FileMaker Developer 7, Ableton LIve 4, Preview, ArtMatic Pro, plus my utility apps: OmniOutliner/OmniGraffle, Terminal, AddressBook, Preview, Font Book, LaunchBar, etc. plus the server side of MySQL, Apache, PHP, osCommerce, ZenCart, and more.

Does anyone here actually baby their hardware? That'd be like trying to protect a hammer; whack away! It was designed to do exactly that.

Best,
Logicat

[PBG4 User]

I have a 15" 1.25GHz PowerBook and I use it for everything I use my desktop for, I just use it while I'm not at my desk. Heck, I do more editing in iMovie on my laptop then I do on my G5 iMac!

I also still have the stock 512MB in this laptop and I don't feel it's holding me back.

[UnixMac]

Mr. Shimpi, who is about as intellectually honest hardware reviewer (helps that he's a real computer engineer) made the fatal decision to try OS X and the Mac, and I'm afraid (for his PC friends).. he's converted.

I have personally converted 5 people to Mac, some have dual 2.5's with 30" screens, and some iMac's and PowerBooks... all have one thing in common, Once you go Mac, you never go Back!

Now maybe we can get a real top notch hardware review sight for the Mac.
(nothing against MacNN which is a great news site).

[Fusion]

Originally posted by PBG4 User:
I have a 15" 1.25GHz PowerBook and I use it for everything I use my desktop for, I just use it while I'm not at my desk. Heck, I do more editing in iMovie on my laptop then I do on my G5 iMac!

I also still have the stock 512MB in this laptop and I don't feel it's holding me back.

You may not feel that it is holding you back, but anyone here who has upgraded can attest, that as soon as you upgrade (if you ever do) it will feel like a new computer.

It makes THAT much of a difference.

[hayesk]

Originally posted by logicat2001:
Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/GoLive, ZBrush 2, Logic Pro 7, Final Cut Express, DVD Studio Pro, MetaSynth, Live, Mail, Safari, FileMaker Developer 7, Ableton LIve 4, Preview, ArtMatic Pro, plus my utility apps: OmniOutliner/OmniGraffle, Terminal, AddressBook, Preview, Font Book, LaunchBar, etc. plus the server side of MySQL, Apache, PHP, osCommerce, ZenCart, and more.

Does anyone here actually baby their hardware? That'd be like trying to protect a hammer; whack away! It was designed to do exactly that.

I have 768 MB on my PowerBook. I use XCode, FileMaker Dev, Safari, Mail, Photoshop Elements (light duty), OmniOutliner/Graffle, and whatever app I'm developing on all at the same time. It's fine for me.

I don't edit movies or DVDs and I'm not a big graphics guy. Those are the real RAM-hungry apps. I probably could get buy with 512, but I think 768 is a good amount for me.

FYI, my wife uses Safari and Mail. She gets along fine with an iBook 466 with 320MB/RAM.

[wuzup101]

I only have my powerbook here, so not only does it come with me every day, but it's also my desktop replacement. I do have a nice PC desktop at home, but I found it would be too much of a hastle to bring it up - that and I hate windows now. I will put it to good use next year (installing and learning linux). I'm also thinking about getting myself a nice powermac G5 (probably the 2.0ghz dual) this summer w/ my internship money (and maybe a 20" cinema or a 23" dell ultrasharp).

[MilkmanDan]

I stuck 768 RAM on my rev c 12in, and have never had any problems doing video or photo editing. Sure, I'm no pro, but I do a heck of a lot more then the 'average' user. More RAM is always a good idea.

Once again, I am impress by this guy's article. I mean, he didn't once slam OS X for not being able to play the 500 new PC games that came out this week. Lamest excuse I ever hear. Wait, scrap that. "I can't use a Mac because the icons are different." Now that was lame.

[P]

Originally posted by SierraDragon:
Max RAM is the only way to make a meaningful test of any box, othewise you are only testing the by-definition lame configuration. Perhaps other serious users don't tax laptops, but pro photographers and other graphics folks do.

Note that unlike OS 9, under OS X the number of apps "open" is not what challenges the throughput unless concurrent heavy multi-app background processing is involved. A single graphics app like Photoshop manipulating large files and/or complex filters works the box very hard, esp. if only one physical hard drive is available to the app. More RAM has a huge impact.

Of course more RAM makes an impact, but where is the limit in how much you should upgrade a box? A faster HD - with a little RAID setup to go along with it? Overclocking the CPU? At some point you should test what's there. I'd prefer a test with the default setup, unless that is entirely useless.

[kndonlee]

I used to have 256mb in my 667dvi, which was pretty painful. Then I upgraded to 512 in which the difference was night and day. As the perceived performance increased, I'd tax my powerbook more. Soon with 512 my disk I/O went up, since I had more applications up and runing. Then onto 768megs, i had the same experience as with the 512, got snappier, then slower. Finally I upgraded to a gig of ram, and voila, things were beautiful.

At our labs at my art school, all the macs have no less than a gig of ram.

Having, Mail, Terminal (5+ terminal sessions), camino(5+ tabs), iTunes, Word/Excel, Graphic Convertor, photoshop all open at the same time... phew you'd really need a gig to run all those above mentioned applications.

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Part II: Month with a Mac

Nice review, esp. cuz it includes some videos of OS X in action.

Just in time for the G4 1.67 release.

Thats a very good review.

But one things is always overlooked: The article says that macs are not suitable for a professional because they often don't support the latest tech gadget (like gamers graphics cards (haha - professionals!)), or pdas.
In my opinion a very important detail for a pro platform is the backup capability and the question: How long does it take to recover a crashed system to its old state.

For the mac the answer is easy: As long as it takes you to transfer your system backup via firewire to your computer. Or even faster: As long as it takes to boot your computer from your firewire drive (transfer can be done the following night) .
For Windows (Ghost, drive image...? hours, days? )
For Linux (big emptiness... )

Or is a pro environment defined by the necessity to pay for a large IT-team, expensive raid systems and a data processing centre that takes care?
Then Windows is doubtlessly pro, very pro .

I have sent an email to the author. Maybe he understands and adds one more brick to his positive view of the mac platform.

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by Dr.Michael:
How long does it take to recover a crashed system to its old state.

For the mac the answer is easy: As long as it takes you to transfer your system backup via firewire to your computer. Or even faster: As long as it takes to boot your computer from your firewire drive (transfer can be done the following night) .
For Windows (Ghost, drive image...? hours, days? )
For Linux (big emptiness... )

Update for linux recovery
##########################
Although it might not be the right forum, it is interesting in this context (that I created myself ;o)).

My Suse 9.0 (better 0.9) Thinkpad needed an update because I wanted a software that did not run on my linux version.
So I updated 9.0 to 9.1. Crash. The system did not boot any more. No network.
This is the situation where I had to do a recovery.
I tried the following steps:

tar.gz and split my home folder and some other smaller things. 10 GB -> 4 hours (one unsuccessful attempt because the hd was full).
copy everything on my usb1 drive -> 2.5 hours
update to 9.2. -> 1 hour. Failed to boot into x-system
tried to repair -> 3 unsuccessful hours until I gave up
clean install of 9.2 -> 2 hours
move back my data from usb1 -> 2.5 hours
rearrange everything -> 3.5 hours. Going on because I still discover that software is missing.

-> 2 working days! Cool.
Compare this to Mac: <1 hour to play back my backup.

Anyone can argue: I compare a fresh install with playing back a backup. True. But I only did a fresh install on linux because an update failed. I still don't know how I can create a bootable backup.
Update on Mac is usually < 30 minutes and it works!