The version of Front Row on these systems is essentially the same as the one on Apple’s
The MacBook Pro is Apple’s first laptop model to come with an infrared remote control and Front Row software, and there’s a corresponding infrared port on the front edge of the system, to the left of the latch. (The iSight worked well in all the video chats we tried, although because the MacBook Pro’s microphone is embedded in the left speaker grille, our iChat audio was restricted to the right speaker and sounded a bit too quiet.) Nestled right above the screen is the MacBook Pro’s built-in iSight camera, and next to it is a green light that comes on whenever the camera is in use. The screen is definitely brighter than the PowerBook’s. However, the MacBook Pro’s screen is 60 pixels shorter than the most recent 15-inch PowerBook G4, offering a native resolution of 1440 by 900 pixels. The MacBook Pro’s trackpad, mouse button, and front latch are also slightly wider than the PowerBook’s. It’s slightly wider and thinner, and weighs the same. In terms of physical appearance, the MacBook Pro is almost identical to the 15-inch PowerBook G4. However, casual Photoshop users should be fine. As a result, it’s hard for us to recommend the MacBook Pro to heavy Photoshop users until Adobe ships a Universal version. The 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 performed our suite of 14 scripted Photoshop tasks 1.7 times faster than the 2GHz MacBook Pro. We found Photoshop to be quite usable on the MacBook Pro, but it doesn’t run nearly as fast as it does on the most recent top-of-the-line PowerBook. In the interim, the MacBook Pro will run Photoshop via Rosetta. The other major application that many MacBook Pro users will want to run isĪdobe Photoshop CS2, and it may be a while before a Universal version arrives. Logic Pro 7.2 version in time to test it for this review. Those applications aren’t expected to arrive until next month, so we weren’t able to test them, and we did not receive the Universal
Given that the professional applications that are part of Apple’s Final Cut Studio suite have long been designed to take advantage of Power Mac models with multiple processors, we would anticipate that the Universal versions of those applications will see dramatic speed boosts on the MacBook Pro.
Since Apple first announced its switch to Intel chips, there’s been intense speculation that Intel-based laptops would be able to perform at speeds that were simply unavailable to PowerBook G4 users. For the past few years, PowerBook users have griped about the relatively small speed improvements in the product line. Intel-based iMacs, the focus on these new MacBook Pro systems is going to be on their speed. When it comes to Universal applications running natively on the MacBook Pro, they definitely felt perkier than on the PowerBook-and the entire computing experience simply felt more responsive than theġ.67GHz PowerBook G4.
But generally, applications running under Mac OS X’s Rosetta code-translation technology, which converts instructions meant for PowerPC processors into those suitable for Intel chips, worked quite well. Occasionally Microsoft Entourage got a bit poky, and Microsoft Word seemed somewhat confused when we tried to use the MacBook Pro’s Scrolling Trackpad feature. (We did experience a few unexpected appearances of OS X’s spinning rainbow cursor of doom, but they abated after we discarded several old items, including Smart Crash Reports and SIMBL, that the Migration Utility had transferred to our InputManagers folder.)Īlthough several of the bread-and-butter applications we used aren’t currently available in Universal versions, we rarely perceived any serious slowness in those applications. Once Spotlight was done with its work, most common operations felt much more responsive than they had on the PowerBook. After the migration was complete, we experienced several annoying slowdowns, but a trip to Apple’s Activity Monitor utility revealed that the culprit was Spotlight, which had to index the MacBook Pro’s hard drive after the Migration Assistant utility finished its transfer.