5 razones a favor de los PowerBooks frente a los MacBook Pro

[digimania]

No todo son alabanzas a la nueva criatura "Intel inside" los de http://www.unsanity.org te ofrecen 5 razones convincentes para que que sigas amando tu PowerBook frente al MacBook Pro, pincha el enlace y deja tu comentario al respecto.

[Onuba]

No todo son alabanzas a la nueva criatura "Intel inside" los de http://www.unsanity.org te ofrecen 5 razones convincentes para que que sigas amando tu PowerBook frente al MacBook Pro, pincha el enlace y deja tu comentario al respecto.

Muy interesante, creo que merece la pena reproducirlo directamente aquí:

Lost in Transition: Overcane of Antflower Milk

Today Apple announced the MacBook Pro. It has quite a few changes compared to the previous PowerBook. For one, it uses an Intel Core Duo (formerly known as Yonah) chip. This is a dual core processor and no, unlike what Steve Jobs stated, this does not have two processors. This will help a lot with responsiveness. I've been dreaming of a dual core laptop for quite a while. However, the realization of my dream coupled with the changes seen makes me cry.

Another change is, of course, the name. Which is horrible. It doesn't roll off the tongue at all and is just too confusing. It actually sounds like some child created it. Well, some PC using child. It's uninspired. The PowerBooks were not named for the chip they used (unlike the PowerMac) as they used a 68k processor and were called PowerBooks long before the PowerPC chip was in them. The new name really sounds like a good name for Accounting software, not a machine.

We've also lost quite a few technologies and features in this transition. All of the following items compare the Old PowerBook 15 inch to the new MacBook Pro 15 inch.

Power: The new portable ICBMs (Intel-chip based Macs, also iCBM) require more power than their previous iterations. They have a 60-watt-hour battery compared to the old PowerBook's 50-watt-hour battery. They also have 85 watt AC adapters compared to the old 65 watt AC adapters. Of course, more power also means more heat.

Parts Missing: The S-Video output, the Modem, the PCMCIA port, and the FW800 have been removed. The modem was extremely useful for those that traveled a lot and needed dialup access to get internet access. Not every hotel/rest area has an ethernet jack/wireless and not everyone can use dialup networking on their cell phone via Bluetooth. In fact, many cell phone companies do not permit you do to this kind of connection (called tethering) as they want you to purchase an additional type of service for your laptop. This additional service requires an EVDO PC Card which uses the PCMCIA slot. So far, such a card does not exist for the new ICBMs. However, the companies involved say an ExpressCard/34 solution should be available by the time the MacBook Pros ship.

The S-Video was very, very useful for presentations on projection screens. Especially when so many of today's presentations are being done via PowerPoint slides. When you're traveling a lot and doing various meetings hosted at other companies, you cannot guarantee the type of projector/video monitor they use. It may be S-Video, DVI, Composite (RCA), or even VGA. Others have suggested using the included remote to control DVD playback. It may be much more "useful" if you can output your DVD playback onto a TV screen via an S-Video cable. Yes, a DVI to S-Video adapter is available at an additional cost.

The FW800 (FireWire 800) was very useful for those that had FW800 devices and needed speed. Even more so for those that needed multiple FW400 ports because their devices weren't daisy chain-able (like the iPod, iSight, and pretty much all digital video cameras). It's not so much that you had a FW800 port, it's that you had two FW400 ports available (with an additional adapter). However, I imagine this could have been removed if having two bus powered devices on two different ports was too much of a power drain for the ICBM. Remove a feature to add longer battery life. Some people suggest these can be added back using the ExpressCard port. However, that's spending a more money for one feature as there is but one slot.

Visually Unimpressive: Here's an odd one. The old PowerBook has a 15.1 inch screen with a 1440x960 resolution. The new MacBook Pro has a resolution of 1440x900. Notice the smaller number? Yes, the new MacBook Pro has 86,400 fewer pixels than the old one. And because these pixels are in a greater area, it means the DPI is lower on the MacBook Pro as well. 60 pixels is enough space to fit the menu bar and the dock into. Vertical space is extremely crowded on most operating systems (menu bar, title bars, dock, toolbars, floating palettes in Quark) as it is.

Burning Issues: I didn't notice this until at least 3 people pointed it out to me, but the new MacBook Pro lacks Dual Layer DVD burning. I'm not even sure how that happens. Previously, Macs would come with DVD±RW burning or DVD+R DL burning without Apple even advertising it; machines would just have it included before it was a standard feature. Now they've actually removed Dual Layer burning. OMGWTF? Yes, this is very likely due to a much slimmer drive being used. In fact I'd bet on it as the slot on the MacBook Pros is near the bottom of the machine compared to being at the top in the current PowerBooks.

Arbitrary Additions: New to the MacBook Pro is a built in iSight and an IR port for the Front Row remote. I can barely understand the iSight for professional users. It might be useful for meetings on the road (or in a plane) and imagining Phil Schiller in a thong. But otherwise, it seems somewhat unnecessary. The Front Row remote I don't get at all. The MacBook Pro is a portable, professional machine, having a remote with a portable machine just seems redundant in some way. The iMac's remote can be snapped on the side of the machine via a magnet, does the MacBook Pro's act the same? All the remotes I've seen here at MWSF for the MacBook Pros were in the Apple employee's pocket or sitting on the "table" with the ICBM.

Performance: Apple says the new MacBook Pro is 4x-5x faster than the old PowerBook. I have to question this a lot. They didn't seem to mention the SPEC test was designed specifically for dual cores/processors and that the Intel compiler has been accused of cheating when it comes to compiling synthetic benchmarks in the past. But that's from memory and I can't find any concrete links on it at this time. Granted, Motorola dropped the ball and never really increased the bus speed for the G4, so even if it could process data fast, it was starved. The faster bus speed allows everything to proceed faster. However, the loss of AltiVec is a HUGE problem which Apple didn't show in their test. I watched a display MacBook Pro here at MWSF play a H.264 trailer for Fun With Dick & Jane and it was very, very noticeably skipping frames. My current 1.5Ghz PowerBook (with AltiVec, of course) plays the same trailer with no skipping. The skipping is highly noticeable on machines with 128megs VRAM (which is the default configuration for the MacBook Pros) but not very noticeable on the MacBook Pros with 256megs of VRAM. My current PowerBook G4 has 128megs of VRAM, for comparison. A friend pointed out Apple's page with some basic application benchmarks. He also seems to mention that the performance increase is very similar to the performance increase you'd get if you just added another core to the current G4s, much like Freescale's neé Motorola's e600 PowerPC does. Imaginary Watt per Performance Arbitrary Unit my butt. If you're going to throw out some number in the computer industry, at least define the measurements and give the math used so observers can reproduce the calculations.

All in all, it doesn't seem like the MacBook Pro is a very compelling laptop, especially without a 17-inch version. It actually seems like these things (the iMac too) were rushed into production. The MacBook Pro's case differs little from the old one and the iMac's case doesn't differ at all sans a mini-DVI out. The MacBook Pro does have one compelling feature, the magnetized power adapter. I've tripped over my current AC adapter so many times I've lost count. And it's fallen on my toes and cut up my shins when it falls. Snakes on a plane.

I should also mention that these new ICBMs from Apple use EFI instead of the standard PC BIOS. According to various documents from Microsoft, Windows for x86 machines does not support booting from EFI (HTML via Google) and won't until Windows Vista is released. As far as I know, no consumer PC ships with EFI support (why bother if Windows doesn't support it, right?). However, the Itanium machines require EFI. This has two "problems". One, you may not be able to dual boot Windows until Vista is released unless you have a third party EFI bootloader that can mimic the PC BIOS. Two, it'll be significantly harder to make OS X run on a stock PC without EFI.


Saludos,

[newimac]

Nacieron los siete mesinos de Apple: iMAC Core Duo y MacBook Pro. Obsoletos ya al nacer.