Filed under: Macworld, Hardware, Portables
Video of MacBook Pro in action
While our own Scott McNulty got his hands on a MacBook Pro at
Macworld, this is what I've been waiting to see: honest to goodness video of a MacBook Pro in action. TUAW readers Kevin and Peter from
theory.isthereason have a video of an Apple rep on the Macworld show
floor demonstrating opening, running and closing various iLife applications (with an obligatory iPhoto demonstration
bug). The first 1/3 of the video or so is an overview of the hardware and (lack of some) ports, so skip ahead for the
juicy performance stuff. Granted, it isn't a rigorous Photoshop benchmark test, a Doom 3 run-through or an FCP HD demo,
but it's definitely helpful to actually see how blazingly fast iPhoto runs, and how quickly and effortlessly the
resource-intensive GarageBand opens. Safari, as Jobs demonstrated with the Dual Core iMac on stage, almost fully-loads
a site before you finish clicking on a link, and iDVD doesn't even break a sweat while swapping themes on the fly.So far, I think it's encouraging to finally see some MacBook Pro action, but a couple of bits at the end of their post worry me: 1) the rep confirms that Apple hasn't finished testing the books to release a concrete battery rating, which fuels the question of whether they're truly ready, and 2) Peter and Kevin say the MacBook Pro feels as hot to the touch as 12" PowerBooks can get. On the flip side, the rep does state that the book has been running for three days straight, but still: the implication that these books could run extremely hot to the touch wouldn't bode well for Apple, since they've touted this switch as heralding in an age of low-power, cooler-running chips.
All of these issues aside though: stop reading this post and go check out a MacBook Pro in action, as it certainly is a thing of beauty.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rob Knight said 7:27AM on 1-13-2006
The mBook Pros I handled (huh huh, handled) were all pretty warm to the touch. But they were getting some serious constant attention.
An interesting note: They were all loaded with Photoshop CS2. I was thinking Adobe had come through with 'Universal' versions of CS2, so I gave it a ride. I had a 2MB image and messed with gaussian blur. I was impressed with the responsiveness and thought, "Cool, good job Adobe."
It wasn't until I got home that I realized Adobe HADN'T got Universal apps out yet that I was REALLY impressed.
Seriously, on a hot, manhandled machine, Photoshop ran seemlessly and snappy. I use CS2 at home and I know what gaussian blur on a 2MB image can do to my 1.2Ghz G4 (Digital Audio with processor upgrade & 1.128GB RAM). On the mBook, it ran better. Very impressive. Got to hand it to Apple on Rosetta, much better than Classic.
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Alex said 7:38AM on 1-13-2006
So what happens to all the manipulated benchmarks that showed how inferior the P4 was? :)
R2K
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Michael Str? said 7:41AM on 1-13-2006
That guy from Apple is completely clueless...
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Oliver said 7:46AM on 1-13-2006
I'm shocked by how useless the apple rep is and how little he know about the product. He opens the MacBook page on apple.com when asked about the specs, and even that doesn't go smoothly (he can't find the specs page at first). He didn't know what GPU it had, and when asked about the lack of FW800 he hesitates and then just says 'yes'. Things get dramatically worse when showing off the software. iPhoto encounters a bug, but rather than quit the app and start again he just fluffs around and asks "why is it doing that?". He doesn't know how iWeb handles blogs, or how to use the new templates in iMovie.
Is this really the best apple can do? Steve is always so well prepared for his keynotes, yet his minions are absolutely clueless. Very unprofessional.
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Merv said 8:50AM on 1-13-2006
The rep is probably clueless because they're not told of the new stuff that's gonna get released that morning until the very last minute.
To prevent leaks to lites like macrumors.
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Piotr Malecki said 9:25AM on 1-13-2006
The rep being clueless - they only had what 3 days to learn new stuff (and I doubt that they had 1 comp withnew iLife suite per Apple rep. Its understandable that he doesn't know the specs yet. He still fared a lot better than any Best Buy employee who has the same equipment for months/years.
The MacBook Pro and iMac websites were redisgned and are somewhat different.
Yes Apple is rushing this release (MacBook Pro) a bit, but they'll have battery and heat issues at least somewhat sorted out before sale.
I doubt anybody can tell me that if it weren't for the people speaking you'd think that the video was sped up. True its not for 4-5 times faster, but integer and floating point calculations aren't the only thing a computer does. One thing I gotta hand to Apple is thank you for increasing the bus 3 fold (that is where most of the speed comes from) and frankly I'm willing to sacrifice an hour of the yet-to-be-announced Intel iBooks battery if it means that it's bus will increase in speed (142MHz to 400-500MHz ???)
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Tim said 9:48AM on 1-13-2006
Interesting...the guy talking about the specs mentions that there is a dvi to s-video adapter. Does he know what he's talking about?
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fishpatrol said 9:53AM on 1-13-2006
What His Steveness was reporting on stage, IIRC, was performance per watt, or some ratio of that sort. Apple could focus on extending battery life, or they could focus on getting a lot more computing power out of a similar amount of battery life. If they're quoting 4x faster, it's pretty evident which one's receiving their focus.
PowerBook users have been waiting for an update for how long? Apple's making the right choice, here. And if they aren't ready to start production immediately, I'd sure hope they would spend that time by trying to tweak performance for a better battery life, etc.
I'm sure this post would have an Apple engineer crying, we just can't win! We make a machine that's four times faster, but that's completely forgotten because the case is hot and the battery life stat hasn't been released. One thing at a time, people. Sweet heavens.
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PQ said 10:52AM on 1-13-2006
I found that piece, at least as interesting as the MacBook Pro ;-)
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/9198/macbook7un.jpg
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David Chartier said 11:15AM on 1-13-2006
#2: Funny you ask. I guess they didn't feel like showing any of those because these are new chips from Intel, as I would imagine Apple switched chip companies for new tech, not chips that are half a decade old.
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djSyndrome said 12:15PM on 1-13-2006
"The rep is probably clueless because they're not told of the new stuff that's gonna get released that morning until the very last minute."
Very true, and it applies throughout the company. Store employees and AppleCare folks learn about the new announcements the same time as everyone else - during the Keynote.
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Oliver said 1:57PM on 1-13-2006
Tim, yes there is a DVI to S-video adapter, sold separately tho.
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fnkybach said 4:09PM on 1-13-2006
Exactly, When I worked for Apple TeleSales as a manager they did not show me product stats until about 30 minutes before an announcement and during the Keynote they would hand us the stat sheets right before the product was released and all of my staff had to learn the product in a few minutes
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