Intel Mac comes very poor second to PPC

[Agafaster]

I've always wondered how much battery power is used up calculating the batterypoer remaining

well, I know you only asked this in jest, but I'm gonna answer anyway:

fsck all: its just a quick lookup on a power curve based on the potential difference measured across the battery indicating the estimated Amp-hours left in the battery: big loads on the battery cause a voltage drop, partially discharged batteries also exhibit this. hurrah for voltage regulators, eh !

[bloodline]

I was so busy looking for problems, forgot to mention the Screen on the MacBook is FANTASIC!!! It's brighter than my desktop LCD! The quality is great.

The Magsafe is brilliant.

The isight works fine... but I've yet to find anyone else with an iSight to chat with :-(

The speakers are loud and clear, with above average frequency response.

The Keyboard lighting is a wonder to behold and the keys have a lovely (adjustable brightness) blue-white glow.

[uncharted]

Thanks for the info Agafaster.

Matt, have you had chance to play with  FrontRow yet?  It seemed a bit gimmicky to me.

What kind of res pics does the iSight take?

[DonnyEMU]

Sure he didn't say it as clearly as he could, but if you read the whole thing and put that last bit into context, you 'll see that:-

Hey I have been looking at these machines, I am probably going to go out and buy a Mac Mini (x86) single core. It's only a pawltry $500US and comes with a bunch of native software. If I need office I will just download open office.

As far as this Intel vs AMD things goes (which I see as a separate issue). I have a Dual Core Windows Vista Box (just for testing software I write) and I have to say in my humble opinion it's the fastest thing on this earth (LOL yeah I am biased).

 :crazy:

With both SLI and two 6800GS nVidia PCI-Express cards in the machine, it certainly is a DIFFERENT world.

What a difference two CPUs make, well let me tell you WHAT A DIFFERENCE two GPUs make, Screen redraw/repaint/compositing never suffers and the cards cost me less than $200 a piece..

I look forward to to seeing Macintels suporting SLI and CROSSFIRE...

You guys are supposed to like Multimedia stuff. FrontRow and Windows Media Center both are really great multimedia librarians/jukeboxes. Now if FrontRow just supported uPnP 802.11x wireless players.. I have my media center box also servicing the whole house, but not a computer everywhere..

[Ocriss]

All,

I can't help but wonder if Apple pays reviewers.  I mean all of their products seem to get glowing reviews and I don't understand why.  Maybe it is just me.

The screen on the Macbook Pro is average.  Sony, HP, and Toshiba laptops all have better screens.  The screens on Apple notebooks are always about one generation behind the PC laptops.  

Has anyone sued Apple for being burned by the bottom of the laptop?  The bottom of the laptop is very hot.  I cannot believe that management let the product ship this way.  I would think it would open them up to a potential lawsuit.  In any event it is way too hot.  

Those are two things I observed from messing with the thing for 5 minutes in the Apple store.  How can these reviewers not be making major issues of these things when they have units to use for days before a review?

The iPod is another big mystery to me.  There are much better players out there.  I bought one for my wife and was so ticked off.  It looks like new and is dead 1 year and 1 month after purchase.  I had to replace the screen on it myself once as well.  The design is horrible.

There was a quote from Bill Gates saying that there are much better MP3 players on the market.  I laughed because I always figure Bill is telling a story.  This was one time he wasn't telling a tall tale.  Bought the wife a Creative Nano to replace her iPod.  She love it and so do I.  Putting songs on it is so much easier.  I don't have to mess with iTunes at all.  I can just drag and drop songs to it like a memory stick.  It has an FM tuner on it so I didn't have to pay money for an add on like I did on the iPod.

I just don't get it.  Is the Apple marketing department really that good?

Regards,
Ocriss

Has anyone sued Apple for being burned by the bottom of the laptop?

Why do you thik they are called "notebooks" now instead of "laptop"?

Because the pathetic and greedy, money-obsessed, litigious American public would sue.

Pathetic.

[bloodline]

uncharted wrote:
Thanks for the info Agafaster.

Matt, have you had chance to play with  FrontRow yet?  It seemed a bit gimmicky to me.

Yup, before I bought the machine I made a concious decision to never use FrontRow and its stupid little remote... so far I've found it brilliant, I can pop the macbook on any available surface and with a simple click of the remote It becomes a Movie/Song jukebox and DVD player... not found much use for the picture viewer though. Never though I would say this, but I rather like my new entertainment centre ;-)

What kind of res pics does the iSight take?

The resolution of the iSight is a rather lame 640*480, with the obvious quality issues assoiciated with the tiny (Hi-Res ;-) ) resolution. But the CCD sensor is rather good by VGA standards and doesn't introduce too much noise into the picture/movie.

[bloodline]

Ocriss wrote:
All,

I can't help but wonder if Apple pays reviewers.  I mean all of their products seem to get glowing reviews and I don't understand why.  Maybe it is just me.

I think it must be to do with the way Apple address human issues rather than technical ones.

The screen on the Macbook Pro is average.  Sony, HP, and Toshiba laptops all have better screens.  The screens on Apple notebooks are always about one generation behind the PC laptops.  

I guess it's a matter of taste, but the screens on both my PowerBook and my MacBook are much better than The Sony and Toshiba laptops I also use... the Sony one has some kind of glossy/reflective coating that make it imposible to use in a normal environment. The Toshiba is a higher resolution than the apple, but much dimmer.

Has anyone sued Apple for being burned by the bottom of the laptop?  The bottom of the laptop is very hot.  I cannot believe that management let the product ship this way.  I would think it would open them up to a potential lawsuit.  In any event it is way too hot.  

Yeah, they get hot! But, if that is the price to pay for a metal laptop without any bloody cooling vents on the bottom (stupid place to put fans!!) then so be it!

Those are two things I observed from messing with the thing for 5 minutes in the Apple store.  How can these reviewers not be making major issues of these things when they have units to use for days before a review?

The reviews seemed pretty good to me... I have tried to be honest (and as impartial as possible) in my descriptions of the MacBook I have here.

The iPod is another big mystery to me.  There are much better players out there.  I bought one for my wife and was so ticked off.  It looks like new and is dead 1 year and 1 month after purchase.  I had to replace the screen on it myself once as well.  The design is horrible.

I agree the older iPods were pretty lame... but the iPod nano is perfect for my needs.

There was a quote from Bill Gates saying that there are much better MP3 players on the market.  I laughed because I always figure Bill is telling a story.  This was one time he wasn't telling a tall tale.  Bought the wife a Creative Nano to replace her iPod.  She love it and so do I.  Putting songs on it is so much easier.  I don't have to mess with iTunes at all.

I rather like the iRiver mp3 players (they have loads of great features), but once you get to try them all, you soon get bored of them and realise you want one that just works and has a nice simple interface... enter the iPod.

I will never forget the nightmare I had with a Sony mp3 player...

 I can just drag and drop songs to it like a memory stick.  It has an FM tuner on it so I didn't have to pay money for an add on like I did on the iPod.

Radio? What's that?

I just don't get it.  Is the Apple marketing department really that good?

Regards,
Ocriss

As I said earlier, I think apple have (since Jobs got back involved in '97) made a large effort to design devices that will appeal to "people" rather than to technophile (who want (x*y)^3 features, rather than elegant design). This is quite a good gimmick/strategy when trying to survive in the faceless technological market... if only Amiga Inc. had figured it out...

Apple also made a great decision by buying Emagic's "Logic Audio" and canceling the Windows version... thus any musician who wants to make quality music now has to by a Mac :-)

Also Apple are the only laptop maker to put a REAL FULL 6Wire Firewire port on their machines... As I use bus powered Firewire Music hardware, I need that very feature...

[Doobrey]

Ocriss wrote:

Has anyone sued Apple for being burned by the bottom of the laptop?

I hope the guy in this report sued whoever made his laptop.

Dunno about the new iNtel Macs, but my 1.3Ghz G4 iBook is perfectly usable on my lap. Sure it gets warm, but not even close to becoming uncomfortable.

I just don't get it.  Is the Apple marketing department really that good?

Yup.. although I think Microsoft's current offerings(and delayed replacements) have helped them a lot too ;-)

[Doobrey]

bloodline wrote:

Ocriss wrote:
 I can just drag and drop songs to it like a memory stick.  It has an FM tuner on it so I didn't have to pay money for an add on like I did on the iPod.

Radio? What's that?

Simple.. get an iPod Shuffle and just upload 15 songs and stick it on autorepeat for the next 6 hours..Voila, instant UK radio. (OK, so it's missing the inane gibberings between tracks, but I'd call that a bonus)

[bloodline]

I've just spent the day working on this MacBook, using Logic Pro 7.2... all I can say is.. WOW! This is the most powerfull notebook computer I've ever used... it pisses on the 2.0Ghz dual Processor G5 tower PowerMac we were using at the studio... Which simply can't handle the amount of processing that this thing can take! I can now work on a song in real time, without having to bounce/freeze the complex tracks!

I can't wait to see what the new MacDesktop machines will be like!

[Hyperspeed]

by blakespot:
However, if Sony or Microsoft went with a modern Pentium, their new consoles would have much more horesepower.

ATi vs nVidia, IBM vs Intel...   the Geforce GPU was the best, then the Radeon... etc. etc.

With PC hardware superseded in 3 months the scales will tip in both sides quite frequently, however the console market takes 5 years to become obsolete and as far as I can see, Microsoft chose the IBM G5 over an Intel CPU for the XBox 360.

This means Intel aren't in the next gen console wars and since they're getting a kicking from AMD in the PC side of things they must be feeling the heat (aren't they considering a server only strategy?).

Down with Intel. They've strangled the market for too long. Next I want to see Microsoft and Hewlett Packard get a beating from Google and Epson.

Maybe then smaller, more innovative companies can germinate...

[/end fanboy rant]