I got reprimanded by Juan last week during one of our conversations:

juanporu: bibili na dapat ako ng c2d
juanporu: kaso naubos pera ko dun sa <site we rather not mention>
nargz: “c2d”?
juanporu: core 2 duo
juanporu: you gotta be in with the linggo dude…
juanporu: you’re about to own one

Now, I am forced to “get with the linggo,” as it were – as I am now an owner of a MBP 15″ 2.33GHz C2D with 2GB RAM, 256MB VRAM, and sure, FW800 as well. That linggo-ed enough?

Kidding aside, I promised Juan a “review” of the new MBP in comparison to an old PowerBook G4 – I’ll be getting to the performance part soon enough. Meanwhile, let me focus on the aesthetics – which we know Apple fans go gaga over.

THE DIFFERENCES

Everyone knows that MBPs have a few cosmetic differences from the G4s, but for those who really want to see the difference, then you’re in luck, I’ve done a side-by-side comparison of the old PB G4 and MBP C2D. Here we have the slim box, which is drastically different from the PowerBooks (I’m not certain when they started making them slimmer, but my guess is after they had switched to Intel).

Putting the MacBook Pro (left) beside a PowerBook (right) shows how much “slimmer” and “wider” it actually is.

And if that doesn’t convince you, here’s a better shot:

Flip them over and you see how the backside has changed as well. Gone are the days when you had to have a coin handy to unlock/detach the battery. We now have a dual-slider setup.

One trivial, but nice improvement was the model badge, wich was now “plated” (whether plastic, or metal is anyone’s guess), but it sure beats the “print” of the G4s.

Aside from those already mentioned, other differences include:

1. Infra-red sensor (for remote)
2. Dual latches (for closing the lid.
3. Wider trackpad
4. No composite (s-video?) out.
5. mini PCMCIA slot. ¹ Now this is actually something I don’t like, since now I can’t use my PCMCIA CF card adaptor with it.
6. Higher resolution – but this was already started with the motion-sensor equipped Powerbooks.
7. Significantly brighter keyboard backlight – when people say that the MBP’s lowest setting is as bright as the PB’s highest setting, they weren’t exaggerating!

Forgive the noise, didn’t have a tripod so I just maxed-out the ISO

PERFORMANCE

I can get into the details another day, but right off the bat, here are some noticeable performance improvements.

SNAPPIER

Obviously this 2.33GHz C2D would be way faster than my 1.5GHz PPC, while I do not bother finding out the obvious incremental speed improvements. I do have to say that one major concern of mine was running the non UB ² Universal Binary – applications that were compiled to fully support the new architecture. applications on Rosetta ³ Apple’s “pseudo-virtualization” PPC to x86 translation engine (think of it as “Classic” for PPC apps)

People reported that the Intel Macs in general run Applications like Photoshop extremely slow – to the point of being ridiculous and unusable.

So what I did was fire up a common session on OS X. I had my usual running apps (Mail, Adium, Firefox, Netnewswire) and I ran Illustrator, loaded an AI file, then went ahead and loaded MS Word, and Photoshop CS2 as well. While all the apps I just mentioned were running simultaneously, I decided to do some actual Photoshopping. I have to say that Photoshop running on rosetta on this MBP is faster than it running natively on my PB G4.

In the picture on the right, I even used Photoshop while running a Parallels desktop environment. Didn’t skip a beat. Though I’ll have to agree with Juan that the 2GB RAM probably had a big part to play in it. I was able to allot about 768MB for it to get good performance out of the virtual environment, and of course 1GB is usually sufficient for good OS X operation, add that to the whole dual-core fact – and these results are not surprising at all.

Again, lot of factors may contribute to this satisfactory behavour. Perhaps it’s the 2GB RAM, 256VRAM, the Core 2 Duo architecture, larger cache, etc. My point however is this:

While it may not be as fast as one would hope from a UB, the truth is this: If people in the G4 days we’re getting perfectly acceptable performance out of these applications, then these apps running on these new machines shouldn’t be a problem for them. With what I just did, the point has been proven that there are Intel-based macs which creative professionals can use normally, and not pull their hair over because of “performance penalties”

So sorry guys, if you think you could try justifying not upgrading because of “ridiculously slow” performance of Rosetta apps, that’s just not a good enough excuse anymore. If you claim that the earlier MBPs sucked ass when it came to rosetta-running Adobe or Microsoft apps, then maybe now you have a good reason to upgrade yet again.

BRIGHTER

As already mentioned (and pictured) above, both display and keyboard backlights are much-much brighter.

Right now, I’ve got the brightness on the 5th bar (that’s like 1/4 of the way to the brightest setting possible), at 1/4 brightness I’ve just matched about 80% of the PB’s max brightness (and mind you, I just had the LCD of that replaced with a new one). The keyboard backlight is extremely bright as well – as already mentioned, the lowest setting is brighter than the PB’s highest setting.

The keyboard backlight continues to impress as they’ve improved the sensor and logic behind it. It clearly includes the ambient light coming from the LCD when it “adjusts” its brightness. The old PB’s always had a point wherein the LCD washed out the KB backlight, therefore negating its purpose – which was very frustrating. On the MBP however, when I dimmed the LCD, the KB backlight dimmed a little as well, if I pushed the LCD up, the KB backlight would glow more. Basically, what it does [now] is if you’re in a dark place, it engages the light – but then makes sure that it’s still brighter than the ambient light nearest to it (the LCD). That allows the KB backlight to be clearly visible at whatever setting you have.

HELLA COOLER

Up to now, I haven’t been using “special” software to control fan speed, et all. I can’t stress enough how cooler this thing is. On normal usage of my PB, I literally can’t hold on to the bottom for too long – it gets that hot. This MBP however, I’m holding in my palm as we speak. (and on other occasions as well).

SOUNDS… DIFFERENT

Being an audio fanatic, I immediately noticed how much more high-frequencies the MBP could spit out compared to the G4. I wouldn’t say it was a good or bad thing really. The G4 and the MBP sound ok, but ultimately, they’re laptops, and can only deliver so much fidelity. But personally, I don’t find the MBP sounding balanced, it’s like a typical cheap car speaker situation where people bump up the highs so much that it tends to sound too thin overall. The G4 for me, sounded more balanced – your mileage may vary though.

WHAT I THINK

Before you continue reading, let me tell your right now that the review part has officially “ended” at this point. Everything below is just a commentary and personal insight. You need not waste your time reading it unless you are open to my opinions (which is worth jack shit).

IS UPGRADING WORTH IT?

The details/factors that led to my decision of purchasing the laptop can be read in an earlier post. This information may be prove to be invaluable to those who are stuck with considerably older machines and are undecided whether or not now’s a good time to upgrade.

Summarizing that post, it is safe to assume that Apple has always upgraded, and will continue to upgrade all of their products at a ridiculous pace – hence when talking in terms of Apple, it’s really pointless to “wait it out” in a sense because once you do get something, they’ll probably release something newer by the next month. Tough that shouldn’t mean that you should not wait at all (unless you have the money to burn).

Simply try to get familiar with Apple’s upgrade cycles and purchase accordingly… and never look back. If you plan to buy something, and know there’s an impending “new” release, then wait a little and buy the newer one. But once you get it, don’t feel bad if you find out if they upgraded it further ⁴ Which is a common emotion to have for those who bought non C2D MBPs. – get what I mean?

Yet it is my belief (if you had read the previous post) that everyone will probably agree that the number of new “features” in the MBP C2Ds are considerably impressive – it looked like it was worth upgrading even from the line right before them – moreso for those of us who are still on G4s

[WHAT WAS] AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE

The only other legitimate reason to wait it out is the whole fact that some of the more intergral applications for the creative professionals (Adobe products, etc.) haven’t been ported to universal binaries yet. So expect them to perform poorly with the new Macs in general.

But as you read above, right now, I don’t think it’s an issue anymore.

WHICH OF THE THREE IS BEST [FOR ME]?

Normally, I wouldn’t really want to mention this part because it’s a very subjective topic. Personally, I don’t bother looking at the 17″ anymore ⁵ They’re just too big – the context of which, makes me question the concept of “portable.”, 12″ probably would’ve been the best if they had shrunk the dot-pitch – allowing more resolution crammed into an already small screen. Alas that is not the case. ⁶ Besides, there are no 12″ MBPs as of now. 15″ always seemed like a perfect median – you get enough real-estate, without having to carry a food-tray.

From the choices, I’d say the lowest would be perfect. There are only 3 “considerable” differences between the 2.16 and 2.33: a 17MHz difference in processor speed, double the RAM, and double the VRAM. The first two however can be negated easily:

You can always buy [cheaper] RAM modules to upgrade to 2GB later on – that right there saves those who aren’t hardcore from spending extra on resources their usage may not even require. As far as the CPU speed goes, you only “see/feel” the 17MHz difference is when reading benchmarks or if you’re doing heavy duty rendering (as in hours of rendering may probably translate to minutes saved on a faster CPU) But as far as normal usage goes, I don’t think it justifies that big a price increase.

The VRAM is the only thing that should concern buyers at this juncture, because you can’t BTO ⁷ Built-to-order a 2.16 to have 256VRAM. Having said that, I leave it to the readers to decide how much they really need that extra 128MB. I’m not saying whether or not you need it – what I’m saying though that if you’re comparing the two, use that as a gauge more than the CPU speed and RAM ⁸ Because as I said, the former is meaningless for most uses, and the latter can be done later one at a cheaper price.

Having said that, the only reason I opted to get the 2.33GHz model was the deal I got for it – if I had purchased the 2.16, I’d only be saving about 2k (pesos) across all “competing” sellers; the 2.33 however got me a considerable amount of savings from a certain seller (plus the fact that I could get it this early as well)

For the record though, all things being equal, I submit that the best bang for buck would be the cheapest, 2.16 model.