Apple MacBook Review: Part 2

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@ funkjunky

Unfortunately there is no skill testing question as a prerequisite to post here. This means that anyone with an opinion can post “Macs are gay” or “PC’s suck”. This is something that everyone has to endure.
The point that 90% of the people are trying to make is that the majority of readers don’t want to hear about prebuilt systems. You wouldn’t see a pastry chef eagerly reading an article about how wonderful pre-made frozen dinners are. That chef would definitely want his 5 minutes back.
A wise man once said “There is a difference between knowledge and intelligence and those who don’t recognize the difference usually lack the latter”.
I personally went to high school with two girls who presently have PHD’s. The following stories are true.
At a grad party, I was asked by one “what are you taking in university?” I said “Engineering”. She then said “Oh, you’re going to drive a train....cool”.
The second story is better. I was giving the second girl directions to a party. I told her to keep going north until she passed the bridge. She asked “which way is north”? I asked “Which way do you think north is?” She pointed straight up. I said “if that is north which way is east and west?” She said “depends which way you are facing”.
Did their PHD make them intelligent? Who knows? All I know is that I won’t be asking the second one for directions.
Feel free to correct my spelling and grammar if it makes you feel better. I was never the greatest wordsmith.
 
[citation][nom]funkjunky[/nom]a phd would probably help you use correct spelling and grammar. =)Btw I only insulted everyones intelligence here. I didn't say having a phd makes you more intelligent. Their is a high chance you are wiser and more knowledgeable if you have one.Also we are talking about an operating system as a whole, not JUST a kernal. The windows kernal is pretty good as the author of this article mentioned >.>. That's the funny thing, he mentioned many pro's with windows, and never flat out said 'windows is better than mac os x', but you INTENSE, and I really wanna emphasize the word intense, fanboys, or I suppose mac haters appear to strongly believe he was just bashing windows and complimenting macs through the entire article.one word dude... one word. Ignorant.[/citation]

What a homo! Talk about being an elitist prick!
 
[citation][nom]Steve Jobs[/nom]So, how many MacBooks can I put you lot down for?[/citation]
Depends, how many do you think I could smash on camera before it got boring?
 
I see a lot of complaining about Toms Hardware covering the mac world. I have been reading this site since I purchased my first Nvidia TNT card, which went into the third system I built in late 98. I built computers for years, studied engineering and then went to new media (which is all done on macs at my school). I bought my first mac in 2004, a powerbook. When bootcamp was announced I finally felt I could make the plunge and ditched my 6th generation custom made machine for an iMac, which I consider to be far superior to anything I can make. After the first few months I never booted windows again.

Maintaining a PC is a zen-like artform. You have to carefully maintain your drivers and applications, and backup your files a million ways in case you get a virus or malware that hoses you. My macs don't need a GD thing. They always work, and I am more than happy to hang up the zen of keeping a computer working. I could do it, but WHY?!

I still read Toms. I still keep up with all the hardware out there, even though 90% of it isn't used in Apples (WTF is our eSATA???????). I can build a top notch PC any day. But it won't match my Mac. Yes, you don't want to hear it. But that article is our experience, and we are Toms readers too.

BTW, my iMac? It runs 65 watts, 2W when it is idle. I got it up to 80 running 3D games... with the 20" LCD panel mind you! Try building THAT. Yeah, I'm stuck with an x1600 until I buy a new machine. But it isn't for a bleeding edge gamer. It's for those of us who want something we don't have to work constantly for... a computer without frustrations, even if that means taking on some limitations. Toms decided to cover this side of computing rather than pretend that the world consists only of home brewed designs. If anyone here could build something to stand up to Apple, they would have billion dollar empire on their hands. But instead readers wine about how unfair it is to talk about how well their computers run and the quality of their design.

Thanks THG for bringing in what makes an Apple tic to the discussion you normally have going about what is out there for computing solutions. You've been keeping me up to date for a long time, and leaving Apple out would be a bit of a glaring omission, regardless of the flame wars ongoing.
 
[citation][nom]invader_allan[/nom]OBVIOUS APPLE ADVERTISEMENT[/citation]
This is a fake account.

He has 4 posts, but his register date is January 1st, 1970

Good god Tom's are you this f***ing pitiful?
 
All old accounts(Like mine) have that glitch. 4 Post is interesting.

It would have been a FAR better review with some actual hardware taking apart. Show me what makes the mac tick(OMG its a dell inside 😛).

I like hardware no matter who makes it.

At the time, Windows works great for me. Will i own a Apple system in the future? Maybe....I do not have enough bias to rule it out, but for now i can do everything I need from one system....Windows.
 
You can tell a good article when the readers get so irate and offensive!

I've been visiting Tom's for years -- from back when they reviewed Windows NT on Alpha systems. The Intel fanboys got irate and offensive back then, too. They just couldn't believe that there was something faster than their Pentiums. And it ran Windows! "The horror!"

Similar stuff happened when the Athlon came out. It was cheaper! "It must be crap!"

This is a good pair of articles. Not great, but spot on in all the observations, performance measurements, analysis of the OS, measurements of LCD contrast and color accuracy, and review of the hardware. (Yes, for all you who claim these things weren't done, go back and look -- these items were all covered.) There's a laptop with a Penryn processor and a 1066MHz bus and an NVidia chipset that runs something besides Windows?? "Say it isn't so! It must be lies, I tell you!!"

A good article will upset the status quo, and is needed every now and then. It's nice to see TH get back to their roots with another article that may help some people think outside their cages. For those who refuse to consider alternatives, fine, you don't have to read the article. Just quit flaming the author about something you know nothing about. BTW, it's okay to read an article that doesn't boost your ego by repeating your pre-conceived notions about a computer -- just think, you might learn something.

Then again, there are some of us who thrive on having options, and a UNIX OS that works like an appliance yet still kicks ass is a great option.

Good job, TH. I think the comments to these articles show that you hit the nail square on the head and woke up some sleeping members of the community!

Read and learn, peeps.

(BTW, I went through the exact same process as the author about 10 months ago; my hacked and rebuilt Compaq laptop had a fatal hardware failure, so I got a MacBook. I run OS X, XP, Windows 7, and Ubuntu on it. Most of the time, it's OS X, for the very reasons the author outlined. Like I said -- the author is spot on. And because I agreed with the author, I fully expect this comment to be buried. :)
 

Yeah, because statements like "PCs are gay" prove the solidity of the article.

Really Tom's, stop with the fake accounts, and stop with the crappy adverts. We get it, you like the taste of Steve Jobbs' *****, we don't.
 
Read all of the posts and you will come to one conclusion.

The fact is that the article was perceived by most as an advertisement by Apple.

Everyone with average or above average computer knowledge knows that there is no magic parts underneath the shiny mac case that makes it superior. Everyone also knows that you can buy faster and more advanced parts when you build a PC or have one built for you.

Is it a solid OS? It sure is. It is also very limited with what it can do compared to windows. Just look at the plethora of software available for Windows compared to Mac.

If the OS is so superior they should offer it to windows users. That would make Apple a whole lot of money.....but then the curtain would be pulled back (wizard of oz reference) revealing the wizard. Previous mac owners would feel ripped off spending 1.5 times the money for slower hardware.

The author of the article carefully skirted around comparing hardware. That is because there is nothing inside a mac that you can't buy for less off the shelve. DDR 2 ram.... oh boy! HD2600 pro most recently replaced by a Nvidia 8800...... where do I sign up? 8800GS has 96 stream processors compared to my 4870x2's 1600
Are you kidding me? The above mentioned hardware is 2-3 years old and Apple is trying to slip it into a $2200 system. My system would cost around $2700 to build but would have 3 times the memory not to mention going from ddr2 to ddr3. A superior i7 processor. Apple will declare them superior within a year or two once they start using them. A video card that is 3 years ahead of a 8800gs and a better 25.5 1080p monitor. If you played Crysis on a $2200 mac on the same settings that I use, it would look like a slide show.

How's that for comparing hardware?

If all I did was edit music, take digital photos, and email. I would consider a mac if it was priced fairly. But sadly they are not. Hell will also freeze over before Apple will offer their OS on the market beside Windows. If they did, the curtain would truly be pulled back. Once you see the wizard...... the magic is gone.

Steve Jobs is quite the wizard. Genius..... pure genius!

I probably will never own a mac because I am a gamer. Buying a mac when you are a gamer is just not an intelligent choice.
 
Gee!

When I actually have someone with a Apple based system receive a common word file or jpg that they can open or send me a copy of what they are working on that they can open on my obsolete Win XP2 machine I will be very surprised.

The first question I ask when I send or receive files that do not open, is are you using a Mac and in almost every case the reply is yes. So if most of the world is able to open a doc or view a picture yet you can not do so on a Mac I guess their college education is showing up really well. Especially when they spent all that extra money for their education and Apple product.

 
I have read here coments about the fact that Tom's posted this article about a nice experience about a Mac. Everyone complains about this like it is a profanity of some sort...
Well I am a tech savy guy myself, I build my own computer many , many times, since the Pentium 2 era, AMD K62...I had work with Windows 3.1 a short time, windows 95, 98, SE, ME, 2000,XP, 2003 server that I still have on many machines here and I have been even such a shmack that I paid money on the Vista Ultimate x64.
I build a state of the art computer with Maximus extreme, 8 Gb DDR 3 1333, great HDD, Good Videocard 4850 with a Termaltake cooling, great power supply of 750W, BD Writer, you name it...All good brands and no malfunction on each one....And the Vista x64 with 8Gb DDR3 is freezing when you browse on the internet....Simply is freezing, hanging...So after all this, after reinstalling it many, many times on a clean 320 Gb HDD only dedicated to mighy Vista, I am thinking to really switch it to an alternative..Mac seems ok from this kind of reading...The hope for a flow free software is very tempting....
 
@ roholidays1:
savvy my ass. I know for the regular mac user building a computer sounds like a feat (most don't know what a cpu is) but honestly it's as easy as buying some lego and putting all pieces together. if your so called state of the art computer freezes when you are 'browsing on the internet', you are simply a big failure.

In which case YES, please switch to mac, join the ranks of the computer-illiterate and when something goes from on your mac, throw some $$$ so it gets fixed, after all if you had the money to buy your 'state of the art' computer (that you cannot even make it work) you should be fine paying for overpriced articles.
 
"Since Macs are inherently more expensive, it would follow that the average income of a Mac owner should be higher than the average income of a Windows owner, and along those lines, the average education of a Mac owner should be higher than that of a Windows user"

Hmm - cocaine is very expensive too ... therefore cocaine users must have a high education too!
 


Post of the day!!!!
 
To all those "who build their own PCs" and are so offended...

Last I checked this was a laptop review, let me know when you are building your own laptops. Also, jee a laptop is hardware so shouldn't it reviewed?!?!?

Also, next this is an OS and software review, let me know when you are writing your own OS.

I own several windows laptops and desktops (and have always built my own desktops) and one macbook. There is value in the Mac and there are many things I prefer about the macbook. Its a compelling machine.

Get over your fracking fear or need to self justify your preconceptions.
 
[citation][nom]rsud[/nom]Get over your fracking fear or need to self justify your preconceptions.[/citation]
Yes, because we don't agree with you, we obviously must be fearful.

And you can build a laptop, if one so chooses. Although the ease is much lower than building a PC depending on how you go about doing it (barebone laptops are about as easy). Not to mention that a similarly performing Laptop not running OSX can be had for about half the price of a Mac.

Also, next this is an OS and software review, let me know when you are writing your own OS.
Click to expand...
Did someone actually say that, or did you come up with that retarded rebuttal yourself?
 
Posters appear to want more meat on Mac OS X. Those of you looking for an in-depth, lengthy review of Leopard, you are directed to this link:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars

The reviewer is quite critical of certain UI designs. I find these complaints exaggerated.

To clarify statements such as "the Mac can't play Crysis", it's simple--the developers of the game clearly list its requirement as the Windows XP platform. Thus, Intel Mac hardware can execute any software with this requirement simply by putting Windows XP on the Mac hard disk (Apple doesn't do it directly but enables it easily with boot camp[1]. Virtualisation[2] is available for lesser demanding software). Also note that the game computers PS3 XB360 or Wii cannot execute any software with this requirement. Nor can Windows XP play MGS 4, Wipeout HD, or their ilk for the same reason--the developers decision.

For software developers the full suite of Mac OS X development tools is available for free[3], unlike Visual Studio and brethren.

As Mac OS X is Certified UNIX[4] (not Unix-like) all POSIX compliant software compiles and runs. A large collection of GNU and *BSD software is easily available via Macports[5] (installed with a simple "port" command), or can be compiled directly. Leopard executes 32 or 64-bit code equally and a single binary can contain the code for multiple architectures (Intel/PPC/32/64). There are no separate 32 or 64-bit OSes, unlike Windows.

Multiple versions of an application or framework can exist side by side without issue. For example, Mac OS X has built-in Java 1.3, 1.3.1, 1.4, 1.4.1, 1.4.2, 1.5, 1.6 available simultaneously and will supply any app whatever version it requests.

For those of you wondering about dedicated software for Mac OS X here is a count of individual executable apps I have on my work system (typically installed by dragging an extracted icon or folder to a preferred location--OS X is an Installer Free Zone for non-system level components):-

General apps (in /Applications2) : More than 600
Developer apps (in /Developer2/Applications) : About 160

I leave the predefined /Applications and /Developer to the Apple stuff. The apps are organised in this evolving folder hierarchy[6]. Apps can be moved anywhere at any time without breaking anything:

/Applications2
|-- 3-D
|-- Audio
|-- Backup
|-- Business
|-- Creative
|-- File Systems
|-- Fix Windows
|-- Games
|-- Graphics
|-- Health
|-- Hobby
|-- Internet
|-- Music
|-- Networking
|-- Organisers
|-- Organisers-GTD
|-- Photos
|-- Random Stuff
|-- Science
|-- Scripts
|-- Trading
|-- Utilities
|-- Video
|-- VoIP
|-- WIN
|-- Web
|-- X-platform
|-- iPhone
`-- iTV

/Developer2/Applications
|-- AppleScript
|-- Business
|-- Cocoa
|-- Database
|-- Editors
|-- IDEs
|-- JavaMonitoring
|-- LDAP
|-- Mono
|-- Network
|-- Project Management
|-- SCM
|-- SCM-git
|-- UML
|-- Utilities
|-- Web
|-- Web Performance
|-- Web Services
`-- WebObjects

Lastly the supplied built-in apps are excellent quality and usability and cover large proportion of most peoples needs out of the box.


[1]
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html

[2]
http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/
http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/
http://www.virtualbox.org/

[3]
http://developer.apple.com/

[4]
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html

[5]
http://www.macports.org/
http://developer.apple.com/mac/articles/opensource/workingwithmacports.html

[6]
Output from the "tree -L 1" command line utility installed with macports (ie. sudo port install tree).
 
[citation][nom]jcwashere[/nom]To clarify statements such as "the Mac can't play Crysis", it's simple--the developers of the game clearly list its requirement as the Windows XP platform.[/citation]
That's a gross oversimplification, not to mention Crysis runs on both Vista and Windows 7.

[citation][nom]jcwashere[/nom]Thus, Intel Mac hardware can execute any software with this requirement simply by putting Windows XP on the Mac hard disk (Apple doesn't do it directly but enables it easily with boot camp.[/citation]
You ignore the fact that Crysis brings even the highest end cards to their knees. You think you'll be able to run Crysis on an integrated graphics card?

[citation][nom]jcwashere[/nom]For software developers the full suite of Mac OS X development tools is available for free[3], unlike Visual Studio and brethren.[/citation]
You're wrong there buck-o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Express
 
"I am sorry but this article does NOT belong on this website.... a very poorly written article to say the least. OS X and Apple products are for people who are too dumb to use a PC. And for people who don't mind overpaying for their lesser quality hardware"

True this article is very mehh , but your comment as to 'OS X and Apple products are for people who are too dumb to use a PC'... yeah right. I've used macs for 16 years, and OS X since 10.0. you know what made me fall in love with OS X? being an MCSE for 6 years (the registry is a relic that should have been killed long ago). OS X and the closed architecture of macs make it so that you dont have to waste time with bloatware, viruses, virus software and booting to a desktop with a million icons of junk software. The uptime is phenomenal, and if OS X falls short for some reason, you always have terminal and the power of Unix at your fingertips.

lesser quality hardware? I have my powermac tower from 1997 running as my file/webserver and last time I checked, the intel core 2 duo in my mac is the same as the one you get in a PC. Honestly, computer performance vs notable usability improvements hit a plateau like 5 or 6 years ago. my wife happily surfs on her 5 year old mac.

I suggest you do a little more research before you bad mouth something you dont know much about. A computer is much more than just hardware, Software plays a BIG role.
 
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