Finally got a chance to try an Intel Mac. Speed didn't blow me away as I had expected

[amin]

This probably won't interest most of you who have long ago had a hands-on experience of your own, but I want to post some brief impressions of the Intel Core Duo iMac. I tried it today in the Apple store in Towson, MD, and I thought I was going to be blown away by the difference in speed in Safari and iPhoto. To my surprise, I found the "feel" to be only slightly faster than my 15" G4 Powerbook. It was a relief to know my PB, purchased in July '05, isn't that much slower than the current hardware when it comes to the things that I do most. I won't pretend I wouldn't rather have a MB Pro than my PB, but my PB does all that I need it to do, and does it well!

 

[powerbook911]

This probably won't interest most of you who have long ago had a hands-on experience of your own, but I want to post some brief impressions of the Intel Core Duo iMac. I tried it today in the Apple store in Towson, MD, and I thought I was going to be blown away by the difference in speed in Safari and iPhoto. To my surprise, I found the "feel" to be only slightly faster than my 15" G4 Powerbook. It was a relief to know my PB, purchased in July '05, isn't that much slower than the current hardware when it comes to the things that I do most. I won't pretend I wouldn't rather have a MB Pro than my PB, but my PB does all that I need it to do, and does it well!

It feels like a big difference to me. I have a 1.5 GHZ Powerbook and the 1.83 GHZ Core Duo iMac.

You're right though that the Powerbooks "feel ok" for most stuff. You should download the Webkit builds of Safari. That will speed up your browsing.

The iMacs really need more memory than the stock 512 though.

 

[ipacmm]

I just picked up my MBP yesterday and it is still noticeably slower then my Quad, which it should be but it is still a lot faster then any other Powerbook or G4/5 Mac I have worked on.

 

[Jon'sLightBulbs]

Now, try encoding an mp3 in itunes while simultaneously loading webpages in safari and opening Aperture. Any difference now?

 

[itgoesbuzz]

I havent used one but i dont know if your going to see a large difference in doing basic tasks. My Powerbook works fast when i have Adium, Itunes, MS Word and Safari all open but youd prob. notice the biggest diff. with apps. like iphoto (esp. with large photo libraries) and like the previous poster said, encoding mp3s, and multitasking while running a cpu intensive program. When everything is universal the speed will be quite noticable.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Yesterday I was trying one out, not to buy but to pass time while thinking of something to buy. I felt a speed boost myself, I put it through some of the stuff I put my g4 through everyday and it did very well, better than my powerbook.

I guess I would get one if my powerbook 1.67 were a dinosaur.

 

[MacAficionado]

Exactly.

Try encoding a two hour movie in H.264 320x240 for the iPod and see which one finishes first. That is the test that will blow you away!!!

 

[amin]

Now, try encoding an mp3 in itunes while simultaneously loading webpages in safari and opening Aperture. Any difference now?

Don't get me wrong. I know it's faster. It's just that for the average things I do, such as working with large iPhoto libraries, it's not as noticeable to me as I thought it would be based on some of the comments I've heard from others. I guess I'm just not a "power user." Either that, or I'm just not as perceptive regarding the speed difference.

 

[amin]

You should download the Webkit builds of Safari. That will speed up your browsing.

Where do I get these? Safari feels fine to me, but I'd like to try them.

 

[asencif]

I tried one myself and it is faster than any G4 machine especially on doing encoding and converting movies to H.264. Also, it is faster than the previous iMac G5 with the basic apps, however not to an exaggerated level. It's supposed to be faster anyway since were talking about two processors. Where I didn't notice a difference was in comparison to the DP/DC PM G5's, except when opening up certain apps. When running tasks the PM's were still faster.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I think Apple is doing itself a tremendous diservice by putting out demo Intel machines with only the stock 512MB RAM. I agree, I was not impressed with the Intel iMacs at the store either. But when my 1.83 MBP came in the first thing I did after testing it was to install 2GB RAM. After I did that the machine flies. Much much faster than any PPC Mac I've ever used (and I have a Dual G5).

 

[rendezvouscp]

Where do I get these? Safari feels fine to me, but I'd like to try them.

You can get them from the WebKit Nightly Builds page. They're usually a little bit buggy, but usually not so much so that it hurts your daily browsing.
-Chasen

 

[Bunsen Burner]

I've a 1.67 PB G4, 15". My MBP 2.0 runs circles around it.

BB

 

[nospleen]

I think Apple is doing itself a tremendous diservice by putting out demo Intel machines with only the stock 512MB RAM. I agree, I was not impressed with the Intel iMacs at the store either. But when my 1.83 MBP came in the first thing I did after testing it was to install 2GB RAM. After I did that the machine flies. Much much faster than any PPC Mac I've ever used (and I have a Dual G5).

This is spot on... They do not seem much faster with stock ram. It is like a car with a lot of horsepower and bad tires... With 2GB ram, it screams.

 

[solvs]

You won't notice a tremendous difference in everyday stuff, except maybe booting. But I can tell you that for some reason, some demo machines at Apple's stores feel slower to me. I tried a G5 iMac when they first came out and it seemed really slow at the Apple Store, even with nothing else running and a gig of RAM. I tried the same model at a CompUSA with only 512MB at it actually seemed a little faster. When I wound up buying one on sale and re-installed the OS from scratch and updated everything it seemed even faster than my friend's iMac with more memory. It slowed down a bit when I loaded all my programs, but sped up again when I added 2GB of RAM.

For some things, it will be faster, but only under certain circumstances.

 

[amin]

I think Apple is doing itself a tremendous diservice by putting out demo Intel machines with only the stock 512MB RAM. I agree, I was not impressed with the Intel iMacs at the store either. But when my 1.83 MBP came in the first thing I did after testing it was to install 2GB RAM. After I did that the machine flies. Much much faster than any PPC Mac I've ever used (and I have a Dual G5).

Maybe that explains it. Makes sense.

 

[asencif]

If you add RAM to any machine it will speed it up. For some reason, the Intel iMacs needed more than the G5's. Everyone is like add more RAM then it will run like it's supposed to, however that seem to be the case more with Intel iMacs. I didn't hear too much of you need to add more RAM when the iMac G5's were out. The PM G5 of course need a lot since Pro Apps are being run. This points to the G5 systems probably being faster with stock RAM. It could be because of non-UB apps, but then again most of the programs installed in the Apple Stores are UB on Intel Macs.

 

[plinden]

The iMacs at the Apple store in Emeryville, the ones I looked at, all have 1GB RAM, the Minis have the stock 512MB.

Anyway, about dual core ... so I've said already that my Intel iMac is 50% faster working with Java than my Windows laptop - I also ran a couple of tests compiling a Java project while importing a CD in iTunes. The Windows laptop took 8 times longer to compile (20s -> 2m 40s), the iMac took two seconds longer (13s -> 15s).

I've heard in the past about how much "snappier" the Windows UI felt than Mac OSX ... I have to say that my experience has been the opposite. This feels like the fastest computer I've ever owned. There's nothing slow about it. I have 2GB RAM though.

 

[iBunny]

My Intel iMac 2GHz Core Duo w/ 2GB Ram and 256MB VRam is by far the fastest Mac I have ever used.

I have never been on a Quad G5, But The Dual 2.5 w/ 1GB Ram seemed slow accually when I used it. But it was at the Apple Store, So it was probably bogged down or something.

I am happy with my purchase. I will be getting a new Intel PowerMac when they surface tho. Primarily because I want a 30'' Screen too <3

 

[jacobj]

Has anyone tried ripping a DVD onto their MBP and compressing it with Handbrake whilst watching it with DVD Player. If it doesn't stutter then, then I'll be impressed.

 

[aristobrat]

To my surprise, I found the "feel" to be only slightly faster than my 15" G4 Powerbook.

I was amazed at how quickly the applications opened. Mail took less that one bounce on the MBP I demo'ed, whereas it takes 2-3 bounces on my 1.67 15" PB.

But I guess that's more a function of the SATA drive than the Intel processor.

 

[Morn]

Going from a G4 mac mini to a MBP feels like going from a toyato echo to a lexus sports car . The speed is very noticable in just in minor UI responsiveness issues like smoothness of scrolling.

 

[notjustjay]

I tried out my first intel iMac (1.83, 512 MB) at the local Future Shop today. Overall I was impressed. Basic stuff didn't feel a whole lot faster, but I played around in iDVD and found it to be very responsive as I dragged things into drop zones and manipulated images. Apps like Pages and Keynote and Garageband still took a few seconds to open, but once open, they were fairly snappy. Pages could actually keep up with my typing!

 

[MarkCollette]

Has anyone tried ripping a DVD onto their MBP and compressing it with Handbrake whilst watching it with DVD Player. If it doesn't stutter then, then I'll be impressed.

Are you describing running two different programs that are each accessing the DVD drive simultaneously? Or do you mean compressing from hard disk to hard disk while playing a DVD from the DVD drive?

If you manually reduce Handbrake's process priority, then it'll probably play the movie smoothly.

 

[MarkCollette]

Going from a G4 mac mini to a MBP feels like going from a toyato echo to a lexus sports car . The speed is very noticable in just in minor UI responsiveness issues like smoothness of scrolling.

So, will I notice anything going from my iMac G3 333 MHz?