Finally had a chance to go by the Apple Store at Valley Fair this eve for a first look at the Intel iMacs. I think they had three there, two 17" (1.83), and one 20" (2.0), but there may have been more - I didn't browse much. I placed an order for the MacBook a soon as I had a chance after the keynote, so I was anxious to see how the 1.83 / 17" performed.
My reaction was . . .
1. Way way way way way way faster than my (now aging) 1.25Ghz Al Pbook. Way faster. Way, way faster. I stepped between the 1.42 mac mini (my wife has one, and it has similar, I guess slightly faster perf than my PB, so it's a good proxy) and the imac, and I just couldn't believe the difference. iCal, iTunes, Garageband, iMovie, all launch in 1/4 the time or so. iCal for example takes about 4 seconds to load on the mini/PB, and it seemed almost instantaneous in the new iMac.
2. Generally snappier that what I remember the G5 to be, though I didn't have a chance to bounce back and forth between the G5 on display and the Intel. I would say, though, that it didn't seem "radically" faster than the G5 iMac as I remember it. Just a bit faster, in practical terms. Apps launched faster, web pages loaded (maybe) a little faster, etc. There wasn't really a "wow this machine is a screamer" reaction during the time I was just poking around with launching apps, etc. Well - it was a "wow" reaction compared with my PB, but I had the same wow reaction with the G5 when it came out too. With several programs running at once it still slowed down and gave beachballs, etc, pretty much just like the G5. However, the display model had only 512MB of Ram, so with 2GB who knows. It definitely wasn't like everything was magically zero-delay instant response, that's for certain.
3. It played 1080i superman trailer at ~50-60% (x2, i.e. both processors at 50-60%) utilization. Rock-solid 24fps. My 1.25 PB chokes on the 720p trailer, and plays it at ~ 15fps tops. This is where my "wow this machine has some horsepower" reaction kicked in.
4. With itunes, safari, mail, ical, ichat w/isight on, and a couple of other programs running, it still played 1080i superman trailer at ~80-90% cpu with no dropped frames. I've heard maybe the h.264 is decoded in the new fast video card - dunno, but it certainly can play the hell out of the HD trailers. Tears welled up in my eyes at this point. Hallelujah, I am so happy I'm going to have a "powerbook" that performs like this.
5. The biggest stunner for me was how well Rosetta ran. Word, Powerpoint, Excel were _as fast or probably 50% faster_ than they are on the mini, and on my PB, even emulated. Totally seamless, ran great, just as fast as native (on my 1.25ghz G4). Now, if you own a G5 today, then you'll probably feel like they're 2x slower, but for me coming from a 1.25 ghz, I can wait all year for an intel version of Office and still be satisfied with the perf. Unfortunately PS wasn't loaded, so I couldn't poke around with it. My sense is that it'll be adequate for what I do. Frankly, most of what I do is process RAW files, so jumping to Aperture or Lightroom when they're native will be no prob, if they're native first.
6. Other than that, my only other reaction was that it was a totally seamless experience. I would not have known whether I was using Intel or PPC, nor Universal or Rosetta, if I didn't care to know. Seemed stable with no weirdness during the 30 min or so I was there.
I'm SO HAPPY. Presuming the MacBook performs similarly to the iMac, I've been waiting for this day for a long long time - a PB that actually performs as well as my windows desktop! How exciting!
Eric
My reaction was . . .
1. Way way way way way way faster than my (now aging) 1.25Ghz Al Pbook. Way faster. Way, way faster. I stepped between the 1.42 mac mini (my wife has one, and it has similar, I guess slightly faster perf than my PB, so it's a good proxy) and the imac, and I just couldn't believe the difference. iCal, iTunes, Garageband, iMovie, all launch in 1/4 the time or so. iCal for example takes about 4 seconds to load on the mini/PB, and it seemed almost instantaneous in the new iMac.
2. Generally snappier that what I remember the G5 to be, though I didn't have a chance to bounce back and forth between the G5 on display and the Intel. I would say, though, that it didn't seem "radically" faster than the G5 iMac as I remember it. Just a bit faster, in practical terms. Apps launched faster, web pages loaded (maybe) a little faster, etc. There wasn't really a "wow this machine is a screamer" reaction during the time I was just poking around with launching apps, etc. Well - it was a "wow" reaction compared with my PB, but I had the same wow reaction with the G5 when it came out too. With several programs running at once it still slowed down and gave beachballs, etc, pretty much just like the G5. However, the display model had only 512MB of Ram, so with 2GB who knows. It definitely wasn't like everything was magically zero-delay instant response, that's for certain.
3. It played 1080i superman trailer at ~50-60% (x2, i.e. both processors at 50-60%) utilization. Rock-solid 24fps. My 1.25 PB chokes on the 720p trailer, and plays it at ~ 15fps tops. This is where my "wow this machine has some horsepower" reaction kicked in.
4. With itunes, safari, mail, ical, ichat w/isight on, and a couple of other programs running, it still played 1080i superman trailer at ~80-90% cpu with no dropped frames. I've heard maybe the h.264 is decoded in the new fast video card - dunno, but it certainly can play the hell out of the HD trailers. Tears welled up in my eyes at this point. Hallelujah, I am so happy I'm going to have a "powerbook" that performs like this.
5. The biggest stunner for me was how well Rosetta ran. Word, Powerpoint, Excel were _as fast or probably 50% faster_ than they are on the mini, and on my PB, even emulated. Totally seamless, ran great, just as fast as native (on my 1.25ghz G4). Now, if you own a G5 today, then you'll probably feel like they're 2x slower, but for me coming from a 1.25 ghz, I can wait all year for an intel version of Office and still be satisfied with the perf. Unfortunately PS wasn't loaded, so I couldn't poke around with it. My sense is that it'll be adequate for what I do. Frankly, most of what I do is process RAW files, so jumping to Aperture or Lightroom when they're native will be no prob, if they're native first.
6. Other than that, my only other reaction was that it was a totally seamless experience. I would not have known whether I was using Intel or PPC, nor Universal or Rosetta, if I didn't care to know. Seemed stable with no weirdness during the 30 min or so I was there.
I'm SO HAPPY. Presuming the MacBook performs similarly to the iMac, I've been waiting for this day for a long long time - a PB that actually performs as well as my windows desktop! How exciting!
Eric
