His Steveness wowed the faithful yet again, but this time even the most jaded PC loyalist may have reason to switch, if not to the OS, at least to the hardware. The new Macbook Pro is relatively unchanged from the latest gen titanium PowerBook except for the processor inside and the clever MagSafe power connector. Performance though is hugely increased by the Intel dual core processor inside: the benchmarks claim as much as a 4x advantage to the MacBook Pro. What it manages in real world terms is yet to be seen as I never trust performance specs and rather prefer a real world application test. It is also unclear as of this writing as to whether the machines will boot Windows XP though Apple has gone as far as to admit that they did not do anything to prevent booting other OSs. This is very significant as the machines will theoretically boot OSX, Windows and Linux, making them the most versatile machines on the market. It also remains to be seen whether somebody will come up with a way to seamlessly run windows apps inside OSX without a reboot, just like you OS9 classic apps.
I did a quick comparo with a similarly spec’ed Dell box (a D810); the pricing is quite competitive and the Apple box is lighter by almost two pounds. Throw in the styling of the mac and unique touches like the built in isight camera and backlit keyboard and the MacBook Pro is a clear winner in my eyes.
For my IT readers, I would strongly recommend that you order at least one of the MacBooks for evaluation. It would be wtrth the differential between a standard $1,500 wintel laptop and the new MacBook Pro to have a truly standard and universal laptop across platforms. Order today though or expect months of wait, this is sure to be a hot seller.
