Archive for MacBook-Pro tag
MacBook Pro two year check-in
It’s been an interesting couple of years with nothing but a maxed-out MacBook Pro 17″ as my only home machine.
Failures
The hard drive died but time machine held my hand. At ALT.NET Seattle 2009 my backpack took a dive that left a dent in one corner. The battery was replaced and I roped GrinGod into obtaining a replacement UK-style \ key from the UK after some frantic typing.
A friend cracked the display when his keyfob sprang from his Batbelt culminating in a visit of the Apple Store in Bellevue. Ten days and $700 later got that fixed and included a bonus disconnected thermal sensor, a couple of new scratches, an extra screw to rattle around inside and a line of grease around the Apple logo.
Sticking with it
When I find myself eying the unibody I wince at the glossy ‘matt finish’ screen, the multi-touch trackpad clicks that sound like Robocop is nearby and a US keyboard that requires my pinky to hit a single-height enter key. That little pink dog won’t learn any new tricks. I’ve tried.
Still the OpenCL benchmark show the 8600M outperforming the newer 9400M and it does everything I need and at least one thing I don’t (gets hot enough to bake bread on). Short of switching the hard disk out for an SSD – I’ve ordered twice and then recalled after a Twitter volley of “no, you don’t want THAT one” – it’s here to stay for at least another year.
Applications
One thing that is always changing is the bunch of installed applications as I search for a combination that deliver a nirvana between productivity and enjoyment. Apps that perform a set of focused useful tasks with a shiny, eminently lick-able user interface, score highly.
I’ve rounded up my favourite apps before but here’s the latest specials on the menu.
CleanMyMac
This great-looking app helps reclaim wasted space making it a pre-requisite for SSD switchers.
Combining the PowerPC and foreign language code-purging of XSlimmer & TrimTheFat is also adds cache & log purging in with application uninstalls ala AppZapper etc.
Despite using XSlimmer already on my machine it was able to reclaim another 1.8GB and V2 is out soon which I hope will remove & alias duplicates given we’re not getting ZFS which had this feature (how many copies of Sparkle.framework do I have on my machine….)
Coda
This year I rewrote my blog’s WordPress theme from scratch and given the PHP requirement I found myself looking for an alternate IDE to Visual Studio. I already own TextMate but the feel of a raw text editor with bundles of extra bits feel didn’t have the gloss and usability I wanted such as fast preview, remote FTP sync etc. with a minimal of setup fuss.
I briefly toyed with Espresso during the early development cycle but Coda won me over in the end with it’s sheer simplicity and elegance plus the addition of built-in documentation for PHP was very helpful when working offline.
BetterTouchTool
Yes, when the Magic Mouse hit the street I picked one up. The idea of a mouse with trackpad multi-touch technology was appealing but a few minutes of use and no amount of twiddling would make it track or let me configure it to take full advantage of what it should be able to do.
Until Apple sort this out BetterTouchTool is your friend letting you speed up the tracking of the Magic Mouse, or indeed your trackpad, and assign all sorts of interesting shortcuts and abilities to combinations of finger gestures.
Secrets
Mac apps tend to expose only the common options in their user interfaces but sometimes developers add some additional tweaks and settings behind the scenes that live in the Mac’s equivalent of the registry (known as “defaults“). While you can set these manually using the defaults command-line tool you still need to know the setting exists, it’s name and what options are available and so secrets exposes this.
Secrets is similar to Deeper and TinkerTool but the difference is that the secrets web site lets people add new options which then are automatically available within the installed preferences pane making them easily discoverable, searchable, applied… and occasionally undone.
Machinarium
This point-and-click adventure game will appeal to people who enjoyed Monkey Island although it feels more like the gorgeously submerging Beneath a Steel Sky.
The scenery is brilliantly imagined, stylistic and shows that very real lived-in cities can be beautiful especially when populated by cute robots capable of assembling themselves from their own body-parts (just like a triple 8 but infinitely cuter).
[)amien
Disappointing new MacBook Pros
Like many other MacBook Pro owners I’ve been waiting for the October 14th event with some excitement. The highlights include:
- Stronger aluminium block casing
- NVidia dual graphics for low-power or high-performance
- Glass multi-touch/multi-press trackpad
But the downsides are also worth noting, all of which make me think when I replace my 2.6GHz 17″ MBP in a year Apple aren’t going to have something I want to replace it with.
- No 17″ model
- 4GB RAM limit
- Glossy screen only
- 1440×900 resolution
- Firewire gone
Keith Combs has some similar observations in more depth while AppleInsider is suggesting a January refresh for the 17″
[)amien
Boot Camp 2.1, VMware Fusion 1.1.2 and MacBook Pro firmware
Boot Camp 2.1
Apple have released Boot Camp 2.1 which finally includes official 64-bit support on Vista and support for Windows XP Service Pack 3.
This update may mean that 3D games will play without locking up or installing NVidia’s own drivers and that the trackpad functions correctly again (broken since Boot Camp 1.x)
MacBook Pro Firmware 1.5.1
Apple’s MacBook Pro Firmware Update 1.5.1 applies to all recent MacBook Pro’s including the ones with MBP31.0070.B05 firmware that the 1.5 update failed to upgrade leaving 17″ owners on MBP31.0070.B07.
The new firmware does not fix a problem where trackpad input would become jerky after suspending/sleeping and turning Airport off would make matters worse. 10.5.3 has fixes for Airport after sleeping which might solve the issue…
VMware Fusion 1.1.2
VMware Fusion 1.1.2 is just out and includes a host of fixes and improvements including:
- Windows XP Service Pack 3
- Network and USB compatibility
- Time Machine compatibility
Now that VMware lets Time Machine backup the VM image file and that Time Machine backs up modified files in their entirety you might want to exclude ~/Documents/Virtual Machines it unless you fancy loosing several gigabytes per hour whilst using a VM. Of course if you have your VM running off it’s own partition to allow Boot Camp too then that’s not an issue.
With any luck VMware will figure out a way of Time Machine backing up changed individual files within the Windows filesystem…
[)amien
One week with a MacBook Pro 17″
It has been one week since I picked up my new MacBook Pro 17″ to replace my aging first-generation 15″ model.
My initial concern was that the size and weight would be unwieldy after 4 years of lugging around a 15″ MacBook Pro and a prior to that a Titanium PowerBook G4. The actual problem was that my trusty Samsonite Trunk & Co. backpack could not accommodate it and that I’d have to hope Santa would deliver something a little bigger. Being properly kitted up might reveal if the dimensions and weight are uncomfortable so expect an update once I’ve travelled with the beast.
The screen is fantastic, a little brighter, and provides me with a desktop-like experience in terms of real estate thanks to the combination of the increased size and the high-definition 1920×1200 option. I had examined the glossy finish in-store and found having my face and the rest of the store glaring back at me far too distracting for real work (it might be nice for watching DVD’s in the dark I guess) and so went with the matte finish. Surprisingly it is a little more reflective than the older MBP but not overly so and it does make removing unwelcome fingerprints easier.
One problem I had with m 15″ was that heavy use of Visual Studio within Parallels wasn’t always cutting it on performance. Compilation was faster than the cheap HP/Compaq desktop I’d been using but still wasn’t snappy enough to keep my attention tightly focused ;-)
I went with top options – a 2.6GHz processor coupled with 4GB of RAM and a 7200RPM 200GB drive – to ensure maximum performance. Mac OS X and native Vista did not disappoint and felt like a speedy desktop despite Vista being 32-bit and limited to 3GB of RAM until Apple ship a 64-bit ready Boot Camp drivers and tools.
My .NET development typically takes place inside a virtual machine – previously Parallels but now evaluating VMware Fusion with its enticing dual-core and 64-bit guest OS support. Both Parallels and Fusion had similar almost-native performance in the disk and processor department on my 15″ according to Vista’s performance index and I’ve yet to rerun those (stay tuned). Whichever gets Aero/DirectX 9Ex shader support first will be my home for a while.
Battery life was a big surprise offering over 3 hours and I certainly feel less conscious of where the next power feed is coming from although that is partly due to the poor battery on my old machine being rather tired and worn.
One big disappointment is the keyboard. Firstly it is the same size as the 15″ model which leaves the extra space to the speaker grille. Whilst the speakers do sound far superior – good enough to actually listen to music on – I couldn’t help but feel a wider enter key, a second ctrl and a little f-key spacing could have gone a long way. What is more concerning is that many keys do not register if hit off-centre even by a slight amount :(
There are still some things to try:
- Games under native Vista taking advantage of the Nvidia 8600M GT chip
- Time Machining my MyBook Pro external drive over FireWire 800 (800 Mb/s) instead of USB2 (400 Mb/s)
- Burning DVD performance
- Removing DVD drive (UJ-85J FBZ8) region protection (RPC) to play my DVD collection
[)amien
Windows Experience Index on MacBook Pro 2GHz compared
I just got the opportunity to try out the latest version of VMware and thought I’d do a quick Windows Experience Index on Boot Camp, Parallels and VMware to see what the performance is like before my new MacBook Pro 17″ arrives (hopefully on Friday!)
When I installed Leopard on my machine I took the opportunity to carve out a dedicated 20GB partition again to put a fresh install of Vista on. As well as being able to boot natively this also now means I can run my single Windows partition switching between native, Parallels or VMware at will which admittedly drives Windows Activation crazy.
Host machine
| Hardware | MacBook Pro 2GHz “MacBookPro1,1″ |
|---|---|
| Memory | 2048MB DDR2 667MHz |
| Processor | 2.0GHz Core Duo |
| Graphics | ATI Radeon X1600 256MB |
| Disk | 100GB 5400RPM |
| Operating system | Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.1 |
Configuration
| Memory | 848MB (Virtual machines only) |
|---|---|
| Disk | 20GB Boot Camp partition |
| Operating system | Microsoft Vista Ultimate Edition 32-bit |
Testing notes
- No other applications running in OS X or Vista
- Full-screen mode
- Vendors guest OS tools & drivers installed
Scores
| VMware 1.1 62573 |
Parallels 3.0 5570 beta |
Boot Camp 2.0 drivers |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.7 |
| Memory (RAM) | 3.9 | 3.9 | 4.9 |
| Graphics | 1.9 | 1.9 | 4.1 |
| Gaming graphics | 1.0 | 1.0 | 4.4 |
| Primary hard disk | 5.9 | 5.9 | 5.9 |
| Overall | 1.0 | 1.0 | 4.1 |
Thoughts
Processor: A little surprising given that VMware supports multiple cores but that Parallels doesn’t.
Memory: To be expected given that the VM was only running with less RAM.
Graphics: Disappointing and likely caused by the VM vendors graphics drivers not being WDM which based.
Gaming graphics: Very disappointing and caused by lack of DirectX 9 graphics support.
Hard disk: Like processor this is a pleasant surprise.
After my new 17″ MacBook Pro arrives (hopefully this Friday) I will produce another set of scores which should show how much faster the 2.6GHz is with all the options and let me compare like-for-like on the memory front.
I also want to run some Visual Studio 2008 build time comparisons (probably of SubSonic) because compilations are what really counts ;-) If you have any further suggestions for benchmarks, leave a comment!
[)amien