Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / February 2006

Probably, if your concern is speed.
Probably, if your concern is resale value.
No, if your concern is an up-to-the-minute OSX.
No, if your concern is availability.

So, you're really asking two questions:
1. Is a current Mac going to be as fast doing xyz as my Linux/Windows
machine?
2. Will the Intel Macintoshes be faster than what I can get now?

Another posted opined that the Intel Macs would "Probably" be faster.
Without disagreeing in general, I would say that it does depend on what
sort of things you're doing, and (AFAICT, more important) what software
you're relying upon.

For example, the Mathematica engine is a piece of code that's been
tweaked for AltiVec, and is therefore quite fast on the PPC hardware.

WRT question 1: A current Mac might very well hand out results in
Mathematica as fast, or potentially even faster (check a comparison,
I've no idea how it actually turns out) than something running on other
hardware.

OTOH, I've heard (mostly from reading various things at ArsTechnica.com)
that the gcc compiler that Apple ships is pretty slow, compared to
optimized compilers available for Windows, when handling the same code.

So, whether the current Macs will be fast enough depends both on your
expectations and upon what you need to do with them. We'd need more
information before being able to weigh in in much more detail.

WRT question 2: There's no doubt that moving to the Intel chips
represents the potential for substantial speed increases, and not just
from the CPU. Mac front-side bus speeds are pretty low these days, as
are RAM speeds. The new hardware will probably take care of that, with
the resultant speed increases for memory-bound tasks, etc.

OTOH, code optimized for AltiVec on current machines (just to take one
example) may not speed up on Intel, depending on how much the developer
can get around this code (think of applications made by Adobe here: can
they use the Windows code to replace the Altivec enhancements that
currently sit in the Mac version? I don't know) either by re-coding,
ignoring, whatever.

For most applications (particularly research apps), speed comparisons
are available, so you can get an idea how current hardware stacks up
against your recently-departed Dell. Claims made about the performance
of future Apple hardware are EXTREMELY suspect. Apple is usually very
good about keeping that sort of thing under wraps until the actual
release.

Having written all that, here's a rough strategy:

Case 1: you need a new machine to be up and running before the start of
the next semester (here it starts on the 9th of January). that means
that you must a Mac (if Mac it is to be) before the new hardware is
released.

In this case, the performance of the new hardware doesn't matter; you
need the machine before it's available.

Case 2: you do need a new machine soon, but have some flexibility in the
timing. In this case, you could wait until after the Macworld Keynote
(12 Jan, IIRC) and see if any announcements are made. If yes, then you
reevaluate your purchasing options. If not, you go with current hardware
(Mac or not as you prefer).

Case 3: You don't really need a new machine: then don't buy one. Ok,
that's not really a live option, but it does deserve to be pointed out:
don't buy hardware, particularly portable hardware, before you need to.
Something better _will_ come out, and you _will_ feel bad.

If you need it NOW, no.  If you need it by February (assuming
announcement at MacWorld Expo), then you might want to wait.  And
consider software availability issues, too.  It's a toss-up.  Definitely
wait until after MacWorld Expo though, just in case.

Probably the announcement in January will tell us what we need to know about
Laptops and Intel chips.

Apple has been building fairly reliable PowerPC based Laptops for a few
years. They have worked out many of the bugs in the manufacturing process
and design process over that time.

Apple has not been designing a lot of portable products with Intel chips, so
they may find on the first few models that they have issues with heat
sources, circuit layout, assembly issues (soldering), support chips (Intel,
Via, etc...)

I think that I'd take a pass on the first few models based on Intel
processors, if reliability is what I was looking for. I am assuming here
that Apple will go to their traditional Laptop manufacturers for the new
products and it will take them some effort to get it right.

Now, in case anyone wants to jump on me and say FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and
Doubt), I used to work for Digital Equipment Corporation here in Canada. We
had a very large manufacturing plant here in Kanata at which I worked for
many years. I was one of the site Apple Consultants as we did a lot of
Contract Manufacturing for Apple over the years. We were approached by Apple
on a regular basis and after signing Apple Non-Disclosure agreements we were
introduced to all manner of Apple Products and asked to quote on
manufacturing the product for them. A lot of the time the whole process was
a fishing trip by Apple, they were comparing their current suppliers against
us for cost and quality levels and also getting an opportunity to see what
our products cost us and by doing the math could see what our mark-up was in
comparison to theirs. In some cases we did outbid their incumbent supplier
and were awarded contracts to manufacture products. They were into the use
of interestingly new technologies in building their products and some times
that made things difficult to do. Sometimes the problems were part
availability on extravagant parts, and that means creative part substitution
at best.

Having been able to look inside many different Laptops by many different
manufacturers over the years, I have seen some horror stories.

Due to a specific contract we signed at one time with Olivetti, we were
obliged to purchase and re-brand Laptop and Notebook computers form them and
sell them under the Digital Equipment Corporation brand. This was a
catastrophe, manufacture quality issues, component assembly issues, design
issues. Our only recourse was to recall all the machines that had been
shipped and sold and to that we pulled back probably close to 380,000 units.
After that we decided that we would have a certain company contract
manufacture a Laptop for us in a foreign land. When we got there we found
that another firm,  had already been building product in the same place and
when they couldn't get the quality of the product they required, they walked
and left the whole mess behind them, including lots of parts for thousands
of machines. We went in and had similar problems, but unlike the management
at the other firm, our management had made a commitment were going to stick
with it till things got better. After a year of hard work and workforce
education we started to get the quality levels we needed and things got
better after that.

Hope you found this an interesting read, basically I am saying I'd be
cautious about purchasing the first model off the line.

thanks all for the responses so far.  it sounds like the transition
wouldn´t be hard.
on another note, should I wait for the X86 Macs ?
one of my main concerns is speed..

I've been using multi-button trackballs on Macs since 1988 or so.  MacOS
X supports them just fine.  If the OP has a particular USB-based
pointing device he prefers, he can likely connect it to a PowerBook or
iBook and continue using it.

I just continue to not understand this whole two-button mouse
argument.  Why do you need it?  OS X was designed to need one button.
  Just because in the windows world you can use a 10-button mouse
doesn't mean you then HAVE TO have a 10-button mouse in OS X.

Some of the best systems are simple systems.  The Atari 2600 had one
button.  Will you refuse to play it unless it has a new controller
that has 361 buttons like your xbox controller?  No, of course not,
because the 2600 was designed to be used with one button.

you're right about the extenal disk being vulnerable to theft, I guess
I could carry it with me when I go to lunch... or lock it away.

My concern about rsync is that I would often need to transfer a lot
of data, and unless I bring the laptop at work (which would defeat
the purpose), this is very slow from my home connection.

Also, it would a hassle to have to do  the rsync thing each time
I want to work from home and then the next morning at work. Do you
do every time?

A question: I'd like to keep the desktop at work as unaccessible as
possible from the exterior. Can I authorize only access from my laptop,
considering that I use DHCP to connect to the internet from the laptop?

In article
<nospam.News.Bob-96F4D6.19590722122005@news.verizon.net>,

You are going to think I'm crazy, but get an iPod.  I'm dead
serious.  It is small.  Easy to slip into your pocket when you go
to lunch and to and from work.  And it has the added bonus that
you can listen to music on it when you go to lunch, or audio
books, or get a video iPod and watch TV.

But think about it.  I you need to be able to keep your data with
you, then anything larger than an iPod is going to be a drag, and
one day you are going to leave it.

Also iPods have docking stations available, so you can easily
attach it to your system and remove it (OK, not as easy to remove,
as you most likely need to tell the system to unmount it first,
but still less trouble than plugging and unplugging a USB or
Firewire cable each time.

Got an iPod.

                   Bob Harris