[eskaywoo]

First impressions of the battery life don't really give much points to the new MacBook Pro. It was supposed to be using a more efficient processor, or so Intel claims.
But a few things I considered... dunno whether anyone thought of these yet.
1. The screen is slightly bigger
2. The screen is brighter, something to the factor of 50+% more (correct?)
3. The processor is faster. (with 2 cores)
4. The Mac OS X for Intel might not be fully optimised to take advantage of any power saving features of the Intel COre Duo processor.
5. The battery itself is new on the MBP and might not be fully charged yet, until a few recharge cycles later.
Anyone agree? I think more testing is needed.
Mike

[tiborg]

Basically you're getting the performance of a G5 with the power consumption of a G4, sounds pretty good. There is a lower voltage version of the CoreDuo available, maybe Apple will be using that in the Intel version of the iBook.

[robco]

The 2 hr battery life was playing a DVD and Energy Saver turned off. This will diminish the battery life of any notebook. Not good if you want to watch an extended LOTR DVD, but it should get better battery life performing less disk-intensive tasks.

[mark_G4]

It seems to me from this that if the next version of the iBook runs the Solocore chip then it won't be that much faster or any faster than the current G4 PowerBook. That would be a very disappointing.

[KenAF]

The tested 2 hr battery life for DVD playback with Energy Server turned off is obviously -not- indicative of the battery life you would see using, say, iTunes or a word processor on a plane. The Core Duo has a lot of 'automatic' power saving features that aren't fully utilized in this DVD playback scenario.
Note Intel also has a lower-power, lower-voltage version of the Core Duo, which Apple isn't currently using. This probably has something to do with its more limited availability at the moment.

[williamb]

Hi Jason,
The whining is reported by some to begin when dimming, beginning just a notch below Full Brightness. At full brightness, the whining is reportedly not heard, at least by some. Can you confirm this either way?
>Of course we'll look into it, but I haven't seen (heard?) it in any of the units I've tried.
>Jason Snell, Editorial Director, Macworld

[cambro]

Several people have pointed out that the MBP screen cannot open as wide as the previous generation PB by something like 10. They have also pointed out that Aluminum PB G4s cannot open as wide as Ti PB G4s. Apple seems like it is going in the wrong direction here in terms of imposing greater and greater constraints on how wide the PB can open.
Can you please comment on the usability of the system in a situation OTHER than sitting on a desk? How about on a elevated iCurve? Or on an angled podium? Or just on your lap? Or on your knees in bed?
I see a design trend that increasingly constrains screen opening angle as very bad!

[frankie]

Once the Intel compiler is released and fully available, expect every CPU-bound benchmark to jump upwards by a good amount. Especially when Apple uses it to compile OS X 10.5.
Note: the Unreal benchmark is most likely GPU-bound, and the Zip benchmark is certainly disk-bound.

[scottmyers]

Either on a partition or simply as a second operating system?

[entspeak]

Yes, there are major considerations to take into account when comparing the battery performance of the MacBook Pro with the G4.
Considering that the battery is powering a processor with two 2Ghz cores as opposed to a single 1.67Ghz processor, I'd say having roughly the same battery life means that the Dual Core performance is more efficient in terms of power consumption just as advertised. And yes, the new LCD, the new graphics system, the Serial ATA interface (maybe, I'm not sure about that one) all may take more power. So the fact that these new machines have roughly the same battery life as the older G4's is a good thing.
That said, hopefully, better batteries will come.

[badlydrawnboy]

This may sound strange, but my main concern is "responsiveness" of the Finder and Applications. 80% of what I do is with Safari, iLife, iWork and Mail. The other 20% is Aperture and Photoshop, with probably 15% of that being Aperture which will be Universal Binary in March.
One of my only complaints about Macs over the years has been that they just "feel" so much slower than PCs with everyday tasks such as web browsing, opening folders, etc. This is what makes the biggest difference in my workflow, since I'm not rendering huge video files or doing processor-intensive Photoshop actions. While a Mac may be faster than a comparable PC in these tasks, it's my experience that the PC blows the Mac away on "responsiveness".
My hope is that the MacBook Pro and other Intel CD Macs will change this. Am I right?

[sigma8]

I wonder how IBM's newer, low-power G5's it claims to have developed would have compared. I guess we'll never know, now!

[bigpics]

In reply to:

---

I wonder how IBM's newer, low-power G5's it claims to have developed would have compared. I guess we'll never know, now!

---

Don't be TOO sure about that.
None, well few, of us ever thought we'd ever see, let alone be salivating over Intel-based Macs, and the apps, after all, haven't gone solely Intel-native, they've gone.... ...UNIVERSAL...
PPC, i.e., IBM's "Power" line isn't going away -- it's strategic to IBM and still has KEY non-IBM customers in the gaming machine world, so IBM's not just thinking of its own server line....
...so what Steve tacketh away from, Steve can re-tacketh toward if circumstance dictates... ...and if Apple's market share increases and its line of products broadens, there could well be an emphasis on "Macness" and OS X over the hardware guts with BOTH x86 and PPC products in the longer term, differentiated by the purpose of the machines.
And would we buy 'em if they did what we needed and delivered value?
Damn straight.
Never say never, and meanwhile....
...Full SPEED (!) ahead.......
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[chewygoat]

Someone needs to come up with a hack, if it's possible, to turn off one of the cores, hopefully resulting in extended battery life. Is the Core Duo capable of running with only one core powered?