My MacBook Pro Sucks
September 10th, 2006 Filed in: Reviews, Mac Jump to commentsI recently bought a new MacBook Pro (my first Apple computer). Yes, I am one of the switchers. I have been a PC user for a while until Apple introduced Intel-based Mac notebook. I was tempted by the MacBook Pro and brought a 15.4-inch display, 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo, with 2GB of RAM (upgraded from 1GB). After couple hours of fun playing around with the Mac OS X, I installed Adobe CS2 and did couple test runs. I was so disappointed on its performance. It even runs slower than my old PC laptop (1.5GHz Centrino with 1GB RAM). That is impossible since the new MacBook has 2.16GHz CPU with 2GB of RAM. I thought it could be my Adobe software issue. So I went to install Macromedia Studio 8 to see how it perform. Same result - slow.
I got frustrated and did a quick search on Google. I found this review from MacWorld. Apparently, neither Adobe CS2 nor Macromedia Studio 8 supports Intel-based Macs (running on Rosetta) yet. Fortunately, Adobe has announced that they will fix this issue to support Intel-based Mac computers in the next versions. So, if you are planning to get a MacBook Pro as your work computer, you’ll be better off waiting until Adobe release the next version of Creative Suite.
Note: Universal application like Safari, iLife and Mail are running fine and smoothy on my MacBook.
Update
June 6, 2007
I’m now using Adobe CS3 on my MacBook and they run very nice. However, I still have problem with the heat issues (extremely hot when charging). I heard the second generation released in Oct 2006 is faster than my first generation and the heat issue is resolved.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
@ SomeDude
Very interesting. This is a point I didn’t considered, shame on me. Even if We think about the colorblind as a little part of population, obviously me MUST take care about that.
I have to ponder over that, and the fact I had a point of view careless about a view problem.
June 11th, 2007 at 8:59 am
@Luke
I do not know the percentage of people that are like me (colorblind) but it seems to be a significant percentage of the USA population (at least 3-5%). Many of my coworkers and relatives have difficulty distinguishing between certain hues or colors (no, I do not live in the South).
In the past I have seen a dark green and thought it was brown–or light brown and thought it was green. Many times I see a dark blue and I think it is purple–or light purple that I believe is pink or blue.
Most mainstream companies take this into consideration and attempt to accommodate by providing vivid primary colors on equipment that uses LEDs but many comanies do not. Perhaps apple does not focus on such things as any sort of concern.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Same old “problems” on Mac Os platform: windows is always coded by technician which just IGNORE the Color Theory (i’m a color management technician).
So million and millions of win user grew up working with microsoft wrong, amateurish, ABSURD ad TOTALLY KITSCH palette. They believe, or better, they’re USED to think that aubergine is dark, almost black, kind of dirty brown, near to fresh extracted oil :-)).
This is a problem in job, as “win graphic designer” usually works on a system that, other than show wrong colours, is not aware about the existance of CMYK color space, which was stated only 500 years ago by gutenberg. Maybe in 2500 somebody in microsoft will say “hey, you know that THE WORLD prints by CMYK and NOT by RGB, which is only a video colour system?”
And everybody will be really surprised, like discovering the existance of UFOs or flying cats with frog legs. A REVELATION, I mean!
We wait in faithful patience for Microsoft taking confidence con real world, while they say they’re top hi tech edge (the fact that they ignore technologies 500 years old doesn’t match a lot with their proud statements).
People which doesn’t have any culture in color theory - I don’t want to say it’s a shame, just a lack of knowledge: nobody knows everything, we know about that - obviously are attracted by strong and kitschy colors, as Microsoft technician. They believe that those are “REAL VIVID COLOR”.
So it’s a bit disappointing, if somebody find mac display has poor colours. Take a printout (professional printout i.e. by offset, not on a 30$ amateurish inkjet), load the original file on a mac and on a win machine, and make comparisons by yourself. Probably you should feel the need to raise up dramatically brightness on win monitor :-]
Sorry for my english, i’ve been working 3 years in Reidsville (C) but still i hate inverse construction in phrases. I got my bug too :-)
Have a nice day!
June 6th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Hey…. haroldsky… why…. do… you… type… like…. hmmm…. this..?
June 1st, 2007 at 5:55 pm
my mac book pro gets very hot as well, how dangerous is that?…..
May 30th, 2007 at 4:33 am
yep your right… but.. i have a laptop cooler… hmm… ill post a picture of it soon… it cost only about 10-30 dollars….
May 24th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Jop - Adobe CS3 is running very nice on my MacBook.
May 24th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
by the way what soft u using? mac or intel?
May 24th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
hey how is your mac? as am planing also buy it? and how it geting with adobe?
May 21st, 2007 at 8:45 am
To correct my ingnorance–As it turns out Apple generally utilizes the same companies to manufacture their hardware that Dell, HP, and many others PC companies use (quanta, asus, etc)… albeit some minor modifications taylored to Apples’ needs. So if most of the hardware is generally the same (amongst the top five or so PC companies AND apple) the only other potential software incompatibility causing factor to consider is…? You got it–Apple software. Thanks go to Matt’s post #111 on this blog.