[Macpartners] 15" PowerBook discontinued

[Albert Willis]

On Feb 22, 2006, at 4:48 PM, Tom Pixton wrote:

> Hi Jay:
>
> Thanks. I've been chatting with folks all day. Apparently, Even Steve
> Jobs said that power users of Adobe CS2 products will not be happy
> with the performance on the new Intel machines until the CS3 products
> are released next year.

It depends on what your users are used to now. Users using current to  
2-3 year old G4's aren't going to really notice much of a change; in  
fact, things may be faster than what they're used to. What Steve Jobs  
said at Macworld that for professional Photoshop users, running  
Photoshop in Rosetta may not be good enough. If you look at the demo  
Steve did at Macworld (putting together the poster for King Kong),  
Photoshop ran pretty well: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf06/.

Also, Adobe has a document that describes how Creative Suite 2 runs  
on Intel Macs and what the plans are for the future: http:// 
www.adobe.com/products/pdfs/intelmacsupport.pdf.

> The 15" PowerBook PC is such an ideal machine
> and we're not willing to put up with slow performance for a year, not
> to mention all the other unknown issues that are sure to crop up.
> We'd need to try out a demo with the CS2 products loaded before we'd
> recommend buying an Intel machine.

I would recommend that anyone making a decision about what to buy has  
to look at the lifecycle of a machine. It's now expected that laptops  
last as long as 3-4 years. While using CS2 on a MacBook Pro won't be  
optimal this year, you'll see a tremendous increase in speed when CS3  
ships. Although CS3 will run on PowerPC and Intel Macs, it's going to  
be much faster--this is where Apple's claim of 4-5 times faster comes  
in--on the MacBook Pro than the PowerBook G4.

What hinders the PowerBook G4 the most is the slow bus--167 MHz. The  
MacBook Pro's bus is 667 MHz, with the Intel Core Duo processor  
having two cores (essentially two processors) running up to 2.16 GHz.  
The bottom line: the MacBook hardware is better than the PowerBook  
G4; apps that are universal will run faster than they ever could on a  
PowerBook G4.

What's going to happen is that things will continue to improve on the  
Intel Macs as Apple continues to release operating system updates and  
more applications become universal. Lets just say users may not be as  
happy using pro apps on a PowerBook G4 next year.

To summarize, CS2 and other applications that were developed for the  
PowerPC will run fast enough for most users for now; CS3 will run  
much faster when it ships. For a machine that has to last 3-4 years,  
the MacBook Pro is the way to go--even if many of the applications  
will be running in Rosetta for a while.

As MacBook Pros arrive on campus, we'll be sure to setup a  
demonstration of how CS2 and other applications run using Rosetta.

   -- Al


______________________________
Albert Willis
Macintosh Platform Coordinator - Software Release Team
Client Support Services
Information Services and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
awillis at mit.edu


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