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Personally I'm actually happy about their decision (got one of the new 13"ers), battery life is more valuable to me than CPU performance. Ideally they'd offer

by moe 16y ago

Personally I'm actually happy about their decision (got one of the new 13"ers), battery life is more valuable to me than CPU performance. Ideally they'd offer choice (as unlikely as that is for apple) between 10h batter time and i5 CPU.

ComputerGuru 16y ago
I was really hoping to upgrade my now 3-generations ago Unibody 13"er because it's just too damn slow. Back then, I opted to pay the extra bucks and get the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo for the "premium" model - it's so sad that that same CPU is still in the new models (albiet as the "base" and a 2.6GHz as the "premium"). I understand their conundrum though, it's not their fault. The 13" design simply doesn't have room for a standalone graphics card, so they need to use an integrated video card. Due to licensing battles between nVidia and Intel (you'd think they'd give it a break in the face of the joint AMD-ATI competition), there are no Core iX motherboards manufactured with an nVidia chipset at the moment. So it's either dump the iX or dump nVidia, and they (sensibly) picked to remain with the nVidia platform. Makes you really hate the stupid politics power plays done that prevent users from paying for and getting the best.
- moe 16y ago
  Well, to be fair, that CPU is still way fast enough for everything 99% of people are doing. I'm admittedly not pushing mine very hard, but it copes well even with windows in vmware and is outright zippy for everything else (light photoshop/lightroom use and such). To those people the 2h (or something) extra battery life is a much bigger benefit than a faster CPU. In fact, for my usage pattern this is the fastest I need. As far as I am concerned they should just keep this CPU forever and only keep pushing battery life and display resolution. ;-) Also, if your photoshop use is more demanding than the 13" can handle then wouldn't a larger screen come in handy anyways for that kind of work? If I was looking for raw power then I wouldn't look at apple anyways. Much better bang-for-buck can be had from Dell and such.
  - ComputerGuru 16y ago
    My problem isn't with Photoshop. It's with running a million apps at once. Word + TextWrangler + Chrome + Fusion + Speed Download + Adium + Transmit + Better Zip + Preview + iTunes + Mail + Finder is more than it can handle, even with 4GB of quality RAM. I'll be honest: I'm not looking for bang for buck. I'm willing to spend a bit extra for the quality experience and superior "whole package" experience. And a MacBook is a device I can throw in my BackPack and take it with me everywhere, every day and never worry about it simply "wearing out" (though they do break, they don't simply "wear out" and start experiencing odd hardware issues such as loose parts, bad circulation, etc.). I want a quality machine that's 13". Not 10, not 14, and certainly not 17 or 19". And MacBook gave me that, 2 years ago. But now, even though they added "Pro" to the name of my Aluminum 13" beast, they haven't upped the specs (at least as far as I'm concerned).
    - eru 16y ago
      Are you sure running so many things at once, the bottleneck is the CPU and not RAM or hard disk access?
    - scott_s 16y ago
      Odd. I have an original unibody 13" with 4 GB of RAM and I've never felt this computer is slow. I typically have Chrome, iTunes, Fluid (running an instance of Gmail in Safari), Adium, Terminal, Preview and Finder open.
    - moe 16y ago
      I second what eru said (sibling post). Your bottleneck is most likely not the CPU but the RAM. Get some activity monitor (e.g. iStat menu) to see what's really going on, I bet you're running low on RAM and the OS is swapping - which is the surefire way to bring everything to a crawl. If you have the spare change then upgrade to 8G Ram (only possible in latest macbook generation I think) and a fast SSD (intel). I'm pretty sure you will have nothing to complain about with a 13" stuffed like that.
    - matwood 16y ago
      Honestly, what it sounds like you need is more RAM and/or an SSD. I recently upgraded to an i7 MBP just so I could get the 8GB of RAM. My last C2D MBP could only use 4GB. If it could have gone to 8GB I would have stuck with it and just added more RAM since that would have been the most cost/benefit way to improve performance with my usage (VMs for Windev, XCode for Apple dev, everything in between). Now that I have an i7, my next big performance changing upgrade will be an SSD. I'm just waiting for the next gen or maybe the next gen after that.
- lowkey 16y ago
  Instead of upgrading the notebook, you may want to consider switching to a solid-state drive. In terms of real-world performance boost, an SSD simply can't be beat. It's like upgrading to 60 or 120GB of RAM for <$300. I am not convinced that most MacBook users are CPU constrained. SSD FTW!
  - houseabsolute 16y ago
    Uninstalling any on-access antivirus protection will help too.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    I am not convinced that most MacBook users are CPU constrained. Any Core Duo above 2 Ghz is just an embarrassment of riches, CPU wise. You're walking around with the equivalent of a super-computer under your arm, and you're complaining? http://www.tikaro.com/2009/03/youre-sitting-in-a-chair-in-th.html http://www.tikaro.com/2009/03/youre-sitting-in-a-chair-in-th... Only game I know of where you're CPU-constrained is Dwarf Fortress.
  - shpxnvz 16y ago
    He's not the typical MacBook user; he's worried about speeding up compiling. I recently switched out to a fast SSD and I can say this with certainty - compiling was and continues to be CPU constrained, at least for the code I spend the most time compiling.
    - ComputerGuru 16y ago
      Thanks - that's exactly my issue. I have compiling which takes up most of the CPU, but the amalgamation of all the other software each taking up to 10% in the background is what kills.

by moe 16y ago

ComputerGuru 16y ago

I was really hoping to upgrade my now 3-generations ago Unibody 13"er because it's just too damn slow. Back then, I opted to pay the extra bucks and get the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo for the "premium" model - it's so sad that that same CPU is still in the new models (albiet as the "base" and a 2.6GHz as the "premium"). I understand their conundrum though, it's not their fault. The 13" design simply doesn't have room for a standalone graphics card, so they need to use an integrated video card. Due to licensing battles between nVidia and Intel (you'd think they'd give it a break in the face of the joint AMD-ATI competition), there are no Core iX motherboards manufactured with an nVidia chipset at the moment. So it's either dump the iX or dump nVidia, and they (sensibly) picked to remain with the nVidia platform. Makes you really hate the stupid politics power plays done that prevent users from paying for and getting the best.

moe 16y ago
Well, to be fair, that CPU is still way fast enough for everything 99% of people are doing. I'm admittedly not pushing mine very hard, but it copes well even with windows in vmware and is outright zippy for everything else (light photoshop/lightroom use and such). To those people the 2h (or something) extra battery life is a much bigger benefit than a faster CPU. In fact, for my usage pattern this is the fastest I need. As far as I am concerned they should just keep this CPU forever and only keep pushing battery life and display resolution. ;-) Also, if your photoshop use is more demanding than the 13" can handle then wouldn't a larger screen come in handy anyways for that kind of work? If I was looking for raw power then I wouldn't look at apple anyways. Much better bang-for-buck can be had from Dell and such.
- ComputerGuru 16y ago
  My problem isn't with Photoshop. It's with running a million apps at once. Word + TextWrangler + Chrome + Fusion + Speed Download + Adium + Transmit + Better Zip + Preview + iTunes + Mail + Finder is more than it can handle, even with 4GB of quality RAM. I'll be honest: I'm not looking for bang for buck. I'm willing to spend a bit extra for the quality experience and superior "whole package" experience. And a MacBook is a device I can throw in my BackPack and take it with me everywhere, every day and never worry about it simply "wearing out" (though they do break, they don't simply "wear out" and start experiencing odd hardware issues such as loose parts, bad circulation, etc.). I want a quality machine that's 13". Not 10, not 14, and certainly not 17 or 19". And MacBook gave me that, 2 years ago. But now, even though they added "Pro" to the name of my Aluminum 13" beast, they haven't upped the specs (at least as far as I'm concerned).
  - eru 16y ago
    Are you sure running so many things at once, the bottleneck is the CPU and not RAM or hard disk access?
  - scott_s 16y ago
    Odd. I have an original unibody 13" with 4 GB of RAM and I've never felt this computer is slow. I typically have Chrome, iTunes, Fluid (running an instance of Gmail in Safari), Adium, Terminal, Preview and Finder open.
  - moe 16y ago
    I second what eru said (sibling post). Your bottleneck is most likely not the CPU but the RAM. Get some activity monitor (e.g. iStat menu) to see what's really going on, I bet you're running low on RAM and the OS is swapping - which is the surefire way to bring everything to a crawl. If you have the spare change then upgrade to 8G Ram (only possible in latest macbook generation I think) and a fast SSD (intel). I'm pretty sure you will have nothing to complain about with a 13" stuffed like that.
  - matwood 16y ago
    Honestly, what it sounds like you need is more RAM and/or an SSD. I recently upgraded to an i7 MBP just so I could get the 8GB of RAM. My last C2D MBP could only use 4GB. If it could have gone to 8GB I would have stuck with it and just added more RAM since that would have been the most cost/benefit way to improve performance with my usage (VMs for Windev, XCode for Apple dev, everything in between). Now that I have an i7, my next big performance changing upgrade will be an SSD. I'm just waiting for the next gen or maybe the next gen after that.
lowkey 16y ago
Instead of upgrading the notebook, you may want to consider switching to a solid-state drive. In terms of real-world performance boost, an SSD simply can't be beat. It's like upgrading to 60 or 120GB of RAM for <$300. I am not convinced that most MacBook users are CPU constrained. SSD FTW!
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  Uninstalling any on-access antivirus protection will help too.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  I am not convinced that most MacBook users are CPU constrained. Any Core Duo above 2 Ghz is just an embarrassment of riches, CPU wise. You're walking around with the equivalent of a super-computer under your arm, and you're complaining? http://www.tikaro.com/2009/03/youre-sitting-in-a-chair-in-th.html http://www.tikaro.com/2009/03/youre-sitting-in-a-chair-in-th... Only game I know of where you're CPU-constrained is Dwarf Fortress.
- shpxnvz 16y ago
  He's not the typical MacBook user; he's worried about speeding up compiling. I recently switched out to a fast SSD and I can say this with certainty - compiling was and continues to be CPU constrained, at least for the code I spend the most time compiling.
  - ComputerGuru 16y ago
    Thanks - that's exactly my issue. I have compiling which takes up most of the CPU, but the amalgamation of all the other software each taking up to 10% in the background is what kills.