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by David Heinemeier Hansson.
Original Post: MacBook Pro: So fast, oh, so fast
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Thanks to a bug in Apple's ordering system, Jason and I took delivery of our duo 2.16ghz/7200 rpm MacBooks yesterday — just five days after placing the order. There's never a bug so bad that it doesn't benefit someone, so yay for computer fallacies. And yes, it's all that. Possibly more.
The first test I conducted was running the test suite for Active Record against the MySQL adapter. I did not even have to wait until the last case to know it was good. The dots were racing across the screen and in just 11 seconds, it was done, telling me that 705 tests and 2307 assertions exhibited 0 failures and 0 errors. Compared to roughly 36 seconds on my Powerbook 1.67Ghz. That's ~3.3 times faster!
And if that sounded good, it's about to get better. The most impressive part of the MacBook Pro is not its peak performance against a G4 when both machines just run a single application. No, the dazzle hits when you actually use your machine for real work. Running multiple applications at the same time. Say, have two Campfires burning, Mail.app delivering, iTunes playing, and GMail sucking the life out of Camino.
While such a scenario might bump my MacBook to take all of 14 or 15 seconds to run the Active Record suite, the G4 absolutely croaks. Marcel was doing a run on his machine while having a ton of stuff running and it came in at a paltry 120 seconds. You do the math on that one.
That's the kind of stuff lab-coat benchmarks rarely pin down and something that takes more of a feel than a stopwatch. The MacBook just feels freaking fast.
It's not just compiling stuff that's brutally fast either. Safari really seems to enjoy the Intel switch. Especially on Google searches and running Javascript. Searching Google on a fast connection has that did-it-know-what-I-wanted-before-pressing-return feeling. And heavily Ajaxed applications with tons of stuff going on, like some of my busy Backpack pages, definitely feel the fun too.
It was also a pleasant surprise to find almost all of my stable applications as Universal binaries. TextMate (CMD-T is so snappy!), Adium, Transmit, Camino, Colloquy, Quicksilver, and of course the Apple suite were all available.
But some notable exceptions too: Desktop Manager, NetNewsWire, Photoshop, and iTerm. I'm happy to report, though, that Rosetta actually works. I know you probably don't believe me, but it does. There's no visible indication that you're running a Rosetta-powered application, other than the fact that it takes a couple of additional bounces to launch, and of course does not posse The Snappy.
Mostly, though, it doesn't matter. I'm happily running Desktop Manager and NetNewsWire as Rosetta applications all day. With iTerm, though, it did matter. Compared to the blinding speed of Apple's own Terminal.app, it just didn't cut it. I don't need tabs in my terminal that bad. So that had to go. Photoshop is a little sluggish on startup too, but for my humble editing needs, it's more than adequate.
So naturally the big question is: Should you buy a MacBook? If you're a developer that depends on compiling software all day, then yes! Preferably getting your order in today. Despite the caveats, there's no arguing with just how fast compilation is. Running a big test suite for a Rails application becomes much less of a chore.
But for "normal" people, I'd probably wait a while. The MacBook feels like a stepping stone, I'd be very surprised if this was the casing and package that'll carry the MacBook name at the end of the year. And if you don't have compilation running in the background, the performance increase for Mail.app and Safari and other every day applications are not that impressive.
Before I finish, a few more pointers on what's making me happy about the new machine:
Wifi reception is much, much improved! They moved the puny receiver from the left side into the screen hatch and made it three times as long. I'm picking up a ton of new signals in my apartment now.
The magnetic power connector is just an awesome idea and gives you a lot of confidence. Jason actually tripped over his power cord just half an hour after we had unpacked the machines at it worked just as advertised.
Having MenuMeters tell me CPU load on both cores and smiling while one is at 70% and the other is at 10% leaving work uninterrupted while heavy stuff is going down in the background.
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The first test I conducted was running the test suite for Active Record against the MySQL adapter. I did not even have to wait until the last case to know it was good. The dots were racing across the screen and in just 11 seconds, it was done, telling me that 705 tests and 2307 assertions exhibited 0 failures and 0 errors. Compared to roughly 36 seconds on my Powerbook 1.67Ghz. That's ~3.3 times faster!
But some notable exceptions too: Desktop Manager, NetNewsWire, Photoshop, and iTerm. I'm happy to report, though, that Rosetta actually works. I know you probably don't believe me, but it does. There's no visible indication that you're running a Rosetta-powered application, other than the fact that it takes a couple of additional bounces to launch, and of course does not posse The Snappy.