Despite the fact that both machines offer up nearly identical specs, Apple is really trying to differentiate its MacBook Pro from the cheaper "consumer" MacBook. One of the ways it has done this is to announce that Final Cut Studio is unsupported on the MacBook--but what does "unsupported" really mean? Not much, says CreativeMac--they ran benchmarks with Final Cut and Motion and found that the consumer laptop runs both applications faster than a G5, and nearly as fast as the MacBook Pro. With the exception of a couple of Motion benchmarks, the $600+ cheaper MacBook is every bit as fast as the "Pro" machine. If you're a hobbyist and you like saving money, you might be hard-pressed to spend the extra loot on the Pro.[via TUAW]
1. " Since the MacBook sports an integrated video processor, which Apple says, doesn't support floating processing performance will be 'degraded' on a MacBook."
This sounds like a load of crock to me... The only thing I can see needing GPU floating point processing is Motion perhaps, which leverages ARBfp. The GMA950 supports it. Now maybe Apple is simply stating that the GMA950s ARBfp performance is so minimal that the CPU paths are simply faster (a pair of 2GHz CPUs vs. a 333-400MHz 4-pipe fragment processor engine? You decide...).
Posted at 10:50AM on May 24th 2006 by Vidgin