Apple's Redesigned MacBook and MacBook Pro: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
GPU Accelerated H.264 Decode
Both AMD and NVIDIA have fully accelerated H.264 decode on their GPUs and chipsets with integrated graphics, something Intel just recently added with G45. Apple has historically done a terrible job of taking advantage of GPU accelerated video decode features in its OS, which is partly why it took us so long to get somewhat acceptable deinterlacing in Apple's DVD app, despite solid deinterlacing support by the GPU vendors.
Part of the problem is that unlike on the PC platforms, companies like ATI and NVIDIA don't write the entire driver for Mac OS X. The GPU vendors provide the hardware interface portion of the driver but Apple handles much of the rest. It's up to Apple to take advantage of the various features supported by the GPU, and most of them aren't high on Apple's priority list.
With Apple heavily pushing H.264 as the codec of choice and offering high bitrate HD H.264 movie trailers at www.apple.com, the move to NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M appeared to be the perfect time to take advantage of GPU accelerated H.264 decode. For the first time ever, Quicktime will use the GPU for the majority of the decode pipeline when playing back H.264 content.
To test the impact of the GPU offload I measured CPU utilization while playing back the 160MB 1080p trailer of The Spirit from Apple's movie trailers website:
| New MacBook Pro 15" | Old MacBook Pro 15" | |
| CPU Utilization | 10% | 30 - 50% |
The old MacBook Pro saw 30 - 50% of its dual core Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz CPU used up to decode the trailer, while the new MacBook Pro only needed 10% as the rest was done on the GPU. The GPU is also a more efficient place to perform H.264 decoding so you'll actually see an increase in battery life when playing back hardware accelerated content.
As OS X still lacks any official Blu-ray support, the H.264 decode acceleration isn't very useful beyond playing these sorts of files, but it's a definite start. It's also unclear how easy it will be for 3rd party developers to tie into the GPU acceleration hooks or if Quicktime will be your only hope for that.
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Imaginer - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
And you have the options of the new iMirror or the new iMirror! :PBut all iJokes aside, this article did not really had me until it is mentioned of the new trackpad. Initially, I thought that Apple went off the deep end by going from one button to NO buttons. But in the end, the right and left click is simply a finger or two down away from touching the pad to make the click.
It is a SHAME that Anand had many troubles with the fickleness of the pad - and even moreso in Windows. Big deal breaker (alongside the annoyance of the newly adopted displayport with no included adapter (nickel and dime? at the very least monitor manufacturers include BOTH the DVI and VGA cable with each monitor, wmy not Apple?).
Features aside, I do agree while that many (including myself) equate Apple to the USSR of the computing world, they do put together a nice OVERALL package compared to other manufacturers. Next revision Apple.... you almost had me with this one... ALMOST. Get your windows stuff and hardware support together and well talk (yes and that includes supporting ALL of your "gestures" in the Windows platform too - yeah fat chance in hell).
ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
The Windows issues should hopefully be fixed with the next BootCamp driver update.But I have to agree about the glass/glossy reflectiveness. I really hope Apple brings back a matte option, which is unlikely, or at least find some way to reduce the reflectivity in the next refresh.
andreschmidt - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
The first reports are coming in at MacRumors and they are definitely Samsung SSDs...didn't they use that horrible controller?Voldenuit - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
"In testing the first batch of Centrino 2 notebooks that Jarred received he noted that he can't seem to find a mainstream notebook with a 50 - 60WHr battery that can come close to offering the sort of battery life you get out of the Macs."You're not looking hard enough. The lenovo thinkpad T400 registered 6.5 hrs with wireless on using a 56 WHr battery.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4...">http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4...
That's about 30% longer than the Macbook Pro.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
"With the T400 you can reach 9 hours and 41 minutes with the wireless enabled, screen backlight at 60%, and the laptop in integrated graphics mode using only the 84Wh 9-cell battery. In this situation the notebook is only consuming roughly 8.5 watts of power. In dedicated graphics mode under the same settings battery life falls by exactly 2 hours down to 7 hours and 41 minutes, and power draw increases to 10.5 watts. The 6-cell battery managed 6 hours and 4 hours and 28 minutes respectively."No mention is made of actually *surfing* the web - WiFi is merely enabled. Without knowing more about how they conduct their battery life testing, I can't say whether their numbers are comparable to ours. What I do know is that on the notebook I mentioned in an earlier comment, battery life almost doubles (142 minutes vs. 261 minutes) when I go from web surfing to idle.
quanta - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
The buttonless mouse is the dumbest idea. For example, if I have to press 1 finger for left click, 2 fingers on the pad for right click, how do I press both buttons? In addition, if scroll is done by moving 2 fingers, how does it not get confused with dragging with right mouse button? Furthermore, the lack of tactile feedback also reduces productivity. So much for another innovative design.aj28 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
1) Why would you need to do a simultaneous left and right click?2) Why would you drag with the right mouse button? (also refer to below)
3) It DOES have tactile feedback. The whole trackpad is a depressible button...
Take your biased ideas elsewhere, thanks. Apple does good for the PC industry and provides an alternative to Microsoft-based solutions. Whether they're better or not is entirely a matter of opinion, but the bottom line is that they provide competition, and competition is good for everyone.
hb18 - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
Another good use of simultaneous button clicks is mouse gestures in web browsers.Johnmcl7 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
1 - For pasting in *nix applications, at least that's what I use on a conventional mouse.2 - Right click drag in Windows lets you choose the file behaviour (move, copy, create shortcut) whereas a standard left click drag will just do a default action.
John
headbox - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
1. newflash: this isn't *nix. There's nothing preventing you from getting a mouse either.2. keyboard shortcuts are faster than mouse actions. Get to know them.