Done for 2009: The Holiday MacBook Pro Roundup
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 10, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Snow Leopard: Bad for Battery Life
I've been very quiet on the Snow Leopard front, honestly in the condition it was released it was worth exactly what Apple was charging for it: $30. The bugs and incompatibilities weren't showstoppers, but they were annoying.
Since its release, Snow Leopard has improved tremendously. I'd say we're almost to the point where there's nothing I miss from Leopard. Is it worth the upgrade? Yeah, I'd say so, but do your research beforehand. There are still some incompatibilities that may make you want to wait before jumping. But if you don't use many 3rd party apps or non-Apple hardware, you'll be fine.
The title of this section says it all - Snow Leopard is worse for your Mac's battery life than Leopard. In the majority of cases it's not that big of a deal, take a few results from my 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro review and compare them to the same system under Snow Leopard:
| 15-inch MBP Battery Life | OS X 10.5.7 "Leopard" | OS X 10.6.1 "Snow Leopard" | % Drop |
| Light Web Browsing | 493 minutes | 444 minutes | 9.9% |
You're looking at nearly a 10% reduction in battery life, nothing to be proud of.
That's not the big issue however. The results on the previous page showed something troubling. The MacBook Pro is only able to deliver between 3.7 - 4.4 hours of battery life while browsing web pages with flash ads on them. Looking back at my 15-inch MBP results under Leopard, we see a problem:
| 15-inch MBP Battery Life | OS X 10.5.7 "Leopard" | OS X 10.6.1 "Snow Leopard" | % Drop |
| Flash Web Browsing | 403 minutes | 230 minutes | 42.9% |
I asked Apple on numerous occasions to help me understand what was going wrong, unfortunately I didn't get any response. I tried multiple things from my end. I updated the version of Flash, but that didn't help. It wasn't until I told our own Ryan Smith, one of the people instrumental in getting me to try a Mac years ago, that he gave me a brilliant suggestion: try 32-bit Safari.
Snow Leopard takes another step towards being a completely 64-bit OS, in many ways this step is the most disruptive. Many of SL's applications now ship with 64-bit binaries such as Finder, TextEdit and Safari. You can launch these 64-bit apps in 32-bit mode by selecting their .app icon and running Get Info (Command + I or File -> Get Info).
From there you can check the "Open in 32-bit mode" box. In my case, this gave me 32-bit Safari, which also gave me much better battery life in my heavy web browsing test:
| 13-inch MBP Battery Life | 64-bit Safari | 32-bit Safari | % Improvement |
| Flash Web Browsing | 222 minutes | 323 minutes | 45.5% |
My 3.7 hours of battery life that the 13-inch MacBook Pro gave me jumped up to 5.36 hours. That's an increase of over 45%.
I passed this data along to Apple but haven't gotten anything back from them. I'm guessing the silence on the matter means that it's a known issue and isn't something that's going to be addressed for a little while. Just to be sure, I spent most of last night running OS X 10.6.2 on three different systems to see if it fixed the problem. It didn't.
You'd think that with $1.67 billion in profit last quarter, Apple could afford to hire a couple of engineers to keep its OSes a bit more polished.
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SmCaudata - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Edit: I meant ASUS Laptop.JimmyJimmington - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Do people really buy 17 inch laptops? I could never justify spending that much money on something I can't even take to school. Might as well build an amazing desktop... And then use the leftover money to buy a great laptop...The0ne - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Not many of us would shell out $2500 for one but many of us would for 1/3 the price with similar if not better specs.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Can we have a roundup of the following machinesDell
Toshiba
HP
etc
etc
That would make everything fair.
Zak - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Not everyone can afford an SSD, SSDs offered by Apple as BTO are crap and overpriced, and a fast 7200rpm HD does make a difference.Z.
Zak - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
" Apple figures someone who wants such a big machine will probably have some fast external storage to connect to it..." And still no SATA? BTW, the screen on the 17" is indeed amazing.Z.
mschira - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
I like the logic you draw with the heavy load test.So that all makes sense.
Some other thing:
Did you check battery time on a Hackintosh?
Like an Acer Timeline get's up to 7 hours on Win7, what can it get when we make it a Hackintosh?
M.
CharonPDX - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
You compare the 17" to an HP and a Dell, which are both monsters. (But, they are nearly 1/3 the price, for noticeably more CPU power.)You compare the 13" to a Dell that is slightly larger. (Compare to the HP Envy 13; then you'll get a definitive Apple win, as the HP costs more than a 13" MBP.)
But you don't do the obvious comparison: 15" MacBook Pro to HP Envy 15.
I think the MacBook Pro would lose out instantly in this comparison. It is what the 15" MacBook Pro *SHOULD* be right now.
For the 17"? You dismiss the Dell and HP as being too big. Yet they both cost less than $1200. And HP offers an identically-sized model that throws in a 1080 screen and Blu-ray player for $1300. For that matter, you can completely max out the HP's specs (fastest mobile Core i7, 8 GB RAM, dual 500 GB hard drives, Blu-ray writer, etc,) before it becomes more expensive than the MacBook Pro. (And then, by only $50.) I'm sorry, but it's not worth the massive loss in features (or $1000, if you take the 'stock' 1080/Blu-ray HP,) to save 1.1 lbs.
ChuckyP83 - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
I think you are missing the point of the article. Comparing a one piece aluminum vault of a laptop to a flimsy, plasticky, lowest-cost-built Dell (or HP or whoever) just doesn't work just on specs buddy. Nobody knows how to build a laptop as solidly as Apple. That is a fact you CANNOT argue (I think Apple patented their manufacturing technique). Apples don't compete on price and specs because the ways they surpass the average PC competition aren't easily quantifiable. Not sure why I am even replying to this guy....The0ne - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
That is subjective. I have many dell laptops and they aren't cheap. I have my 17" with me as a backpack hiking weight in China and it still works afterward. Granted the Macbook quality might be a bit better but when people like you said it in your way you make it out as though Dell or HP has horrible quality build, that the laptop wouldn't last being carrying around, that a drop would kill it, etc. Unless you don't know how to lug around a laptop the build quality is the least of your concern.The bottom line is that most of us are fine with the build quality of Dell, HPs, Acer, etc. But some people don't mind spending A LOT more to have nicer metal pieces and looks. Seriously in the end what would you prefer, function or style?
You're too much of a Apple fanboy. Thank God no one builds laptop, or in more general terms hardware, like Apple. I won't even go into the details of their greatness here. Their hardware is not perfect as you know. Knowing this and claiming no one does it better than they do is fan-boyish.
Apple doesn't have a patent on manufacturing techniques. If they did it would be a very specific process that is not covered by countless generations of manufacturing processes. They could, like Intel, put a freeze on the process to prevent any changes. But this has severe advantages and disadvantages.
"Apples don't compete on price and specs because the ways they surpass the average PC competition aren't easily quantifiable. Not sure why I am even replying to this guy.... "
Who else besides me thinks these sentences is a load of BS? Please respond to this user if you do. Apple don't compete in price and spec because lets see...they are the only ones selling them and thus can dictate the prices? They surpass the average PC competition so they can do whatever they want because the user wouldn't be able to quantify the reasons? O.o
To be honest, I'm not even sure why I'M responding to your post. It's so lame, riddled with false facts it's not even funny. Urgh.