The Far Side of Tech - Latest Comments in Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

R Kuntz — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:02:07 -0000

You missed an important application for multi-core laptops: virtualization. Many Mac users run Microsoft operating systems in virtual machines and they would benefit from more than two cores.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

Franky Boy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:40:59 -0000

1stp Aprilk 2009, still no quad-core Macbook's ;-)

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

mervyn — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:18:17 -0000

I believe that the Quad Core is the answer for apple. (1)Power. The new 17" battery is good, but
apple can make a half inch battery with a 17" diameter as extra,that will give the labtop 8 hours running time (2) Heat. A miniature Liquid cooling system, that will help the heating problem.
So with the new battery now runs at 8 to 7 hours. With the Quad Core will run at 3 to 4 hours,
Add on a half inch battery at a 17" inch diameter as extra will give you 8 hours on top. So what do you think about that idea.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

Ben Robinson — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:42:44 -0000

I really think this is all kinda silly!! A Quad Core macbook pro would be excellent for audio production on the go! Then a studio can record in very different locations and have great chances to come up with tons of new music. A quad core is hotter, but with a revised heatsink those problems can be avoided. I believe that if apple makes a quad core laptop, first of all it would be extremely expensive, and it will take a while because right now they are pushing the new macbooks battery life which is cool but they will have to do optimize the batteries for the quad core laptops quite a bit.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

jon — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:51:01 -0000

I want a 4 core , 16gb mac simply to run 3 or 4 vm machines at a time ( my mac, my work windows laptop image, and a development image of linux) Yes you are correct people who right articles on websites don't need a powerful mac. In fact in some situations they use a pen, paper and crayons :-)

Give me more POWER !!!

Jon

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

da bishop — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:40:55 -0000

However, should apple release these machines (which it's very likely they will in the first quarters of 2009) I'm going to buy one. Just not the very first generation, it's likely that there'll be some sort of melting/burning scenario. That's how come they didn't come out with the rest of the unibody machines.

I can't wait for a more powerful laptop. My macbook pro is the first laptop which has been a good workhorse. It's a G5 in a bag! The mac pro has got very neglected indeed.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

da bishop — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:35:24 -0000

Oh yeah, and what's more, pro laptops live plugged into the mains for the most part. Running my macbook pro on "toned down" settings I can get 3 to 4 hours for emailing on the move, but to use it on full blast, it's the mains adapter every time.

All of the core chips have the ability to power down cores to save some amps, or if they start getting a bit too hot. It's called dynamic throttling, and it's the shared cache that makes that possible.

Seriously, if somebody bought a quad core 17 inch desktop replacement macbook pro, what do you think they'll be found using it for? Minesweeper?

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

da bishop — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:22:45 -0000

What a bunch of N00bery! Of course apps under OSX are heavily multithreaded, and the OS is seriously multitasking. Most apps written since 2002 behave this way, anything written in Cocoa. If there was no performance gain from multicore, why would the mac pros with 8 cores sell? Believe me, they really do run faster.

Adobe are slack enough to still be running OS9 era code, but even that is multithreaded! Photoshop has been multithreading on the mac since the days of daystar.

In addition, apple are moving to a technology called Grand Central, which unifies all of the threads to a scheduler, which spreads them across the available resources, including the GPU doing compute tasks via OpenCL. Grand Central will make all apps behave in a fully multithreaded manner.

The multithreading performance tax is something that belongs in the Windows field of debate. The mac is fully multithreading. My CPU meters prove it. Hit an app hard, and all the cores jump to it.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

John Sawyer — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:30:42 -0000

Even the somewhat average person doing somewhat average web browsing might benefit from four processors--on a dual core, with just one or two dozen browser windows open, and many of those windows running stupid slow Javascripts, the entire computer can slow to a crawl. Yes, I know the "prudent" user should just bookmark and close some of those browser windows, but what if they don't want to?

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

Peter Morris — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:46:08 -0000

quad core is not about running a single application faster (at least for me).

My (aging and aged, first gen) macbookpro is my main development workhorse, and at any time it will be running a couple of different db servers, a web server or 3, development tools, mail, irc, skype, web browser, twitter, neo office, itunes etc. That situation would benefit from quad cores very well.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

John M — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:10:27 -0000

There is a perfectly valid use for quad core on a laptop, where the software can use all of the cores: virtualization. I use VMware every day on the job. I am a systems engineer that needs to keep multiple, separate environments running on my laptop.

On a daily basis I run Mac OS X with a separate Windows XP VM for my work stuff. When I go out to a customer I will generally have 3 VMs running on top of OS X:
* An Oracle database running under Linux
* WebLogic Server running under Linux
* Eclipse and other development tools running under Windows XP

Some of those virtual machines could really use more than one core as well. When I demo all of these at once I require a LOT of RAM and a LOT of processor power.

Perhaps I am a power user, but I know thousands of people within just my company that could use every ounce of that quad-core!

One note though: if you are going to put a quad-core processor in a laptop, the processor should be smart enough to only fire up the cores that it needs at the time. For example, if I am just cruising the web on OS X, I only need one or two cores at most. If I start firing up virtual machines under VMware, it should allocate a core to each VM until all four cores are in use. That would help with the battery life immensely.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

ChaosInMind — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:56:42 -0000

Seriously? I'm tired of hearing "quad core processors are un-needed at this time"
#1) You don't think the fully 64bit Unix based operating system by Apple is capable of using 4 cores? The OS itself will see benefits from the extra power!
#2) This is probably going into their Pro series because people that buy the pro usually do high end graphics work or digital audio production, not to mention the price of such a system.
#3) This would be a mobile quad core chip, not a desktop chip. This means it can probably disable unused cores and throttle back speed depending on use and power state.
#4) Can you say, Solid State Harddrive, 4gb DDR2 Memory, Quad Core CPU... Oh no, we don't need all that to see performance gains, just throw it away and pick up a Powerbook G3.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

Guy — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:46:54 -0000

well....If the speeds going to be the Increased...and well due to the 45nm changes the benefits would be: Faster speeds...Downsides: The heat is around the same and well the Battery Life would be around the same...Pointless argument....Improve one part leave the other two around about the same...It's a win win situation....

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

William Shaw — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:50:11 -0000

Robert: The option of running in 2-core or even 1-core mode while under batteries is a very good idea. Somebody tell Apple. I can read/compose e-mail off-line on a long flight on 1-core cycled down to 1 GHz, and do HPC demos at full tilt plugged in when I arrive.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

Robert — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:59:08 -0000

Macbook pro with quad is going to bi like a dream for users like me who uses it for a workstation with logic 8. and by the way: don't you think apple will make it possible to disable at least two of the cores when it runs on battery? it certainly would be smart.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

pete23 — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:00:18 -0000

mmmf. ableton live has good multicore support - there's always room for more CPU power for VSTs...

i think that you're neglecting an important usecase for laptops - that of the portable desktop replacement. my laptop probably spends 90%+ of its time connected to the mains.

general computer users can live with a macbook. the pro is for people who need the extra welly.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

Devindra — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:37:07 -0000

William, it'll certainly be useful for users like yourself, my point is that it's not that wise of a release among general computer users. Most laptops today already run obscenely hot, and battery life hasn't been improved much recently, on dual core chips.

Unless significant changes occur to quad core chip architecture, they won't be a good addition to laptops. I'm sure it will happen eventually, just not sure if that will be this year.

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

William Shaw — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:26:49 -0000

Bizarre article. I use a cluster of Macs to do mathematical work with GridMathematica and the sooner one of these comes out the better - that way I can travel and do demos of parallel computation applications without replying on a local setup. I rarely work off batteries, and the benefits of four processors massively outweigh slightly faster clock speed. Can't wait for quad myself!

Re: Quad Core Macbook Pros, Seriously? Why Quad Core Laptops Are a Joke Today

Trent — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:33:24 -0000

I'm thinking that Quad Cores in a laptop would definetely drain the battery life more and that a laptop has limited cappabillites with expansion, they should just stick to dual cores.

Trent