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MacBook Pro Comparison Charts

Today, Apple announced their first Intel based lap­top. This announce­ment pro­vides us with some inter­est­ing data that can be used to com­pare the exist­ing plat­form to its pre­de­ces­sor and to equiv­a­lent offer­ings from the PC world.

Com­par­ing Apples to Apples

One of the inter­est­ing thing is that Apple did not demise its exist­ing Power­book G4 prod­uct line. Whether it’s a ques­tion of inven­tory man­age­ment hav­ing gone awry or an attempt to milk more out of the G4 mar­ket, it pro­vides an inter­est­ing way to com­pare Apple lap­tops from the G4 gen­er­a­tion to those of the Intel one. For the pur­pose of this study, I took data directly on the Apple site, look­ing at their offer­ings for the Power­book and its equiv­a­lent on the Intel side of the house, the Mac­Book Pro. Here’s how they stack up against each other:

15 inch Mac­Book Pro 15 inch Power­book G4
Proces­sor 1.67GHz Intel Core Duo proces­sor, 2MB on chip sharedL2 cache run­ning 1:1 with proces­sor speed 1.67GHz Pow­erPC G4
Dis­play 15.4-inch (diag­o­nal), 1440 x 900 res­o­lu­tion, TFTwidescreen 15.2-inch (diag­o­nal), 1440 x 960 res­o­lu­tion, TFT widescreen
Mem­ory 512MB (sin­gle SODIMM) of PC2-5300 (667MHz);two SODIMM slots sup­port up to 2GB 512MB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM (run­ning at 333MHz)
Graph­ics ATI Mobil­ity Radeon X1600 with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRA­Mand dual-link DVI ATI Mobil­ity Radeon 9700 with 128MB of DDR SDRAM anddual-link DVI
Video out DVI, VGA (DVI to VGA adapter included) DVI, VGA, S-video and composite
Audio Com­bined opti­cal dig­i­tal input/audio line in,combined opti­cal dig­i­tal output/headphone out, stereo speak­ers, microphone Com­bined ana­log and opti­cal dig­i­tal line-in,combined ana­log and opti­cal dig­i­tal line-out, stereo speak­ers, microphone
Hard Disk 80GB Ser­ial ATA/100; 5400 rpm 80GB Ultra ATA/100; 5400 rpm
Drive Slot-loading opti­cal SuperDrive Slot-loading opti­cal SuperDrive
Eth­er­net Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit) Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit)
Modem Apple USB Modem (sold separately) Built-in 56K V.92 modem
Input Apple Remote; full-size, illu­mi­nated key­board with­am­bi­ent light sen­sor; Scrolling Trackpad Full size, illu­mi­nated with ambi­ent light sensor
Video Cam­era iSight (1/4-inch color CCD image sen­sor, 640x480 VGAresolution) None
Firewire One FireWire 400 port at up to 400 Mbps One FireWire 400, one FireWire 800,
USB Two 480-Mbps USB 2.0 ports two USB 2.0 ports
Bat­tery Time UNKNOWN 5.5 hours
Weight 5.6 pounds 5.6 pounds
Foot­print 14.1 x 9.6 inches 13.7 x 9.5 inches
Thick­ness 1.0 inches (2.59 cm) 1.1 inches
Price $1999 $1999

So, at first look, the proces­sor is about the same, mem­ory is twice as fast, and other specs are roughly the same. But, when you take a sec­ond look, you real­ize there are a few dif­fer­ences. For starter, the foot­print of the new lap­top is slightly larger (slimer, true, but still with a wider foot­print) and there seems to be a few things miss­ing. For exam­ple, S-video and com­pos­ite video seem to be gone. And so is the built-in modem (now avail­able as an extra, sold sep­a­rately) and so is a firewire 800 port. On the other hand, you get a remote and a video cam­era with the new laptop.

Also a lit­tle scary is the fact that Apple is not tout­ing the bat­tery life on this lap­top (it claimed 5.5 hours on the power­book). Con­sid­er­ing the might of Apple mar­ket­ing, I sus­pect this is not an over­sight but that the bat­tery time is prob­a­bly lower than 5.5 hours.

Last but not least, it is inter­est­ing to see that they are pric­ing them at exactly the same price-point ($1999). Is Apple hedg­ing its bets?

Com­par­ing Apple to… not Apple

While the Apple to Apple com­par­i­son pro­vides some insight into their own prod­uct, the fact that they are now switch­ing to Intel Core duo pro­vides us with a unique oppor­tu­nity to do actual hard­ware com­par­isons with other sys­tems. A quick web search yielded the Trav­el­Mate 8200, a new lap­top from Acer that seemed to match the Mac­Book in terms of price and offer a Core Duo proces­sor. Let’s look at how they stack against each other since one could assume that both machine could run the same soft­ware, if Apple and Microsoft let them.

15 inch Mac­Book Pro Acer Trav­el­mate 8200
Proces­sor 1.67GHz Intel Core Duo proces­sor, 2MB on chip sharedL2 cache run­ning 1:1 with proces­sor speed 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo processor
Dis­play 15.4-inch (diag­o­nal), 1440 x 900 res­o­lu­tion, TFT widescreen 15.4-inch (diag­o­nal), 1680x1050 res­o­lu­tion, TFT widescreen
Mem­ory 512MB (sin­gle SODIMM) of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2memory on 1.67GHz configuration;two SODIMM slots sup­port up to 2GB 2GB (1GB installed in each of two mem­ory slots)DDR2 667 SDRAM, user upgrade­able up to 2GB (one 1GB mem­ory card in each slot)
Hard Disk 80GB Ser­ial ATA/100; 5400 rpm 120GB Ser­ial ATA, 5400RPM, with Acer­DASP+ (Disk Anti-Shock Protection+)
Graph­ics ATI Mobil­ity Radeon X1600 with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual-link DVI ATI Mobil­ity Radeon X1600 graph­ics, 256MB DDR memory
Video out DVI, VGA (DVI to VGA adapter included) VGA, DVI and S-video TV-out ports
Video Cam­era iSight (1/4-inch color CCD image sen­sor, 640x480 VGA resolution) Acer OrbiCam inte­grated 1.3 megapixel CMOS camera
Audio Com­bined opti­cal dig­i­tal input/audio line in, com­bined opti­cal dig­i­tal output/headphone out, stereo speak­ers, microphone Headphones/speakers/line-out with SPDIF sup­port, micro­phone and line-in ports, stereo speak­ers, microphone
Drive Slot-loading opti­cal Super­Drive (DVD+RW/CD-RW) Mod­u­lar variable-speed Super-Multi drive (DVD+R,DVD-R, DVD-RAM) swappable
Eth­er­net Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit) Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit)
Wire­less Built-in 54-Mbps Air­Port Extreme (802.11g); built-inBluetooth 2.0+EDR Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG net­work con­nec­tion sup­port­ing 802.11a/b/g wire­less LAN (equiv­a­lent to Air­port Extreme), Blue­tooth 2.0+EDR
Modem Apple USB Modem (sold separately) V.92 56Kbps data/fax modem
Input Apple Remote; full-size, illu­mi­nated key­board with­am­bi­ent light sen­sor; Scrolling Trackpad 88-key Acer Fine­Touch key­board (+ 12 func­tion, four­cur­sor, two Microsoft Win­dows keys, Web browser, e-mail, Empow­er­ing Key, oneuser-programmable easy-launch but­tons; front-access WLAN, Blue­tooth buttons);Touchpad with four-way inte­grated scroll button
Firewire One FireWire 400 port at up to 400 Mbps One FireWire 400 port at up to 400 Mbps
USB Two 480-Mbps USB 2.0 ports Four 480-Mbps USB 2.0 ports
Bat­tery Time UNKNOWN 3.5 hours
Weight 5.6 pounds 6.6 pounds
Foot­print 14.1 x 9.6 inches 14.3 x 10.7 inches
Thick­ness 1.0 inches (2.59 cm) 1.0 inches (2.63 cm)
Price $1999 $1999

This table does not seem to favor Apple. On a fea­ture by fea­ture basis, it seems the Acer beats. In the cat­e­gories of CPU, screen res­o­lu­tion, mem­ory, hard disk space, video mem­ory, and res­o­lu­tion on the video cam­era, the Acer comes ahead. The same is true in terms of ports (S-video, TV-out, 4 USB2 (vs 2 on the Mac­Book), more audio ports, etc…). How­ever, when it comes to weight and size, the Apple machine is much slicker. The Mac­Book offers a back­lit key­board but the Acer offers a modem. So if it’s style you’re after, the Mac­Book is your machine but if you’re aching for raw power, another option may beat it.

Update:

There’s a dis­cus­sion going on in the com­ments as to the price on the Acer. Cur­rently, dif­fer­ent sources are quot­ing two dif­fer­ent prices: $1999 and $2499. I don’t know which one is cor­rect yet and could not find that infor­ma­tion on the Acer site.

Originally published on January 11, 2006 in Technology . You may find related thoughts pieces under the following terms: ,

  • Kevin

    Newegg has the Trav­el­mate 8200 for slightly less than $2,000 as of 6/19/06

  • Anthony

    The Mac­book Pro specs you have pub­lished are innacu­rate. The proces­sors start at 2 GHZ, and the deives do fea­ture e Anti-Shock Pro­tec­tion. It also boots Win­dows via Bootcamp.

  • Libs

    The mac looks way nicer aes­thet­i­cally. But lol “Anti-Shock” pro­tec­tion.… “Anti-shock,” wow what a word. All com­po­nents in a lap­top has its own tested shock resis­tance (like hard­drives have a cer­tain thresh­old when oper­at­ing and not oper­at­ing). The cha­sis can help a lit­tle bit, but “anti-shock”… I think apple’s try­ing really hard here.

  • Brent

    Your Mac­Book Pro specs are def­i­nitely off, but not so much for Jan 11. How­ever, your analy­sis ignores the soft­ware that comes installed. The stuff on the Mac is stuff you’d actu­ally want to use. Also, you ignore the fact that even with the same specs, the Mac will boot much faster (into OS X, if not XP too). Finally, I get done with things I’m doing way faster on my Mac­Book Pro. Every­thing responds snap­pier in OS X. I hate going back to using Win­dows now, just because I have to wait so long for every­thing to load and respond.

  • Kyle Prescott

    “The Mac­book Pro specs you have pub­lished are innacu­rate. The proces­sors start at 2 GHZ, and the deives do fea­ture e Anti-Shock Pro­tec­tion. It also boots Win­dows via Bootcamp.”

    When the intel lap­tops were first out the slow­est was 1.67

    The anti-shock tech­nol­ogy is the fea­ture of hav­ing the hard drive shut down in a few ms after it detects a shock.… most lap­tops have this

    its also makes hav­ing the soft­ware smack­book a lot of fun

  • Jon

    You left out the most impor­tant point: the OS.

    The Mac­Book can run OS X and Win­dows via Boot­Camp. The Acer comes with some ver­sion of Win­dows. Well, Win­dows is a steam­ing pile of shit. That drops it well below the Mac­Book in terms of specs.

  • andre

    Omg, who ever wrote this com­par­i­son knows NOTHING about macs. This com­par­i­son is highly biased. Let me set you straight. The 15inch mac­books come with at LEAST 2.16 ghz WITH 4MB’s of cache, an ati 1600 with 128 OR 256 mmegs of mem­ory, 1 GB STANDARD, 1 firewire 400 and 1 firewire 800, air­port extreme that sup­port 802.11 A B G & N with firmware upgrade. BATTERY LIFE IS 4–5 HOURS with stan­dard usage, 1–2 HOURS when play­ing dvds or other highly inten­sive tasks.

    Beyond all this your buy­ing an apple which can run win­dows. also CROSSOVER MAC allows you to install win­dows apps + GAMES with­out windows.

    “anti-shock” — this is alot bet­ter than what LIBS describes it as. The com­puter can detect how many “G’s” the lap­top is tak­ing, so lets say it started to fall from your desk, the com­puter would detect this, stop the hard drive dur­ing the high G’s and then turn the hard drive back on when the G’s are back to normal.

    APPLE is a supe­rior pc man­u­fac­turer. A wise man once said “if you want to make good soft­ware, make good hard ware”. When you buy a pc lap­top, most of them are pretty much the same, in fact most of them are made from the same moth­er­board man­u­fac­turer. The rea­son why peo­ple buy apple is not only the the os supe­rior to win­dows and easy to use, but the hard­ware is awesome.

    that acer is pretty good though. My teacher has one too. but.. apple is bet­ter none the less, if i were to get a pc, it would prob­a­bly be that acer. But why would i want another pc?

  • Fran­cisco Gama

    hi
    Ignor­ing the fact that the com­par­i­son is out­dated, i think that chart ben­e­fits Apple.
    RAM BUS and ATI graphic card highly under­clocked because of known heat prob­lems. Up to the Modem say­ing “Apple USB Modem (sold sep­a­rately)” is the same of “Not Avail­able”. Bat­tery of these new macs lasts less than 3 hours. Oh, it’s a lie that a Mac boots faster. Just a myth.
    On details, the Acer includes case and mouse and adapters you have to pay in a Mac.

    Of course that Apple design hyp­no­tises a lot of peo­ple like most of the com­ments here but the truth is that they only give a real advan­tage on a Soft­ware discussion.

    Thanks

    P.S.:
    I have a bunch of pc’s, a lap­top x86, a mac­book and a mac­book pro.

  • Mickey

    Mac­book Pro doesn’t come with HDMI?? what the? I won’t buy unless it comes with HTMI. How am i to hook it up with my HDTV. I don’t want to use two cables –1 for Video and –2 for Sound? what were you think­ing Steve Jobs?

  • DPC

    Not to men­tion, Apple doesn’t sub­si­dize hard­ware costs with adware and cr@pware. Win­dows machine devel­op­ers do. Even when remov­ing the garbage­ware, the reg­istry isn’t entirely cleaned up, and even using 3rd party clean­ing tools, the reg­istry is not re-compressed. Which still means slower per­for­mance and greater risk of cor­rup­tion than if the yutzware wasn’t installed to begin with.

    If Win­dows machine brands didn’t do the “Sub­si­dize me with heap­ware” rou­tine, costs would almost be iden­ti­cal. Never mind Apple hasn’t any ill-implemented reg­istry to muck things up… or a file sys­tem that frag­ments files as part of its very nature… or needs a 4GB sys­tem to run at an accept­able speed… (no plat­form is immune to viruses and mal­ware… OS X is still by and large cleaner, but noth­ing is immune so it’s a silly argu­ment to really make in the first place.)