Software for Macbook pro

I am teetering on leaving the darkside and coming over to apple :black:

I have been trying to follow all the speculation over the new Macbook but will wait until the user reviews start appearing before making a decision on whether to purchase or not.

I was wondering though, will the current mac software work ok with the new intel system. I am thinking about stuff like office mac, photo editing and games.
Will the pro be powerful enough to handle the more intensive games in the same way as a windows based machine.

Thanks
Dave

airline1 said:

I am teetering on leaving the darkside and coming over to apple :black:

I have been trying to follow all the speculation over the new Macbook but will wait until the user reviews start appearing before making a decision on whether to purchase or not.

I was wondering though, will the current mac software work ok with the new intel system. I am thinking about stuff like office mac, photo editing and games.
Will the pro be powerful enough to handle the more intensive games in the same way as a windows based machine.

Thanks
Dave

Click to expand...

The current mac software will work under Rosetta, a transparent app that translates PPC apps into x86. They do not, however, run at full speed so I wouldn't recommend relying on it as a permanent solution for games and heavy photo editing. By 2007, however, most apps should be universal. When native games come out, the performance will be astounding, far beyond any pre-Core Duo laptop that's existed. In fact, even now the gaming performance should be amazing since those things rely so much on the video card. Also, World of Warcraft already has a native version.

If I have understood that correctly, your saying:

There is no native software for the pro and current software needs to be run under this Rosetta thingy which will make it run slow. And I would need to wait for a year before native office and photo editing software is available for it.
Flipp'in eck, think I will buy a powerbook instead!!

Or have I misunderstood?

Cheers
Dave

There's a pretty good listing of Intel-native (AKA "Universal Binary") applications at MacInTouch. Some are "promised," some are available today.

Notably, Microsoft Office and Adobe's Creative Suite applications are not yet available natively on Intel, but both will be made native in the next major revision.

airline1 said:

If I have understood that correctly, your saying:

There is no native software for the pro and current software needs to be run under this Rosetta thingy which will make it run slow. And I would need to wait for a year before native office and photo editing software is available for it.
Flipp'in eck, think I will buy a powerbook instead!!

Or have I misunderstood?

Cheers
Dave

Click to expand...

Most of your everyday use software has been made native. All of Apple's software outside the pro apps (Final Cut, Aperture, Logic Express) is native for instance. Adium, the best instant messaging app around, is native. Chances are most of the free aoftware you find yourself downloading will have native versions very soon. Office, however, is not native, and neither is Photoshop. Office supposedly runs okay under Rosetta and Photoshop has enough performance for casual use. Office and Photoshop won't be native until the next major release of each, as technologist said (Office 12 and CS3). And as far as games go, while Rosetta won't be able to simulate anything faster than maybe an around 1 GHz G4, they rely much more on the video card, which is miles ahead of what's in the PowerBook currently (AGP Radeon 9700 w/ 128MB can't compare to PCI Express Radeon X1600 w/ 256MB). And Blizzard has already released a native WoW (v. 1.93). I didn't mean to imply that there is NO Intel-native software out, but the vast majority of mac software still isn't universal yet. It all depends on how you plan to use the notebook and whether you're willing to sacrifice some performance over the next 10 months for a much better outcome and more robust set of standard features.

Thanks Discerptor, that makes it bit clearer.
Theres no rush for me to switch to apple, so I can sit back for a couple of months and check out everyones experiences with the pro, once its out and about.

Cheers
Dave

I was also planning to get one until I read about these limited native software at the moment.

What about OS X? Is is native for the intels or is another version for intel on the way?

ylim said:

I was also planning to get one until I read about these limited native software at the moment.

What about OS X? Is is native for the intels or is another version for intel on the way?

Click to expand...

OS X has been native-capable for Intel since its introduction almost 6 years ago.

There will be native software for intels soon, apple suprised everybody by announcing the intels this early, they were not suppose to be announced till june and steve jobs told us when the released the intel computers that there would not be alot of native apps yet because they kept the secret from the delevopers as well as customers that they were realeasing intel proccessor systems early.