Got our first Intel iMac today for testing. I fixed it up the way we like it and imaged the drive to a FireWire disk. When I option-booted to get to the startup disk selection screen (usually in OpenFirmware), I was greeted with this very slick new selection UI. It’s fully keyboard-navigable. Booting from FireWire is a bit slower than booting from the internal drive (see this movie for the FireWire boot), which happens quickly – damned fast, actually.
My initial reaction to Photoshop speed is: faster than my PowerBook. Photoshop CS2 booted twice as fast on the iMac (1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM) as on the PowerBook (1GHz G4, 2GB RAM). Working with a 35MB .psd file (levels, unsharp mask, etc.) seemed faster than I’m used to on the PowerBook. No complaints so far.
I’m taking this machine to the San Juans tomorrow for field testing by one of our production artists for a few weeks. If all goes well, we’ll be buying a few of these a month for the next year.
tags: intelimac | coreduo | mactel
so any word on the macbookpro?
Nobody has their hands on one yet. Apple says my ship by date is March 3 but I keep hearing mid-Feb. The last PowerBook I bought (17-inch, 1GHz) was announced at MWSF in Jan that year but didn’t ship until late March. I don’t think I’ll have to wait that long but if the rumors about Intel’s production problems on the Core Duo chip are any indication, the initial batches of MacBook Pros should be small.