Dual core means that it has two separate processors built into one chip; while you can’t compare chips of different designs by clockspeed alone (A 2ghz G5 or Athlon 64 or Pentium M will be a hell of a lot faster than than say a 2ghz Pentium 4 or Celeron) the Pentium M based design used in the Core Duo chips has a pretty good performance per clock, on highly parallel code it should be close to twice as fast as a 2ghz G5; on single threaded stuff it would be mildly faster, at best.
Also, now that the new iMacs are running x86 processors, I expect someone to get Windows working on them pretty soon, allowing for a dual boot OSX/Windows machine. Or maybe go insane pentuble boot OSX/Windows/Linux/BSD/Solaris. That, and I expect Wine to be ported to OSX pretty soon, which would let you run many Windows programs within OSX at near native speeds.
This is configurable. Go to System Preferences, and look for mouse preferences or somesuch.
Another point to mention for figuring this out is that the Help menu is actually pretty helpful on Mac OS. Actually, it’s often helpful on Windows, too, but IMHO, the Mac help is more likely to get you where you need to be. I don’t have my iBook with me to check, but I’d guess if you searched “Touchpad click” in Help, it would tell you what to do. It’s a good first step for those kinds of things.
Oh, and mark me down as one who loves his Mac (converted about 2.5 years ago), but hates the OS X model of “zoom” instead of “maximize”. With Expose, there’s no need for me to be able to see different windows in the background, and on a 12" screen, I want whatever I’m doing to be as big as possible. In addition, lots of programs “zoom” to stupid settings. When I’m trying to read a pdf, it’s unlikely that I want to see the entire portrait-oriented page on my screen at one time, too small to read, but that’s what Preview does when you “zoom.” Luckily, windows are pretty good about remembering their past locations and sizes. So all I have to do is manually drag each window to fill the screen once, and thereafter it will automatically be maximized.
The irony of Apple’s move is that their prfessional users rely on software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Final Cut Pro–none of which can run on the new systems yet. It will be a long time before Apple’s Intel transition is complete; your G4 will serve you in good stead for a good long time.
Yes and no. The high end apps are usually the FIRST ones to take advantage of any improvements in hardware. I’m not sure how Apple gets around Altivec in the new machines, but I haven’t heard anything other than ‘Rosetta will help you limp along’.
A better mindset would be: the release of these machines didn’t suddenly break all the other stuff out there. The iBook I use to surf the web, SDMB, read email, and check my bank statements can still do so JUST as well as the latest greatest. The bottleneck isn’t the laptop, but the network connection, or the Internet, or the server at the other side.
I’ve found that a typical Windows mindset is: This new hotness is SO much better, because I can rip DVDs in 8 minutes, rather than 12!
A unix user’s mindset (and one I carry with the iBook) is: There are two types of things. The very fast (get an email, move a window, switch to another program), and the ones that take a long time. (Make a DVD) If the first set, the iBook is more than adequate. The latter is something I tend to set up to run just before I go to bed. If it takes 40 minutes or 25 with a faster computer, I could care less as I’m not there to see it. And if I wanted to do the DVD build while using the computer I can and not suffer for it. The fast stuff still stays fast. Note that I am NOT one of those folks that make my money by having the machine crunch cycles. WETA (the folks that did the CGI for Lord of the rings) is in a slightly different boat performance wise.
You G5 owners don’t need to worry so much. My little 1Ghz G4 will keep chugging along. Tho there are rumours I may get a new MacBook through the offics…I’m trying not to get my hopes up.
As a Windows (and Linux) user, I just want to say that I don’t care about the things that take a long time either. There are other reasons to upgrade, like 1) Things that take a medium amount of time, such as using CPU-intensive graphics programs, compressing archives, decoding high-res videos, and loading Adobe programs (ugh); and 2) Games. #1 is more or less a luxury, but faster computers do noticeably speed up those tasks. As for #2, fast computers are simply a must for modern 3D games.
Those also happen to be the two reasons I’m considering, for the first time, a Mac purchase. IMO, the MacBook is the first Mac with a decent hardware-to-price ratio. I’d never have paid 3x the price of a PC for equivalent performance in a Mac, but the new MacBook seems to have significantly decreased that difference (it’s more or less the same price a Dell laptop with similar specs). If the MacBook can also run Windows and PC games… well, I’d finally be willing to switch.
Frankly, I have been a Mac person since Atari went belly-up. (Why yes, I am a member of Green Party, why do you ask?)
While I have had some Bad Things happen, the new OS X is rock solid. That, and the complete (why does everyone use modifiers for this?) lack of viruses make the Mac the way to go for the average user.
It is sort of like Pepsi. In blind taste tests, it always beats Coke, but people do not want to switch to Pepsi. People, go figure!
The margin in certain areas has been closer for quite some time. A year and a half ago, I went looking for a 12" laptop I could use on the bus. True, I was looking at getting a Mac from a curiosity standpoint, but at the time, the $999 iBook was the only cheap 12" laptop out there, everybody else was forgoing things like an onboard DVD/CDRW drive and charging twice the money as only Businessmen with budgets bought 12" notebooks.
The G5 iMac really is a comparable home computer if you’re not looking at pure synthetic benchmarks. Running an office suite 150 times faster than a human can, vs. running it 100 time faster than a human can really doesn’t prove anything. And when you compare a PC-side all-in-one to the iMac all-in-one, it’s like Apple’s parents helped it with the science project.
You too? Went from a 1040ST to a Quadra after the Tramiel implosion.
And I’d seriously consider breaking someone’s appendages for one of the new dual-core iMacs. But then, as I’m still puttering with a six-year-old G3 iMac, anything would be a step up.
That, and I expect Wine to be ported to OSX pretty soon, which would let you run many Windows programs within OSX at near native speeds.