The last time I wrote about Photoshop on the new MacBook Pro I was vilified. This time I’ll probably be vilified again for saying the following sentence:
CNET just reviewed the MacBook Pro’s performance when running a variety of applications on both Mac OS X and Windows XP, and although the article was geared more towards Windows benchmarks on the Mac, they had this graph which caused me to do a double take:
Because Photoshop has to run using Rosetta emulation (at least until April 2007, if not longer) it’s going to be really slow. The author of the CNET article even said that Photoshop on the MacBook Pro is slower than Photoshop on a 12″ iBook. Wow. I’m using a 12″ iBook right now, and I can tell you that is *not* good.
Now this is not a fault entry. I fully realize that porting Photoshop over to a Universal Binary is not a trivial task, and I also know that first generation hardware has its quirks. But as a designer who has Photoshop open on his computer all day long, and makes a living from the usage of that software, I would strongly advise everyone not to purchase a MacBook Pro if you intend to use it as your Photoshop workhorse. Not only is it slow, but I’ve heard from numerous friends saying that it is buggy and prone to crashing when switching back and forth between Photoshop and other applications. If you need a portable Photoshop machine, I’d suggest picking up a 15″ or 17″ Aluminum Powerbook G4, or wait a year from now when MacBook Pro prices drop and Adobe CS3 is released.