i'm not normally one to chime in on such debates but here it is:
The new top-end 17" MacBook Pro cost £2,458.99 with the i7 dual-core CPU, 8 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive. A reasonable spec for a mobile photographer / video / audio editor like myself.
The Dell Precision 6500M costs £2,492.00 for a true quad-core i7 with Win 7 64 bit with 8 GB RAM and two 160 hard drives in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration as well as a 1GB nVIDIA FX3800M graphics card. Okay it's uglier, the battery pack is large, the battery life is woeful and it weighs a kilo more - but it's intended to be a luggable desktop replacement with proper power for those that need it - us photo and video guys. Also included is a 3 year warranty! Get Adobe CS5 running on it and you've got a very compelling reason to leave Final Cut Studio for dust.
Even Apple's own 'pro' apps aren't optimised for hyper-threading or multiple CPUs - anyone who's rendered on the timeline in FCP or bounced out of Logic will know what I mean. Barely one core being utilised if you're lucky!
Adobe's Premiere runs 3 times faster for renders on my Mac Pro in Win 7 via Boot Camp than Premiere for OS X. That may change with CS5, but surely Apple is in danger of losing the market that made them way back when - the creative professionals?
I understand that the new 17" MacBook Pro strikes a balance between power consumption and performance - but surely there should be a fully-fledged desktop replacement build-to-order option?
Maybe with these new machines out, Apple will update their pro apps for the hyper-threading and multiple CPU's. I mean why release software that everyone will complain will not run? Now they have the machines, and the software updates may be coming? Also what version of OS X are you running? is it the newest Snow Leopard for multi-core, etc or you still running Leopard?
Me I am still running leopard and my 2008 whitebook still runs like a charm. I ditched Premier elements. I used to run it on windows, but the version I have (3.0) did not run properly on Xp professional, and several Adobe techs told me it was Designed for Xp Media Center edition. I took a look at the newer versions and it was too much like iMovie and they even cut out the timeline (they said since iMovie is the most popular consumer editor freely availble on the mac, our premier elements will be exactly like the version in iLife '08 and we will no longer release a mac vesion of premeir elements).
I also talked to Adobe about Premier in the CS# versions (seeing if it would be worth shelling out over $1,000), they said they took out some of the optimizing and features; not because of Apple machine capability; but more because they did not want to support 2 versions long term and wanted to concentrate more on Windows users. They said eventually they wanted one code set to maintain, and since the world works on Windows - that was their target.
So see, Adobe admitted to me they were not interested in properly performing Apple products. Let's not blame Apple here (and I am not 100% of a fanboi, I still use some Windows apps); blame the 3rd party software makers for crippling apps.
It happens both ways, I seen software companies cripple apps on Windows for enhancing Apple or Linux based apps, and I seen software companies cripple other platforms for enhancing Windows based apps. it all depends on where their vision and the programming talent they have lie.