Are People Angry at CNET’s Windows 7 and Mac OS X Comparison Test on A MacBook Pro?
Bertrand Vasquez | Oct 16, 2009 | Comments 9
First of all, for those of you who don’t know, let me explain in a nutshell what CNET did. They basically ran a comparison test on a 2008 MacBook Pro using 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow, to see which OS performed better. Turns out Snow Leopard was faster than Windows 7 on the MacBook Pro. There’s where it all started.
I’ve been reading this story all morning in a number of blogs, no big deal. What really caught my attention is the comments from readers. Angry comments that is. You see, a number of people, and let me just say I agree with them, think it’s unfair and maybe even a bit paradoxical to say that Windows 7 runs slower or performs poorly on an Apple MacBook Pro computer. Many are celebrating Mac OS X, but these people are not looking at the big picture. It being that Snow Leopard had a slight advantage over Windows 7 because it’s running on a computer that was designed, and engineered specifically for it to perform its best.
Back to the subject though, many people are indeed angry at this test for not being just. But don’t take my word for it, here are a few comments I collected from various blogs:
“This is such a pointless article. Like everyone’s been saying, this just proves that OSX applications run best on the platform for which it was originally intended. It’s pointless for CNET to have done these tests for [website's name] to have passed on this rubbish.
In other news, fish fare well in the water, not so well on land.”
“This is barely a test! There are so few test points, and the ones that are chosen are dubious because they favour one manufacturer (iTunes, Quicktime, using MacBook Pro with suspected dodgy Win7 drivers).”
“Anyone with common sense can see this is biased. How about comparing Office versions?”
“There isn’t a way to make this comparison valid, really. Apple builds the OS and the machine to work well together. Microsoft builds the OS to work on a huge variety of machine configurations. Since Microsoft doesn’t have retail machines that Windows 7 was specifically designed for, the comparison falls apart, even if you put both OS’es on a third-party box.”
“Interesting but I would have been more interested in seeing the results when you compared a PC built specifically to optimize Win7″
“I think it would have been more interesting to actually test non OS specific applications, or the same version of software (QuickTime 7 vs. QuickTime X, really?). This comparison shows absolutely nothing except that Apple software runs better on Macs. I think we all knew that.”
“I keep thinking we should get an option to downrank articles… I this one should def be grayed out on the main page so that I dont have to read this BS. [website's name] ”"reporting” keeps going south…
What’s next, Office ’08 runs faster on Windows 7 than Snow Leopard? Tsk”
What do you think?
Filed Under: Miscellaneous
To answer, YES, people are angry because a little mac fan boy cherry picked tests and didn’t test in a completely fair way. Had he wanted to show windows 7 was quicker he wouldn’t have loaded it in boot camp. Even if people think it’s natively running, it’s not quite the same and the HD isn’t quite as fast. Second, he’s choosing only ONE hardware configuration that is the best to make his case. What about on a somewhat faster system? What it have been closer? No one knows because he only used one configuration. Next his cherry picked tests were not even rally good ones. Shut down can not be compared because osx and windows shut down differently and do different things. Winodows must deal with a lot more hardware.
But what I think really bothers people is that mac fans ALWAYS show up at microsoft release, within the same week just to boast their over priced macs are superior. I have BOTH leopard osx and windows 7 and win7 is over all better on a lot of points. THAT is why he felt the need to do that. LOOK at him. He’s what 20? was on a skate board 5 years ago. What does he know? He falls into the typical group of uninformed kids that watch ImAMac commercials, buying them hook, line and sinker.
So what’s the message? A small set of benches were faster in osx, so everyone should give up a universe of applications in windows just so they can spend double on a mac, and end up loading windows anyway? You forget that Mac’s ARE PC’S that are delivered by Apple. Look at the hard ware. Core duo? Piece of shit for the money. I can get an i7 at 3.6ghz with 1TB hard drive, ddr3 that will blow the living crap out of his mac for $800. No such option from apple.
But back to the point. He picked only things that made the mac look good, and he loaded windowds in bootcamp which is not as good as booting windows on a pc, without boot camp. He should have instead used a standard pc, and loaded osx into the pc which can be done. Then done the benchmarks.
So YES, people are mad because the test is fairly bogus. It gives the average user the false impression that every thing will be faster on a mac, no matter what it it is which is bull shit. Then he suggests that if moeny is no object every one should get a mac. Again, the words from a 20something mac fan boy who’s likely spent his parents $1600 for his macbook. I’m pretty well to do, and have over 400k in savings. I would NEVER, fill my home with macs because it just doesn’t make any sense. Yet he’s suggesting every one do this over 3 or 4 stupid benches.
This sort of stuff happens with every windows release and it’s always from fanboys. The kid should be called on his dumb tests. And even if it were 2 or 3% quicker, I wouldn’t do it because what good is that when you have so few choices and a slow CORE DUO CPU from 3 years ago? That’s right Apple rips people off and gives them 3 year old technology and then charges them through the nose. Also his cinebench was only like 5500. Why? Because he bought a macbook. That’s why. My home computer gets 17,500 and it was under $1000. Should everyone by a mac? NO.
I do want to say thanks for the article, because it points a lot of things out. And now that I think about it, there are even more things wrong with his testing method, including what you pointed out along with others in comments. And I do realize it’s all about relative testing, but that test was over assumptive and over simplistic. It doesn’t even address how an app was perhaps compiled and assumes it’s equal. On the HD, that translates to virtual ram if he hasn’t much ram and add the fact that the HD doesn’t behave identically under BC and that’s enough to ruin the tests right there. There are long articles about this. And mis-matches with other tests. It just really makes me mad when they are always so snotty and do this to claim superiority.
SOME REAL RESULTS:
I’m calling this guy on his test methods now. Since I also have cinebench I decided to set up Mac OSX and windows 7 for one test to show how much things can vary under different circumstances.
In cinebench score he shows his mac getting is 5437, vs Windows 7 RTM at 5777. This shows windows7 at a pitiful 94% the speed. My point was that he ran this in bootcamp which affected the results. To illustrate this I conducted a test where I loaded mac osx onto a pc natively, but did NOT use bootcamp to run windows as he did. The results are quite different.
The machine is faster than his, but the relative scores are of interest. For osx 10.5.8 I got mac 12,490 vs Windows 7 12,411, which puts the windows score within 99.4% that of the mac for multi core.
On another run I got 12,520 on mac, and 12,370 windows 7. That’s 98.8%, nearly 99% of the score. Not sure why it was less the 2nd time.
For single threaded 1cpu, the mac got 3224 CB-CPU, but Windows 7 got 3842 BEATING osx!! OSX had only 83% of the score in this case.
IF osx is truly that much faster than windows 7 and only has 94% of the score as his tests show, then how am I able to do this? I think my test is more pure because neither os uses something like boot camp. Boot camp does have an affect. It’s a test where both OS’s got to load how they wanted to load. Also why did he mysteriously leave off the single threaded cinebench results since most apps are singled threaded anyway? Again, this guy is cherry picking tests, results and methods to give the false illusion that osx is FAR superior to windows 7. It is not. Now this false information is contained within about 3 or 4 articles floating out there now which is sort of unfair to people wanting to know how much of a difference it really makes. I’m finding there is hardly any.
conclusion is his test in bootcamp, for what ever reason, pulled between 4% and 5% off the windows score out of it’s favor. HOW IS THAT FAIR?
typo. I mixed up the scores with cinebench, but the point still remains. The two were MUCH closer when I ran the benches as hackintosh, rather than using boot camp. And other tests he did, I’m now finding out are also MUCH closer and within 1%, often with windows 7 being faster. Again, they should do a re-match with no boot camp and no cherry picked apps for mac. I think the results will show a much closer race.
I just figured out that my $800 3.6ghz i7 is still about 2-3 times faster than a $1600 imac even if it were true about the 1-3% speed differences. LOL. OK, Now I feel happy. On to windows 7.
@zing:
Thank you so much for taking the time to share all of this information with us.
It’s pointless because of all the resident programs that run on Windows. The MAC OS generally uses way fewer resources. If you take a machine that’s loaded up with the typical windows anti-virus, games, office software, photoshop, pdf, etc., I think we would get a much more fair comparison. Windows 7 is certainly faster than the previous Vista OS, so at least Windows users have something to be optimistic about.
Build Your Own Windows 7 PC
why doesn’t someone run a real benchmark, when Win7 is properly supported by bootcamp, and use 3rd party apps.
OS fanboyism is stupid, and the article is misleading, but as someone who considers the Windows vs Mac debate all about the lesser of two evils (as far as their corporate mothers), can someone explain something to me:
OSs are like tools. Some things work better on Linux, somethings work better on Windows, some things work better on Mac.
Can we make a list of those things? What works better on a Mac? Both have MS Office, both have Photoshop, is it all about silly little garage band apps for tweens?