CNet Mac OS X/Parallels/Boot Camp benchmarks

I’m usually skeptical of articles that start out baiting Mac users for flames:

The Mac cult, er, I mean, community seems to be of two minds about the fact the Apple has switched to Intel processors for its computers: One group seems to believe that this is tantamount to sacrilege and Apple has forever sullied its good name. The other group thinks that this is just the right move to motivate all those poor Windows suckers (the meager other 89 percent of all computer users) to finally move over to the Mac platform—also known to some as “the light side of the force.”

While my vastly oversimplified exaggerations might incur the wrath of die-hard Mac fanatics, the truth is that the rest of us can easily enjoy the best of both the Mac and Windows XP worlds on a single system—as long as that system is an Intel Mac.

However, it has actual benchmarks. Real numbers, so it’s worth a closer look. While I do that, I can’t help but lash back at the editorializing.

First, a little response to the introduction by Daniel A. Begun. I’m a proud member of the Mac community. Therefore, I must fall into one of those two groups. I’m not of the first, as I think the Intel switch is a good thing. Thus I must conclude I’m part of the second. I think Windows users are “suckers”. Right, because I stereotype. Wait, no, that’s what Daniel is doing here. He then admits his characterization is woefully inadequate and exaggerated (and yet, he still publishes it). He goes on to say “the rest of us can easily enjoy the best of both the Mac and Windows XP worlds on a single system.” Clever use of the Apple marketing phrase rest of us in a different situation. Yet, if that dichotomy he’s set up describes the Mac community, is he talking about Windows users. In which case, is he now putting himself in a less severe version of the latter group? Oh, the irony.

They ran a series of tests, pitting the Mac, Windows XP, and Parallels versions of the same task against one another. First up, is the Photoshop CS2 comparison. They actually admit it isn’t a fair test as Photoshop is running in Rosetta: “Strictly speaking, our Photoshop CS2 test isn’t completely fair. ” (Nitpick: “not completely fair”? How about not fair at all?) It’s a little less than twice as slow as native XP. Not bad I must admit, especially considering Parallels lagged way behind.

Next up was an Office 2003 comparison. It’s not a big surprise, so it’s not even worthy of comment. Next up, iTunes encodes faster on Mac OS X than on Windows XP. Naturally, Dan has disqualify this because, drumroll please, “iTunes is an Apple app after all.” Sure, ok. Whatever you say.

Quake 4 came next. Mac OS X came in first. Yowza. Sounds promising to me. Finally, OS X hands XP’s ass to itself when it comes to boot time. Then again, I find that a pretty meaningless statistic because I don’t feel it necessary to boot either one over and over again.

It ends with a warning about interpreting these results. Alterations and tweaks could alter the results, blah blah blah. I think my own conclusion is that things are looking good for the Mac, particularly when comparing to XP on the same hardware. Considering Apple has been putting most of their energy into making OS X faster with each revision and Vista has requirements that will make most current PCs obsolete, the next few years could yield a really large market shift.