New MacBook Pro with NVIDIA 9600M GT

Dog, chances are you're not going to be able to get much help in here. Not only are these machines using different hardware (9500 series and 9600 series are different, but that's just the start of the differences between Mac and PC), but different software as well (not just the operating system and any system drivers, but the SL application as well.

yeah i got that thanx, I shudda posted on technical forum and applied it more to windows xp - apologies.
am working through probs which mainly concern graphics, drivers and quick time errors.

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dog

You might have a new PC but might not have the latest video card drivers, I would recommend you goto Nvidia and get the latest drivers and install them and then try second life again.

Just because you get an error that SL does not recognize the card does not mean it wont work, I'm sure LL has some sort of list in the client that detects known video card GPU's I would guess that LL didn’t put the lower end GPU into there list as of yet so perhaps a future client update will fix that problem but anyway why would you want to run SL on the slower card anyway? As far as checking what SL is using go into the preferences and see what is shown in the video card section, Video Card memory will be a dead give away.

I just go my new Macbook Pro and SL keeps resetting the Texture Memory to 256MB even though I'm running with the high performance mode (9600M).

for SL on the iPhone.. i am hoping Vollee gets it working soon, would love to be able to get on to check stuff between classes... or anywhere on the go. They have it working on many phones, and they say they are working on the iPhone, they just dont have it done yet

Bay - the 9400M & 9600M GT are from the same series, but the 9400M is newer. While the 9600M GT has been around for several months, the 9400M was introduced on the day the new MacBooks and MacBook Pro's came out. Since it was developed behind closed doors, only a small number of CPU manufacturers had access to it (Apple and I believe one or two PC vendors who were working with nVidia). Over time, expect game developers to develop specific support for the 9400M.

Ninja - SL does run (and run REALLY WELL) on the 9400M. It also only displays that error message once, the very first time you try to run the viewer with the 9400M. Afterwards it does exactly what you say and uses an existing default. We didn't see the particulars.... it just worked.

Hugh - mine keeps sliding back down to 256MB as well. Talking to a couple Mac Pro users in the Macintosh group in-world, this appears to be something that happens to all Mac users, not just people with MacBook Pro's. The good news is, you really don't want to set your texture memory settings beyond 256MB anyways, since that video memory is used by your Mac for everything running (OS X screens, other applications, etc). As a general rule, you want to keep your SL texture memory settings no higher than half of what your video card's capacity is.

This is encouraging. I'm not sure why the new macbook pros are fairing so much better than the previous gen with 8600m GT cards (have a couple of friends with those and they had issues) because there's not in theory all that much difference between that and the newer 9600m GT. But it's good to hear nontheless!

I played with the new macbook pros a few weeks ago and wasn't too keen on the keyboard and trackpad button. I visited a nearby store 5 mins later and tried several Vaios and those keyboards had a much nicer feel to them (and vastly better layout of keys by the way but dont get me started on that!). I've heard others with the same thoughts about the macbook pros keyboard but I'm trying to convince myself I'll get used to it!

That just leaves the new trackpad. How are users of the new macbook pro finding these, especially for editing objects? The trackpad itself seems nice, but the button depress had a little too much resistance for my liking, even when pressed at the bottom where there's least resistance, and I heard lots talk about how loud/clunky it is but I didnt notice that in the noisy Apple store.

By the way. Using a mouse is not an option. I get RSI pretty quick when using a mouse, even with high end mice like Logitech's laser mouse. No such issues with a trackpad and it has been fine for building. At the very least it's nice to know if the trackpad is up to the job! It does come fixed to the laptop after all.

I've been holding off Apple for years. I guess I don't like the companys attitude because they never seem to listen. Apple keyboards are one example, but no change despite several articles picking up on the poor layout. Lack of copy/paste and landscape keyboard on the iPhone is another example despite customers crying out for these basic features for as long as I can remember. There's also the way they try to milk and manipulate customers instead of just being thankful for the sale of an expensive piece of kit - Apple charging 3 to 4 fold retail price on memory upgrade options over several years has always striked me as a scam with no justification. Though doesn't apply so much now if opting for the top end macbook pro because it's already maxed out (reports of 6gb working aside).

So I guess another question to Apple users is, how do you find Apple as a company, and are they actually worse than Microsoft in some ways? Switching platforms is a big investment, especially if you use alot of apps like I do, so you're commiting to the company as much as the computer because you're relying on support, updates and future upgrades.

Especially like to hear from recent switchers. With Mac adoption heading skywards it seems like a pretty good time to switch to me. But at Apple prices I want the darn thing to just work!

Just got a new macbook pro today, really a great computer! Having one issue with sl though, maybe someone can help me. No matter what clothes i give my av, a black layer keeps going over the clothes. I have the 9600 GT graphics card and im using OS.

Interesting =o.
A shame the new generations are not detected yet, wakeup lindens .

who really cares if its detected? SL hasnt detected my processor for 3 years now, but who cares? It doesnt have to know what it is, you can still use it just the same

Oh, SL has a video card certification process, if the card is not on the supported list they often experience more crashes and performance glitches.

unsupported doesn't mean it wont work, or work as well... just because they haven't tested it, and don't know if it'll work. Everyone i hear talking about it seems like they are missing out on something if its not "supported." They can experience problems, if its not supported, but that doesn't mean they will, or that its even likely, its just LL doesn't give a crap if it works or not and wont help you get it to work if there is a problem, because they don't support it.

But to the 9400M, they do support cards in the same family, they just haven't updated their list, which means it shouldn't have any problems at all.

Anthony... there's a long-standing technical issue that affects the 8600 series. Not just the 8600M GT that's in last year's MBP, but the versions in Mac Pro's as well. Lots of finger-pointing has ensued. I'm not really one for blamestorming, as it does not usually the problem solved any faster. Point your friends with 8600M GT's in the direction of another recent thread on this board (has 8600 in the thread title), that's got my long-winded recommendations for those users.

Trackpad does take some getting used to. The awkwardness I still sometimes feel a few weeks on is nothing compared to how much I love the gestures and the larger touch surface. My recommendation is to enable click to tap as well as two finger clicking for right clicks. 3-finger swipe to go backwards and forwards in my web browser - I don't know how I lived without it lol....

'll skip the bit about the iPhone and not listening (despite some inaccuracies), as I'm not sure that's relevant to this forum. As a company? They're a company. Don't expect them not to be. However, as companies go, they put a ridiculous amount of effort into the user experience, ergonomics, and ease of use. Should you find yourself on the line for tech support you can expect to be on hold (just like everybody else), but the hold times tend to be shorter by 15-20 minutes (according to various industry tracking figures I've seen). More importantly (in my book), is that I have fewer reasons to seek out support. That attention to detail thing really pays off. My experience with Microsoft since somewhere in the mid-90's has been that they're more than happy to leave it to consultants and service companies and the whole cottage industry of tutorial books and videos to let you try and figure stuff out, and Apple's operation seems to be the opposite. Getting started and learning to work your way around stuff is significantly easier, and they put some effort into making tutorials and training available without sending you off to some third party to spend more money.

The other thing to consider, and I'm surprised more people don't catch on to this, is the life of the product. The typical duty cycle of a windows PC is 2-3 years, and a windows laptop is 18-24 months. After that, even if the machine is still running properly, odds are you'll need to replace it because the software tools and toys you used have long since passed you by. With Apple, the duty cycles are longer by a full year or more. A Mac laptop is not only made to survive for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 years, but you'll still be able to run the apps you want to. I just retired my old PowerBook G4 last month - after 5 1/2 years of faithful service! And I did a lot more than just email and surfing. That thing ran audio and video production software and traveled all around the country. In 5 and a half years I would have bought 2-3 wintel notebooks. Sure, each one is cheaper, but in the end I saved a fortune on my PowerBook.

I used to really know my way around PC's. I worked in the computer industry for nearly 2 decades, designed systems for manufacturers, and even trained support techs. I made the switch because I got tired of spending so much of my time "working on my computer" instead of just doing the things I want. No more fooling with the windows registry and all that business. I do admit that I geek around and poke under the hood, but I do that when I'm choosing to, because I'm playing around with something or tinkering around and having fun. Not because stuff isn't working, and because if I don't I'll lose a bunch of files or have to reinstall everything.

Good luck, which ever way you decide to go.

King - it's never happened to me, but I've heard people mention it in the Macintosh User's Group in world. Re-Bake your textures... I believe it's Cmd-Option-R. Also worth noting, that issue appears to have been fixed in the latest release candidate SL 1.22 RC2 client (at least according to the release notes).

Maylin - the 9400M is newer than the 1.21 software everyone's using (that viewer was being tested back in September). 1.22 (in testing/release candidate mode now) is able to detect it. But worth pointing out, 1.21 still runs beautifully on the 9400M.

Missy - EXACTLY!

I gave in and bought a Macbook Pro. I havent commited to it fully yet because I'm still setting up software and learning the Mac OS and the new apps - about 30 of them. But initial impressions are roughly as follows.

I love the trackpad in as far the feel, size and the multi-touch gestures. I've done the same and enabled the touch to tap option and two finger tap for right-click, same as you. Frankly it's the only thing that kept me sane because I'm not a big fan of the physical depress of the new trackpads - a loud and clunky affair. The touch to left/right click works nicely, though I'm sure it fails to detect it some of the time (or I'm losing my sanity, one or the other). It's fully patched, including the trackpad patch to do with not registering all clicks, but I still seem to experience it anyway, so the patch may have only dealt with physical presses. I'm keeping an eye on it. I've got a bluetooth MightyMouse too so I'll see if that triggers RSI in my hand - I noticed that you don't use the same muscles for mouse clicks because the whole mouse depresses, so thought I'd give it a try. For most activity though I'm using the Trackpad. I really like the four finger gesture for Expose - i use that alot. And two finger scrolling.



It's relevant because it underpins the company philosophy. With the iPhone they turned a blind eye to customer feedback. They still havent implemented copy/paste yet despite everyone repeatedly blasting Apple for it for example. And it highlights the control they like to impose - just look at some of the apps they refused into the app store for anti-competitive reasons. Plus they pushed a firmware update to disable third party AV cables (I have two dud cables now). The list goes on. So it's just another example of the way the company runs things.

But with Macbooks it's the keyboard layout which is annoying. I've seen two or more magazine articles in the UK comment on the poor layout but Apple refuse to budge over several years. All they have to do is add an extra column of keys on the right-hand side, like most PCs, and problem solved - in one swoop it would 1) Allow for larger UK/European Enter key, 2) Larger arrow keys, 3) Have the very handy Page Up/Down and Home/End keys, which I use all the time!, 4) More pleasing design - i.e. no gaps around the Arrow keys - just a consistant gap around all keys. I've seen people on blogs give the keyboard as the sole reason for giving up on the Mac laptops, especially those who write software.



Agreed. It's the reason I'm switching to the Mac. And they've seriously ramped up their R&D budget over the last 2 to 3 years, not that it was small to begin with. They're going to be hard to compete with.



The contrast between Apple and Microsoft is like night and day. I still run XP on my previous laptop so had little hands-on experience with Vista. I had to setup Vista for a family member recently and the neighbour probably heard me cursing Microsoft. Not because I was stuck, but because of all the lame UI decisions Microsoft makes. So a few days ago I setup the Mac OS and it was smooth sailing. You can see they actually put thought into the UI. It was a very pleasing introduction to the Mac platform. Microsoft's UI approach is to throw everything at the user and wave their hands around trying to get your attention. Just try counting the system tray notifications in Vista after a new install. Don't recall seeing one with the Mac.

Not that everything on the Mac is plain sailing. I experienced the black screen of death when waking the laptop up. Long history of lengthy threads about it on Apple's forums. I tried resetting the PRAM for what good it'll do so will see if it crops up again.



Thanks. I've already got my first Mac as I mentioned. The things that bug me (the keyboard and trackpad) I'll learn to adjust to. Cheers for sharing your experience.

Just to cap it off. What a beautiful laptop the Macbook Pro is! I really didnt appreciate it fully in the Apple store. With it placed side-by-side with my old Vaio (and a friend's newer Vaio) it's like night and day. Awesome bit of engineering.

I only spent a few hours in SL on the Mac so far, but so far there's no crashes and it seems quite stable. The only two things is me not rezzing the very first time I logged in (subsequent logins were fine). And when minimizing SL it doesnt decrease the CPU load much like it does on the PC - goes roughly from abuot 25% to 20% if I remember correctly. But no showstoppers yet. I didnt see any errors or warnings from Second Life the first time I started it up either - looks like it recognizes the 9600M GT (havent tried switching back to the 9400M yet so dont know how well that handles SL).

The only thing that concerns me given SL's patchy history on the Mac is the possibility of future updates to SL or Mac upsetting the status quo again, so I'll be paying a closer attention on Mac forums/threads from now on. But yep, it seems to be running smoothly currently anyway, so far. Am I the only one who gets a kick out of using the four finger gesture and watching SL running full speed in Expose? Maybe I've been using Windows too long...

PS: just to share a little more. What I nice experience it is not to have a laptop covered in stickers advertising what's inside the machine, and no Product key stickers on the underside either, and no crapware!!! On the Vaio/Vista setup it came preloaded with a bunch of crapware so I had to waste time uninstalling most of it. And it caused issues installing new Antivirus because the Trial Antivirus that came preloaded didn't uninstall fully. Horrible affair. Just some of the many things that bugged me about the PC/Vista affair these days.

Thanks for the great reviews, feedbacks and observations.

I've been a Microbloat user for decades now after giving up my Mac 512 for a 286 in my university days, but I've been teetering on the edge of buying a MacBook Pro for a few months now. With all these reports that SL is running well on the new versions, I think I'll get one tomorrow.

BTW, I just went through a few weeks of playing with the Android G1 and the iPhone, but 15 minutes with a Blackberry Storm sent me right to the Apple store to buy an iPhone. Your points about engineering, user experience, and fit and finish are well taken, and I hope the satisfaction I've gotten out of using the iPhone will carry over to the MBP (although I do want cut and paste!).

For my next trick, I'll try to download SLim and see what happens....