Aperture performance on new Apple laptops vs older Mac Pro

I took a small Aperture library to an Apple Store to test the performance of Apple's new laptops. I've got a 2008 Mac Pro and a 2007 Macbook Pro, and both are dropping hints that it might be time for something new.

Now, even on my MBP, I find Aperture responsiveness to be perfectly adequate with my 1D2, 1Ds2 and 1D3 RAW files, and just a tad pokey with 1Ds3 RAWs. So, for me, responsiveness is not an issue. Where horsepower makes a difference in my working life as a high-volume event photog is in exporting hundreds or thousands of JPEGs from heavily adjusted RAW files. What takes 8 hours on my MBP takes only 1 on my MP. That's the difference between over dinner and overnight. FYI, my MP is upgraded with 8GB RAM, an SSD boot drive, a 3-drive RAID 0, and an ATI Radeon 4870. No slouch.

So, I ran a test outputting 25 JPEGs from 1D3 and 1Ds3 heavily-adjusted high-ISO RAW files and timed it. Guess which  Macbook Pro tied it?

Here are the times:

Mac Pro (2008), 8-core 2.8GHz Xeon, 8GB RAM - 2:02

13" Macbook Pro, dual-core 2.5GHz i5, 4GB RAM, $1,199 - 2:02

13" Macbook Pro, dual-core 2.9GHz i7, 8GB RAM, $1,499 - 1:30

15" Retina Macbook Pro, quad-core 2.3GHz i7, 8GB RAM, $2,199 - 1:18

15" Macbook Pro, quad-core 2.7GHz i7, 8GB RAM, $2,449 - 1:00

Food for thought.

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'No matter where you go, there you are.'