Now, here's something that you don't see every day, my friends, namely the fact that an Apple user admitted a glitch or misuse from the greatest operating system of all times, on his MacBook Pro, which is one of Apple's latest models. As we saw when they were launched, the new MacBook Pros now sport Intel Core i7 processors, and Nvidia Graphics, aside from the Intel HD embedded on the mobo. According to a user on the MacRumors forum, connecting an external display to the laptops will serve you the latter graphics card, rather than employing the best there is, namely the Nvidia GT 330M.

The overall concept is that the operating system should be capable of automatically managing which graphics card to use, yet some tests show it does that not so accurately, just like follows. You can even look for yourselves, by checking the display list in the Graphics / Displays section of your MacBook's System Profiler.

A survey shows that things don't look pretty at all, just like follows. Photoshop and iMovie take advantage of the Nvidia GT 330M GPU, whereas Lightoom 3 beta 2 doesn't want to drain anything from Nvidia. Also, iPhoto '09 drinks a full glass with Nvidia's sibling, just like QuickTime trailers on Apple's web site using Chrome. The bad part is that after watching the trailers, the system doesn't switch back to the less powerful and less power consuming Intel HD graphics, the only thing to be done being to close the browser and reopen it.

Luckily, Firefox and Safari only use the integrated graphics, even when downloading 480p and 720p content. Only when drawing 1080p videos locally will the system cram the discrete graphics, which would be the normal behavior, come to think about it.

Also, the little Tweetie applet used only the discrete graphics, so as long as you have that open, battery draining is done. Hopefully for you Apple users out there, some courageous dev will make a toggle application, for switching between graphics.


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