On the plus side, Macintel models are the only Macs that can boot OS X from a USB hard drive. Further, Power PC Macs running any version of the Mac OS prior to 10.4.2 cannot mount GPT volumes.
Macintel models can only boot from GPT hard drives APM (Apple’s old partitioning scheme) hard drives cannot be used to boot them. Intel-based Macs use a new partitioning scheme known as GPT. Note that the built-in display is only capable of 18-bit color, not the full 24-bit color you might expect. One more change is moving from a 4x SuperDrive that couldn’t burn dual-layer DVDs to a 6x one with dual-layer support. The Late 2006 MacBook Pro looks almost exactly like the earlier 15″ MacBook Pro, but the FireWire 800 port is the clue that you’re looking at the newer model. This model shipped with Mac OS X 10.4.8 Tiger and supports OS X 10.7 Lion, but not 10.8 Mountain Lion or later. Also, a 120 GB 5400 rpm hard drive is standard, with 160 GB and 200 GB options. Memory has been doubled to 1 GB standard on the 2.16 GHz model and 2 GB on the 2.33 GHz one, and the memory ceiling is now 3 GB, up from 2 GB in the earlier MacBook Pro. The 15″ MacBook Pro gains FireWire 800, an unfortunate ommission in the original 15″ MacBook Pro. Part of that comes from the more efficient CPU, and part from an 8% faster CPU. On 2006.10.24, Apple moved the MacBook Pro line to Intel’s newer Core 2 Duo CPU, claiming “up to 39% faster” performance than the model it replaced.
