Apple's Redesigned MacBook and MacBook Pro: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Final Words
In terms of aesthetics and build quality, the new MacBook and MacBook Pro are absolutely excellent. When Apple introduced the iPhone I called it a phone that looked like it was made in 2007, and the same is true about the new notebooks.
Apple walks a fine line between balancing form and function and with this latest update it seems have to gone further on the form side. The glossy screens look great but will be problematic for those who use their notebooks outdoors a lot without shade or other shelter from the ultra bouncy rays of light from the sun. And the new trackpads offer a bit more functionality but are far too tempermental for me to be too happy about them.
Despite the hardware updates to the new machines they are no faster than the ones they are replacing. The GeForce 9400M is a nice change from the Intel integrated graphics in the older MacBook and hopefully it will send a clear message to Intel: the days of delivering mediocre integrated graphics are over. But in terms of actual performance, if you've already got a Penryn based MacBook or MacBook Pro, there's no reason to upgrade. You'd be much better off waiting until Apple adopts Nehalem in these things a year from now.
The winner of the group is the new MacBook, which finally closed the gap between it and its Pro sibling. I've said it throughout this article but the new $1299 MacBook is finally good enough for me to be happy recommending. It's not to say that the MacBook Pro isn't a good solution, it's just a bit pricey. Let me also take this time to once again point out that Apple needs to move to 4GB memory configurations, at least on the MacBook Pro, by default. The competition is offering more for less and memory isn't exactly very expensive.
It's a difficult conclusion to make because I genuinely enjoy the improvements in build quality Apple introduced with these new notebooks, but the quirks (ahem, trackpad) are too much for me to make a glowing recommendation here. If you need an Apple notebook today and aren't upgrading from an existing Intel MacBook or MacBook Pro obviously these two are fine, but go in knowing that you're being an early adopter of a platform that already has some issues.
I hate making this recommendation because the notebooks are probably at least 9 months away, but the Nehalem versions will have all of the build quality improvements of these notebooks, probably offer affordable SSD options (and maybe even one standard), and be significantly faster as a whole. In other words, buy the 2009 model year.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
66 Comments
View All Comments
MacMatte - Sunday, June 21, 2009 - link
For those of you who insist that Apple brings back the matte screen option, please leave a comment at http://macmatte.wordpress.com">http://macmatte.wordpress.com - it's a website solely focused on the issue of bringing back the matte screen. See the number of pro-matte comments already at the MacMatte website.drbrady63 - Thursday, June 18, 2009 - link
I am trying to identify if a new macbook pro 13" would be adequate for editing with Final Cut Express, and for that matter, Final Cut Studio. Unfortunately, it has a 5400rpm hard drive and that is not good for editing. But, I wonder if an optional ssd would be fast enough??I would use the 13" for more mobile work and dock it with a larger monitor for more involved editing work.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Dan Brady
richmoffitt - Sunday, November 9, 2008 - link
This is an uneducated guess, but I'm pretty sure that Quartz works in ways similar to X11, where changing graphics drivers requires a restart of the window manager.You're right though -- this is only a software problem and can hopefully be fixed in the near future (if it's a big enough issue for their user base anyway).
scipi - Monday, October 27, 2008 - link
Hope the quality of the components is better than the first gen MacBook Pro's. Mine is on its second H/D, gone through 2 logic boards and now needs a third, this time outside of warranty. Wont be buying another Apple again which is a pity because OSX is great.Zebo - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
Vista is bloated resource hogging junk - You should have tried the OS many of use still use - Windows XP for battery life. I get over 4 hours on my R31 thinkpad with winxp pro.Ronbo13 - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
You photos comparing the glossiness and reflection on the screens was not fair, though. Please notice that the laptop on the right (the new MBP) is reflecting a portion of wall that has direct sunlight shining on it, and the laptop on the left is reflecting stuff that's in shadows. So even if the screens were equally reflective, the one on the right would show tons more reflections.Come on, people. Normally you guys pay more attention to details. That's just sloppy.
ioannis - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
nop, you are wrong. Both of them reflect stuff that have direct sunlight. Notice Anand's reflection for instance, or the wall on the left hand side of the old MB and the wall on the right hand side on the new one.I'm referring to this:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mac/MacBookPro...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mac/MacBookPro...
Enrox - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
Anand, why don't you test Vista installing it on the new MacBook Pro without using Bootcamp, you need to wipe out the drive and create a MBR partition and use Vista x64 SP1 (it supporta EFI), the only thing you need to know is that at startup you have to press the Alt key and manually select the Windows disk in order to boot from it, beside that everything else seems to work just fine with the Vista native installation (tested on a white MacBook Penryn 2.4 GHz 4GB ram).It would be very interesting to see if you get the same exact battery life numbers bypassing Bootcamp.
JonnyDough - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Until Apple stops being so shady, I won't have anything to do with them.aos007 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I have brand new Vaio Z laptop and I can get 5 hours battery life IF I disable Vista sidebar. It does not matter whether there's no widgets running, it seems to use 10-15% of CPU time no matter what. This translates into a big loss of runtime - I'd get 3.5 hours versus 5. Unfortunately, I like Sidebar as there are some useful widgets, as well as for eye candy so I feel Vista is crippled without it.So the question is whether you disabled Sidebar during Vista testing? I am guessing not since it runs by default and if so, that may be part of your answer.