I’ve never been that much of a fan of laptops mostly for 2 reasons. The first is that it’s not particularly feasible to build one yourself should have the desire to do so and for someone who’s hand built every PC he’s ever owned this was a bit of a sticking point. The second was that I never really had a use for an on the go computer that lacked the power of my home PC, apart from those times beloved LAN parties where I’d lament hauling the heft of my PC around. Still I’ve been the owner of several of these devices for various reasons, most of them work related unfortunately, so it’s not like I haven’t had experience with this platform. However I found myself in a rather peculiar situation where I was in need of an Apple computer and a portable device for travelling. Whilst I didn’t rush out and buy one right away it did finally come time for me to bite the bullet and purchase an Apple product and thanks to my contracting company’s financial arrangements the 15″ Macbook Pro was the same cost as Mac Mini with all the required trimmings. So I ordered myself one and just on a week later it arrived at my door in all it’s Apple splendour¹.
As always Apple is the master of utilitarian packaging with the box containing nothing more than what’s required to use the machine. Honestly after being showered with with miscellanea from all the computer bits and pieces I’ve bought for machines it’s always a bit of a shock just how little Apple includes with their products, even the really expensive ones. Still apart from the adapters and possibly the free games I’ve never really used most of those things, but it’s still nice to be lavished with “freebies” when you’re shelling out this amount cash. Hell even my $800 Gigabyte T1028 came with a free carry case.
The laptop itself is very easy on the eyes with Apple’s distinctive industrial minimalist design philosophy distilling away any unnecessary aspect. Even with the entire main body being machined out of a single piece of aluminium it still has a decent heft to it weighing in at about 2.5KG. The keyboard (whilst it takes a little getting used to if you’re used to more traditional laptop keyboards) is well built, backlit illuminated and has a good feel about it. I had no problem bashing out 1000s of words on it over the course of the past month and have yet to meet any sticky or unresponsive keys. The screen is quite nice and whilst I was initially going to go for the matt screen my game developer friend convinced me otherwise. It has given me some trouble in high light situations but it hasn’t been as bad as I had thought it would be. Overall the Macbook Pro gives a very solid first impression.
However it’s not all roses with the new Macbook pro. The first thing I noticed was the power brick. Now whilst I like the magsafe power connection (saved me a couple times from dragging the brick along the ground) the power brick itself is made in a way that you can’t use standard figure 8 cables with it thanks to an in the way connector. It’s mostly an aesthetics thing as the supplied connectors (a direct wall plug and 2m cable) serve to complete the power brick’s shape. Similarly there’s a distinct lack of interconnectivity ports with only the bare minimum being provided. Sure it’s adequate for the most part but there have been several times when I’ve wanted to plug in more than 2 USB devices (thumbdrive, iPhone, camera) and had to store things temporarily on the hard drive in order to get what I want done. Still both of these are minor complaints compared to what I consider the biggest flaw of them all: the aluminium body.
For the first month or so it’s life my Macbook Pro sat on top of my regular PC where I’d remote into it to get any work done. There were only a few times when I actually used it as a laptop and never for extended periods of time. However when travelling there were many times I’d be in front of it for an hour or so and that’s when I started to notice just how sharp the edges are on the bottom half of this laptop. After a while of using it I noticed just how much they were digging into my arms and any further use just made it worse. The only solution I’ve found is to use it on your lap with the keyboard angled down about 45 degrees so that my arms don’t touch it. This also brings with it the problem of it heating up your nether regions to ungodly temperatures making a cushion or laptop stand mandatory.
On the specification front I’ll admit that I was expecting a lot when I bought the Macbook, considering I shelled out for the fastest 15″ model with a 2.66 i7 and a NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M. Being as I received this laptop during the height of my Starcraft 2 addiction I decided I’d install said game on it to give the graphics card hardware a workout. The game plays buttery smooth on my nearly 2 year old main PC so I had thought it would be cake for my shiny new Macbook. Unfortunately at the same settings the framerates I was getting was almost half of that of my aging rig² even with the newest drivers from NVIDIA. A few tweaks later had it running better (definitely playable) but it still paled in comparison to the machine it sat atop of. I had also copied across my World of Warcraft installation but since my account is currently inactive I’ve yet to give that a go but I’d hazard a guess that it would be quite playable.
Battery life is actually quite astounding, especially when you’re using OS X. With mild usage I was easily able to get 6~7 hours on a single charge and even with 1080p video playing I was still able to eek out just under 4 hours, enough for 2 movies on long flights cross country. Strangely enough even a base configuration of Windows with all the Bootcamp drivers struggled to get close to half that, although I think that’s related to Windows not being able to switch to the low powered graphics as the native OS X does.
The Macbook Pro is everything I’ve come to expect from Apple. It’s well designed, minimalist and over all expensive when compared to similar offerings from other companies. With size, weight and battery life being critical factors for many it unquestionably excels in these areas. However it is marred by it’s high price, underwhelming performance and lack of interconnectivity options. Still the trifecta small size, comparatively light weight and uncanny battery life do make the laptop suitable for a wide range of people and I can’t deny the build quality that’s gone into this Macbook Pro. So if you’ve got the cash to burn or can swing a finance deal like I did the Macbook Pro will do you well, just don’t expect it to perform on par with it’s similarly priced cousins.
¹Just in case anyone was wondering why I’m doing the laptop review separate to the operating system review it’s because they’re 2 very distinct products and warrant being investigated on their own merits. Plus the Macbook can run Windows so there’s no real reason to lump it in with OS X.
²It’s specs are Core 2 Duo E8400, 4GB RAM and a Radeon 4870 just so you know 🙂
Interesting to see your comments about SC2, i was considering getting it for my mbp which is quite a bit older than yours (late 2007).
I’ve been using mine for about 3 years now and it’s hardly skipped a beat. I use it all the time, not so much for gaming anymore but I run the adobe suite on it which can be pretty system intensive. I upgraded it from 2 to 4gb ram, it only really struggles when it’s low on HDD space.
Battery life isn’t as good as yours, but most of the time it stays on the charger anyway. Battery health seems ok too, usually charges to 98% – 100% but its status is ‘replace soon’.
Like you’ve noticed, they can get quite hot. I looked into getting a cooling stand or something but after I did some tests, I found it was actually hotter if I lifted it off the table. I’ve seen temps get into the 90s while playing games. The best way to cool it I’ve found was playing L4D while it sat on a slab of frozen minced meat, i thought it was quite appropriate.
If you’re after lap usage i’d say the macbook/air/ipads are better suited.
I really can’t recommend a Macbook Pro for anyone who’s going to be play games on it. Realistically for the same price you could buy just a simple Macbook and a gaming rig satisfying both the need for a Mac laptop and games that run decently. It’s no slouch though with all the other programs I’ve thrown at it, just that games aren’t as fantastic as I’d hope they would be.
I’ll definitely be keeping this one for a while to come and from what I’ve seen as long as you don’t get the 1.0 revisions of Mac hardware they’ll last you quite well.
I was really only using it in my lap when I was writing blog posts whilst sitting on the bed. If I’m near a couch and need the Internet 90% of the time I’m at home (and less than 2 meters from my main PC) or somewhere else and my phone does the trick. Still I had hoped that Apple would’ve figured out a way not to roast my nuts if I felt the need to put it on my lap but really when you’ve got a 150W heat source next to a giant block aluminium there’s not too much you can do about it.
lol @ the frozen minced meat, that’s classic 😀
I’ve got both the 13″ macbook pro, and the i7 17″ – the smaller machine does get rather warm on your nads, but the 17″ never ever heats up to uncomfortable temperatures. I’ve found the single biggest performance factor is RAM usage – the 13″ is maxed out at 4gb, and the 17″ has 8gb – I only really get everything I want running with 8gb ram (3 browsers with 60 odd tabs, word, excel, twhirl, skype, textedit, dreamweaver, photoshop, preview, itunes, iphoto, market samurai)
I haven’t ever found a problem with hard edges.
And on the matte vs gloss screen, my business partner has the 17″ is gloss, my 13″ is in gloss, and my 17″ is matte… Given a choice I would got for matte any day of the week – the screen quality is yonks better in any light. While the black is not quite as black as on the gloss screen, atleast I can see it when a light is on, and atleast I can’t see my own reflection when the lights are off.
Battery life on the 13″ is about 2 hours when maxed out, and about 3.5hours on the 17″ maxed out.
But I do run them both very very hard.
I’ve also got the 24″ iMac, so I am officially the biggest apple fan boy!