All About the Mac

Review of the New MacBook Pro

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After high school I took all graduation money and bought my first computer: A Dell Inspiron 3800 (laptop). Five years later I bought my next laptop: A 12-inch PowerBook G4. And two weeks ago I purchased my third laptop: A 15-inch MacBook Pro.1

Last spring, as my PowerBook began to show its age due in the graphics work I was using it for, I decided to buy a tower instead of a new laptop. The idea behind buying the Mac Pro was that (1) it would last for years: I had already been using my PowerBook for more than two years, who’s specs were far below the Mac Pro’s and it was still chugging along well. And then, (2) the ease and affordability to expand the Mac Pro’s specs would make it all the easier to make sure it lasted even longer.

Therefore the PowerBook became my secondary computer. I used it when traveling and when not in the office - which was still quite a lot - and the Mac Pro became my primary work machine. Then, about a month ago my wife got a new position at work and now needed her own laptop. She hooked me up big-time by taking the PowerBook and letting me get the new laptop. (I owe you big-time, babe!)

I ordered the new 15-inch, multi-touch MacBook Pro with a 2.4GHz processor and the 200 GB 7,200 RPM hard drive. I watched FedEX as they picked it up in China, swung by Alaska, and finally dropped it off at my place a week ago.

When you use two computers you have to pick one that will be the “primary” computer; the home base. It’s your only hope for any sort of syncing sanity (if there is hope).

The point of picking one main machine is that you now know where to keep all the most recent versions of files, it’s where all your iTunes purchases are done, and it’s what everything syncs with.

While I was had the PowerBook it was a no-brainer that the Mac Pro would be home base. And even still, when I purchased the MacBook Pro I fully expected that it too would be my secondary computer, just as the PowerBook had been.

However, it quickly became obvious that the MacBook Pro should be the main computer. It just made sense. For several reasons:

• The PowerBook had a 100 GB hard drive, which was enough to keep many important files, some songs and some photos, but not enough to keep all the data I have. The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, can hold all my data. The 200 GB 7,200 RPM hard drive is plenty big enough to store all my files with room to spare.
• The entire reason I purchased the Mac Pro was because the PowerBook couldn’t keep up with the graphics-intensive work I was doing. The PowerBook couldn’t be my “work” computer anymore, and therefore became my “write, email and surf the web, while away from home” computer. However, the MacBook Pro has better benchmarks than the G5 Power Macs, and is even quite comparable to my Mac Pro’s performance in many of the most common tasks I do every day. The MacBook Pro is clearly a capable work and road machine.
• The biggest pain in the butt when using two computers is keeping them synced. Whenever I needed to go on a trip while also in the midst of a major design project I would have to transfer all the relevant files over to the PowerBook. Additionally, I never knew if the one or two other projects which I just finalized may come back to haunt with some pre-print, last-minute emergency; so I would have to transfer them over as well. With the MBP as my main computer I can just put it in my backpack and go to another city without worrying about forgetting an important photoshop file. And that is an ease of mind is worth its weight in gold.

Although I originally didn’t intend it to, the MacBook Pro now has become my primary computer. Which naturally leads me to the next logical question: Do I even need to keep the Mac Pro? The answer is no.

I don’t need the Mac Pro. The loss in horsepower is negligible for what I do, and the gain in simplicity cannot be expressed with words. I’m selling the tower and going back to being a one-computer consumer, and connoisseur of fine laptops.

If I had known this would be the outcome before I ordered the MacBook Pro I would have ordered the mid-level, 2.5GHz processor which has the higher 6MB of L2 cache, the faster bus speed and the better graphics card.

But even still, this thing is a fantastic machine and herein is my review:

Packaging

I very much appreciate the minimum amount of items included in the MacBook Pro’s box. Aside from the computer, the box only contained the power cord, a DVI to VGA adapter, the remote control I paid $19 for and a small black “Designed by Apple in California” box.

In the small black box were two things: One labeled “Everything Mac” and another labeled “Everything Else”. Everything Mac is the user’s manual, and Everything Else is a cardboard sleeve holding the install discs, the bluetooth info sheet, the obligatory Apple stickers and a very nice screen cleaning cloth.

What I love so much about the small amount of peripherals and paperwork included is that it gives more attention to what comes in the box. The concept is similar to a printed flyer: If the flyer is covered in text you won’t read any of it. But if it has just a few phrases you will read those. When un-boxing the MacBook Pro it was like each piece was there for a purpose - not “just because”. Less is more.

And along these same lines is the size itself of the MacBook Pro’s box. It is quite a bit thinner than my PowerBook’swas. Though I remember when un-boxing my PowerBook, there was a great deal of open space underneath the computer.

It’s almost as if the boxes themselves communicate the form factor of the enclosed laptop: Wider and thinner versus shorter and “stubbier”.

Form Factor

After using a 12-inch PowerBook for so long I still haven’t adjusted to the bigger look of the 15-inch when I’m using it. It’s not so much the screen that throws me off as it is the extra space next to the keyboard where the speakers are. I’m used to looking at a bigger screen, but not used to typing on a laptop with an extra inch-and-a-half of hardware on either side.

When I see other people using their 15-inch laptop it doesn’t seem large at all, but when I’m sitting right in front of mine it seems huge. Though a quick glance at the “airplane wing” style 17-inch, and the 15-inch seems quite proportionate again.

Otherwise the size difference is most welcome. The larger footprint makes the MacBook Pro feel safer and more comfortable on my lap. And since it weighs nearly the same as my old PowerBook, it’s a win/win situation for me.

Other differences - such as the better speakers and the extra input jacks (Finally: FireWire 800!!) - are great. I’ve quickly become a fan of my $19 remote control, but the IR sensor on the front of the laptop is a serious eye sore.

And of course, some old habits will die hard - like trying to put CDs in the right-hand side.

Unchanging

Apple’s professional laptops have gone virtually unchanged for nearly 5 years. The new MacBook Pros looks nearly identical to the original aluminum PowerBooks that came out in fall of 2003. I could just imagine a conversation along these lines:

“Hey, is that Apple’s newest laptop?”

“No. It’s my 4 year old PowerBook.” 2

Not that any of you would ever ask that question, but you see my point, don’t you? The above conversation reveals two things: That (a) Apple’s laptop hardware is still attractive and appealing; and (b) that it is not uncommon to see someone still using their four or five-year-old PowerBook on a daily basis. Even though 5 years is a virtual eternity in computer-land, the previous generation of Apple’s laptops - the aluminum PowerBooks - are still hearty machines.

I’m sure that much of the PowerBook’s longevity is due to the fact that Apple fully controls the development and engineering of the operating system and the hardware it runs on. Simply put: Apple doesn’t need to conform to the lowest common denominator.

Set-Up

After un-boxing the first thing I did was install 4 GB of new memory. There’s no reason not to max out your RAM; it’s the single most affordable and effective way to minimize any cases of beach-ball-itis. Laptop memory is just about as cheap as tower memory nowadays, and swapping out the two 1 GB sticks for two 2 GB sticks was just as easy as adding RAM to the Mac Pro (a machine that’s famous for being easy to upgrade).

Migration

With the new memory installed I booted up and migrated my data.

Ideally I would have done a clean install of all my applications, manually transfer the documents and let .Mac sync the rest, but I wasn’t in the mood for the extra time and attention it would take. I had a few meetings to go to that afternoon and I wanted to come back to a ready to use laptop; therefore I used the Migration Assistant instead.

Instead of using the Mac Pro, I used my external FireWire drive which holds a bootable clone of my Mac Pro via SuperDuper. This way my tower wasn’t out of commission while I transfered files, and I saved the time it takes to do a Time Machine restore.

Migrating roughly 180 GBs of data over the FireWire 800 port took about 2.5 hours. And once all the files were successfully migrated the thing booted up perfectly and was ready to roll. Well, except for a few oddities…

Network Settings

Once I had the machine up and running the first thing I had to do was make sure the internet worked. I mean, without internet what good is the thing? Seriously…

I hadn’t been thinking and I had the migration assistant transfers network settings. Regardless of the network capabilities of the old machine verses the new machine, it just sets up the new network settings to be identical to the old ones. Which means since I was transferring from the Mac Pro, laptop’s Airport option now read as “Ethernet 2″, even though it had the radar icon next to it.

Additionally, the Airport icon up in the menu bar was displayed in the “empty” state, as if it was turned off. Clicking on it said the airport was not configured. But the MBP was getting signal from my wireless network because I had internet with no cables.

The weirdness was easily fixed by simply re-configuring everything using the location setup assistant.

The Keyboard

I have always been jealous of the backlit keyboards. I think they’re brilliant and my 12-inch PowerBook didn’t have one. Naturally, one of the first things I played with was my new keyboard’s backlighting. But, it was broken. At first I thought the mapping for the hardware keys (F5/F6) was broken because in normal light I was totally unable to manually turn on the keyboard’s backlight.

When pressing the adjustment keys this would appear:

I assumed the unresponsive lighting had something to do with the same migration trouble I had with the Network Settings. I repaired the disk permissions, reset the PRAM and still had no luck. After searching online with no results I called Apple..

The general technician was clueless on how to fix it. He assumed I would need to re-install the OS due to the hardware mapping problem from the migration. But before making that giant executive decision, he transfered me to a product specialist.

I again described the problem, and he too was unsure about a solution. I noted how the lights came on when it was dark in the room (or when I put my palms over the speakers), and then, at that point I could adjust the brightness level. But I could not manually turn the backlights on if they weren’t first turned on by the ambient light sensor.

The product specialist concluded it must be a new feature in the latest MacBook Pros since they have the new F1 - F12 keyboard layout and what-not. And that was the end of that.

Those of you who have a 15-inch Mac are probably rolling right now. Since I’ve never owned a laptop with backlit keyboards I had no clue, but apparently this has been the standard function all along! (Read: over four years!)

To recap: You can’t adjust the backlit keyboard unless it’s dark in the room.

Now, as far as real keyboard changes go, there are quite a few (Apple Care phone support, take note):

• As expected, the F1 - F12 layout in the MBP is now the same as the slim keyboard’s, the MacBook Air’s and the MacBook’s.
• The Enter key to the right of the spacebar has been replaced by the option key.
• The num lock key is gone, as are the keypad style numbers.
• The “speed tap safety feature” for the caps lock key (a.k.a. the antiCAPSLOCK campaign) has been implemented. The reason it exists only in the new laptops, and not in all of our computers via some software update, is because as Rentzsch discovered: “The activation delay occurs in the keyboard itself, before the operating system even sees the key-down.”

Point being: all of Apple’s keyboards are now the same. The only differences are the F5 and F6 keys: on the MacBooks and the slim-desktop keyboards those two keys are blank, whereas on the MBPs and MBAs they have the icons for the keyboard’s backlight adjustment.

The Screen

The LED screen is gorgeous. Naturally I got the matte screen, since (no offense, but) glossy is synonymous with cheesy to me. The display is bright, clear and sharp. And even though it’s not quite as bright as my Apple Cinema Display, it is a very satisfactory alternative when not at my desk.

The 1440×900 pixel resolution is the same as the old 17″ PowerBooks used to have a few years back. And it is in-fact a higher pixel per inch density than my 23″ ACD is (114 PPI for the MacBook Pro versus 98 PPI for the Cinema Display). One of the primary advantages of a higher density screen is font-rendering — especially on the Web. If you like to read on the web, the MacBook Pro makes great companion.

Of course, when working at my desk the Cinema Display is still more pleasant - on the eyes and the neck - which means I’ll be diving back into the world of connecting to an external display on a regular basis. I’m reminded of how fantastically my PowerBook handled external monitors. As John Gruber put it:

The PowerBooks’ support for external displays is quite clever. When the PowerBook wakes from sleep (or starts up), it detects which displays are available and uses them. This means you can walk around using the built-in display, set it down, connect an external display, and it automatically recognizes the just-connected external display and uses it. If you keep the PowerBook open, it uses the external display in addition to the built-in display; if you keep the PowerBook closed, it uses the external display instead of the internal. Disconnect the external display, and the right thing will happen, where by “right thing” I mean that any windows which were open on the no-longer-available display will be moved to the internal display, and resized, if necessary, to fit.

Moreover, it seems the MacBook Pro now has instant monitor detection. I’m not sure just how new this is, but it’s new to me. When I plug in an external monitor while the MBP is open and running it detects the new monitor right away and adjusts accordingly with only a few seconds of light-blue-screen down time. Likewise, if I unplug the external monitor the MBP adjusts, and, as John says, “does the right thing.”

Next is the ambient light sensor. It’s a nice feature, but I can’t seriously imagine anyone leaving it on for the internal display. I often have my left hand off to the side of the keyboard (and therefore over top of the left speaker) keeping my thumb on the CMD key and my middle finger on the tab key, and I often bring my right hand up and it would dim the screen every time - not too much, but just enough to make you feel crazy. It only took about 45 seconds of use before I realized I would have to turn it off.

Otherwise, my only gripe about the MacBook Pro’s display is the amount it will tilt back, or rather, won’t tilt back. Compared to my PowerBookthe difference in angle is substantial, and I miss it. I’m not sure, but from what I can tell the primary reason for the tighter angle is the slimmer form factor of the new MacBook Pro. Meaning if the screen did tilt back any further I think the outside edge of the display would actually lift the back end of the laptop up.

Multi-Touch

Like I do when almost any of Apple’s new products are announced, I didn’t think of the multi-touch as necessary to my everyday laptop use. That is, until it actually was a part of my everyday laptop use. Sure, I knew it would be nice, and if I could choose between getting a laptop that had it or one that didn’t, I would choose the one that did. But for the most part, I was impartial.

Now, after a week with the multi-touch, I am hooked. Not only are the old multi-touch features (two-finger scrolling) new to me, but the newest features (three-finger swipe, pinch, and etc.) are brilliant.

Just like on the iPhone, the multi-touch gestures make perfect sense in context. Which means I don’t have to think about them. Once I settled that three fingers swiping from left to right means “next” I find myself naturally using it in places I hadn’t even thought about, without thinking about it. It already feels natural.

In iCal the three-finger swipe takes you to the next or previous day/week/month in your calendar. In Apple’s Mail the swipe takes you to the next email message. In Preview, you get the next page. And it’s the same with pinching: On the desktop, pinching enlarges or shrinks your icon sizes. In Preview, it enlarges the image or document. And, more…

Even the short tutorial videos in the trackpad preferences pane are brilliant. What a perfect way to demonstrate how to use all the different options.

Right now, multi-touch to the trackpad is what keyboard shortcuts are to the the keyboard. But But it’s apparent that multi-touch to the trackpad can be what Quicksilver is to the keyboard.

Since multi-touch is really only helpful inside apps which are primarily designed as mostly mouse-input apps (iCal, Safari, iPhoto) versus keyboard-input apps, if you’re in an app that is mostly a keyboard-input app, forcing yourself to use multi-touch instead of keyboard shortcuts is a little more trouble than it’s worth. But, if you’re fingers are already on the trackpad then multi-touch features can be great.

Clearly, multi-touch won’t be able to replace all the keyboard shortcuts. But certainly the most common ones.

To see how multi-touch would work with some of the 3rd Party apps I use regularly, I installed the beta of MultiClutch.

MultiClutch takes keyboard shortcuts and maps them to trackpad gestures for certain applications. I honestly haven’t found it indispensable, since the applications that I find myself using multi-touch functionality already support it: Mail, iCal and Safari. But I have been able to set a couple new convenient gestures.

The MultiClutch setup pane is pretty straight forward. You add an application to the list, select the multi-touch gesture and then pick the keyboard shortcut you want accompany it and.

When I’m in an app that I wish had some multi-touch functionality I can go to MultiClutch, add the gesture, and the new mapping works instantly. As of now I’ve only added four gestures in MultiClutch. Two in NetNewsWire and two global shortcuts.

In NNW I wanted to map three-finger swipe to the space bar — this makes sense because the swipe means “next” and pressing spacebar takes you to your next unread feed. But MultiClutch doesn’t allow me to map the spacebar as a shortcut key.

Fortunately, pressing CMD+/ also takes you to “Next Unread”, and pressing CMD+’ takes you to previous unread. I mapped these to the three-finger swipes for previous and next, respectively. This actually works better though, because CMD+/ takes you directly to the next unread item, whereas spacebar also scrolls down the article until it gets to the end, and then takes you to the next unread item. I can use the swipe shortcut and the two-finger scrolling to read a bit easier in NNW than what just spacebar alone offers.

For the two global shortcuts, I mapped “Swipe Up” and “Swipe Down” to “Page Up” and “Page Down” respectively. This has been great for Safari, and other similar situations where I want to get to the very top or very bottom of the page.

Unfortunately, Adobe CS3 doesn’t get any love from MultiClutch. It would be great if pinching in or out would zoom respectively, and three-finger swiping would take me to the next page in InDesign, but gesture mapping through MultiClutch doesn’t work with Carbon apps.

Obviously multi-touch has a bright future. I think it’s a privilege to be around from the start, so one day I can say something like, “I remember when I had to click on the sidebar and drag down to see the rest of the page.”

Hard Drive

I am determined not to be a digital pack-rat. I delete anything and everything I can and try to keep around only the files which I am quite confident I will need again in the future. I simply hate keeping something on my computer simply because I might, maybe, possibly need it one day.

Needless to say, upgrading the hard-drive’s speed instead of capacity was a no brainer. I paid the $100 upgrade to get the 200 GB 7,200 RPM hard drive. Looking in the System Profiler, I found the drive is from Hitachi.

The MacBook Pro’s hard drive is as quiet as my PowerBook’s used to be before I manually replaced the drive in the G4 a few months ago. (I took out the stock Hitachi 80 GB 4,500 RPM drive it came with and put in a Seagate 100 GB 7,200 RPM drive I bought from NewEgg.) The first thing I noticed with my PowerBook’s new drive was the hum and even some vibration.

The Mac Pro tower currently has two hard drives: The 250 GB Western Digital drive it came with and an additional 500 GB Seagate drive I added later. The drives are quiet, but it’s the fans that make so much noise.

All this to say I am very impressed at how quiet the MacBook Pro is: The fans and the hard drive.

Sleeping

If I leave the MacBook Pro alone for awhile and the screen goes to sleep, the white LED comes on, but at full-strength (not pulsing or breathing). I am not quite sure what the point of that feature is, though. I suppose it’s so I can instantly tell the state of my Mac if the screen is off.

This feature also comes in to play when closing the lid to put the Mac to sleep. The white LED will come on right away at full-strength, but won’t start “breathing” until the laptop actually goes to sleep. I’m used to waiting until the LED comes on, but now I have to watch it and wait for it to start breathing before I can pack up the laptop. I wish they would have left that alone.

Unfortunately, putting the MacBook Pro to sleep takes 30-45 seconds. This is a long time to wait when you’re ready to go. But the reason it takes so long to sleep is because your computer is writing all the information that’s in RAM to your disc. This way you won’t lose any info if your battery dies, or falls out while in sleep mode. But with 2 to 4 GB of RAM it can take quite a while.

There’s a short terminal command (via Paul) to change the sleep-mode from the default “3″ to “0″ which fixes the slow sleep frustration:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

You’ll be prompted to enter your administrator password, and then you’re good to go. And make sure you logout before quitting terminal or the change won’t keep.

What this command does is change your laptop’s sleep-mode from “safe” to “instant”. That means if your battery dies while your laptop is sleeping you’ll lose all your session data.

But I always save - and usually quit out of - everything anyway, so it would be no loss if the battery died. And now the laptop sleeps in about 5 -7 seconds instead of 30 - 45. Hallelujah.

U P D A T E: SmartSleep.

Proper Baggage

Finding the right bag seems to be a never-ending venture. I knew I would miss my little Brenthaven bag for the 12-inch PowerBook, but Brenthaven’s 15-inch MBP version was a bit too clunky. I found a slick Burton Bandwidth Casefrom Turntable Labs. It’s slim, has very little extra storage, and is perfect for the times I just need to take my laptop and nothing else.

That case is not my everyday bag, though. For everyday use I’ve decided I need a backpack: One that doesn’t look like it belongs in a sci-fi movie; one that holds my laptop safely; And one that is the right size (not too big, but not too small).

I’m currently using the Case Logic XN Backpack, and so far, it seems to fit the bill. Granted, I have a pretty bad track record of keeping bags. I’ve been through about 8 in the course of my three laptops, but with each one I get closer to perfection.

Odds and Ends

• There has been a lot of hub-ubb about the new battery-life claims on Apple’s website. Are the new computers getting worse battery life or are the claims actually realistic? From my own experience so far I’m quite sure the claims are dead-on. I haven’t done any legit testing, but earlier today the battery lasted nearly four hours with the power settings on “Better Performance” and the screen at full brightness — all while typing, surfing the web, listening to music through the built-in speakers, and I downloaded a 1.13 GB movie from iTunes. I have no doubt with more caution I could squeeze 5 hours out of the battery.
• The new Penryn processor runs much cooler than my old PPC G4. Even on processor intensive apps, with the MacBook Pro on my lap it stays cool and the fan runs virtually silent.
• The MacBook Pro shipped with it’s own build of OS X 10.5.2 — Build 9C2028. (My PowerBook and Mac Pro are both running Build 9C31.) I imagine this has something to do with the new trackpad new multi-touch features.
• The MagSafe power adapter is a brilliant invention. Aside from the “safety” factor it’s much easier to connect and disconnect. But the orange or green indicator light only comes on about once every four plug-ins, even though the battery icon in the menu bar indicates charging. I’ll probably take it into the genius bar some-day to get it replaced.
• When reading on the Apple website I just noticed they refer to the computer as MacBook Pro, not the MacBook Pro. Like iPhone.
• Something else I’ve noticed about the MacBook Pro’s internal display is that when dimming the screen the increments seem rather far apart. Instead of a gradual dimming, each step is a bit jarring. Though I honestly don’t know for sure, I assume this has something to do with the way an LED display is lit, verses the older CCFL technology.

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Apple iPhone 3GS

Released for AT&T, the Apple iPhone 3GS is an upgrade to the iPhone 3G, offering a faster processor, longer battery life, an internal compass, voice control features and an improved 3.0-megapixel auto-focus camera with video recording capabilities. The handset takes advantage of the OpenGL for high-quality 3D graphics for faster and improved mobile gaming. Users can watch more videos, listen to more music, browse the Internet or keep using their favorite apps even longer. The iPhone 3GS also supports 7.2 Mbps HSDPA for faster networking speeds. It runs on Apple's new iPhone OS 3.0 software and has the ability to cut, copy and paste text. It also features a new built-in digital compass for instant navigation. The Compass app shows travelers which way they are headed and rotates as they change direction. The compass is also integrated within Maps, so it automatically orients any map to the direction they are facing.

Apple iPhone 3GS Features

• Up to 2x faster and more responsive than iPhone 3G for faster application launches, Web page rendering, and email attachment viewing
• Shoot high-quality VGA video in portrait or landscape, trim the footage by adjusting start and end points, then share it in an email or post it to the MobileMe gallery, publish it on YouTube, or sync it back to a Mac or PC using iTunes
• New 3.0-megapixel camera has built-in autofocus and a handy new feature that lets users tap the display to focus
• Voice Control recognizes the names in Contacts and knows the music on the iPod so users just have to ask to place a call or play a song
• Integrated digital compass can point the way and automatically reorients maps to match the direction users are facing
• Large 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display with 320 x 480 px resolution at 163 ppi and support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously
• MobileMe stores all email, contacts, and calendars on a secure online server and pushes them down to the iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC
• Stereo earphones with built-in microphone
• Cut, copy, and paste words and photos, even between applications
• Rotate the iPhone 3GS to landscape to use a larger keyboard in Mail, Messages, Notes, and Safari

Mac Mini

Tuesday’s announcement of the new Mac miniprompted some discussion amongst the Macworld staff: while many of us thought that the specs on the low-end $600 model seemed pretty solid, we were unanimous in our agreement that the $200 increase for the higher model was the opposite of the bee’s knees—the sloth’s nose, perhaps. For that price, an additional 2GB 1GB of RAM and a bump to a 320GB hard drive is a little ridiculous when you can probably buy the components for much less—that is, if you’re willing to do the upgrades yourself.

The mini can be annoying to take apart—I know, I spent some time upgrading a Core Duo model, and I got pretty well acquainted with a putty knife (I can now bullseye my dartboard from twenty feet). We wondered if the new mini would be more, less, or roughly equal to its predecessor in disassembly difficulty?

The folks at Macminicolo.net, a Las Vegas-based co-location company that—you guessed it—uses Mac minis, got themselves one of the new models and tried their hands at taking it apart. Their verdict? While it’s not substantially more difficult to take apart than earlier Mac minis, there are some changes to be on the lookout for: Apple has apparently added a second AirPort antenna and removed a power cable that used to be on the front of the unit (possibly related to moving the optical drive to a SATA connection).

So, if you don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty—metaphorically speaking, of course; we’re sure the inside of the mini is as clean as the inside of Steve Jobs’s featureless, white hibernation pod—it looks like upgrading the RAM and hard drive on a new mini isn’t too much of an ordeal.

New Mac Book Review

Introduction

The radically redesigned aluminum MacBook is the first major retooling of Apple's consumer-oriented laptops since the Intel-based MacBook replaced the PowerPC-based iBook in May 2006. A new "unibody" chassis made from a single piece of machined aluminum brings the look of the MacBook Pro line, while improving serviceability, and a striking black, glass display now unifies Apple's MacBook, iMac and iPhone designs. A new, glass trackpad extends gestural control.

Brand new video hardware from Nvidia replaces the old Intel graphics, and the mini-DVI port has been replaced with mini-DisplayPort, so the MacBook now can drive the massive 30" Apple Cinema Display.

But Apple has removed FireWire, leaving many users — especially IT professionals, musicians and video enthusiasts — stranded with unusable investments in important FireWire peripherals.

The new MacBook costs more than the old one — it retails for $1299 — but the old, white MacBook model, upgraded with a SuperDrive and complete with FireWire, is available for just $999. A $1599 aluminum MacBook model adds a faster CPU and a larger hard drive. Like all Macs, the aluminum MacBook includes the latest iLife suite (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD, iWeb, and iTunes).

Design/Features

The first thing you notice about the new MacBook is its sleek aluminum shape. The tight corners of the old MacBook are gone, replaced with the softly rounded edges of the MacBook Air. Like the Air, the subtle curve makes picking up the MacBook easier, and it rests quite comfortably in the lap for typing.

Lifting the lid reveals the contrasting black glass screen and black keycaps. Instead of the traditional plastic or metal bezel surrounding an LCD panel, a single glass face covers both, extending all the way to the edges of the lid. The effect is even more striking here than in the iMac which introduced the style.

The MacBook has the same love-it-or-hate-it chiclet-style keyboard as its predecessor. (The more expensive model adds backlit keys to sweeten the deal.)

The aluminum MacBook's redesigned trackpad is huge, and the button is gone: instead, the trackpad itself is the button.

The new MacBook is visually striking, bringing the design of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air to Apple's consumer price point.

And the beauty of that sleek chassis is much more than skin deep. Traditionally, laptops have combined internal framework and external body panels in an intricate assembly with dozens of screws and hundreds of components. The MacBook's main chassis isn't assembled from parts this way — instead, a single block of aluminum is machined into what Apple calls the "unibody" chassis, carved like a sculpture. The computer's circuit boards are mounted to the underside of this chassis, and a thin, light bottom plate closes it up.

Similar techniques are used in the MacBook Air, and in Apple's flat aluminum desktop keyboards, but not so extensively. Like the original white iMacs, which required new ways of injecting plastics into molds without visible seaming, Apple is pushing the boundaries of mass production with its latest laptops.

The new MacBook has the fit and finish of a luxury product. We can't even get a fingernail into the seams between its two aluminum panels, and the four visible screws have circular grooves machined into their heads so they catch the light dramatically. The chassis is completely rigid, without even a hint of flex, and it feels tremendously solid. The one-piece screen, too, resists torsion, and the hinge is as smooth as the MacBook Air's.

Too Much Gloss

Unfortunately, the MacBook's glossy LED-backlit display is too much of a good thing. Glossy screens are known for their bright colors and high contrast (if not color fidelity), but at the cost of distinct, sharp reflections. These are even more prominent on the new MacBook's display than on its direct predecessor's, and we found window reflections to be far more distracting when using the new MacBook than when using the MacBook Air, which is also glossy.

While we quickly tuned out reflections in the active display, the black bezel around the screen acts like a mirror, adding reflections to the visual clutter. It's ironic that a simpler, sleeker-looking display would actually contribute visual distraction.

Aluminum MacBook in direct sunlight click for larger image...

Aluminum MacBook with black screen click for larger image...

Aluminum MacBook vs. MacBook Air click for larger image...

The horizontal viewing angle is moderately wide by current standards, dimming faster off-angle than the MacBook Air does, but not as sharply as the old MacBook. There is a sweet spot from the center in which brightness is mostly even across the display, horizontally, but if you move from that spot, colors shift rapidly.

The vertical viewing angle remains extremely limited; brightness and color vary drastically with tiny angular changes. Also, like the earlier MacBook, the new display shows subtle color stippling, apparently an inherent limitation of the 6-bit color channels used by laptop LCDs.

Laptop displays have never been suitable for precise color work, but between the distracting edge reflections and vertical angular changes, the new MacBook is a step backwards in usability. Color and brightness are more consistent today than in the PowerBook G4 era, but the aluminum MacBook falls short of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in image quality, while the white MacBook is less brilliant but more usable! If your work requires accurate, consistent color reproduction, you'll definitely want a high-quality external display, connected via one of Apple's extra-cost mini-DisplayPort adapters.

Trackpad

Unlike the display, the all-new glass trackpad is a straight improvement. Incorporating more "multitouch" technology from the iPhone platform, this trackpad adds support for four-finger gestures. And, customers who have been asking for a secondary click (or "right-click") button on the trackpad have been answered: you can configure the trackpad to interpret clicks in the bottom right or bottom left as a secondary click.

The button is no longer a separate control; like Mighty Mouse, the entire surface is the button. The huge trackpad is hinged at the top and depresses at the bottom with a precise, satisfying click. (No "origami" hacks required, as some early MacBooks needed.) The feel is superb. The surface is smoother than a traditional trackpad's, with a matte finish that provides an excellent mix of slip and stick. Apple's pride in the feel of their their new trackpad is well justified.

Like the multitouch track pads of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro before it, the new trackpad supports pinch, stretch and rotate gestures; three-finger navigation in Safari and Finder; two-finger scrolling and secondary click; and optional tap-lock. You can swipe all four fingers up or down to activate Expose (up to push all windows off the screen, or down to view all windows). Left and right four-finger swipes trigger the application switcher (normally accessed via Command-Tab key combo). This was a little confusing to use; it turns out you activate it with four-finger swipe, but then use the mouse pointer normally to select an application and switch to it. We could scroll among the application icons with two fingers, but not switch to one! This could use some fine tuning.

Enabling new features via
Trackpad preferences

click for larger image

Apple seems to have changed the acceleration curve of the trackpad from the long-time Mac standard. At first we thought it was matched to Windows, but it's not as jumpy as the Microsoft standard; it's somewhere in between. After a day we had mostly adjusted, and found the new curve provides more precision in small movements while requiring less motion to jump across the screen. But it takes some getting used to.

DisplayPort

Apple has adopted the new DisplayPort industry standard introduced by VESA in 2006 and finalized in 2007. DisplayPort, created to replace the DVI standard, is an advanced bus for high definition video, supporting audio streams and even a data channel. Unlike DVI and HDMI, it's designed both to connect external displays and for internal signaling inside laptops, making it very attractive from an engineer's viewpoint. DisplayPort also supports long cables without boosters — retaining 1080p resolution at up to 15 meters (48 feet), and full 2560x1600 resolution at up to 3 meters (9.8 feet).

The immediate impact is that we now need yet another video connector in our bag to use DVI or VGA displays. And there's no composite or S-video adapter. DVI and VGA adapters are $29 each. A Dual-Link DVI adapter, required for the 30" Cinema Display, is $99. (We note the 30" Dell 3008WFP already has a DisplayPort!) Apple does not offer a TV adapter, but the DisplayPort specification supports it, in theory.

Apple says it's adopting DisplayPort across its entire product line. Today, this means the aluminum MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro; we assume the iMac and Mac Pro will get the update, too.

(Along with the MacBook, Apple introduced a new DisplayPort-only 24" LED Cinema Display specifically designed specifically for use with the new Apple laptops. It won't ship until November, though, so we haven't had a chance to evaluate it.)

Nvidia graphics

Apple replaced the previous MacBook's anemic, integrated Intel graphics with brand-new Nvidia 9400M hardware. We're still in process of benchmarking it, but the Nvidia 9400M is far faster than the old Intel graphics, and this is speed you can feel in the user interface. Like the Intel GMA graphics, Nvidia's 9400M uses the computer's main memory for its own work, taking away 256+ MB, or about 12% of the base 2GB memory complement.

Nvidia claims the 9400M is up to 6.2 times faster than the Intel GMA X3100. Apple describes it relative to the MacBook Pro: the aluminum MacBook is said to provide 55% of the 3D speed of the Nvidia 8600M GT in the previous MacBook Pro, while the old MacBooks' Intel GMA only delivered 11% of MacBook Pro 3D speeds!

This Nvidia chip does more than just video duty, though: it is a "System-On-a-Chip" (SOC) design that replaces the Intel "Santa Rosa" architecture of the previous MacBook model. This is part of an industry-wide trend to more highly integrated chips, reducing power consumption, circuit board size and component costs. The Nvidia-based system swaps the old 800MHz memory bus for a 1066MHz bus, which seems to make up for the slightly slower CPU clock speed vs the previous MacBook. The Nvidia SOC includes SATA, USB, Ethernet, PCI Express, and audio controllers — but no FireWire. (More on that omission below.)

Service and Accessibility

The new MacBook sets a wonderful new standard for service access. The battery and hard drive lie behind a thin cover on the bottom. To release it, just lift a magnetic latch, and the lid pops up. The battery lifts out on a clear plastic tab; the hard drive does too, once you remove a single screw. This is the fastest, easiest hard drive replacement on any Apple laptop, ever. We couldn't help playing with the latch mechanism, opening and shutting it just to watch and feel this precision component do its job! Easy swappability of hard drives is a huge benefit in our book, letting you easily deal with hardware failures or upgrade to higher capacity and performance without paying a technician to do the work.

Memory requires slightly more work: remove eight more screws, and the second bottom panel lifts free. Not only is the memory expansion slot exposed, so is everything else. The new unibody chassis makes removing and replacing nearly any component a quick job. Kudos to Apple's design team for making it so easy to service the new MacBook! (Of course, this will also lower Apple's own warranty service costs.)

Other Notes

The MacBook has a host of other features. A new light sensor adjusts display brightness based on ambient lighting, and the backlit keyboard comes on the pricier model, both taken from the MacBook Pro and Air models.

The battery indicator has been moved from the bottom of the case to the left side. The only visual cue is a slightly recessed circle — a button — and when you press it, a line of eight tiny LEDs lights up in a row to show you the power level. (When charging, the top LED blinks.) It's simple but visually delightful.

All aluminum MacBooks include 802.11n WiFi networking, Bluetooth, gigabit Ethernet, two USB ports, and audio in and out jacks (supporting both analog and S/PDIF cables). A Kensington Microsaver security slot and MagSafe power connector round out the left side of the MacBook. A slot-loading SuperDrive is on the right, handling all the usual CD/DVD±R/RW/DL media options.

The aluminum MacBook is rated for up to 4 GB of RAM (it ships with 2 GB). However, iFixit (see Links section) noted during their disassembly, "the Montevina chipset appears to support up to 8GB." Further testing is warranted!

While the MacBook got warm during performance testing, it never got painfully hot, and the fan remained very quiet. Unlike earlier models, this MacBook seems to feature a large, low-speed fan, so there's none of the high pitched whine that plagued heavily-loaded PowerBook G4's and some MacBooks.

Environmental Impact

Apple proudly proclaims the new MacBook's environmental friendliness. High points include arsenic-free glass, no brominated flame retardants, no mercury, no PVC. This will reduce toxicity if some MacBooks are improperly disposed of (as, inevitably, some will be).

Although aluminum is highly recyclable, it also is very energy-intensive to produce. And while scraps from machining are recycled during manufacturing, they too require energy to re-melt into blocks of usable material.

Overall, Apple projects the entire lifecycle of a MacBook, from manufacturing to retirement, will release 460kg of CO2. (This includes both energy used in manufacturing and by end-users.) This compares to 340kg for the MacBook Air, 560kg for the 15" MacBook Pro, 1070kg for the 20" iMac, and a whopping 1500kg for the 24" iMac. (We haven't seen an estimate for the MacBook's polycarbonate predecessor.) As the choices go, you can do a lot worse than the new MacBook.

We measured the MacBook's power consumption with a Kill-a-Wattmeter, and found it quite low. Sleeping, it consumes just 3 VA of power; idling with the screen at maximum brightness draws 31 VA (about 14 watts). This drops to just 24 VA (11 watts) with the screen at minimum brightness. The most we could get it to consume, by running hard drive and 3D graphics benchmarks simultaneously, was 56 VA (29 watts). That's less than the average reading lamp.

Issues

Firewire

FireWire — a technology Apple invented and popularized — disappeared from the aluminum MacBook. It's used for hard drives, video capture, audio hardware and high-end scanners — essential devices for Apple's huge base of "creative professional" users.

If you depend on hardware that requires FireWire, you must either upgrade to the $1999 MacBook Pro, or downgrade to the older, white Macbook (which is available now for $999).

Apple CEO Steve Jobs defended the decision, stating that most consumer camcorders now use USB instead of FireWire. That doesn't do much good for someone who already owns a FireWire-only camcorder; for most of us, that's a pretty big investment! And USB 2, despite its huge speed improvement over USB 1, still isn't suitable for professional audio work — it just isn't designed for time-sensitive data.

In hopes of getting a view into more typical consumer behavior, we talked to a salesperson at an Apple retail store. He said he was selling a lot of the new MacBooks even without FireWire. When asked how we could get video from our FireWire camcorder onto the new MacBook, the salesperson candidly answered, "You can't, and I know that's not a good answer."

We asked if the week's buyers knew or cared about the loss of FireWire. "A few people have been pretty upset," we were told, but many don't have any FireWire devices. A few buyers, he volunteered, did require FireWire, and in every instance, they went up to the MacBook Pro, not down to the white MacBook. But, he noted, "We're not all billionaires, a video camera is a big investment!"

The long-requested, but still-missing eSATA port would take the sting out of losing FireWire, and a fast I/O bus always can be exploited. USB is seriously deficient when it comes to multi-device data streaming; it may be good enough for Apple, but it's not adequate for a small, but influential, portion of Apple's traditional customer base.

We think it's a big mistake to take such a versatile, useful feature out of Apple's most popular laptop arbitrarily. But the marginal cost of upgrading to a MacBook Pro is less than the cost of a new video camera or audio hardware; maybe that's what Apple is counting on. If so, it's an artificial and cynical product segmentation tactic.

Vulnerable display?

The new display is a single sheet of glass, bonded directly to the aluminum lid. If it's damaged, the entire assembly must be replaced. On laptops with more traditional bezels, the bezel serves as a sacrificial "crumple zone", helping to mitigate damage to the expensive LCD panel. The MacBook has no such margin, and we just don't know how strong the glass is. We hope it's similar to the super-strong glass used in iPhone and iPod Touch screen. Only time and experience (accident reports) will tell if this is indeed a weak spot.

Other issues

We must repeat the need to purchase adapters to use any existing external display. None is included in the box, so if you already have a display, plan on a $29 adapter to use it. Our nearest Apple retail store didn't yet have them in stock when this was published, but the online store shows them shipping in a few days.

Lastly, we've developed a healthy caution for "1.0" hardware, and it's worth noting that this device is based on an all-new chipset from a company that's had some problems in the past. (One of Nvidia's early SOC efforts had a serious problem with SATA data corruption!) But Nvidia really wants into the SOC market, and Apple (a legendarily demanding business partner) is giving them a big chance — so they have a lot riding on a success with such a high profile client. Any failures will be heavily reported... and we hope Nvidia has worked hard to eliminate any potential problems.

Performance

We've done some preliminary benchmarking comparing the new MacBook's hard drive, graphics and processor performance to previous Macs.

Graphics and Gaming

First up, the Nvidia 9400M integrated graphics controller provides a definite boost in the Cinebench9.5 3D graphics test. OpenGL hardware shading is more than twice as fast as the white, 2.16GHz MacBook (with integrated Intel graphics), and very nearly catches up wth last year's MacBook Pro (LED model), which featured the dedicated Nvidia GeForce 8600M mobile graphics processor.

Also worth noting is the software OpenGL shading test: This year's 2.0GHz MacBook virtually matches last year's 2.2GHz MacBook Pro! The new, 20%-faster memory bus appears to help here, making up for the MacBook Pro's faster CPU clock.

When it comes to gaming, the new MacBook is an improvement on its predecessor, but it certainly won't challenge PS3 or Xbox 360 consoles. The aluminum MacBook performs quite nicely on older games but is merely competent at current games.

We started with Halo. Released for the Mac five years ago, Halo is long in the tooth. Its main use is comparing performance to older systems. Running the standard timedemo test, we saw 53 frames per second at 800x600 with advanced shaders enabled, and 43 fps at 1024x768. We like to test at 1680x1050, but we still haven't found the DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter in local stores. So instead, we enabled 2x full screen antialiasing at 1024x768, and saw 37 fps. This is fair, but hardly great.

Next, we tried playing EA's 2142 Battlefield, an Intel-only game released last summer. Like a number of EA's other games, it uses TransGaming's Cider technology to run a Windows game as a Mac application. Using 2140 Battlefield's high quality video preset (1024x768, full special effects), the game was attractive, but unplayable — frame rates were visibly low, and any significant effects (such as explosions and smoke) caused gameplay to stutter. At the medium preset (800x600, effects at middle settings) the game occasionally lagged during heavy action. We found the low quality preset (800x600, minimum effects) provided acceptable visual quality while retaining full frame rates — in other words, for a competitive head-to-head game, this is the only acceptable option.

We also ran the Doom 3 timedemo. While Doom 3 itself is four years old, its graphics engine, id Tech 4, is still in use today by games such as Quake 4, Prey, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and thus it remains a useful test. At medium quality 640x480, Doom 3 averaged 73 frames per second — leaving plenty of overhead left for physics and artificial intelligence engines. At the high quality 800x600 setting, it still achieved a consistent 60 fps. Then, we ran what is normally a torture test: "Ultra" quality 1024x768, which uses over 500 MB of textures. That's twice the video memory allocated to the MacBook's GeForce 9400M, so it should cause substantial pauses while textures are transferred to and from video memory. But, to our great suprise, the game still managed to achieve 42 fps, and had almost none of the pauses we've seen when overloading video memory in the past. Perhaps this is an advantage of the GeForce's direct integration with the memory controller?

Hard Drive

Our test unit came with a Hitachi 160 GB SATA hard drive. Though not the most capacious, it's definitely quick. We ran the AJA System Test [AJA_System_Test_v601.zip] - File Size Sweep - and it was faster than the last MacBook, the 2007 MacBook Pro, and even the desktop hard drive in the original iMac Core Duo! This is desktop-class speed, low-end desktop, but far better than we expected.

GeekBench

Geekbench 2006measures pure processor speed, nothing else. It provides a good read on how the CPU performs independent of other components. Much as we saw in the OpenGL software test above, the new 2.0GHz MacBook catches up to within 2% of last year's 2.2GHz MacBook Pro! And it's about 10% faster than the white, 2.16GHz MacBook it replaces — again demonstrating that clock speed alone doesn't tell the whole story.

(Newer versions of Cinebench and Geekbench are available; we used older versions so we could more accurately compare the MacBook to previous sytems.)

Comparing the new MacBook to both the white MacBook and last year's MacBook Pro, it's clearly a very fast machine for the price. It's almost a mini-Pro MacBook — if it weren't for that missing FireWire port!

Conclusions

MacInTouch readers have weighed in with some pretty strong opinions about this new laptop, both for and against. It has the high style of the sleek MacBook Air with a more reasonable price, while providing much better performance, accessibility and capacity. The new Nvidia video chip is a great improvement on the previous model's underwhelming graphics, delivering performance you can feel in ordinary use. It's competent, if unspectacular, for casual gaming; it is a sad statement on the previous MacBook that "competent" is such an improvement! The latest MacBook Pro still outperforms, but at least now the MacBook is in the race — and it nearly matches last year's MacBook Pro!

But despite the luxury feel and build quality, this is not professional-grade hardware. The loss of FireWire is a big deal for video, music and visual creative professionals with an important investment in FireWire hardware. The stylish display doesn't have the same color quality as the MacBook Pro, and it even lags behind the otherwise-similar MacBook Air; anyone doing photography or design work will require an external display, just as with previous MacBooks.

The new MacBook's graphics can drive a big 30" Apple Cinema Display, which the old model cannot. But the aluminum MacBook's own display is a bit of a misstep. It's bright and visually striking but more reflective than the MacBook Air and white MacBooks. It's not unusable; it just falls short of the excellence we usually expect from Apple products.

The aluminum MacBook should be a great laptop for many customers, including Windows switchers. MacInTouch readers have said that pro styling with a consumer price is very welcome. But potential upgraders from older MacBooks and PowerBooks with a heavy investment in FireWire hardware may wish instead to investigate the older white MacBooks (available for $999 from Apple, or much less at Amazon), or a close-out MacBook Pro — the previous models are selling for as little as the high-end new MacBook, with FireWire 800 and a great display.

In terms of pure design, the new MacBook is a big step forward. We love its new trackpad, definitely appreciate its speed, and upgrading the hard drive down the line will be far easier, thanks to its wonderfully accessible components. But the lack of FireWire and the too-glossy display give us pause, limiting the power-user appeal of an otherwise-outstanding, new, portable Mac.

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Pros exquisite design at a lower price wonderfully accessible for service and upgrades outstanding performance (including 3D graphics) powerful multitouch trackpad with good feel

Cons FireWire missing too-glossy display mini-DisplayPort requires new adapters

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Updates

Before this machine we had no major issue with the glossy screens of the original MacBook, the MacBook Air and the 2007 MacBook Pro with LED backlight. But the mirror-like display is the new MacBook's Achilles' Heel, even more than the missing FireWire port. Not everyone uses FireWire, but everyone uses that screen.

MacInTouch readers suggested trying out Photodon's anti-glare film (www.photodon.com). Photodon supplied us with a test sheet of their film, custom-cut for the new MacBook. It extends all the way to the edge of the black glass bezel, minimizing that mirror effect, and includes a v-shaped notch for the Macbook's iSight camera. The corners match the different top and bottom radii of the display, and if we hadn't mis-aligned the top, it would have been a perfect fit!

The Photodon film uses a no-residue silicon resin adhesive, so it can be removed without leaving anything behind. It's quite stiff, and applied easily once we peeled back its backing. Photodon says the outer surface is hardened to resist scratching; it feels much thicker and tougher than iPod screen protectors we've used in the past. It's a functional upgrade in more ways that one.

But to the point — could the Photodon film subdue the MacBook's mighty mirror?

In a word, yes.

The Photodon film cuts the sharp reflection and mutes it to a diffuse glare, which many users find less distracting. Like other screen films we've used in the past, it adds some graininess to the image, making it a tradeoff. This is definitely a matter of taste, but if you can't abide the glossy reflections, the Photodon film redeems the new MacBook. For just $15.50, it's a very cheap way to vastly improve the MacBook's day-to-day usability.

Aluminum MacBook Window reflection click for larger image...

Aluminum MacBook with Photodon matte film click for larger image...