The MacBook Pro does not suck (general review)
 

We've got two of them in the house now, with the following specs:

2.0GHz/1GB/100GB 5400RPM/256MB video (Mine)

2.0GHz/1GB/120GB 5400RPM/256MB video (Hers)

We're both business/IT managers, with hands-on work as well as having responsibility for business direction and goals. We both work in a primarily Windows/MS apps world but moving everything towards open standards, both work with Linux servers, and both love technology in a personal aspect.

Enough of the background. Her MacBook came in first, and out of the box, it looks pretty normal. Actually it looks less impressive than the 15/17 PowerBook since it is missing a few ports. No S-Video (it has DVI-A so you just need the $20 Apple TV adapter though), no Firewire 800, no modem. It also struck me as being very large, though measurements show it's only .4" bigger than the 15" PB. For some reason it looks as big as a 17 to me. Putting the 12" on top of it increased that perception.

I've been using G5 2.7 systems at home and work for a while, with a 12" to travel and move around with me. I was getting tired of the file sync issues that randomly come up though, and the 12" severely limits what I can do while mobile due to CPU power and/or screen size. I absolutely love how small it is though, and the long battery life. My hope is that I can replace even the G5s with the MacBook. A tall order, certainly.

But after a little time with the first MacBook we got, it didn't seem impossible or even unlikely. The speed is quite impressive all around. It's important to realize that speed has been improved in every possible part of the system, not just the CPU. It is using technologies that are nearly unheard of, such as the memory speed (try asking for memory of this speed at a Fry's or CompUSA--they say it doesn't exist). This is what would have been considered a decent server six months ago.

It's hard to put quantifiable numbers to this because so many of the high-end pro apps are still not native Intel binaries. Even some benchmarks, like Super Pi, are not yet re-written. However, I can tell you that, with significant experience sitting in front of Macs ranging from a 333 iMac CRT to the dual 2.7 G5, that this machine has a snappy feel and responsiveness equal to the best of them. With the exception of an occasional short hang (I'll talk about that later), the entire UI and all apps are faster and more responsive. Essentially you just never wait for anything to happen.

Occasionally, the system seems to hang for just a second or three. It's random, and not frequent. I'm putting this one down to a bug or possibly software I've added which is not fully compatible. It happens very rarely. I have a mild suspicion that it could be related to wireless throughput, as it has never happened while I was on a wired network. Overall it's not impacting productivity.

Application support is the only area of annoyance, and that's only because I have very specific desires for mice and keyboards. I use an MS keyboard at my desk, along with a Logitech trackball on the left and Logitech laser mouse on the right. The drivers for all of these devices are incompatible. The keyboard has the Option/Command buttons crossed up, which can be fixed in system prefs, but has to be changed back when you go mobile. For the mouse/trackball, the only way I've found to make the left one reverse the buttong but not the right one is to use USB overdrive and a BT mouse (Microsoft BT mouse). For people with less specific input desires, this shouldn't be an issue.

In general, most non-system/non-network apps are compatible with Rosetta, with the exception of the Apple pro apps. Any drivers, system (prefs) apps, and network apps must be native, as far as I've found. Even the Rosetta apps perform well, much better than Windows in Virtual PC. I haven't noticed a performance impact, though it is obviously slower to do translation. The CPU usage does climb up of course.

Which is another place of interest; CPU usage. I run MenuMeters and monitor the usage; it's VERY low on this machine. I normally have Mail and Entourage running at all times, Adium IM client, Camino, VNC, and RDC, along with other apps needed for specific tasks. The "idle" CPU usage is extremely low, so the MenuMeters graph just looks like a thin line. On the G4 PowerBook this was always much higher, in the 20% range. Consequently, the heat is lower during normal usage. However, when the other half is playing World of Warcraft on her machine, it's red-hot. No way you would want that thing on your lap.

System stability has been excellent, though she got a KP and a full lockup once each. However, she has been running beta and alpha-level apps and drivers, so problems are to be expected. We have not yet done any diagnostics on the crashes.

All the usual PowerBook features are here, like auto-dimming screen (two sensors, works very wel), lighted keyboard (brighter and more power-efficient than the first gen), and of course, a great display. The display brightness is VERY high. Burn the retinas at full brightness. Makes it great for outdoor use (I spent most of yesterday working on our patio). One drawback is that while the horizontal viewing angle is VERY wide, the vertical one is not. It's so tight that you can't get the screen in any position where the top and bottom are both at optimum viewing angle. I'd rather lose width and gain height, personally, but everyone is going to WVA these days at the expense of vertical flexibility.

Battery life is OK so far but unimpressive. My only full battery run-down was done with heavy use, lots of Wi-Fi file transfers, and full screen brightness outdoors. I got exactly 3 hours and 1 minute to sleep. The new battery is larger, so the charger is too. The charger will give a full charge quicker than the previous ones did (haven't timed it yet, I think it charges in under 3 hours). Of course, we all know about the nifty magnetic connection, and it works very well. Great design. The battery is similar to that on the PB 17, just slightly larger.

There are some design drawbacks though, probably a constraint of trying to make it so thin and small. The USB, FW, and ethernet ports interfere with using an external mouse on the right. It would be much nicer to have these on the left. Same with the DVI connector. The camera angle doesn't fit well with the viewing angle of the screen, so at optimum screen view your forehead is about in the center of the camera view with lots of wasted space and your chin cut off. Camera quality is good and it works well under very low light conditions. It's not an iSight, but it sure beats most cheap webcams. The mic and speakers do a good job for conferencing.

The Expresscard is a mixed bag; sounds good for the future, but there's nothing useful available for it now. Also it is the smaller of the two Expresscard formats, so it will be more limited. The lack of FW800 has caused a lot of negative commentary by some people, but I doubt those people ever USED it. I used it just once on each of my previous PBs; to transfer system data from a desktop at the best speed. Even then, I doubt that the drives were fast enough to exceed FW400 speed. If you REALLY need FW800, you can already get that in an Expresscard.

I don't know if it comes through in my previous comments, but overall I'm extremely happy with the performance and usability of this machine. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is, and I'm picky. It's a true desktop replacement system (high end desktop even) but with all the abilities and features of a notebook. Side by side with an HP notebook featuring a hyperthreaded Pentium 4 desktop CPU, the Mac feels snappier and seems to do every task in the same timeframe. However, the HP gets nary two hours of battery life and is always too hot to use on a lap. I compared a few tasks to a dual Opteron 1.8 server, and the Opteron only barely beat the notebook. The Opteron system has SATA/300 drives and interleaved DDR-2 memory, so this is an impressive feat for the MacBook. Opterons are VERY efficient processors with great math abilities. But the CPU in the MacBook is also extremely math-efficient, as evidenced by Super Pi and the speed while resizng very large photos.

Thanks for this review, Carlos. Sounds like a great start on a line that will improve even more in months to come.

I wasn't aware there's no modem. That would be a problem for me when I go on the road.

Apple now sells an optional USB modem for $50. Personally I've never actually used any Mac modem, so for all I know they could have been fake... :D You still hit places with no high speed access?

Another speed comment I missed...booting the system is FAST. I mean FAST FAST FAST. It boots faster than the dual 2.7 G5. Not of huge importance considering how rarely you have to reboot OS X, but a good indicator of the drive system performance.

Thanks for that thorough review Carlos. I too noticed the random hesitations on an intel iMac a few weeks back while spending about 15 minutes on one in an Apple Store. (It was wireless)

I'm also curious to see how bothersome it is to not be able to position the screen for an optimal vertical viewing angle...i imagine that would be a pet peeve of mine.

The vertical alignment is becoming more transparent as I get used to it. I probably move it around as needed, but I'm not conscious of doing it any more. The only time it's an issue is if I'm trying to use the camera, which I can't imagine will be often...if ever. It was a fun toy for about 5 minutes.

I'll add here, as posted in another thread, that the MacBook has 802.11a wireless. This is very good because there is very little crowding there, unlike the 802.11b/g spectrum. Microwaves and cordless phones interfere with b/g, but not a. General performance is also better.

So are you comfortable with the fact that she has the larger hard drive? :D

:D :D I was wondering who'd comment on that first...

What I really want is a 7200 RPM drive, the size is not important. Er, that's what I tell her all the time. Speed, not size. Yeah, that's it.

really what I would like to see is a solid state HD, 7200rpm HDs in laptops chew through battery power.

My main question on the new mac book pros is, how much of a pain is it to tear it down and build it back up again? I loved the service aspect of design of the G3 laptops. Modular and easy to take apart, easy to upgrade, and easy to work on. The G4 powerbooks are a real big pain with tons of unneeded screws and never an access panel directly to drives or memory (some of them you could access under the keyboard, but it was never a direct access panel).

Have you taken that bad boy apart yet?

I've used mine to fax directly from applications. It was a lot easier and less wasteful than printing out pages, running them through the fax machine, then tossing the pages I just printed.

Not yet, I'm waiting for the 7200 RPM drive to get here. It cost the same to buy a new one as what Apple wants just for an upgraded machine shipped with it originally, so this way I get a spare to use for portable backups.

I've got a MacBook BTO on order now. I'm chafing at the March 30 promised date for delivery, as my trusty PB G4 blew its display a few weeks ago and I'm using a borrowed iBook G4 now for my mobile work. I'm glad that you're satisfied with your MacBook, since it relieves a lot of tension with my choice. I would have waited until the summer to buy, if my PowerBook could have held out for that long.

I'm curious as to where you are getting your upgrade drive, since you mentioned that this would be cheaper than the BTO option. I got the 7200RPM/100GB option because I could not find a 2.5" 7200RPM SATA drive at any capacity for less than $200, which made the BTO option attractive.

I did buy a 1GB stick of RAM separately, though. I was wondering how easy it would be to install the RAM. Unfortunately, the Apple Store wouldn't let me disassemble their display unit to find out.;)

I ordered it from Newegg.com, and yes, it's right at $200. I was wrong about the BTO price, or at least should have specified the details. I had been looking at the 1.83 model which starts with an 80GB/5400 and it is $200 for the upgrade to 100GB/7200.

I spent about four hours shopping trying to find this one. The only MacBooks in town are the low end model at the college store and the one I got at CompUSA. And that started an internal feud, since I pulled a string with my local corporate contact and he took the machine from the demo shelf at another store.

I'm still on my quest for mice that have Intel-compatible drivers/button managers which let me control the left and right devices separately. USB Overdrive promises it "soon." If anyone finds something that works, I'd like to hear about it.

On the memory, it is very easy. And that is definitely cheaper by far in the aftermarket. We paid $110 at Newegg.com for the extra 1GB sticks. To install it you remove the battery, then a few screws on the cover next to the battery. Insert in slot, replace cover. Same as the 17", and very easy.

It is interesting to note that machines with matched pairs of memory run faster. The memory must be interleaved if installed in pairs, as it is in the desktops. See the Xbench site for comparisons. You can select "Carlos_MacBook" to see my benchmark with 1GB memory and the 7200 drive, the compare to others with more memory and the faster drive. The faster drive makes a huge difference in uncached large block file moves, but oddly, not as much on small block moves. Meaning that working with big files like video, audio, graphics will be helped by the 7200 drive, but not database-type work.

Carlos,

SteerMouse is my favorite mouse driver utility for MacOS X. It's available for ppc/intel already, and was well worth the $20. I switched to that from USB Overdrive a few months back and it was a good decision.

I suggest you try it out and see if it fits your needs.

I gave it a try, but unfortunately it did the same thing as USB Overdrive; it treats both left and right devices as one. So the left/right buttons are always wrong on one or the other, as are the extra buttons. I can get around this by using USB Overdrive which takes over the trackball, and use a Bluetooth mouse which isn't recognized by USB Overdrive. Steermouse sees the BT mouse and treats it as one with the USB trackball, so it's worse. Unfortunately I haven't found a USB mouse that doesn't suck. And yes, I know I'm incredibly picky about input devices; comes with spending so many hours a day using them.

Actually, they don't use much more power than a 5400 RPM drive. Comparing manufacturer's specs proves this. Also, you really don't want to pay for 100GB of flash memory, trust me.

Chris

Oh yes. Rural USA, for the most part, isn't there yet. They might have cable TV, but no broadband. Certainly no DSL, either.

I guess modems will eventually go the way of floppy drives. When I bought my first iMac in 1998 (Rev. A), I also bought an external floppy drive, and it still works. I don't think I've used it twice during the last five years, however.

Some newer cordless phones, like the one I have at home, work off the same 5.4Ghz range as 802.11a band wireless networks. So there is the possibility of interference.
That said, there are so many more devices working on the 2.4GHz 802.11g/b band the interference should be non-existant to very minimal comparatively.

Interesting. On a recent cross-country trip I was expecting to have issues with connectivity, but didn't. There was only one Motel 6 in the middle of nowhere in Alabama that didn't have high speed of some sort, wired or wireless. We used our cell phones as modems (it's cheaper than a dialup account!). Otherwise everywhere we went through the South, between FL and AZ, there was high speed internet to be found. Are you traveling mostly around your region? Have you considered cell phone wireless for access? We pay $37.50/mo for BOTH of our phones to have high speed unlimited access (800k/second).

There are vast differences in how 11a operates that make this almost a non-issue (and in real life, I'd say it is completely a non-issue). While 11b/g use overlapping channels (each "channel" occupies the space of nearly five channels. There is no overlap in 11a. The signalling used in 11a is far more robust and resistant to interference. The higher frequencies are more linear and have a lower range, which can be its own problem, but not in the typical home or small office.

The only reason b/g is more attractive is cost; it's cheaper to implement. Kind of like USB vs. Firewire; we all know FW is better and faster, but USB is far cheaper.

802.11b/g vs. a
 

Actually, I suspect that the reason 802.11b and g dominate nowadays over 802.11a is due to these facts:

-802.11b was first to market, and thus was already widely deployed when 802.11a rolled out.
-802.11g is backward compatible with b, while a is not, due to the difference in frequencies.

For all my friends who've come to me for advice in buying laptops, I've always insisted that they have built-in b/g radios, and if they had a radios, that was a plus, but not required. I have yet to see a public wireless network based on a radios; you will see these mostly in corporate networks where the IT department can control all the hardware purchases.

Radios? All transmitters are generally classed as a "radio," so I don't know what you mean. Those factors you mention of course are part of the reason why b/g are prevalent. If 11a was as cheap to implement, I would think there would be more of it, maybe not as many, but more. Hopefully more computers will include a/b/g capability, prompting router makers to relase more reasonably-priced a/b/g routers. Then again, having fewer of them is good for us that know better.

You're playing "Who's on first" with shantanusaha.
When shantanusaha said "a radios", he/she was referring to 802.11a radios.

No, I don't want to pay the price for it as it stands now. But it is the future. Don't you agree? A future with a laptop completely void of moving parts (and with it, most of the noise) is getting closer.

Maybe, but our storage desires are growing quickly also. Maybe quicker than the technology for flash storage. Also there is the problem of a finite erase/write life for flash, though of course, that is improving too. I'm not convinced that memory technology will outpace the storage needs. What I am sure we will see soon is a cheap way to provide some level of storage, say 10GB, so the OS and most-used files work from that, and spinning media for the rest.

Well apple just bought out a nice scaleable solid state technology from I believe (but could be mistaken) Hitachi, that is scaleable up to over 100GB. I don't think the 100GB ipod would be the biggest seller out there, but if you could get a laptop with a 100GB solid state HD, it would be super fast and it would also take up a lot less batter power.

The technology just is not affordable to the retail market yet. I am sure if they dumped some money into it, they could make it affordable sooner than you people think. Look how much we have advanced in computer hardware since 2000.

MacBook Pro, DIDN'T suck....
 

Hey Gang,

Well... I have recently upgraded from the G4 PowerBook Titanium to the new MacBook Pro.

I have absolutly loved the increase in speed, and everything else about the new machine. I have not had any productivity loss (until now... will explain!) with any of my software (Adobe CS 2 and Macromedia Studio MX 2004).

The only thing i have had a problem with is the lack of support for Virtual PC. I need VPC to do some of my work, but i have just stolen my fathers pc based laptop now! hehe!

Anyway... until today, the new MacBook Pro didn't suck! it was sleeping over night. i opened the machine and nothing! hit lots of keys and nothing. I then held the power button in to turn off the machine, and it wouldn't boot up! Nothing!

I went to the apple website, simply typed in MacBook Pro in thier support page and found the first link was "Troubleshooting a MacBook Pro that won't turn on." Now this makes me concerned as to why this is at the top of the page? How many other people have had this problem?

I have since followed all thier instructions, and still nothing! I am taking the MacBook into an Apple Store tomorrow morning for a hardware test! \

Wish me luck!

Regarding "revs"
 

Much discussion has surrounded the quality/features of MacBook Pro "rev a." For me, the features are fine - everything I will need and more.

In regards to the various quality issues (lcd tearing and inconsistencies, whining noises, freezing, etc) that have been ubiquitously reported, is there any reason to think that these problems wouldn't be resolved prior to an official new revision? That is, would you expect the technical kinks to be worked out in a shorter amount of time than you might expect a specifications enhancement such as firewire 800?

I am planning to make a purchase, but don't want to deal with subpar initial quality that many have reported.

Thanks

u·biq·ui·tous
( P ) Pronunciation Key (y-bkw-ts)
adj.
Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent: “plodded through the shadows fruitlessly like an ubiquitous spook” (Joseph Heller).

I haven't seen any MacBooks with issues at all yet, and I've seen a few dozen. I have heard of one or two minor complaints.

But anyway, yeah, a "rev B" would typically show up quickly IF the issues are real. If they turn out to be basic normal defects or just user whining, don't expect any changes.

Troubleshooting documentation is typically written in order of how the computer is used. Power on is the first thing, so it's the first thing listed in troubleshooting (plug in technically is, but they're related).