MacBook, MacBook Pro Reviewed

MacBook and MacBook Pro

By Mark McClusky

Let’s start under the hood of the newly-redesigned Apple notebook line, and work our way out. Of course, with all the emphasis Apple placed on the new design and construction techniques for these machines, that might seem like attacking the issue backward, but it’s really the performance, rather than the aesthetics that stand out for us. Here's the hard proof as evidenced in our Xbench scores:

(** denotes the Pro running the NVIDIA 9400 M. * denotes the Pro running the NVIDIA 9600 M GT graphics card.)

That's no typo. Our Black MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM) got an Xbench of 68.03 with a battery rundown of 2:52. On the other hand, our new Aluminum MacBook (2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM) scored an Xbench of 116.70 with a battery rundown of 3:01.

We know, we know ... Xbench is a synthetic benchmark, which doesn’t necessarily reflect the way that people interact with their machine on a day to day basis. But that’s a pretty shocking improvement in the performance numbers, and in our use of the new MacBook, it’s noticeable across the board. This machine, in comparison to the very capable Black Book, just screams.

On the Pro, we haven’t had time to do battery rundown tests yet. But you can see, the new Pro machine is faster, in Xbench at least. In fact, the old ATI graphics card was much faster in Open GL render than either of the new Nvidia cards in the new Pro. It’s also important to note that in the operating system, there’s currently no way to run the video cards in tandem — you have to choose one or the other, and in fact, you have to log out to in order to switch them.

So that’s the short performance story: MacBook Pro gets a little quicker, while the MacBook gets way, way faster. You might notice that the new MacBook outperformed the old Pro in Xbench, and that meshes with our experience. Apple’s produced a consumer notebook that speeds past what was the top of the line just a year ago.

Oh, and by the way, they totally redesigned and re-engineered the machines.

It’s hard to evaluate aesthetics — a jaw dropping beauty to one person is an eye crunching catastrophe to another — but to my peepers, the new Mac laptops are some of the most handsome the company has ever released. I’m a sucker for the black bezel around the screens, and for the glass all the way to the edge of the display. (One bonus is that the laptops and the iMac, as well as Apple’s new Cinema Display, all share the same black and aluminum look. Jony Ive must be doing the dance of joy).

There are a couple of other changes of note — the battery compartment has been reconfigured. Now you pop off a door that allows access to both the battery and also the hard drive. This is the easiest Mac to hack ever; I’m looking forward to throwing an SSD into the MacBook to see how it runs. Cleverly, the battery life indicator has been moved to the side of the machines, so that you might actually use it.

All the ports live on the left side of the machines, and here we come to one of the downsides of these machines: the death of Firewire 400. The Pro has a Firewire 800 port that can be used with FW 400 with a (non-included) adapter. But the poor MacBook has no Firewire at all, just two USB 2.0 ports.

Now I’m no apologist for Firewire, but this just seems a little shortsighted to me, especially when it comes to the video market. There’s still a metric kiloton of FW gear out there, including cams and hard drive, that people rely on. To take that option away seems like a bad idea.

Of course, this is the sort of thing that Apple does all the time. When they stripped the floppy drive out of the first iMac, people howled in protest (really, there were pitchforks and torches). Down in Cupertino, they’re happy to remove legacy devices a little bit too early rather than a little too late. The downside is a bunch of FW stuff that you can’t use any more. The upside is that you avoid the sort of thing you see on PC laptops, where you can still find a freaking serial port from time to time.

The case design relies on a solid billet of aluminum that’s milled to form the top shell of the computer, as well as providing its structure. Again, the change is most pronounced in the MacBook, which goes from a little bit flimsy to rock-solid while slicing a half a pound. The Pro is lovely as well, but actually gets a little bit wider and taller to accommodate the screen. The new trackpad — which has been turned into one enormous button — felt so natural, we didn't remotely miss the recently jettisoned separate click key.

This isn’t the sort of redesign that makes your jaw drop, although it might be unreasonable to think that Apple has to reach that standard every time they launch a revision. That’s a measure of how inflated our expectations have become. But the Apple notebook line is just miles ahead, and these two machines — especially the MacBook — only put them further out in front.

MacBook

$1600 as tested, apple.com

MacBook Pro

$2500 as tested, apple.com