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Ars Technica Reviews the MacBook
phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has performed another of their in-depth and thorough hardware reviews. The subject in this review is the newly released MacBook. From the article: 'The Apple portable web site proudly announces that the "family is finally complete." What began with an announcement from Steve Jobs at the MacWorld conference in January has come full circle with the release of the MacBook this week. Every Apple laptop is Intel powered and moving in what I would consider is the right direction. The laptop line is finally better delineated by pro and consumer features, and the prices have been fixed at points that better reflect the minute differences in the models.'"
They could have at least done a little bit better on the black premium model. I know they're trying to balance performance with cheap, but it would be great to have a well-built small laptop that packs enough 3D punch for gaming. I was seriously considering one of these for my next "PC" until I saw that.
I went and checked out the 13.3" Macbook in black with the matte finish today. I think that it will hold up as well as the aluminum. (All the iBooks I have seen scratch like crazy) The keyboard is nice, and I would say it's neither better nor worse than that of my 12" PowerBook. I think it's a little crazy to charge an extra $150 for a black versus white finish... However, market demands it... I even bought a black iPod.
After getting my hands on it, I think I will eventually buy a black one. But still...
I wish that they had a 13.3 Pro coming out with a matte screen, backlit keyboard, and the extra little perks that the 15 and 17 Pro's have... But that would probably end up costing as much as the 15...
What's most interesting are the benchmark results. While some screamed bloody murder over Apple's apparent downgrade to Intel's integrated graphics chipset, the new MacBook completely outclasses the old iBook on all fronts, and even out-performs the MacBook Pro in some cases (due to its slightly faster processor).
So what's worse? Integrated graphics or an underclocked Radeon X1600?
Nonetheless, the MacBook looks great, and I can't help but feel sorry for the people who rushed out and got a MacBook Pro. It seems that Apple rushed the Pro out of the door, whereas they took their time with the MacBook and got it right.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Cons:
I wonder what hard drives they use. My powerbook's hard drive died in just a little over 2 years. Between whine noises, power adapters that fall away too easily, notebook latches that don't close properly, logic board issues, overheating, display glitches, dead hard drives and more, i think that apple
hardware is just as error-prone as regular pc hardware.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
It has 20 additional gigabytes of hard drive space compared to the model that costs $200 less. Plus the hard drive is easy to replace (according to the article.) Upgrade the mid-range model to the same specs on Apple store and it is *still* $150 more for the black one.
Bottom line is you are paying $200 for the color, or lack thereof.
I still want one bad, but 82 degrees C is way to hot for my lap. I can believe he didn't mention the temperature as a con at the end, I agree with his conclusion earlier in the article that a laptop that runs that hot is defective.
Karma: Incomprehensible (Mostly affected by posting at +5, reading at -1, and metamoderating everything unfair.)
Has anyone else noticed that the Powerbooks/iBooks have gone the way of the dodo? Also, at the beginning of the Core Duo age they were still selling the iMac G5's along with the iMac Core Duo's, but now it's just the Core Duo. Same with the Mac Mini. As for all the Apple notebooks now being widescreen, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm going to miss the good old days of non-widescreen notebooks. I don't know why, but a good old non-widescreen still has much more appeal to me than a widescreen of the same size.
This is not a sig. This is a llama-duck. Quack.
That's a pretty stupid question. The builtin chipset used sucks; it uses system ram, for starters. That is -really- going to hurt when you're mucking about in Aperture or iPhoto, or go to play a video and the whole system becomes slow as a dog.
Here's a test: why don't you try running Quake 4 at 1280x1024 or higher and tell me how well it works for you. Works FANTASTIC on the MBP (it was a little laggy sometimes, but they've since updated it to be SMP and it FLIES.)
Test number two: try playing the high-definition (1080i) trailers on Apple's website. I'd be absolutely shocked if it manages to do it without dropping frames like crazy. My Macbook Pro barely breaks a sweat.
Nonetheless, the MacBook looks great, and I can't help but feel sorry for the people who rushed out and got a MacBook Pro.
I don't feel sorry for myself or anyone else who bought a MacBook Pro, but I did get a developer discount. The MacBook Pro doesn't have any major faults; I hate the name with a passion, it makes some noises it shouldn't (slightly better after the recent firmware update) and I would have greatly preferred the 15" G4 screen's extra vertical pixels over the blurry, narcissistic iSight...but the thing works just goddamn fine.
I got my money's worth, I assure you. I was surprised at how "Pro" the non-Pro was (and Ars severely underplays the graphics and display differences; a lot of people hate glossy screens and the integrated graphics truly do suck), but whatever. I can't wait for all the "waaah, my graphics really really suck, I thought I was getting a MacBook Pro, how come I can't play any games and all the i-apps are slow as shit" comments over the next few weeks from "early adopters" of the Macbook...
Please help metamoderate.
I have a new Macbook pro, and yes, it does get hot. As for the thermal paste, I think it's an issue of it being easier to tell the assemblers to gob it on rather than risk someone not getting enough. As soon as my warrenty expires, you can guarantee I will be in there redoing it myself.
On the other hand, I notice that my laptop's fan NEVER comes on, as long as I'm not in the hot sun. It seems that with the aluminum case, they have the luxury of using the back half of the laptop as a giant heat exchanger. Heat radiation is proportional to the difference in temperature between the air and the heatsink, so the high temperatures just mean that Apple has decided that having a quiet laptop was more important than a cool one.
My friends all have Dells and Sonys. Yes, they run cooler, but their fans are almost ALWAYS on, and if they run any more than the basics, they start to sound like a leaf blower.
Bottom line- with all my past laptops, I have had underclock them in order to keep the fans off, since that seems to be the first component to fail. I can put up with a hot computer, as long as it is quiet and lasts longer.
A final note- my processor has a full blown whine, but it is easily quited with the well-known quietMBP program. I hope someone comes up with a more elegant solution.
The review mentions that the trackpad registers a right-click when you click the button while having two fingers resting on the trackpad.
What I'd like to know is if that works when you're running XP via Boot Camp. Anyone have a MacBook or 17" MacBook Pro, a copy of XPSP2, and the will to find out?
Alright, it seems that this is a great upgrade for people coming from a 12" iBook.
I, however, am looking for an upgrade for my 12" Powerbook G4. And this ain't it.
First of all, the glossy screen. I guess we've got that confirmed now. I hate those. As the Ars review mentions, that's not a feature 'professionals' want. I certainly don't.
Quite a few of the new features - display spanning, for example - are NOT a new feature for me. My 12" Powerbook can already do that.
I'm not sure about the keyboard... I'll have to go play with that at an Apple store or something.
Now, I would NOT pay $150 for a black case. I would, however, HAPPILY pay an extra $150 for a non-glossy screen. I will never buy a laptop with a glossy screen.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
I've got one. I can certainly understand the worry, but I've got one, and honestly it's not that bad. Perhaps its just perception, but it's not nearly as bad as the 12" G4s were on my lap. That said however, I'm not sure whether I'd keep any of these machines on one's lap cool or no. Regardless, speaking as a biologist, by placing anything that's warm on your lap for large portions of a day you're reducing your reproductive potential. *cue joke about slashdotters, girlfriends & reproduction*
I'm a bit confused.. when I goto Apple and select the 2.0Ghz version, I notice that the 2GB is $500 more.. but at pricewatch .. they are only $166 for 2GB... is Apple jacking up the price that much?
The MacBooks have a right-click button, in a way. It's a gesture, and you have to turn it on in System Preferences. If you click on the button while holding two fingers on the trackpad, it opens the context menu (a.k.a. right-clicks).
with the white and black models side-by-side, I can say there is another overlooked difference between the two (not that it justifies the price, but it's worth noting). The black one has a stiffer screen casing. You can determine this very easily by holding the rim of the screen with your thumb and pressing on the back of the screen with any of the rest of your fingers. On the white unit surprisingly light pressure results in the characteristic color distortion seen when you press on an LCD; the screen bezel simply isn't stiff enough to resist the pressure of your fingers. When you do the same thing on a black Macbook, you have to press *much* harder to get the color distortion.
This matters because it suggests the plastic used in the black model is stiffer. It may be more prone to cracking if you drop it (for the record I've never seen a white iBook's plastic crack), but it also appears to resist deformation from behind the screen better than the white one. So when your S.O....well, this is Slashdot so let's say your mother...unwarily drops the power adapter in to your laptop bag so it's pressing directly against the back of the screen, you'll be less likely to end up with a cracked screen when you set the bag down with your hardback collector's edition Lord Of The Rings Trilogy on top of it, and the car goes over a bump.
I've seen a lot of broken laptop screens, and many of those were broken by some object pressing against the screen from behind.
Given a choice, I'd rather risk cracked case plastic than a colorful spiderweb crack across my screen...although I will say that since it's a glossy screen I won't feel nearly so bad if it does get broken. Ugh. Glossy. What were they thinking?
What, like a Walkman?
It's funny how the original post is reflective of how ubiquitous the iPod has become. I'll throw in my own anecdote:
I fly about 15 times a year for business. In the last 6 months, out of about 8 flights, only 1 has told the passengers they can now turn on/off their "portable electronic devices". The rest of them told us we could now turn on/off our "iPods and other portable electronic devices". It didn't even occur to me until maybe a half hour after the first time I heard it. They just assumed most of us who had small electronic devices had iPods.
The fact is, most people won't even consider iPod alternatives. The reasons are varied, but for me it's because I've owned 4 MP3 players, including one Creative, before the two iPods I've bought (one is 3rd generation, and the latest is 5th generation), and every one of them sucked for a handful of reasons. Each one sucked for a different set of reasons, but they all sucked for more than one or two reasons.
I just got tired of wasting my money on "iPod alternatives", so I don't even consider them any more. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
On the integrated graphics, I think the MacBook has the same integrated video the Mac Mini has, which I've been using for about a month. I've tested dozens of apps in Mac OS X and Windows on my Mac Mini, and the integrated graphics performed WAY better than I expected. The only recent game I had any problem running because of the graphics was Doom 3. Half Life 2, World of Warcraft (Win and Mac) both ran comparable to my Powerbook with ATI Radeon 9700 and my AMD desktop with NVidia 6800GT.
We use Solidworks for engineering our products at work, and I showed one of our engineers how it ran on the Mac Mini in Windows XP with a very complex 400mb model, and we were both quite impressed. Especially considering it's an $800 computer, and he needs a $2500 computer to get noticeably better 3D video performance ($750 of that is a high-end workstation card).
Anyway, the point is, don't just write it off because it's integrated video. Not all integrated video is created equal...
From what I've read, the results are reversible, though I'm nto sure what the timescale is on the recovery period. The main problem comes from prolonged use, if you have something on your lap for a great number of hours per day keeping the heat in it's going to reduce the viability of the sperm produced. The main reason for this is that the scrotum need to be a bit lower in temperature than one's core body temperature for proper gamete production. So what happens when you keep something on your lap is that you at the very least keep more heat in the groin area. When you put something hot on top of this area it makes matters worse. This is also one of the reasons that lots of sedentary work isn't great either as while sitting with one's legs closed temperatures will remain higher than they should be.
:-)
What I'm not sure of is the degree of this effect in the short and long term, like whether it can make it difficult or impossible to have a child.
So, in summary, just start wearing a kilt to work, keep those legs spread, walk around a bit, and don't put hot things near your groin
I'm not quite sure why you think the Mini is targeting a much different market to the MacBook.
Did you catch the "reluctantly" bit in there?
I'm talking about Apple apologists who beable on slashdot about how the crappy video in the Mini is OK because it's "targeted for a different market".
Not to mention, everything running OS X is running 3D, not 2D.
There is absolutely no T&L or any other advanced 3d required by the OSX user interface. It's all throwing around scaled 2d bitmaps in a 2d plane with fake shadows done by layering 2d shadow bitmaps at the edge of the window. It's no more "3d" than Windows NT 4.0 or X11 with Motif... it's a 3d look using 2d bitmap operations.
None of its contemporaries are.
I'm seeing a number of sub-1000 notebooks with Radeon chipsets.
Games are - in the realm of non-professional software - the most hardware-intensive software the average person will ever use. Why on earth would anyone think a low-end general-purpose computer would be capable of running such high-end, specific software well?
I didn't say "well", I said "better than barely adequately".
And I said "better than barely adequately" rather than "even barely adequately" because the post I was responding to described it as being barely adequate. I wouldn't use that phrase to describe the existing iBook's performance... I'd have called it "embarassingly bad" or even "unacceptable"... but if that's what you call "barely adequate" then I want more than what you consider "barely adequate".
The GPU on the Macbook Pro isn't a "gamer chip" either, but it's adequate.
I accepted the horrible performance of the iBook and Powerbook because they had an excuse... the low speed memory bus on the G4. Once that bottleneck was gone, they should be able to do at least do as well as other entry level computers with low-end-but-acceptable chipsets like the nVidia go5200.
So now instead of being crippled by the 166 MHz bus, they're crippled by the Intel GMA950. They're still crippled.
It's like buying a Honda Civic and then complaining that it sucks on the racetrack.
No, it's like buying a Honda Civic and discovering it can't accelerate to freeway speed by the end of the on-ramp.
If you want to play games, either buy a computer meant for playing games, or buy one high-end enough that it can play games as a side effect.
Most of the OpenGL apps I'm interested in aren't actually games, but they run acceptably fast on any machine with any GPU that actually implements a full set of 3d shaders. That is, anything that doesn't actually suck at games. I was hoping that the higher speed bus on the Intel Core would mean Apple was finally going to ship machines that were comparable to the better entry level (under $500) PCs or (under $1000) laptops. What a fool I was. Apple still thinks that anyone who isn't interested in forking over $2000 at the drop of a hat doesn't matter.