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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.'"
Apple loves price holes. Just look at the iPod. They used to have a 20GB regular iPod and a 6GB iPod mini. At that point, a lot of people are already going to be thinking that 6GB's just isn't enough, but if they want more they have to jump up to 20. I'm sure a lot of people who weren't really looking for something that big made the jump because there was nothing in between, and who wants to go down a level? Characteristically, Apple then introduced the nanos (which had even smaller hard drives) to replace the minis and then upped the capacity of the video iPods. Now, you can get either a 30GB model or a 4GB model. That's a huge hole and forces a lot of people who only need 10GB's or so to jump up to 30. It's amazing marketing, although I'm sure it makes some (myself among them) resentful at being herded like that.
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
If the PowerBook became the MacBook Pro, what's the Power Mac going to become?
Double Big Mac.
You could always, you know, buy a not-iPod.
Just a thought.
Haida Manga
Au contraire, mon frère! It seems the MacBook isn't really a "laptop" anymore!
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
Don't take the Xbench OpenGL scores Ars reports too seriously. In MacWorld's benchmarks with real-world OpenGL (UT2004), the MacBook Pro, with real video, delivered three times the framerate of the MacBook.
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"laptop" does not appear once in the MacBook's manual."
The term "laptop" went away after the first guy burnt his dick on one.
Then they called them "notebooks".
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.
K maybe I like those types of neat little nuances.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
$1487.
An equivalent Macbook (the lowest one) is $1099. Add in $200 for Applecare and the Macbook is still cheaper. Plus the Dell is 50% thicker. It also weighs 16% more.
An Inspiron 640m 14" notebook configured to be the same as the Macbook is $1457. Still $200 more and you don't get all that great software (OS X and iLife). It weighs the same, but is still 50% thicker.
What a 12" screen? You'll need a Inspiron 710m. But that means a 1.7 GHz Pentium M. Matching things the best I can otherwise (CD-RW only, no DVD reader or burner) it costs... $1658. That's $400 more than the Macbook. It weighs one pound less than the 13" MacBook but... it's STILL 50% THICKER.
The Macbook is a great deal. You say you configured a cheaper Dell... can you provide the model? I'd like to see for myself.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I go to Dell and check out the same model...
2 GHz Core Duo, 1 Gig of RAM, XP Pro, 100 Gig 7200 RPM drive, glossy screen, you're looking at $1746 shipped.
The price YOU quoted was for 1.66 GHz, XP Media Center, 5400 RPM drive, non-glossy screen.
By the way, both prices are after a 22% SALE that Dell is holding. I know they're always holding some sale or another, but even with the sale your price is flat out wrong for the specs you quoted.
This doesn't include all the great software that OS X comes with like iLife, iWork, and more. Also, the Dell is 50% thicker than the Mac. The video out is VGA only (not DVI). On the plus side, you do get the 5-in-1 media card reader (I'm still surprised Apple hasn't done this yet with all the media stuff they push).
If I make a white Macbook match the Dell (by upping the RAM, the hard drive, and adding Apple Care)... it costs $1798.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Macintosh premium: $52
That's 3%.
I'd GLADLY pay $52 to get OS X, iLife, and a laptop that isn't 50% thicker.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I find it funny when people spend time reading through all the /. comments of each story ... but never read the story itself. It boggles the mind, it does.
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...