Review - Apple's MacBook Pro

Provataki writes "OSNews posted a 2-editor review of Apple's MacBook Pro laptop. The whole review feels like a long conversation between the two editors with agreements and disagreements on several issues and topics. They both agree that the laptop is too hot, but there is disagreement on the screen quality for example."

Comments

Speaker quality?

[Mononoke]

TH: ...That's not unacceptable, but for a computer aimed at excellence in audio processing, this is a shortcoming, plain and simple.

No one who does audio processing on a computer uses the internal speakers, no matter what brand of computer it is.

That's just one of many misinformed statements TH makes about the machine.

Re:Speaker quality?

[ThinkingInBinary]

No one who does audio processing on a computer uses the internal speakers, no matter what brand of computer it is.

No, not for production work, but it's nice to be able to get good audio quality out of the speakers. No one's expecting miracles, but it should be able to reproduce a normal range of sounds at a decent volume, without major distortion. My laptop, for example, completely ignores bass frequencies, and, if they're loud enough, they distort everything else and there's a little "gap" in the audio where the bass beat was. That is bad.

There are laptops with good sound quality--a friend of mine has the Dell Inspiron e1705, and it has pretty good sound. (It's a 17" widescreen, though, so it's got room for bigger speakers.)

Re:Speaker quality?

[drinkypoo]

As gearheads say, "there's no replacement for displacement".

Only the lames say this. And there's a lot of lames. There are several replacements for displacement. Most significantly, High RPMs and high compression. High compression comes in two versions: forced induction, and just having high compression in the first place.

As we all know, there are small speakers that kick the shit out of cheaper speakers several times their size. Now, with speakers, it's true that there's no replacement for displacement, but you should be aware that displacement comes from two places in the case of both engines and speakers, though the terminology is different. In engines, we call it bore and stroke; AFAIK it's still stroke in audio, but the "bore" would be the "diameter".

In addition, both engines and speakers have the concept of "response", and it works much the same way in both places. In engines, you make them respond quicker by lightening the rotating mass, this allows you to achieve higher RPMs. Speakers are made lighter; this allows them to move faster, improving high-frequency response. Low-frequency response (consistency without distortion) is also achieved in the same way in both engines and speakers; You have more mass, but you use more energy to move it. A car with a heavier rotating mass is harder to stall, and thus less susceptible to small perturbations. Ditto for a speaker.

Anyway, just trying to bust up some myths. I know a lot more about the cars than the audio, but I know enough about physics to make some generalizations :P

Summary

[ThinkingInBinary]

• Screen: Adam likes the bright screen, Thom dislikes the viewing angle (color distortion) problems
• Speed: Both of them love it.
• Speakers: Both agree, the speakers are too quiet and distort at loud volumes. Thom notes it has digital optical audio out.
• Keyboard: Adam likes it, Thom finds the layout too cramped, calls it "form over function". Both like the backlighting.
• Airport: Adam has no problems. Thom finds the reception worse than his iBook.
• Heat: Both agree, it is too hot.
• Rosetta: Both agree, it is awesome, but native apps are eagerly anticipated.
• Build Quality: Both like it. Adam wants more USB ports.
• Battery: Both agree, battery life is skimpy.
• Running Windows: Thom says it's "a breeze", Adam doesn't plan to try it.

Frankly, I guess this points out that the MacBook Pro isn't "above" anything else. It's got its share of problems, and feelings are mixed about many features. Unlike the MacBook, though, the MacBook Pro isn't priced competitively with other brands. (The regular MacBook, surprisingly enough, since Apple is usually overpriced, matches up pretty well with PC manufacturers. It's hard to compare it directly because of the odd screen size, but it's only $100-$200 more than a PC, if even that.)

Re:Summary

[Aiku1337]

(The regular MacBook, surprisingly enough, since Apple is usually overpriced, matches up pretty well with PC manufacturers. It's hard to compare it directly because of the odd screen size, but it's only $100-$200 more than a PC, if even that.)

This is probably my Apple fanboyism talking, but the MacBook (or, previously iBook) has always been competively priced. The entry level iBook was going for 1000 USD and included more standard features than any PC laptop did, for that price. I wouldn't say Apple is usually overpriced, maybe just their pro line. But then again, the pro line is targeted towards business and professionals. You'd expect to pay more.

Re:Summary

[pVoid]

Frankly, I guess this points out that the MacBook Pro isn't "above" anything else.

Well, I'm a long time Microsoft'y, in that I've worked mainly on windows platforms (professionally) for the last decade. I just recently got a mac book pro. I'll tell you this much: I looked for a LONG time for a PC laptop that I could get instead. The only thing that came near in ergonomy was the LG laptops which were ridiculously overpriced. I mean, compare a Dell laptop (which looks like a tank) to a macbook pro, i.e. hold both in your hands, and you will see there is an order of magnitude in difference.

That being said, there are aspects of my Macbook that I am surprisingly disappointed about. Namely: Apple.

From everything I had read - especially anti microsoft bashing comparing how Windows has so many bugs etc - Apple is unbelievably bad at both hardware and software tech support.

Examples: there is a high pitch whining noise that comes from the MacBook Pros. It is quite obviously an electrical leak, which consistently goes away if you switch off the second core. Apple has yet to *officially* acknowledge this problem. It's one thing to acknowledge, it's another thing to replace. They could easily say "yeah, sorry, that's not repairable", but it's quite insulting to go to an authorized dealer and say "there, don't you hear it? it's driving me insane" and get an answer "uhm, sorry, no, I don't hear it". Same for AppleCare.

Speaking of apple care, they treat their custommers like idiots. I had a problem with my fan making a rattling noise - clearly a ball bearing problem. I call apple care, it was so loud she could hear it on the phone without my even putting the phone up to the laptop. I was just laughing when she took me step by step through how to put the installation CD in, boot off of it, and run checkdisk (which btw, yielded all green, to which she grunted in disappointment - I guess people shut off their computers often enough that they always get red warnings about filesystem problems...) Anyways...

And last but not least, they recently came out with a patch for Quicktime that would effectively freeze your entire UI if you ran certain programs. When contacting AppleCare, they asked me which program did this, and I said "Unrar", "Graphviz" and "Adobe apps", to which his 'straight faced' reply was: we're sorry, Apple can not take responsability for third party software. Which is preposterous because it wasn't the third party software failing so much as the *entire* OS freezing up.

They later reissued a new patch that fixed this problem - but Apple *never* admitted that their initial fix was broken.

All of this is that kind of stuff that would turn into a flame storm for Microsoft.

All that aside, I still like my mbp.

Re:Summary

[Darsovit]

Funny, I have found that the Macbook Pro 17" is cheaper than a comparably equipped Dell XPS M1710 17". I've left the Macbook Pro with the default settings (although the hard drive can be changed to truly match the Dell's 100GB 7200 rpm drive since the Dell doesn't have the 120 GB 5400rpm option that the Macbook Pro has) and it's listed on the online store at $2799.00. For the Dell XPS M1710, I chose the basic model, then upgraded the processor to 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo, added the Remote for Windows XP Media Center (the Macbook Pro comes with a remote standard, $29), upgraded the hard drive to 100 GB as noted ($215), upgraded to the CD/DVD Burner combo drive ($50), and added the Bluetooth ($49) and the total at their online store is $3118.

I could upgrade the memory on the Macbook Pro to 2GB and still be under the Dell with 1 GB of RAM.

Granted, this is only a comparison with one competitor, but with the use of the Intel processor in the Mac it can now be compared pretty closely and it would seem to be competing fairly well, at least with this brand.

Re:Summary

[hlimethe3rd]

The fact that the G4-based laptops weren't competitive on performance was largely due to the lag in technology. The 1.25 GHz (or whatever) G4 chip in your brother's iBook G4 probably was competitive with the PC laptops that came out at the same time, but realistically it had been three years since the G4 chips had been significantly refreshed (yes, I'm not counting moving from 1.25GHz to 1.33). Apple's portables were very, very long in the tooth looking just at the chips.

screen is important!

[yagu]

The weakest link in user experience is one of the most important features to have maximum information. This is an ongoing frustration -- for me, the screen is the weakest link in interacting with a computer (assuming disk, cpu, and memory are reasonably up to snuff). If the screen isn't pretty, I ain't happy.

In this review as often occurs there is little feedback objective or otherwise on the screen quality. From the article:

The Screen
TH: I find that the MBP screen has very bad viewing angles, which is extra annoying because it's a laptop (you have to adjust the screen angle all the time). The screen on my 'cheap' Dell Inspiron 6000 is much better in that respect.
AS: I disagree. Everyone seems to go ga-ga over "Brightview" or whatever they're calling it these days. While it does make the picture crisp, it also adds glare from virtually every other angle. I have no issue with the screen position or angle.
TH: I'm not talking about the glossy thing; my Inspiron does not have a glossy screen either. What bothers me on the MacBook Pro is how the colours change even when you tilt your head slightly away from the ideal viewing angle, causing me to adjust or my head, or the screen, continuously; this especially reveals itself via the shadows underneath the windows in the MacOS. The Dell does not have this problem, or at least, not as bad as the MacBook Pro.
AS: I haven't noticed this. I actually find the display to be very bright. I'm in love with the widescreen.
TH: That's for sure, the brightness and wideness are very much appreciated. I just expected a better viewing angle on a 'pro' laptop.

I want to know screen resolution! I want to know measured viewing angles! (For $2000, or $2500 you get 1440x900 -- so-so, for $2800 you get 1680x1050 -- not bad, but way too expensive.) I want to know contrast ratios.

Unfortunately lots if not all of this information is rarely included in discussions and ads for laptops -- I think it's intentional. And, it's the reason I would never buy a notebook or laptop sight-unseen. The screen is something you can't change on a laptop, you'd better be happy with it when you get it. (This has been an excellent policy for me -- I've been very happy with the last several laptops I've had -- if the screen's pretty, I'm happy.)

2 day review of the 1.83/intel dual core

[bloosqr]

Ha I just got a macbook pro two days ago (for free via work). My previous laptop was a powerbook g4 running at 1.333 (which wasn't that old to be honest). The heat issue people are talking about really does seem to be a problem. It feels much warmer than it should be. The keyboard is medium warm (it'd be brilliant in winter i guess!) and the underside is plain hot.

The machine is definitely nice and speedy though. The fact that the "emulation" mode works so well however I honestly a reflection of how bad the old motorola g4 chips were. I benchmarked code on the g4 and it was about as fast as my old p3 800 that it replaced. Native apps work remarkably well (as they should) and emulated apps aka word seem at least as fast as on the motorola chip. I have a feeling these machines will likely really shine once everything goes universal binary.

Where the machine really shines is some of their attention to detail. The camera built into the screen is seriously genius in this day and age of ichat/aim and everyone being permantly logged in. The new frontrow app is so awesome I actually ported that over to my desktop g5 machine at home. (where it is a bit more useful). The weird glowing keyboard thing is a bit pointless if you know how to type but is eye candy, and a fun way.

Battery life: If I unplug it it says I get 3 hours off of it which is about what my old g4 got when I first bought it. (I am surprised the # is that high considering how much heat this thing generates).

Other random things, the machine is dual core but the version of top that it comes w/ only shows one cpu (this is my first dual core machine). I have not benchmarked the machine but i have a feeling it'll be decent. I did try running two video/quicktime apps simultaneously and it seems like each app gets 50% of "the cpu" via top and it doesn't seem like they are both running as if alone (some of that may be drive issues of course, but i have 2 gigs of ram so it should be able to cache it). At least in theory having a dual core unix laptop is totally sex :)

I'll benchmark our mpich/g++ code soon just for fun. Hopefully there is an intel port of their compiler as that is going to make a huge difference. (I had heard somewhere apple had compiled the OS/apps using intels compilers, i hope thats true, i do know however they never used xlc/xlf aka ibm's compiler for the ppc machines).

Incidentally, I think the screen isn't as bright as I was expecting it would be (but same as the g4) and my keyboard "squeeks" in a weird way when i type!

-bloosqr

Re:2 day review of the 1.83/intel dual core

[splatterboy]

I wasn't fujitsu - PPC was a product of the AIM consortium - Apple, IBM, Motorola... Moto designed the G3 & 4 using the PPC architecture from IBM and the G5 was all IBM

Re:Correction

[Darsovit]

The RAM upgrade on the apple is $300 more. But I think you also need to upgrade the video card from the Dell e1705. The ATI Mobility X1400 with Hypermemory (when you click on the Help Me Choose on the Dell website) seems to indicate that it uses 256MB of shared System memory vs. the Macbook Pro's 256MB of GDDR3 on the ATI X1600. So, yes, I did indeed compare it to the high-end gaming laptop because of this.