There are lots of positives. First, the aluminum unibody design is both gorgeous and practical. The precision construction gives the whole unit a solid feel. Aluminum and glass won’t wear out like the plastic on many other laptops. The silver matte finish with black keys looks classy as well.
Fingers glide easily over the large, glass trackpad. The trackpad also operates as a mouse button — it takes a small amount of pressure to click it. Other trackpads I’ve used often register a click just putting my fingers down — the MacBook Pro’s trackpad gives physical feedback which reduces those mis-clicks.
Multiple-finger gestures make it a snap to navigate through documents and websites. Pressing with two fingers instead of one performs the equivalent of a right click. Swiping with 2 fingers scrolls the current window. Spreading fingers apart zooms in; pinching zooms out (similar to the iPhone). Swiping 4 fingers exposes the desktop or switches between applications. These gestures are intuitive and it is hard going back to the Windows laptop after getting used to their convenience (I am really hooked on the 2-finger scrolling).
The keyboard automatically lights up as the room light dims. This isn’t an essential feature (especially for touch typists), but is helpful for picking out the correct function keys after dark. It’s little touches like this that make the MacBook Pro a pleasure to use.
Apple put a lot of thought into the design of their power supply. It has a special connector that attaches magnetically to main body — so it connects easily and won’t cause your laptop to crash to the floor if you trip over it. The connector even has a light that shows it’s connected and charging (turning green when the battery reaches 100%). A little plastic clip on the cord helps manage its length. When traveling, the extension cord can be replaced with a retractable plug that goes directly into an outlet, so there’s even less to carry. The U.S. plug is included with the MacBook Pro, but you can order plugs for other countries.
The solid body, backlit keyboard and MagSafe power supply are nice design flourishes, but the important feature is the long battery life.
The built-in battery can last up to 7 hours between charges so you can get almost a full day of work out of it. The downside is that the battery cannot simply be swapped out when it gets low or reaches its end-of-life. Apple says their smart charging method allows up to 1000 recharges and batteries should last for up to 5 years. The inability to swap in a fresh battery could be an issue for people that take long intercontinental plane trips, although a HyperMac external battery can keep a 13″ MacBook Pro running up to 33 hours.
The MacBook Pro’s LED backlit display provides a wide color gamut (Apple says it is a 60% improvement over the MacBook). This is major plus for art and photography applications. A lot of people complain the glossy display is hard to use outdoors — I like its sharpness and mostly work under indoor lighting. However, I can see how this might annoy some users.
Apple has added a FireWire 800 port and support for up to 8GB of RAM. Currently, the cost of a full 8GB of memory is prohibitively expensive, but 4GB is quite reasonable. Eventually memory prices should drop and the MacBook Pro can be inexpensively upgraded to its full potential. The support for more RAM is a welcome feature as we enter the age of 64-bit operating systems. If you are using Photoshop, editing video or running Windows in the background, you might consider extra memory (the manual describes how to upgrade the memory yourself).
The MacBook Pro is a reasonable value for the money, but cheaper laptops are certainly available. I’ll leave it to others to argue the merits of one operating system over the other. Because the Macs are Intel-based, they can still be used to run Windows applications, either through Apple’s Boot Camp or virtual machine software such as Parallels or Fusion (or Sun’s free VirtualBox). The Mac operating system, OS X, is easy to use, so Windows users needn’t worry about switching.
The new Macs now ship with Snow Leopard, the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system. If the 13″ MacBook Pro you bought came with Leopard, you can upgrade to Snow Leopard for $9.95 via Apple’s up-to-date program (be sure to sign up within 90 days of purchase). Google “snow leopard up to date” for details.
What’s not to like? This MacBook Pro does not have an ExpressCard slot which limits its expandability. Apple is probably right that most users will be satisfied with the SD slot, but pro photographers might prefer to insert their compact flash card. 3D graphic designers might want to consider one of the higher end MacBook Pros that offer a separate graphics processor. Hard core gamers should probably invest in a PC. And it’s no deal-breaker, but a writable Blu-ray drive is still on my wish list. There are rumors that the MacBook Pros will be upgraded with faster processors in January 2010.
The aluminum body is durable — I have had mine for months now and it still look great. Naturally, nothing is totally scratch-proof and scratches on the anodized aluminum case cannot be simply buffed out. Scuff marks happen — true road warriors must learn to accept this as a fact of life. However if it’s a big concern, a Speck See Thru Case or InvisibleShield might offer some piece of mind. Personally, I prefer to just be careful and carry my MacBook Pro in a Tom Bihn Ristretto messenger bag (the STM Small Alley Messenger Bag looks like good alternative).
The 13″ model is perfect for someone wanting a full-featured laptop that’s easy to carry around. The MacBook Air is even more portable, but has less battery life and is not as expandable (plus the Pro’s built-in DVD is convenient). To work on a larger screen, plugging into a standalone display turns the laptop into a desktop machine. I can tell you, I would have loved to have a MacBook Pro when I had to march 20 minutes to campus for computer classes.