Apple Laptops
MacBook
MackBook
Pro
MacBook
Air
MacBook
Air review
It fits in a manila folder,
you can slide it under a door, and if you threw
it hard enough you could probably chop someone
in half with the thing. It's the thinnest, and
if we may say so, sexiest laptop around today:
the MacBook Air. But looks aren't everything
to everyone, and despite all the rhetoric about
being a no-compromises ultraportable, Apple
did leave plenty on the cutting-room floor in
its quest to make an absurdly thin ultraportable
that doesn't skimp on a full size keyboard or
roomier 13-inch display. But, as many potential
buyers have been asking themselves since last
week, is the Air right to be your next machine?
Read on, we'll tell you what we think.
Hardware
It's hard to take lightly (har) the purposeful
design that went into the Air, it's simply and
without a doubt the most beautiful laptop we've
seen in a while. Sure, there have been thinner,
lighter laptops that take up fewer cubic centimeters
-- but that's not really on trial. The goal
of the Air was clear: create a Mac that frequent
fliers wouldn't be ashamed of, or in physical
pain to lug around. But therein lies the rub.
The Air simply doesn't have the power to be
many users' primary machine, while also lacking
many of the features considered necessity by
business travelers. More on that in a minute,
though.
There are a lot of things
that the Air gets right, and a decent amount
of horsepower is one of 'em. Apple didn't take
the easy route and go with an etiolated Ultra
Low Voltage (read: ultra low performance) chip,
they actually pushed Intel to repackage a slower
version of its full-on Core 2 Duo processor.
We were a little disappointed when Steve announced
this wasn't the new power-efficient, lower-heat
45nm Penryn chip design, but in the time we've
played with the Air, it's still rarely managed
to output enough heat to raise an eyebrow. This
is actually a laptop that belongs on your lap
-- without any fear of sterility. Of course,
as our Mac-on-Mac benchmarks showed, the 1.6GHz
chip is still a little on the slow side, but
the Air is by no means unusable. It's not really
one of Steve's "screamers" -- but
ultraportables aren't really intended to be.
The 13-inch LED backlit screen not only sips
power where larger CCFL backlit displays guzzle,
it also looks amazing: crisp, bright, and vibrant.
Where other small laptops use 8-11-inch screens
that are nigh-unreadable by many a squinty Engadget
editor, for a laptop of this size the Air gives
plenty of screen real estate to get things done.
Unfortunately, Apple only offers this display
with a glossy finish, so if you're fond of the
matte or work outside or near a window, be forewarned.
The bezel around the display is a little thick
for our tastes, and the lid might not tilt back
as far as we'd like due to the physical constraints
of the joint design, but these are relatively
minor complaints.
Also rare for an ultraportable is the Air's
full-size keyboard, which adds some (worthy)
width to the body. Those fond of the ridgeless,
separated key design as found in MacBook and
iMac / Mac pro keyboards will feel right at
home. We're not too into this design, but unlike
almost every ultraportable we've owned, the
Air's keyboard feels thoroughly solid and sturdy.
The keys are tactile, not at all mushy, and
backlit to boot. Typing on the Air is a pleasure,
not a chore. The keyboard also happens to be
where the MacBook Air emits audio -- beneath
right home row keys (k, l, ;, ') is the Air's
tinny mono speaker, which seems and sounds more
like an afterthought.
The Air's integrated 802.11n worked well with
our stock D-Link 802.11n router, and transferred
data at about 3-4MBps -- we were certainly satisfied
with its wireless performance. The Bluetooth
2.1 + EDR as a standard option is also nice,
but it's immediately clear the Air needed some
integrated 3G, especially considering its lack
of an ExpressCard slot.
Where a lot of other machines
might have ports and protrusions along their
edges, the Air has none -- it swoops inward
from the edge to the base with only two spots
for plugs, a new, 90-degree angled MagSafe power
connector on the left underside, and a clicky,
extremely sturdy-feeling foldable door that
is impossible to open while resting on the table,
and basically requires picking the entire machine
up. This exposes the Air's only three ports:
one USB 2.0, one micro-DVI, and one headphone.
But here we begin with the design sacrifices,
and at the top of the list is the lack of a
user replaceable battery.
For some this might be an issue, but for others
-- especially those on the road for long periods
of time without access to a power outlet --
a deal-breaker. The Air uses a 37 Watt/hour
lithium polymer (compared to the MacBook Pro's
60WH lithium-ion), and using our normal tests
-- full screen brightness, WiFi and Bluetooth
on, no attached peripherals -- under medium
usage (light browsing and watching a 1:20 h.264
movie) we got a mere 2 hours and 25 minutes.
Under lighter usage (browsing, some audio playback,
no movies) we got closer to 3 hours and 35 minutes.
Not bad, but still nowhere near the 5 hours
Apple promises (under ideal conditions, surely).
Thankfully, the Air's power
adapter is as impressively proportioned as the
laptop, so taking it with you won't be much
of an issue. But users of current generation
adapters be warned: the Air's MagSafe implementation
won't always work with your current MagSafe
adapters simply because the angle and location
make it physically impossible to accommodate
when used on a table. Hardly a huge issue, we
know. But things get worse on the connectivity
side. The USB port is recessed enough that,
while we're sure it meets USB Implementers Forum's
design spec, it realistically won't accommodate
most 3G modems without a USB extension cable,
and some flash drives, as we learned yesterday.
Even the headphone port had a difficult time
accommodating our Shure E4C phones. We got stereo
audio, but a high pitched hissing from not being
fully plugged in and grounded. (This went away
when we used a better-fitting audio extension
cable.)
The micro-DVI port is also not physically compatible
with the mini-DVI port on your MacBook and previous
Apple laptops, so it requires some new connection
accessories for VGA and DVI out, which are thankfully
included in the box. Since the Air doesn't have
a powerful (but space and power-consuming) discrete
graphics adapter, you'll only be able to drive
a 24-inch display, although for many that should
probably be sufficient. (Games and movie watching
also suffer because of the integrated graphics,
since some of that visual load is taken on by
the CPU.) Also integrated is the Air's 2GB of
RAM, built directly into its insanely small
motherboard; processors rarely need to be swapped
in laptops, but are you willing to bank on a
couple of years' use without having to upgrade
your RAM? Perhaps a lot of people are, but we're
not.
The Air also uses a slower
80GB 1.8-inch drive, the same kind that powers
many portable media players. While probably
sturdy enough to withstand normal use, it's
nowhere near as fast as your average 2.5-inch
laptop drive, and will always be behind in storage
should you chose to upgrade later. If you can
afford to spring for the 64GB SSD option, we
highly suggest it -- your machine's reliability,
performance, and battery life will all get a
boost (at the expense of 16GB of space and a
ton of cash, naturally). Oddly overlooked for
inclusion is the Apple Remote; the Air certainly
has the necessary sliver of an IR sensor for
making use of one, but the remote isn't included,
despite being found in the box of just about
every other Apple machine. Oh, and for those
wondering, the Air's built-in iSight is the
VGA variety.
Despite its shortcomings on
the hardware and specs side, though, it's hard
to say enough about how well made the Air feels
-- a particularly important point when you're
taking your machine everywhere. Whereas most
smaller laptops try to cut weight with inner
metal frames and flimsy plastic bodies, the
Air bulks up a bit with an all-metal enclosure
that looks and feels like it was carved out
of a single piece of aluminum. Only time will
tell if metal in the Air's wrist rest area will
pit out and blacken like MacBook Pros and PowerBooks
of years past, but the machine definitely gets
extremely high marks for its the physical engineering.
And no, we're not at liberty to drop test Apple's
review unit, sorry!
Software
Just like every other Apple
machine, the Air runs Leopard -- albeit a slightly
different build (9B2324). The only changes made
have to do with taking advantage of the machine's
oversized touchpad, which now supports multi-finger
gestures in system prefs. Apple thoughtfully
actually includes in-line instructional videos
for learning how the gestures work (and how
to make them), like the three-finger sweep for
backward and forward in Safari, or using two
fingers to rotate an image in iPhoto. This is
just the beginning of touchpad-based multi-touch,
and while it's not always the most practical
way to do things (cmd+R or L seems to us an
easier way to rotate a photo), it's intuitive
and well-integrated.
Apple also hasn't released
any information for third party developers on
how to integrated touch gestures into their
apps, so until they do, only Apple apps will
be able to take advantage of the new input methods.
It's obvious that, with time, Apple will be
rolling out multi-touch on their other machines,
but for now they claim that current hardware
cannot support this input, so don't expect to
see any (official) software updates to enable
multi-touch.
Another feature rolled out
is Remote Disc, Apple's new system for sharing
the optical drives of networked Macs and PCs
with the drive-less Air. As we quickly learned,
you should be prepared to have as much bandwidth
as possible between the Air and your host machine,
-- and don't be disappointed when you can't
do everything with Remote Disc that you can
do with a regular drive. There's no commercial
media playback, no HD support, no ripping, no
burning -- it's really only meant for installing
apps, downloading data, or reinstalling the
OS (more on that in a second). On the upshot,
it did work seamlessly when we tried it.
Still, we think the Air's
external USB SuperDrive (which only works with
the Air, mind you) is a necessity. There simply
isn't any way to transparently replace all the
functionality of an optical drive yet, so we're
kind of bummed Apple didn't just include the
thing in box. [Also, disclosure: we had a pool
running and I bet against a non-bundled optical
drive and lost ten bucks. Thanks, Apple!] There's
no question that a laptop really doesn't need
an optical drive at all times, and we've always
been happy to omit them. But having to shell
out $99 to buy the drive separately just doesn't
sit well with us.
Wrap-up
The Air is a tough call. On the one hand it
proposes to be a no-compromises ultraportable,
but on the other hand it compromises many (but
not all) the things road warriors want. We're
all about removing unnecessary frills and drives
(we rejoiced the day the original iMac bucked
the floppy), but laptops are increasingly becoming
many users' primary -- often only -- machines,
which is why the Air's price doesn't do it any
favors, either. It's hard to justify almost
two grand for a second laptop (or a third machine)
just for travel needs -- and even then, that's
only easily done if all your data lives in the
cloud. Given those sacrifices and that higher-end
sticker, it's more than likely not going to
replace most peoples' current workhorse laptop.
This all might look a bit
different if the Air was a little closer to
MacBook price range, though. We're thinking
$1500 could be a sweet spot, especially if bundled
with the wired Ethernet dongle and SuperDrive.
But we're not going to kid ourselves, either;
the Air isn't supposed to be everything for
everyone. For those in need of a machine that
masters basics in a super thin, light form-factor,
and who have the coin to pay for that ultraportability,
the Air absolutely nails it like few others.
Given its stripped down, one-piece
design, some are calling the Air the iPod of
laptops. The point is debatable as to whether
this machine could have the same appeal to computer
users, but if there is one clear upshot to the
Air, it's that Apple's learned to take the next
step in miniaturizing their portable computers.
While not all Mac users are going to stand in
line to get this latest machine, Apple is doubtless
welcomed back into the ultraportable laptop
market by the technology world. Perhaps the
largest side-effect of the Air won't be ditching
optical drives, though; for the rest of Apple's
consumer base it's now just a matter of time
before other Mac laptop lines benefit from the
technical and engineering advances that made
this thing so thin and light. Give us the lovechild
of the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, and
it's all over.
http://www.engadget.com
Macbook
Pro
The new Macbook Pro is not much of a bump up
from its predecessors, but it is a step in the
right direction. The addition of Multi-Touch
is a great new feature, even on a touchpad that's
smaller than the one on the Air. However, the
Penryn-powered processor in this MBP is running
at roughly the same speed as the last generation's
chips, GHz to GHz, and give no good reason to
upgrade from machines that are less than a year
old. The most interesting point here is the
boost in efficiency the now-pervasive LED backlighting
and 45nm Penryn chips bring to the MacBook Pro,
which together give an hour extra battery life
over older models with CCFL screens and 65nm
CPU technology. That makes this the most efficient
Macbook Pro yet.
Multi-Touch Trackpad
After a month of getting used to the Multi-Touch
trouchpad on the MacBook Air, we have to say
that the Pro's touchpad is not quite as good
in comparison. Compared to the Air, the Pro's
touchpad is slightly narrower in width and a
whole half of an inch shorter in height. Our
initial thoughts were that the smaller touchpad
would make using Multi-Touch more difficult,
but that wasn't exactly the case.
Our first impression after
testing with iPhoto was that the smaller touchpad
did make the use of Multi-Touch more difficult,
but after a few minutes we realised we were
trying to use our fingers in the same fashion
as we did on the Air, where we had more room
to gesture. For example, on the Air we skipped
through photos with our fingers vertically but
because of the Pro's size it's not comfortable
to do this. So we placed our three fingers horizontally
and it worked perfectly.
We came to the same conclusion
with the rotate function. Instead of trying
to move our rotate finger from the top of the
touchpad to the bottom, we realised that by
simply doing the rotate movement with more of
a flick, iPhoto and Preview correctly rotated
our photo to the next layout.
For testing zoom, we did a
side-by-side comparison with the Air and found
that the Pro's smaller touchpad actually zoomed
into the same position as it did using the Air.
Overall we were surprised
to find out that the Pro's smaller touchpad
didn't actually make the use of Multi-Touch
too much more difficult, but after getting use
to the Air's larger touchpad it sure felt compromised.
One thing to note though is that the matte screen
on the version we got was less bright than the
glossy screen on the MacBook Air. This might
be the matte vs. glossy difference, or it might
be that the MacBook Air's screen is just plain
brighter.
Keyboard
The updated keyboard now has the F-key functions,
same as the MacBook Air, and we think the additional
Dashboard and Expose buttons use the F-keys
nicely. We might not actually use buttons for
these features but we think it's cool that the
buttons are now clearly labelled.
Benchmark
The Penryn MacBook Pro has already been benched
and compared to the previous generation. But
if you are considering buying the new model,
you probably have an older MBP that isn't the
previous gen, which is still fast enough to
make it not worth updating from. With that in
mind we tested the new Penryn MBP agaisnt a
year old Merom MBP and found a slight increase
in power overall.
In a video encoding test, the Penryn MBP exported
a 2.5min HD trailer in11 min., where as the
older Merom MBP took 13 min. As noted in the
temperature section, the Penryn did use much
more of its power to accomplish the encoding
which produced more heat and drained more battery.
If you would like to see the Xbench results
and compare it to your own machine you can check
them out here.
Temperature
While idling, the Penryn MBP's CPU was running
at 53ºC —slightly cooler than the
Merom MBP which had 56ºC. But as for the
actual experience, the new Penryn MBP felt much
cooler on your lap than the older Merom.
While performing a video encode
in iMovie with the new Penryn MBP CPU was operating
at a temperature of 76ºC; actually warmer
than the older Merom MBP at 74ºC. The surprising
increase in operating temperature during a video
encode is based on the fact that it's a more
powerful machine. Once the the encoding started,
the Penryn was able to use more power to get
the job done quicker, but in return it produced
more heat.
Battery
So why do Apple's battery ratings look the same
or lower in comparison to the last generation's
Macbook Pro ratings? Simple: They made the tests
harder. Again, according to numbers provided
by Apple, for this and the last generation's
MacBook Pro's battery life, you get about half
an hour more due to the Penryn redesign, and
half an hour more from the LED backlights. As
with the AirBook ratings, your mileage will
definitely vary. Downwards. But relative to
the older books, these are more miserly.
Conclusion
Overall this MacBook Pro update is nothing amazing.
The Multi-Touch touchpad and the Penryn processor
are nice upgrades, but not necessarily something
that a previous generation MacBook Pro user
would feel an urgency to upgrade to. In the
end it is clear that this update is more about
efficiency than power, since the Penryn processor
and LED backlighting allow for better battery
life
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/
Apple MacBook
Key Specs:
* 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
* 100GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
* 2GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM (upgraded from stock amount)
* Intel GMA950
* 13.3" Glossy Widescreen (1280 x 800)
First impressions
One thing I noticed about
the Apple MacBook which wasn't entirely apparent
from all the photos I'd seen swarming the net
was the contrast between the glossy white and
the matte grey of the inside. Everything I'd
seen so far suggested a difference far more
subtle if at all! In reality the difference
is pretty large and I'm not too sure if I'm
keen on it yet. I was extremely close to going
for the Blackbook but common sense prevailed,
the £100 or so difference meant an extra
1GB of RAM which was far more useful. Besides,
I've seen the way my Navy Nintendo DS Lite and
my Logitech Midnight Black MX1000 mouse pick
up fingerprints, and I despise dust and dirt!
The texture is very nice,
smooth to the touch but not glossy, a lot of
people have mentioned the lip at the bottom
of the macbook where just below the trackpad
meets the glossy surface. There's been suggestions
that it's quite sharp and it can cut into your
wrist when typing. The way my hands rested when
typing meant my wrist never got near the edge
and even when it does it's not sharp enough
to cut it, it's a non-issue for me.
Build quality
The MacBook is an extremely
sturdy laptop, I compared it with a Dell at
work and an Acer at home. The Dell (although
it is around 2 years old) creaked all over the
place, it doesn't help that there's flaps and
slots all over the place. With the Dell you
could also press the back of the screen and
see the results on the LCD, as many of you would've
done at some point. With the Macbook there wasn't
a hint of shimmering, I dare not press it harder!
Another aspect of the Macbook I like is the
port arrangement, the lines it leaves are so
clean with 6 ports on the left hand side towards
the back and that's it. You have the tiny IR
sensor for Front Row on the front and the slot
loading superdrive. By its very nature there's
less room for creaking and less weak points.
On the one hand you could argue that its lack
of expansion slots are a downside, but personally
I'd rather have it just the way it is, I've
not seen a well implemented expansion card slot
outside of Apple.
Heat issues? What heat issues....
Yes everyone has heard the
horror stories regarding the Macbook Pro and
when the Macbook came out everyone feared the
worst. I'm not going to comment on people ripping
apart their Macbook and reapplying thermal paste,
people yanking out bits of plastic they deem
extra. I'm just going to let you know how my
Macbook is. Under normal load it's not even
warm to the touch, the whole of the surface
where the keyboard lies is cool to the touch
all over. Under normal load the fans don't even
come on, the Macbook is absolutely silent. Under
normal load I hear no whine, moos or anything
of the kind. Perhaps I'm lucky, but more than
likely I'm the norm, it's the few exceptions
which are plastered all over the net portraying
some sort of horror story. Under full load the
fans come on but they're not intrusive, it's
still quieter than my iMac, the rear left near
the Escape key gets warm but not hot. Running
CoreDuoTemp displays an idle temp of around
40-50 with it between 70 and 80 on full load,
these numbers are well within the operating
spec of a 100 degrees maximum (Core Duo spec
sheet section 3.2).
Expandability
This is one of the first Apple
laptops I can remember that has such ease of
use with regards to replacing the hard drive.
After taking the battery out you have 3 small
(and I mean small, glasses screw small) screws
to undo and an L shaped bracket comes out, one
side revealing the 2 memory slots and the other
revealing a slide out SATA 2.5" hard drive.
I was tempted initially to stick with the standard
hard drive and buy a 160GB Seagate perpendicular
hard drive until I realized they don't offer
it in SATA yet. The second option was a 100GB
7200 RPM drive but ultimately it was still cheaper
to upgrade to 100GB from Apple and I couldn't
be bothered to buy an enclosure for the redundant
hard drive Apple supplied (I couldn't not use
it!).
Trackpad and its features
The trackpad is fortunate
in that it's inherited many of the nice features
of its (far bigger) 17" brother (and in
a hacked up pre 10.4.7 kind of way its 15"
brother too). Within OS X I'm never found wanting
a second mouse button, I've taken a quick video
to hopefuly demonstrate how the right clicking
works on the trackpad as well as the scrolling.
There's 2 ways to right click:
1. You can tap 2 fingers
on the trackpad itself
2. You can have 2 fingers on the trackpad whilst
pressing the single trackpad button
I personally find myself just
tapping with 2 fingers to right click because
I'm a tapper, as a result of this I prefer this
trackpad implementation to the traditional 2
button trackpad. I used to find myself tapping
the trackpad for a regular click then moving
down to the right click when needed. This way
I can get my clicking and secondary clicking
all out of the trackpad.
Here's the option to enable
the two fingered tapping:
Scrolling is another area
that I feel the Macbook (and Pros) excel, I've
read people call it clunky and unwieldy but
I love how simple it is. In a similar fashion
to right clicking you just place 2 fingers on
the trackpad and move in any direction, it's
not strictly left/right and strictly up/down
you can scroll diagonally throughout 360 degrees.
Again I've included a video to demonstrate.
When it comes to performance
with scrolling (and window resizing) OS X started
at the lowest it could possibly get, with each
new ($129.99) update it's brought massive performance
boosts in this area but with my iMac I still
felt it had a step to go before being slick
and snappy. The Macbook makes this final jump
with scrolling and window resizing being stupidly
fast, everything I've thrown at it has been
instant (apart from PowerPC apps via Rosetta).
There are two kinds of people
out there, those who like laptop style keyboards
and those who don't. If you fall into the latter
category then I don't think you'll like the
Macbook keyboard at all. If on the other hand
you do then I think you'll love it. I fall into
the camp that loves laptop style keyboards,
I love the reduced amount of travel compared
to regular keyboards, I love how quiet they
are compared to regular keyboards and I love
Macbook keyboard. If I have one gripe it's that
the enter key is a little too small, initially
I found myself missing it and hitting the ]
or the key sat next to it. I've got used to
it now but it's worth mentioning.
Aperture and the Pro apps
One of the reasons I bought
this laptop was to take it with me on holiday
in July, I wanted to be able to run Aperture
on it when I was away to organize and touch
up my photos. This has been a sticking point
and a huge topic of discussion for many people
because there's a huge demand for a small form
factor Pro laptop. The Macbook isn't it, not
only because of the lack of dedicated GPU but
because of size. At over 5 lbs and with the
dimensions it is, it's not the 12" Powerbook
replacement many were after. Regardless, I bought
it for that because that's what I need right
now. If I had the option of a <4 lbs 12.1"
Apple Macbook Pro then I would've snapped it
up in an instant. Still, they didn't so this
is what we have, how's the performance on the
"Pro" apps?
In Final Cut Studio the performance
so far has been pretty good, here's the link
to the Creative Mac benchmarks and they're pretty
favorable. In Final Cut Pro rendering it was
alongside the Dual 2.0GHz G5, in Motion it was
faster in 3 out of the 4 tests and in Compressor
it was faster in 3 out of the 4 tests. Now as
time moves on and Final Cut Studio evolves there's
no telling how much of it they'll shift onto
the GPU, in which case the Macbook starts hitting
its weak point. But for the time being the very
fact that a £899 laptop beats out a £1399
(excluding screen) Dual 2.0GHz G5 is pretty
darn good.
I found no similar benchmarks
for Aperture so I fired it up. The first thing
I hit was the resolution warning, a dialog pops
up when you try and run Aperture saying it doesn't
meet the resolution requirements (1280 x 854).
With Aperture 1.1.1 you have the option of either
just running Aperture or quitting. Having previously
used the program on a 1680 x 1050 20" iMac
it did feel a little cramped at first, where
on the iMac you can edit photos within the window
you don't really have that luxury on the Macbook,
full screen is really the only way. Browsing
through the library and doing the basic tasks
like white balance etc are pretty quick, but
when you get into anything more than that you
do notice that it's doing some pretty intensive
work. Watch the video and you'll see how using
the crop and straighten tool isn't quite as
instant as you'd expect. I'd say it was on par
with my iMac with the basics and slightly slower
for the rest so you know with a dedicated GPU
it's simply going to be faster.
The Macbook certainly isn't
a work horse for Aperture, it's not intended
to be but for those hankering after the smallest
laptop Apple offers I'd say it just about passes
for a mobile Aperture workstation. There's certainly
room in Apple's lineup for a proper small form
factor Pro laptop regardless of what they (publicly)
say, I imagine somewhere along the line when
Merom kicks in and Apple learn all their lessons
from their first generation of Intel laptops
we'll see that hole filled in their lineup.
Magsafe
Unlike others I'm not one
who's proclaiming this as a stroke of genius,
I guess that's because I've been fortunate to
never have tripped on a power lead. It's certainly
a nicely engineered feature and I appreciate
having it but I've never been unlucky enough
to require it. For those who don't know, Magsafe
is a magnetic power lead. The idea is if someone
trips on the lead it'll unplug itself sparing
your laptop the fall. If you pull on it parallel
to the laptop then the lead might as well be
permanently bonded to the laptop, it's almost
irremovable, but pull it at any sort of angle
and it'll come straight out. Great in theory
but I wonder if it'll work as nicely in practice,
I'd rather not test to find out, you'll have
to make do with my nicely controlled videos
of it in action :-)
I've got to say that Boot
Camp is a stroke of genius on Apples behalf,
they've added a safety net which has been holding
many people back from switching, just one extra
thing made possible by the switch to Intel.
As with many people there are certain Windows
applications that simply aren't replaceable
by anything OS X has to offer, in the past we've
had to make do by either buying a cheap Windows
box or using Virtual PC (or equivalent). We
now have the luxury of Virtualization and running
Windows natively. For me the one app I can't
make do without is Visio (in combination with
Harnware so Omnigraffle or something similar
isn't an option), before I went down the road
of setting up my laptop just the way I was going
to have it it was experiment time.
The first application on my
laptop was Parallels Desktop RC2, I assigned
the machine 512 MB RAM, enabled Virtualization
and let it fly by installing Windows XP. The
first thing that struck me was the speed, I'd
been used to Virtual PC and it's 90 minute Windows
install (at the minimum!) but this flew through
it as fast as it would being native, once at
the desktop my expectations were brought down
with a bump, the GUI felt a little sluggish
which is just what I'd feared. One thing I didn't
realize was that Parallels has its own set of
OS tools which you install in the virtual machine
just like its competitors. After doing this
there was a great, great difference in responsiveness.
I proceeded to install Office 2003 because this
was the test to see if I could get away with
just Parallels or if I'd actually have to dual
boot to get what I wanted. Word and Excel were
good, I wouldn't say fast and I wouldn't say
native speed because I've since used it on Boot
Camp and it's simply not as fast. Could you
happily use it on a day to day basis? Damn right.
Is it stupidly faster than all other Virtual
PC solutions on the Mac before? Again, damn
right. When it came to Visio though and opening
some sample files I use there was a tiny bit
of lag in moving around the drawing. It probably
wouldn't bother me but I like working at 100
MPH, making mistakes and fixing them rather
then plodding along. As a result I wasn't happy
enough using it knowing I could get blazing
performance via Boot Camp. For 90% of the things
people need Windows for I'd say it was perfect
and at the moment it's a $39.99 pre order with
the final product costing $79.99 now, that's
a bargain in my eyes but something to consider
if you don't already own Windows.
Parallels Desktop
Boot Camp was a bit of a shot
out of the dark from Apple, for weeks the multi
OS boot competition had been gathering steam
and no sooner had it been solved and the prize
money stumped up had Apple released their (far
more elegant) solution. Boot Camp does a very
slick job of holding your hand to partition
your hard drive and install Windows. The setup
will give you a graphical representation of
the HD split by a slider you can grab, you simply
resize to your liking. Personally I fancied
more of a play! I actually wanted 3 partitions,
something Boot Camp can't offer. I wanted XP,
OS X and a third partition to store all my media;
this third partition would be visible by both
with shared music, movie, pictures and desktop
folders. I followed this tutorial to create
my 3 partitions and it worked without a hitch.
I decided on the media partition being HFS+
and using Macdrive on Windows rather than FAT32.
Believe it or not one of the reasons for this
was FAT32 volumes always appear in uppercase
in OS X and I couldn't stand that.
So, does Vista work?
If you're following any of
the steps I mention below, don't blame me if
you hose your OS X install or your Macbook catches
fire...
Taking it one step further
than running the upgrade advisor on XP via Boot
Camp (which interestingly gives good results,
the Macbook is Aero Glass capable for those
who want to know) I decided to give Vista Beta
2 a try. The install wasn't as flawless as the
XP install, I did a fresh install as opposed
to an upgrade and there were a few hoops to
jump through. First step was to boot from the
Vista Beta 2 CD and delete the 200MB EFI partition
then proceed to install Vista on the partition
created by Boot Camp. After you restart midway
through installation there is an error message
related to Winload.exe, you have to boot from
the CD again but this time choose recovery options,
the installer will detect a repairable partition
and offer to repair it. Repair, restart, continue
installation like normal. Once you get to the
desktop you have the issue of quite a lot of
unrecognized hardware, I decided to give the
driver CD that Boot Camp creates a try. The
installation of the drivers actually completes
but there's still quite a lot of unrecognized
hardware, Vista reports that one of the Intel
GPU components isn't installed correctly and
although I could run at the native 1280 x 800
resolution it was choking on the performance
advisor getting only a 2 which is less than
when the advisor is run on Windows. As a result
(I imagine) there was no Glass, sound was also
broken. Performance generally felt ok but as
a test it wasn't really successful, I'd lost
patience and I wanted to get my OS X/XP setup
finalized to I could get to the setup I wanted.
XP on Boot Camp, OS X and
my shared partition
Performance of XP on Boot
Camp is as you'd expect it, blazing fast, it
is a dual core 2.0 GHz chip with 2GB of 667
MHz memory after all. After installing Macdrive
and picking up my third HFS+ partition I simply
used TweakUI to relocate my My Music, My Movies,
My Pictures and Desktop folder to the HFS+ partition.
I'd made the 60GB partition my Home folder with
Netinfo Utility in OS X so the 2 operating systems
shared the media folders. This in my eyes is
exactly the type of setup I imagined and wanted
and I'm more than happy with how it's worked
out. The only 2 applications (excluding TweakUI)
I installed were Office 2003 and Office 2007,
performance on both was instant as you'd expect.
One thing I'm yet to try is anything taxing
on the GPU e.g. games. I don't think I ever
will, my DS Lite and 360 have that area covered
but from the benchmarks I've seen around the
place I wouldn't get my hopes up.
The drivers CD which Boot
Camp created includes drivers for everything
apart from the IR sensor and in a way the iSight
(gets installed but it doesn't work). Bluetooth,
wireless and video all work as expected. One
of the best features of the laptop which is
so perfect in OS X is all of a sudden crippled
in XP, the trackpad. You don't get any scrolling,
no advanced right click tapping, nothing. Straight
away I'd suggest you install AppleMouse, a utility
that I set to run at startup which gives you
the ability to use ctrl + click to right click.
Another thing which is worth mentioning is there
is no delete key on the Macbook, there's a backspace
but no delete. This means no ctrl + alt + del,
although for the task manager there's other
ways around it for users who need to ctrl +
alt + del to logon there's not. Fortunately
there are quite a few utilities to remap the
keyboard. I personally used a small utility
called remapkey.exe which is part of the Windows
Server 2003 resource kit. I changed the right
hand Apple button to the del key, normally it's
the Windows key but there's already one on the
left hand side so it was spare.
Performance
Always handy in a review,
there are many many reviews already out there
with every type of benchmark imaginable so I'm
only including the ones I felt relevant to me.
First up is video encoding. I do loads of MPEG2
encoding and MPEG4 encoding so first up is encoding
some h.264.
h.264 Encoding Test Setup:
Handbrake 0.7.1 (Universal)
Lost In Translation DVD (gotta test it out on
something decent)
Chapter 5 (03:55)
Video - 1000 kbps variable bitrate
Sound - 128 kbps
h.264, x264 main profile
720*384
This was a huge boost to me
as this is one of the most frequent activities
I perform. The dual core really comes into its
own when video encoding is concerned.
High Definition Video Playback:
Before purchasing the Macbook
I'd read good things in regards to HD playback,
the GMA950 was actually pretty competent when
it comes to playback of 720p and even 1080p
material. To test this out I tried the following
from Apples HD gallery:
BBC Motion Gallery: Africa
(720p)
Warren Miller's Higher Ground (1080p)
The 720p video played in a
window and full screen without dropping a single
frame, impressive I'm sure you'll agree. Even
better than that was the performance of the
1080p clip, playing this on my iMac brought
it to a crawl with the clip averaging around
11-15 FPS. On the Macbook this wasn't the case,
obviously it can't be played 1:1 in a window
so I tried it in a window filling the screen
and full screen, both times it averaged around
20-24 FPS but only by looking at the movie info
could I tell, it was a very smooth experience.
General GUI performance:
I've already commented on
the fantastic window resizing performance earlier
on in the review so I thought I'd just include
a little video clip of Expose in action, the
GPU flies through it without a hint of stutter.
Photoshop Test:
I've tested it in every way
I can imagine by using a standard test borrowed
from the MacNN forums. The test is as follows:
1 - Download the test image
from here
2 - Save it to the computer and then open it
up in Photoshop
3 - From there please apply a 'radial blur'
with the settings at:
Amount = 100
Blur Method = Spin
Quality = Best
To get the time you can either
use a stopwatch or use the timing facility in
Photoshop.
I will be including the following
figures from myself:
Photoshop CS2 via Windows
XP in Parallels Desktop RC2
Photoshop CS2 via Windows XP in Boot Camp
Photoshop CS2 Natively on the 2.1GHz G5 iMac
Photoshop CS2 via Rosetta on the Macbook
Photoshop CS2 via Rosetta on the Macbook (after
it's cached the instruction set)
I'll also include other figures
as a reference point, here's the results:
(view large image)
The figures don't really tell
the whole story, for example it was faster under
Parallels then under Rosetta but the responsiveness
was greater in OS X than in the virtual machine.
Boot Camp is a different story but I wouldn't
go as far as restarting the Macbook to run Photoshop
CS2, Rosetta is perfectly fine. The reason I
included 2 Rosetta benchmarks in the test was
because I've read that OS X caches the PowerPC
instructions, if you're doing the same PowerPC
stuff over and over again (e.g. this filter)
it speeds up greatly, load times are also reduced
with Photoshop CS2 going from around 6-7 bounces
to 3 bounces on the second launch.
Speaker, Wifi and battery
life
I thought I'd briefly touch
on this, the speakers on the Macbook aren't
actually visible initially, they're hidden within
the hinge on the far left and far right. The
sound quality is adequate but nothing more,
sound via headphones and external speakers though
is a different matter with the quality being
exactly as good as you'd expect. The WiFi range
on the Macbook is extremely good, sat in my
garden around 50-60 ft away from the Linksys
router I got 3 out of 4 bars, even picking up
neighbours WiFi from around 80 ft away.
Apple claim up to 6 hours
for the Macbook but I've gotta say that must
be with the screen on minimum, everything throttled
and no work being done. Browsing the net, listening
to iTunes and playing around with Aperture gave
me 3:15, turn WiFi off and I get an estimated
time of over 4:30. I'm glad we've arrived at
the stage where 3-4 hours of battery life is
merely average, I remember my VAIO about 7-8
years ago having around 90 minutes of battery
life. Here's to the next 7-8 years and 12-15
hours of battery life!
Conclusion
The Macbook angered a lot
of people, but I think it just happened to anger
the most vocal of Apple fans. I feel this laptop
is going to be huge and one of Apples biggest
sellers, it doesn't "Complete the family"
like Apple says, there's still room for a small
form factor Pro laptop and the Macbook isn't
it. For the rest of us though I think it's fantastic
value for money. I have a few gripes about the
laptop with the first being the most obvious:
the GPU. Yes the majority of users aren't going
to notice but it stinks of cheap for the sake
of it by Apple. I imagine their margins could've
allowed for a X1300, heck even something as
low as a X300 would've sufficed, it's still
better then what we have now. From what I've
read the GMA950 is an extra $4 over the regular
945 chipset, with prices like that it's not
hard to understand why Apple went down this
route. All being said I'm happy, very happy
with the Macbook. I've previously owned a 12"
Powerbook and I feel this improves on it in
every way which mattered to me, I also think
it looks a lot better!
That being said, when Apple
announce their 12.1" widescreen, 0.8"
thin, 2.0GHz Merom, X1400 GPU with 160GB perpendicular
HD I'll be first in line whatever the cost,
ready to dump all my impressions on you lot!
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