Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro

When the most anticipated aspect of a new laptop is what it looks like, it can only be a new laptop from Apple. After all, when did a website last run leaked photos of a new laptop chassis from Dell..?

To be fair, the external design of the new Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro is a little bit special, largely because of the manufacturing process behind it. Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have cases that are carved from a single block of aluminium and assembled from three (or four, if you count the battery cover) single pieces. We’ll leave aside any potential strength advantages that this new “unibody” design bestows and focus on something much more interesting instead – how it looks.

In short, both the new MacBook and MacBook Pro look absolutely gorgeous. Most laptops have a sleek and curvy lid, but that’s about as far as PC manufacturers go, and the undersides tend to be black, vent-ridden plastic. Not so the new MacBooks. The rounded aluminium case completely envelops the laptops and there are no vents to spoil its smooth, matte finish. Both models feel extremely solid as a result and no matter what you think of Macs, there’s no doubt that these are the best-looking laptops by a significant margin.

Size aside, both the MacBook and MacBook Pro are all but identical externally and the only other giveaway is the selection of ports. These now all sit on the left of the case (along with a battery status indicator), but this bit of streamlining isn’t without sacrifice – the MacBook has lost its FireWire port and the MacBook Pro has just FireWire 800. How big a deal this is depends on how badly you need FireWire and while there will be situations where its loss will be keenly felt, we suspect USB 2.0 will prove just as functional for most people (and there is apparently a reason for the omission).

Apple’s cosmetic makeover doesn’t stop at the outside and the interiors of both laptops have also been extensively overhauled. Lift the lid (now held shut with a magnetic fastener) and you’re greeted by the same black ‘Scrabble tile’ keyboard first used on the MacBook Air (Apple’s first laptop with the unibody case design, incidentally).

The keyboard works well enough, although we think it’s about time that Apple dumped the skinny Enter key and micro cursor keys in favour of something more sensibly sized. Backlit keys are standard on MacBook Pro, but aren’t fitted to the MacBook unless you pay top-whack for the 2.4GHz model.

Backlit keys are a better solution to working in the dark than the single keyboard light favoured by Lenovo, but they’re not perfect. Because the keys don’t descend into their holes in the case unless pressed, light leaks out around them rather than just through the legends on their tops – this can be distracting if you’re working in the dark. You can adjust the backlight level, of course – at least under MacOS X, but more on this later.

Another striking redesign is the screen. This is still either a 13.3in or 15.4in widescreen panel, depending on the model, but the matte finish has been replaced with a sheet of glass that covers the whole of the inside of the lid. This is obviously intended to mimic the screen on the iPhone and new iMacs and it looks truly lovely, but the glass is extremely reflective.

The MacBook’s 13.3in screen has a resolution of 1280 x 800, while the MacBook Pro has 1440 x 900, but despite both using LED backlights, one is noticeably better than the other. Viewed in isolation, the MacBook screen is bright, crisp and vibrant, and certainly pleasing to look at. Put it next to the MacBook Pro, however, and it starts to look a little lifeless – the MacBook Pro has a much richer colour saturation and a significantly wider viewing angle. Given the price difference between the two models, potential MacBook owners shouldn’t be too deterred by this (nor the lack of FireWire) – given their other similarities, Apple has to differentiate the two models somehow.

The final innovation to be found on both the MacBook and MacBook Pro is the touchpad. This is both huge (105 x 77mm) and unusual – the touchpad is made from the same kind of toughened glass as the iPhone’s screen and uses the same Multi-Touch technology. There’s also no mouse button and instead, the entire pad is clickable across its entire surface. And by ‘clickable’, we don’t mean ‘tappable’ – you can still tap to select (like on any other touchpad), but the MacBook and MacBook Pro touchpads sit on a  physical mechanism that gives a tactile ‘click’ when pressed (although not across their entire surface – they appear to be hinged at their top edge).

It sounds weird and frankly, it is weird when you first use it – but your brain soon adapts. Clicking and dragging takes the most getting used to, but once you realise that you can either click and drag with one finger, or click with one and drag with another, things start to make more sense. The usual two-finger right-click still works, but you can also set one of the bottom corners of the pad to act as a right-click, too. Again, at least in MacOS X – as alluded to earlier, Windows running under Boot Camp has a few issues, but we’ll deal with this shortly.

So, externally, the new MacBook and MacBook Pro are a roaring success and if laptops were judged on looks alone, Apple would win every award going. Despite being essentially identical though, we prefer the design of the MacBook – the MacBook Pro’s broad ‘shoulders’ above the keyboard look a little out of proportion and the fine speaker grilles look a little like they’re clogged with dust when the light catches them at a certain angle.

Internally, both the MacBook and MacBook Pro are a little less breathtaking and Apple hasn’t taken this opportunity to give a dramatic specification bump. Both models get faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors and a choice of hard disk capacities (the drive is now easily accessible, plus there’s an SSD option), but there is one more interesting addition. Recognising that MacBook owners sometimes like to kick back with a bit of gaming every once in a while, Apple has also slipped in a graphics chipset to suit.  

Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have new nVidia GeForce 9400M graphics chipsets and while this isn’t the last word in mobile 3D graphics, it’s sufficient to play most 3D games at the screens’ native resolution (perhaps a bit lower than native on the MacBook Pro) and at reasonable image-quality settings. In other words, both models will cater to occasional gamers who don’t obsess about detail levels and frame rates – which probably covers most people whose only computer is a laptop.

Apple has, however, taken things a step further with the MacBook Pro and complemented its GeForce 9400M chipset with a beefier 9600M GT chipset. This isn’t dramatically faster than the 9400M (even Apple only claims a 50% speed increase), but it’s enough to play most 3D games at high detail settings with smooth frame rates and in our tests, even Crysis ran smoothly at medium detail settings (albeit at 1280 x 1024).

You need to log off and on again to switch between graphics modes on the MacBook Pro, which is better than a full restart, but still a bit of a pain. The nVidia chipsets used in the MacBook Pro are capable of being switched on the fly as required, but the current version of MacOS X doesn’t support this Hybrid SLI feature.

Getting Windows XP and Vista installed and running on the MacBook and MacBook Pro via Boot Camp is easy enough, but there are a few issues that prevent the Windows experience from being a smooth one. Some are minor and, presumably, driver-based. You can’t adjust the keyboard backlight level unless the backlight is actually on, for example; two-finger mouse clicks actually require three fingers; and there’s no corner right-click option. A couple of others, however, are more problematic.

First is battery life. Under MacOS X, the battery life of both MacBook and MacBook Pro is respectable enough. The MacBook ran for seven hours under light use and three and a half under heavy use. In 9400M graphics mode, the MacBook Pro ran for nearly six hours under light use and just under three and a half under heavy use. Not bad, in other words.

Under Windows Vista, however, the MacBook’s battery life plummeted to just over 90 minutes with heavy use, the MacBook Pro’s dropped to just over an hour. These scores are clearly far lower than they should be and we can only guess that they’re the result of a misbehaving driver. At the time of writing, Apple had yet to get back to us about this problem, so we’ll update this review as soon as it does.

Second is the MacBook Pro’s nVidia 9400M graphics chipset with Boot Camp. This isn’t really a problem as such, since it doesn’t actually work at all with Windows – only the 9600M GT chipset is supported. In other words, MacBook Pro owners running Windows won’t be able to exploit its low-power graphics chipset on battery power.

The new models don't represent a major MacBook upgrade for Apple and while some of the design choices won’t appeal to everyone, it’s difficult to them putting many people off purchasing. If anything, once you’ve clapped eyes on the new models yourself, you’ll probably be more tempted – they’re that good-looking. Specifications could be higher given the price tags and those Boot Camp problems really need sorting out, but Apple will no doubt get around to addressing both issues at some point.