Unibody Macbook Review
Apple have long been infamous for design.
From the Rainbow iMacs to the iPod, and on to the Powerbook and iPhone, Apple has always had a recognisable product.
This particular product revision has been one of the most anticipated though in Apple’s history. The last major revision was almost 5 years ago, making these long overdue, but Apple’s popularity has never been higher either. Having seen the new products I jumped at the chance to replace my beloved but aging Macbook Pro, so my trip to Florida at the end of October was the perfect opportunity to pick one up.
There are no Apple stores in Ireland so I was looking forward to check one out in the flesh. And they don’t disappoint, I’ve spent the best part of 20 minutes in one, once and I’m certain no other store will ever match it for impressiveness... The first thing you notice about the new Macbooks, is the size of the box they come in. I remember being impressed by the size of the box my Macbook Pro came in, but the new Macbook boxes are TINY! They are incredibly small. I’ve seen cereal boxes that are bigger, and it only gets better the further you get into the box.
When you eventually finish drooling over the packaging, you manage to take the Macbook out and open it to have a go. The Unibody case makes for a beautiful laptop. The thing that pulled me to the Macbook Pro before was the aluminium case. I wanted to go mac but I really didn’t like the plastic case of the then Macbooks. But the new unibody case makes the two nearly indistinguishable. The only thing that distinguishes between the two is the bigger screen and the dedicated graphics card. But with the introduction of the new nVidia chipsets the macbook’s now have more than enough graphical grunt for my usage. in fact the new integrated cards provide more power than my old Macbook Pro and at considerably less power. And that new power drives, what is by far, the best screen I have ever seen in a laptop of this size. Admittedly I was a little frustrated that Apple hadn’t updated the resolution of the 13 inch screens, but it’s something that you forget about very quickly.
So, on to my impressions of the laptops performance. I will be honest and say that in terms of general performance, I haven’t noticed much, if any, improvement in performance. There is an improvement in Wi-FI though. It manages to pick up another 2-3 networks in my neighborhood than my old mac. The battery performance has improved greatly as well. I managed a full 6 hours of use on the flight back from the US. I was lucky to get a full 2 hours on my last Macbook Pro.
Overall, I’m in love with the new Macbook, they’re beautiful, well built, and provide a high level of performance in a nice small package.
From the Rainbow iMacs to the iPod, and on to the Powerbook and iPhone, Apple has always had a recognisable product.
This particular product revision has been one of the most anticipated though in Apple’s history. The last major revision was almost 5 years ago, making these long overdue, but Apple’s popularity has never been higher either. Having seen the new products I jumped at the chance to replace my beloved but aging Macbook Pro, so my trip to Florida at the end of October was the perfect opportunity to pick one up.
There are no Apple stores in Ireland so I was looking forward to check one out in the flesh. And they don’t disappoint, I’ve spent the best part of 20 minutes in one, once and I’m certain no other store will ever match it for impressiveness... The first thing you notice about the new Macbooks, is the size of the box they come in. I remember being impressed by the size of the box my Macbook Pro came in, but the new Macbook boxes are TINY! They are incredibly small. I’ve seen cereal boxes that are bigger, and it only gets better the further you get into the box.
When you eventually finish drooling over the packaging, you manage to take the Macbook out and open it to have a go. The Unibody case makes for a beautiful laptop. The thing that pulled me to the Macbook Pro before was the aluminium case. I wanted to go mac but I really didn’t like the plastic case of the then Macbooks. But the new unibody case makes the two nearly indistinguishable. The only thing that distinguishes between the two is the bigger screen and the dedicated graphics card. But with the introduction of the new nVidia chipsets the macbook’s now have more than enough graphical grunt for my usage. in fact the new integrated cards provide more power than my old Macbook Pro and at considerably less power. And that new power drives, what is by far, the best screen I have ever seen in a laptop of this size. Admittedly I was a little frustrated that Apple hadn’t updated the resolution of the 13 inch screens, but it’s something that you forget about very quickly.
So, on to my impressions of the laptops performance. I will be honest and say that in terms of general performance, I haven’t noticed much, if any, improvement in performance. There is an improvement in Wi-FI though. It manages to pick up another 2-3 networks in my neighborhood than my old mac. The battery performance has improved greatly as well. I managed a full 6 hours of use on the flight back from the US. I was lucky to get a full 2 hours on my last Macbook Pro.
Overall, I’m in love with the new Macbook, they’re beautiful, well built, and provide a high level of performance in a nice small package.