Apple MacBook 2008 Release
Overview
It's big news whenever Apple announces new products and now Apple’s bestselling consumer notebook receives the long rumored major redesign that is no doubt, another stunner. Just when you thought Apple couldn’t make the previous generation MacBook any better, they come around and offer this aluminum and glass beauty that is even thinner, lighter, and more powerful than before. Now that Apple has brought its renewed MacBooks ($1299 starting) and MacBook Pros ($1999 starting) even closer together by offering the same design, engineering, and -for the first time on the MacBook - aluminum body to both notebook lines, the once straightforward consumer and pro-line product differentiation is slowly fading away. Is this the best MacBook to date? Is it safe to call the MacBook, the MacBook Pro "mini"? Read on.
Design
The new MacBook and MacBook Pro make some significant strides in the design department. First, the MacBook for the first time, joins the MacBook Pro in offering an all-aluminum body, ditching the white polycarbonate plastic that once defined the consumer line. In fact, both machines look pretty much identical to each other - offering a black glass bezel screen and black "chiclet-style" keyboards to reflect the new Apple design direction first introduced with the current iMac and iPhone. It's a stunner for sure. The exterior borrows cues from the MacBook Air using tapered edges that trick you into thinking it's even thinner than it already is. The magnetic latch opens and closes the display with buttery smoothness and without mechanical parts. Aa satisfyingly solid "thunk" can be heard when closed. Available in the more expensive $1599 model are LED backlit keys - a first for the MacBook.
Aside from the switch to a fully aluminum casing that replaces the now-defunct white plastic and/or black matte finish of the previous generation, Apple is touting its new manufacturing process as a technological and engineering breakthrough. Using a full slab of aluminum to construct the MacBook and MacBook Pro, not only does this revolutionary process create a body and chassis that is much stiffer with no flexing, these new notebooks use less mechanical screws, parts and pieces to construct together, and thus allow Apple is able to achieve a lighter and thinner product. The result is a notebook that is so clean and so sleek looking in design, it's devoid of any evidence of screws to piece it together and without any vents, confirms that this new design doubles as an effective heatsink.
While it's nice to see the MacBook now offer the same look and materials as the MacBook Pro, Apple may now run the risk of cannibalizing sales of its own pricier MacBook Pros, as they both look almost identical to each other and features-wise, the line between the two is blurring. Call it the MacBook Pro mini if you will in appearance, Apple has revolutionized a new way to build quality notebooks that are also environmental friendly.
Size and Weight
Impressively, the new MacBook is even thinner and lighter than before, achieving a thickness of only .95 " - the same as the new MacBook Pro. At 4.5 pounds, the new MacBook is 1.5 pounds lighter than the outgoing model with weight evenly distributed across thanks to its unibody construction (read: less parts). At 12.78" x 8.94", the new machines are pretty much identical in dimensions to the last generation models.
Keyboard
Love it or hate it, Apple has now transitioned its entire Mac lineup to the retro-looking "chiclet-style" keyboard with the new MacBooks. Rather than color match the keys with the aluminum body, Apple's new design direction employs the use of black keys to give the notebook an interesting design contrast. The downside of having black keys is noticeable fingerprint smudging from oily fingers; At least it won't look and get dirty like the older white MacBooks. Aesthetics aside, the full-size keyboard is a real pleasure to type on with very solid and satisfying clicks. The keys may be flat and spaced out, but it's oh-so-comfortable to type on with just the right amount of key travel and spring action. The higher end model also offers LED backlit keys for the first time on a MacBook - once again, blurring the lines between the MacBook and MacBook Pro in features.
Display
With a gorgeous 13.3" LED-backlit LCD screen fully encased beneath a black bezeled glass, the MacBook's display is stunning to look at even when powered off. The glossy finish makes colors really pop and adds to its enhanced vibrance, but at the cost of massive glare, making outdoor viewing difficult. Indoor viewing is not as bad, but reflections abound so be mindful of viewing angles and tilt adjustments. At first glance, the display seems identical to the previous MacBook screen with the same 1280x800 native resolution, but thanks to the new LED-backlighting, the display is evenly lit across the screen and noticeably brighter than the previous generation models. Watching movies was a real treat even though you'll find yourself seeing your own reflection in lighted areas. But when compared to the MacBook Pro's larger screen, the MacBook's picture quality is still inferior and you'll notice the contrast and blacks drop out when viewed from an angle - The MacBook Pro's, on the otherhand, looks great at any angle. This is a big reason why Apple would like for you to pay the extra money to go Pro for the better screen. A built-in iSight camera is included as well like before on the top of the display.
Buttonless Glass Trackpad
Apple once again leads the competition by offering zero buttons...no really! Apple has created the first "buttonless" trackpad built entirely of glass that also includes multi-touch technology. The entire trackpad is essential a button in itself where pushing down creates a solid click to confirm depresses. While it takes getting used to at first, the trackpad actually turns out to be very intuitive with a smooth glossy feel. The MacBook Air introduced 3-finger scrolling and the MacBook and MacBook Pro now offer 4-finger multi-touch scrolling for calling upon Expose and Spaces functionality. While quirky, you'll soon appreciate the wonders the new glassy trackpad's buttonless design provides.
Connectivity
Apple has shrewdly and neatly moved all ports to the left side of the notebook (the right side now occupies the lone optical drive), giving it a very clean and organized look so there's no cluttered wires coming out of either side. With the MacBook, you get 2 USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet port, audio in/out jacks, MagSafe charge port, and the new mini DisplayPort that replaces the old mini-DVI out in an effort to save precious component space. Also of convenience is the battery meter on the same side. In a surprising move, Apple has curiously decided to omit FireWire in the new MacBook that was previous made standard across the entire Mac lineup. Now, the only way for media heads to take advantage of FireWire connectivity is to shell up the $700 for the MacBook Pro or buy a pricey adapter. While most people can argue that FireWire's adoption is dwindling in favor of USB, one of the unique things that made FireWire so special for Macs is the target disk feature, allowing the computer to boot OS X off any FireWire external drive. Call it cost-cutting or the death of FireWire adoption, we call it a disappointment.
The DisplayPort is another interesting move on Apple's part to capitalize on a new standard that not only saves component space from the larger DVI and mini-DVI ports, but transitions across all future Macs. Unfortunately, Apple is skimping on the accessories as you'll have to shell the hefty $99 for the mini DisplayPort adapter kit to connect an external monitor. Harsh.
For the common consumer, the MacBook provides just enough of what you need and nothing you don't in terms of available ports. Trimming the fat, Apple still doesn't offer any built-in digital card reader into the unit when compared to the competition and ExpressCard is a feature you'll only find on the MacBook Pro. Limited but more than sufficient.
Upgrading
One of the pains of owning an Apple notebook before was the difficulty in upgrading the basic hardware components. It took a few dozen tiny screws just to get to the harddrive! Not so with these new notebooks. Apple clearly did it's homework when redesigning the MacBook and MacBook Pro, making it very easy to open and upgrade. Only 2 aluminum plates pieces hold the base together, providing easy access into the harddrive compartment and RAM slots through a simple flip of a latche. The big news is the removable battery, now tucked neatly beneath one panel next to the hard drive. Upgrading is limited to your standard harddrive upgrade (SATA or SSD) and adding more RAM (up to 4GB max).
Performance
We've ran the awesome xbench scoring system for the Mac OSX system. The following xbench file has been generated:
Results 166.40
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F2088)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model MacBook5,1
Drive Type FUJITSU MHZ2160BH FFS G1
CPU Test 130.27
GCD Loop 231.33 12.19 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 110.01 2.61 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 89.98 2.97 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 161.79 28.17 Mops/sec
Thread Test 223.78
Computation 394.19 7.99 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 156.24 6.72 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 169.95
System 187.15
Allocate 219.84 807.34 Kalloc/sec
Fill 160.39 7798.53 MB/sec
Copy 190.62 3937.16 MB/sec
Stream 155.64
Copy 148.05 3057.84 MB/sec
Scale 147.50 3047.36 MB/sec
Add 165.94 3534.84 MB/sec
Triad 162.89 3484.61 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 156.66
Line 144.27 9.60 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 187.28 55.91 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 153.22 12.49 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 151.91 3.83 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 152.99 9.57 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 137.40
Spinning Squares 137.40 174.30 frames/sec
User Interface Test 263.01
Elements 263.01 1.21 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test 34.41
Sequential 40.08
Uncached Write 60.79 37.32 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 24.75 14.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 29.32 8.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 113.16 56.87 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 30.14
Uncached Write 11.14 1.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 65.17 20.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 58.06 0.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 96.87 17.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Battery Life: 187 minutes Recharge Time: 122 minutes
Features:
The MacBook is a real engineering marvel. It's stunning good looks compliment the bevy of new advanced technology and engineering features. The Intel Core2Duo 2.0Ghz model ($1299) we received proved plenty capable of handling most common computing tasks and comes with a 160gb harddrive and 2gb of RAM (with the 1066Mhz FSB). A 2.4Ghz model is available as well for an additional $300 sticker price and includes a 250Gb SATA drive. Both models offer the option of the pricey but fast SSD drive.
Ditching the weak integrated graphics chipset from Intel, the MacBook finally offers a dedicated true graphics engine in the form of the nVidia GeForce 9400M making for better handling of 3D graphics and video. The results, are quite noticeable in speed and video performance throughout the system. Another great feature with this card is that it results in lower heat generation as the CPU no longer has to work so hard in processing these tasks. However, don't expect the GPU to bowl you over in graphics-heavy applications though (read gaming). But, the 9400M certainly does pack a good amount of 3D punch to your videos, media, and gaming sessions, especially with the likes of the new Adobe Photoshop utilizing thus features.
Wireless-N, Bluetooth, SuperDrive and iSight are all standard features as usual.
Heat and noise wasn't much of an issue with the new MacBooks thanks to the entire aluminum unibody acting as a giant heatsink. The notebook runs warm but not quite as hot as older models and a soft hum can be heard only when the fan kicks in intermittently. No issues here. In our battery tests, watching a DVD yielded about 2:40 of juice, and in basic tasks such as web browsing and word processing, a respectable 4:30 of life.
Conclusion
Overall, we found the new MacBook a real pleasure to use as with all Mac products we've tested. It's a gorgeous, sexy piece of machinery and certainly the best MacBook yet. But we do question Apple's decision to make the MacBook so closely identical in looks and features to the MacBook Pro... Anyway, at $1299 starting, it's a tad more expensive than we had hoped it would be, but you do get a lot for your money namely the aluminum casing, glassy multi-touch buttonless trackpad and of course, the revolutionary unibody "brick" construction and for a whole $700 cheaper than the cheapest MacBook Pro model. Nonetheless it's a excellent buy for one of the best notebooks around on the market. Some may not like Apple's new design direction (myself included) utilizing black keys to contrast the aluminum, but there's no denying this is one of the best looking laptops available.
Bottom Line:
With a dedicated GPU and aluminum body, it might be "safe" to call the MacBook the "true" successor to the highly heralded Powerbook 12". Well...almost - the lack of FireWire is a serious hit and it's still a tad too big. What about calling it a MacBook Pro mini? Not quite but its darn close. A better display and graphics card, Firewire, ExpressCard slot, and LED keys are all that gets in the way of the $700 difference, features wise. Yet, the lines between the consumer and pro models are fading away ever so slightly...Suddenly $1299 feels like a great bargain.
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