Apple’s New Laptops (Late 2008)

New MacBooK Pro. ©Apple Inc.

On Tuesday, October 14, Apple introduced their new, redesigned laptops. On Thursday, I got to see and use them at the Oxmoor Apple Store. Apple also introduced a new 24-inch Apple LED Cinema Display, but the local Apple Store didn’t have any set up, since they won’t ship till next month, but I will do a short article on it then. 

Apple also moved into the sub-$1000 laptop market with an updated version of the older white MacBook and released it as a $999 MacBook. This model is indistinguishable from the older one on the outside, with the same white plastic case, same 13.3-inch display. It ships with a 2.1 Ghz Core 2 Duo Intel Processor, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB hard drive and is the last MacBook with a FireWire port for use with external hard drives and older camcorders. This is a good model to consider if you have limited funds but really want to get an entry-level Apple portable computer and/or need to support FireWire-based peripherals. I think the new price ($100 drop) will definitely increase Apple’s potential customer pool and it has been speculated that it would have really blown the market open if they had brought it in at $899 or at the improbable $799 that some of the rumor sites were postulating. We’ll have to see how things go in the current economic climate.

The big news for the MacBook line had to be the two new redesigned MacBooks that replaced the plastic-shelled ones. Apple claims that their MacBook customers had a wish-list of features that they wanted in the next incarnation of the line and these included: a LED-backlit display, better graphic performance and the biggie was that they really wanted the aluminum enclosure that the MacBook Pro sports. Those features are just what Apple delivered Tuesday.

The first thing you notice when you see the new MacBook of course is the new aluminum case, but you also quickly notice that it is much thinner than the previous generation and with the addition of a marked tapering of the edge of the case, it seems even thinner than it is. Much is being made of the fact that the new cases for both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro are being manufactured from single billets of aluminum, rather than being pieced together out of multiple stamped aluminum panels attached to an internal magnesium frame. Both of the new laptops feel substantially more rigid; there is little or no give to the panels and it just feels more rugged. More than rugged, it feels, for want of a better way of putting it, right. 

When you raise the lid of the new MacBook, you will be greeted by the new display, which is much more vivid than the one on the old model; the new display is now backlit with LEDs rather than CFLs and is fronted by a glass panel. The glass covers the whole display, from bezel to bezel with the LCD being bordered in black and yes, it is quite reflective. I was easily able to find a sweet-spot where I could see the screen without distracting reflections, even in a brightly-lit Apple Store showroom, so I don’t think it is going to be the pain that a lot of people online said it would be. Outdoors, in bright sunshine it might be, but that is an extreme example, since you can’t really see an LCD screen in direct sunlight very well anyway.

The keyboard has the same chiclet-style keys as the old MacBook, but they are now black, kind of like the keyboard on the old Titanium PowerBook that Apple had out earlier this decade, and like the keyboard on that one and the more recent MacBook Pros, the keyboard — at least on the higher-end iteration — lights up in a dim room. This is a first in a MacBook and I can tell you after having it on my MacBook Pro for the last couple of years, that it is a very neat feature. The keys contrast nicely with the aluminum case and feel the same as the old MacBook keyboard; solid with a short travel to them, not the absolute best keyboard out there, but still pretty good.

The one thing that caught my eye however, was the larger trackpad and the fact that there is no accompanying button. Actually, the whole trackpad is now the button. It is also made of glass and feels a lot like the glass face of the iPhone; very smooth to the touch, but it might take me a little while to get used to clicking on the pad and stop looking for the button. But after trying some of the multi-touch gestures, it might be worth the retraining effort. We found it especially nice to be able to pinch and expand pictures in iPhoto and to rotate them with just a twist of of our thumb and forefinger on the trackpad. I also accidentally found out that if you place two fingers on the trackpad and click, it acts like a right-click; essentially Apple, after years of sticking with a one-button mouse, have introduced a NO-button, two-button mouse. We like the new trackpad, but Lynda keeps hoping that Apple will eventually release a laptop with a multi-touch screen, but I think my arms would get tried reaching up to manipulate objects on the screen and I wouldn’t like having to always be cleaning the smeary mess off the screen — just ask anybody with an iPhone or go look at the new HP all-in-one computer that is like an iMac, but with a touchscreen.

We really didn’t test the graphic performance of the new NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor, but Apple claims it is up to 5 times faster than the Intel integrated graphic processor on the old MacBook and we will say motion on the screen was more smooth and fluid, so we will give them that. It is still an integrated solution, rather than a discrete graphics card like those on desktop systems or the MacBook Pro and it shares 256 MB of the main system memory. It can drive external monitors with resolutions up to 2560 by 1600 (better than HDTV) through its new mini DisplayPort, while maintaining full native resolution on its main display, with extended desktop and video mirroring capabilities. Which isn’t too shabby for an integrated system.

Apple sells the Aluminum MacBook in two standard configurations:

The 2.0 GHz MacBook comes with 2 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM, with support for up to 4 GB (+$150). The standard storage is a 160 GB 5400-rpm SATA hard drive, with build-to-order options of 250 and 320 GB hard drives or for $700 extra, you gan get a 128 GB Solid-State Drive. List price for the standard configuration is $1299.

The 2.4 GHz MacBook has the same RAM options as its lower-priced brethren, but ups the standard storage to the 250 GB hard drive with the 320 GB hard drive and 128 GB Solid-State drives optional. This model also ships with the illuminated keyboard I mentioned earlier. List price for this model is $1599.

Both models ship with an 8X slot-load SuperDrive DVD/CD burner, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n WiFi (a/b/g-compatible), two USB 2.0 ports, Audio line in and out (analog and digital optical) ports, built-in iSight camera, microphone and stereo speakers. Of course, they come with Mac OS X Leopard onboard, as well as the latest iLife ’08 suite of software.

On the whole, not a bad upgrade. If we hadn’t just had to replace the refrigerator the weekend before, Lynda might have walked out of the Apple Store with one. Especially since Apple made all these changes and created a computer that is almost a quarter inch thinner and half a pound lighter than her BlackBook (the now-discontinued black model of the old MacBook.) So it goes…

More intriguing for me were the new 15-inch MacBook Pros. I like the form-factor of my current MacBook Pro, and don’t buy into the complaints that its design is getting a little long-in-the-tooth, even if it is pretty much the same as the Titanium Powerbook that was introduced during the Age of Dinosaurs in 2001. There is something to be said for that old saw, that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but I suppose a few stylistic changes won’t hurt it it too bad. It gets the same glass-fronted, black-bordered display as the MacBook — albeit a 15.4-inch one rather the 13.3-inch one on the MacBook — and the MacBook’s black keys have replaced the silver keys on the Pro’s illuminated keyboard. With the displays closed, they look pretty much alike with the Pro simply having a larger footprint, although Apple has managed to shave one-twentieth of an inch off the thickness, so the Pro is the same .95 of an inch thick as the MacBook. Oh, there is the addition of the FireWire 800 port and ExpressCard/34 slot on the right edge that the MacBook doesn’t have. Also, both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro have moved the battery-level indicator from the bottom battery cover to the front of the right edge. The slot for the SuperDrive has also been moved from the front edge to the left, which is good as I have always disliked it spitting discs out the front on my Pro.

Probably the biggest visible change on the new MacBook Pro is the latchless closure like the MacBooks have always had. This is a nice change for me, as a keyboardist, I have no fingernails and pushing in the latch — especially when it is on my iLap Laptop Stand — is problematic. I am sure they use some sort of magnetic latch for this, but I don’t really know the exact details, except that it works well on Lynda’s BlackBook and feels very secure.

The MacBook Pro now has TWO graphic systems. In a move to offer greater battery life for the Pros, they all ship with the same integrated chip as the MacBook, the NVIDIA 9400M graphic processor with 256 MB of shared memory. For more graphical horsepower, a discrete graphics card utilizing the NVIDIA 9600M GT processor with Dual-Link DVI support (to drive the 30-inch Apple Cinema Display) and 256 MB of GDDR3 memory on the 2.4 GHz model and 512 MB on the 2.53 GHz and optional 2.8 GHz models. Again, we weren’t able to test the graphics in an Apple Store setting, but from what I am reading on the interweb, these cards could potentially turn the MacBook Pros into a viable gaming platform if that is what stokes your passions and certainly should be able to handle most higher-end 3-D and video work that would normally have required a desktop machine before these laptops were released. The downside is that you will lose at least a hour of battery life when using the 9600M GT and it also will require you to log out and back it to switch between the 9400 and the 9600 — at least you won’t have to reboot.

Apple sells the MacBook Pro in two standard configurations:

The 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro comes with 2 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM, with support for up to 4 GB (+$150). The standard storage is a 250 GB 5400-rpm SATA hard drive with optional 250 GB 7200-rpm (+$50), 320 GB 5400-rpm (+$100) and 320 GB 7200-rpm (+$150) drives. The 128 GB SSD option is $600 more. List price for the standard configuration is $1999.

The 2.53 GHz MacBook Pro comes with the maximum 4 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM. The standard storage is a 320 GB 5400-rpm SATA hard drive or opt for a faster 7200-rpm one for $50 more or for a smaller faster 250 GB 7200-rpm one for $50 less. The 128 GB SSD option is $500 more. The list price is $2499. You can also upgrade this model to 2.8 GHz for an additional $300.

I was quite tempted by the new MacBook Pros, possibly as much as Lynda was by the new MacBooks and we probably will both be upgrading in the next year or so. While neither laptop is revolutionary in its respective changes, we both thought Apple had done a fine job with this update. Hopefully, they will sell well during this holiday shopping season (full disclosure, we both have a small, long position in AAPL). 

The Cinema Display I mentioned at the beginning of this posting will be a good companion product for either of these computers. It has a cable with a MagSafe power plug to power the laptops, a USB plug and a DisplayPort plug.

Tags: Apple Computer, Computer, Gadget, Laptop, MacBook, MacBook Pro