Filed under: Macworld, Portables
Hands on: Macbook Pro
I also had a chance to get my hands on one of the Macbook Pros today, and I was impressed by the responsiveness of this machine. It is the fastest Mac portable I have ever used, which makes sense but I was impressed by just how much faster it seems.
The construction is solid, and the screen is much brighter than my stupid old Powerbooks (sorry, Ambrose!).
I do have one complaint though, and it doesn't really have to do with the MacBook Pro. I wanted to pop the battery out and take a picture or two but I was told rather brusquely that I couldn't do that, nor could I even close the lid of the Macbook. What's up with that?
Overall though, this thing is very cool
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Anon said 3:48PM on 1-12-2006
The reason for the delay of the macbooks and the facts you have stated are because the macbook has serious issue when it goes to sleep (which will happen if lid is closed). And for some reason I was not allowed to the the machine restart.
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pwnage said 3:49PM on 1-12-2006
Well, this is conjecture, but the morning of the keynote, a few knuckleheads in front of me DID close the lid. When I re-opened it, the pointer was frozen and me and the Apple rep had to do a hard restart by holding down the power key.
I wasn't impressed with this first encounter.
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Eno Compton said 3:53PM on 1-12-2006
Any news on the battery life? I haven't seen any real numbers yet - only estimates on how well it will perform. And what about the lack of a DVD dual-layer burner? What's up with that?
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tenin2wenty10 said 4:08PM on 1-12-2006
it took two of you to hold down the power key? thats some flawed hardware...
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Phil said 4:48PM on 1-12-2006
Why would you have to take the battery out to take a picture of it? Is that some kind of Apple rule, and if so does anyone know the reasoning behind it?
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Rob Knight said 4:55PM on 1-12-2006
That was one of the issues when I was playing with an mBook (it's gonna catch on, the name mBook). Coming straight from the Apple employee's mouth:
If you close the lid and put it to sleep, the mouse freezes and you have to do a hard restart. I also noticed that the mousepad on two of the mBooks I played with stuttered alot. Granted these things had been manhandled non-stop for hours by the time I tried them. But it was still disconcerting.
The power question is a good one. System Profiler on the mBook said a full battery was over 6000mAh. On the Powerbook DL (Oct 2005), a full battery is between 4000 and 4600mAh.
So there is a sizable difference in the new battery, yet Apple isn't bragging about the battery life, which leads me to think it isn't any better and is most likely worse.
We'll have to wait for February to know these answers for sure. For me, I'm a Rev. B kind of guy. Let the early adopters work out the bugs.
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Mike B said 6:02PM on 1-12-2006
---Hey "pwnage" you said that you had to hard reset the macbook......well what was the boot time like? Is there a different start-up sound? Anything new with booting up?
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martin said 6:55PM on 1-12-2006
what about LCD light intensity, is the display the same or brighter?
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niccas said 7:36PM on 1-12-2006
I was also prevented from shutting the lid and didn't think of the significance at the time... Far out I've ordered one of these things, having second thoughts now!
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pwnage said 9:04PM on 1-12-2006
I didn't really think about putting a stopwatch to the boot time, but it didn't seem to be much difference in the start time of the mmmmBook and my PowerBook 15". The startup screen looks exactly the same, and the chime hasn't changed either.
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Armando said 1:39AM on 1-13-2006
I was told by an Apple employee at Macworld that the MacBook Pro would ship with a DVI-to-VGA/S-Video adapter, so we will have s-video out using this adapter. In regards to the DL and DVD-R 8X issue, no drives exist that are thin enough to fit in the new MacBook Pro. So we're stuck with Superdrive 4X until thinner drives come out.
I'm a MAC developer, so I'm getting one of the new Intel iMac exchanged for the DTK (Developer Transition Kits). I'm going to test all my PowerPC apps on it prior to deciding if I should upgrade my Powerbook G4 to the MacBook Pro.
I like the fact they offer the 100GB 7200 RPMs drive! Sweet. Now if only we could get Windows XP to run...
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Tita said 3:39AM on 1-13-2006
Some Italian people at MacWorld has check the battery time on the new IntelBook and the answer is... two hours.
Maybe the ones in show are preliminary versions but I won't trade speed for battery duration.
If I buy a portable I prefer to have a (relatively) slow computer that last for six (or +) hours rather then a very fast one that last for a very short time.
Tita
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David Pence said 3:56AM on 1-13-2006
I would definitely wait 6 months on the MacBook Pro. Resolution is lower than the powerbook G4. And please, I know all about emulators or translators. Rosetta will run apps slower than the G4 or G5. Jobs didn't do a very good sell on rosetta even with his demo. Wait till the programs catch up to run natively on the intel chip. You know there will be an improved MacBook Pro and iMac by midyear. Let's wait to see all the benchmarks and bumps.
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Jeremy Brooks said 5:20PM on 1-13-2006
Hmm....I shut the lid on a MacBook yesterday, and the MacPerson there didn't say anything. It woke up just fine for me. Maybe I'll have to go fiddle with it some more today.
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James Hadden said 11:59PM on 1-24-2006
MacBook Pro is tempting even for a Rev A, but things will improve. Late '06 is my best bet.
I found a screen protector for it:
http://www.shaggymac.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_5&products_id=37
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