Up close and personal with the MacBook

Now that I've had a few days to play with my latest splurge here's a short photo and video review of some of the small design touches that other reviews of the MacBook may have missed. Please forgive me if this article reads like a poor student trying to justify yet another computer purchase. I've found that the new MacBook is no exception to the company's great design reputation, although, as you'll see in a second, it ain't quite perfect.

I was surprised to find that the MacBook is roughly the same depth as the 12" iBook and the same width as the 14" iBook. It's noticeably thinner than both models too. Of that I wasn't surprised -- the iBook is quite a chunky laptop by Apple's standards.

The top side of the bottom arrow key and the bottom side of the up arrow key are curved downwards, making it easier to tell which button you're pressing.

One design flaw that my MacBook exhibited is just about visibile in the above photo. Several keys on the right side of the keyboard (including the "." key) aren't level for some reason. The keys are fully mounted so it's not a matter of snapping them back in. Note that this problem isn't particularly noticeable whilst typing.

Like earlier iBooks the ports on the left side of the MacBook are sunk slightly into the casing. That stops them from getting damaged. Also, the white MacBook's ports feature white plastic, while the black MacBook has black plastic inside the ports.

The sunken ports also serve an aesthetic role: when you plug anything in, the cable plug's casing is flush with the case.

According to one brave person that's taken apart his MacBook, these two screws are entirely for show. They serve absolutely no purpose in holding together the case. I like them.

The MacBook's battery latch doesn't have a spring that snaps it automatically back into the locked position. The spring on several of my previous laptops (iBooks and Titanium PowerBooks) have broken in the past making it difficult to take out and place in batteries. The downside for this non-spring approach is you have to use two hands to put the battery back in.


When the MacBook's screen turns itself off because of powersaving, the sleep light turns on and stays on at a consistent brightness so you don't forget the machine is off. Also, the sleep light comes on instantly when you close the MacBook's lid.

Here's a picture showing a comparison of the screen brightness between a 1.42GHz 14" iBook, a 2GHz 13" MacBook and a 500MHz 12" iBook.

Yongwon Lee took apart his MacBook and posted his thoughts over at the Apple support forums. He found out some things that are impossible to tell without taking apart the Mac (the quality of the frame, a rubber hard drive assembly and the fact that the fan exhaust grill only spans from F5 to F7) as well as confirmed the existence of a third, central speaker. His write-up is definitely worth a read.


Finally, we'll end with another problem exhibited by mine and other people's MacBooks. The moo and the whine. Personally neither of these problems bother me, but some MacBook owners that use their computers in a completely noise and light free environment (e.g. their parent's basement) are very annoyed by these issues.
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