My New MacBook
The Apple MacBook line has not witnessed a significant update since 2006, when the 13.3″ widescreen¬†black and white polycarbonate¬†notebooks were released to the public. In contrast to the high-powered aluminum MacBook Pro that was released several months prior to that, it had significantly lower system, materials and build quality, marking its place as a consumer-only model. Its price, on the other hand, was low enough to appeal to college students, which caused it to achieve much higher market share than any other Apple notebook in the past.
Last week, on October 14th, Steve Jobs announced at an invite-only keynote address the long-awaited refreshes of both the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. Prominently featured in the event was the new method of construction for both laptops, a one-piece aluminum shell (termed the “unibody”) that holds all of the computer’s components in place. Carved out of a single block of aluminum with the same technology used to build aircraft, it was billed as a more efficient, stronger and lighter way to build notebook computers, as opposed to the old-fashioned way of assembling multiple irregular pieces to form the inner chassis. The keynote also heralded a significant change in the design philosophies of Apple’s “pro” and “consumer” notebooks, with the MacBook receiving many of the features once solely available on the Pro, including a backlit keyboard, aluminum frame, and faster video card. The new MacBook is so powerful, in fact, that there are many Mac users purchasing it as a replacement for their old 12″ PowerBooks, or as an alternative to their larger and heavier MacBook Pros.
Featured in the new MacBook is a new integrated graphics chipset born out of a collaboration between Apple and Nvidia. Termed the Geforce 9400M, it is allegedly 5x faster than the old Intel GMA chipsets and has the capability of running many modern 3D applications and games, a performance level necessary for many artists and designers to fully utilize their photo editing software. In addition, both MacBook and Pro now have an LED-backlit display, which is thinner, brighter and uses less energy than the previous version. Also found in the new notebooks are 39% larger, multi-touch trackpads with no visible buttons - in fact, the entire trackpad itself is a button, and the finger’s location when clicking can have an impact on how the system responds. The trackpad is also able to support one- to four-fingered gestures to easily control everything from scrolling to switching windows to running Expos√©. The inner workings feature a 1066 MHz front-side bus and DDR3 RAM, in addition to a new SATA SuperDrive that could potentially be replaced with a second hard drive for those who need more secure or faster drive access.
There are currently three MacBook models you can buy: (1) a sub-$1000 model that is almost identical to the old white polycarbonate notebook, but with an updated SuperDrive; (2) a 2.0 GHz unibody aluminum notebook with a 160 GB hard drive and 2 GB DDR3 RAM; and (3) a 2.4 GHz aluminum model with a 250 GB hard drive, 2 GB DDR3 RAM and a backlit keyboard identical to the ones found on MacBook Pros. Interestingly, the Apple Store claimed erroneously on Launch Day that the 2.0 GHz model also had the backlit keyboard, in contrast to the rest of the Apple website and Steve Jobs’ keynote earlier in the day. I was one of the many users who purchased that model thinking that it did, only to find out the following day that it actually did not. Thankfully, after calling Apple’s customer support to complain, they offered me a $150 discount to upgrade to the 2.4 GHz model (with the backlit keyboard) which I gladly accepted.
After an excruciatingly long wait for the notebook, I finally received it on Monday, delivered by FedEx straight from the source - Shanghai, China. Upon opening the box, my first impressions largely revolved around the beauty of the aluminum exterior and the physical thinness of the notebook, both of which were vastly superior to my Lenovo ThinkPad T60 that I owned previously.
Getting the notebook up and running was a breeze, though since it was my first exposure to Mac OS X, I was a little slower learning where everything was. However, within 24 hours after receiving it I had already installed all the programs I needed (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Microsoft Office, et cetera), installed Windows Vista on a 32 GB Boot Camp partition and gained access to it through VMWare Fusion, and calibrated both the battery life monitor and the screen’s color spectrum. Vista actually runs unbelievably fast on this computer; my Windows Experience Index is 5.2 out of a possible 5.9 which is an tremendous score, especially for a notebook.
The new trackpad, with all its clicking and gestures, is surprisingly efficient - so much of an improvement, in fact, that I now cannot stand the tiny trackpad with its physical buttons on Morgan’s ThinkPad. Getting used to pointing and clicking with the same finger was intuitive, and some of the gestures (the four-finger Expos√© ones especially) have made many tasks such as navigating through open windows faster and easier. Furthermore, I am really enjoying using the Mac operating system, as it seems to require a lot less input than Vista to accomplish the same tasks in addition to being absolutely gorgeous.
At this point my MacBook is fully functional, and is ready to do some serious work - I cannot wait to try out some more computationally intensive programs like MATLAB in order to really judge the laptop’s performance.
Keep checking for updates, I’ll keep you posted! 
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