I stopped at my local Apple Store this morning MacBook Pro was made available to the public, and bought one to replace my two year old unibody MacBook. These are premium computers and well executed. My old computer that looks very much like this one that still looked good after two years, with some scratches on the underside, and an unhappy denting in one corner. I do not regret a minute to pay more for a device that I spend several hours a day, and from which I derived my living room.
The strong point of this computer compared to the previous 13-inch MacBook unibody Processor. It is noticeably faster CPU tasks. I have such a large program written in C + + programming language that Xcode on my late 2008 MacBook vintage was collected in 16.5 minutes, this MacBook to do the same task in 8.5 minutes, a near doubling of speed. Similiarly, converting a 10-minute MP3 file to AAC in iTunes used to take 21 seconds, now it takes 14 seconds. Not surprisingly, computer processors become faster. The new processor tends to heat up quickly under full load, so be prepared for frequent fan noise.
The weak point is the stock hard drive, a 320GB 5400 RPM Hitachi portable devices. All service depending on the hard drive throughput will not be much faster on this machine than the previous year. If you do not have large capacity requirements, you may be better to special order a model with a smaller but much faster solid state drive (SSD), they are not cheap, but it will result in a much more balanced machine that leaves its high performance CPU idle waiting for data. I would do it, but a higher capacity SSD cost as much as the computer itself.
Should you upgrade to an SSD, be aware that while this model has a type III-SATA port, you may have trouble using one of the new type III SATA SSD drive in it. [Update: The company reports that Apple has begun shipping the laptops with the optical bay can also use a SATA III port.] I tried to enter the hard drive and operating system installer to install a 128 GB Crucial RealSSD C300 could not install. Online forums indicate people have problems with Type III unit, and the problem is with the use of the device, a bad cable or firmware is controversial. You may want to wait for a Type III upgrade until this settles out. In the meantime, I bought a console allows me to replace the optical drive and put SSD in type II port previously used by the SuperDrive.
This and the new MacBook Air is the only laptop Apple sells without a dedicated graphics card (GPU) instead rely on Intel's integrated GPU Soly 3000HD. Intel has not previously been known for its GPU performance, but lack of space, and Intel's design limitations and improvements in performance eventually drove Apple to go integrated only. I would have preferred a discrete GPU, especially in the premium laptop, but I'm not a player, and will settle for a much better CPU. I'm sure Apple would have preferred a discrete GPU, as their strategy to increase performance is to use the GPU for general computing with OpenCL frames.
New for this year's models are Intel Thunderbolt connector replaces the Mini Display Port connector. This flexible port will probably be more useful as hubs and peripherals will be available to use his amazing speed. Adapters and bridges will be available to use that one port as a USB, DVI, Firewire, Ethernet port at the same time, making a data cable for easy desktop docking. But I do not need it now. Media reports indicate Apple will have this port for itself this year, Intel also insist that other motherboard manufacturers could start playing it and I hope they do. If the port is a marketplace success is not given, but I look forward to syncing and charging a future IPAD over this fast gate, unfortunately iPhone 2 does not have this port, but one day.
I'm glad to have a standard FireWire 800 port and an SD card reader, none of which were on my previous non-Pro laptop. I will be able to recharge my iPhone at maximum speed with a 2 Amp USB ports, something I could not do before. The FaceTime app for OS X comes preinstalled, you do not buy it from the Mac App Store.
Little luxuries include a backlit keyboard, MagSafe power cable, the company responsive keyboard and large multi-touch capable trackpad. The display is bright and has a good but not great variety of perspectives, certainly worse than an IPAD, but better than most cheap laptop screens Yellow is a bit saturated, while using the default color profile. I'm sure many would prefer a higher resolution than 1280x800, but I prefer a jump to very high resolutions, combined with support for independence to resolve operating system and applications. Maybe one day. The high-resolution iSight camera surprised me with its clarity and size when you make a FaceTime IM.
Some things have gone downhill. It removes 12 screws to replace the hard drive, my old MacBook, but first it used to be a special microphone port next to the headset jack, but has gone the way of the Dodo, and I've never used it anyway.
I chose to buy my own 204-pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Named tag memory from a favorite online vendor and saved a lot of money over Apple charging for 8 GB of RAM (2x4GB). Installation was easy enough with the right size screwdriver, but it is strange that we are expected to change the RAM, when the battery is still connected. Still, the installation went smoothly, and it is easier than most other laptops. I was a little disappointed that the extra RAM is not noticeably better my Xcode compile time, cut up to 20 seconds to 8.5 minutes, but hopefully it will help when multitasking several programs.
This is a development of previous generations, and I bet will probably be the last for this series of machined anodized aluminum unibody enclosure, so elegant and perfect as they seem. If you wait a year or more, you can get such modifications as formidable liquid metal for the fantastic shapes, Retina displays, touch screens, standard solid-state drive 4G network and the loss of the optical drive. But I could not wait, I needed horsepower now, not next year.
As a Mac developer, I've been running OS X 10.7 Lion this box as my primary OS for several weeks before the official launch, and I recommend that you upgrade to Lion unless it came preinstalled. Fast and robust, but you should prepare to train with more intensive use of gestures taken from IOS and make a perfect fit with built-in touchpad.
Compared to other Macs.
Owners of newer vintage 13-inch MacBooks will have to make an informed decision to stay pat or move up. Many will get more value for their money to replace their spinning disk with a SSD, which I was tempted to do. Seriously, a Core 2 Duo with separate NVIDIA GPU and SSD drive well under OS X Lion for a few months, so remember to just do an upgrade disk instead of the entire computer. That said, this model has much better battery life than a few years ago, and a better set of ports, along with a backlit keyboard, faster processor and higher resolution. Another advantage of my late 2008 model is the maximum RAM, this model has a maximum capacity of 8GB, the same as last year's model, but higher than my old capacity.
Versus 2.7 GHz i7 version of the same screen size, which also comes with Intel integrated graphics. Online reports provide i7 version an overall speed improvement of perhaps 10-15%, which drives even more noticeable. I preferred to do what I did, use the money to put a moderate SSD boot size of the previous optical bay. The difference in random disk access is fantastic and very real. If money is no object, you can do both.
Between this and the new MacBook Air. The new Air is about as quickly to treatment, as this Pro, but has an extremely fast built-in SSD, in practice, will feel the turbo next to the base model MacBook Pro with the rotating disc. The air is also lighter and 13 "model has a higher resolution screen, basically, I would recommend to get air if you do not absolutely need one of the following:. More than 256 GB of hard drive space, a FireWire port on the box, more than 4 GB of RAM, or an Ethernet port. I plan to buy an Air for my wife, in combination with the new Cinema Display, which comes with USB, Ethernet and a FireWire port, it will be a flexible but extremely expensive combination. I need, however, the space on your hard drive so I will agree with this MacBook Pro for this round.
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