The Apple Touch

When Apple switched to Intel it unified the notebook line in name only. In design and features the difference between the MacBook and MacBook Pro remained great. While the aluminum of the Pros allowed for a more robust and premium finish, the latchless design and keyboard of the MacBook were clearly the future for Apple. And while the two families often had similar processors, the difference in graphics performance was stark. Further muddling the lines was that with the switch to Intel your choice for a consumer or pro version could solely be decided along screen size preference. Losing the 12 inch Powerbook, meant anyone looking for a small footprint needed to look at a MacBook.

The recent updates to the MacBook line brings unity and cohesion along with sensible differentiations. Premier industrial design and finishes are now shared across the entire line. If you do 3D work or high end audio/video which requires speedy connectivity (e.g. firewire 800) then the Pro is your machine. Otherwise, you can get a very capable high end MacBook. If your needs are purely in the realm of iLife and other software bundled with OS X, then the 1,299 USD MacBook offers a great value. No longer do prosumer photographers need a Pro to get satisfactory 2D graphics performance and the clear, bright whites of an LED display, nor do professionals need to put up with a mishmash of premium and second rate design just to get discrete graphics.

Apple is going to sell all the MacBooks they can make. Indeed they sold one to me the day they were announced. It was on my door step mid afternoon the next day. And now The Apple Touch is no longer being designed and published on a 12 inch PowerBook, but instead by a “Best” MacBook. My thoughts and impressions follow.

Design and Style

The new unibody construction deserves its praise. The new MacBook line can best be described as feeling as if it was carved from a block of aluminum, which it was. From the vantage point of a person using the machine, there are no exposed seams on the laptop body. And underneath, the seams fit tightly and are uniform. The physical response to typing and regular use exhibits no flexing nor creaking. It is both solid and impressive.

When I reached in my bag for my black MacBook, grabbing around the thumb scoop, the flex in the plastic was noticeable. When I did the same for my MacBook Pro, grabbing at the latch point, the gap between the screen and palm rest would vanish as I squeezed the computer. But grabbing the MacBook is like grabbing a book. A beautiful, svelte and sculpted book that cost $1,500, but a book nonetheless.

The color scheme is two-tone using black to compliment the silver anodized aluminum. Where the prior MacBook Pro look could be described as both handsome and timeless, the current two-tone look is sexy, but perhaps trendy. I fear the two-tone look will go the way of brushed metal. It makes sense in moderation. I think the silver-black combo looks great on the new Nano, and on the iMac it makes perfect sense; the iMac design is updated fairly regularly. But the MacBook line’s industrial design tends to have staying power. To my eyes the MacBook Air really struck the right chord with its black keyboard but otherwise uniform aluminum design. Its hard to second guess Jony Ive and the Apple design aesthetic, but while I think the MacBook duo tone looks good today, in two years I fear it will look dated.

The aluminum finish is slightly different than prior Pros, though the change is hard to put into words. The advantage of this anodized aluminum is that it is resistant to stains (ala the white MacBook), scratches, and doesn’t need a constant wipe down to look its best (ala the Blackbook).

Closing and opening the new MacBooks is wholly unlike any other Apple laptop. The prior Pros required a squeeze at the latch point and metallic click could be heard. The prior MacBooks shut with a softened thud. This new breed shuts with what I can only describe as being similar to a felt lined jewelry case. It is a soft, easy close. Inside the aluminum bezel, separating the glass screen from the frame is a thin strip of hard rubber, which provides the separation between screen and palm rest when the laptop is closed. The thumb scoop is well positioned and opening the MacBook is easy and the rubber divide seems to save your thumb from smearing up the top part of the glass screen.

The MacBook is light, and makes the MacBook Air seem like an even worse value than before. The MacBook is even one tenth of a pound lighter than the fabled 12 inch PowerBook. And for the first time the consumer notebooks are the same thickness as the Pro ones. Both are extremely thin. The design, with the tapered top and bottom make the new laptops look even thinner then their specs declare. Even more so than the tapered design of the iPhone, the new MacBook deceives the eye in looking even thinner than it is.

Output

The display is gorgeous. When Apple made the switch to Intel all subsequent laptop revisions got upgraded, brighter displays. The switch to LED has been an equal order of magnitude improvement. Whites are white. Colors are bright. And as Apple marketing is quick to remind, LED allows for instant maximum brightness.

Though MacBooks have always come in one matte, glossy, its worth pointing out that this is now the case across all Apple displays. As with any significant change, there has been some degree of ridiculous hysteria.¹ It is true that when customers lose a choice, it has to be marked in the con column. But this will eventually be a non-issue for a couple of reasons.

First is the simple fact that most users (an overwhelming majority judging by my work) prefer glossy displays. Of the remaining people, quite a few don’t have a preference. It is a small minority, vociferous as they may be, that don’t prefer, or indeed despise, glossy displays. For them there are two reasonable options. One is to change preference. Seems harsh, but I think a lot of people who give glossy an extended look will grow to like it. The glare issue is overblown. Apple is right that with brighter displays the pixels can overwhelm the glare, but the simpler truth is that your eyes focus behind the glare. Like one of those 90’s era abstract posters that, with careful cornea relaxation reveals a 3D image, glossy glare quickly fades as the mind and eye focus on computing. Additionally, the new MacBook screens have a greater viewing angle than prior MacBook Pros. You can now push your MacBook screen much, much farther back than you could a MacBook Pro, which gives you greater flexibility in avoiding glare.

A second and more satisfying solution will be the capable anti-gloss covers that will ramp in production shortly. There are already quality such covers for the iPhone. I have one on mine, and it does provide a top-notch matte finish to the iPhone’s glossy display. These covers adhere with static so they are non-destructive and easy to apply. I suspect a robust third-party market will quell the minority dissent, and the Mac community can finally rid itself of the reoccurring and annoying “glossy vs. matte” whine discussion.

Apple has always been about making choices for the consumer. Usually, they are spot on, and in this case I think they’ve struck the right cord. Build to order customizations like “display finish” always seemed a little un-Apple-like.

Finally, one output of prior notebooks has been excessive heat. No where does Apple ever refer to these computers as laptops; though my experience with the buying public is that “laptops” is what they all call them, and how most use them. The new lower wattage CPUs in the MacBook means a very cool running laptop. Where I wouldn’t ever use the first-gen MacBook on my lap, and rarely did for last generation’s MacBook Pro, this laptop notebook is cool to the touch. I don’t convert videos with it on my lap, but for all other tasks the under-aluminum housing temperature is indistinguishable from room temperature.

Input

Keyboard

The keyboard is the same keyboard found on the MacBook Air and prior MacBooks. I miss the scalloped tops of the MacBook Pro keyboard, but otherwise I’ve been a fan of these keyboards. The keys are responsive and the overall feel is not mushy. Additionally, crumbs and other detritus don’t make it into the crevices of my machine, which allows me to sleep easier at night.

The backlit keyboard is like it has always been: strong feature for marketing, marginal in usefulness. The light that escapes around the key caps actually looks good, surrounding and framing the square keys. It looks more like a design function than failure. On the prior MacBook Pros the ambient light sensor was in the left speaker grill. My hands invariably rested there and falsely activated the dimming/backlight feature. It was so annoying I eventually had to turn it off. On the new MacBooks, the light sensor, like the Air, is in the top bevel of the display, and thus clear from accidental activation.

That New Trackpad

I’ve always been a fan of the trackpad gestures. Two finger scrolling and two finger right click are the kind of features that drive me batty when I use a computer that doesn’t support them. They simply are as much a part of my computing habits as command-tab and copy and paste. But where I didn’t find much use for the the three finger swipe, I find the four finger gestures surprisingly useful. Their inability to be customized is frustrating. I would immediately swap the up-swipe with the down swipe. And the decision to map the left swipe with the same output as the right swipe seems ill-conceived. If users can understand the difference between up and down, then why not left and right?

The buttonless, or all-button trackpad is a mixed bag. It is clear that this will be incorporated into the new iPhone. I am sure the button-less-loving-Jobs is anxious to remove the home button on the iPhone, instead allowing users to click anywhere on the glass. And it will probably be a great, space-saving feature on the iPhone. On the MacBook, the force required to depress the trackpad seems excessive. I’ve also found that it seems to occasionally ignore clicks, and to ignore my finger’s request for cursor movement. In the redesigned System Preferences there is a new pane solely for the trackpad. Despite breaking out the trackpad features from the Keyboard and Mouse pane, users have lost the ability to turn off “Ignore Accidental Input.” That preference usually left me vigorously moving my finger over the trackpad trying to ignite the cursor, while Mac OS X willfully ignored my commands under some misguided notion that one could be so spastic as to be accidentally causing such movement. It was one of the first defaults I switched on a new machine, but now I can’t. My guess is the setting lies somewhere in a plist file, and someone on MacOSXHints.com will reveal the command to turn it off soon enough.

The new trackpad seems best suited to being controlled by your index finger, both for cursor tracking and clicks. It clearly has been designed to allow you to use your thumb on the bottom as you would with a traditional trackpad, but I think clicking with two fingers is what sometimes activates the “ignore accidental input” and causes my clicks to be unresponsive.

The extra space gained by removing the button is welcome and useful. Not to mention the aesthetic of it all: clean, simple and very Apple-esque. I suspect that the force required will be something that Apple refines over time - a consequence of any version one Apple product.

Input/Output

In this round of updates Apple adds a new video connector. This means if you use an external monitor, go ahead and figure $20 into the purchase price for an adaptor. The good news is that Display Port is a standard, and we should soon see reasonable priced adaptors from third parties. The change is a small annoyance, but the space savings are undeniable. The mini-DVI output on my prior MacBook dwarfs the mini Display Port. I appreciate Apple’s trend to adopt standards as they could have continued to propagate an entirely new proprietary standard found on the first generation MacBook Air.

Unlike the glossy decision, Apple’s decision to axe firewire is more troublesome. Simply put if you have a lot of firewire peripherals than you will be buying a MacBook Pro or a lot of new peripherals. Getting new peripherals that come with USB connectivity is fairly easy (unless we are talking high end audio and video, in which case the Pro is probably your product anyway). The problem lies if you have just a few - maybe a backup hard drive and iSight for when you are connected to your external monitor - firewire peripherals. If you can’t afford to change them, you probably aren’t eager to plunk the extra cash down for a MacBook Pro. In that edge case, your just out of luck.

By-products of losing firewire means losing target disk mode and fast Migration Assistant transfers. For the former, there is no substitute. TDM is a useful feature. But it isn’t worth $500. Regarding the latter, most people use it once in the lifetime of a computer. I never used Migration Assistant as I see a new computer as an opportunity to build a new, clean system. Losing it is a single, momentary pain and if that is what it takes to get LED, improved graphics and aluminum features in a MacBook, then that is a worthwhile trade.

And that is what this is about: tradeoffs and product differentiation. The MacBook, at 1,299 USD, comes awfully close the 1,999 USD MacBook Pro. Apple has always come up with ways to distinguish the two, and I think the lack of firewire is probably the best solution yet. People who rely heavily on firewire peripherals, most likely, were already leaning towards the Pro line, while consumers probably aren’t concerned with TDM and video capture. My Flip uses USB as does my Nikon DSLR.

Specifications

I opted for the 2.4 Ghz machine. There will be various sites benchmarking the performance of both the processor and the new graphics chip assembly and I’ll leave you in their capable hands. I was willing to go with the MacBook from a prior generation MacBook Pro for two main reasons. First, the processor speed was the same, and I found my prior computer to be quick and responsive.

More importantly was the graphic performance. Steve Jobs said that the MacBook performed 3D tasks at 50% the speed of the prior MacBook Pros. Not playing games or doing much 3D rendering, I figured I never really pushed the 3D capabilities of 8600GT card. What really caught my attention was Jobs’s claim that new Nvidia 9400 performed, overall, at 80% capacity of the prior MBP’s graphics performance. Figuring that 3D work brought that average down, that means 2D performance was near on par with prior generation MBPs. Impressive. Being mainly into photography, a decidedly 2D computing adventure, that kind of performance meant I could get a MacBook and probably see no appreciable downturn in performance.

In my short, subjective testing, that hypothesis is holding. Aperture 2.0 seems to run as fast as it did on my MBP. I don’t find it lagging or stuttering. I am pleased and satisfied with the performance. Coverflow and iPhoto scrolling are the same as my MacBook Pro. And for me that concludes the vast majority of my graphics needs.

Purchasing Power

Dan Frakes at Macworld talks about the indecision point - where people try to decide between the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Prior to these latest revisions it had been my experience that the indecision point lied with high end consumers. Meaning people that probably who only needed to purchase a MacBook often jumped to the Pro. This jump was largely attributable to the Pro’s aluminum enclosure. More than clock speeds and screen size, for consumers, nothing denoted the extra quality of Apple’s Pro machines like their industrial design and materials.

I imagine now most of those affluent consumers will be content with the top of the line MacBook. And instead, the indecision point will come with professionals who rely mainly on 2D work and appreciate the smaller footprint. I expect the new high end MacBook to siphon off sales of the MacBook Pro, where before the low end MacBook Pro would siphon off sales from style conscious consumers who were looking at the black MacBook. And though it was Jobs talking as an advocate for Apple, he wasn’t that far off when he said the new 1,299 USD MacBook represented a $700 price drop. For many people, the LED display, aluminum enclosure and better-than-intel graphics were why they opted for the Pro machine (I’m one of them). The “better” MacBook may be the best bang-for-your-buck notebook Apple has ever made.

Conclusion

This is the first laptop I didn’t feel was a compromise. This is the first computing purchase decision that didn’t require long, meticulous pro/con lists (and my wife is happy she got to avoid endless Mac discussion). The firewire con is the only one that effects me, and it is minor for my use. When I bought my MacBook Pro, I was excited about the performance and the industrial design, but concerned about the size. I pack my computers almost everywhere. When I had my first generation MacBook, I loved the foot print, but the plastic and graphics seemed chintzy. In this iteration Apple seems to have prioritized all the things I care about in a computer and sacrificed the things I don’t. It is the MacBook Air without the high price and drop in performance. It is the Pro without the price-tag and size. In short I find it to be the most complete and compelling piece of personal computing I’ve ever owned.

Misc

• Death to the Black Tax. If you are an education customer, the two stock MacBook options will cost you $1,249 and $1,499 respectively. This is a difference of $250. For that difference you get a 400 mhz faster processor, 90 GB more hard drive space and the backlighting in the keyboard. The hard drive upgrade is fairly easy to quantify, as Apple would charge $90 to upgrade the base model to a 250 GB hard drive. That means the upgraded processor and backlit keyboard will costs about $160. And this seems about right, as looking at most online cost analysis of intel chips, the retail difference between 2.0 Ghz, and 2.4 Ghz chip is around $150.

• The question of whether spending $150 for a 400 mhz upgrade is worth it to you (and this doesn’t’ factor in all the permutations you can dream up with a user-upgradeable hard drive) but there is no “black-tax” like on prior high-end MacBook versions.

• Apple’s RAM prices are, for the first time, sensible. A 4 GB upgrade in my MacBook cost the same as it would from Crucial or other reputable RAM dealers. DDR3 is more expensive than DDR2. If you have the time, its best to get the RAM supplied by Apple as then it is under a single cohesive warranty. However, if you customize your order it will ship from China, and I couldn’t wait that long. By going stock I got my machine from Tennessee and will be installing 3rd party RAM when it arrives in a few days.

• Apple is keeping around the prior 1,299 USD MacBook at a new 999 USD price point. Great, but why couldn’t it be black?

• Rubber Feet. Like prior generations the new line of MacBooks have built in rubber feet. However, the set on my machine are not as sticky as before, and on finished wood surfaces (both my coffee table and tables in coffee shops) the device has a tendency to slip around.

• The MacBook Air was announced and is for sale, but won’t ship until November. It doesn’t get the two-tone look, nor the new trackpad. And there is no way to buy the prior version (not that you would want to). My guess is that Apple can’t get enough chips from Nvidia. The MacBook Air makes little sense, and even less at its current price point, and it really is getting second class treatment from Apple.

• As reported elsewhere, new MacBook owners are greeted with a software update specifically for their systems. The Mac OS X build for my MacBook is 9F2114. 10.5.6 should once again even the playing field for all computers.

• The System Preferences comes with a revamped Energy Saver pane and icon. The icon is now a compact fluorescent, and the options no longer offer better performance / better battery life options. Now you simply choose the sleep timer and screen dim timer for both battery and A/C power along with spinning down the hard drive and other options. In some ways it is simpler, but I don’t know if we’ve lost ability to throttle the CPU, or if that is happening more automagically now at either the kernel or hardware level.