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Apple's MacBook Pro: Using it as a Mac and a PC

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2006 12:00 AM EST
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52 Comments

Apple's Military Aspirations

The slightly redesigned exterior, integrated iSight and performance improvements are more than enough to make the MacBook Pro stand on its own. It's rare that you can make a single upgrade and experience such a noticeable increase in performance, but as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the MacBook Pro has a couple of features that make it even more enticing.

Apple released the first public beta of Boot Camp, an application that allows you to install Windows XP SP2 on your Intel based Mac. Apple announced that Boot Camp would be shipping with the next version of Mac OS X (10.5), codename Leopard, but until then we've got this free public beta.

The Boot Camp setup process is extremely straightforward, and a lot easier than even I expected it to be. After mounting the Boot Camp image and running the installer I was told that I needed to update my firmware before proceeding with the installation. Given that my MacBook Pro was an earlier revision (Rev C) it didn't have the updated firmware so I had to download and install it before proceeding.

Interestingly enough, the process is different on the MacBook Pro than upgrading firmware was on my PowerBook G4 and PowerMac G5; those two machines simply updated their firmware through OS X's Software Update utility, whereas the MacBook Pro requires you to go out and download the firmware update on your own. I'm not sure if this is because of the switch to Intel or something else entirely.

The firmware update gives you very little feedback or information as to what's going on: you run the program and it shuts down your MacBook Pro. You are then told to hold down the power button until the front power LED starts flashing. Once the front LED starts flashing the firmware update begins and you'll see a grey screen with a progress bar at the bottom of it. When it's done you're greeted with a ridiculously loud beep and then the system reboots and works as normal.

With the firmware updated I ran the Boot Camp assistant once more and now I was ready to begin. The assistant prompted me for a blank CD so it can burn all the drivers I'd need onto that disc. Unfortunately it's impossible for you to get the Boot Camp assistant to run on a non-Intel Mac so your only hope for creating the driver disc is on your MacBook Pro or if you have another Intel based Mac laying around.

After burning the driver CD it's time to start the actual installation process. Boot Camp comes with its own partitioning utility, and it requires a minimum of 6GB set aside for your Windows partition; I chose 10, but you can select whatever you'd like. If you actually plan on using the Windows partition on a regular basis for applications and games you may want to make it even larger (as well as opt for the larger 120GB drive). The repartitioning is non-destructive so your OS X installation, applications and documents are safe. Amazingly enough, the repartitioning only took about 2 minutes.

With the partition created and my Windows XP SP2 disc in the drive, it was time to reboot and start the installation. The Boot Camp assistant warns that you must have a Windows XP SP2 disc (either Home or Professional), a SP1 disc will not work. If all you've got is a SP1 disc then you'll have to create a slipstreamed version with SP2 yourself.

After the reboot I was dropped into the very familiar Windows XP setup process, which from this point on behaved entirely as normal. The only thing to pay attention to here is that you want to make sure you format and install to the right partition, as they aren't labeled. I selected the 10GB partition I had created earlier and chose to format it as a FAT partition (Windows setup forced FAT32 because of the size of the partition, although listing FAT). The benefit to using a FAT32 partition is that the partition will be read and write accessible from within OS X; if you create a NTFS partition you'll only be able to read from it in OS X, you won't be able to write to it.

With the partition formatted (a quick format works just fine), the rest of the Windows install proceeded as normal. All reboots went directly into Windows setup and I hardly remembered that I was doing all of this on a Mac.

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  • Sengir - Saturday, July 22, 2006 - link

    I'm mainly a PC guy, but while working on Apple notebooks at a Notebook Depot, I've become interested in the Mac OS. Previously I had little to no exposure to it.
    I will say this. Apple has made alot of improvement with the Macbook/Pro in terms of repairing. Alot easier to get to the motherboard, hard drive, memory or anything.

    Unfortunately they didn't redesign for the heat of the CPUs, the ventilation just doesn't seem adequate and as a result, overheating is common.

    There are other issues with the hardware, but none I can really go into. I believe people buy Macs for the OS and not the hardware. Since some of the design/materials are cheaper than an HP notebook, for more cost. If I buy a Mac, it will probably be a mini, due to cost. The Macbooks are very nice, but have several flaws that need to be addressed.

  • redison - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link

    "I've become interested in the Mac OS ..... believe people buy Macs for the OS and not the hardware"

    Right on, and check out the Leopard ( OS X 10.5 )Preview on Apples website, even better if you have the time see Jobs Kenote

  • phillock - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link

    I've also bought a Macbook one week ago, and I also had a keyboard issue... My 'e' button wasnt working sometimes... When i lifted the key off the keyboard i could see the plastic under the key was kind of broken: there was a little crack in it. https://tinyurl.com I went back to the apple shop, and because I only had the laptop for like 2 days they just gave me a complete new one.../y83723ww

  • phillock - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link

    I'm most interested in a smaller model though, so I have to wait regardless. I suspect the smallest model may get a 13" 1280x800 widescreen too, considering that as of the Aperture 1.1 update, Apple https://tinyurl.com/y83723ww has arbitrarily (and very annoyingly) removed support for my 1024x768 iBook G4 12" 1.33 GHz, and is saying that a minimum 1280x780 screen is required, even though no such laptop is available yet from Apple.

  • hasapi - Monday, April 17, 2006 - link

    Excellent reading - I just received my 2GHz MBP - and its just fantastic in every way. My only gripe which was noted in the article is the battery life of just over 2.5hrs!, its probably unrealistic but my old PB was getting 3.5hrs - maybe a new third party battery might help but would have been nice to see upwards of 5hrs imo?

  • Eug - Sunday, April 16, 2006 - link

    quote:
    I would recommend waiting for a Merom version if you can. By the time Merom is introduced later this year there will be even more Universal Binaries available for the platform and hopefully by then all of the issues with the current MacBook Pros will have been worked out.

    I agree. Moreover, Boot Camp and Parallels' Workstation both will be improved by then, and Apple's pro line of laptops may just have Blu-ray drives as well available as an option. Even if we don't get Blu-ray drives by the time Merom is incorporated into MacBook Pros, in the very least we'll have 8X DVD-R support as well as dual-layer support.

    I'm most interested in a smaller model though, so I have to wait regardless. I suspect the smallest model may get a 13" 1280x800 widescreen too, considering that as of the Aperture 1.1 update, Apple has arbitrarily (and very annoyingly) removed support for my 1024x768 iBook G4 12" 1.33 GHz, and is saying that a minimum 1280x780 screen is required, even though no such laptop is available yet from Apple.

  • tekkstore - Monday, April 17, 2006 - link

    http://www.tekkstore.com">tekkstore.com

  • gamehack - Saturday, April 15, 2006 - link

    Hi there,

    I have a question to any owners of a MacBook Pro - Is the keyboard suitable for heavy use? I planning to get a MBP and use it as my main dev machine so I would typing quite a lot.

    Kind regards,
    gamehack

  • bertd - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link

    in my opinion, the keyboard is one of the best keyboards i've ever used on a laptop... and i code a lot of html, php and css so i use it a lot too

  • bertd - Saturday, April 15, 2006 - link

    Anand:
    great review!

    I've also bought a Macbook one week ago, and I also had a keyboard issue... My 'e' button wasnt working sometimes... When i lifted the key off the keyboard i could see the plastic under the key was kind of broken: there was a little crack in it. I went back to the apple shop, and because I only had the laptop for like 2 days they just gave me a complete new one...

    I've also experienced the 'heat' problems.. the first macbook i had was an 'earlier' version of the macbook : the serial number was W8611*****... With the new one, the one they have given me to replace the one with the broken 'e' key, the serial number started with w8612****, and I've read that macbooks starting with these numbers in their serial should be newer revisions...
    The heat problem is not as bad as with the first one, but still the bottom gets kind off hotter than with any other laptop i've ever had...
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