Apple's MacBook Pro: Using it as a Mac and a PC
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Problems in Mac-land
As I mentioned before, I purchased one of the earlier revision MacBook Pros and as such I've had a total of three major problems/annoyances with the MacBook Pro:
1) What has become known as the MacBook Pro "whine" is an extremely annoying whine/buzzing sound that emanates from the area around the MagSafe connector. The sound appears to be related to CPU load and seems to be caused by whatever power circuitry is affected by the CPU switching into lower sleep states. While this noise was present on my PowerBook G4, for whatever reason it is more annoying/present on the MacBook Pro. I have not seen a fix for this problem as of yet nor do I think one is possible without a redesign of some of the internals of the MacBook Pro.
2) The bottom of the MacBook Pro gets extremely hot; hotter than any notebook I've ever used. On the plus side you can barely hear either of the two fans running but the downside is that you've got to be careful with what you rest it on while using it. I've found that it only really gets extremely hot when doing something very CPU intensive. While I was benchmarking the unit the heat got almost unbearable, but during normal use it was mostly fine and when simply writing on it there were no problems at all. I've heard that this problem has since been fixed with later revisions but I don't know first hand as everyone has different definitions of fixed and tolerances of heat.
3) The third and final problem I've had with the notebook are the two keys that are mounted improperly on the keyboard. I haven't been able to fix this myself and suspect that it may actually require a keyboard replacement. After publishing this review, I'll head down to Apple and see what they say.
The problems I encountered with the MacBook Pro are definitely bothersome, but they aren't enough for me to personally want to opt for a non-Mac notebook. When I sit down and think about that statement, there's something horribly wrong with it. It's my job to be tough on manufacturers when they release products with these sorts of problems and it's my job to not recommend purchasing a flawed product, so am I just terrible at following my own advice? Am I so hooked on OS X that I'm willing to deal with fairly annoying hardware problems just to get my fix? In a sense, aren't these the same complaints many have about Microsoft: that you put up with the problems because it's the only way to get what you want?
Apple has an extremely important responsibility to its users not to release questionable hardware. Spending the past few days surfing through Apple's support forums it's all too often that I've come across the statement that Apple's quality control has gone down hill as of late. As the only provider of hardware for the Mac OS X platform, that should not be a statement that's frequently encountered. Yet it is, and it seems that the statement has quite a bit of truth behind it.
While I would definitely recommend a MacBook Pro because of all of the positive things I've said in the past about OS X and about Intel's Core Duo processor, I would strongly urge you to wait and get a model with all of the kinks worked out. It seems that the later revisions have addressed a number of the problems that existed early on, so all you may have to do is just make sure to custom order a configuration through Apple's online store so it gets built rather than shipped from what's in stock. It's unfortunate that as well designed as many of Apple's products happen to be, you'll want to stay away from the first run of any new model.
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boinkle - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Great review, apart from making me think "that's still quite pretty!", at the end of the day it's just a PC in an Apple enclosure. It's shiny, fast, but has all the problems of an Apple 1st gen product, with few of the benefits of Core duo showing up...How I wish someone had given Freescale some incentive to develop the G4 further (to a reasonablt timescale). It's amazing that it's still even *reasonably* competitive. Imagine dual-core, 65nm G4 derivative production? Don't TI have a 65nm fab up and running now? That's where your 5 hours would come from, Anand... pie in the sky, I know.
*sigh*
littlebitstrouds - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
How about some gaming benchmarks. If you run windows and game are you getting good performance numbers? If I could have a Mac for everyday use and boot up windows when I want to game I might jump on this.Visual - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
you have some borked page 18 after the "final thoughts" page showing up in the dropdown.in printarticle.aspx it shows up as a duplicate of page 17 for some reason
as to the article itself - good job :)
my guess as to why the vm is faster than the real thing is because the hdd emulation works somewhat like a ramdrive - its a file on the apple hdd but it probably gets cached up by osx or by the vmsoftware itself.
plinden - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
That could be - I have maxed out at 2GB RAM in my iMac, and I get wired RAM is close to the max and a hefty number of Page Outs (up to 210,000 last time I looked. before it setayed below 5000 even after being on for a week) while running Parallels VM.
ibisbowti - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
I been using the 1.83 Core Duo for about a week now. I think it is one of the latest builds according to the serial number. No problems at all, other than it does get pretty warm. Heat issue seems better after latest firmware update. I think the aluminum is designed to be a big heat sink! I thought the Front Row software would be a little gimmicky, but it is pretty cool, especially when sitting the unit on a coffee table and watching the HD movie trailers, IPhoto pics, etc with others. It's an awesome machine so far.artifex - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Since you say you ran the same tests as in your earlier review, I'd like to see graphs comparing the results of the Intel iMac vs. the MBP. and add in ones for the Intel Mini, if you can. I suspect we'll see iMac > MBP > Mini, but it would be nice to be sure.Also, if you could slap Parallels on the Mini and tell us how much of a hit the virtualization takes because the hardware virtualization is disabled for that line, that would be really interesting.
Thanks.
AppaYipYip - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
"Apple quality control at it's best"That comment bothers me. Overall, there are no other manufacturers that come even close to Apples quality, design, and workmanship. Yet, you find one key that sits slightly off and suddenly feel the need to make such a blanket statement. If it bothers you so much, take it back and Apple will repair it for you, in record time.
Calin - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
The IBM thinkpads (before the Lenovo deal) were regarded as the best business laptops (or at least PC laptops) as quality and workmanship. Too bad they were designed with cramped keyboards (at least the models I saw) and no trackpad.Ryan Norton - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
I'm a PC guy but I like Macs a lot and will probably buy a Macbook Pro, either now or when Merom ones come out. I figure Anand probably is too. Yet I work with Mac zealots who give me endless shit about the unequivocal superiority of Apple everything over PC (except for games, which they concede). So when someone like me finds a glaring flaw that seems like something that should have been spotted before it got to the end user, it's easy to take a cheap shot at Jobs =^)Sunrise089 - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
If I had my dream review of this product, here's how I would have you test gaming performance:Test performance in Windows mode. Then compare it to other Core Duo notebooks. Then see if there is any game written natively for OS-X under Core Duo, and run the OS-X version and the Windows version to see the difference in OS on performance on the same machine.
Other than no gaming info, terrific review.