Finally. A Macbook Pro.

Amidst all the junk on my desk, it stands tall, silent and strong. Presenting the all new Macbook Pro. This has been for me, a journey spanning 3 years, watching enviously as people around me got their own sleek high end Apple machines while I laboured away at my Windows Vista powered HP Pavilion DV9000. I assured myself that my choice of a PC was a pragmatic one, considering the amount of work I do on Windows as an animator. I was contented, until about the same time last year, a white Macbook came into my life. Sure, it had the most basic specifications an Apple computer could have, but it made me actually enjoy doing work. With its ram upgraded to 4gb, I found myself doing concept art, video editing, compositing, motion graphics and then some on this neat little machine. The only thing I couldn’t do was play games or use any 3D animation software. A year later, here I am staring at this beautiful 15 inch LED glossy display on the new Macbook Pro 2009, while my old Macbook is in the hands of a random buyer off the internets.

So I thought, what the hey, I’ll do a mini review of the Macbook Pro.

What I have with me here is the 15 inch 2.8 ghz version. You can check out the full specifications here.

First of all, the screen is gorgeous. Nothing I have ever owned beats the quality of this glossy screen. Sure, to some it may be a little too glossy, but I like my screens that way. In my old Macbook, there was a certain sweet spot where I had to place my head to enjoy the best picture quality, and even then it couldn’t hold a candle to the screen on this Macbook Pro. It’s bright, the colours are vibrant, and the viewing angle is very wide. That means if I were to use it on the MRT, everyone will be able to see what I’m doing.

At long last, an SD card slot finally makes its way onto the Macbook Pro. This was one of the main reasons why I finally took the plunge. I never envisioned myself using the expresscard slot found in the older models, so I felt it was a good tradeoff that Apple made. Everything you see in this picture works as it should; the standard magsafe, ethernet port, displayport, firewire, 2 USB ports, the SD card slot and the audio input and output.

Speakers sound great. However, when I started playing some audio, I noticed that the right speaker sounded a little louder than the left. At first I thought I received a faulty laptop, but after some extensive googling, I found out that the subwoofer is placed within the right speaker grill. Apparently my ears are sensitive enough to pick up the minute imbalance. This could be an issue for people like me, but then again you’ll stop noticing it after a while.

The keyboard lights up. Useful for when I want to ruin my eyes and work in the dark.

The trackpad is amazing. I am SO thankful that Apple didn’t follow in the footsteps of HP and include a glossy trackpad. The HP trackpad that I had was totally smooth, and it’s actually more difficult to glide your fingers across a glossy trackpad than a matte trackpad like in the Macbook Pro. Multitouch gestures are as intuitive as it could be, and the whole trackpad (at least most of the lower part) is a button, so I can perform most commands with just one finger.

The build quality is just excellent. Everything just feels solid, with no creaking. This is one of the thinnest laptops I’ve used, considering what’s inside. The bottom of this laptop is unlike any I’ve ever seen. It’s totally barren of any notches and latches, due to the absence of the removable battery. Battery life appears to be longer than my old Macbook, and it looks like it could very well last me 2 lectures instead of one. Whether it can last me 1000 recharge cycles as advertised remains to be seen.

One of the first things I did when I got the Macbook Pro was to download the Release Candidate version of Windows 7 and install it with Bootcamp. For the most part, Windows 7 runs smoothly on the Macbook Pro. However there is an issue with the audio drivers; the speakers are too quiet and the built-in microphone does not work on any program other than the sound recorder application. This should be fixed in a audio driver update, but I wouldn’t count on Apple being efficient with their Windows drivers. Interestingly headphones are sufficiently loud when you plug them into the input jack.

The Nvidia 9600M GT graphics card with 512mb of GDDR3 memory handles modern games like Left 4 Dead very well at rather high settings. The machine does tend to get quite hot when playing such games, and you can really feel the heat on the keyboard. I guess this is one of the drawbacks of playing games on a laptop.

I only use Windows 7 for games, and I do most of my work in Mac OS X. iLife ’09 is a fantastic software package. The killer feature in my opinion belongs to iPhoto ’09. The face recognition system is pretty frickin’ awesome and gives us a glimpse into the future where robots can actually differentiate one human being from another when they evolve into Cylons.

It’s been about 2 weeks now since it arrived, and I am enjoying every bit of it. Sure, I wish it could be a little cheaper, and the drivers in Windows could work a bit better, but if you’re looking a solid, well built computer with plenty of horsepower for games and graphics programs, this is as good as it gets.

Now I wonder if Apple could send me an iPhone 3GS for review.

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