The 13.3in. Apple MacBook and 15.4in. MacBook Pro, both featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processors, impressed us by mixing Apple's lauded industrial design and user-friendly operating system with the kind of high-end hardware usually seen only on the PC side — not to mention the ability to run Windows XP through Boot Camp. The high-end 17in. MacBook Pro adds some hard drive space and screen real estate over the 15.4in. MacBook Pro, boosting the base price by £170.21 (ex. VAT). The £1,616.17 (ex. VAT) system (our £1,939.57 (ex. VAT) review unit was tricked out with extra RAM) is very light for a 17in. notebook, and it's a good choice for anyone needing an easily transportable big-screen system, although most users will be equally happy with the excellent 15.4in. version.
The aluminium MacBook Pro is a clear departure from the black or white plastic look of the iPod, the iMac or the (non-Pro) MacBook. Weighing just 3.1kg, it's easily the lightest desktop replacement notebook we've seen. Other 17in. systems, such as HP Compaq's nx9420, weigh around 250g more. The MacBook Pro is also very thin, measuring 39.2cm wide by 26.5cm deep by only 2.59cm high. Although it's still too bulky to commute with every day, it can certainly make for high-impact presentations.
Opening the lid, you'll find the typical minimalist Apple design, including only a keyboard, a power button, stereo speakers and a sizable touchpad with a single mouse button. The built-in iSight camera sits above the display. The keyboard is the same size as the one on the 15.4in. MacBook Pro, and it's somewhat jarring to see it floating in the middle of a giant keyboard tray. Other desktop replacement systems make up for this by using larger keyboards and adding separate number pads. We continue to be big fans of the two-finger touch pad scroll (run two fingers down the touch pad and it scrolls like a mouse wheel).
The 17in. MacBook Pro includes three USB 2.0 ports, both FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 ports (previous models had only FireWire 400) and a slot-loading SuperDrive DVD burner running at 8x, compared to the 6x drive in the 15.4in. MacBook Pro. You still won't find a media card reader, however, which has become an almost ubiquitous feature on Windows notebooks, but there is an ExpressCard slot, handy for adding mobile broadband capabilities later on. Built-in networking hardware includes an AirPort Extreme 802.11a/b/g wireless card and Bluetooth.
The 17in. display looks positively massive against the thin, silver screen bezel. The native resolution is 1,680 by 1,050, which is standard for a screen this size. We've seen only a handful of systems with higher resolutions, such as the 1,920 by 1,200 Dell XPS M1710. Those involved with very high-end photo editing might like a higher resolution, but the default is perfect for common tasks such as Web surfing and displaying media. Output to an external monitor is available via a DVI port on the side, and a DVI-to-VGA cable is included.
For Apple devotees, it's the little things that make the difference, and the MacBook Pro has a handful of extras that help it stand out amid a fairly generic field of competitors. The MacBook's AC adapter connects magnetically to the system, so if you accidentally trip over the cord, it will simply detach instead of sending the entire system crashing to the floor. You also get Apple's Front Row remote: this tiny unit is the same as the one that comes with the iMac, and it controls Apple's Front Row software for playing back movies, music and photos from a 3m interface.Also included is Apple's excellent suite of proprietary software, iLife '06, which includes intuitive tools for building Web sites, creating DVDs, composing music and working with photos.
There are only a few configurable options on the MacBook Pro. The 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU is set in stone, but the RAM and the hard drive are both upgradeable. Going from 2GB of RAM to 3GB (which our review unit had) adds £323.40 (ex. VAT) to the cost, because it requires one expensive 2GB RAM module plus a regular 1GB module. The standard 2GB configuration uses two 1GB modules.
Although the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro significantly outperforms the older Core Duo version, the performance of the 15.4in. and 17in. Core 2 Duo models was essentially identical — which is to be expected, as they share identical processors, RAM and hard drives (although the default configurations call for a smaller hard drive in the 15.4in. model). We did see a significant boost over the non-Pro version of the MacBook, which includes a slower 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, in both the Photoshop CS2 and the iTunes encoding tests. As with any current Core 2 Duo notebook, the MacBook Pro is more than powerful enough for running productivity and multimedia applications, as well as tackling basic photo and video editing.
The ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU, the same one found in the previous generation of Core Duo MacBook Pros, isn't going to make this a blazingly fast gaming system, but in Quake 4 running at a resolution of 1,280 by 1,024, we got a very playable frame rate of 32.8fps. Gaming is not the first thing that springs to mind when one thinks of Macs, but thanks to Boot Camp, the utility that allows users to run a partitioned installation of Windows XP on their Intel Macs, you'll be able to play many popular PC games on this hardware.
In our DVD battery-drain test, we got 3 hours 2 minutes of battery life from the MacBook Pro. Three hours for a system with a 17in. screen is excellent, especially since the battery is not an extended model that sticks out from the back of the system. The battery is larger than the 15.4in. MacBook Pro's, which explains why both systems had nearly identical battery life even though the 17in. model has to power a larger display.
The default warranty for the MacBook Pro is one year of coverage for parts and labour, but free telephone support is limited to a mere 90 days — well short of what you'd typically find on the PC side. You can purchase the £279 AppleCare Protection Plan to extend phone support and repair coverage to three years.
Benchmarks
Specifications
| Audio | |
|---|---|
| Microphone | yes |
| Speakers | stereo |
| Audio connectors | combined optical digital audio in/line in, combined optical digital audio out/line out |
| Battery | |
| Battery technology | Li-polymer |
| Estimated battery life (mfr) | 5.5 h |
| Number of batteries supplied | 1 |
| Cabinet (chassis) | |
| Case form factor | clamshell |
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 39.2x2.59x26.5 cm |
| Weight | 3.1 kg |
| Colour | silver |
| Display | |
| Display technology | colour TFT |
| Display diagonal size | 17 in |
| Maximum resolution | 1680x1050 pixels |
| Expansion slots | |
| ExpressCard | ExpressCard/34 |
| Hard drive storage | |
| Hard drive interface type | SATA |
| Hard drive type | standard |
| Hard drive size | 120 GB |
| Rotation speed | 5400 rpm |
| Storage controller | Intel ICH7-M |
| Interfaces & networking | |
| USB | 2 |
| FireWire (IEEE 1394) | 2 |
| Ethernet | 10/100/1000Base-T |
| Modem | optional |
| VGA (analogue) | via DVI-to-VGA adapter |
| DVI (digital) | 1 |
| Bluetooth | 2.0+EDR |
| Wireless LAN | AirPort Extreme (802.11b/g) |
| Memory | |
| RAM installed | 3072 MB |
| Number of memory slots | 2 |
| RAM capacity | 3 GB |
| RAM type | DDR2 SDRAM |
| Memory specification compliance | PC2-5300 |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Other | integrated iSight digital camera |
| Motherboard | |
| Chipset | Intel 945PM |
| Data bus speed | 667 MHz |
| Optical storage | |
| CD / DVD type | DVD±RW (+R DL) |
| CD / DVD read speed | 24x CD / 8x DVD |
| CD / DVD write speed | 24x CD / 8x DVD |
| CD / DVD rewrite speed | 16x CD / 8x DVD |
| OS & software | |
| Operating system | Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger |
| Software included | Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat AV, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Xcode Developer Tools; iLife ’06 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand); Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive, iWork ’06 (30-day trial), Comic Life, FileMaker Pro Trial, OmniOutliner, Photo Booth, Front Row |
| Processor | |
| Processor manufacturer | Intel |
| Processor model | Core 2 Duo T7600 |
| Clock speed | 2.33 GHz |
| Service & support | |
| Standard warranty | 1 year |
| Service & support details | AppleCare Protection Plan (3 years), £279 |
| Video | |
| Graphics processor | ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 |
| Graphics RAM | 256 MB |
| Graphics memory technology | GDDR3 SDRAM |
| Maximum resolution | 2560x1600 pixels |
| Expand | |
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