The MacBook Pro was introduced earlier this year with Intel's Core Duo processor, and now Apple's high-end laptop gets a boost to Intel's latest-and-greatest processor, the Core 2 Duo.
Other than the updated CPU, the rest of the MacBook Pro remains largely the same, with appreciated bumps to the memory and the hard drive. There are two 15-inch versions that use either a 2.16GHz or a 2.33GHz CPU, as well as a 17-inch version with the 2.33GHz chip.
Apple supplied us with the 2.33GHz 15-inch model, which has a base price of £1,699. Our review unit features memory and hard drive upgrades, which bring the price to £2,149. While the performance gains aren't game-changing, anyone who recently purchased a Core Duo MacBook Pro is doubtlessly gnashing their teeth right now. This move to Core 2 Duo removes one of the last objections some buyers felt about paying out for a Mac laptop.
Design
The sleek, aluminium MacBook Pro is the same size and shape as its predecessor, and it clearly stands out from the white/black plastic look of iPods, iMacs, MacBooks and other more consumer-oriented Apple products. The MacBook Pro feels lighter than the aluminium casing makes it look, but at 2.5kg (2.9kg with the AC adaptor), it's at the upper end of the weight scale for a laptop you'd want to carry around every day. The dimensions remain as slim as the previous model's, at 358mm by 25mm by 244mm.
Apple's minimalist school of design is well represented in the MacBook Pro. Opening the lid, you'll find only a power button, a full-size keyboard, stereo speakers, a sizable touchpad with a single mouse button and a built-in iSight camera that sits above the display. We're still big fans of the keyboard's backlighting feature and the two-finger touchpad scroll -- run two fingers down the touchpad and it scrolls like a mouse wheel.
Features
The MacBook Pro supplies you with two USB 2.0 ports, both FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 ports (previous models had only FireWire 400), and a slot-loading SuperDrive DVD burner. While a media card reader has become a familiar feature of Windows laptops, you won't find one here. The Airport Extreme 802.11a/b/g wireless card and the built-in Bluetooth keep you connected.
The 15.4-inch display has a native resolution of 1,440x900 pixels, which isn't the highest resolution we've seen in a laptop of this size. It does, however, offer a nice balance of screen real estate and readability, especially when reading Web-based text. Video output is offered via a DVI port on the side, and a DVI-to-VGA cable is included in the box.
Compared to the 15-inch Core Duo MacBook Pro, with its 60GB hard drive and 512MB of RAM, the new model brings important upgrades in addition to the Core 2 Duo processor, starting with 2GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive. Our system was upgraded to 3GB of RAM, instead of the default 2GB -- a £380 option -- and it had a larger 160GB hard drive, which added another £70 to the price.
Performance
Apple has claimed performance boosts of up to 39 per cent over the Core Duo MacBook Pro models. We ran several applications on the new Core 2 Duo version and found a notable boost in performance. In iTunes, the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro was 32 per cent faster than a 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro. It was also significantly faster than a comparable Core 2 Duo Windows laptop, the HP Pavilion dv6000t, in iTunes -- although we should note that iTunes was built by Apple and we'd expect it to run better on Apple hardware.
Gaming is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Macs, much less Mac laptops. Having said this, we were able to get a very playable frame rate of 42fps in Quake 4, thanks to the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU, which was also found in Core Duo MacBook Pros.
Many popular PC games can be played on this hardware with the help of Boot Camp -- the utility that allows users to run a partitioned installation of Windows XP on their Intel Macs.
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User reviews5
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Phonesyay1234 5 December 2011
Good: looks quite good
Bad: evrything else
Comment: this has broken 9 times
p.nev 23 November 2008
Good: Stylish and clean
Bad: Deteriorates slowly
Comment: I bought a MacBook pro in November of 2007, just over a year ago and it was incredible. I loved how it was so unique from what my friends were using and the Apple hardware and software was very stylish and clean-feeling. It was super-fast and easy to use as well as having an excellent battery life and the same functionality when portable.
A year later, a lot has changed. . .
About a month ago the so-called super drive began ‘coughing’ and spitting DVDs back at me. It was still under warrantee so I had this repaired for free. Great! But later the magnetic connector at the head of the mains adapter began to deteriorate and eventually completely failed to charge my Mac. No worries, it was still under warrantee and got a new one sorted out right away. Great! But again, problems arose. Now whenever I put my Mac on charge it miraculously comes to life without anyone having pressed the power button. It seems to occur just as it reaches full charge. A waste of power and an annoyance at 3am when I’m awoken by ‘AUUUUUUUUH’ and the zip of the ‘super’ drive. The performance of the Mac has also significantly decreased, despite me clearing nearly 50GB of hard drive space using an external hard drive. Further problems include a failure to install subsequent Mac OS X updates using software update. So I’m stuck a year in the past in terms of the operating system. I also find that applications tend to quit unexpectedly all the time. I’m surprised the error message doesn’t read ‘The application ‘photo booth’ quit, much as it has done the past 2 months.’ And of course “Would you care to send a report to apple that no one will read but may comfort you in the knowledge that you’ve taken some kind of offensive action against apple’s failure.” I treat my Mac like a gem and have never dropped it nor spilled anything on it. What have I don’t to deserve this? What am I not doing right?
Apple has great customer service and stylish machines but in this case its been nothing but a massive failure. Maybe I was just unlucky but it seems like my MacBook Pro was only meant to work so long as the warrantee was still valid. Im not going to invest in apple care because its just more money towards a machine that seems to be slowly dying. My old windows laptop was under £300 and served me well for over 3 years. I could have bought 4 of them for the price of my MacBook Pro and in retrospect, should have. I’m not a computer expert in any respect but Apple seem to have a lot of bugs to work out and for a machine so expensive it should be more durable and long-lasting.
Not worth the money, at all. It’s upsetting :( I love apple. . .
T Molnar 1 February 2007
Good: Fast, bright screen, Mac OS
Bad: Ports on sides, suffering through MS Word in Rosetta coupled with Endnote ref tool
Comment: All in all I am very happy with my MacBook Pro. Having had an older G4 Powerbook with ports on the back, I have to say I miss that configuration.
Generally everything works faster and I have had no major difficulties with the various media development I undertake, website design/maintenance, and research/teaching writing.
It's not Apple's fault that Microsoft Word/Endnote works only adequately (that will change) but that is a downside for me which is tangential to how the actual machine operates.
That being said this is a great laptop.
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