"In typical PC hardware enthusiast fashion, we haven't covered Macs much here at TR."

Whaaa? If there was any more Apple-related news here, the admins might as well change Tech Report's logo to a bitten Apple one.

I've read through the whole review and there are several pieces I disagree with, especially when it comes to Thinkpads. I've used both Thinkpads and Apple's crapbooks (albeit lightly) and I like the Thinkpads much better. In all these years mighty fruit hasn't come close to Thinkpads when it comes to keyboards. All this especially considering prices for top of the line machines on the used market.

While they do look decent, the fact that Apple makes it is a big no-no in my book. And the fact that you can't run Windows or Linux natively (ie without OS X present at all) is a total deal-killer.

the one thing that caught my eye with these new macbooks and MBP's is the aluminum enclosures...absolutely eye catching and it's a first for me since i never fancied any of Apple's notebooks...but this time it's different mainly because the build quality has improved tremendously

I was all set to settle for an iMac, but this has renewed my interest and desire for the new MacBooks.

My main concern is how it'd run Starcraft II and Diablo III, but we've got a while before they'll even be out to test. From what I can tell poking around the WoW forums, it runs WoW in OS X pretty well (way better than the GMA950 in the Mini, at least).

For everything else I do (mostly audio work) it looks like it'll be a winner. And only having to pop an extra $50 for a 7200RPM drive doesn't seem like THAT BAD of a tax to me.

"The absence of features like Windows' System Restore could make troubleshooting problems a little trickier, too."

This features you speak of is actually part of Time Machine. Every time Time Machine makes a backup, it created a "System Restore" point where you can boot up with your OS X install DVD and restore your system to any of those points in time. Since TimeMachine makes a backup every hour, that's pretty good :)

Adi

I feel compelled to reply and say that I get much of the same 'comfort' as described in this review by using Ubuntu on my HP business laptop.

plus, I've got even more graphical goodies akin to 'expose' and 'spaces' than OS X, like transparency, ring switcher, and even better virtual machine support with virtualbox

I feel like macs are the rich and lazy way to get the experience offered by a nice business notebook + linux and compiz.

I still fail to see why one should use BootCamp. If it's for gaming, well a MacBook isn't intended for gaming. If it's for anything else, Parallels and Fusion take 10 minutes to install Windows, they don't have problems with drivers and they are 5 times much more comfortable than BootCamp if you need to use Windows - namely for Office 2007 which is the real application Mac is missing (Office 2008 is a kind of a bad joke, with Excel 2008 not being able to filter by colored cells, to quickly open its own files (XLSX) and so on).

includes a healthy number of other titles, too, from recent ones like Prey

I saw some native Mac (retail box) games such as Prey and some other games too.

Hmm, it would be time (and budget) consuming
but maybe some benchmarks between native Mac games
and games via CrossOver Games would be nice.

Now run Linux on it. I bet KDE 4.1 will look real good on that screen.

For those of you needing a card slot and faster graphics, consider buying a refurbished MacBookPro. Apple.com has them, at the moment for $1349 with a one year warranty: http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB133LL/A?mco=MjE0NDk5Mw#overview
This MBP is 2.4GHz, 256MB DDR3 8600GT, 200GBHD, 2GB - has a DVI port, a 1440x900 display, but the smaller trackpad with button. It also has a front loading superdrive, but you do get usb ports on either side, as well as firewire ports. I bought one last summer and an very pleased with it.

Thanks to TR for doing a fair and balanced review of the MacBook. It's not perfect, I need a slot and a few other things, but it's a great laptop.

big ups to the first ever review of an apple computer on The Tech Report!

It was very well done and well written. I bought my 17 inch mac book pro last year, and it's the first laptop I've ever bought. All of you who know me know that I am addicted to power and quality, and until that moment there had never been a laptop invented that fulfilled all the requirements I have for a laptop. Very high res screen (1920x1200) very fast CPU (2.4ghz C2D) lots of RAM (4gb) good GPU (8600GT) and a 7200 RPM HDD while being under 7lbs. I play games on it in windows vista, they run perfectly.

I also had a very strong anti apple bias going back to 1996, but I have to say with apple's adoption of intel CPUs and boot camp, I can't picture buying a non apple laptop unless it's a netbook. there is just no comparison in terms of build quality and even though I've been a die hard PC user since 1995, I am in awe of OSX as an OS. It doesn't help that vista is pretty much a POS, maybe windows 7 will make me feel differently, but for now OSX 10.5 makes vista look like windows ME on a pentium 4 1.7ghz with rambus RAM and a 4200 RPM hard drive and a power supply that runs off the farts of a pile of drunk monkeys.

I will probably always have a windows based system as my main work station because my main system will always be something I build myself because I'm a control freak and I want every single component of my system to be hand selected and I like to cut the skin of my hands on metal sh$t.

Word.

I'm not a heavy text editor, but TextWrangler (once called BBEdit Lite) is free and is pretty full-featured from what I've seen.

Anyone else frustrated that there are only 2 USB ports and they are both on one side?? It's just that sometimes there are devices with short cord lengths that ideally should be plugged into a right side and not a left. (logitech USB speakers, for one)

Can the touchpad middle click?

NM.... expose scaling. hence why it is difficult to read.

You're right about us, some of us do hate glossy screens.
As far as I'm concerned, a glossy screen is a defective product and should be returned for a working one.

It's like having a mouse mat with an un-even surface, like a hard disk which is roaringly loud or something.

while aluminum can look quite shiny and is light it's also not very strong unless you triple the thickness and it's also scratch prone unless treated.

I'm kind of curious why Apple went with aluminum it's benefits and popularity were born from racing.

those being that it's easier to optimise compared to steal as you can specifically design a frame to be stronger at certain points where needed and also save weight where the strength isn't needed.

it's also easier to weld comparatively speaking specifically because more of it's needed whereas a comparable steel design would need to be thinner to realise the same weight savings making it more prone to stress cracking, difficult to weld as well as corrosion susceptable throughout the year........ none of this has anything to do with notebook useage aside from the weight concerns while the negatives for aluminum still apply.

curious what a long term test will show.

"My ThinkPad feels kludgy and awkward to use"
Well, duh. A ThinkPad is kludgy and awkward compared w/ most wintel notebooks. They're good machines, but not exactly the measuring stick in terms of elegance. A comparison that might almost be relevant would be a vaio sz vs. the aluminum macbook.

Hey - is that the same "MathMan" as from the HFC, below? If so, small world!

Time was when TR wouldn't touch anything OEM with a ten-foot-pole, and Apple wasn't even in the TR lexicon, let alone within satellite distance of a TR sweatshop.

Man, how times have changed.

So, now that we're reviewing pre-fab laptops, notebooks, and netbooks (not to mention office chairs, hook-up sacks bean bag chairs, and USB sticks), can we look forward to seeing other OEM system reviews? I asked about this years ago, but now seems like a good time to mention it again.

Seriously, there's some pretty slick custom-built or -designed high-end options out there from FNW, Alienware, et al, and even (Don't tase me bro!) Dell's top XPS units (before they bought up Alienware) have not only always been fast, but included some really innovative case, cooling and board features that even an experienced enthusiast would be hard-pressed to duplicate. Granted, some of these systems can't be (easily) overclocked, but that endeavor is seldom more than a great deal of effort and risk with negligible rewards.

Personally, I'd really like to see how well the fastest system TR can build stacks up against the best commercial units out there. Anyone else agree?

You can also have Time Machine back up to a partition for that 'last second' recent point, and have a network FreeNAS share or Time Capsule set up for the long term retention.

Time Machine will use multiple target points without any fuss. I currently have my iMac making the most recent TM snapshot to a local disk, with at least one week being kept on the external HDD, and as many as space allows being stored on a network share. It's not hard to set up, and it's a pretty bulletproof backup system. At any point I could take a sledgehammer to my iMac, bring in a new one (even a different model altogether) and then restore my last TM point onto it. OSX doesn't really care about the hardware changes, and I'll lose at most a day's work. More likely I'd lose somewhere around one hour's changes.

No security lock port?

I bought the same machine, my first self-paid laptop that I've ever owned. I've had many company laptops, all running Windows, of course, and this is by far the best I've ever used.

Apple has its share of love/hate features, but they often manage come up with a singular item that makes it all worth it. My initial reason to finally make the switch, a year ago, was the introduction of TimeMachine. I've never felt more comfortable about the integrity of my data.

For the MacBook, the trackpad takes center stage. Its greatness can't be stressed enough. I used to be a fan of the TrackPoint on a ThinkPad, but this one blows it out of the water and the ease of scrolling is a fantastic help to work around the relatively small resolution of the screen. I was never a heavy user of Expose but the 4-finger gesture makes it suddenly so natural that it's now used all the time.

I've reconfigured the trackpad such that simple tapping it with 1 finger makes it issue a mouse click, so there's no need to depress the track pad.

I'd rather get something like Fujitsu-Siemens's Amilo Pa-3553 or any of its derivates. Cheaper, bigger and cooler look and tech. :-)

The only reason why I ever jump on my friend's macbook here at school is to tinker away with Garage Band. That is perhaps the coolest application ever to come standard on a laptop. I'd love to find something like that for my laptop, so I could tinker away with my inner musician.

Well I'm a die-hard gamer and fan of performance for price ratio, so the MacBook fails on both of those desires, especially when you try to unite the two.

For instance, a HP Dv7t with 250 Gigs of storage, 4 Gigs of ram, a 9600 GT, and a 2.4 GHz Core 2, has the same hardware as a MacBook Pro, which I would be forced to get to satisfy my needs, but is the same price as the regular MacBook.

However, if I were to shed these two needs, I agree this is a great laptop, but sadly is not for me. It does make me jealous though, if only I had the extra money around to ignore the pricing of the Pro.

it's a surprisingly capable backup if you're far from home and feel like hopping in a multiplayer game with your friends. (Just don't tell them you're using a Mac.)

That's pretty much a lol.

I succumbed and bought the 2.4GHz model on launch day too. I thought I'd hate the glossy screen but it really hasn't been an issue.

I agree with DrBillyBar, Apple can design great looking hardware. Not that I've used the touchpad but I do think the removal of mouse button(s) altogether isn't great. I'm also happy to read a reviewer writing sanley about glossy screens, while I think that glossy screens in laptops are a negative at least you didn't post pictures of a powered off screen, because we all know that's how one actually uses a computer :rolleyes:, with a window directly behind it.

Something that finally struck me when reading the article is that there's something ironic about the Apple ads that attack Vista so vigorously and yet Apple provides a simple way to install Vista or another Windows version.

Windows XP SP3 works fine in Boot Camp on my last-gen Macbook Pro. I do see the battery life difference though. Some of that seems to be that the CPU runs harder in Windows (it certainly seems to get hotter)...

Still, I use it about 50/50 in Windows/OSX. Works quite well for either, and I love having the flexibility to use either.

The MacBook doesn't have a BIOS, so don't expect to just slip in a Windows installation DVD and get things going

Actually, it does (a BIOS emulation layer in EFI), and you can. The assistant is just needed to non-destructively resize the Mac partition and create a partition for Windows. Stick in a Windows or Linux boot CD and hold down option on boot--it'll show up, and boot as usual.