New Apple MacBook 2008 Review

The new Apple MacBook for 2008 is an upgrade in terms of both power and design from the previous MacBook.  Gone is the plastic case design, aluminum is now used instead, and a new faster Intel processor is part of the mix along with dedicated Nvidia graphics.  That’s all good news, but unfortunately the upgrades come at a price — the base model new MacBook starts at $1,299 instead of the $1,099 we saw as a starting price on the previous MacBook.

Specifications of 2008 MacBook under review:

• Screen: 13.3-inch LED backlit widescreen 1280 x 800 pixel, glossy type display
• Processor: 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350
• Memory: 2GB 1066MHz PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM
• Graphics: Integrated nVidia GeForce 9400M with 256MB shared with main memory
• Storage: 160GB 5400-rpm
• Wireless: AirPort Extreme Integrated 802.11a/b/g/draft-n
• Optical Drive: Internal Slot-Loading SuperDrive
• OS: Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.5
• Weight: 4.5 pounds / 2.04 kg

Design

First off let’s talk about the design of the new MacBook  Simply put, it’s beautiful.  The aluminum body is sleek and sexy looking, it looks like one seamless shiny piece of aluminum crafted and milled to perfection.  The lack of ports (which we’ll get to later) has the advantage of making the overall look more elegant and simple.

Open up the lid and you’ll notice how thin the screen is as it is the LED backlit variety that lends itself to a slimmer form factor.  The screen has a black rim with a panel of glass on top to give an overall extra cool look and consequently glossier screen.  The keyboard has black keys which stand out nicely against the silver case.  If you pay for the higher-end MacBook you get a backlit keyboard, with this unit under review the keyboard does not have such a feature — bummer.

The new MacBook (on the right) next to an old 12″ PowerBook

Build Quality

The added advantage of having an aluminum body is that the laptop not only looks nice but is also very durable, there’s no case flex whatsoever.  While the aluminum build does place the MacBook on the hefty size for its size range, weighing in at around 4.5lbs, it’s not going to give you much of a problem carrying around campus still.  The one disadvantage to aluminum is that the new MacBook could be prone to scratching if a sharp object object or hard blow befall it.

The bottom line is that the updated MacBook is far sleeker than its plastic predecessor.

Performance

Apple is using an Intel P7350 2.0GHz processor on the base model aluminum MacBook.  This processor offers decent performance but is also battery friendly as it draws only 25w versus 35w for the more powerful laptop processors out there.  Apple has also moved to using Nvidia integrated graphics inside the MacBook instead of Intel integrated.  Apple claims the Nvidia 9400m offers 5 times better performance than the previous MacBook.  The Nvidia 9400m is not a high-end graphics card, but it is better than Intel integrated graphics and will allow you to play a few games.  Using 3DMark06 as a benchmark gives a score of around 2350, which is very respectable.  Games from 2-years ago such as Doom 3 or Far Cry will actually play very well on the aluminum MacBook with the 9400m graphics card.

Apple includes 2GB of memory with the MacBook, I’d like to see more given the $1,299 cost, but running OS X will be smooth with this amount of RAM.  If you run Windows Vista on the MacBook having more RAM would be beneficial.  Given the fact that you can buy an $800 PC notebook and get 3GB of RAM as a fairly standard amount of memory, it’s disappointing Apple didn’t step up what they offer here.

Screen

The aluminum MacBook has a 13.3″ widescreen glossy display.  The entire screen is covered with a glass panel that is attractive from a design perspective, but makes the screen so reflective that in terms of usability it’s a bit of a downer.  Those that prefer a matte display will go crazy with the amount of reflection you get from the screen.  However, the advantage of the gloss is that it makes colors on the screen pop and contrast is improved — blacks appear as deep and rich.

The screen brightness is very good.  When comparing the MacBook screen to the MacBook Pro in an Apple retail store I did notice the MacBook was not quite as bright, but it’s as bright as it needs to be and if you’re in a dark room you’ll need to tone down the brightness level.

The horizontal viewing angles of the MacBook screen are good, meaning you can be off to one side a fair amount and still see the screen.  However, vertical viewing angles are not so great, polarization of colors occurs as soon as the screen is angled away from a 90-degree viewing angle.  The solution to that is of course just to tilt the screen so the colors appear correctly.

Port Selection

There’s a lot to like about the MacBook, but there’s not a lot to like about the port selection.  The port selection is rather paltry compared to the competition.  It only has two USB ports, that’s less than $400 netbooks on the market today.  There is no SD card reader or any other type of media card reader built-in.  We all have digital cameras these days and it’s certainly nice to be able to take a memory card out of a camera and quickly slip it into your laptop for viewing, but Apple would rather you use a cord to connect with your camera instead.  Also missing is FireWire so there’s no super fast port for transferring data.  Apple is using a mini-Display Port adaptor for video output to a monitor.  If you haven’t heard of such a port before you’re not alone, as it’s the first time this type of port has appeared in a laptop.  You’ll have to pony up $19 for a video adapter to use this with most monitors, which is kind of a slap in the face when you’re already spending $1,299.

Heat and Noise

The cooling system for the MacBook relies on vents hidden beneath the screen hinge, this results in the top of the laptop getting slightly warm as the heat is vented upwards.  The temps on the bottom of the MacBook topped out at 85F, which is a very reasonable temperature and won’t become uncomfortable for usage in the lap.  The fact that the MacBook is made of aluminum material means it does a better job staying cool when used on your lap due to aluminum’s excellent thermal and electrical conductor traits.

Audio

Initially I was scratching my head as to where the sound was coming from for the new aluminum MacBook.  The sound actually emits from where the heat vents are, just below the screen.  The claim is that the sound will reflect off of the screen and back to the user.  This seems to work fairly well as audio is adequate and not muffled in any way.  Volume loudness is also great.

Battery Life

Apple claims 5 hours of battery life when using wireless.  This is optimistic, and more than any battery life I could come close to achieving with the MacBook.  Under fairly normal usage such as web browsing and watching videos on YouTube.com, using email and a word processor I got 2 hours and 49 minutes of battery life when the screen brightness was set at around 2/3 brightness.  Setting the screen brightness to the lowest setting and turning wireless off and only using the MacBook for word processing I was able to get close to 4 hours of battery life.  You can probably assume around 3 hours of battery life in most normal usage scenarios, 5 hours is not realistic though.

Keyboard

The keyboard for the MacBook is quite different from any PC out there, the keys are each standalone and individual and look as if they stick up and protrude out of the case.  This took a while for me to get used to as the spacing between the keys seems a little larger than average, but it’s entirely usable once you get used to the feel within a few minute.  The added advantage of the keys being individual is that the keyboard feels very sturdy and there’s little chance you’ll mistype.

The touchpad is as big as a Blackberry phone as shown in this size comparison

Trackpad

The touchpad for the new MacBook is without a doubt one of the more standout features.  The touchpad is huge, it’s by far the largest of any laptop out there.  At first glance the MacBook appears to be without mouse buttons, but that’s because the buttons have actually been integrated into the touchpad.  You simply depress the touchpad in the bottom left area to register a left mouse click, and you can also configure it so that a click in the bottom right area will register as a right-click.  That’s right, for those coming from the PC world out there who are used to having right click mouse functionality, you’re in luck.

Apple has also built-in some cool gesture capabilities to the trackpad, a la the iPhone.  For instance, you can pinch and enlarge pictures on the screen with two fingers, put three fingers on the trackpad to swipe through photos, or use four fingers and swipe to the right or left to switch between applications.

Once you get used to these various gestures for getting around on the Mac you’ll miss them when using a regular old touchpad.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to like about the MacBook in terms of design and build.  The look is awesome and it’s most certainly one of the sturdiest and well built laptops out there.  The fact you have the fantastic Leopard OS X operating system and can also use Windows Vista via the BootCamp feature means you can have the best of both worlds in terms of operating systems.  But is the cost of $1,299 justifiable for the feature set you get?  Given the competition it’s hard to justify paying this much when there are PC alternatives for $800 that offer more features than the MacBook.  The new aluminum MacBook is most definitely a wonderful machine, and if you’re a fan of Apple, love OS X and money is no object then by all means it’s a good choice.  If money is a concern and you need something that costs under $1,000, it’s not worth stretching your budget to get the new MacBook as you can get more features in a similar PC laptop for $500 less.