Macbook Evaluations

Well, it’s been exactly two weeks since I first received the hand-delivery of both the MacBook (MB) and MacBook Pro (MBP) for evaluation, courtesy of Apple’s seed labs (a division of Product Marketing). Once again, I would like to claim to have the best job in the world. =] Well, here are my initial thoughts and observations!

In classic Apple style, the MB and MBP came in sleek boxes where everything had its place. The first thing I noticed was that the MBP power adapter was significantly larger and less square. Looking more closely, I realized that the MBP requires a 85W adapter, while the MB only needs a 65W adapter. Wow, do I really have to carry this brick around to ensure that the MBP gets enough juice? (Incidentally, I managed to mix up the identical MagSafe connectors at some point during the first day and left them that way overnight, but neither unit blew up. Phew!)

Here are some of my consultants poring over every inch of the MacBooks. Hey, looks like the client on the other side of the Desk is interested too. We all loved the two-fingered scrolling support, but I was a bit put off by the overly-large touchpad, which often interpreted my gestures as scrolling when really I just accidentally let my pinky knuckle rest on the touchpad. One of my consultants (who will remain unnamed) seriously tried to stick the included remote control into the MBP’s PCI Express slot!

Here are the rest of the specs for the two evaluation units Apple lent me for the next 6 weeks (with my somewhat lame Fujitsu Lifebook T4020 Tablet PC feeling inadequate next to the MacBooks in the photo):

:: 13″ MacBook with black matte finish,
glossy screen (ahh, the glare! the glare! But hey, it’s still not as bad as the Fujitsu),
Intel built-in graphics with 64 MB shared system memory (aww man!),
1280×800 resolution,
2 GHz Intel Core Duo,
2 GB RAM,
120 GB 5400 RPM hard disk

:: 15″ MacBook Pro with anodized aluminum finish,
matte screen (hmm, no glare, but doesn’t seem as pleasingly bright),
ATI Radeon 1600 with 256 MB VRAM,
1440×900 resolution,
2 GHz Intel Core Duo,
2 GB RAM,
100 GB 5400 RPM hard disk (I requested the middle-of-the-line model.)

Both machines also came fully loaded with Apple software, including Final Cut Studio, Logic Pro, and Remote Desktop Administrator, which was awesome, especially since Apple said they officially do not support running FCS on the MacBook because of its underpowered built-in graphics capabilities (though I have heard conflicting stories about whether the graphics card is really that critical in even applications like Motion).

After the requisite ogling, I immediately set the MacBooks to work. First of all, these Macs boot up super fast! I started the testing with some basic non-pro video editing projects. For the most part, the process was very straightforward to import miniDV camcorder footage into iMovie 06, apply subtitles, chapterize and send to iDVD, and burn the project out to DVD. However, I did manage to crash iMovie randomly when starting a new project and hot-swapping camcorders on the MacBook. The MB took 2:52 hours to encode and burn a 1-hour video DVD. iDVD randomly hanged (i.e. the process was “Not responding”) on a second project I worked on, but even with the restart time, the total project only took 3:10 hours to complete. The MBP faired quite a bit better, clocking in at 2:20 hours. Mind you, since these were actual projects I was working on, I used different amounts of footage (but both around 1 hour), so this isn’t a super-precise comparison. Surprisingly, the dual 2 GHz processor PowerMac G5 at work completed with the best time, clocking in at 2:06. I guess iLife 06 is not totally optimized for the Intel chipset yet. Oh well.

I felt kinda sorry for the Fujitsu Tablet PC that could not edit movies or do video chats or run two operating systems simultaneously, so I tried to include it in my multitasking. That lasted about 5 minutes before I decided it would be even less annoying to just use Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection to control the Tablet PC. (I also discovered the nasty surprise that Apple Remote Desktop administrator is not in fact free, and actually costs a whopping

On the MacBook, I installed Parallels for OSX, which is a virtual machine application that allows you to run additional operating systems from within Mac OSX! A lot of people have heard of Apple Boot Camp, which allows you to boot your Intel Mac into Windows XP, but XP has to reside on a separate hard drive partition. Parallels does even better (for my purposes), by allowing you to run Windows literally as a window. File sharing and device sharing are completely possible between the operating systems, and you can run Windows in fullscreen when you need it. The above screenshot has not been altered in any way.

On the MacBook Pro, I decided to install Windows Vista (Beta 2) using Boot Camp, just for fun. The new visual elements are pretty, but there actually wasn’t enough stuff in Vista to hold my attention for long. I also watched the doctored Vista Features Presentation on YouTube, which only went to demonstrate that Mac OSX pretty much already has most, if not all, of the “new” features released in Windows Vista. One thing that sucks about running Windows on a Mac is that certain keys are desperately missing, including a right-click, Delete key, Print Screen key, among others. Eventually, I had to plug in a full USB keyboard to get the functionality I wanted.

Well, I think I’m starting to bore some readers, so I’ll just summarize the rest of my findings thus far. I tried to use the MacBook exclusively “on the road”, and it’s proven to be pretty adequate for all of my normal tasks. Sure, it would be nice to have the higher resolution screen for handling tasks like Remote Desktop Connection, but overall, I’ve been very happy with it. Given the $1000 price difference, I’d seriously think about buying just a MacBook instead of the MBP, which marks a significant shift from the opinion I held before getting these test units. In fact, the MBP really doesn’t feel like a very portable unit, especially given how amazingly hot it gets, even when it’s not running any major applications. One big problem I’ve been having is testing true Final Cut Pro performance. For some reason, all of the DV files I’ve been trying to import and playback in the Viewer stutters, and often stops playing altogether. At first, I thought, “Oh, so this is why FCS isn’t supported on the MB,” but I discovered the same problem on the MBP, except that it just stutters, as opposed to flat out stopping. Neither case is ideal if I’m going to get any serious video editing work done on a laptop. I’ve assumed this must be just a glitch with my particular projects, but tried a bunch of things to try to workaround it, with no luck. Does anyone out there have more definitive data about whether playback of full-quality DV (I guess with “unrendered” audio tracks) is supposed to be smooth on the MBs?

Okay, I think that’s enough for now! For more MacBook and Vista photos, check out http://mmstudio.stanford.edu/photos/v/Acomp2005/macbook/

P.S. I’m getting a kick out of the Mac Spoof commercials by TrueNuff on YouTube.