Image credit: Apple
Since I’m going to be getting a 13-inch MacBook Pro pretty soon, I looked at it when our family went to Best Buy. I strolled through the cell phone display, and all the brand-new Windows notebooks and netbooks, and finally got to the glowing white Apple logo on a black background. Classic Apple move: put an island of simplicity in the sea of different Windows notebooks.
I looked at the MacBook plastic, the MacBook Air (useless unless you’re going for style), and saw…the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Wow. That thing is beautifully engineered—it looks better in person than in the photos at Apple.com. That thing is all display when you open it up. And the unibody is really sturdy compared to some of the plastic Windows notebooks. It’s almost indestructible.
Of course, the first thing I noticed about it when I started testing it out was the display. It’s a whole ton better than the MacBook Plastic and MacBook Air to the left of it. When I put the same wallpaper on, the colors on the MacBook Pro were noticeably richer, crisper, more vivid, and altogether better-looking.
I played around with iPhoto, dabbled in iMovie and Keynote, checked GarageBand out, and found that the huge trackpad is great for long-term use. You don’t feel confined, and gestures speed everything up. My only concern is that it the trackpad is hard to click. You have to push really hard and once it clicks, your finger may have slipped and moved the pointer somewhere else.
Flipping it over to check out the bottom, I noticed that the keyboard lit up. Wait, this comes with a backlit keyboard? Awesome! But what activates it? I tried putting my finger on various holes in the computer, but none of them activated the keyboard’s backlight. Then, I tried putting my finger over the iSight camera. The backlight faded in. I took my finger off. The backlight faded out. Smart move on Apple’s part, using the webcam also as an ambient light sensor.
I noticed that there was a tiny microphone, but could not find the speakers. They just weren’t there. So, I played some music from iTunes and put my finger over various parts of the laptop trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. Four songs into an ACDC album, it finally dawned on me: The speakers are internal, but they still can pump out a lot of volume and have OK bass response. Ooh! Asian Moment of Realization!
Clearly, a lot went into the design of this laptop. You really tell (if it wasn’t obvious enough) by when you go into the Windows side of the computer section at Best Buy. The HPs and Dells all have muted screens and small trackpads. If/when I do get it next year, I will be installing Windows 7 on it. It should be a wonderful laptop.
