Hands-on with the MacBook Pro
By Peter Rojas 
posted January 10th 2006 3:26PM
posted January 10th 2006 3:26PM
It's all fine and good that His Steveness introduced new Intel-powered iMacs today, but we all know that the real star of the show was the new MacBook Pro, which we were lucky enough to lay our hands on earlier today. Nothing extraordinary from a design point of view -- it looks pretty much like the old 15-inch PowerBook, just thinner -- but the screen on this thing is amazing and the switch to Intel promises to give Apple's laptop line a much needed boost in performance.
Yes, it runs FrontRow.
New MagSafe power connector.
Slightly thinner than the 17-inch PowerBook.
Okay, Anyone who is complaining about not having a right mouse button clearly just hasn't spent any significant time with OS X. Here's the deal... YOU DON'T NEED IT. Almost everything that the right click is used for in Windows is replaced with dragging and dropping in OS X. And for the guy touting his Thinkpad... there are volume and mute buttons on every laptop and every desktop keyboard Apple has made for years.
Still No Right Mouse Button? No Thanks!
Are those new Express Card slots compatible with Panasonics P2 cards?
So...does it f'n run windows??!?! ;)
How I wish so badly that I wasn't at university and already £5,000 in debt. This is one amazing piece of kit.
first post!
I want one!!!
I'm mostly curious about how hot/cool it runs. I have a G4 Aluminum powerbook myself and it can get rather toasty after being on a while.
Nearly...if we didt have to comfirm posts it would of been!
What's the battery life?
I think it's a bit strange Apple doesn't mention the battery life of the MacBook Pro on their website.
Has Apple said anything about this at Mac World?
Has anyone actually confirmed that this only has one mouse button? Or is it possible that it is two buttons but just looks like one sort of like the Mighty Mouse?
oh please... "no right mouse button" ... gimme a break, get something new to complain about.
wicked news, although I have to say: where's the 12" one!? that's what I'm waiting for.
I really WANT TO WANT one of these, but I love some of my Thinkpad features like the separate volume and mute buttons. Two pointing devices. And the light that shines down on the kb from above. ALL laptops should have that.
AND - this was the time to get the right mouse button. I'm sure I could work around some of the right-click issues with some touchpad enhancements - but I shouldn't have to.
what is the deal with the PCMICA slot being dropped? And what is the replacement express slot all about?
It certainly seems pretty to cool to me! Some things I want to know:
1. When it boots, what happens? Is it pretty similar to a normal Mac, I'm sire there can't be a beige-box-style Boot screen.
2. Can you actually run Windows/Linux normally on this?
3. What is the actual chip used? Apple are calling it an "Intel Duo Core" but what's it really? A Yonah?
4. What's the battery life like? I'm sure it's got to be shorter than the PowerBooks, and the lack of it on Apple's web-site seems pretty conspicuous to me.
Searched Apple's MacBook Pro pages for some idea of battery life, still can't find any. Looks real nice, if a bit pricy.
Maybe it's a Mighty mouse-style button, that senses which side of the button you touched. I doubt it though, as Steve would have mentioned it if it was so.
How's the bootup? Does it look like a PC or a Mac? IE, does it have a BIOS POST screen, or does it go straight into the grey OS X bootup screen?
why can't they make 14.1", i don't really want to lug a huge laptop around.. it's too much... if i just want to do regular stuff that doesn't need that extra screen. it'll be perfect. that would compete with the rest of pc laptop.
battery life is just a huge issue
Since there's no information about battery life anywhere on Apple's site, can you guys please unplug the power adapter and see what the remaining battery life shows?
SWEEEET. I have been waiting so long for a big boost in power. Ill order tonight!
I'd just like to note that for $100 over the cost of the 1.83GHz model, one can buy two 1.83GHz iMacs. Also not mentioned so far: no fw800. Still hot, though.
Quick, jerk the power plug out and get a read of the battery life display :p
I'd say it's pricey, but then I spec'd out a similar Core Duo on Dell's site.. maby 100 $ difference, tops. They're really on par w/ price now. And for an Apple, hell yea I'll pay 100$ more.
Pricing's even sweeter if your EDU (200 off each MacBook Model)
I, too want to know about battery life.. specs are suspciously absent.
I'm a little disappointed they didn't make too many cosmetic changes to the enclosures of both the MacBook and iMac. In any case I'm still interested in picking one of the models up.
3. first post!
I want one!!!
HAHAHAHA third poster LOSER
anyway these babies look sweet apart from their price
How hot does it get? Do the fans get loud? Come on give us some first impressions!
why do people get so excited about this stuff? It's a laptop that does NOTHING better than any other laptop on the market. Apple makes the best pissing contest products on the planet. Because beyond allowing people to gloat that they ordered theirs IMMEDIATELY, they don't do anything better than stuff that was already available.
fw is dead (okay.. dying).. if you didn't get that from the fact the Nano won't even support the fw ipod connector.
Plus all the "switchers" will have USB peripherals, not fw ones.
Dumb question: But are these going to be able to dual-boot Windows? (Only reason is then I can justify a purchase for work)
i want one
"A light that shines down all the keyboard"
All OUTDATED laptops should have that. Modern ones can have a backlit keyboard, like the MacBook Pro.
BobbyW, this has all the same features. The audio control features are on the F Keys, and since those are almost never used, it isn't an issue. Also, the light shining on the keyboard from IBM is a hack job. This has a backlit keyboard that can intelligently turn itself on or off (and vary brightness) based on ambient lighting.
The lack of pcmcia slot kinda bothers me. I have a 6-1 pc card adapter (7 with mini sd sleeve) living in mine and a cf adapter in my bag. the adapter means a few less camera cables i need to carry on trips and an easy way to dump mp3s on my phone via the minisd card.
and those wanting a 2nd mouse button, the ctrl key is your friend.
The MacBook Pro DOES have backlight keys (better than the IBM solution as each key is backlit, AND it is done so with an ambient light sensor to determine the amount of light needed while adjusting the key AND screen brightness), it DOES have seperate volume/mute buttons (F3 F4 F5 keys), the right button click issue has been beaten to death, get a bluetooth mouse. Problem solved. If you don't like to carry a mouse, ctrl+click. Get over it. The current PowerBook uses a 50 watt-hour Li-Ion battery with about 3.5 usable hours (that's what I get out of mine with bluetooth and wifi turned on). This new 'book has a 60 watt-hour Li-Polymer battery, so I would guess around 4.5 usable hours with extras (brightness, wireless) turned on.
I'd like to know what happened to FW800.
It's really dodgy how there's no indication of the battery life. That's probably one of the most important things in a laptop, yet it's nowhere to be seen on the apple.com
How about an "About This Mac" screenshot or even better some system profiler shots.
FW800 was dropped with the new Intel chipset (I gather it wasn't easily implemented). Yes, the new ExpressCard/34 port is the replacement of PCMCIA, it's several times faster and I've been told it can even support an external video card. Sounds cool to me!
i get dropping pc card in favor of expresscard or whatever--these things won't be out for another few months at least, so there's a little wiggle room in there for third parties. besides, i'd bet that the major players in the powerbook add-on card market have known about this for a while and are getting ready to make the the switch themselves.
but dropping FW800? retarded. it would only be okay if this thing had a SATA2 port, but it doesn't. looks like "4x faster" really means "400mbps."
ps. how many people out there do you think will totally hose their machines by jamming their apple remotes into that expresscard slot?
Big MacBook Pro - now with sesame seed and two all-beef patties!
Yes it's really easy to install WinXP right next to OSX, Linux too for that matter, better yet all 3. Use Darwine and run your Windows apps in OSX without having to boot to Windows...
Rumor has it down the road that Windows apps will run in OSx86 with no porting or emulation tricks so long as you have WinXP installed on the box as well. Not sure if that means certain windows system files will be used by OSx86 and taken on the fly from the Windows install or what ???
Duo is a dual core centrino replacement, Tom's Hardware reviewed an Asus laptop with the chip and compared to the centrino. Since Asus makes this Apple Laptop the hardware should be quite similar.
The Duo Asus Windows laptops get in the 4+ hours of battery so I would assume an Apple version would be close to that.
Still No Right Mouse Button? No Thanks.
Any person who knows even a tiny bit about any computers knows that there are freeware drivers for OS X that can make a tap of the trackpad or some other thing of your choice mimic the right-mouse button. If you wouldn't buy a computer because you have to tap the trackpad rather than click a button then you really make great decisions I'm sure. Moreover, it is much better to just have one button on a laptop trackpad -- that way you just hit the button without making sure you are hitting the right side (one button desktop mice however are absurd and I threw mine in the garbage after getting a two button for my imac).
Nice on Apple! You came up trumps again.
Just gotta wait for the 12" with a 2.16Ghz Duo Processor (http://www.intel.com/products/processor/coreduo/specs.htm)!
Now that would be laptop!
I hope it has a mighty-mouse style right mouse button on there -- trying to use Windows without a right mouse button is hard. (Not to mention using OSX when used to Windows... I right click on everything)
I thought this would be a great laptop for me -- but I would put Windows XP on it.
WIll you guys give us some shots of the lid latch and the System Profiler with CPU/memory and all that? Is the built-in iSight USB like the iMac?
Re Express Card, does ANYONE know if there will be EVDO express cards or HSPDA ones?? I assume that there may be HSPDA in due course given Apple's relationship with cingular.
I say give it 2 - 3 months and we will see the 17" macbook with 2GHz and firewire 800.
so does it run windows or not?!?!