First impressions of macbook/+pro

[johnsy]

I didn't bough it, so this review is limited.

Good things- keyboard is quite nice, but someone with smaller hands will have problems to reach keys- there are some significant clearance between certain keys.
hard drive is very easy to replace.
now lcd can move in a little bigger angle (back) than previous apple laptops.
Screen quality. (but it has one minus too). It blows old macbook 100 times. Older generation macbook seems like some PC made in '80. Older generation macbook pro's screen is not so shameful.

Speaker sound quality. Sure we need headphones for REAL sound, but older generation macbook's speakers are pathetic.

bad things. Sorry, but screen is really too glossy. You cannot find any angle in which you cannot see either yourself or background behind you.

Trackpad without any buttons. I just don't buy it. It took me too long time to fiddle with such trackpad to highlight some text. I just don't see it in a real life as useful as advertised- I talk about simple word editing job and I can imagine what hardship it going to cause for gamers (except might be one day games will be created according to apple like things going right now with ipod touch/iphone platform. In any other case you will need external mouse just to save time.

So I will continue later, but here is my take:

If you was dreaming about macbook, then buy shiny, new one, because upgrades are really significant (even if you loose fw port some you get much more other upgrades in return). Now if you need macbook pro, I wouldn't think that new shiny macbook pro is better. Bigger screen really annoys with reflections and we REALLY have to see performance improvements.

 

[madmaxmedia]

Thanks for the impressions.

The center-to-center distance between the keys are actually the same, it only looks different because of the small gaps. If you look at the old MBP keyboard, the keys are 'tapered' at the top, so there is actually a gap between the key surfaces there too.

 

[johnsy]

So I would lean heavily towards shiny macbook, but there is one thing which stops me- lack of firewire. After all these years using USB I finally leaned towards firewire because of speed improvement and here you go- apple discontinued it...

Now I was reading Steve's answer to that... I think he has to understand one thing- apple DOES influence industry. Just look at all iphone clones, white earbuds, floppy dumping and other things. So if apple tells that firewire should disappear, well then it will became a novelty item then, just like external floppy reader. However if they kept DVD burner then firewire should have stayed too. I think DVD-CD format is dead. I rarely use them and even if I do I would be OK with using external DVD burner instead of just carrying useless weight all the time. Seriously people even if you download something suspicious from bittorent or whatever how often do you put stuff on a DVD? They now even sell cases for portable hard drives, so what does it tell you? OK some people do backup, but external dvd burners cost like next to nothing (unless you are really obsessed with idea that even shoes you wear should be made by apple.

If firewire must go, then give us something like e-sata or better.

 

[Logos327]

Just to add a small reply. Any serious gamers would not use the trackpad in the first place. Even in the casual game of WoW a mouse is leaps and bounds easier (and better) than the trackpad.