The MacBook Pro is an outstanding laptop/notebook both in terms of performance and looks. My MBP 2.53GHz Unibody can handle every application I throw at it, from Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop CS4, to Crysis, a very resource-demanding game. Whereas similar and better specs can be found in other high-end laptops, sometimes for cheaper prices, the build quality and aesthetic beauty of the MBP is matched by no other laptop. It feels sturdy and rock solid with its aluminium enclosure and it is a pleasure just looking at the physical aspects of the notebook. The only downside of having an aesthetic masterpiece as a working tool, is yourself being overprotective of the machine. I find myself cleaning the screen and the keyboard, handle it just like my little baby, have a sleeve which in turn is stored in a messenger bag etc. Although these have nothing wrong in themselves, some may see you as a complete idiot and/or geek.
Yeah, the design is spectacular. I do have some reservations about the miniscule cursor keys (these are important keys, arguably the most used of all) and the fact that they've now put a damn Fn key where anyone's muscle memory would expect to find Ctrl. And maybe (I'm ambivalent about this one) they should have utilized the larger space on the 17" to add a numpad like they do on all 17" PC notebooks. Not that I'm a number cruncher but those keys are vital to anyone who uses a music application like Reason, Cubase etc, because it's a 20+ year old standard to have Play, Stop, Rec, Loop/Cycle, FF, Rew and left and right locators on the numpad. Without them it's kind of like trying to drive a car without pedals. Mac is a favorite among musicians after all. But other than that, the design is damn near perfect.
It is a well-known fact about Apple, is that they try to minimalise their devices in order to create a slimmer, sleeker device. This anorexic feature of Apple is also found in their Pro notebook, which for example, only provides two USB ports which are very close to each other, and sometimes when plugging in a USB device with a wider than normal port, the other USB port is blocked. Yes this can be solved by a USB hub, but still, why buy a bulky device for a $3000 laptop when other $600 PC laptops have 4 USB ports, 2 on each side of the machine?
True. Apple really hates cables and talks a lot about cable elimination (it's one of the selling points for the iMac), but you end up with more cable spaghetti on an MBP (and the cables stick out like a sore thumb since they're white) than on a professional PC notebook since these often have a docking station, which allows you to tuck away the cables nicely. Maybe Apple got burned by the DuoDock flop, I dunno, but they should really extend their war against cables to the laptops.
The Mac OS experience is by far better than any other OS out there. I'm a very technical savvy guy with experience in Windows and Linux OS and still I found the Mac OS the best of them all. It's NOT true that Macs never crash. One time, even Calculator.app crashed, so the myth that Macs are error-free and never crash is not true. But still, Macs are 100% reliable in my opinion.
The OS is great. It does lack some features like copy/paste in the Finder, or the ability to resize windows with something other than the wimpy handle at the bottom right, but on the whole it's stable, fast, easy to use, intuitive and eye-pleasing.
In my opinion, no other company has the level of customer support offered by Apple. In my case, my iPod Touch was broken after 14 months of purchase, was out of warranty and still Apple gave me a new one without any hassle. I heard a lot of other success stories with Apple's customer support including replacements out of warranty, of previous generation machines with current generation ones.
Ooooh, now that one I can't agree with. Sure, the support might be great if you live two blocks from an Apple Store, but what if you don't? What if you live in a country where there isn't a single Apple Store (they do have international sales, after all).
Let's say it's Wednesday, and you have one week to an important and definitive deadline. You live in a small town where there's neither an Apple Store nor an Apple service center.
Suddenly, the power management on your laptop goes haywire and you suspect the culprit is a broken logic board. Damn. You don't have time for this now.
If your work machine is a pro Dell notebook, here's what you do:
Call the number on the bottom of your laptop. Describe the problem. 12-24 hours later, a guy stops by and replaces the logic board. You're up and running again with ample time to complete the project.
If your work machine is a MacBook Pro, here's what you do:
Find the number to Apple support, call them. They'll tell you they don't service portables on-site, and besides, where you live they don't do any on-site service period. They tell you that they can send a box for you so that you can send it in, but you're on this deadline, see. So they say well, if you can transport it to town X in the neighboring county, there's a service center there. So on Thursday morning you get in your car and drive there. Slap the MBP on the counter and say "fix this now please". "Woah, easy there" says the guy. "We don't have parts here. First, we have to run some diagnostics to determine what's wrong, then we order new parts from Apple". So you reluctantly leave it there and drive home. They do the diagnostics thing and order the parts, they're expected to arrive on Monday. The weekend goes by. Monday goes by. On Tuesday you get a call: your Mac is fixed, come and pick it up. On Tuesday evening you're up and running again, but despite pulling a frantic all-nighter, you're nowhere near done by Wednesday morning, and what little you've managed to produce looks like garbage.
May not seem important but much of this scenario would actually apply to me, and it's one of the things holding me back from retiring my PC notebook and getting an MBP. Of course, I'd just switch to my desktop machine and finish the project there, but that's me -- someone else might have blown his entire computer budget on an MBP.
This is something they should've rectified before they started yelling about how great it is to do the Mac switch. At least two PC manufacturers are way ahead of Apple when it comes to the speed and convenience aspects of support.
Convenience and speed aside, there are other cons with having to send or transport the machine for repairs; what if your hard disk was full of confidential work files, or something embarrassing like 40 gigs of hardcore porn (maybe even starring yourself, if you're Paris Hilton)? Not a problem with on-site repairs. Heck, you can even hold the hard disk while the repair dude does his thing. But if you have a hermetically sealed Mac that's dead so you can't get to the files in any way, and you can't remove the drive physically, the contents of your hard drive will be exposed to some unknown repairman miles away.
