Apple MacBook Pro
So, where to start with this, i owned a MacBook Pro, its spec is in my sig, i bought it last September before going to university, it is a brilliant device, and it has served me well, it is running snow leopard, which is a good version of mac osx, the same version i have on my iMac (also in Sig), however, i noticed that for something called 'black Friday' which i understand is some sort of American bank holiday, companies in America compete with each other and have massive sales, and thus, reduce the price of their products to attract shoppers, well, this year, apple brought this tradition across the pond to us here in Blighty, and introduced offers for one day only here in the UK, how well they did i am unsure, but from me alone they ended up with over 1000 pounds, i bought this, and a ipod classic, which i will review seperatly when it arrives.
The cost of this unit was (£918) for those who were curious, thats 918 of my own pounds.
So, onto this, it got delivered, in the usual way, via ups (which i understand is united states parcel service?) i believe?.
Onto, like all my reviews, PICS!!
Nicely wedged in, and for £82 off, its the same quality, nice to see no corners have been cut
The box is firmly wedged down the center, so firmly, it took a good tug to get it out...
So, a good tug later
Nice to see every thought has been taken, they even put a clear plastic bag around the box to prevent the outer cardboard marking the gorgeous white cardboard box
So, lets whip that off
Some specs for those of you who are interested:
Should be a nice upgrade from my system in my sig, although that is by no means slow, or outdated, in my opinion, sorry for the socks
One side of the box (above 3) open, the other side (below) closed!
The cost of this unit was (£918) for those who were curious, thats 918 of my own pounds.
So, onto this, it got delivered, in the usual way, via ups (which i understand is united states parcel service?) i believe?.
Onto, like all my reviews, PICS!!
Nicely wedged in, and for £82 off, its the same quality, nice to see no corners have been cut
The box is firmly wedged down the center, so firmly, it took a good tug to get it out...
So, a good tug later
Nice to see every thought has been taken, they even put a clear plastic bag around the box to prevent the outer cardboard marking the gorgeous white cardboard box
So, lets whip that off
Some specs for those of you who are interested:
Should be a nice upgrade from my system in my sig, although that is by no means slow, or outdated, in my opinion, sorry for the socks
One side of the box (above 3) open, the other side (below) closed!
Lets slice the seal and whip it open, ohh its so nice to open brand new apple products, the quality of the packaging, the fact its so well thought out, the protection, everything, its just brilliant, so many other companies could take so many notes from apples ideas:
Everything from the plastic cover on the MBP itself, through to the soft foam stuck to the lid of the box.
Echo! Echo!
Usual legal bumph, do not use if you do not agree with terms and conditions, blah, blah, blah, that's nice, lemmie at my macbook!
Box swiftly emptied:
So, included are:
- Power Cable
- Power Adapter
- Plug Adapter
- Booklets etc
Tadah!
Books, some apple stickers, and a cloth to keep your new Macbook nice and shiney
Lets remove the things that i dont need:
Guess which is old and new? (old one is plugged in, although if i hadn't plugged it in i bet you wouldn't have been able to tell
And again, open it up, there's no clue as to which is the older and newer of the two, apart from the fact the new one is....new
Lets whip it onto the table and get the camera out in more force.
On!
Loading:
The quality of the keyboard is brilliant, the function buttons are a bit different to those i am used to now, but apart from that, same old keyboard too, except this one feels new, mine feels like it has been heavily used, like it has, for writing reviews like this, and all my old uni work etc.
more key pics:
I will note that i do especially like the eject key on the keyboard, its something that other laptop companies should take into account, it is a clever way of making it work, and it is so simple, yet so effective, it is also the same as my old MacBook Pro (now to be abbreviated to MBP because my fingers are starting to ache
Lets go through the setup shall we, ill shush for a minute and let the pics do the talking, as it doesnt take all that much explaining.
I didnt want to import using the assistant because im sure every setting, every little detail would be kept, and i couldnt be bothered, i just wanted to transfer my files, at a later date, by myself.
You can choose your picture if you wish for lion, i should note that this runs on the new version of OSX, lion, which is 10.7.X, rather than my current OS, snow leopard (10.6.8)
You can even take a picture, im camera shy, so i improvised, and used a standard picture
And Tadahhhhhh!
The keyboard is something i keep coming back to, i have used a whole wide selection of laptop and desktop keyboards, and i have yet to find one i enjoy typing on more than my mac keyboards, both the desktop and the laptop versions, even their touch screen versions are some of the best i have ever used.
Details of system:
And there we are, working:
I have to admit, i was sceptical when lion came out, i didn't like some of its features as listed on the website, some of the ways it changed things from snow leopard, and the way they had removed front row (almost like a media center that could be controlled with a apple remote)
However, the changes have been done for a reason, the hard drive isnt on the desktop anymore because it doesn't need to be, apps have been removed from the dock because they dont need to be there, the gestures have been simplified, everything has been tweaked to give it a more grown up feeling, and one of my quibbles with snow leopard was the fact when you clicked the red X the program was still running, it just closed the window, not anymore!
there are so many tweaked features in lion that i cannot list them all, if you wish, you can continue reading at: http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/
Because lion in itself is almost worthy of its own review, anyway, back onto this, there isnt really much i can say, i could drone on and on about the usual things reviews bang on about, but lets keep this reasonably brief.
Its reasonably lightweight, its small, its compact, its quite expensive, but for that expense, you get ALMOST every feature you would need, lion is vastly improved over snow leopard, the small upgrades in tech spec have made a big difference to performance, a 500 Gb slow hard drive is maybe not the best choise, the touchpad is one of the best ive used, 4gb of ram should be more than enough unless your doing stupid levels of work on it, the included programs are good, and the mac app store lets you expand it indefinatly, the inclusion of a CD/DVD superdrive is a good thing, please dont remove this apple, the thunderbolt port is a brilliant adition to the MBP as it allows it to act as a desktop replacement in many cases, more details here:
www.apple.com/uk/macbookpro/features.html#thunderbolt
it is superb to type on, its intuitive to use, it just does exactly what it says on the tin, without any fuss, or any problems, it just does what you ask of it, well, and will continue doing so for aslong as you can keep going, with 7 hours battery life (my old MBP was 10, but the exchange of power/battery is always a trade off you have to make with a laptop) and im sure i can improve on that anyway, my current MBP lasted 12 hours on the lowest screen brightness, with wifi off, bluetooth off, everything else i could turn off, off, doing nothing more than typing
So, lets sum this up
Pro's
- Brilliant All Rounder
- Packed with Features
- No Bloatware that comes with Windows
- Works out of the box, no reformat needed
- Clean classic simple design
- Brilliant Keyboard
- Brilliant Trackpad
- Inclusion of Thunderbolt port
- Continued inclusion of DVD superdrive
- Expensive, but worth it
- No Blu-ray, but im sure you can live with it, as the screen isnt 1080p anyway.
- No Frontrow in Lion
- Nothing Yet
Thank you for Reading
