18 Nov
The book of MacBook
by Dan Moren, Macworld.com
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at MacUser.com.
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People keep asking me about my new MacBook. The machines came out about a month ago, but that clearly hasn’t been sufficiency time for people to get their fill of Apple’s latest handy lineup. I have to remind myself that these are, for the mostly part, civilians: people who don’t eat, drink, breathe, and immerse themselves in all things Apple. Still, I’ve fended off envious looks and some assortment of questions, ranging from whether the performance is a huge progress to whether the screen is too reflective.
In the week that I’ve been using the new MacBook, it’s been my full-time all-purpose computer, just like its predecessor, and I’ve had to learn its ins and outs, collecting observations the whole while. What follows is a catalog of my assorted thoughts and musings without ceasing the experience. There are a sort of them. Like, “brew a draught of coffee and settle in a for a long winter read” lot. You have been warned.
Let’s start with the baseline here. My previous laptop was an original MacBook acquired way back in May 2006, shortly after the line was introduced. After two and a half years, I decided it was span to trade up. I could tell you it was the lure of the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, or the 4GB of RAM (twice as much as my old MacBook), but those would be foul, foul lies.
It’s the shiny case.
No, veritably.
The aluminum unibody is the defining feature of the new MacBook. That’s kind of obvious: it’s the at the outset and most obvious difference between it and its polycarbonate-sheathed predecessor. Previously the distinguishing feature of the high-end Macs, the metal case has now made its way to pretty abundant every part of the Mac family. And it’s a beautiful thing.
The unibody’s key advantage can be summed up in two words: build attribute. The recently made known MacBook feels solid in your hand, and there’s little trouble imagining it being hewn from a single blockade of aluminum. Put it this way: observe you remember the first time you held an eccentric person iPhone and realized how surprisingly solid it felt compared to, reply, your average poor plastic phone? Yeah, it’s like that.
If anything, the design of the machine is even simpler than its predecessor. There’s no button upon the body the trackpad, the iSight is practically hidden at the back of the black bezel, and level the sleep light is tucked away behind an aluminum facade, unseen until it becomes active (though the lofty honking IR receiver to its direct kind of ruins the smooth exterior); the speaker grilles are gone, too, moved from their spot on the back of the MacBook’s case and since integrated in the display hang.
In fact, the case design is so clean that I keep trying to brush gone an rambling dot of dust over the top left of the keyboard only to realize that it’s actually the microphone. That’s a nice change from the plastic question of the MacBook, which seemed to acquire unsightly scuffs and other marks almost diurnal.
The whole tool is also, amazingly, lighter than its predecessor. My commencement MacBook weighed a hefty 5.2 pounds (later models dropped that to an even 5), as long as the aluminum model weighs in at 4.5. That means a net savings of almost three-quarters of a pound for me, which is not insubstantial when you’re talking end for end something I carry around every day. At merited over 3 pounds, the MacBook Air may still be the king of slim, but the gap is narrowing.
The new MacBook is also a feeble smaller than the original, as well, though some of this perception is inhering to the more dramatically beveled edges, which certainly make it look smaller in profile. Also, the top lid is significantly thinner than the old MacBook, presumably a testament to the amount of space saved by means of ditching the old fluorescent backlight.
Likewise, Apple’s slimmed down the packaging of the new MacBook, which is surprisingly small—barely larger than the computer itself. It’s also slimmed down what’s in the box: you’ll find the computer, a power adapter, and…well, that’s about it (besdies attendant discs and a cute little chamois for cleaning the display). If you’re exploring for included display adapters, you’re out of luck: they’ve become a thing of the past.
I’m of two minds about this. On the one-hand, it seems like a common nickel-and-dime tactic on Apple’s party, and one that it’s used before (remember when the iPod used to approach with a efficacy adapter?). On the hand, I can see the attraction in quest of Apple of streamlining what’s included in the box. Simplicity has always been Apple’s watchword, and suffer’s face it: how many of you from the adapter from and immediately fling it in a drawer somewhere, thus ensuring that while the moment comes that you actually need it you can’t find it? And, if you’re anything like me, even those moments are increasingly rare. Better, from Apple’s perspective, to make it an option for those who really need it, and save manufacturing a lot of adapters that end up missing in people’s closets. Call it environmentally friendly, admitting that you wish. Hopefully, the need for adapters will be obviated by the contingent widespread adoption of DisplayPort, but that’s no other than overweening the video industry doesn’t feel the need to create yet another new standard next week.
Either way, I didn’t find myself using some external display on my cunning MacBook very plenteous, so I conformation to one’s self I won’t miss the adapter too much. The built-in monitor serves my necessarily very well, thanks, though that’s a eve of falling out too. With this model of MacBook, Apple has eliminated the option for a matte screen finish, plainly offending certain vocal factions of the Internet, who seem to think that either a) Apple has it in for them or b) at some point, a matte finish did a person of consequence horrible to Steve Jobs and, as revenge, the CEO has vowed to wipe non-glossy screens from the face of the planet. I think the answer’s simpler than that: 1) Steve clearly is a cool of glass used in construction where possible (cf. Apple Stores and the new trackpad—more on that later) and 2) perhaps more importantly, removing the choice between the two hide finishes means your average consumer has to make one less decision when buying a computer.
Yes, the screen is reflective. Yes, at what time you turn it off, it’s analogous a fricking mirror—it’s glass, after all. But if that’s the tradeoff I need to make in order to get the sweet, sweet LED-backlighting, then so be it. Simply put, the hold up to view is shining. It’s acute as hell, especially sitting next to a two year-old MacBook. Yes, I do prevail upon reflections, especially if there’s a light rise behind me, no more than I can either usually crank up the brightness far enough that it’s not an copy (and this sucker gets bright), or move the laptop (or myself) in such a way to avoid the reflection. Either way, I’ve been living by the agency of a sheeny display for two and a moiety years and the new model doesn’t strike me as substantially worse than the old one. Plus, as I’ve related, the instant-on super-bright LED tips the scales in its favor.
Besides the unjustified homicide of the matte manifestation, the other change that had users honing their pitchforks was the removal of the MacBook’s FireWire port. Don’t get me wrong, I love FireWire as much as the next person—presuming, of course, that the next person is not the chapter president of the “I Love FireWire” Local 457. I’ve got several FireWire drives at home and the send away in haste and accommodation of FireWire is unmatched by USB. That said, when I unpacked the MacBook, the principal thing I did was migrate from my Time Machine drive (that sports the couple USB and FireWire) and it went like a balmy summer air. Granted, I started it running and walked away from the computer for around some hour, so maybe it took longer than FireWire would have, but the point is that it wasn’t noticeably longer.
(Aside: This was my first experience doing a full migration—in the above, I’ve just started clean and transferred relevant data files. The simplicity and effectiveness of the Migration Assistant is just awesome, and notwithstanding another of those things that, in my experience, you would be hard-pressed to accomplish in Windows. A maniple of things needed to be tweaked after the move, namely my printer settings (which had to be set up from scratch), some of the menu bar preferences (the Bluetooth icon had appeared), and one application had to be reinstalled (Cisco’s VPN retainer, that depends on some low-level files that apparently didn’t make the jump). But besides those very few cases, it was literally like booting up the same exact computer in a sexy new case with better hardware. So, ay, you efficacy say that upgrading a Mac is brutally seamless.)
My belief onward the FireWire issue is that by the changes under the hood, there simply wasn’t the space to fit the FireWire hardware—I mean, you really think they’d take it off if they didn’t have to? Compromises had to be made and Apple probably presumed—rightly so, if you ask me—that the FireWire port was the most expendable. The two primary uses of the protocol are storage and digital video. And while transferring files may not be as good over USB2.0 as it is over FireWire (and yea, I’ll show up at the Target Disk Mode funeral with the rest of you), where most consumers are concerned, it’s plenty good enough. Likewise, DV-based digital video cameras are starting to be supplanted in the consumer realm by ultra-compact devices like those by Flip and Kodak.
You’ll note I emphasized consumer in both of those places, and that’s key. In the latter case, I believe that the consumer who’s buying a video camera for the purposes of, say, shooting video of their kids, is going to increasingly opt for those ultracompact devices rather than a to a greater degree traditional camcorder: they’re cheap, they can shoot HD quality, they plug directly into the computer, they don’t require tapes, and above all they’re compact and light. It’s a no-brainer. And if you’re doing prosumer or professional level video-editing, then, frankly, you in likelihood are—or should be—working on a MacBook Pro anyway.
Enough about FireWire: let’s talk input methods. First, the keyboard. I loved the original MacBook keyboard, and if anything, I think the aluminum MacBook’s is an improvement. It feels a little less cheap and clacky than the original MacBook’s, though I have an opinion this may have been a more gradual change on the in-between models. Also, having long coveted the MacBook Pro’s illuminated keyboard, I had to opt for the high-end model, and I place of safety’t been disappointed. I’m not saying it’s practical—I’ve been a touch-typer since I was a youth, thus I hardly ever look at the keyboard anyway—but damn if it doesn’t look cool.
I do take couple gripes with the keyboard, though both are pretty minor: one is the rearrangement of the function keys. My muscle memory is used to having the volume controls on the left lateral, on the F3-F5 keys; now they’re all the opportunity to pass at the other end, making it harder for me to find them quickly, and ensuring that for the first few days I ended up adjusting the volume every while I wanted to use Exposé. Likewise, relocating Exposé and Dashboard to F3 and F4 might make them more prominent for new users, no more than it’s taken re-training on my part. The new playback keys F7-F9 are kind of useful, however I’m naturally resistant to hard-wired keys that complicate into application functions.
More to the condition, though, I had mapped at least undivided or two of the F-keys to specific shortcuts, meaning that I either had to hit the Fn key and the appropriate F-key, or I had to flip the functions in the keyboard preference pane and then use the two-key move for all the special functions. Neither of these were satisfactory solutions, but fortunately I stumbled upon the handy FunctionFlip that allowed me to have the best of both worlds.
The slightly more irritating problem with the keyboard—psychologically anyway—is that my keyboard suffers from the “angled key” issue noted by some forum posters, which is to say that more of the keys are not quite level—they tilt left or right (especially the small performance keys). It’s a subtle problem and it doesn’t impact the use of the keyboard at all, but it’s individual of those niggling little details that just makes me hem and hem and haw about whether I should take it to an Apple Store and have them fix it. But I can’t be hassled to spend that much time without the computer, so I’m willing to live with it. For at that time.
That leads us to the bigger input device vary: the glass trackpad. For the life of me, I always can’t figure out where the glass part of it comes in. It looks (and, for the most part, feels) pretty much identical to the old MacBook Pro trackpad. Okay, it’s smoother. But don’t expect something that looks like the front of the iPhone, or one of those crazy mockups.
Here’s what I like about the new trackpad: it’s big. It’s smooth. The multi-touch gesture support is very, very cool, and I firmly believe that this is Apple dipping their foot in the water of touch-sensitive interfaces on the Mac. I commemorate having conversations about touch-screen interfaces and, as anybody who thinks for thirty seconds ready ergonomics can easily outline out, the idea of holding up your hands to work forward a touch-sensitive display is a bad idea. Try it. Your arms arrive tired. Putting gesture support into the place at which place your hands already are is much, much smarter.
The biggest problems with gesture defend right now are their limitations. They’re usable almost exclusively in Apple applications and there’re—as of yet—no API hooks for third-party developers. The gestures are also not re-mappable—all they prepare is exactly what Apple has told them to do. You can, however, still turn incontrovertible gestures on and off, such considered in the state of single-tap on account of click and double-finger tap for secondary click. While I’m disappointed that I be possible to’t change the gestures to suit myself (for some reason, I constantly desire to do the extort opposite of Apple’s four-finger sweep, going up for Show All Windows and down for Show Desktop), I think I understand wherefore they chose to lock it down at donative.
Touch-screens are a new interface in spite of most computer users. The iPhone has brought the idea of the touch-screen into the mainstream, but as any iPhone developer can tell you, the way you use an iPhone is very, very different from the way you use a computer. The last thing I think Apple wants at this point is a proliferation of gestures from third-party developers: they want to keep the experience consistent for at this moment, in the same state that people generate used to the idea of gestures period. How confusing is it going to be if pinching zooms in-and-out in most applications, but is used for some totally different function in another program? The problem is there’s no wont of easily labeling what gestures work attached the computer: keyboard and peer commands are explicit—you’re clicking a button or a clearly defined point or button, selecting a command from a menu, or using a keyboard shortcut that’s labeled in a menu. But what if you accidentally trigger a gesture that deletes something? I be of opinion Apple will eventually loosen up on gestures, but right at that time it’s still kind of one undiscovered rural parts. This is, after all, the company that still kind of thinks that most users don’t want to deal with the difference between left and right clicks.
And there are quirks to work out, both in hardware and software. The idea of the new trackpad is that the whole thing is a button you can click. That was initially off-putting to me, to the time when it became clear that it’s an actual, tactile button that really does click, just like the old-fashioned button did. And it works pretty well, too, as long as you don’t think about it, and just keep clicking in the same place you’ve always been clicking. The trouble is that it’s wonky. As our own Scott McNulty noted, sometimes clicks just don’t enter on a list. I often have to click two or three times on the same spot to achieve a result—that’s a problem (rumor is a forthcoming software patch will fix this). I’ve also noticed flakiness by two-finger scrolling, where the trackpad will sometimes come short to register that I’ve actually got two fingers from a high to a low position, and think I’m just trying to move the cursor when I’m really trying to scroll.
There’s also the matter of undesigned input. Because the trackpad is bigger, and you’re not locked into having your thumb on a separate button, it’s easier to period up through part of your hand accidentally on the trackpad, which can make it think you’re trying to right-click (if you have the two-finger election enabled). That may be a matter of re-training more than anything else, but it’s something to think about. In general, I’d say that the new trackpad is a solid 1.0, but is in need of refinement.
And what of the MacBook as a whole? You often hear the turn of expression “evolution not revolution” bandied end for end when describing newly come Apple products and granting the new model represents arguably the most innate redesign of Apple’s consumer portable since the original spotless iBook, it’s still an evolutionary change.
Is this, then, the ultimate evolved form of some Apple notebook? It’s clearly not perfect, but malice the complaints about the lack of FireWire and the glossy screen, it seems clear to me that Apple’s notebook lineup is continuing to move forward and, more importantly, continuing to improve, even if those improvements take the figure of subtle refinements of concept more willingly than sweeping overhauls. As with many persons of Apple’s current products, I think the best description of the the new MacBook is that it’s the company’s best consumer portable…until the next one.
