Apple MacBook Review: Part 2

[Guest]

Yeah, I'll get a huge "thumbs down" for this, but I have to say I enjoyed the articles and I'm a Mac user... by choice. I've used both Windows and Mac OS for a long time, and I have to give the nod to the Mac. Some people prefer it, go figure, don't tell me I'm wrong for it; that makes you an ignorant prick. As for hardware, show me a Dell with the same level of fit and finish, general quality of design, reliability, with comparable components all the way through (don't just tack stupid card readers on) and put the OS that works best for me on it, and I'll gladly pay Apple levels for it. Until then, they're really just not worth it.

Thanks for the articles, Alan, and props for posting them knowing you'd have to deal with all this Apple hating garbage. After all, despite how much these goons deny it, most of these comments are because they simply hate Apple.

Btw, I don't insult you all because you use Windows; I use it too. I insult because you're all pricks that probably won't understand a word I say unless I use a bit of your own language.

 

[arkadi]

I am surprised to see the second part of this article, not after reading comments on the first one...

 

[danimal_the_animal]

I have a few people here at work who bought macbooks (they are teachers)
they brag about them all the time ( i feel like they are repeating the commercial word for word on how good it is) yet they constantly ask me for HELP cause THEY cant figure something out!!!! cant even add themselves to a wireless network!!!'

WTF!!!!!!

 

[Guest]

"People here are Tech Enthusiasts, which is about as far away from a Mac user as you can get. People here build computers, they don't buy them. Why should they give a shit about any pre-built computer, much less a Mac?"

People here don't build computers, they assemble them from components built by someone else and probably tested and recommended by yet another someone else. I can assemble pretty much any automobile engine...build one? Not so much.
Workers are paid less than a buck an hour to assemble computers in China. I don't work that cheap and since I never came up with a design for the next more powerful cpu or a faster bus I gave it up as being essentially non-productive.

Just a thought.

 

[Tedders]

[citation][nom]darkfires[/nom]I am sorry but this article does NOT belong on this website.... a very poorly written article to say the least. OS X and Apple products are for people who are too dumb to use a PC. And for people who don't mind overpaying for their lesser quality hardware, forget how Apple always censors anything negative about any of their products in the forum. There was even an article about this on tomshardware about their communist style censorship. I've dumped thousands of dollars on apple hardware, and regretted it.[/citation]

Gee, that is strange. I use a Mac at home, but I have to fix everybody else's PC problems at work. So am I still too dumb? I think not.

 

[HB87]

Wow! I have noticed in the IT world individuals select, and attend their respective churches, which I find annoying. If you want religion go find God, don’t waist every ones time by spouting off your religious feelings on the matter. Computers are tools.
I haven’t looked at a Mac, but I will now. Well ok I saw one at a Fry’s back in 2001 I think, pretty OS, but seemed to lack the depth. I’ve used Tom’s Hardware for years. This site is awesome. And the title of the site says it all. It’s Toms Hardware, not Tom’s PC’s. While I agree the info on the OS doesn’t fit, it was useful. The hardware portion was fascinating, because I had no idea what was in a Mac, other than they had switched to Intel a few years back. Seems to me if you truly like hardware you should have loved the review, unless it offended your religious stance. The Mac heads are just as bad, from other posts I have read recently.
I read the guys post on Stealth marketing. Again Wow! Seems you feel like this article shows some kind of conspiracy. Computers are only tools we use. Use what works for you. We don’t all drive the same kind of car do we? If Linux suits you, great use it. Windows suits you, great use it. Mac suits you, great use it. There tools! Not Gods!
Most of you sound like some MOPAR guys I use to know. To them Dodge came up with every good idea, and had no faults. I like articles like this because the author does point out quite a few faults with the Mac.
Apple is not going to take over the world and you shouldn’t see them as a threat to your PC religion. If they make good tools people will buy them. If Microsoft makes good tools people will buy them, but we all won’t choose the same thing.
Techies constantly want to show their line of thought as better, their reasoning as better, their choice as better (and yes I’m a techie since DOS 3.2). Yet we proclaimed ourselves as forward thinking and open to new ideas, because we deal with new technology all the time. They are tools, there’s no conspiracy, and in nearly all situations where you have decided there is only ONE clear choice, there is actually MANY.

 

[chaohsiangchen]

[citation][nom]justkevin7[/nom]I think its funny you talk about the percentage of college educated people who use Macs vs. PC's. In my 14 years of doing technical support, by far the most idiotic and users are at Ph.D level. Absolute complete morons.[/citation]

Let me guess, you're mentioning people in communication, law, English, history, gender or ethnic study major, right? Because, here in Engineering/Science department, we use non-Mac. The people I know in Science department using macs are those doing simulation or data crunching, and they buy workstation running linux for that, while using their macs as wordprocessingpowrpointer. Mac is non-starter to us. We need tweaking hardware, software, build and rebuild computers constantly to fit our needs.

In the end, Apple Inc is selling an image attached to their product. People who don't buy into image don't buy from them. We'll see how Apple Inc will do without Mr. Jobs in the coming depression.

 

[T-Bone]

I agree 100% with comment: "Ive been reading Tomshardware intermittently for about 8 years now and Ive noticed a steady decline in quality." This couldn't be more true and really has nothing to do with macs in general; it's simply a general decline in quality. That said, I believe that readership has declined so consequently, articles like this are designed to attract readership and thus drive more people to the site in hopes of having them come back to read more substantive stuff later on. Like when the tv news (i.e. the news not entertainment tonight or hard copy) does a piece on a Lohan or Spears nip-slip or something like that. It's a shame because I think that most people would like to see a well written objective article on the subject, but it would have to stick to cold hard facts, contain accurate test data, and compare apples to apples (no pun intended.) Although I think that macs would probably loose in the "overall" aspect of these types of comparisons, I think that people would probably be delightfully surprised to see how it fairs on "test data graphs" that compare many other systems.

In the end, Macs aren't the worst things in the world of pc's and they aren't the best either. I would say they are somewhere in between and certainly closer to the upper echelon than the bottom but this article is completely disingenuous and does WAY more disservice to macs than to pc's .

To put in less (or more) abstract terms, I really like to use the "cars are pc's" analogy where you have different brands from Hyundai to Bentley (eMachines to Alienware) and also different colors from black to white (OSX to Linux). Since Macs are really pc's now-a-days, one can only conclude that when the author says Mac vs pc he really means Mac vs a certain pc or certain pc's; otherwise, it would like saying BMW vs cars. Moving along, if I were to choose a particular car company to be a Mac, then I would say Macs are like BMWs (imo); consequently, pc's would be all other car companies. So, sure you can compare the BMW (Mac) to a Honda (pc) or Chevy (pc) but then THAT'S what you're doing: comparing BMWs to Chevys. This isn't in and of itself wrong or biased BUT when you say that the BMW is better because it only costs slightly more than this particular Chevy and that it's also better because the BMW is more well-built and comes with more features and this BMW comes in Sedona Red Metallic color (OSX) and the Chevy comes in red (Windows Vista); then, this is where it becomes biased and subjective. The truth is that BMW (Mac or Apple) makes a great car and yes it is fast, stylish, looks great, and has many cool features and when you park it next to a Chevy or a Honda you might feel really proud about it and think that it sticks out so much more but don't forget that someone can also park their Jaguar or Mercedes or Cadillac or Acura next to you and give you a real run for your money. Not to mention that someone else can also park a much more expensive Ferrari, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, McLauren, or Porsche, and really blow the doors off your Beamer!

 

[Guest]

This my first time on this site.

I don't think Apple has to bribe anyone at tom's hardware to get good reviews.
Is any positive article about Apple products always met with accusations of bribery on this site?
If so then, by extension, only negative reviews on Apple's products will be considered fair by you PC folk.

Talk about the PC Stockholm syndrome!

Alan Dang's reaction to his new MacBook was almost exactly the same as mine was to my new MacBook Pro.

Once you buy a Mac, you never go back!

 

[imkvn]

I agree with the following people. Why make an article about Apple when the sight is targeted to Enthusiast. This is not "TH". This article is based on so much "feel" and not enough test data to give a non bias conclusion. ex: "I never thought I would become a Mac fan," is an example of "TH" selling out. How can you be a fan? It's more about how well something preforms at a given task. I remember when there was a time when TH actually cared about us, enthusiast, but now completely sold out. Look at their web site. It's full of crappy ads, keywords, loads really slow, I cant even get to the next page without a pop-up of a key word or advertisement. TH has taken a turn for the worst. The only thing good about this sight is archives, and forums.

 

[totenkopf]

[citation][nom]Benihana[/nom]"People here are Tech Enthusiasts, which is about as far away from a Mac user as you can get. People here build computers, they don't buy them. Why should they give a shit about any pre-built computer, much less a Mac?"People here don't build computers, they assemble them from components built by someone else and probably tested and recommended by yet another someone else. I can assemble pretty much any automobile engine...build one? Not so much. Workers are paid less than a buck an hour to assemble computers in China. I don't work that cheap and since I never came up with a design for the next more powerful cpu or a faster bus I gave it up as being essentially non-productive.Just a thought.[/citation]

Hold on there, professor. You have just posed what I believe to be the best real world definition of an ad hominem attack that I have ever seen. You're trying to prove him wrong by arguing semantics (and badly at that), when you should be trying to prove that most people here do actually buy pre-built systems more often then "assembling" them from components (as that would have been relevant to the point he was making). I can't tell what you're trying to prove with that post. Are you saying we aren't enthusiasts? Apparently you don't dispute the fact that most people here "assemble" computers, just that we don't fabricate the pieces? Either you missed the context completely, or you just like arguing over irrelevant bits of the conversation (like me).

By the way, I'm pretty sure that "build" literally means to assemble from parts/pieces. I think the word you're looking for is fabricate, as in a fabrication shop that creates(fabricates) metal parts for machines or whatever from customer specs. I don't think the guy you quoted was trying to say people at Tom's design and fabricate the components of their builds.

 

[firefox408]

I was amused by this article to say the least, why not actually compare two machines running OSX, instead of the same machine that you "hacked" the OS then claim it isn't legitimite copy of OSX for your tests....

The hacked copies of OS are setup to run on NON Apple hardware, what makes you think its going to work the exact same on Apple HW?

Try running the tests using a real mac, and a hackmac side by side if your so interested in results.

I went and D/L'd a copy of OSX for non-apple hw, installed it on my HP dv6700 and my xbench numbers stuff yours into the ground for the same class machine. C2D @2.0ghz. Makes me wonder what you put in your coffee the morning you ran your "benchmarks"

Re-do your tests and show us the HARDWARE that you used, and WHY one is better than the other. Not the same mangled misguided test using the same machine and software you crippled.

I agree with previous posters that this is the poorest review...

(P.S. for the record, I own an iMac with C2D@2.4ghz but benchmarks would hardly be fair, laptop hd vs desktop)

 

[Observer]

These negative comments prove that there's nothing that gets the vocal minority of server admins, gamers and modders more upset than an article that refuses to reinforce their condemnation of Macintosh computers -- except, of course, when the heresy comes from one of their own. The offender must quickly be ostracized, branded with a scarlet "A" (for Apple), shamed and shunned.

For these tech-nerds, specs, slots, ports, options, and bargain pricing, are all that matter. Design, simplicity, and style have little or no value, and are to be hurled as insults. It's all about macho.

Here's their thought process: Mastering a PC is a hard-won source of pride. Anyone who isn't willing or thought capable to fight the battle (learning the minutia of configuring, troubleshooting, and fine tuning hardware and OS) deserves no respect from these elite. Mac users take the easy way out. They must be too stupid to use a "real computer", or surely they are willing to overpay simply for the pleasure of flaunting their underpowered status symbol to other ignorant fools. What else could it be?

While the world around them wakes up and increasingly gives the Mac serious consideration, the remaining geeks will close ranks and take comfort in their shared hatred of all things Apple.

 

[Bugermass]

I never really post on this site, but I have been an avid tomshardware reader since it first opened back in the day. I've also been a hard core PC hardware guy all my life and have used everything from dos to Vista-64, and several flavors of linux. I could be considered one of the most anti-mac people you would know.. BUT... I do alot of Digital Audio Recording as well as Video Editing. I've always been on PC, using Cubase,Older Versions Of Logic Audio, and the last several years I've been using Sonar Producer. As for video editing I did use an older mac back in the day with Avid Cinema on it as a local public TV station. Anyways.. The other day I went to the MAC store to get a new case for my iPhone and decided to try and crash the MacPro they had there.. So I opened every program I could find. To my surprise, I couldn't even get the machine to studder. What suprised me the most it that I was able to play a video on I-Tunes, Play another multi tracked video in Final Cut and Play a pretty large project in logic Audio all at the same time with real-time rendered plug ins in both projects with not one single glitch pop or click WHILE having about 20 or so other applicaions running at the same time.. My home computer that I do all my digital recording on is a home built phenom quad core with the badest MB and memory at the time, SATA HDDs, baddest graphics card, and I could never get it to do ALL these things at the same time without gliches and studders. And its not the fault of the CPU or Hardware. Its the OS.. Because of the way windows manages reasources and shares IRQs and other poor design problems it will choke where the mac didn't.. For the first time I saw the MAC for what it was. A very well built linux machine with useable apps and a well designed GUI..

Just some thoughts. I still hate mac for everything they stand for and dislike their rabbid fanboy community, but I must say OSX does do things much better than windows when it comes to managing resources and true multitasking.

 

[Jesper-L]

Im a bit shaken by this section of the article:

I’m not saying that Mac users are smarter than Windows users. Just the averages. If you think about the ubiquity of computers in North America, Europe, and Asia, then the average Windows user should in fact be close to the 50 percentile for the global population. If you think you’re better than 50 percentile, then you, too, are better than the average.

If you look at the market, it makes sense. US Census data has long shown the association between level of education and household income. Since Macs are inherently more expensive, it would follow that the average income of a Mac owner should be higher than the average income of a Windows owner, and along those lines, the average education of a Mac owner should be higher than that of a Windows user. That bears out in large surveys. About 70% of Mac users have a college education whereas only 54% of Windows users have a college education according to a 2002 Nielsen study.

How can that pass editorial processes? How can that be of any relevance at all to the security of a piece of hardware and an OS? What is "smart" precisely? Does the level of education reflect ability to handle computers or what? That is based on which statistics?

You are saying:

"The smart people in the world get an education, so if you dont have one, then youre dumb as a door."

"Since youre reading this article on TH, then dont worry. Im not spitting you in the face, youre a smart guy. Im just spitting all the other fools in the world in the face."

You argue in favour of the truth of the myth (arguments based based on prejudice) and then you say its not important. So why is it there? What is the precise point of that section?

Ive been coming here for 10 years i think. Never signed up before, but i did now, and im not confirmed it, since i wont be coming here anymore. Im completely stunned by this.

 

[ryansolid]

I find it funny how this guy is gonna be the first out the door to by the new Core i7 mac computer. Truthfully there are lots of advantages with the mac for the average user. The OS is pretty efficient (look what it's based on) and fairly compatible with a wide range of software. The user experience can be awe inspiring for the casual user. I actually like OS X a lot.

That being said I still wouldn't buy a Mac desktop. A Mac laptop is one thing, as realistically what you are looking for isn't necessarily best performance and they provide a nice little package (most people don't mess with their laptops much). Unless you are buying at the very front of the curve you are paying more for your computer. Their products first put on the market are priced reasonably (in that everything is overpriced). That being said they don't depreciate. They just get replaced as if the old product never existed. If you are gonna pay that type of money I'm sure you would want some customizability on the hardware. Mac majorly falls short here. They don't attract the enthusiast for this reason. Any one on a budget knows they will get the same performance for half price in 6 months at which point their upgrade options will be limited. So who does that leave us with? Non-enthusiasts with a big budget who probably don't need that type of power or they would have probably gotten something that they could keep cutting edge for a couple years.

 

[Bugermass]

Yeah, but lets take a look at somthing for a moment. Even though my post was totally disreguarded.... ;( There is a significant difference in the performance of a OSX based machine vs Windows. Go into any professional recording studio and all you'll see are Mac Pros. The reason is not because the MAC hardware is better, its because in situations where you're moving large amounts of data thats time critical to the frame and can't sit and wait for the OS to time share a critical reasource, theres a HUGE differnce between how a PC and MAC handles that or should I say OSX and Windows. For that reason the larger Digital Media software companies like Digidesign or Logic Audio develop their top tier solutions for MAC.. Look just do this.. Go to the apple store, clear your mind of your anti MAC thoughts and just play with one for a while.. And not just tinker, but try to crash it, try to bog it down. Its gonna feel weird cause its different, but your a computer nerd, "figure it out!" and put it through the ringer and see if you don't have a different opinion afterwards. I beat on the MAC pro I was messin with for a good hour, and thats all it took for me to become more curious about it just because of how solidly it performed whith all th abuse I was giving it. You can't talk crap about somthing that you've never given a honest chance to, and if you do, then your just another PC lover poser on a bandwagon and shouldn't be reading these reviews in the first place. If you DO test it and truthfully give it your all and you are still no convinced then thats great, you don't have to like it, but look objectivley and get hands on with it before you just blablablabalbal.. Taking that approach opened my eyes to somthing that I never before realised. I'm still a PC guy, but I have a new respect for MACs..

 

[Bugermass]

Sorry when I type I skip keys somtimes. But you should be able to read it..

 

[ph3412b07]

The hacked copies of OS are setup to run on NON Apple hardware, what makes you think its going to work the exact same on Apple HW?

Um...just so you know when it comes down to hardware, Macs and PC's are just about the same. The x86/x64 architecture is not exclusive to either, the same intel cpu's are used in both. Unless you wanna talk about PowerPC. Yeah, some great Apple exclusive architecture there. Gaps in performance benchmarks can be attributed to poorly optimized software. Whats exclusive about Apple hardware? Clearly, the sleek design is going to improve benchmark scores.

 

[ryansolid]

Most of my mac use has been in the studio. It's amazing how good an old G4 is still at running pro tools. Finding a used mac desktop is a great option here. A friend of mine just picked up a G5 for his setup and is running it great. And yes I use a q6600 and run protools 7.4 in Vista. I prefer Mac OS X and have been interested in the OSX86 project. That being said, a brand new Mac Pro is a hard sell even in the pro audio/visual segment. I know that is where they mostly go. As I said although initially priced well (the first 2 socket duo core solution, was easily $500 cheaper than I could put together an equivalent pc), but a few months later a Q6600 could roughly give you that performance for half the price. The 8 core (2 quads) was a lot nicer prospect a few months later, but no longer. So if you really just want to pay the inflated prices when they first come out go ahead. Otherwise buy the best performing system for the price. It's really about where you want to buy on the curve. And that is true no matter PC or Mac. But you have to ask yourself what is that extra cash getting you?

 

[sneakyfcknrusky]

Hold on a second, He changed to a mac because he got some spam mail. I bet that happened because he registered with a website that said they would give the address to a third party but won't admit it since that wouldn't be in apple's interests. Why doesn't tomshardware review hardware and not apple's pre-built monstrosities. I expect to come on here and see unbiased reviews between nvidia and ati or intel and amd etc etc but instead I get apple is good because I got spam mail on windows.

 

[Guest]

My dad uses a mac, my sister uses a mac, my girlfriend uses a mac. I'm doing Tech Support and Troubleshooting in an Apple Premium Reseller Outlet for over a year now. Happy to say, I'm still on windows. I don't think i will be a convert after seeing what apple has been doing for their notebooks currently.

*No Offense* Mac OSXs are pretty easy, straightforward and boring.

Yes i agree, Mac OSX is easier to use than Windows.

 

[jawshoeaw]

[citation][nom]justkevin7[/nom]I think its funny you talk about the percentage of college educated people who use Macs vs. PC's. In my 14 years of doing technical support, by far the most idiotic and users are at Ph.D level. Absolute complete morons.[/citation]
Ah yes, the old "college kids are dumb and people who are self taught are the real geniuses." I've done my stint of technical support and some of the biggest idiots were the ones doing the technical support. They had poor listening skills, little ability to think beyond their script, and couldn't write a coherent sentence. We tried to get all our tech support people to submit knowledge base articles via email. Most were too poorly written to understand, never mind publish to a KB searchable by customers. To be fair, many of these guys were great at building their own rigs and solving Windows problems...of their own.) Don't get me wrong, I've met some really talented self-taught people who actually dropped out of high school, and of course some real tools with a bachelor's degree. What does this have to do with the review? Damn, probably nothing. Ad hominems flying right and left - very productive - lots of anecdotes about "...well in my experience..." Well here's mine. In my extended family I'm the computer guy and the only people in the family who never need help are the Mac users. Personally, I think they (Macs) are too expensive, but then I like it when things break. And for you Unix queens out there, the biggest computer headache at the hospital where I worked was a Unix print queue that wouldn't release a physical printer - 6 hours later and two senior Unix techs woken up in the middle of the night and still no one on an entire hospital floor could print (a big deal since at that time lab results were still on paper - now you can look them up on a windows PC). The unix group finally fixed the problem and apologized. So there! Oh, and a big middle finger for anyone who doesn't like that I don't know the plural for hominem.

 

[cruiseoveride]

haha, "Stunning piece of hardware", yeah stunning alright, cant get more pimp than a geforce 9400M.

In life there are certain things that if a man does them, it makes him look gay but if a woman does, its fine. I will list some of these things:

1. Drive a Mazda Miata or Porsche Boxster
2. Use beauty products
3. Wear polo necks
4. Use apple products

Good or Bad, like it or not, if you go to a coffee shop and pull out a laptop (nerd), and then it just happens to be a macbook (faaaaaaaaaag). Its life. You're a poof

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

OMFG !!

Two Parts 12 & 7 pages to do a MacBook Review !?! WTF !?!

Meanwhile the SLI, Media and Ultra reviews cram 5 laptops each into less space?

First Tuan feels the Apple draw and now Alan. Well, good for you, but really c'mon, where the F@Q is Laptops like the Lenovo W700 !?!

MACs are fine, my sister and dad own and love them, I use them from time to time and don't love or hate them nor Apple (enjoy my iPod), but seriously WTF !?! 2 PARTS !?!