Michal Ždanský Welcome to the first episode of the new Switcher series. Switcher is primarily intended for new Mac users who have switched from the Windows operating system. We'll try to familiarize you with Mac OS X here to make your transition as smooth and painless as possible.
If you've decided, or are considering a Mac OS X switch, your attention has most likely turned to MacBook laptops. These are among Apple's best-selling non-iOS products. Most people consider a laptop to be a closed hardware configuration, so it's certainly easier to go from a Notebook to a MacBook than from an assembled desktop to an iMac.
If in the end the choice really falls on a MacBook, Switchers usually choose one of two variants – a White MacBook or a 13-inch Macbook Pro. The reason for the choice is of course the price, which is around 24 for the white MacBook, and 000-3 thousand more for the Pro version. For an ordinary person, a laptop is usually over 4 expensive, so the purchase of a MacBook needs to be justified somehow. As a recent Switcher, I would like to do so, specifically with the lowest model 20-inch MacBook Pro, but only on the hardware side. Mac OS X alone would (and will) spawn many more articles.
unibody
The entire MacBook Pro line is known for its chassis made from a single piece of aluminum. Brushed aluminum gives the notebook a very luxurious look, and after a few days you won't even be able to look at the "plastics" of other brands. At the same time, aluminum perfectly solves the cooling of the entire computer and is less prone to scratches or other mechanical damage.
Battery
As is the custom among manufacturers, they are very happy to exaggerate the endurance of their notebook on a single charge. Apple claims up to 10 hours of battery life with WiFi. From several months of practice, I can confirm that in normal operation the MacBook lasts an average of 8 hours with a network connection, which is an amazing figure for a laptop. This is due to both a high-quality battery and a tuned system. If you were to dual boot Windows 7 on your MacBook, it would only last you 4 hours.
In addition, on the left side you will find a very handy gadget - a button, after pressing which up to 8 LEDs will light up indicating the remaining battery capacity. You can thus find out whether you need to charge it even when the computer is turned off
Charging adapter
Apple laptops are also characterized by a handy MagSafe connector. Unlike the usual ones, it is magnetically attached to the body of the MacBook and if you accidentally trip over the cable, the laptop will not fall, the connector will just disconnect, as it is not actually connected completely firmly. There is also a pair of diodes on the connector, which show you by color whether the MacBook is charging or only being powered.
The entire adapter consists of two parts that separate the transformer. If you would like to use a half-length adapter, you simply disconnect the mains cable and insert the mains plug instead, so the transformer will go straight into the socket.
In addition, you will find two hinged levers on which you can wind the cable with the connector.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard is very typical for MacBooks, and therefore for all Apple keyboards, with its spaces between individual keys. Not only is it easier to write on, but it also partially prevents dirt from settling inside. You can also find this type of keyboard in Sony Vaio products and recently also in ASUS laptops - which only underlines its great hardware concept.
The touchpad on the MacBook is not big, but giant. I have not yet encountered such a large touch surface on a laptop computer, as the MacBook has. The surface of the touchpad is made of a kind of frosted glass, which is incredibly comfortable and pleasant for the fingertips. Thanks to this large surface, multi-touch gestures can also be effectively used, which will greatly facilitate your control.
You can also find multi-touch touchpads from other brands, but you usually encounter two problems – firstly, a small surface, which makes gestures meaningless, and secondly, a poor touchpad material that will rub your fingers on it.
Ports
In this regard, the MacBook let me down a bit. It only offers 2 USB 2.0 ports. For some, this number may be enough, I personally would appreciate another 1-2 more, and a USB hub is not exactly an elegant solution for me. Further on the left side you will find the now obsolete FireWire, LAN and SD card reader. It is a pity that the reader does not accept more formats, let it be a consolation that SD is probably the most widespread. The connectors on the left side close the shared audio input/output in the form of a 3,5mm jack and a mini DisplayPort.
DisplayPort is an Apple-only interface and you won't find it on any other manufacturer (there may be exceptions). I myself would prefer HDMI, however, you have to make do with a reducer, which you can get for around 400 CZK, both for HDMI and for DVI or VGA.
On the right side you will find a lone DVD drive, not a slide-out, but in the form of a slot, which looks very elegant and underlines the overall design of Apple products.
Picture and sound
Compared to other notebooks, the MacBook display has a ratio of 16:10 with a resolution of 1280×800. The advantage of this ratio is, of course, more vertical space compared to the classic "16:9 noodle". Although the display is glossy, it is made of quality materials and does not shine as much in the sun as cheaper competing laptops. In addition, it contains a backlight sensor that regulates the brightness according to the ambient light. It thus helps the battery last longer.
The sound is at a very high level for a laptop, it is not distorted in any way, although it lacks a bit of bass. With a tear in my eye, I remember the Subwoofer on my former MSI. However, the sound is still at a high level and you will not regret listening to movies or music only on the built-in speakers, which do not lose quality even at higher volumes (it can be really loud).
Something to conclude
Since this is a Mac, I must not fail to mention the glowing apple on the back of the lid, which has been a feature of Apple laptops for many years.
In addition to everything, the MacBook Pro 13" in particular has very pleasant dimensions, thanks to which it also replaced my 12" netbook, and thanks to the weight, which fit under two kilograms, it will not put a significant burden on your backpack, i.e. your lap.
As for the internals, the MacBook has rather above-average equipment, whether it is "only" a 2,4 MHz Core 2 Duo processor or an NVidia GeForce 320 M graphics card. As the iOS platform has already proven, it is not important how "bloated" it is hardware, but how it can work together with software. And if there's something Apple is good at, it's precisely this "jointness" that makes the parameters very relative.
You can also buy a MacBook Pro at www.kuptolevne.cz
Just a couple of clarifications, the touchpad on Mac is called Trackpad :)
Otherwise, FireWire 800 and even 400 are definitely not obsolete, transfer speeds are higher than USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 is not yet expanded :)
Otherwise, nice article...;)
joop USB 3.0 is not only not expanded, but there are also not many external toys for it, and everything will be stupidly overpriced. I have a 1TB WD Studio at home, which has 2* FW 400,800 ports, and a USB 2.0 copy test 12,89GB FW800 11min vs. USB2 44min ….. and that was only 1 file ://
otherwise, the review is really cool. I've been using the Macbook pro for about a year and I'm very satisfied!
And firewire has one more great feature on the mac;) if you have fw and your system crashes, you can press the touch key at startup, the mac will boot into external disk mode, so you can extract data via firewire:) and the reason why people were upset about the removal firewire in new versions of mack :)
I can't help it - I don't really like the aluminum ones. I'd probably get used to it, but I just like the white one. Although it is slightly weaker in terms of hardware, I prefer it. Only the white iPhone 4 is still not here. ;-( Before it reaches us, if at all, it won't be worth going into it.
I had the opposite problem when I first bought a cat, so in the end I calmed down with the white plastic, unfortunately I didn't have the configuration I wanted and a Late 2008 unibody was sent out that day, considering that I still go somewhere with it I quite like this unibody version and it seems more durable to me, but maybe it just looks :) It's just about personal preferences ;)
But then again, my friend's wife wouldn't want aluminum, and my little girl wouldn't want white again ;)
I somehow do not like the combination of aluminum body and black keyboard. That's why the white Macbook is simply beautiful, it catches the eye at first glance. Even a white iPhone goes great with it, it wouldn't be the same with an aluminum one. But now I will have to go to the black four after years, and black Macbooks are no longer made. ;-( :-)
But seriously, the look really impressed me (both versions in their own way) and I would definitely go for the white one at the moment. For now, the older white one is enough for me and I don't have enough reasons to upgrade. Unfortunately, I have to replace my iPhone now, I will miss the white one a lot, but I don't have much of a choice, so if I can decide between the white 3GS and the black 4, it will definitely be the four. But I've been waiting for white for a long time and I'd probably wait a lot longer.
Is Firewire Obsolete? These are things... In PC notebooks, it is installed only in the highest models :-)
As far as I can see, today's trends are moving away from firewire and almost everything is now moving towards USB. This should be clearly seen with digital cameras.
The question is why this happens - I personally guess that using USB will be cheaper in terms of licensing than using FireWire. Fortunately, I have FireWire everywhere on my external audio devices, and after a few experiences with USB, I would not like to change it.
I don't see, but it seems to me that the author of the article has probably never worked on a macbook pro. :D Firewire 800 is outdated, thus slow? What are you trying to do with us? If you buy, for example, an external disk from IOMEGA, you will quickly appreciate FireWire :D Keep in mind that the theoretical speed is almost 2x greater and in reality it really is. My subjective opinion about USB 3.0 is that it will not catch on and will be driven out by the expected novelty LightPeak. :/
And as for the Display port, i.e. miniDVI in the macbook, I wouldn't mind that one either. On the one hand, it doesn't affect you directly with the laptop, but the main thing is that there are HDMI, DVI and VGA connections. I use HDMI to connect to the TV and VGA when I'm presenting somewhere with a projector.
I don't know that I would write somewhere in the article that FireWire would be slow. I'm well aware that it has a much higher transfer rate than current USB, it's more that FireWire hasn't caught on as much as it might have deserved, which I think is a shame. And I honestly think that with the arrival of USB 3.0 FireWire will disappear completely.
"DisplayPort is an interface designed exclusively for Apple and you won't find it with any of the other manufacturers" - there are certainly exceptions, DisplayPort is expanding more and more, as soon as you have to work with a higher resolution than 1920x1200, as a rule, the choice falls on DP much more often, than dual link DVI.
I would also like to add that DisplayPor (DP) is an invention of ATi, not AMD, and if the author meant mini DP by chance, it also appears more and more often, just look at the previous two generations of AMD Radeo, where the "AMD Eyefinity Technology" technology is present (option connect up to 6 monitors to one card) which in the 5000 series needed a special card and this particular card had 6 mini DPs (because the "big" DPs are really big and apple promotes their mini variant and I will add that they are quite good at it) and today's The 6000 series doesn't even need a special version of the graphics card, but it is still possible (by the manufacturer) to equip the card with two DVI, one HDMI and two mini DP. devices to the series + there is an MST (Multi-Stream-Transport) adapter that allows you to connect four monitors...
and FireWire (FW), its biggest advantage is that it acts as a network interface (it has its own mac address) and it is possible (as I already noted) to connect it serially, which means that you have one cable from the PC/Mac to the device (in my in this case, an external drive WD MyBook studio) which has two FW connectors and another device can be connected to it + use FW as a favorite is an often mentioned option to network two computers and quickly exchange data between them
Well, what about USB 3? I'm probably not the only skeptic around who doesn't see its expansion as rosy, since even Intel (its "inventor") doesn't plan to deploy it earlier than 2012, and by then its "successor" will probably be on the market Light Peak, which has much better features (e.g. higher transmission speed, the possibility to use a longer cable...)
It might also not be a bad idea to point out that the 3.5mm jack also includes an optical output (just buy a reducer, e.g. http://www.dtpobchod.cz/redukce-optickeho-audiokabelu-toslink-na-mini-toslink-3-5mm-jack-mini-spdif-_d28492.html?from=macro&action=login , even 5.1 sound can be played from the MacBook =) )
thank you for the good tip :-)) reduction is very useful if you choose an external display and want to play a slightly better sound for the movie :-D
Or a reduction to HDMI is enough, sound is transmitted via this protocol, anyway thanks for the tip with optical output.
Hello, I recently switched PC > iMac for video editing. Just the fact that I don't have such a mess on my desk (cable mess with PC+Monitor) is a plus for me. I know only positives about Mac Os X. I'll buy a Macbook pro or an air, whatever I see. Maybe I'll wait for the next version of the Macbook for 13″...otherwise I had it in my hand and I have to admit that it fits nicely, aluminum is aluminum :-) Well done Apple.
good article :-D
I would like to emphasize the excellent workmanship and pleasant user environment (including HW): as stated in the article, the trackpad is very pleasant to the touch, the keyboard is also very comfortable, everything works as it should, there are not many tricks and corners (for a beginner user) (HW !!!)… and with the aluminum body, I would mention the resistance of the lid (+ for the display), against scratches, prints (outside the display), very good image of the glossy display.
when I switched, I don't think about going back anymore :-))
P
Hello. Thanks for this article. I would like to buy a MacBook PRO. I've been following Apple and iOS for about a year now and I really like everything. I have an iPhone 4 and I have been very satisfied since the 3Gs, which was my previous one. I have had several versions of HTC and none of the HTC models showed me what the iPhone showed. The stability alone surprised me. Back to Mac. I would like a 17-inch, but considering the price, the 13-inch will probably be the most affordable for me. I have no experience with iOS X at all, so I'll be watching for a sequel if there is one. Thanks a lot
Thank you for the positive feedback, this series will definitely grow, several more episodes are already ready at the moment ;-)
I'm very happy about that. Thanks a lot. I will be following your website and I am very pleased with your work. Keep it up.
minor correction not "iOS X" but OS X (the x is actually the Roman numeral ten)
I have (for three years now) a 15" MacBook Pro and I had a similar problem, but after "touching" all three (then the 13" was only in plastic) I decided on the 15" model, it's a compromise between the "huge" 17 ″ MBP (it's just too big to carry) and 13″ which has a small monitor for my daily use...
I have to say that I am a proud owner of a MacBook Pro 13" and I can't praise it enough, sometimes it annoys me, but otherwise it's great :) I would just like to ask more experienced people what to do with the occasional spontaneous disconnection of the battery from the PC and instead of the battery percentage, I get says No battery available. I've been to the service center with it twice, but each time they returned it to me saying that they couldn't find anything, so I'm asking for your knowledge :) Thank you in advance
I own a macbook pro 15, so far everything sleeps as it should, unfortunately I have the feeling that recently looks have been winning over functionality.
Most of all, it is absolutely senseless to place the USB ports so close to each other that they are almost unusable together. And the free space on the remaining sides is already too much.
For the time being, Apple is looking for everything, for example, the remote has disappeared from the package... fire wire gone, express card gone... somehow the price does not decrease, on the contrary.
I'll think about what we'll come up with in other models, I wouldn't be surprised by DVD mechanics...
Apple increases profits, combs products...
I wouldn't even be surprised that the hdd will eventually disappear and everything will be stored and downloaded from Apple's data storage. Long live Big Brother
The fact that there is a lot of space on the sides is a fact, but be aware of where the motherboard is packed. On the other side is the mechanism, and in the front part are the battery and HDD. Everything is packed together so that it takes up as little space as possible (I think it's also balanced :) ). So I don't agree that appearance wins over functionality. The fact that other manufacturers have USBs all over the circuit is not an argument. At MBA, they dropped the drive and you already have USB on the other end. And yes, the HDD will disappear, but it will be replaced by an SSD. It's all about space - we want smaller and lighter laptops with long endurance. (and if we don't want to, we'll buy an MBP 17″, it has everything ;) ).
far from it
"... fire wire gone, express card gone ... I wouldn't be surprised at the DVD mechanism..." - I have all of these mentioned.
it's already an old article, but it shouldn't be in this sentence - .... whether it is "only" a 2,4 MHz Core 2 Duo processor ....
perhaps 2,4 GHz??? :D