Gizmodo
The new Macbook Pro is not much of a bump up from its predecessors, but it is a step in the right direction. The addition of Multi-Touch is a great new feature, even on a touchpad that's smaller than the one on the Air. However, the Penryn-powered processor in this MBP is running at roughly the same speed as the last generation's chips, GHz to GHz, and give no good reason to upgrade from machines that are less than a year old. The most interesting point here is the boost in efficiency the now-pervasive LED backlighting and 45nm Penryn chips bring to the MacBook Pro, which together give an hour extra battery life over older models with CCFL screens and 65nm CPU technology. That makes this the most efficient Macbook Pro yet. Here's more on the 2.6GHz 4GB 15-inch MacBook we got to play with.
Multi-Touch Trackpad
After a month of getting used to the Multi-Touch touchpad on the MacBook Air, I have to say that the Pro's touchpad is not quite as good in comparison. Comparatively, the Pro's touchpad is slightly narrower in width and a whole half of an inch shorter in height. (It's identical to the touchpad on the last Gen MBP's pad.) My initial thoughts were that the smaller touchpad would make using Multi-Touch more difficult, but that wasn't exactly the case.
After a month of getting used to the Multi-Touch touchpad on the MacBook Air, I have to say that the Pro's touchpad is not quite as good in comparison. Comparatively, the Pro's touchpad is slightly narrower in width and a whole half of an inch shorter in height. (It's identical to the touchpad on the last Gen MBP's pad.) My initial thoughts were that the smaller touchpad would make using Multi-Touch more difficult, but that wasn't exactly the case.Initially, in iPhoto, Multi-Touch on the smaller pad was more difficult, but after a few minutes we realized we were trying to use fingers in the same fashion as we did on the Air, where we had more room to gesture. For example, on the Air we skipped through photos with our fingers vertically but because of the Pro's size it's not comfortable to do this. So we placed our three fingers horizontally and it worked perfectly.
We came to the same conclusion with the rotate function. Instead of trying to move our rotate finger from the top of the touchpad to the bottom, we realized that by simply doing the rotate movement with more of a flick, iPhoto and Preview correctly rotated our photo to the next layout.
For testing zoom, we did a side-by-side comparison with the Air and found that the Pro's smaller touchpad actually zoomed into the same position as it did using the Air.
Screen
One thing to note though is that the LED matte screen on the version we got was less bright than the glossy screen on the MacBook Air. This might be the matte vs. glossy difference, or it might be that the MacBook Air's screen is just brighter.
Keyboard
The updated keyboard now has the F-key functions, same as the MacBook Air, and we think the additional Dashboard and Expose buttons use the F-keys nicely. We might not actually use buttons for these features but we think it's cool that the buttons are now clearly labeled.
Benchmark
The Penryn MacBook Pro has already been benched and compared to the previous generation MBP, and its clear it's about the same performance, per GHz. With that in mind we tested the new Penryn MBP agaisnt a year old Merom MBP and found a slight increase in speed. Also not surprising.
In a video encoding test, the Penryn MBP exported a 2.5min HD trailer in 11 minutes, where as the older Merom MBP took 13 min. (The basic config on the older machine included a 2.33GHz processor and 2GB of RAM; the Penryn had a 2.6GHz processor and 4GB of RAM, so this test is just a rough guide.) As noted in the temperature section, the Penryn did use much more of its power to accomplish the encoding which produced more heat. If you would like to see the Xbench results and compare it to your own machine you can check them out here.
Temperature
While idling, the Penryn MBP's CPU was running at 127 F—slightly cooler than the Merom MBP which had 133 F. But as for the actual experience, the new Penryn MBP felt much cooler on your lap than the older Merom.
While performing a video encode in iMovie with the new Penryn MBP CPU was operating at a temperature of 170 F; actually warmer than the older Merom MBP at 165 F. The increase in operating temperature during a video encode is likely because the more efficient machine is still doing more work every second at its higher clock rate.
Battery
So why do Apple's battery ratings look the same or lower in comparison to the last generation's Macbook Pro ratings? Simple: They made the tests harder. Again, according to numbers provided by Apple, for this and the last generation's MacBook Pro's battery life, you get about half an hour more due to the Penryn redesign, and half an hour more from the LED backlights. As with the AirBook ratings, your mileage will definitely vary. Downwards. But relative to the older books, these are more miserly.
Conclusion
Overall this MacBook Pro update is nothing amazing. The Multi-Touch touchpad and the Penryn processor are nice upgrades, but not necessarily something that a previous generation MacBook Pro user would feel an urgency to upgrade to. This update is more about efficiency than power gains.
Comments
..And my friend bought one mere weeks before these ones.
Apple has a 14-day price guarantee; your friend can pocket the cash difference or (I believe) update to the new model by paying the cash difference.
I bought an "iPod with video" shortly before newer models were introduced, and got a significant chunk of change back.
Oops... "weeks"...
Craiglist or EBay time? MBPs keep a pretty significant resale value...
@Mammoth: That's funny the same thing happened to my cousin.
...so they just refreshed the price?
@zan: Well he didn't buy it from Apple.
@TonyTriple: The prices didn't go up; the specs did.
For those who don't wanna read everything, the summary: "Meh"
Why don't you give us an actual side-by-side MBP benchmark for the battery life instead of taking Apple's word for it? If you believed them, you'd also think the Air lasts at least 5 hours, even though in reality, you're lucky to get 2 hours.
@mrsteve007: Working on it.
Lets not forget the new SSE4 instructions for graphics and video encoding. I'd expect updates from Adobe and Apple to their software in the near future to take advantage of these additional instructions yielding 2x + performance improvements for those applications.
So I'd bet these guys get faster benchmarks in 6months than they will now.. Especially once XCode and gcc take advantages of the new instructions.
@drierp: Excellent points! Let's add this to the write up.
our rotate finger -- lol. Never saw a finger that belonged to multiple people at the same time. Or was it a royal we?
Last generation (late 2007) 15" Macbook Pro's had LED backlighting as well, so besides the 17" I'm confused as to why you would even put that in the title of the article? It's the same stock of screens they've been selling since around mid 2007.
One more point - I have last generation's MBP with the 2.6ghz Memrom and 4gb of ram and I normally run at 118º, not 133º. What the heck is making your laptop so hot all the time? Please don't tell me your using it on your lap with nothing between you and bottom of the notebook? That's asking for it with these puppies...
-So wait for Nehalem and the integrated mem cont?
What's up with that new keyboard? It looks cramped.
OMG, apple use to be the company with the best desyign out there, but... this is really ugly, the proportions are so wrong
I noticed from the xbench results that it's using a hitachi 7k200 hd. So this is the model for the 7200rpm upgrade option? I was looking around to confirm the exact model so I know what I am paying extra for. Also it's a sata150 drive. OK, sata300 is overkill for current hds, but is the mbp controller sata300?
Boos for Apple until they give us what we want: 3G iPhones and 13" Macbook Pros.
even though the body isn't much bigger, it seems like it has a jay leno chin compared to the macbook air.
On the fence between the previous gen 2.4 or new 2.4. If battery life does indeed increase then I'm going for the new 2.4.
I want a mac. . . I need to get rid of (or give)my current 3 year old laptop that is grunting when it has the fans on, and whines when it is in use. Its a pretty decent laptop for a 3 year old hp, 1gb ram, 3.0 ghz pentium 4, and a ati mobility radeon 9000 igp(plays source games pretty well, on steam).
A mac with boot camp I would be happy!
@JPQsat: Lol. I know, right? I was I looking at the thing, and for the life of me couldn't understand what apple is thinking with this design. It was cool when they first designed it like 5 years ago, but it's really showing age. Even the 13" macbook design is from 2006, but it's not showing nearly as much age. And it looks so much better. This one is just so meh. I like Hp's design. They must like it too since they've been using the same one on all their laptops for the past years. No joke, all their laptops are just variations of the old dv6000 from 12" to 17" it's so stupid.
@MrBlahBlah: That's what I was just about to say. This design looks fugly. What's the big deal with multi touch anyway? It looks like all it's ever used for is zooming in and out. I've been doing this for years with the scroll wheel on my mouse. Not that interesting really. I'm pretty sure even though it is a lappy, most people use a mouse.
@Samifumi: 12" MacBook Pros, like the old 12" PowerBooks. The perfect combination of mobility, power and practicality, all in a package that's a bit smaller than a spiral notebook.
I don't know about anyone else, but 13.3" is still a little too big for me; I mean, if I have room for the 13.3", I might as well get the 15", you know? The footprint difference is absolutely negligible, and completely defeats the purpose of having a small, near-ultraportable laptop.
Oh, yes, and fuck the Air. 1.3" off and I would have loved it. As it is, it's just like one svelte, well-designed cocktease.
For everyone saying it looks odd and ugly, it's just a bad photo. It looks like it was taken close up with a wide angle lens. The distortion looks like if you closed the lids they would only reach 2/3 of the way to the front edge.
JustThisGuy and Samifumi, I agree that Apple should release a 12 or 13" MacBookPro! Till then I'll just stick with my trusty old 12" PowerBook G4 (and no upgrade to Leopard).
@nocar: That would be cool!
It'll be nice when another company OTHER than Apple comes out with portable computers so that Gizmodo can talk about those, too.
Does the owner retain the mineral rights to all that real estate? They may as well put it to some use. I'm a big guy, but my lap just isn't that big. The word monolithic comes to mind.
I love the keyboard on the Macbook Pro. No matter how hard they try to push those Mattell Aquarius keyboards on the Air and iMac keyboards, they're just not as good.
I hope the real Macbook Pro redesign keeps these keys, they are easily the most comfortable laptop keys I've ever typed on. But, just like Apple let me down by ditching the 12" Powerbook, I'm sure they'll ruin the next generation of Macbook Pros too.
Sigh.
@permissionmag: Yea I liked the keys too. They had some resistance to them but not to much and I like resistance on my keys or else I would just be typing the same letter over and over again, the new keyboard layout they have is nice to(same resistance aspect).
@craig: Have any requests?
@FranklinTurtle: Duh, same as the old.
What about HP, alienware, dell(the good ones), and the companies who make gaming laptops?
@craig: yeah you would think giz is a apple slut..or iSlut..
@Samifumi: Your right, 3G iPhones that have a video feature and 13" MBPs!
Needs jumpin jack Flash inside.
@Samifumi: 3g iphone: coming soon. 13" mbp? never gonna happen.
@--Tito--: Did you mention Dell and Good in the same sentence? hahaha
@imTheKing: If you want to see good notebook / pc reviews other than mac, then lets start off with Northwest Falcon or Voodoo PC (HP).
I wonder what the new 512mb videocard can do, i think that's the biggest change! I wanna see the FPS in games for example.
I wouldn't expect that much of a change though, because the videocard is designed for 256MB.
The difference wouldn't be more than 10% i gues.
Could you guys test that out? Maybe when running windows?
I actually prefer the square tablet keys of the Macbook and MBA. They're not nearly as susceptible to crud catching as the Powerbook/Macbook Pro keys are. But, for the love of AllahBuddhaJesus Apple, do not make them black. I beg of you!
The Macbook Pro and Powerbook really need a new design soon. It is just getting really old. Keep the backlite keyboard. Especially for the powerbook which has a good entry price point.
I second Creibold's comment. The LED screen was already in last gen's MBP why was it written here as if it is a new feature of this gen's MBP?
@imTheKing: There are at least like 3 good ones arent there :p. I never really liked dell but if we have more stuff featured everyday we would have engdget run for their money (they are right nw but make them sprint for their money)
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