Apple 13″ Macbook Unibody Hands On Review

The Unibody MacBook from Apple is a beautiful refresh of the older version, the ‘unibody’ word which was just limited to MacBook Pros earlier. But with this release, did Apple bring out anything that might prompt the older generation MacBook users to upgrade to the newer ones? Did it concentrate just on the design, or the performance and other all aspects were looked about too? I’ve tried checking every aspect and below are all the comparative points, along with things that would make your decision making easy while buying the new MacBook.

If you have used a 13″ MacBook Pro earlier, you will find this new MacBook just a white version of the Pro. Features like the unibody design, LED-backlit and the compact shape coincides with both.

Design and Body

Unibody enclosure surely makes this book a compact structure, and comparing the thickness of the previous and this MacBook, they differ a lot, with the Unibody MacBook shrinking to just 1.08 inches, with all the rounded ends but the top body isn’t changed. So rough usage will cause scratches easily, although the polycarbonate made surface would try to resist and avoid scratches due to small sharp rubs. The bottom is changed, totally different from the older MacBook.

The new MacBook has a rubber base in the bottom, which would prevent shifting in position or slipping from one place, when compared to the previous generation MacBook that has the polycarbonate base with 4 rubber buttons on the ends to prevent movement. Apart from that, the bottom looks neat with a single rubber sheet, and no sections. The older MacBook has a lock for opening the battery case, and the battery could be removed from there. You would see the one-button battery meter from the bottom in the new unibody MacBook.

One more added advantage of the rubber base is that it won’t get heated up easily, and using the laptop on your thighs for long time would be comfortable.

Power Adapter

The 60W power adapter for the new MacBook has a different make, which has got thinner and has a straight end, similar to what you get for the MacBook Air. The left section includes MagSafe power, Gigabit Ethernet, Mini DisplayPort, USB, and audio in/out. Nothing except the CD drive is on the right side, making everything well organized.

One disappointing thing about all the Macs, is the strip in the end of the screen plate, that leads to cracking of the keyboard end. Below is the one I was using since 3 years, and gradually the weight over it, made the strip break the edges.

Keyboard

The keyboard is almost similar with a few slight changes in the on-key shortcuts, which one commonly sees in every Apple product upgrade. The dashboard dedicated key is f4, and not f12. The volume control keys have been pushed to extreme right. And the window highlighter which was f10 earlier, now is f3.

There are media control shortcuts too, which is added newly in the new MacBook. The enter key is replaced by the Alt/Option key.

Trackpad

The trackpad, is a standard-glass multitouch, with a single trackbar instead of a touch pad, and a press key. You can’t invoke the click by a simple finger touch. The pinch-in and pinch-out for zooming out and zooming in respectively, work well along with the double finger drags to sides for scrolling long pages or windows.

Rotating the fingers would also reorient the photos in the iPhoto, and when compared to the previous MacBook, the scrolling and finger is more smoother and the sweaty fingers don’t seem so frictional.

Media and Chat

The iTunes and Quicktime are good enough to play the music and video, apart from syncing other Apple devices. There’s iSync to sync non-Apple products like Nokia mobiles to the Mac. The iSight camera previously square, is now circular. So quite a few changes you can see in the exterior of the new MacBook. Photo booth for capturing pictures, helps you make a gallery of pictures taken from iSight, and the quality of pictures taken in light is appreciable. In the dark, its totally dark but you can’t complain, as you won’t expect more than this from a laptop camera. Video chatting from iChat, and also from the 3rd party apps like Skype and Yahoo gave a good broadcasting.

Screen display

The 13.3″ widescreen has a glossy appearance and you would see the same quality of the picture when viewing from a side angle. Compared the screen with the previous generation MacBook, its better in quality comparing the pictures and videos in same brightness. The resolution is 1280 x 800 pixels.

Performance

The processor is 2.4 GHz, and the machine I got, runs Mac OS X Leopard, on intel core 2 duo processor. It has got 2 GB RAM and 256 GB hard drive, though I feel the memory is too low for such a big disk space, which can make the computer slower. Still, on testing with a few apps in comparison with the previous MacBook, its certainly faster. Though it totally depends on how many apps you are running in the front, background etc.

Battery

This is where the resemblance is more towards the MacBook Pro, and totally beats the MacBook. Apple claims the battery life to be 10 hours, but that varies. Full brightness, with video running continuously, Wi-Fi on, and a few apps in the background altogether made the battery last for 4.5 hours. But if the brightness settings were optimized and usage is limited to web browsing with Wi-Fi, and other applications, then the battery did last for more than 8 hours. That surely is going to be helpful on-the-go during any long flights or journeys where you would be away from the power supply and rely on the battery of the laptop.

Applications

The default applications one would find in a new MacBook include the iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto and iWeb. For the working on documents and presentations, you are initially empty-handed, and will have to purchase either iWork or Microsoft Office for Mac for that. iMovie movie editing is pretty easy, and better option than downloading and using a 3rd party app for video editing. I could easily organize the pictures in iPhoto, based on which location they were taken from.

iChat is available, which used with the iSight camera would help you in video chats and stay connected. And it works pretty well, thanks to the appreciable quality of iSight.

Time Machine is there for backup of the hard drive, and optional for you to decide whether to use it with the Time Capsule.

Connectivity

The wireless connection is through AirPort Extreme 802.11n Wi-Fi wireless networking. 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector) is another option.

Bluetooth works pretty well, the same 2.1 technology with Enhanced Data Rate. The speed of sending from a MacBook to any other Mac product is faster than any other 3rd party, like the Nokia mobile I tried. Nearly 1.5 times faster.

Pros

• Similar specs to MacBook Pro – When you are looking just for specifications, and are satisfied with what the MacBook Pro 13″ gives, better pick MacBook unibody which has similar specs but is a lot cheaper.
• Multitouch glass trackpad – The new trackpad with multitouch and several options to play around with fingers, is superb.
• Rubber base, lesser heated base – The base made of rubber, this time heats up less than the polycarbonate one previously, so run it for long on your lap.
• Faster – It certainly is faster in performance with not big changes in the processor, though Apple has tried to make many internal changes that made the speed better.
• Longer running battery – As said earlier, it run for more than 8 hours with normal usage, and when tested to extreme stages it ran for around 4.5 hours, which is more than the normal battery level for the previous generation MacBook.
• Ability to upgrade RAM and hard drive – Though by default you get 250 GB hard drive and 2 GB memory, it can be expanded to 500 GB and 4 GB. That’s what you are getting in the iMac or MacBook Pro bigger version too.
• Windows through bootcamp pretty fast – Tried installing and using Windows 7 in this mac through bootcamp, and the memory was good enough for running Windows at the same speed as Mac OS. Impressive.

Cons

• Battery Indicator gone – The battery indicator, which was seen in the previous MacBook, is gone. When I was running on low battery on Mac, i used to check the battery using the indicator, when the mac was hibernated or shut down. But there is no option to check the same in the new unibody MacBook.
• Polycarbonate body, prone to scratches – Aluminum bodies have an advantage over this. Polycarbonate is prone to scratches easily, similar to what we always see with the Magic mouse.
• No battery replacing option – Previously, we could change the battery by ourselves, as the base had a section to open the battery pane. In the new one, everything is packed within the unibody structure. You can’t do anything yourself.
• USB ports have very small gap – We had complained many a times, and so did those lakhs of Mac users, that the USB ports were too near to each other, so any bigger USB device used in one port doesn’t leave enough space for another device to fit into the adjacent port.
• No firewire port – Now where has this gone? There was a firewire port in the previous MacBook, and now has been removed. A big disadvantage.
• Graphics card not high – NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory. This isn’t enough for heavy gaming, and the fact that MacBooks are not gaming devices, remains the same.

Overall

The MacBook Unibody 13″ new is a good upgraded version, with many new changes that you might like although there are a few cons I mentioned, still its better than the previous version, talking first about the battery. And to choose between the MacBook and the Pro in the 13″ level, I would go for the normal MacBook unibody, as its just the design and body that I see different. Most of the specifications are nearly equal in both, why would one want to cash out $200 more?

* For Windows users who never have had their hands on a Mac, this is the best MacBook you can start with. Its basic, and you would be seeing it meet most of your requirements, and you won’t miss Windows which can be installed in here too.