Done for 2009: The Holiday MacBook Pro Roundup
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 10, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Swap the Pro Out for Some Flavor
The 17-inch MacBook Pro is a workhorse. You get FireWire 800, an ExpressCard/34 slot and discrete graphics if you choose to use it. Apple figures someone who wants such a big machine will probably have some fast external storage to connect to it, some peripherals to slide in it, and some GPU intensive applications to run.
From left to right: 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro
The 13-inch and 15-inch are much more consumer focused, despite their Pro branding. You lose the features mentioned above (although the 9600M is optional on the 15-inch), but gain a built in SD card reader. With most professional DSLRs using Compact Flash, the SD card reader seems to imply that Apple's entry level Pro users are shooting with point-and-shoot cameras instead.
13-inch MacBook Pro
15-inch MacBook Pro
Mini DisplayPort is still standard, and you still don't get any adapters in the box. The number of USB ports is cut down to two and processor speeds drop accordingly.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro. Compact but with a great keyboard.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro comes with a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo by default. Still a 45nm chip, it only has 3MB of L2 cache to share between the cores. The base 13-inch model only comes with 2GB of memory, Apple's biggest fault, presumably to maintain profit margins even at the lowest end of the spectrum.
Moving to the $1499 version you can get the 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, keeping the 3MB L2 cache. 4GB is also standard with the more expensive 13-inch model.
Hard drive speed remains at 5400RPM across all MacBook Pros, which is fine because if you really want speed you want an SSD anyway.
The 15-inch MacBook Pro. Same keyboard, more screen.
The 15-inch picks up where the 13-inch leaves off. You can get a 2.53GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.80GHz or 3.06GHz chip - the latter is only available in built-to-order configurations. It's the most flexible of all of the options, but its default configuration isn't bad at all. 4GB of RAM is standard on the 15-inch.
| Apple's 2009 Lineup | 13-inch MacBook Pro | 15-inch MacBook Pro | 17-inch MacBook Pro |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz | Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz | Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz |
| Memory | 2GB DDR3-1066 | 4GB DDR3-1066 | 4GB DDR3-1066 |
| HDD | 160GB 5400RPM | 250GB 5400RPM | 500GB 5400RPM |
| Video | NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (integrated) | NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (integrated) | NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (integrated) + NVIDIA GeForce 9600M 512MB (discrete) |
| Optical Drive | 8X Slot Load DL DVD +/-R | 8X Slot Load DL DVD +/-R | 8X Slot Load DL DVD +/-R |
| Screen Resolution | 1280 x 800 | 1440 x 900 | 1920 x 1200 |
| USB | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| SD Card Reader | Yes | Yes | No |
| FireWire 800 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| ExpressCard/34 | No | No | Yes |
| Battery | 60Whr | 73Whr | 95Whr |
| Dimensions (W x D x H) | 12.78" x 8.94" x 0.95" | 14.35" x 9.82" x 0.95" | 15.47" x 10.51" x 0.98" |
| Weight | 4.5 lbs | 5.5 lbs | 6.6 lbs |
| Price | $1199 | $1699 | $2499 |
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sprockkets - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
While in general their stuff just works better with OSX for the general public, and this issue will never affect any of them, still, this issue, plus the stupidity of having unlocked iphones legally purchased in other countries lose their ability to teather and other stuff makes for a big disconnect.They didn't handle the SATA issue well at all, and the efi update didn't help either when there was no easy downgrade option.
martinw - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Not really news, it's just the way Apple works, particularly towards developers. For some reason they do not admit to faults, they just go away and fix the problem in a future version. Not ideal from a developer angle as I'd prefer to get an acknowledgment that something is definitely wrong and that it will be addressed, but at least the problems do get fixed eventually.windspast - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
I was a bit disappointed with this article. In a technological website, an article like this with many pages only spent ONE single page on the actual TECH. This article only spent ONE PAGE talking about the spec and it wasn't even any comparison on how fast (or slow) this computer is. For a technological website, this article only talked about things that didn't matter.When it comes to comparing Mac and DELL or HP, the rest of it is irrelevant. Design is purely objective. I don't care if the MacBookPro is thinner by a tiny little bit. It's not that big of a deal. 2 pounds worth of difference? WHO CARES. I buy a computer for the power that it offers, not whether or not it's thin enough to be a coaster.
I don't care if the DELL is one or two pounds heavier if it cost half as much and is twice as fast. I don't care if the MacbookPro has a "stylish" design. I think it's plain and boring looking. I don't care if it has a longer battery life. That's not important to me. I want POWER out of my machines without having to sell a kidney to buy one.
This is a TECH website, not a style website. I bet if you spend one second showing how much the i7 blows the core 2 duo out of the water, none of the other stuff will even matter.
Mac isn't a BMW or a Lexus or a Cadillac.
Mac is a beat up Honda with a new paint job and a higher price tag.
jhl654321 - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link
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roxyland - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
Anand, while the rest of your article seems like a very objective analysis, I couldn't agree less with your comment "virtually anything you can do in OS X can be done in Windows 7"...I don't even want to touch on the subject on UI capabilities on each platfrom, where it all comes down to user preference, but if you were more than the average desktop user, OSX give you all the power and flexibility of UNIX via a shell. It wouldn't even be fair to compare the far limited command line utility available on Windows to a UNIX shell.
Anyone with experience on either linux or any flavour of unix will tell you how invaluable this is for more serious work on an OS. On these terms Windows 7 is still more comparable to "buying a car with it's hood welded shut".