Apple MacBook Pro 13: Can a Mac Be a Decent Windows Laptop?
by Vivek Gowri on October 14, 2010 9:00 PM ESTApple MacBook Pro 13—Conclusion
Apple products tend to be tough to give a conclusion on. There’s the style factor, the (lack of) value factor, the fanboy factor, the OS X factor (for Macs), etc. Macs are divisive products—the people who use them love them, but for every person that loves a Mac there’s two more that wish all things Apple would burn in hell.
So lets start with the easier part of the conclusion: if you need an OS X portable and think the MBP15 is too large, the 13” MacBook Pro is the one to get. It’s $200 more expensive than the plastic unibody MacBook (or $150 if you’re a student, due to a larger discount on the MBP), but it’s definitely worth it, for a number of reasons.The difference in display quality between the plastic MacBook and the MBP13 is almost enough to justify the extra cost alone. The aluminum unibody construction, faster CPU (2.4GHz vs 2.26), RAM upgrade (4GB vs 2GB), backlit keyboard, and SD card reader are just bonuses. It’s thinner, lighter, and has more features, along with a far better display. So unless you’ve got a strict $1000 cap, you’re better off with a MacBook Pro. I have noticed a far larger number of MBP13s than unibody plastic MacBooks lately on the UW campus, so apparently Anand and I aren’t the only ones who feel that way.
More difficult is to compare the MacBook Pro to PC notebooks. Apple products aren’t reknowned for their value for money quotient, but even by Apple standards, this is pretty bad. A Core 2 processor at $1200 and $1500 price points? Even the base MacBook, at around $999, is more than pushing it as far as Core 2 Duo’s go. For comparison, ASUS would be happy to sell you a 14” N82JQ with a quad-core Core i7 and a GT 335M for $900 after their mail in rebate. It’s a bit bigger, but it’s orders of magnitude faster, too. For similarly sized 13.3” notebooks, I’d point you to the U3xJc series—the U30, U33, and U35. 13” notebooks with Core i3 processors, the G 310M/Optimus combo, aluminum or bambo panels, 3.9lbs without an optical drive/4.8lbs with, carrying pricetags of anywhere between $819 and $969. Seriously, these are far less expensive notebooks that perform better and offer more features. The MacBook Pro’s wins in design and screen quality simply aren’t comparable to the ASUS lineups. I’d just like to commend Apple for throwing in a simply superb LCD panel into the MBP, but how much is that worth? How much is the design worth? Can you justify paying $1200 for a computer with two year old internals?
If you’re planning to use it mostly under Windows, I’d come down on the side of no, but if you want to run OS X and just need Windows for some program compatibility issues, then clearly it’s your only option. So again it all comes back to OS X. Apple has created such a finely balanced marriage of their hardware and software that it is almost impossible to have one without the other. So while the MacBook Pro 13’s hardware is beautifully designed and built, it’s almost pointless to use it with anything other than OS X. But if you are hellbent on turning it into a Windows notebook, the MacBook Pro is definitely more than capable of being an excellent PC.
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JarredWalton - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
I'm completely aware of the fact that Apple has a business and a boutique mentality. That doesn't mean I have to support that idea, though, and it's one of the things that makes me despise Macs. Call it what you will, but the facts are Apple overcharges compared to the vast majority of Windows PCs. (Sony also fits that description in my book.) Yes, quality costs extra, but they're milking it pretty hard.The MacBook 2009 model was virtually the same as the current model. The only real change is the chipset/IGP, which was really trivial in my book. Yes, the 320M does a lot for graphics performance, but on the R&D side Apple didn't have to do anything really. Then they took the profits and didn't pass them on, and it's working fine based on sales so who can really fault them? At the same time, I'm not going to praise them for their actions -- just like I don't praise Microsoft for charging an arm and a leg for Office, which hasn't radically improved in over a decade. (Yes, I could easily do 99% of what I need with Office '97.)
So congrats to Apple for making money. I only wish the competition would step up to the plate a bit and compete on quality, features, price, etc. rather than just giving the high end and higher margins away. ASUS keeps trying to get a piece of the pie, but they keep missing on the LCD and build quality while easily winning the performance and other features. Give me the N82Jv with a better chassis, LCD, and larger battery for under $1200 and I'd never even consider a MacBook Pro.
podpi - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
answers all my questions, was no effort to read and all your recommendations seem spot on the money too!dexpert - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
I'd like to point out a small error. You stated that the 13" MacBook Pro has a slightly faster CPU than the white MacBook, 2.4GHz vs. 2.26. Actually, the white MB currently has the same 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo as the low-end MBP.I've also seen several recent articles stating that the white MacBook has a bad display. While that was certainly true for the pre-unibody models, the newer plastic unibody MacBooks have much better displays. The viewing angles are much better (for TN panels anyway), it's much brighter and the contrast has been improved a lot as well. I'd say the unibody white MacBook's display is basically a 13" MacBook Pro's display with somewhat less contrast.
VivekGowri - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
Oops, my bad. I'll fix that. But putting them side by side, you can pretty clearly see that the MBP is pretty far superior to the unibody plastic MacBook.dexpert - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
Oh yeah, I definitely agree that the 13" MBP is definitely the better value of the two.EclipsedAurora - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
>>>The aluminum unibody construction, faster CPU (2.4GHz vs 2.26), RAM upgrade (4GB vs 2GB), backlit keyboard, and SD card reader are just bonuses. It’s thinner, lighter, and has more features, along with a far better display.Such an aluminum design was originally used by Sony in her original 2003 VAIO Z. Japanese notebook leader like Toshiba, Fujitsu and Sony have long dumped aluminium design in favour carbon fiber chasis to further reduce weight. Of course most of these high end models are not available world wide.
Macbook Pro 13" has a nearly 2kg weight, which is too heavy in today's standard. In comparation, latest 13" VAIO Z weights at 1.39kg only even with similar 6 cells battery, dedicated GPU, TPM and fingerprint security hardware! Furthermore, a 600g reduction can let you bring another iPaq or VAIO X on the street!
disappointed1 - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
As per your often repeated advice (as recently as in http://www.anandtech.com/show/3973/nvidias-geforce..."As we’ve mentioned before we’re not huge fans of synthetic tests like 3DMark since they encourage non-useful driver optimizations for the benchmark instead of real games..."
3DMark is a pure synthetic and offers no useful information on actual relevant performance - and worse, its purchase is now required (Vantage) in order to be run at home by readers looking to compare. 3DMarks are meaningless, arbitrary numbers.
Performance across product generations isn't really any different than performance across major product categories within the same generation, and could just as easily be measured with a scalable real-world application, should you choose to maintain one in your benchmark suite. I think Far Cry 2 would be a prime candidate in this respect. Give us something useful, like frames-per-second in an actual game.
Sufo - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
mm, while i agree with you to an extent, i think "3DMarks are meaningless, arbitrary numbers." is something of an overstatement - and i'm sure you yourself were aware of perhaps a little exaggeration creeping in here.Look at something like IMDB (even more wildly subjective). If you were to guage whether you were going to enjoy a film purely on the back of the score listed there, you would most likely be a fool - however were you to take that number as merely one factor while reading other reviews and so on, you'd most likely find that contextually it is somewhat indicative of certain features (for example, one might conclude that from a high IMDB score, and some low reiewer scores that the film, while perhaps of weak script and acting, is nonetheless entertaining for various reasons).
Despite the verbosity of the aforediscussed comparison, the same does hold for PC benchmarks too. They are just one part of a whole, complete, testing suite. They are the equivalent of a game - and suggesting that we include FC2, while a perfectly sound suggestion, is not really that much better than suggesting the addition of another benchmark. All one would find out would be how some specifc hardware performs in some specific game. Which in all its subjectivity is fine, it's as it should be - it's what we want.
Finally, i suppose if it is not obvious, i should express my opinion on the matter of whetehr we shoudl keep said benches or not - well of course yes, adding the results of a known quantity like a 3DMark bench can only help to enrich the assesment of the hardware - however similarly, i'd suggest keeping things current, and unless testing netbooks or the like, omitting the 03 and 05 flavours is probably a good shout.
JarredWalton - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
That's one yes, and one no. Unfortunately, that doesn't give us much input. LOL. Most likely we'll drop 03/05 shortly (outside of netbooks that still can't run 06 well, and Vantage not at all).hybrid2d4x4 - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
Put me down as another in favor of dropping them. I know that when I read the reviews, I skip over the synthetic charts entirely (unless real-world tests are altogether missing- not so much a concern on this site).