MacBook Pro: The 13-inch acid test

Apple kindly lent me a 13-inch MacBook Pro for a fortnight to have a look at. I haven't done a proper evaluation of a new Mac since the MacBook Air, so I'd used a couple of unibodies but not to evaluate seriously, and this had the added fillip of being the new 'Pro' version.

This one had 4GB RAM and a 2.53GHz processor. A few other details differed too - the 13 has 3MB of L2 Cache and a 1.07GHz bus speed.

They both have 2x USB2 ports, but the 15 has FireWire 400 and 800 plus an ExpressCard slot for some easy expansion (for which Sonnet's ExpressCard 34 is a particularly good addition, adding another two FireWire 400 ports and another USB2.

The video cards are different too. The older 15 has an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT with 256MB VRAM, the 13 has NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M with 256MB VRAM. Both cards support Quartz Extreme.

Speeds

So I ran a few timings versus an 18-month old MacBook Pro 15-inch (pre Unibody), 2.4GHz with 2GB RAM. This has a 4MB L2 cache but 800MHz bus speed.

Start-up time from pressing the On button to being able to launch apps:

MBP 15-inch 1 minute 26 seconds (and from a restart, 2:02).

The 13-inch MacBook Pro booted from cold in 34 seconds, and on a restart in ... 34 seconds.

A Numbers document booted in 3.9 seconds on the old 15, and 2.4 seconds, including launching Numbers (Apple's spreadsheet program).

I have graphed all this in the full review on mac.nz, by the way.

Video

As far as general performance goes, I've been editing a short film in Final Cut on the MacBook Pro 15. There's been a performance glitch in it that drives me crazy. In Final Cut, you run clips in a viewer and choose in and out points. You ten drag selected material into a timeline and this forms the edited project. All fine, except on the 2.4GHz early 2008 MacBook Pro 15, the playback is so glitchy in the preview window it was virtually impossible to choose In and Out points precisely.

I had to place a clip into the timeline for it to play properly, discard it and try a few more times to get it right. As you can imagine, this is not how it's supposed to be. I'm not sure if this is because the 5400rpm hard drive in the 15-inch is too slow, or because it doesn't have enough RAM (2GBs) or whether the video card is not up to it, even though it's an NVIDIA which has 256MB VRAM.

I tried it on a slightly older (September '07), slower (2.2GHz) MacBook Pro 15 too. It only has an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card with 128MB VRAM, but the machine does have 4GB RAM. However, the problem remained - stopping/freezing video in the Final Cut preview window.

So I tried it on the new 13-inch MacBook Pro and it was fine, at least with the sample footage on the Apple machine. So I transferred my biggest project movie clips over and tried with these. Awesome. Perfect. No stops, smooth playback, easy editing. I don't exactly know whether this was due to the faster bus, the nominally faster CPU (2.53GHz), the 4GBs RAM or the newer NVIDIA GeForce 9400M video card with 256MB VRAM. (If you know, do tell.)

'That' screen

OK, 1/ I love the glossy screen! It's clear and bright. No laptop I've ever used has been reflection free or perfect outside in the sunlight. I don't believe this is even possible. But seeing pictures clear and sharp without that damn matte stipple? Excellent. I think the glossy screen is a lame excuse to beat on Apple, and from a minority of albeit vocal users. Meanwhile, virtually every other PC laptop on the market also has a glossy screen. Get over it - give me clarity any day.

2/ The open-screen tilt angle is much improved. I measure the 13-inch at 45° from the surface behind it. The older MacBook Pro 15 is 57°, which I agree was never far enough for comfortable use, at least on your lap. As a result I sit my 15 on a book on my desk to get things workable. This is not necessary with the 13-inch.

All in all, the MacBook Pro 13 is very impressive. Its unibody aluminium construction makes it feel rigid and strong, the size makes it exceedingly portable and the catch-free curved brushed-metal body makes it easy to slip into a bag.

It's really fast, it has very useful ports, I love the screen and it puts my 1.5 year old MacBook Pro 15-inch in the shade on all fronts except screen size. Awesome. Great stuff. I'd love one.

- Mark Webster mac.nz