Love at Second Sight

I owned a first generation MacBook (the black one) and came away from the experience thoroughly impressed with Apple’s latest portable, and thoroughly disgusted with early-production defects. In short, the MacBook would get so hot (80 degrees Celsius) that it would simply shut down to protect itself, losing whatever data had yet to be saved at the time. Other than that little quibble, I loved the machine.

Apple fixed the heat problems with the original Core Duo MacBook in the form of a firmware update that keeps the fan constantly running, but even with the fix they are still definitely not LAPtops. Enter the second-generation MacBook with Intel’s new Core2Duo processor, and a very safe 40 degree Celsius operating temperature. I’m not sure what they did inside the case, but it’s a heat reduction far more drastic even than that on the 12” PowerBook, which originally ran so hot as to warp its metal case, and was thoroughly tamed in the second generation. I used those 12” PowerBooks for 3 years and still consider them among the best laptops ever, except for that overly hot first-gen model, and the MacBook was so hot that that early PowerBook seamed like an arctic breeze by comparison.

Well, the MacBook is an oven no more. I’m convinced its more than a firmware difference, as the fan isn’t always running either. I tried the 2.0GHz White model, the middle of the line, that actually is a perfect match specification-wise for the first black MacBook that I owned for a little while. What’s changed, besides the new processor, is the superdrive, which is now a dual layer model, and the hard drive and ram, which are now a much more reasonable 80GB and 1.0GB, respectively. Black MacBooks have a 120GB drive and are also equipped with a full GB of ram, a very welcome improvement.

The entry-level 1.83GHz model, despite having a Core 2 Duo, shares its predecessor’s 2MB of level 2 cache, whereas the 2.0GHz black and white MacBooks have twice that, a full 4MB, though in my brief and informal tests there was very little performance difference. This isn’t to say that the new MacBooks aren’t faster than the old ones, just that the old ones were already so fast that the difference is only noticeable in tasks that take a lot of time, like rendering video, rather than in casual tasks like opening documents, which are all-but instantaneous. These are EXTREMELY fast computers.

Of course, the same limitations apply as on the first-gen MacBooks. The graphics are still handled by Intel’s GMA950 integrated controller. The GMA950 siphons off between 8MB and 256MB of system ram to handle the graphics. While shared graphics have traditionally been very slow, and the GMA950 will set no gaming benchmark records, for all but the most demanding games it is more than adequate, helped considerably by the fast Core 2 Duo and ample 1.0 GB of ram.

So the processor is a bit faster and the machine runs much cooler (cool enough to use on your lap!), what else has changed? Thankfully, nothing at all. Other than the heat, the MacBook was a homerun from the start. No, it isn’t as small and light as the 12” PowerBook and the graphics fall short of the larger MacBook Pro. What the MacBook was, and is, is the best ever consumer-grade laptop, period. No, it won’t compete well with ultraportables for frequent travelers or with workstation-models for graphics pros, but for most users, the MacBook is just right.

With the MacBook, you get a trim 1” thick machine with a bright and vibrant 13.3” glossy widescreen that somehow doesn’t turn into a useless mirror like most of its PC competition. It has an outstanding, though strange-looking keyboard, solidly average (3.5 hours real world) battery life and Apple’s usual terrific industrial design. What you also get, is perhaps the most versatile computer on the planet. You see, the MacBook, like all Intel Macs, not only runs the extremely superior Mac OS X operating system, but thanks to its Intel processor and Apple’s Boot Camp software, you can natively run Windows XP as well.

The MacBook I bought for my law firm is so configured, and I’m delighted to say that Boot Camp has improved in the time since I sold my overheating MacBook in August. Boot Camp now creates drivers not only for the basics, but for the frills as well. This means that (finally) you can use the scrolling touchpad the same way in Windows as in OS X, that the iSight camera actually works, and that you can control-click the single mouse button. Yes, there are now absolutely NO COMPROMISES to running Windows on a MacBook compared to an actual Windows machine,m which is important for me as the paralegal who uses the MacBook is a long-time Windows user who just doesn’t want to learn her way around a different OS.

Yes, you read correctly, I bought a MacBook to be used primarly as a Windows machine. Simply put, the Apple MacBook, even shopped only on price, is a better value than just about anything else on the market today, at least if you have an unused Windows XP license like I do. Of course my hope is that after playing with OS X a bit (we always show her the cool features on the other Macs like Dashboard and Expose) that she will just start using OS X instead of XP, but honestly it doesn’t’ matter much to me. Mac or Windows, the MacBook is a reliable, cool-running laptop that is powerful enough to not intrude, well made so it will last, and most importantly, it is an ergonomically excellent package that doesn’t disappoint in the all-important areas of screen and keyboard.

If the MacBook is so good, why don’t I use it? Well, if I were a typical user, I would. I use my laptop too much in courtrooms and on airplanes. In a courtroom, a laptop is simply too distracting, while on an airplane, even small laptops are too bulky when the passenger in front of you reclines. For those two reasons, I’ve moved to the Tablet PC. A MacBook without the keyboard and with a digitizer in the excellent screen would be a very compelling machine, but until Apple releases a tablet, a high-quality OS X portable like the MacBook remains out of reach.

I really like the MacBook, and will probably be buying a second (entry level) one for my daughter to replace a dying ThinkPad X22 in the next few months. It is fast, rugged and extremely powerful, at a price that simply cannot be matched without serious compromises in quality, weight or both. In short, it is perhaps the best laptop computer available today.