scattered technology news

Terc says

I read visit your site daily, but I was a little dissapointed with this review. The front row issue has apparently been addressed. Critisizing for a touchpad issue that would be fixed by taking it to an apple store is really not fair either. I’m no mac fanboy, and that hissing issue bothers me still, but maybe you could be a little more fair.

Terc says

Here’s a link for you. Sounds as though it’s exactly the issues you were having. http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1536
as far as the touchpad, you’re right, I’ve missed those. I’ve been pretty excited about the intel macs, now that xp is running on them I’ve been looking into getting one. Just wanted to say though, thanks for such a great site.
-Terc

Scott Stevenson says

This sounds like maybe it’s a defective/damaged unit more than “Rev A” issues? Hissing sound aside, the machine is fast.

Mx says

I’ve been searching for reviews of the MBP, but found very few that were detailed and balanced enough to form an educated decision. So, I decided to take a plunge and buy one, test it out for some time and then decide if I want to keep it.

The configuration I got was: MBP 2.0 / 1GB / 100GB. Here’s my $0.02:

The presentation, look and feel are great initially. The casing is sturdy, the keyboard is excellent, and the trackpad and mouse button are great. Some of the softare is quite neat (e.g. expose, search functions, remote controllable audio/visual), and some freeware is great (e.g. QuickSilver, TinkerTools). The usability / productivity turned out to be less than anticipated.

I was very well aware of the “whine” issue, and researched it enough to find out that it its various variants it is related to a faulty inverter for the display and a faulty logic board used with the Core Duo. Some users have reported getting Apple to tacitly acknowledge the problem and begin replacing the faulty components.

In practice, the notorious whine can be an issue, depending on how sensitive your hearing is, and/or when your MBP was manufactured. People who haven’t yet lost hearing in the upper register (e.g. women and younger men) can hear the whine very well and are quite irritated by it. Older people and those desensitized by 5-hours a day of iPod use cannot.

I’m in the former category, and find the “whine” or “hiss” to be at a particularly irritating frequency that makes it rather unbearable, despite its low overall volume.

I had to download QuietMBP to silence the machine. This is probably the best / least processor intensive “fix” that’s been documented in the user community. However, it does decrease the battery life by about 30 minutes. This is out of a total of 2.5 - 3 hours on average display brightness, bluetooth off, wireless internet on. (I had conditioned the battery as per instructions.)

In use, whether plugged in or on battery power, on whatever performance setting, with much less than 10% average processor intensity, the laptop still got quite hot. Around the area where the screen meets the laptop it was simply too hot to touch. Elsewhere, the keyboard and palm-rests were hot enough to make my hands sweat constantly, leaving visible salt deposits over the silver surface.

Finally, I’d like to say a few words about using Mac OS for professionals and others that are considering switching from Windows XP.

I had used a Mac in 1990’s, and didn’t mind it at all - actually preferred it to a PC. Since then, however, most of my professional experience/use (I’m in science/technology/academics) has been mostly on Windows (95 and XP). The majority of programs I are available or have equivalents on a Mac, with a few notable exceptions: Microcal Origin, AutoCAD, and some others. My workhorse applications are Word, PowerPoint, and Acrobat. Despite being well aware of the benefits of the TeX variants for typesetting, and the great advances in the OpenOffice applications (all of which I have tried and use on occasion) if you collaborate with enough people, Word and PowerPoint are indispensible; that’s just a fact.

I found that about half of my PowerPoint slides are not displayed properly on the MacBook Pro. The problems range from having the text garbled and plot labels misplaced, to colors mixed up and some plots / figures not showing up at all. These issues carry over to Word as well. In general, I’ve experienced multiple problems with conversion of slides and Word documents to PDF on the Mac. While the PC experience is by no means trouble-free in that regard, I’ve gotten a pretty good understanding of what happens and have gotten very good results on Windows. Less luck on the Mac OS. If you deal with these programs regularly, you’ll find that switching over can be a major hassle. Furthermore, if you collaborate with enough people that don’t use a Mac (which seem to make up about 90% of computer users), this will be a problem.

Another usability issue that is also highly user-dependent, is the display / text rendering. The technical term is Anti-aliasing (feel free to google for an explanation) and it can either be a non-issue, or drive you nuts. The short of it is that to me, the text on a Mac always looked “fuzzy”. I learned to fiddle with the anti-aliasing settings in the OS to minimize this effect, and recommend a program called TinkerTools for greater flexibility with the settings. (Among other things, it lets you relocate the Dock.) Still, the display quality falls short of the glossy offerings by Sony, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and matte displays of IBM and… well, pretty much everyone else in the business.

The connectivity and synchronization options are fairly limited for switchers, and I feel that Microsoft and Apple are equally guilty of this. Still this doesn’t help solve the problem. For example, chances are that your SmartPhone device won’t sync easily with a Mac, and your MS Outlook calendar and contacts cannot be read by MS Entourage (made by the same company, mind!) or iCal. I found Mark/Space - a $40 program that let me transfer my Outlook info from my Audiovox SMT5600 SmartPhone. Since the phone syncs seamlessly with Windows, it served as my vehicle for porting all the vital info.

I cannot identify a single issue that was the deal-breaker for me. Rather, the combination of high-pitch noise, heat, poor battery life, file conversion issues, and the hefty price tag made me return the computer. Perhaps the most irritating aspect of the experience is the blithe manner in which Apple Geniuses and the tech persons on the phone tended to dismiss my (politely worded) concerns.

As of now, I’m back to my 3-pound ultraportable with a 133 dpi x-brite screen and 7 hour battery life. After nearly 2 years of heavy daily use the keyboard is finally starting to feel a bit cramped, and I’ll have to get myself a bigger laptop… Sony SZ and ThinkPad T43 come to mind, and I’d welcome any recommendations :-)

FIX: Apologies… one paragraph above unintentionally conflates the issue of anti-aliasing and screen quality. (Couldn’t find the edit function.) What I meant to say was that I haven’t been able to find a good solution to the text rendering problem on the Mac OS (and many people seem to have the same issue).
Only somewhat related to that is the issue of the contrast ratio on the typical matte LCD and the newer glossy versions. I find the latter far superior, for both graphic-intensive uses, and for text editing.

Brian says

I had my MBP for all of three days and had massive failure - after 3 weeks they finally replaced both the faulty logic board and the LCD screen. No apologies from Mac, poor customer service - the whine is annoying. Not half as fast as promised. I am now fighting to return it.

Klaus says

I have a MacBook Pro since three weeks: I am very satisfied. Maybe this is of newer production and has already some of the early issues fixed.
Compared to my iMAC G5 and the IBM ThinkPad notebook I use at work it feels very fast. Also, it is the most silent computer of all three (yes: there IS noice).
I can confirm it is getting warm, but for me this is no issue (still below my “pain” threshold but at the limit to use it on the lap).