By now, you have likely read a ton of articles reviewing the MacBook Pro, and have seen various benchmarks. I have as well, and they all seem to say a lot of the same stuff.
Well, I’ve been using my MacBook Pro for the past week, and have the following random observations. Note that the machine is a stock 1.83 except for having 2GB RAM.
- The screen is outstanding
- It’s way faster at compiling than my PowerBook G4 — my 3:05 FuzzMeasure compile went down to only 0:40
- The UI is snappier — way snappier
- Browsing feels much faster — this makes a big difference when working in FogBugz
- It’s not much hotter than my PowerBook G4
- The battery life doesn’t seem much different, even though I see lower “time remaining” values for my battery after unplugging it from the wall
- The MagSafe connector is very sturdy
- Waking up the MacBook is quieter, on account of a quieter SuperDrive mechanism
- The light on the latch release is very confusing — I have to wait until the light starts pulsing before I feel safe putting the MacBook Pro in my bag
- The power brick is large — almost comically so
- The high-pitched whine is annoying, but I quickly forget the problem when I’m ripping through compilations at 4.5x the speed…
- The wire connecting the power brick to the MacBook Pro is far thicker, and feels sturdier
- Aside from the imbalance in the two speakers, they sound fine enough — maybe the difference is by (a limitation in?) design
- The keyboard feels slightly sturdier, but that could be due to its newness
- Wireless reception’s noticeably better than on the PowerBook
- Rosetta applications run well enough that I barely notice — if only they didn’t take 2x as long to launch
I’ll stop there for now. Maybe I’ll add some more another time.