You’d be forgiven for not noticing the changes just by glancing at the new 13in MacBook Pro because it’s identical from the outside, with the same line-up of ports (there’s no sign of Apple adopting USB 3) and the same aluminium unibody design. The differences lie inside and comprise a mix of incremental bumps to the processor and memory and a completely new graphics processor.
Apple supplied the 2.66GHz model for review. It’s a Core 2 Duo processor rather than the newer Intel iSeries. Apple reasons that it has focused on other components that make a difference, so the ageing NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor is ousted in favour of a GeForce 320M, though it still siphons off some RAM for its graphical work.
That’s of less concern now that 4GB is fitted as standard, double the previous amount, enough to run several office applications, even under Windows in a virtual machine. The new GPU boosted our OpenGL graphics test by 15 points to score 178 points, and you’ll have to step up to the 15in model to get better performance for CAD and other demanding applications.
The 13in MacBook Pro weighs 2.04kg, a whole 500 grams less than the 15in model and 90g lighter than the white polycarbonate MacBook. That’s a noticeable weight to carry but it’s the lightest of all portable Macs.
Apple reckons this model has the longest battery life, too. It quotes a massive 10 hours of wireless productivity, which amounts to browsing web pages and typing in a word processor. Our tests work out the extremes of your behaviour. Left idle while connected to a Wi-Fi network, and with screen brightness at 50 per cent, the battery lasted 13 hours and two minutes.
Apple measures battery life by browsing web pages and typing in a word processor. The content of pages you browse, so expect video such as online seminars to impact on battery life. Our other test looped an HD TV show (1280 x 720 pixels) and expired the battery in four hours and 15 minutes. That’s acceptable for short flights, but if you do business further away make sure you pick up an airline adaptor (£29) as you can’t swap the battery out for a fresh one.
The display provides a 1280 x 800-pixel Desktop to play with, which is more comfortable than you might expect thanks to the gesture-driven shortcuts of the trackpad and, if you set it up, the operating system’s virtual Desktop feature.
Otherwise, the specs of the MacBook are largely unchanged. Its DDR3 memory and the frontside bus run at 1066MHz, and it can be boosted to 8GB for £320. Don’t rush to do that as the manual shows you how to do it, assuming you ever need to. We’ve been using a similarly-specced 2.4GHz MacBook with 4GB of RAM for about 18 months and it works a treat for basic Mac applications and running Windows in a virtual machine.
Our advice is the same for hard drive upgrades. Step up from 320GB to 500GB and you’ll have to fork out £80. You’re better off putting that towards a 500GB portable drive to hold your backu... |
