17" MacBook Pro in da house - one user's gripes
It's happened. I hinted at it several times before, but as of 7 days ago I am the proud owner of a new 17" 2.16GHz MacBook Pro with the 100GB 7200rpm drive. Once Apple announced the speed bump and price reductions across the line at the end of May I knew that it was time to splash the cash.
Luckily for me the other half is a secondary school teacher, so we qualified for Apple's excellent education discount. Instead of paying £1900, we got the beast for a 'mere' £1750. Add in another £110 or so for a 1GB memory stick from Crucial (significantly better than the £200 Apple would have charged) and the grand total was around £1850. Not a small chunk of change by anyone's standards, but given that my venerable 667MHz Titanium Powerbook is definitely showing its age, it's a worthwhile buy.
Having had the machine for almost a week now, I can definitely say that the speed increase has been wonderful. Apps launch almost instantly. Spotlight is finally a useful tool. Web pages render with far more of that near-mythical 'snappy'. Programs that were as slow as molasses on the old laptop (Dreamweaver MX 2004 I'm lookin' at you) are now quite usable on the MacBook Pro even under Rosetta emulation. I am aware that these are all fairly subjective measurements, so as a test I whipped out my trusty old copy of DVD2OneX. The results were approximately what I expected, but it was still nice to see the results firsthand. Processing a 7GB DVD on the old Powerbook takes about an hour. Using the universal binary version of DVD2OneX on the MacBook Pro this now takes approximately 12 minutes! Absolutely fantastic, or as Jeremy Clarkson might say, "enough to give me a semi"
Despite all the good experiences of the last few days, there have been a few negatives. The MacBook Pro itself exhibits several of the problems reported by other people:
Heat
The MacBook Pro certainly gets quite hot. After a few hours of casual use the left palm rest gets very warm - not uncomfortable but enough to make your palm a bit sweaty! Also the strip of case between the keyboard and the screen (just above the air vent) gets extremely hot, to the point where extended contact is certainly uncomfortable, and even slightly painful. I have yet to run any lengthy CPU-intensive tasks, but I plan on remedying that situation in the next day or two. As long as it doesn't get any hotter than it is now I think it is fairly warm but acceptable.
Warped screen caseThe case around the screen exhibits a slight warp when the lid is closed, i.e. when it is closed the gap between the screen and the body of the laptop isn't even. The gap is noticeably wider at the front corners of the machine than it is at the central latch area, i.e. perhaps 0.75mm at the latches and 1.5mm at the corners. This is also apparently a fairly common problem, but other than the slight annoyance of a cosmetic flaw in a £1850 laptop, it doesn't really bother me.
[Update: while taking these photos I've now concluded that the screen warp has at least partially corrected itself. As you can see from the photo above it is still noticeable, but it is not as bad as it was when I first unpacked the laptop.]
Other screen issuesI had previously noticed the new (compared to the Powerbook) hinge design during my last visit to an Apple Store. While I can see the logic of the new design in that it reduces the depth of the laptop, I wasn't so happy to find that I could no longer really use my laptop while standing up because the screen cannot fold back nearly as far as my Powerbook. This results in me having to bend down to properly read the screen.
Secondly, despite Apple offering a choice between glossy and matte screens, the matte screen of my MacBook Pro is noticeably glossier than the Powerbook's. Not a huge deal, but something I noticed immediately.
The third issue is the new hinge mechanism. It is far looser than the hinge on my almost-4-year-old Powerbook. Admittedly the MacBook Pro's screen glides very smoothly and is easily adjusted with a light push from a single finger while the Powerbook screen takes two hands to adjust (one to move the screen and one to hold the base of the laptop to stop it moving!). However there is a flaw - if you lie down on your back in bed or on a sofa with your knees bent, putting the MacBook Pro on your lap results in the screen falling down and closing itself! This was a feasible (and fairly comfortable!) position with my old Powerbook.
My final quibble is with the (admittedly cool) keyboard backlighting. This seems to be somehow connected to the ambient light screen brightness controller, in that when the keyboard backlight automatically turns off after a few minutes of non-use (despite being set to never turn off) the screen also gets significantly dimmer. I suspect that the light from the keyboard backlight is affecting the ambient light sensor for the screen brightness, so when the keyboard backlight switches off, the screen dims due to reduced ambient light. This may be the intended design, but I find it quite distracting.
Tiny return key, and other keyboard annoyancesI haven't seen anyone else mention this yet, but this is annoying the crap out of me. The return key on the MacBook Pro keyboard is positively tiny compared to one on the Titanium Powerbook. This is evidently so they could squeeze in an extra key (more on that later). I'm hoping that I will get used to the tiny key, but after a week it is still a bit of a lottery which key I will actually press when going for the return key. More often than not it is the backslash key. In fact the whole keyboard is taking some getting used to.
For some inexplicable reason Apple have also decided to move the tilde (~) key and replace it with a new key (which produces the § and ± symbols). Now I don't have a problem with this, but it certainly fucks up application switching. In the past we used command-tab to cycle forwards through applications, and command-tilde to cycle backwards. This was great when the tilde key was above the tab key, but is not so great with the tilde key's new position. It also screws up window switching within an application (command-tilde).Strange noises
One of the major issues reported by hundreds of different users has been strange noises coming from their MacBook Pros. Most commonly this is reported as a high-pitched whine coming from the base of the screen, possibly from a power inverter. Others have reported a 'mooing' noise which seems to be related to a misaligned fan. I, of course, have a completely different noise
What I get is a white noise/static sound coming from the right speaker. it sounds exactly like a vinyl record player on high volume when it is in between tracks on the record (i.e. a kind of hissing and popping noise). The noise lasts for around 5 or 10 seconds. It has only happened 5 or 6 times so far, almost always when I am booting the laptop or waking it from sleep. Rather worryingly, these are two things I rarely do - the laptop is usually powered-on and on a table 24/7. Strangely enough the strange noise has also occurred once when I was booting under Windows XP via Bootcamp. This makes me wonder if it is a hardware fault, rather than a speaker driver problem. The noise isn't solely restricted to bootup and waking from sleep though. I've also heard it once when launching an application. For me this noise is a show-stopper. If I cannot find a fix for it I shall be returning this machine.Closing thoughts
I should note that this is far from a complete review of the 17" MacBook Pro. I'll leave that to others. This piece simply states my impressions of the laptop after a week of use. I should add that despite my extensive moaning above, this is far and away the fastest and slickest laptop I've ever used. It is, on the whole, a hell of an improvement on my aged Powerbook. The MacBook Pro looks great, and the performance is simply stunning. I will probably even get used to the keyboard eventually. It is just that for the hefty price tag I want a perfect machine. That means a laptop that doesn't get too hot to touch, doesn't have no stinkin' warped screen, and absolutely, positively, does not make inexplicable noises at seemingly random times.
Related entries
YA MBP review - 7 March 2006XP on a MacBook Pro pics - 20 March 2006
MacBook Pro hissing noises explained - 8 March 2006
Tiger in da house - 27 April 2005
OS X screensavers - 12 February 2003
Unique Mac mini review - 3 February 2005
More on MacBook To Buy Or Not To Buy - 23 February 2006
P910i Mac-centric review - 30 November 2004
Tiger review like you've never seen - 29 April 2005
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Comments
Interesting stuff! It is useful to actually see some photos of these warped screens I read so much about. Thanks for that. By the way, do you know the serial number of your MBP?
by: Scott at June 16, 2006 2:59 PM
Scott: Thanks for the comment. My number starts with W8621 - I've read speculation that the 621 means 21st week of 2006, and the 8 specifies the factory, but that could be complete fiction
by: Tim Houghton at June 16, 2006 7:08 PM
Completely agree with the hinge problems.
I think they use the same hinge on the 15" and the 17", so it's about right on the 15", but with the heaver screen of the 17" it's just not tight enough and flops way too easily. I also wish the screen folded back further.
It would be very handy use these laptops on your knees like you described!
My 17" G4 PowerBook has exactly the same problem, as does the only 17" MacbookPro I've tried.
by: Tim at July 10, 2006 9:43 AM
Your keyboard has changed because you have the UK version, not the standard American one (which it sounds like your Titanium had).
by: Jon at July 21, 2006 7:37 AM
Hmmm that's a very good point Jon. My Titanium PB was bought in Hong Kong, but I think they use the American keyboard there (it has a $ sign). I didn't know there was such a big difference.
That doesn't mean I don't think it's stupid however
I mean what keyboard would have a § key but be missing the # symbol?!?! (Option-3 produces the # symbol, but the symbol itself isn't printed on the key).
I have, however, become used to the tiny return key. I still don't like having to contort my hand to hit command-tilde though.
by: Tim Houghton at July 21, 2006 10:03 PM
I forgot to add that even the option key has gone. It has now become an 'alt' key (presumably to keep switchers happy).
by: Tim Houghton at July 21, 2006 10:09 PM
hi, i have recently bought an old power book 17" G4, It has the same warped screen as yours but it also has to warm up before the backlite works! have you checked that one of the magnetic latches that close the screen isnt broken?i keep putting everything in caps instead of pressing A. They are brilliant machines but so easy to have problems with. is it normal for the power adaptors to get really hot? thanx,
myles
by: myles at January 18, 2007 1:10 AM
Hi Myles, yes it is normal for the adaptor to get very warm to the touch. (It shouldn't be too hot to touch though!). I try to keep an eye on mine and make sure it has enough ventilation etc. There have been a few stories on the net of Apple power adaptors catching fire. I'm sure it is a tiny percentage, but I've heard at least 3 seperate stories in the last few months.
by: Tim Houghton at January 18, 2007 6:52 PM
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