New MacBook Pro Revision Makes Pro vs. Air Purchase Decision Easier
Now entering the home stretch of my three year system upgrade cycle target, I had hoped that the early 2011 MacBook Pro refreshment would clarify the path going forward, and to a considerable degree it has. For the past 4 1/2 months, since the redesigned MacBook Airs were released, I’ve been torn as to whether to go with a 13-inch MacBook Pro or a 13-inch MacBook Air for my next workhorse Mac. I suppose I should be happy that there are only two serious candidates on my shortlist.
On the one hand, the 13-inch Pro is a full-featured laptop with plenty of power and capability for the sort of production work I do on computers. Currently filling that role for me is a late 2008 model aluminum unibody MacBook that’s proved capable of doing everything I’ve asked of it for the first two years in service. Since the 13-inch MacBook Pro is nearly identical to my MacBook in form factor and general layout, only with less power and fewer connectivity features. I have no doubt that its much more powerful direct successor would be amply able to measure up to my requirements ongoing. My biggest — really only serious complaint about the aluminum MacBook has been its lack of a high-speedI/O data transfer interface.
The latest 13-inch MacBook Pro, with both FireWire and the new Thunderbolt ports, has high speed I/O well covered, Thunderbolt being 12 times faster than FireWire 800, 20 times faster than USB 2.0 (which is what my current MacBook is limited to), and also theoretically twice as fast as USB 3.0. Thunderbolt also can supply 10 watts of bus power for external peripherals, compared with a maximum of about 6 watts for USB.
One of the other cool things about Thunderbolt is that because it’s partly based on DisplayPort technology, It uses an updated DisplayPort, which left room to retain the existing FireWire port even on the 13-inch MacBook Pro and it’s backwards-compatible so existing DisplayPort peripherals or adapters will work just fine. Of course if you buy an early 2011 MacBook Pro right away, you won’t have much to connect to via Thunderbolt in the early going, at least without a USB, FireWire, or eSATA adapter. However, several companies including Aja, Apogee, Avid, Blackmagic, LaCie, Promise, and Western Digital already announced their intention to support Thunderbolt technology in upcoming products, which should start appearing by summer. Reportedly Thunderbolt adapters for FireWire, USB 3 and eSATA will also soon be available, and Target Disk Mode also reportedly works with Thunderbolt, although Apple’s Migration Assistant doesn’t, at least until OS X 10.7 Lion is on the prowl come summer.
High-speed I/O is one feature area where the 13-inch MacBook Pro also clearly outclasses the 13-inch MacBook Air, which like my aging MacBook has no high speed data interface ports, and you’re also limited to 128 GB of storage in the affordable model, and to up to a maximum 4 GB of RAM, which must be installed at the time of manufacture. The 13-inch MacBook Pro comes with 4 GB of RAM standard, and supports up to 8 GB. On the other hand, the 13-inch MacBook Air outclasses the 13-inch Pro in display resolution at 1440 X 900 versus the 13-inch MacBook Pro’s 1280 x 800, which I find only marginally adequate on the MacBook. Consequently, I have to say I was disappointed that the early 2011 version 13-inch model didn’t get the 1440 X 900 display, which seems illogical since both screens have the same 16:10 aspect ratio, so the higher-res unit would be a drop-in, and with the 13-incher pitched as the “Pro” model.
Some Mac laptop fans are expressing disappointment that Apple didn’t go whole hog with a more radical redesign for the MacBook Pro, taking styling cues from the superslim wedgie-profiled, optical drive-less enclosures of the October 2010 MacBook Air models and standard SSD drives. Personally I’m glad they held off with both, and am on record predicting a no more than a 50/50 probability of that thorough a redesign of the less than 2 1/2 year old (fewer than two in the case of the 17 inch model) unibody MacBook Pro enclosure. The current aluminum Pro housings are still fresh, attractive, and I’m happy to see Apple stick with a good basic design through several product revisions over a number of years. It forestalls “Revision A anxiety” and I prefer to buy relatively debugged and mature technology. The 13-inch MacBook Pro weighs almost twice as much as the 13-inch MacBook Air (2.04 kg vs 1.06 kg), but if that’s a priority concern for you the solution is to buy a MacBook Air.
As for the SSD, I don’t gainsay its performance virtues greater speed, quiet operation, lower heat and longer battery runtime and solid state ruggedness, but it’s still too expensive an limited in capacity to displace the HDD in serious workhorse machines. Even the 13-inch MacBook Pro now comes with a base 320 GB HDD, with up to 750 GB optional. Had Apple opted to go SSD, the base config. at the $1,199 price point would have been no more than 128 GB at most. Anyone who wants an SSD in their MacBook Pro can check that box on the configure-to-order form.
I think at this stage of the game I could get along quite successfully with a peripheral optical drive, but I’m in no rush to dispense with the convenience of having one on board. Another advantage of the internal optical drive is that it can be swapped out and replaced with a second hard drive, using a third-party adapter such as the http://eshop.macsales.com/search/data+doubler OWC Data Doubler or the http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ MCE
Optibay, which comes with a bundled USB 2.0 portable enclosure for your pulled SuperDrive to turn it it into a bootable, portable, bus-powered, external SuperDrive.
This IMHO sensible revision is essentially threefold — the aforementioned Intel Thunderbolt interface, which for now, as noted, complements rather than replaces FireWire 800; second generation Sandy Bridge Core “i” CPUs, replacing long-in-the-tooth Core 2 Duo CPUs in the 13-incher and the first-generation Core i5 and i7 silicon in the 15-inch and 17-inch models. All three sizes get default Intel DMX HD 3000 integrated graphics, and all three say goodbye to Nvidia graphics processor units the Nvidia GeForce 320 M integrated graphics processor in the 13-inch model and the discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M in the 15-inch and 17-inch models, which now come with either the AMD Radeon HD 6490M GPU in the lower-priced 15-inch model and the AMD Radeon HD 6750M in the high-end 15” and the 17” MacBook Pros, in all cases complementing basic HD 3000 IDP use in the Sandy Bridge processors with automatic switching on demand.
The early 2011 unibody Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros run DDR3-1333 RAM, compared with original series unibodies that use DDR3-1066 memory.
Early benchmark reports indicate that notwithstanding nominally lower clock speeds, these new Sandy Bridge pros blow the proverbial doors off their immediate predecessors, and are the fastest Apple laptops ever by far, with up to 2x faster processors and 3x faster graphics, and the slowest MacBook Pro 13” now performing on par with the fastest previous-generation 17” MacBook Pro, and the new fastest MacBook Pro 80% faster than the fastest previous-generation MacBook Pro.
There has been some controversy and conjecture over Intel building a DRM lock into the Sandy Bridge CPUs in order to pacify big moviebiz interests, an unwelcome change for users who will be affected, but it shouldn’t be an issue for folks like me who rarely watch movies on their laptops.
The third innovation with the new Pro laptops is a more powerful FaceTime HD camera capable of capturing triple the resolution, and with improved low-light performance compared with the old iSight camera used in previous models.
The new cameras support 720p video calling to the iPhone 4, new iPod touch, or other Mac computers. To support the new camera’s greater capabilities, Apple has released a FaceTime for Mac app on the Mac App Store, which retails for $.99 (free with the new Pros). For more information, visit:
http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/
The Intel HD 3000 IGPU’s are pedestrian performers compared with the Nvidia 320 M units used in the primarily 13-inch MacBook Pro, but reportedly there much improved from the old GMX IGPU’s unfortunately remembered from the first-generation MacBooks, and their lower relative performance is compensated for and more by the lightning speed of the Sandy Bridge chips.
One thing that has suffered is battery life down from a claimed 10 hours to seven hours in these new models. Apple might have countered this by going with Core i3 processors in the 13-inch model, but I’m glad they didn’t and went with Core i5 and i7.
Speaking of that topic, the question is begged as to what form the MacBook Air’s inevitable transition to Sandy Bridge silicon will take. I’m guessing that the Core i3 is a stronger probability for the Airs, which, if that turns out to be the case would be another significant point distinguishing them from the Pro models.
Another advantage of the MacBook Pro is the ease of swapping hard drives, thanks to easy access and support for standard SATA devices, of which a vast selection is available both SSD and HDD, the latter particularly at very economical gigabytes per dollar ratios.
As much as I admire the MacBook Air, after a lot of weighing the pros and cons I had been already leaning toward the 13” MacBook Pro. This revision on all points inclines me to lean farther that way, and if I were ordering today, that would be the way I’d fall. I may even be persuaded to make my next system upgrade jump a bit early, although I’ll definitely wait until OS X 10.7 Lion comes loaded up on new machines.
Price discounts: Be sure to check the price trackers on this site for up-to-date prices, bundles, and other information on the new models. MacConnection has the new 2011 MacBook Pros in stock and on sale today for up to $150 off MSRP. There are no rebates required, and shipping is free. Stock comes and goes with some models, so check their site often. These prices are the currently the lowest available for the new models from any Apple Authorized Reseller:
– 17″ 2.2GHz MacBook Pro: $2349.99 $150 off MSRP
– 15″ 2.2GHz MacBook Pro: $2059.99 $140 off MSRP
– 15″ 2.0GHz MacBook Pro: $1699.99 $100 off MSRP
– 13″ 2.7GHz MacBook Pro: $1429.99 $70 off MSRP
– 13″ 2.3GHz MacBook Pro: $1149.99 $50 off MSRP