The 13 Inch Unibody - Now A Real Computer With No Excuses Necessary
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
by Charles W. Moore
Last fall when Apple unveiled its revolutionary unibody notebooks, I observed that the 13 inch MacBook was about as close to perfect as I’d yet seen in a small laptop, save for Apple’s bizarre decision to launch it bereft of a FireWire port. If not for that egregious omission, I argued, the baby unibody was a completely worthy successor to the legendary 12 inch PowerBook G4.
I put my money where my mouth was, so to speak, bought a 2.0 GHz unibody MacBook last February, and didn’t have a twinge of buyer remorse until June 9, when Apple announced its new MacBook Pro line, with the 13 inch unibody now “promoted” to full-fledged MacBook Pro status, gaining not only a FireWire 800 port, but also a Secure Digital (SD) Card slot, debunking the notion than had been floated by some defenders of Apple’s FireWire boo-boo that there had simply been no room to include FireWire the first time around.
Better late than never, I say, even though it too late for me, having made my commitment to the 13 inch MacBook for a targeted three-year hitch before upgrading my main system again. Not that I’m feeling all that hard done by. The 13 inch MacBook is a delightful little machine, a feast for the eyes, speedy, and completely reliable and trouble- free so far, albeit somewhat crippled by the lack of FireWire, which has been an annoyance and an inconvenience by times, but so far I’ve worked around it.
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That said, I would dearly love to have one of the new 13 inch MacBook Pros, which now truly represent the high water mark in compact notebooks with no qualifiers necessary. Perfection? Still not quite, something did have to give in order to cram in both a FireWire port and an SD Card slot, and the something turned out to be the 13 inch MacBook’s digital audio in/out ports, which have been replaced by an iPhone/iPod type integrated mic and headphone port. This will make the 13 inch MacBook Pro a no-go for a minority of users who absolutely require the digital audio port, but I can’t say as it will be any hardship at all for me, and probably not for most of us.
The other caveat with the new 13-incher is its built-in, non-swappable battery, about which I’m ambivalent, at least now that IFixIt has determined that do-it-yourself replacement of the battery pack should be no problem for anyone reasonably handy with screwdrivers.
Not being able to swap in a spare battery in case of long stretches without access to AC power, or to keep a fully charged extra or two on hand for lengthy power outages, which are not uncommon in my neck of the woods, is a potentially troublesome issue, but there are workarounds for that too.
For those, for example my esteemed Low End Mac colleague Andrew Fishkin who suggest that a 1280 x 800 resolution 13 inch display is an impediment to calling this compute “perfect,” the ready answer is to be found in the new base model 15 inch MacBook Pro, which now sells for just $200 more than the high-end 13-inch model, with the same 2.53 GHz processor and essentially the same hardware spec. except for the display dimensions.
Of course there are others, like PBCentral’s own Joe Leo who say that the 13 inch display conversely makes the unibody to large in footprint to qualify as a true successor to the 12 inch PowerBook. I also respectfully disagree. My most serious worry about moving to the 13 inch MacBook after three years of using a 17 inch PowerBook for my production Mac was how difficult I would find it adapting to the smaller, 1280 x 800 resolution display after the wide open spaces of the PowerBook’s 1440 x 900 screen. It’s not been too traumatic, although with my nearly 58-year-old eyes, I do find myself using 18 point fonts for word processing and the very convenient zoom function in Opera, my favorite browser, more frequently than I ever did before.
On the balance, however, I think the 13.3 inch, 1280 x 800 display strikes the sweet spot compromise between viewing area and compact size convenience, and the 13 inch MacBook Pro gets a high quality screen than its MacBook predecessor.
CNET’s Dan Ackerman has some other reservations about the MacBook Pro’s aspirations to perfection, including the lack of Matte screen options on the 13” and 15” models, the lack of Blu-ray optical drive availability, no Mobile broadband support, no HDMI outputs, and no Touchscreen/tablet option. The lack of a matte surface display option has been a nonissue for me. I’m quite happy with glossy screens and like the glossy display in my MacBook, but if that point is truly a deal-breaker for you, http://techrestore.com/xcart/home.php?cat=404 TechRestore offers a mail-in full matte screen conversion (not just an anti-glare coating like Apple’s $50 17” MacBook Pro “matte” screen option) for the 13 inch unibody MacBook Pro for a modest $169.00 (or $199.99 for the 15” unibody ) with a brand new matte finish, non-glossy screen along with a matching black bezel that surrounds the screen and covered by a 1-year TechRestore warranty.
The long and short of it is that with restoration of FireWire, the 13 inch PowerBook MacBook Pro is now every bit as capable of serving as a production workhorse” only” computer as the 12 inch PowerBook ever was in the context of its time, and perhaps even more so with the addition of the SD card slot as icing on the proverbial case, slots being something the 12 inch or never had. The smallest MacBook Pro is now a “real” computer with no excuses necessary.
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