IN DEPTH REVIEW: Apple 13 inch Mac Book Pro

Until now, Apple's MacBook Pro range has only come in 15 and 17 inch models - meaning if you wanted the convenience of a 13 inch Apple notebook then you had to forgo some of the advanced features of the MacBook Pro and opt for a MacBook. The new 13 inch MacBook Pro now offers the best of both worlds.

The 13 inch MBP utilises the silver, solid unibody design first introduced with the MacBook Air. Apple has scrapped the 13 inch silver unibody MacBooks, leaving only one entry-level white polycarbonate 13 inch MacBook ($1599) which sports the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chip but lacks the multi-touch button-less trackpad. The 13 inch silver unibody MacBooks would appear to have only been a six-month stop-gap measure, basically MacBook Pro "Lites" with a feature set sitting somewhere between the white MacBooks and the silver MacBook Pros.


The new fully fledged 13 inch MacBook Pro (from $1899) weighs in at 2.04 kg and is only 2.41 cm thick. When it comes to connectivity it features the usual suspects including 802.11n, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, Firewire 800 and two USB 2.0 ports. It has plenty of advantages over the sole remaining 13 inch white MacBook;

- LED Backlit 13.3 inch 1280x800 display (was also in the unibody MacBook)
- Multi-touch trackpad (was also in the unibody MacBook)
- Backlit keyboard (was also in the high-end unibody MacBook)
- Mini Display Port (was also in the unibody MacBook)
- 2.26GHZ or 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
- Firewire 800
- SD card slot
- option of 128GB (+$640) or 256GB (+$1350) solid state drive
- 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM up to 8GB (was also in the unibody MacBook, up to 4GB)
- much longer battery life

It's interesting to note that Apple has backtracked on its decision to ditch Firewire from the unibody MacBook, while also relenting and finally adding a memory card slot to its notebooks. Perhaps it's a sign the design boffins at Cupertino are starting to listen to what people want rather than dictating it to them.

Of course there are sacrifices, apart from screen size and resolution, if you opt for the 13in MBP rather than the 15 or 17in model. The key advantages of the larger models are;

- 2.8GHZ or 3.06GHz processor
- 6MB shared L2 cache (on some models)
- NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics chip
- ExpressCard/34 slot (17in MBP)
- Three USB 2.0 ports (17in MBP)
- Optional matte screen (17in MBP)
- Separate audio line in with digital input

That last point isn't a mistake - there's no separate audio line in on the 13in MBP. Apple has combined the audio in and audio out in a single jack - which is obviously a serious pain if you want to record from external sources and use headphones at the same time. It also means you lose the digital audio input capabilities of the bigger MBPs. The easiest workaround is to use USB headphones, but it's still annoying considering the cheaper MacBook still features a dedicated audio line in and so did the old silver unibody MacBooks.

Like the short-lived unibody MacBook, the 13in MBP offers the improved multi-touch trackpad, which adds new four-finger gestures - sweeping four fingers up scatters the open windows to reveal the desktop, sweeping four fingers down shows all the open windows on the current desktop and sweeping right calls up the Application Switcher. The trackpad button has vanished. Instead the entire trackpad is a button and the bottom third of the trackpad is treated as a virtual button. You can even split this in half to create a virtual right-click button, although Apple can't bring itself to use such a forbidden term and instead refers to this as the "secondary click" option.

Also like the defunct unibody MacBook, the new 13in MBP is blessed with an NVIDIA graphics card rather than relying on the integrated Intel graphics. Our Xbench benchmarks tell the story, with the OpenGL test jumping from 28 frames per second on an old white MacBook to 183 frames per second on the 13in MBP (which is on par with the silver unibody MacBooks).

The switch to NVIDIA graphics offers MPEG-4 hardware acceleration - although it only seems to work with H.264 content downloaded from Apple and played with native applications. Apple is reluctant to talk about hardware acceleration, but the numbers speak for themselves. If you play Apple's <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/bbc_earth.html" target="blank">1080p H.264 samples</a> on the 13in MBP in QuickTime, the CPU usage sits at a low 15 per cent. This leaps to around 55 per cent if you play the same files in a third-party app such as VLC, Plex or XMBC. An old MacBook, which doesn't have the NVIDIA graphics, chokes on this test file even in QuickTime.

As with the short-lived unibody MacBook, the LCD backlit display on the 13in MBP is exquisite - much brighter than than old MacBooks and with greater colour vibrance. Apple has even bumped up the colour gamut by 60 per cent. The trade-off is terrible glare and unfortunately you can't opt for a matte finish (this option is only available on the 17in MBP). The extra brightness and anti-glare coating do help compensate for this but, if you've an aversion to glare and tend to use your notebook in varied lighting conditions, you'd want to road-test the 13in MBP instore before handing over your money.

The biggest difference between the new 13in MBP and the now defunct unibody MacBook is battery life. The 13 inch MBP features an integrated 58-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery, which promises "up to" seven hours battery life and delivers around six hours under normal conditions. That's about double what you'd get from a MacBook of old and enough to make you consider leaving the charge cable at home if you're flying interstate for the day. The trade off is that the battery is now non-removeable, which is a bugbear for some people.

So what's the verdict? If you've got an ageing old-school white (or black) polycarbonate MacBook, and resisted the lure of the short-lived silver unibody MacBook, now is the time to cave into temptation and upgrade. The 13in MBP is lighter, faster, runs for longer and offers more graphics grunt, plus it offers a swag of new features compared to the MacBooks you could buy this time last year.

With these features and at this price, the 13in MBP is arguably the best value Mac we've seen in a while. Our only hesitation would be the terrible screen glare. If this is your only concern, it would be worth investigating third party anti-glare options (such as a privacy filters) rather than forgoing the upgrade completely and sticking with your old MacBook.

If you did splash out on the silver unibody MacBook Pro Lite only a few months ago, you're entitled to be annoyed now there's a real 13 inch Pro. Still, I wouldn't dump it on the nature strip and rush out to buy the Pro. Apart from battery life all you're really missing out on is Firewire, something you obviously decided you could live without when weighing up your purchase. You can also bet that this first-gen 13 inch MacBook Pro will go through a refresh or two before your current MacBook reaches the end of its life.