Mac Laptops

Posted on 30 Jun 2006 at 11:13

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Well, that's the end of an era: the PowerBook and younger iBook brands are both now defunct, and Apple's entire laptop line is now powered by modern, powerful Intel Core Duo chips.

But how do they perform? What's new? What's missing? Which one is right for you? And, most importantly, should you buy one?

That's where we come in. We've completely overhauled our benchmarking regime and submitted each of the MacBook and MacBook Pro models to our extensive battery of tests. You can find out more about these new tests on p54, but all you need to know right now is that they're designed to give you an authoritative, real-world idea of how fast these computers are.

Deciding which laptop to buy is about more than just how fast it is, though, and you'll find information over the next few pages that will really give you a taste of what it's like to own one of Apple's new portables. Is the MagSafe power connector really so revolutionary? Just how useful is a built-in iSight camera? Will these blazingly fast laptops leave you with scorched thighs? Read on to find out.

One thing Apple does very well, of course, is the finishing touches, so for each of the two main ranges, we'll be showcasing these little design flourishes.

Don't forget that all of these laptops will also run Windows, and while few Mac users would do this by choice, it's good to have the option, and it might just be the thing that convinces any Mac-phobic IT department that their next bulk order of laptops should be Macs. The MacBook line in particular isn't just cheap for Apple, but it's competitive across the entire laptop market, especially when you consider all of the bundled extras.

Bear in mind that the move to Intel chips means that while all the laptops in Apple's range will run Windows with the (still-beta) Boot Camp technology, they'll neither boot into Mac OS 9 nor run pre-OS X applications using Classic. Remember, too, that neither Quark nor any of Adobe's Creative Suite titles are Intel-native Universal Binaries, and so will perform sluggishly on Intel systems.

So which laptop is right for you? Turn over to find out.

MacBook

There's a sense of history repeating itself here. In the last days of the PowerBook and iBook lines, the differences between the two ranges were increasingly difficult to pinpoint: both were powered by G4 chips, both came with AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth, both sported USB 2 connections, at least some models in each line-up could burn DVDs - the list went on. For many, the iBook offered all the functionality they needed, and the decision to spend significantly more money on a PowerBook rather than an iBook was difficult to justify.

Enter the MacBook. It made its debut after the Intel Core Duo-powered MacBook Pro, Apple's replacement for the PowerBook, and many in the industry assumed that when the successor to the iBook was launched, it would be called the MacBook (dropping the 'Pro' suffix) and have at its heart the less powerful Core Solo processor. They were only half right: they are called MacBooks, but they tote Core Duo processors. The difference is that while Core Solo processors - as used in the entry-level Mac mini - feature only one 'execution core', Core Duos have two. The practical upshot of this is that it's like having two processors in your Mac rather than just one. What's more, the Core Duo processor can allocate resources in a smart way to squeeze even more performance out of the system.

And so you can get a MacBook powered by a 2GHz Intel Core Duo for £500 less than the entry-level MacBook Pro, which has the same processor. If you'd be happy with a 1.83GHz Core Duo, there's the entry-level MacBook, which costs £650 less than the entry-level MacBook Pro. OK, so there must be a catch, right? Something missing? Well, yes and no.