MacBook Pro 2GHz review

Forget the Intel Core Duo processor the biggest stir in the MacUser office when the MacBook Pro arrived was caused by the built-in iSight camera and its accompanying application, PhotoBooth.

We're sure the key application for the iSight in the MacBook Pro will be iChat and the ability to easily video-conference with other Mac users anywhere in the world. However, we were much more interested in being able to instantly create warped pictures of ourselves and share them around the office.

Novelties aside, there's a great deal to like about the MacBook Pro. The PowerBook G4 was showing its age more than any other Mac in the range. IBM's inability to make a G5 chip that ran cool enough to work in a laptop meant Apple's professional portable range was painfully underpowered in comparison with its PC competitors. Not anymore. Intel's Core Duo has put an end to that, and this 2GHz model is a match for anything in the Windows world.

It showed a staggering improvement on the most recent 15in PowerBook G4 in our tests. We put it through its paces in two tests designed to stress the processor and show us just how much more the Intel Core Duo has to offer than the geriatric G4. As you can see from our graph, the results show the difference between the two machines to be of a magnitude much greater than the 'four times faster' quoted by Apple. However, these tests are very heavily focused on the processor. In everyday work, the performance is governed by a host of factors such as disk speed, graphics power and installed RAM. Also, these tests used applications that run natively on Intel processors. Most Mac OS X applications will run under emulation in Rosetta, and so won't benefit much, if at all, from the faster processor. However, it's an excellent indicator of why the move to Intel was a smart one for Apple.

Other tests didn't show results quite as impressive as our video encoding results. Ripping a CD in iTunes, for example, showed an improvement of less than 50%. As such, the benefits you'll experience very much depends on the work you do. However, if you spend time crunching video files, prepare to be amazed.

So what else does the MacBook Pro have to offer besides a huge performance leap? Not a great deal, but what there is is beautifully implemented. Anyone who was expecting Apple to take the opportunity presented by a brand-new processor and name to redesign the case will be disappointed. We suspect that this may be a temporary state of affairs. Although the PowerBook was radically re-designed to coincide with the transition from the G3 to the G4, when it leapt from PowerPC 604 to G3, the case had to wait until the second wave of machines before it adopted that iconic black clamshell design. We're hoping Apple's product design team was caught on the hop by the early availability of processors from Intel and that Apple's marketers deemed it more important to get the product out than wait for a new shell design. If that's the case, we can expect to see a brand-new MacBook Pro later in the year.

The only noticeable differences in the case of this MacBook Pro are the iSight camera, an infrared receiver for the included Apple remote control, and the new power adaptor connector that accommodates the MagSafe plug. The MagSafe connector is yet another example of Apple's attention to detail. Whereas most manufacturers see the power adaptor as a necessary evil, Apple regards it as a place to add value. So we have a connector held in by a magnet, which means that if the cable is yanked at an angle, the plug falls easily out and the MacBook Pro doesn't land on the floor. Try and pull it out straight however, and it's as tough as a regular plug. There's also a tiny LED on the plug that glows green when the MacBook is connected and fully charged and red when it's charging.