Thursday 09 Jul 2009
- product MacBook Pro 17-inch
- platform 1610
- price £1,610 plus VAT
- pros Powerful processor; RAM; wide-gamut screen; innovative.
- cons You have to pay extra for the non-shiny screen.
- rating
- product MacBook Pro 15-inch
- platform Mac OS X 10.5
- price £1,477 plus VAT
- company Apple
- pros Powerful processor; lots of RAM; wide-gamut screen; stuffed with innovations.
- cons Low-res, shiny screen.
- rating
- product MacBook Pro 13-inch
- platform Mac OS X 10.5
- price £999 plus VAT
- company Apple
- pros Slim; light; powerful; wide-gamut screen; stuffed with innovations
- cons Low-res, shiny screen.
- rating
Apple’s new line of professional-grade laptops is more about refinement than innovation. Externally they look almost identical to their predecessors, with the same matte silver and gloss black design, but some important changes have been made out of sight. While they’re not a must-have upgrade, the 2009 MacBook Pros should be on your shortlist if you’re in need of a new laptop for professional creative work.
Question of the day!
Do you share your creations online?
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What do you create and how do you share it?
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paintings & illustrations, mostly, which i upload to flickr.RT @fragmentedm
I draw manga/anime characters. I also do graphic design and photography.RT @spialelo
Yes. I usually put them up on my #deviantart account for feedback on how to improve.RT @spialelo
The new line has the same 15- and 17-inch models as before, but introduces a 13-inch model – if the word ‘introduce’ can be used to mean ‘add a FireWire 800 port to the old aluminium MacBook and give it the same spruce-up as the larger models’. The 13-inch model shares most features with its big brothers, except for having a lower-resolution screen, a choice of less powerful processors, and no separate graphics chip.
The small size and light weight will attract many creatives to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, as it’s truly portable, in a way that even the svelte 15-inch model isn’t. It’s always easy to use the baby MacBook Pro on the move: no matter how cramped you are on a train or plane – and at 2kg, it’s light enough to sling in your bag for the park without really noticing. It’s a little heavier than you expect when you first pick it up, but that’s the aluminium case that keeps it safe from prangs.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro is mighty for its size too. Though you can’t get a model with a 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz or 3.06GHz processors like the larger models, the 2.53GHz chip in our test model delivered a Cinebench rendering score that a year ago would have been a good score for a top-of-the-line 15-inch laptop.
With 4GB of RAM, it’s a fast performer in Photoshop too, matching the larger MacBook Pros – and if needed, you can hike this to 8GB. You can get a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.26GHz chip and 2GB RAM if you’d prefer for £780, but most designers, illustrators and artists will want the extra power of the faster model.
What lets the 13-inch MacBook Pro down in Photoshop – and many other mainstream creative applications – is the low resolution of its screen. 1,200-x-800 is standard for 13-inch models, but it feels cramped in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or Painter with even the most limited panels – and tools such as Final Cut Pro and After Effects are nigh-on unusable. You can connect it to a higher-resolution monitor in your studio though, using the Mini DisplayPort.
Like the 15-inch model and the standard 17-inch configuration, it’s a gloss screen too – which may make movies and games look sexier but for design work is a pain in the backside – especially under strong studio lights or sunshine.
MacBook Pro family 2009 (13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch) review continues...
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Question of the day!
Neil Bennett
Editor
Do you share your creations online?