APPLE MACBOOK PRO 15.

4 (2011)
OVERVIEW

(For review purposes, I would only review the base 15.4 2.0 GHz quad-core model.)

Apple is declaring a shift in the PC market into a Post-PC world when they released the iPad 2, but with release of the beast that is the new Winter 2011 Macbook Pro, consumers will still find joy in owning one in spite of the transition. The entire 2011 Macbook Pro lineup sports Thunderbolt port, a new I/O technology that theoretically soundly trumps the USB 2.0, by a whopping 20 fold, and its slow emerging successor, the USB 3.0, by twice the performance. But is this alone worth the hefty price tag? It just might be. The question would have to be tweaked a little. Is it worth upgrading? The answer is a resounding yes, though hardware purists might beg to differ.

THE SPECS AND PERFORMANCE

Apple opted to marry the new Intel Thunderbolt I/O port with the existing Mini DisplayPort, saving space and tears from many consumers. Seeing how there are no products released with that new technology, it was a smart move on their part because this new, market untested technology is now backward compatible with the Mini DisplayPort and is future ready when new peripherals with Thunderbolt ports become available. It packs a wallop of a punch with bitrate performance of up to 10 Gbps, in both directions. In a real world demo, file transfer rates equate to about 600 to 800 MB per second simultaneously in both directions. Transferring full 1080p HD footage will blaze through really quickly in less than 10 seconds. They also demonstrated seamless output of at least 4 concurrently running 1080p HD footage (in Final Cut Pro) onto a display through it, while it is daisy-chained from a Thunderbolt equipped storage array.

These numbers may sound magical, but I really do wish it came with a HDMI port at the very least. It has been around long enough for it to be mainstream but for now, I am stuck with purchasing port adaptors to connect to my gorgeous big screen HDTV. Like its last generation, the models are set within 13, 15.4 and 17. The 15.4 model was a perfect fit for me, with enough screen real estate and resolution (1440 x 900) to get my personal work done at home or on the go. The glossy screen did not intrude for me at all, but one could have it upgraded to a higher resolution (1680 x 1050) matte screen if he is so inclined to for an additional SGD $203. Perhaps its greatest change under the hood is its processor. The last Macbook Pro family came equipped with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo on the 13, while the 15.4 and 17 models shipped with the 2.4 GHz/2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 and 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 respectively.

This time around, Apple packed in a monster of a quad-core Intel Core i7 Sandy Bridge processor in its 15.4 model, with the option to upgrade from 2.0 GHz to 2.2 GHz. The spanking new Sandy Bridge processor from Intel delivers unparalleled speed, with 17% more CPU clock-for-clock performance and close to doubling the performance of Clarkdale/ Arrandales. To give a statistical comparison, it racked up a score of 8804, almost doubling last years models score of 4866 when running Geekbench 2. The entire Macbook Pro family also includes a 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM Memory, which is a step up from the 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM, something that has been left unchanged for almost 3 years. What all of that translates to for me is blazingly quick speeds to do what I want, when I want it. One other major shakeup of the 15.4 model in the graphics department is the surprising inclusion of a AMD Radeon HD 6490M with 256 MB GDDR5 memory alongside the already powerful Intel HD Graphics 3000 with 383 MB DDR3 SDRAM, shared with main memory. The 15.4 models of yesteryear only sports a Nvidia GeForce GT 330M with 256 MB of GDDR3, together with the Intel HD Graphics with 256 MB of DDR 3 SDRAM. It retains the really neat feature of automatically switching between the two when needed, while running Mac OS X. So for instance, when booting up Batman: Arkham Asylum at native resolution, the Radeon HD 6490M kicked in to run things smoothly at almost 60fps, but nothing was discernibly laggy. I am also relieved that Apple integrated the automatic switch to kick in the Radeon, because there can be a really significant decrease in heat and power. The fan also hums on silently for the most parts, until I begin my next gaming session, and that is when you could start to hear it churning away. The machine also comes with a storage of 500 GB serial ATA running at 5400-rpm, so nothing to boasts about there. There is also an option to replace it with a 128 GB, 256 GB or 512 GB SSD for SGD$278, SGD $823, and SGD $1658 respectively. When upgraded, everything, from booting up to loading applications will run really quickly, but like most Apple upgrades, it might prove too costly for most people. The lithium polymer battery will take about 7 hours to deplete out from one full charge. Now this number might be a little lower than its predecessor, which will run for at least 8 hours, but this little statistical equation would be unfair because of much more stringent testing instead of the usual light web browsing used for most tests. According to Apple, rigorous testing is defined as setting the display to 50% and surfing 25 of the most popular websites, doing the main function of the sites over and over. This would include Flash video. Yes, Flash. Personally, it took me 3 hours to deplete a fully charged battery to 17% while running Dead Space 2 at native resolution, thanks in part distribution of the workload with the discrete AMD GPU. With this in mind, it would easily give the average consumer about 7 hours of productivity.

Besides those mentioned before this, all models come with the standard Magsafe Charger and port, Gigabit Ethernet port, one FireWire 800 port, Audio In/Out jacks, SDXC card slot, SuperDrive DVD drive, and an integrated 802.11 a/b/g/n Airport Extreme. The speakers sitting next to both sides of the keyboard were rocking it as usual, showcasing loud enough audio without peaking. These remain unchanged from previous iteration of the 15.4 Macbook Pro. A Blu-ray Disc Drive is sorely missing from this refresh and, like the HDMI port, could potentially steal a bigger share of the market with its inclusion in the next iteration. Also, an extra USB 2.0 slot on the right side would also be hugely beneficial, with 2 ports being the bare minimum for any laptop these days.

THE DESIGN
The design of the latest generation of Macbook Pros remain largely unchanged. It has been almost three years since it has wowed the world with its sleek and yet green, sturdy unibody aluminium design. Cosmetically, nothing has been tweaked, except for the minor change in the Mini DisplayPort logo to the new Thunderbolt icon. It retains the strong unibody chassis, making it easy to hold it up with one hand when it is open. Even when resting on my forearm, I can easily open the lid with the other hand by lifting the area above the concave groove, without the need to unlatch any form of catch.

As with its older generations, the unibody aluminium shell dissipates heat more efficiently and evenly throughout the bottom, so resting it on your lap would prove no problems, but do watch it when the discrete graphics card kicks in.

THE FEATURES
With the wildly successful iPads and the iPhones/iPod Touches, Apple built upon what they do best: the multitouch gestures. The glass trackpad comes fully equipped to take advantage of the multitouch gesture system made popular by those iOS devices. Things like swiping three fingers to navigate through photos or files and four fingers downwards for Expos did take some getting used to, but once mastered, it can be a really handy way to get to things quickly. And once Apple ships Lion, the latest OS X, in July, multitouch gestures would be even more intuitive. The iSight camera has also been rebranded as the Facetime camera, this time enabled with 720p HD capture. Strangely enough though, this feature was not applied to the existing Photo Booth application, with it capturing video at 640 x 360, instead of 720p capture in Facetime. Hopefully, upcoming software updates would rectify this little abnormality.

THE BAD
The exclusion of long-existent mainstream technology like HDMI or Blu-ray was certainly no shocker, but still sorely missed. While it was not an issue for me, some would have preferred an out-of-the-box higher resolution matte screen instead of the standardized glossy screen. The storage could also definitely use a bigger bump up to at least 750GB to handle the massive files that I go through often. Upgrades and peripherals can still rack up to quite a bit too.

CONCLUSION
However, with that said, the tremendous leap in performance is more than enough to justify the arguably hefty pricetag. The inclusion of the backwards compatible Thunderbolt I/O interface just sweetens the pot for those considering jumping into getting one. This is, without a doubt, by far the most future-proof laptop lineup Apple has released in years.

RATING 9.2 / 10 STARS

Written by Samson Lam