MacBook Pro 15-inch 2011

For yet another year, Apple is continuing with what can be called a tradition of maintaining the general look and feel of their MacBook Pro range, while only upgrading the internals to bring them up to speed with the current market trends. The latest generation MacBook Pros feature Intel's Sandy Bridge range of processors along with updated graphics, relatively new I/O technology named Thunderbolt and high definition FaceTime camera.

Bundle

• MacBook Pro
• Display cleaning cloth
• 85W MagSafe Power Adapter, AC wall plug, and power cord
• Software DVDs
• Printed and electronic documentation

We expected Apple to bundle the new flash drive that they provide with the latest generation MacBook Air for re-installing the OS and the iLife suite of applications, but were disappointed to see the same old dual DVDs in the bundle. 




Design and Build
The total number of visible changes from the last generation model is one and you will be forgiven to miss it upon initial inspection. It's the tiny Thunderbolt symbol besides the port, which replaces the erstwhile Mini DisplayPort symbol found on the older machines.
 

Apart from that it is identical to the older model; not that it's a bad thing. Few designs age as gracefully as that of the MacBook Pro, which still looks good after all these years. We wouldn't blame Apple if they choose to maintain this design for their next generation models as well. The MacBook Pro is the Coke bottle in the world of laptops. Also, I'd rather have a laptop that looks the same as the one before it rather than one that looks like every other.

But that isn't to say it's perfect. There are some design issues which I had previously addressed in a separate article. Like the position of the USB ports that are so close to each other that if you plug in a thick drive it renders the port next to it completely useless. I would have also liked if Apple printed the names of the ports next to the speaker grille on top instead of on the right, next to them, so that they could be visible from top without having to tilt your head sideways.

Of course, the symbols would have been hidden when you close the lid, but why would you need to know them then anyway? With the help of the symbol, one would have known the general location of the port on the side making it easier to plug in stuff. This is a tiny design detail but something one would expect from Apple instead of having to tell them.

The other thing is the sharp edges, particularly near the display hinge. Now this is no children's toy for the edges to be smoothened but these are some seriously sharp edges that we are talking about here and could be lethal even to an adult.

Lastly it's the ventilation. Apple places the vents below the display hinge. A very clever solution for reducing the clutter of vents that you see on other laptops but one that has a very serious side effect in the form of skin toasting heat levels when the machine is under stress. Using the machine in the Indian summer in a non-air conditioned room made me feel glad man invented desks and that there is no rule that laptops must be used on laps.

Build quality is top notch, the aluminum unibody feels as solid as ever. The display hinge is a bit loose though, so if you tilt the base, the display moves a bit.


Display, Keyboard and Trackpad
Again nothing new here, which is a bit disappointing. We expected higher resolution displays, but Apple has maintained the display resolutions across all models. It's especially disappointing now that the new 13-inch MacBook Air has the same resolution as the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Not that the display looks bad, quite the opposite actually.

The display is very vivid and bright with great colors and contrast. The gamma levels were slightly less though, which makes the blacks look really black but some of the deeper shades of gray were lost, and images had a slightly darker look. The 15-inch comes with the option of a non-glossy screen, which is recommended for professional work such as image or video editing, as stray reflections can be detrimental to such work.

The backlit keyboard on the MacBooks have always been excellent. It's again the same as the previous model and in fact it is also common across all MacBooks, regardless of their size. The multi-touch trackpad is again, the best in the business.


Hardware
Now let us get to the interesting part. The new range of MacBook Pros have Intel's Sandy Bridge range of CPUs. The 15-inch MacBook Pro comes in two variants with a 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz Core i7 and you have the option to upgrade to 2.3GHz Core i7. All three are quad-cores with the 13-inch model being the only MacBook Pro to have dual-core processors now. These CPU's also support Intel's Turbo Boost feature that boosts the clock speed of the CPU over its officially rated clock speed when required by the operating system. So even though you might look at the clock speed and think it is just 2.2GHz, in reality it is capable of delivering much more.

Along with the new CPUs, we also have new GPUs on the new MacBook Pros. Apple has completely dumped NVIDIA GPUs that they have been using for some time now and gone over to AMD to source the GPUs for their new range. This is applicable only to the 15-inch and 17-inch models though, which get the HD 6490M (15-inch) and HD 6750M (15, 17-inch) as dedicated graphics with 256MB and 1GB GDDR5 memory respectively and Intel HD 3000 as on-board graphics. The 13-inch model instead gets just the HD 3000, which replaces the NVIDIA 320M on the previous generation model.

The hard drive capacities have gone up. The minimum is now 320GB on the 13-inch model, while the 15-inch model comes with 500GB and 750GB capacities. The RAM is the same 4GB (2 x 2GB) 1333MHz DDR3 and can be upgraded to 8GB.

We would have liked to see SSDs become part of the standard equipment on the MacBook Pros, at least as a boot disk, with HDDs acting as the storage device. After experiencing the difference an SSD makes on the Mac, despite its relatively weaker hardware, we can only assume how much of a difference an SSD would have made on the MacBook Pro. Meanwhile the SuperDrive continues to be part of the standard equipment, even though the uses for it are dwindling with every passing day. Who knows, this might be the last generation of MacBook Pros to ship with the SuperDrive built-in.
 

Thunderbolt is the latest addition to the list of features available on the MacBook Pro. Hitherto known as Intel Light Peak, it is an I/O port that can transfer data at speeds as high as 10 Gbps in both directions simultaneously. We have talked about it in a separate article before. The good thing about this technology is that it is backward compatible, so with the help of adaptors you can convert it into a traditional USB port or a FireWire port and as Thunderbolt compatible devices become more popular you will be able to make full use of it. The fact that it is shaped the same as the Mini DisplayPort on the older Macs is no coincidence as it can also output video and audio and can connect directly to a display with Mini DisplayPort or displays with other ports such as DVI or HDMI with the help of adaptors. Right now we can only talk in future tense about this port as we don t have any devices to connect to it that would let us use it the way it s meant to be.



Performance
As expected the 2.2GHz MacBook Pro that we received turned out to be considerably faster in the benchmarks we ran. Even in regular usage, one could feel the extra horsepower under the hood. It felt almost sinful to use this machine for casual usage. This much should ideally be used for hardcore work such as 3D modelling or image/video editing. For professionals who want something they can carry around, the new MacBook Pro would put a big smile on their face. For a home user, it would be a bit of a waste, but there is no doubt it would still be a great thing to have.

We ran some games on the machine, such as Portal, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Tomb Raider: Anniversary and were greeted to smooth framerates even with every setting at max. The previous generation model did well too but when you place it next to the newer model you can see it isn't as smooth. It's like the iPad and iPad 2; you won't notice that the former is slower until you place the two next to each other.

The better graphical performance comes at a very good time. Thanks to Steam and the App Store, gaming on the Mac is currently at an all time high and it can only get better. Hence the improved graphics would be seeing a lot more usage than what the older Mac GPUs were subjected too. Also, a lot more applications, such as the upcoming Final Cut Pro X, will make use of the GPU instead of the CPU, so a powerful GPU will soon be more of a necessity rather than a luxury on the Mac.

We would also like to mention that the loudspeakers on the new model were one of the best loudspeakers we have heard. They were surprisingly loud and the clarity was exceptional. They seemed to have been tuned for voice, which sounded crystal clear.

The FaceTime HD camera is a decent addition. The quality of video is pretty good although low light video is still pretty noisy. The HD video does put some strain on the hardware though, not that it can t handle it, and you also need a fast connection to stream video at that resolution.