At first glance the new Apple MacBook looks like a cross between its iMac and MacBook Air. It's got the aluminum body and black keyboard reminiscent of the MacBook Air, but it's chunkier and its 13.3-inch (viewable) glossy screen comes complete with an iMac-style black border.
It's available in two product SKUs - a 2.0GHz Intel Core II Duo with 2GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive for £949, and a 2.4GHz Intel Core II Duo, also with 2GB of RAM, but with a 250GB hard drive for £1,149. For this review we've got our hands on the 2.4GHz MacBook.
Apple was never known for being generous with its notebook ports, and the new MacBook is no exception. Along with the 8x SuperDrive you get just two USB ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, Mini DisplayPort (a new industry standard for connecting external monitors), and audio line in and out, but no Firewire ports at all.
That's it. In the cold light of day, it looks stingy, especially compared to cheaper PC laptops, which have many more features. Of course, nobody judges an Apple laptop by comparing its specs to a PC notebook.
Macs offer something more - namely the OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system and the bundled iLife apps, which give Windows Vista a pants down thrashing in terms of features, and then that legendary design flair they're famous for. We don't want to spend this review talking about the benefits of OS X over Windows, so instead let's look at that legendary design flair....
Precision Unibody
The big design breakthrough this time is the new aluminum unibody. Apple has completely changed the way it manufactures laptops, hewing the main body of the MacBook out of a single piece of aluminum, instead of constructing it from multiple parts. The advantage of Apple's new design process is increased rigidity in the frame at the same time as reducing its weight.
The result is a surprisingly robust and streamlined notebook. It's a thing of beauty: The lines are clean, sharp and crisp. It's slightly lighter than its predecessor, but still fairly hefty at 2.04 kg. The new case design also facilitates easier access to the hard drive than in the previous MacBook.
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