Apple MacBook Pro 17 in. (MA611LL/A) Notebook

The Back-Story
I'm a self-employed software programmer---a consultant if you will. My business is pretty much contained in my backpack: my laptop, notepads, assorted books and papers. That sort of thing.

Like all the self-employed, I pay more than my fair share of taxes. This year, my tax person at H&R Block (Patsy, an absolutely superb tax advisor) told me "you need to buy more stuff!" So my wife told me "buy the biggest computer you can!" I didn't ask for a second opinion. I rushed out (well, not really: I went online) and got a 17" MacBook Pro.

The Specs
I tend to think machine specs ("speeds and feeds", as we used to call them) are pretty much academic. In the end, a shade more speed or a shade less capacity is really more a subjective decision than an objective one. Additionally, how fast a machine "feels" is really more important than how fast it is. It's highly individualistic, and depends a lot on what you want to do with your machine. But for the inquisitive, I customized my Book a little, and here it is:
- 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 3GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM-1x2GB,1x1GB
- 100GB Serial ATA Drive (7200rpm)
- SuperDrive 8X
- 17" Glossy Widescreen Display
- No Modem
- BkLit Keyboard/Mac OS

The Reviewer
I don't want to be defensive, but IT is a field that attracts a lot of self-proclaimed experts. So I'll offer a brief description of my background, to let you judge whether my opinion matters. I was a Unix sysadmin for several years before I switched largely to development last year. I currently spend about 60--70% of my time programming (mainly Java, some Perl, some Ruby), 20--30% administering several mission critical Oracle databases, and 10% or so doing Unix/Linux administration. Previously, I administered Solaris, Tru64 Unix, Linux (several flavors), and BSD (NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD) in production systems (high availability, uptime-sensitive applications). The MacBook replaces my previous laptop, a HP Pavilion dv5000z (2 GHz Turion64, 2GB RAM) running SuSE 10 and (more recently) Kubuntu 6.10.

I've been using a Mac since around 2002, when it became clear BeOS wasn't going to make a comeback. I had already tired of Windows, and after trying every imaginable Linux or BSD on a laptop, I realized I needed to look at Macintosh: my last hope, if you will. A close friend let me test-drive his brand-new iBook (600 MHz G3), and I was hooked the moment I fired up Terminal and saw a tcsh prompt. I mean, tcsh as the default shell... how cool is that? Add in the best GUI available today, and you have a killer product. I bought a 14" iBook that fall (700 MHz G3) for my first entrepreneurial venture (doomed, but I didn't know it then), and haven't looked back. The MacBook is the third Mac I've owned, and there was a G5 somewhere in there that belonged to my employer. I've also clocked quite a bit of time on XServes, with a particularly harsh all-night disaster recovery session. That wasn't fun.

The Work
My laptop is mainly a development box. I also use it to manage my books (I already mentioned I'm self-employed) and as a system administration resource (a terminal). Most of my work is done in Java, and I use NetBeans 99% of the time. NetBeans is a bit of a pig: it'll reduce a machine to groans and sweat in no time flat. I run NetBeans on JDK1.5, and I set the JVM to use 1GB RAM at startup (-Xms:1g -Xmx:1g). I also run Emacs, a chat client, a web browser, etc. throughout the day.

The Box
The box includes the computer, a remote control (for Front Row), a DVI/VGA convertor, a power cord, an owner's manual, and some restore/install DVDs.

This is the first Apple computer I've owned that had an owner's manual. I find that odd. I haven't read it, of course. I hope it doesn't say something like "If you power this computer up without first completely disassembling it, it will reduce itself to a smouldering ruin within 30 days" or something.

Front Row is a cool multimedia feature on a lot of the current Macs. It basically removes the desktop from the screen and replaces it with a MythTV/Freevo -like interface that lets you play music, movies, or TV shows on your Mac. I can't see using it a lot, but I have it. The remote control looks just like an iPod Shuffle (the old ones, not the newer clip-ons) with 6 buttons on it. I haven't taken mine out of its wrapper.

The power cord is interesting: Apple has switched their power cords (at least on the MacBook Pro) to a magnetic coupling without any real pins. That it, there are pins in both the power adapter and the plug on the laptop, but the pins are not the typical male/female connection. Rather, they are kept in contact by magnets in both the laptop and the power adapter. That way, if someone trips over your power cord and yanks it, they won't bend any pins in your adapter. It's supposed to keep your laptop from getting pulled off the desk by accident too, but I'm not sure I want to test that. Mine seems to grab pretty tightly just with the magnets, so I'm a little leery about a test-drive on that feature. Still, it makes bending pins impossible, which is great.

The software DVDs are pretty typical. I was surprised that Apple no longer ships XCode install media with their systems: perhaps they think they're beyond trying to woo everyone who's ever written three lines of BASIC into becoming a developer... XCode is still available as a free download, but the image is well over 900MB, so it takes a while to suck it down.

All the MacBooks have a built-in iSight in the screens now. That's not as cool as it sounds: I haven't actually found a use for it yet. And since I only use iChat for business, I've never done a video chat at all. I tried a couple applications that supposedly harness the powers of the iSight for Good, but so far, nothing is really doing a great job. Not that I need a firewire webcam on my laptop, but it bugs me to see it staring at me when I can't use it.

OK, I just took a break from typing and figured out how to use iSight to take a video of myself and save it as a QuickTime movie on the hard drive. Still, not that useful.

The Laptop
Physically, the MacBook is smaller and lighter than it has any right to be: it's 1" think, and weighs very little. The biggest problem, size-wise, is the 17" monitor. It makes carrying the Book a little awkward, but the comfort level of the large screen size more than makes up for it.

The brushed-metal case and keyboard are really nice. I have a white iBook, and those aged really quickly: this metallic finish appears to be a lot more durable.

The DVD player is slot-load. Personally, I hate slot-load DVD players, but a tray-style player is not an option for this line. Slot-load drives always sound like they're dying during load and eject; and the Apple drives seem to need the disk pushed in too far: most slot-load drives catch the disk once it's inserted half-way or so: the Apple drives require it to be inserted probably 70% in before the mechanism catches it: it always makes me think I'm forcing it in. Worse, when the drive ejects the disk, it only comes out to about the 30% point, so it's difficult to just grab the disk and pull it out. Still, slot-load drives are considered sexy by the majority of the population.

The mouse has a single mouse button. Apple people love that, PC people hate it. I'm all for it, but that's just me. You can always plug a two(or more)-button USB mouse in and use that.

The Software
The MacBook Pro comes with the following software:
- Mac OS X. If you're a computer geek, you've been told how great OS X is. If you're a Unix person, you can't help admire it. OS X is the Darwin-based clone of NextStep from Next. It's gorgeous GUI on top of a BSD derivative.
- Spotlight. OS X 10.4, "Tiger" has an almost-BeOS search capability, which looks at metadata of every file on your system. If you've never used BeOS' BFS or another "database-like" filesystem, it has to be tried to be believed. Put your files wherever you like: you can find them with queries. And once you save your queries and then write queries to find queries: then you've gone to the Next Level, where you are essentially running an ad hoc pseudo-filesystem orthogonal to what's on your disk. It's an awesome experience that must be seen to be believed.
- Dashboard. Dashboard is a layer over your desktop in OS X that hosts and runs small JavaScript "Widgets". The widgets are tiny applets that do small tasks. I have widgets that watch the weather, check gas prices within a certain radius of my house, and keep an eye on GMail for me. Dashboard is invisible unless it's brought up, when it puts a transluscent layer over the desktop and plays the widgets in it. I like Dashboard, at least in theory, but don't use it much. Still, it's really cool. My wife uses it a lot.
- Automator. Automator is a user-friendly front-end to Apple's scripting language, AppleScript. It allows you to plug script components together visually and save "workflows". I don't use it much, but I've played with it, and it's really full of untapped potential. It's basically shell-scripting for your mother-in-law.
- iLife. iLife is Apple's consumer application suite: iTunes, iPhoto, GarageBand, iCal, iChat, iMovie, iDVD, and iWeb. It's a suite of applications so you can do "fun, creative" stuff with your computer. iLife is awesome for the consumer---the professional will need more, of course---it's designed so Grandma can take all her digital photos and send them off with a mouse-click to be printed and bound into a glossy-paged photo album; or so your son can upload movies from your camcorder and turn them into a professional-looking DVD. iTunes is practically a household name already, so I won't get into it here. The iLife applications are designed for simplicity and ease-of-use. They've been getting more and more powerful with time, and I'm finding they really make my personal Mac a lot more useful. Obviously the Macbook is my work computer, so I won't get the same use there...
- Microsoft Office Test Drive. If you like Microsoft Office, it comes pre-installed on your MacBook. It's a 30-day trial, so you need to purchase and register it or it goes away. I don't have a lot of use for Office, but a lot of people do.
- iWork Demo. iWork is Apple's "office suite". It's like a lightweight Office, but with a more Mac-y, creative twist. There is not currently a dedicated spreadsheet program in iWork, but there is a word processor (Pages), and a presentation application (Keynote). I bought iWork out of curiosity, and I haven't yet got a firm opinion of it. I've historically used LaTeX for my document preparation; and it'll take a lot to put me off it. I've played with Pages and Keynote a little, but not enough to really have a feel for them: Pages seems more like a desktop publishing app than a word processor, which is really cool. Too many poorly-written documents are also poorly laid-out thanks to people trying to use Word as a desktop publisher. I need to play with Pages more, but it has definite potential. iWork is compatible with MS Office, so it helps fill that space for people who receive a lot of Office documents. The iWork demo expires after 30 days, and it costs $79.99 for a single machine, or $99.99 for up to five in a single household. At that price, it's worth a try as an MS Office alternative for 99% of the population. Of course, NeoOffice might be worth a look too: it's OpenOffice re-written in Java and ported to OS X. On my MacBook, NeoOffice is definitely fast enough to be used everyday.

The Pros
This machine is a joy to work on. Not just because it's a Mac, but everything about this machine is a delight. Here are a few highpoints:
- Back-lit keyboard. I'm sitting on my bedroom floor right now, my wife is asleep so the lights are off. But my keyboard is all lit up! If you're an excellent typist, that means very little to you; but to poor schmucks like me who can barely type on a good day, it's a boon.
- Great screen resolution (1680 X 1050 px). This screen is large enough to have space. I can see a whole lotta source code on this screen! And although the font is small at this resolution, it's not unreadable. The color, of course, is excellent.
- Glossy screen. I like glossy screens. There it is: I've outed myself. It seems a lot of geeks prefer the non-glare matte screens, but I prefer glossy. Glossy screens are new on Macs, and I love it!
- Good speakers. You won't want to get replace your stereo with a MacBook, but the sound is incredible for a laptop. I mean, awesome. It more than fills a room with sound when it's turned way up.
- Good performance. This machine is fast. Faster than the specs would lead you to believe. There's no noticeable lag when using it, and that's saying something for NetBeans...
- All the OS X features: Expose (not just eye-candy, but a great workflow tool); working Terminal and a good GUI; great render engine; bundled rootless X11 environment; everything "just works".

One big plus with OS X in general on my job is, I do development work for Unix systems. You can do development work for Unix on Windows, but it's very foreign feeling; you can run a GUI on Linux, but it's hardly elegant. A Mac gives you native Unix tools when you need them, and a working GUI for the other times. Of course that's true for every modern Mac, but it's no less true of this MacBook for all that.

The Cons
The biggest drawback to this system is, the price is fairly high. This machine lists at $2799, and with extra RAM, that climbs a few hundred higher. I definitely wouldn't be able to justify this as a "personal" machine: I only bought it for business purposes. I do intend to buy another Mac for my home computer this year, but it'll be less expensive than this MacBook; or so I hope.

Parallels
It seems everyone's talking about Parallels---the Mac software that lets you run Windows (or Linux or BSD or whatever) alongside OS X on your Mac. It's not a virtualization: the two operating systems run together. Personally, I see very little practical value in that feature for what I do. Apparently this is a big selling point for others, though; so it deserves some notice.

Parallels is much-touted in the Apple world, but it's not Apple software: it's a 3rd-party package that runs around $80. If you want to run Windows on it, you need to buy one of the upscale versions of Vista (can't remember which one), which will run you at least another $200. I have no use for that: I tend to use native Mac software. It is certainly a feature for people who are required to run certain OS-specific business software, though. If you've got some business-specific Windows-only software and you want a Mac, you can always give Parallels a try.

Conclusion
I believe the MacBook Pro has the quality without a name. It is not a cheap computer: it will certainly cost you more than Dell's laptop-of-the-month. I have personally decided it's worth the extra money to buy the computer I enjoy working on, rather than the cheap one; because I spend almost my entire working life on it. If you're a student looking for something you can use to write papers for school, I wouldn't recommend this laptop: buy the cheap Dell or the lower-end MacBooks. But if you make a living on your computer---especially if you work in IT---I'd highly recommend this as an extremely powerful, versatile, feature-rich portable computer.