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The Unibody 17” MacBook Pro Isn’t Perfect, But It's Pretty Good Stuff All The Same

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

by Charles W. Moore

It wasn’t a very long-lived rumor, but it proved an accurate one, perhaps given the timing better characterized as a leak. When the story broke on Monday about a possible 17” unibody MacBook to be introduced in the Macworld keynote, I thought that sounded plausible. A 17” version of the unibody was a given in the not-too distant future, but I was more skeptical about reports that it would have a non-removable (at least without tools and some disassembly) battery after all the stick Apple has taken over the fixed battery in the MacBook Air.

However, the 17” unibody was indeed announced by Phil Schiller pinch-hitting for the ailing Steve Jobs at what will be Apple’s last keynote appearance at the show, and indeed it does have a fixed battery, albeit a Lithium Polymer one with a claimed eight-hour runtime between charges, and durability for approximately 1000 charge-discharge cycles - compared with about compared with only 200 to 300 charge cycles for typical notebook conventional Lithium Ion laptop battery packs.

I’m personally still not a fan of non-removable batteries, which go against the grain of my “everything should be as modular and easily disassembled as possible” philosophy, but the longer charge life and extended service cycle life, if Apple’s claims prove to be real-world accurate, go a considerable way toward mitigating what I still consider a design shortcoming.

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More on the battery in a bit, but first a look at some of the new king-of-the-hill MAcBook Pro’s features and specifications, most of which are a clone of the 15” unibody MacBook Pro spec. there is the oversized glass Multi-Touch trackpad, the tandem NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor for better battery life and NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics processor for higher performance, a slot-load 8X SuperDrive with double-layer support , and a 320GB 5400 rpm hard drive standard with a 320GB 7200 rpm hard drive and 128GB and 256GB solid state drives as options, plus an 85 watt power adapter with MagSafe connectors, and the same black chiclet 78-key keyboard.

In terms of expansion and I/O connectivity, it’s pretty similar to the 15-incher as well, with an ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot, Gigabit Ethernet port, one FireWire 800 port (FireWire 400 compatible with an optional adapter), built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a Mini DisplayPort for video out (adapters sold separately) instead of the erstwhile DVI, analog audio in and out ports and a built-in iSight camera.

There are, however, some differences too, such as three rather then two USB ports, 4GB of standard RAM upgradable ti a maximum of 8 GB (twice the spec. of the 15” MacBook Pro), 2.66 GHz and 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 45nm technology Penryn processors running on a 1066 MHz front-side bus as opposed to the 2.4 and 2.53 GHz Penryns available in the 15 inch machine, and a glossy 1920 x 1200 resolution (a razor-sharp133 pixels per inch) display with 78 percent more pixels than the 15-inch MacBook Pro’s 1440 x 900 screen, and a 700:1 contrast ratio that makes whites brighter and blacks blacker, supporting both dual display and video mirroring modes. Apple says the sealed glass display enclosure makes the display assembly stronger and more durable. 60 percent greater color gamut that delivers desktop-quality color in a notebook (but still only 18-bit color, rather than full 24-bit color), plus in acknowledgment (sort of) of the howls of dismay that went up from many Mac laptop fans about the matte finish display being dropped from the 15” MacBook Pro, which there is no true matte screen option for the 17” unibody machine, but you can order an anti-glare coating for a $50 premium, which is not quite the same thing.

Returning to the new MacBook Pro 17” battery, Apple isn’t spilling much detail about the technology being employed to provide the longer life other than that as fore-noted they are lithium polymer cells rather than lithium ion. The stated rationale for going with cells fixed inside the laptop’s enclosure rather than in a slide-out, swappable module. As Apple’s literature explains, in order to make its lithium-polymer battery capacity even greater, their engineers looked for extra space within the enclosure and found it in the removable battery module itself which requires infrastructure that takes up space. — bulky plastic housings and mechanisms for a separate battery compartment, such as latches and/or a door, all of which take up space that could be used for greater battery capacity. Consequently, on way to provide longer runtime capacity is to embed the battery cells internally in the notebook enclosure, and use lithium ion batteries that can be made with ultrathin, squared-off form factors, all of which Apple says created enough additional space for a battery with 40 percent greater capacity.

To double projected service cycle durability, a new technology developed by Apple, called Adaptive Charging reduces wear and tear on the battery thanks to a “smart” built with a chip that “talks” to each of the battery cells to determine their precise condition. The chip than shares this information with the computer, which then uses an advanced algorithm to make constant small adjustments to optimize the charging current, varying it to suit the changing conditions inside the cells, and providing a projected five-year lifespan between replacements, which for most users would have to be done by a technician and Apple does not warrant the battery beyond the MacBook Pro’s standard one-year limited warranty.

Apple also points out that a longer-lasting battery is a more environmentally friendly battery, while conventional laptop batteries often last for only a year or two before needing replacement and being discarded or hopefully recycled. With its fixed battery’s projected five-year service life, the new 17-inch MacBook Pro will go through just one battery in the same time a typical notebook uses three, and Apple is also offering a battery take-back program in 95 percent of the countries where it does business.

The new 17” MacBook Pro is a smidge thinner and lighter, albeit with a slightly larger footprint than the model it replaces, with physical dimensions of 0.98” x 15.47” x 10.51” and weighing in at 6.6 lb. as opposed to 1.0” x 15.4” x 10.4” and 6.8 lb. for the older 17” machines.

The price point remains the same as the previous model with a base of $2,799, but if you want to run an external monitor you’ll have to pony up for a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter unless you buy one of Apple’s nice but pricey 24” Cinema Displays, a FireWire 400 adapter if you want that support, and another 20 bucks for an Apple remote, which used to be standard equipment.

The new 17” MacBook Pro isn’t perfect any more than its 15” and 13” MacBook siblings are, and some folks will be disappointed that there is no quad-core Intel Q9000 CPU option to go head-to-head with Acer’s new Aspire 8930G-7665 quad-core laptop and presumably soon others as well on the PC side. Perhaps in the future, and I’m not surprised that it wasn’t offered at this point. At least it has FireWire support (albeit with the adapter kludge for FireWire 400, which is of greatest practical interest to me), and the third USB port. The glossy display isn’t a deal-breaker for me. I would probably stick with matte given the choice, but could live happily with glossy and I wouldn’t bother with the anti-glare coating band-aid.

I’m not enchanted with the non-swappable battery, but the longer runtime and especially the longer service life would make it easier to hold my nose, even though my old Pismo PowerBooks can squeeze more than 10 hours out of two extended life batteries between charges.

Those several niggles notwithstanding, this is a really nice computer, I would love to have one to replace my old 17” G4 PowerBook, but alas it’s out of my price range, especially with this “uncertain” economy. However, if I had the ready cash I’d definitely choose this unibody model over the one it’s displacing, and that says something I think.

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