Saw the MacBooks

Yes, I went to my nearby Apple Store - 3.8 miles, my door to their door.

I love the new MacBooks. They reek of quality. The solid construction is amazing. The ports on the sides are so clean. The screen - well, it's cool, but that wasn't the most impressive thing to me. I loved the tiny speaker holes and power button! (The speaker holes are on the MacBook Pro.)

The speed of the 2.4 ghz models was noticeably faster than my 2.16 ghz model, which is about 18 months old. (The new ones are running a different CPU chipset, as well as substantially improved graphics chipsets.)

Why did I put this weird photo of the store's facade? Apple has a "no camera policy" for the inside of their store. The only cameras allowed are the ones they sell. And even if you bought one there, you couldn't take a picture with it inside the store.

New MacBook Review

Yes, new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are out.

They look pretty cool. My favorite feature is the smooth edge-to-edge screen.

On the face of it, there aren't that many huge advances over the just-obsolete line. The entry price point has been dropped to $999 for the base model (which is an old one - faster than the cheapest new one, curiously). But if you want a new one, you must ante up $1299. The screens are now LED - using less power than the old LCDs.

Forums seem focused on the loss of firewire for the MacBook non-pro line. That means no bootable external hard drive. But I see that as a minor loss - kind of like how Apple first rejected the floppy drive. In time, everyone followed suit. (My analogy breaks down in that firewire was never part of most computers.)

One thing I haven't heard anywhere is that I think it was a strange decision on Apple's part to blur the lines between their pro line and their consumer line. Both now look and act very similarly. For $500 difference, you get a larger screen, firewire 800, a slot to fit a wireless cell phone connector and not much else.

Apple has released a great little video in which the design team discusses the new MacBook. If you're into design at all, it's worth a watch. (The photo shows Jonathan Ive, the head of the design team.)

So if you've got $1299 burning a hole in your pocket, go for it! Better yet, hit the refurbs store and for the same money, get a faster just-obsolete MacBook Pro, for the same money.