MacBook, review part 2

Battery life and Charger heat

The battery life of the MacBook is an improvement on the Powerbook but not an earth-shattering difference. I get a good four hours out of it while the Powerbook was good for 2.5 hours (the battery was a few years old though). Very light usage will see five to six hours. Charging seems to take an age, but that's an illusion. It charges rapidly to 80% then switches to a trickle charge. This is why the PSU light seems to remain on orange for so long before going green. The charger gave me a bit of a scare the first time I used it. When under full load, i.e. changing a battery from nothing, it'll become very hot. Too hot to hold in your hand in fact. In normal use where you charge before losing power, it never gets beyond warm. This seems to be the normal behaviour.

The magnetic attachment on the power connector is genius - I've pulled it out accidently a few times and cursed it, but the question is would I have otherwise damaged it in those circumstances?

Fan

The MacBook does feel like the electronics run warmer than the G4 Powerbook. That is, there's always a lot of heat around the back where the fans exhaust is. On the G4, I found that the hard disk was a major source of heat in normal use but the fan did not usually kick in. This may have been because the HD was a larger replacement. I can't feel any heat from the MacBook's hard disk.

When putting the machine under a bit more stress, so that it needs the fans to keep cool, the MacBook is much better than the Powerbook. The Powerbook had a habit of running the fans on for a long time after the CPU intensive work had ended. The MacBook is in comparison much more responsive. It'll spin the fan up and down almost in sync with the CPU monitor in Activity Monitor! It also has a wider working range. The G4 may have remained off for a lot longer, but it had a minimum speed as soon as it was going. The MacBook will spin the fan almost silently when required, but it does seem to be turning more often.

Case

I've not had any of the reported problems that earlier MacBook owners have reported. No 'mooing' fans. No click of death from the hard disk. No screen problems (well, there's a dead pixel or a bit of dust in the title bar area of the screen).

But I do find the plastic case poor. It flexes a lot - if I pick it up by one corner, it bends - so much so that if the fan is turning you can hear the fan blades start to rub on something inside. The keyboard itself I'm still happy with - it's got a very nice feel and responsive keys - but there must be a tiny bit of flex on it's plastic mountings - there's something there that doesn't quite feel as it should.

Perhaps this is because I'm so use to the aluminium Powerbook. I do find it better than the myriad cheap PC laptops out there. But not better than the PC laptops of equal cost - remember, the Mac comes at a premium. In all areas but for the case, the premium is worth it.

Please Apple, bring back the 12" pro notebook - I suppose I'm just asking for a 13" MacBook Pro really. Hmm, isn't that really what the Air is? No, the Air is a really good idea and certain to change the laptop market in the long run but I need those ports down the left side and that CD slot on the right.

Keyboard

The last little note for today relates to the keyboard layout. Apple have screwed up here, along with not being able to hold mute to stop the startup bong.

The older MacBooks shared the Fn keyboard layout with the Powerbooks. You had all the Expose features, screen brightness and sound along the F keys. Apple have changed this on the new models so that they now look like a cheap PC 'multimedia' laptop from long ago. The Expose buttons have gone, replaced with a single Expose button on F3. There original functions are there still, but you need to hold the Fn button. The sound control are now on F10-F12. On F7-F9 are three new keys: rewind, pause/play, fast forward.

This ranks as the most trivial, useless and annoying change to a computer platform that I've even seen. I have a remote control with these functions on! Why duplicate them on the keyboard! I've effectively lost the most used key from my Powerbook, the 'show desktop' Expose function.

I will quickly grow use to it, I suppose. Until then, a curse on whoever approved that change.