Apple product launches are always preceded by a pre-launch hype extolling the features of the yet-to-be launched product. We all saw that at the time of the iPad or the latest iPhone4, but comparatively speaking the MacBookPro (MBP here on) did not receive that much of attention. Strange as it may seem, but it isn’t hard to digest.

The primary reason for the superb launches of the iPad and iPhone4 has its root in the beautiful design of the product. MacBookPro on the other hand has had the same design since 2008. Having said this, we are by no means underestimating the latest iteration of the MBP.

First up, let us get the product specifications. We got a 15.4-inch MacBookPro having the Intel Core i5 processor having a speed of 2.4 GHz and 4 GB of DDR3 RAM with 320 GB of hard disk space.

Core i series of laptop processors which were announced by Intel in January, have finally found a way in the MBP, thus ending the Core 2 Duo era of processors. However, the 13-inch MacBook Pro still houses a C2D processor. The Core i series processors bring along with them the power of Intel’s Turbo boost technology, which dynamically scales up the clock speed of the processor depending on the thermal design power. Another aspect that comes bundled in with the processor is Hyper threading, which allows two threads to be executed in parallel.

There are two graphics processors in the MBP. One is the Intel HD integrated graphics using 288 MB of VRAM and the other is the discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT330M which has 256 MB of  RAM. Two graphics solution in the same system might appear confusing, but Apple has implemented a very intelligent feature that allows the system to switch automatically from integrated graphics to discrete graphics based on the programs being used. It looks for the frameworks used by individual apps – like OpenGL or Core Animation – to decide when to switch from Intel HD to GT330M. Another new feature that has been integrated in the MBP is inertial scrolling, which is seen in iPhones and iPods and also on the Magic Mouse. This prevents the scrolling from stopping abruptly but gradually slowing down.
Coming to the features that haven’t changed much. The new MBP still comes in the traditional aluminium uni-body casing. The edges of the MBP are quite sharp and you ought to be careful around them. HDMI port is still missing, so is a Blu-ray drive which seems illogical considering the selling price of the MBP. Somehow the DVD slot drive only seems limiting. The 15.4-inch LED backlit screen is brilliant with a great contrast ratio making the blacks appear deeper. But the resolution 1440x990 seems really odd. You can upgrade to another screen with the 1680x1050 resolution at a price however. This is one aspect which we did not like.

The chiclet keyboard as always, is  a pleasure to work on. The new generation Core i5 mobile processors gave impressive scores on all the benchmarks we ran. GeekBench gave an overall score of 4750 (a good 500 points up from the Apple iMac 27-inch system we had tested some months back, which had a Core 2 Duo processor). Xbench gave a score of 160 while Cinebench R11 gave an OpenGL frame rate of 15.55 fps. In the real life tests it took a mere 34 seconds to encode around 6 audio files to a 320 kbps MP3 files. Data transfer within the hard disk took about 105 seconds for a 4 GB sequential file and 164 seconds for a 4 GB assorted files. Copying same data from an external drive took 130 and 172 seconds respectively.

MacBookPro 15-inch comes with a hefty price tag of Rs. 1,09,900. It is an ideal buy for professionals or Mac users who would want to upgrade.
 

Apple product launches are always preceded by a pre-launch hype extolling the features of the yet-to-be launched product. We all saw that at the time of the iPad or...