Apple’s 45nm Refresh: New MacBook & MacBook Pro
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 29, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Oh Hashmir, Multitouch Me Down There
Normally I don’t like reusing borderline comedic material from other reviews I’ve written but it’s late and I couldn’t type the word multitouch without giggling.
The MacBook Pro gets the same multi-touch technology from the MacBook Air’s trackpad. The multi-touch surface itself isn’t quite as large as it is on the Air, but the functionality is the same.
Two fingers on the trackpad will let you scroll up and down or left and right. Three fingers and you can swipe back and forth to traverse your web or folder history (as well as pages in Preview).
You get scroll, right click and zoom functionality with the base MacBook's touchpad but no ability to rotate or swipe-to-navigate
You can even rotate images by making little rotate motions with your fingers when in Preview or iPhoto.
I'm rotating this image entirely using my fingers on the touchpad
As I mentioned in the MacBook Air review, while I definitely appreciate the multi-touch features of the new notebooks (much more so than I expected actually) Apple is in dire need of better OS integration for the multi-touch gestures.
The latest example of this is the three finger swipe-to-navigate gesture. If you’ve got a Finder window open in column view and want to go forward in the directory structure, you can’t unless you’ve previously been there. The swipe gesture only controls the forward/back buttons in Finder, it doesn’t actually control traversal of folders.
Using three fingers to swipe works for going back, but you can't swipe forward here (see the greyed out forward arrow button in the top left of the Finder window)
Obviously this is something Apple is working on, as other OEMs are focusing many resources on touch-enabled interfaces for PCs. The Apple advantage is that it controls the software stack, so our expectations are higher - we want a version of OS X designed around touch, not one with some added touch UI functionality.
Think iPhone meets OS X, now make it happen Steveo.
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tayhimself - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
You also called the 2299 version 2199Doormat - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
A quick question - the yonah Core Duos had really really poor battery life in the review. Were those performed recently with new batteries? The MB itself is nearly 2 years old.Still, 4 hours is amazing on the DVD tests. I could stop watching movies on my iPhone and use my laptop on the entire transcon flight... though I think I'll wait for the Montevina platform. Hopefully the SFF chips, 25W CPUs and additional graphics horsepower will be worth the upgrade.
alpaye - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
Well it seems that these upgrades you call "tick upgrades" are mostly to keep up with the technology. They don't seem to be a must upgrade for people like me, as I own the last "tock version" of MBP. Nice review, good points.The Unofficial Mac (http://www.unofficialmac.com)">http://www.unofficialmac.com)
TestKing123 - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
A comparison with non-Apple notebooks would be nice as well.AMDJunkie - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
This is what I miss! Horribly cornball sex jokes (no point in calling it innuendo), genuine reporting of personal experience (shock at a kernel panic; admitting your exhausted because you've written a review at some godawful morning hour, for example), and snark (iWork is for converting your work into Office). And yet there's a half-decent review in there! It's like reading a blog, but with content!PlasmaBomb - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
Tocks happen every two years not once a year...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
woops, that's what I meant :)Yearly tocks and I'm pretty sure we'd be well on our way to skynet by now :-P
Take care,
Anand
InternetGeek - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
Apple will introduce a new 'revolutionary' Macbook in every tock, and some improved models on every tick. I wonder if Intel might be interested in having Apple use the 'Intel inside' logo? That'll be interesting.It'll be interesting to see how these MacBooks perform once some PC games are also ported to the Mac (Unreal and so)...
joey2264 - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
The Macbook has an absolutely horrible keyboard. You can't possibly, rationally, reasonably, believe that this is not the case, especially with all your experience reviewing computers. The absolute crap Dell keyboards that they used to use in their notebooks are far better.I hope you mention somewhere in your review the ridiculousness of Apple releasing a 5.3 pound notebook with a 13.3 inch screen and integrated graphics.
Dennis Travis - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
I have been using computers and almost every keyboard known to man from the Commodore 64 too todays keyboards find the keyboard on the Macbook and their external keyboard that is like the one in the Macbook two of the best I have ever typed on. I can fly on either of them.Keyboards are more of a personal thing as people are very different, but the Macbook has an excellent keyboard. Sorry I agree with Anand.