Digital Trends

Apple MacBook (2.4GHz, 2008) October 23rd, 2008 | by Nick Mokey

Features and Design

Under the hood, the most basic MacBook gets a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor coupled with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive, but Apple also offers a 2.4GHz version that also gets a 250GB drive as its base option, with a further upgrade available bumping it to 320GB. This means that the cheapest MacBook available, which is now $1299, actually loses some CPU speed over the older version, which was only $1099. In the graphics department, the MacBook picks up Nvidia's venerable GeForce 9400M GPU. 

Like the MacBook Air before it, the ordinary MacBook now gets an LED-backlit 13.3-inch screen with native 1280 x 800 resolution. But as an added twist, the LCD and the surrounding black bezel have been sealed under a single pane of glass, giving it a sleek edge-to-edge glass look.

Apple's Ubersexy Unibody

Apple’s old MacBook Pro set a high standard in build quality, but the new unibody design manages to demolish just about every other notebook out there in terms of feel. The tight tolerances, lack of gaps and sturdy construction all make the notebook feel almost like a solid slab of aluminum when it’s closed. According to Apple, that’s because it’s machined from one. And it shows. There’s not a bit of creaking, squeaking of flexing to be found.

Unfortunately, practicality does pay a price in two small ways. First, the aluminum takes on a cold feel when used in cool conditions, or if it’s been transported in a less-than-heated environment (like say, a backpack or trunk in the winter). It doesn’t take long to come up to temp, but in the meantime you’ll be pulling the edges of your sleeves up to cover your wrists. Which also brings us to the next problem: the edges around the laptop’s inner deck are about two strokes on a whetstone away from being razor blades. Apple has given the notebook straight, squared-off edges as a visual effect, but they also have the unfortunate side effect of being harsh on the wrists if you’re operating the laptop from the wrong angle. Neither was a deal-breaker, and seasoned MacBook Pro users are already accustomed to the problems, but the style does come with a price. 

Weight

Tipping the scales at 4.5 pounds, the new MacBook is about half a pound less than the previous version, but it's far from a featherweight, given the size. Sony's 13.3-inch SR-series notebooks, for instance, slide in even lighter at 4.14 pounds, and Dell's XPS 1330 manages to hit 3.97. Granted, neither delivers quite the solid feel of Apple's aluminum unibody, but it's important to note that Apple's exotic new milling process hasn't turned this tanker of a notebook into anything less hefty.

Ports and Connectors

Apple has truly kept the MacBook to just the essentials when it comes to connectivity. It includes only an optical drive, Ethernet jack, two USB ports (both on the left hand side, an inconvenience for travel mouse users), a mini DisplayPort, and audio input/output jacks.

Though Apple itself birthed the FireWire standard, raised it up through different generations, and defended its merits against USB 2.0, the company has abandoned the connector on its latest MacBook, which has no FireWire connector to speak of. Most average consumers won’t miss the relatively niche connector, but media types who are used to pulling data from camcorder to laptop via FireWire and spitting back the content onto external hard drives with the same cable will likely find the missing port to be a deal killer.

The mini DisplayPort may be able to turn into both DVI and VGA ports through adapters, but Apple didn’t decide to include to either adapter with the MacBook, making it an essentially a useless port out of the box. We would have rather seen a native DVI port, which would not only provide the same flexibility, it would eliminate the need for Apple’s arcane and expensive adapters, which start at $29 and run all the way up to $99 for the dual-DVI version.

Apple's signature MagSafe power adapter makes it easy to connect and disconnect the notebook's power cord by snapping the cord to the notebook with only magnetic cling, but we also discovered an annoying side effect: The magnetized power port sucked up tiny magnetic particles from the bottom of a backpack, jamming it up and preventing the power cord from sticking. The ferrous sandy bits were also difficult to remove, due to the magnetism locking them into the crevice. 
 

Massively Multitouch

If normal touchpads are like backyard swimming pools, the one on Apple’s new MacBook is like the Olympic-sized one down at the YMCA. It spans roughly four inches across and three inches tall, leaving plenty of room for multitouch acrobatics. And as anyone who has used an iPhone or iPod Touch can testify, the ability to use more than one finger to navigate a touch device makes an enormous difference in ease of use after figuring out all the tricks and shortcuts it opens up. A four-finger swipe to the right, for instance, brings up Apple’s application switcher, while the same gesture down opens Expose. Two fingers will scroll, and three act like a back-forward button. After getting the hang of these few basic features, the pad began to feel a lot less like a mouse and a lot more like a desktop control center. 

The lack of a mouse button didn’t turn out to be much of an issue, but at the same time, it doesn’t add much to the experience either. It’s clearly an aesthetic choice on Apple’s behalf. While we adjusted easily to clicking down on the touchpad, it did bother us in a few circumstances, like when dragging items. It’s possible to press and hold the pad as a button and simultaneously move your finger (or touch with one finger and move with the other), but it’s more of a pain than with a conventional pad. The one-finger-touch-and-drag really annoyed us for certain applications, like Google Maps (which, oddly enough, does not support any multitouch tricks for navigation).

Image Courtesy of Apple