Apple MacBook Pro

Posted by T3 Online on Tue 30 Oct 2007

Apple's Intel-inside laptop is a high-speed silver dream machine.

The Intel Mac revolution is gathering pace. This widescreen laptop is the latest to add a dual-core processor to Apple's usual box of tricks. Casting its beady eye at you from the top of the brushed aluminium body is a webcam, and the power cable now attaches by magnets!

This looks almost identical to the last Powerbook. The screen's slightly brighter and very easy on the eye, but irritatingly second-best next to the top PC laptops.

-The battery lasted three hours in normal use, but a really intensive session (ripping CDs while importing photos and doing some rudimentary video editing) saw the battery gasping for air after 90 minutes. At least that gave us the chance to plug in Apple's magnetically-attaching, trip-proof power cable. Yank this out with all the force you can muster and the MacBook barely budges.

The webcam produces clear, bright images. Used alongside Apple's iChat app, it allows effortless video conferencing over broadband with up to three others - as long as they're iChat users too.

What, though, of that Intel Core Duo processor? It makes mincemeat of video-editing app iMovie, letting you quickly add complex effects to your footage. Applications, though, must be optimised for the new processor and at the time of writing professional apps such as Final Cut Pro, and Adobe's Creative Suite hadn't been through this process. Although still usable, they run slower than on an iMac G5.

But you can't view this in terms of just nuts and bolts - it's a great mix of high spec and high style. For the Mac-loving classes in their angular glasses, its quirks only add to its considerable charm.